The Warhammer faithful have cause to rejoice: the street date for the highly anticipated Warhammer: Age of Reckoning has finally been announced.
Marc Jacobs, founder and general manager of Mythic Entertainment, released a statement on WAR’s website this morning along with the announcement heralding the release.
“The countdown has officially begun. Mark your calendars! September 18th is the Day of Reckoning,” said Jacobs. “For the last three years, the entire team at Mythic has poured their hearts into making Warhammer Online the next great MMORPG. We are so excited to open up this world and share it with the fans that will live in it, quest in it, go to war in it and make it come alive.”
Subscription rates were also announced this morning at $14.99 per month, $41.97 for three months, and $77.94 for six months.
Pre-order customers will also be allowed to participate in the WAR open beta, a “head-start” program that allows player to gear up and level before launch, as well as bonus in-game gear from specific retailers.
Developer Mythic Entertainment has been notorious for pushing the release date that many gamers felt the game would be in a permanent state of development limbo. Citing technical issues such the inability to produce individual capitol cities for all playable races and no racially specific traits for orcs and dwarves, many gamers felt that this title would exist in closed beta in perpetuity.
Now that an open beta is available, it is only a matter of time before gamers may make the final determination amongst themselves.
First-quarter results from the industry mainstay posted the company at a loss of $963.
Despite the brutal blow, consumer growth has gone up 90.6 per cent. However, the company’s current woes can be laid directly at the feet of Sega’s pachinko arcade interests which cost them more than $39 million.
However, Videogame sales have continued to climb for the publisher as Iron Man and Valkyria Chronicles continue to exceed sales expectations in Japan and worldwide.
Ken Levine is a man of many words, so when he gets tight-lipped in an interview at GamesIndustry.biz, suspicion naturally follows.
Levine, the genius behind the genre defining Bioshock, is currently working on a project for 2K that he explains “The goal for our next project is something very different.”
What that something is remains a mystery.
“I actually can’t talk about it, without talking about the game itself,” Levine said to Industry.biz editor Phil Elliott. “There are things related to story, gameplay and…I don’t know how to describe it…people’s relationship with the game over the long term. That’s what we’re thinking about, but it’s about as clear as I can be.”
As the Golden State begins to look like the “Lead Balloon State,” California is showing the ESA the money.
The Entertainment Software Association was awarded more than $280,000 for attorney’s fees while battling the state over a videogame law that proved to be unconstitutional.
This comes at a time when California is already drowning in a sea of red ink, laying off more than 10,000 state employees and civil servants. A point that the ESA was quick to bring up in a statement made earlier today.
“California deserves more from its legislators than pursuing flawed legislation. State employees are facing pay cuts. California’s services are being scaled back. And, anxiety is rising in Sacramento to find funds,“ said Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the ESA, the trade association representing U.S. computer and video game publishers. “Rather than tackling real problems affecting Californians, they chose to waste time, money and state resources. It is shameful that legislators pursued personal agendas in spite of the facts.”
The ESA received a favorable ruling in 2007 when Judge Ronald Whyte granted the association’s motion for summary judgment, acknowledging that video games were protected under the 1st Amendment.
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