WAR Forged in Chaos novel in the works

Mythic Entertainment and The Black Library, a division of Games Workshop, today announced FORGED IN CHAOS, an original novel based on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. The third in a series of WAR novels, FORGED IN CHAOS will be available in all major bookstores and on the Black Library website in the fall of 2009.

FORGED IN CHAOS, by Black Library author C.L. Werner, provides an account of Destruction’s incursion into the Bastion Stair in search of the legendary Spear of Myrmidia. C. L. Werner is a veteran Black Library author, and his credits include Mathias Thulmann: Witch Hunter, the Chaos Wastes books Palace of the Plague Lord and Blood for the Blood God, Runefang and the Brunner the Bounty Hunter trilogy. Currently living in the American south-west, he continues to write stories of mayhem and madness set in the Warhammer World.

Mythic Pulls Plug on Over 60 Warhammer Online Servers

The world of Mythic Entertainment’s MMO game Warhammer Online got a whole lot smaller this week, as the company pulled the plug on more than sixty of the game’s low population servers. Mythic has shut down 43 of the servers in North America and Asia, and 20 of the European servers.

The shutdown is the culmination of efforts started a few months back, when the company offered up free transfers for players from those low population servers to some of the game’s busier servers. Mythic’s hope was that by consolidating the servers, it could manage to put the “Massive” feeling back into the “Massively Multiplayer Online” game, after seeing its subscriber base plummet from an initial three quarters of a million after launch to the current install base of roughly 300,000 players this year. Yesterday, Warhammer Online players who had not yet taken advantage of the free transfers logged in to find out their characters were automatically changed to one of the more densely populated servers. Mandatory realm transfers in Europe are expected to wrap up this week, after which all of the then empty servers will be taken down.

Considering the epic scope of Warhammer Online’s large scale PvP battles, putting more asses in the proverbial seats is critical to the game’s future. In an effort to rebuild and reinforce the number of players in Warhammer Online, Mythic announced this week that it was expanding the game’s Recruit-A-Friend program in North America and Asia. Originally, subscribers would get an extra 30 days of free game time for each new player he convinced to sign up for the game. This week, Mythic sweetened the pot a bit more, offering anyone who recruits two new subscribers an exclusive pet, and giving subscribers who manage to convince four new players to sign up an exclusive in-game item.

WAR: Empire in Chaos in Stores

Warhammer Online is set for September 18, but players can get a taste of the game’s rich backstory by picking up a copy of the new book Empire in Chaos. Penned by noted Games Workshop writer Anthony Reynolds novel follows the journey of Annaliese Jager as she escapes her destroyed village only to be swept up in a battle to save the Empire from the forces of Chaos. Joined by an injured High Elf, a grizzled Witch Hunter, and a Dwarf Ironbreaker, she must battle alongside the armies of the Empire and Dwarfs against greenskin tribes and the Chaos Raven Host.

The novel is being published by Black Library Publishing and is in stores now.

Battle March Hits Retail

Namco Bandai Games today announced that Warhammer: Battle March for the Xbox 360 and Warhammer: Mark of Chaos - Battle March for the PC have shipped to retailers throughout North America. Set in the popular Warhammer universe, Battle March extends the fun of the tactics-based real-time strategy action game with new content and brings the expansion and original game to the Xbox 360.

Warhammer: Battle March on the Xbox 360 includes the original content from Warhammer: Mark of Chaos as well as more units and armies, new console-specific control schemes and support for online play via the Xbox LIVE. Eliminating the tedium of resource management and base building, this game puts the focus on combat.

If you enjoyed the original on the PC or want to experience it in a new way on a home console system, these games are probably worth checking out.