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First Warhammer 40K MMO details

RPG, guns, races, scrolls, hulks, more.

Dark blue icons of video game controllers on a light blue background
Image credit: Eurogamer

The new issue of the UK's PC Gamer magazine has published the first details of THQ's massively multiplayer Warhammer 40K game. Not bad going, considering it's still years away.

The game, it transpires, is definitely an RPG at its core. But although it's no MMOFPS it's still firefight-focused, and borrows heavily from the holy trinity of tactical shooter mechanics: cover, suppressive fire, and flanking. Sounds a bit like Tabula Rasa to us.

Combat will apparently take place on a larger scale than in EA Mythic's fantasy MMO, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Since Mythic is anticipating raid sizes of 70 players or so for city sieges in WAR, this is a pretty bold claim.

"All of the races important to Warhammer 40,000 lore (not to mention the fans) will be represented," creative director Joe Madureira reassured the magazine.

He also confidently stated that there will be "tons of stuff hanging off your character, weapons, scrolls... we are going to have the coolest looking characters of any MMO, ever. Once we begin releasing images, feel free to call me on that."

Again, this is fighting talk, after the astonishing demonstration of the characters in All Points Bulletin given at this year's GDC.

Finally PC Gamer provides some unsurprising but none the less enticing detail on the world players will find themselves in: "cities, alien temples, Chaos shrines, deserted battlefields (er, woo?), mysterious ruins, ancient structures, and - here's the cool one - 'drifting hulks in space'."

Warhammer 40K Online is in development at THQ's Vigil Games studio in Austin.

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