Eight years after Warhammer Online shut down, fans revive two capital cities that never made it into the game
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Warhammer Online shut down eight years ago - but it lives on thanks to the work of dedicated fans.
Return of Reckoning is a Warhammer Online private server that has been going for some time now, but over the weekend achieved a quite impressive milestone: the release of two capital cities that were planned for the fantasy MMO but never made it into the official game.
The Dwarf home city of Karaz-A-Karak and the Greenskin home city of Karak Eight Peaks were two of four capital cities that appeared in the Warhammer Online beta but were removed prior to launch. Only two capital cities - Altdorf and The Inevitable City - ended up officially released.
Now, Karaz-A-Karak and Karak Eight Peaks are live in Return of Reckoning. It's the work of volunteers who put in thousands of hours into recreating, developing and releasing what defunct developer Mythic Entertainment started over a decade ago.
The video below shows off the new areas:
I've had my eye on Return of Reckoning for some time now. I played Warhammer Online when it launched as an alternative to World of Warcraft (I still remember the fighting take from the studio ahead of launch), but quickly fell off the bandwagon as the early promise of the game failed to materialise.
The people behind Return of Reckoning deserve enormous credit for taking what Mythic started and building upon it - and it certainly seems worth it. A recent PvP event themed around Dwarfs vs Greenskins saw 1100 players on a single map. That's pretty good!
And the team isn't done, either. It said it plans to add a new city siege system, a new zone called Land of the Dead, and missing dungeons.
If you're wondering how Return of Reckoning, which uses the original game's assets, is allowed to exist with Games Workshop and EA, which published Warhammer Online, sniffing around, the developers have said they "reject any money or support in any way", which they hope "will be enough to stay off their radar".
"As long as we are able to, Return of Reckoning will be here to push the limits of Warhammer Online," the developers said.