Ah, now here's some news I can get a little hyperactive about:

Gamespot: THQ Forging Warhammer 40K MMOG
(via MMODIG)

Looks like the already tried and tested partnership between THQ and Games Workshop, which brought us Dawn of War, and Fire Warrior are going to have a crack at the big one, an MMO based on, in or around, the sprawling grim darkness of the future that is Warhammer 40K. The Unbeliever is excited, and damnit, so am I, in spite of the carefully constructed veneer of jaded indifference I maintain to appear cool online!

I'm certainly interested in the much more complete and much closer to actually playable Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, but to be honest, World of Warcraft has stolen it's thunder a bit for me. I know, I know...Games Workshop were there first, and Blizzard are just nasty tricksey little theiveses who stole it from us, and all that, but it pretty much feels somewhat academic at this point, and you can't argue with WoW's polished execution and huge popularity. Even so, I'm not quite sure I'm up to something so essentially similar now, particularly in light of the recent decision to aim at a 'T for Teen' rating, something that seems rather at odds with the grim war-torn fantasy world of the tabletop gaming lore. We'll see - I'll probably have a look because I'm just weak.

Warhammer 40K on the other hand, offers THQ/GW a chance to stand out from the crowd a bit, and unless Blizzard suddenly 'decloak' a shockingly finished and annoyingly perfect 'World of Starcraft' any time soon, should give jaded MMO gamers the world over a chance to go somewhere, and be someone, a bit different to the usual sword-swinging goblin murderer.

The universe of Warhammer 40K is a staggeringly huge tapestry of lore, back story, concept art and the rest, and is now about twenty years in the making. While initially quite a derivative basic set-up; Space Orcs, Space Elves, Space Dwarves, Space Demons, etc, in the interveneing years, it's flourished and blossomed in all manner of weird and wonderful directions, and is the colaborative work of litterally dozens of designers, authors and artists, leaving a whole which is at least, if not more, elaborate than the collected Tolkien works, but which still retains the accessibility and variety which can only come from the basic concepts being designed from the word go, for a game - something many big IP Franchise Tie-ins suffer from: Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar and Star Wars: Galaxies, for example. The whole backstory is already stuffed to the gills with stats, damage values, dice rolls and the like, making for a much easier translation to a computer game, than either of the former two examples ever had.

Far too early to speculate on gameplay, but since the tag-line of the table-top stuff reads; 'In the dark future of the 41st millennium, there is only war!', one can reasonably expect a fair degree of hot PvP Bolter-on-Bolter action. The 'usual' races are likely to all be there, but in unusual forms - Orks, Eldar, Necron, Imperium, Tyranids, Chaos, Tau, and so on - many of which have their conceptual roots in the very traditional, and increasingly bland, line-up of character select race choices, but in 40K, they're all a bit different, and within each race there are often dozens of sub-races - Marine Chapters, Eldar Craftworlds, Ork Clans. With this kind of huge lore to explore, one would expect there to be a fairly significant PvE element to wander, (or more likely sprint, head down and screaming), through.

I'd also expect to see something almost Planetside-esque in terms of FPS twitch gameplay - it's a world of really big guns and cult-based forgotten technology, rather than spells and swords, and given the few years we're likely to have to wait for it, I doubt that the usual tab-to-target, double-click-to-auto-attack, and use-abilities-to-cause-damage model with really cut the mustard in the MMOs of 2010. I think we'll all be ready for something a bit fresh by then - I know I am already!

Many folks are already familiar with Dawn of War, and indeed, that does make a good primer to the 40k Universe, if a little cartoonish, introducing the essential character of the place, and it's people, but for a really good pre-emptive poke about the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, I can't recommend Fire Warrior enough. It's a single-player FPS, with quite a high skill requirement, but does a fantastic job of giving you an up-close and personal glimpse of the kind of worlds we might expect from a Warhammer 40k MMO, casting you as a bright young Tau warrior, and facing you up against all manner of the more common adversaries to be found in the place.

I'm just off to take a quick Fanboi refresher course - I'm very rusty these days. Definitely one to watch!