Stopping Warhammer MMO Gets New Cities Decade Overdue

Eight years ago, the MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Judgment to close. But fans of Warhammer Online won’t let the game die. A passionate team of fan developers have maintained an emulated version of the game on its own server since 2013. And they just announced that they are adding new cities to the MMO, nearly a decade after its official end.

The return of accounts is a fan project which started shortly after Warhammer Online devs Mythic Entertainment shut down the MMO in 2013. Since then, the team has continued to maintain and update their own private version of the MMO. But now the team is ready to not only keep the MMO dead, but expand it.

September 18, the developers behind To recover released a trailer announcing that two new cities have been added to the game: the dwarf city of Karaz-A-Karak and the hometown of Greenskin from Karak Eight Peaks. These towns were originally to be part of Warhammer Online, but Mythic cut a bunch of content, like lessons, to get the game out on time.

But adding these cities to the MMO wasn’t a simple cut and paste of old, unused content. According to the developers working on To recover, the cities were only partially developed and none were ready for the players. Each new city is roughly divided into two zones. The upper area of ​​the towns was mostly completed by Mythic, but needed to be cleaned up and repaired by the team. They also came in and added monsters, quests, and lore. Lower areas of cities were virtually non-existent, forcing developers to create these areas mostly from scratch. According to the post announcing the new cities, nearly 40 fan developers have dedicated tens of thousands of hours to creating and publishing this new content.

In a world where it seems there is much, much too much War hammer Games, it’s always nice to see an older title remain popular nearly a decade after its official end. These fans work hard to preserve a piece of the game’s history and do an exceptional job at it, unlike most big game companies. It’s also a great example of why MMOs Should Open Their Assets And Engines To Fans After They Closebecause it allows these games to endure and people to play them long after bean counters and combinations deemed them more profitable or not worth investing more.

You can download The return of accounts for free via the game’s official website, where the team also posts frequent updates and blogs.

(h / t: Eurogamer)