“Shutting down now, thanks for all the Waaaaaghs!” read the message to gamers logged in a the time of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning's shut down. While there might have been a reasonable number of players still willing to slaughter one another across the Old World, with the licensing deal between Mythic and Games Workshop over, there was no hope for  the game.

Watch the final minutes of its life here, with well wishes and cries of Waaagh from all involved: [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxfoR_3PU9c']

Warhammer Online launched in 2008 to a lot of positive reviews and press, but while it came strong out of the gate with over a million early sales, the game quickly dwindled to just 300,000 active players within a couple of months. Over the next few of years servers were scaled back and consolidated as player numbers continued to fall and ultimately led to just three running by the time of the final shut down.

Maybe a decapitation feature would have kept players around for longer

However the Age of Reckoning can lay claim to some elements that are now popular in MMO creation, like public quests, where anyone can join in and be given a chance of winning a share of the loot.

Kittguru Says: I remember when this was being developed they initially talked about making characters like Orcs get bigger as they levelled up. While I don't think this was actually implemented in the end, I remember thinking it sounded cool.  

[Thanks StrategyInformer]

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