Eight years ago, the MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning shut down. But the fans of Warhammer Online won’t let the game die. A passionate team of fan developers has maintained an emulated version of the game on their own server since 2013. And they just announced they are adding new cities to the MMO, nearly a decade after it officially ended.
Return of Reckoning is a fan project that started up soon after Warhammer Online devs Mythic Entertainment closed down the MMO in 2013. Since then, the team has continued to maintain and update their own, privately-controlled version of the MMO. But now the team is ready to not just maintain the dead MMO, but expand it.
On September 18, the devs behind Return released a trailer announcing that two new cities had been added to the game: The Dwarf city of Karaz-A-Karak and the Greenskin home town of Karak Eight Peaks. These cities were originally planned to be part of Warhammer Online, but Mythic cut a bunch of content, like classes, to get the game out the door on time.
But adding these cities back into the MMO wasn’t a simple copy and paste of the old, unused content. According to the devs working on Return, the cities were only partially developed, and neither were ready for players. Each new city is roughly split into two areas. The upper area of the cities were mostly completed by Mythic, but needed to be cleaned up and fixed by the team. They also went in and added monsters, quests, and lore. The lower areas of the cities were basically non-existent, forcing the devs to create these areas mostly from scratch. According to the post announcing the new cities, nearly 40 fan devs put tens of thousands of hours into building and releasing this new content.
In a world where it seems like there are far, far too many Warhammer games, it is still nice to see an older title remaining popular nearly a decade after it was officially ended. These fans are working hard to preserve a piece of gaming history and doing an exceptional job at it, unlike most large game companies. This is also a great example of why MMOs should open up their assets and engines to fans after getting shut down, as it allows these games to live on and for folks to play them long after the bean counters and suits have deemed them no longer profitable or worth further investment.
You can download Return of Reckoning for free via the game’s official website, where the team also posts frequent updates and blogs.
(h/t: Eurogamer)
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