WAR - The mysterious acronym?

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Warhammer: Age of Reckoning = WAR, however, you may be asking yourself, “What came first: the chicken (game title) or the egg (acronym)?” To answer that, we’ll need to do a bit of digging and guess-work.

It all started with a Climax. In the early 2000’s, a Warhammer MMORPG was being developed by Climax Group under the title, Warhammer Online (WHO). Here’s some old video footage of their original vision:

WHO never saw the light of day though, as it was canceled in June 2004:

A Warhammer MMORPG Warhammer Online was in development, but was canceled in June 2004 towards the end of its development after Games Workshop decided the roll out costs were too high. Work on the game never actually stopped though as its developer Climax Online (formerly Climax Nottingham) continued the project using its own funding. Climax Online reported in late 2004 that it was closed due to difficulty securing a publishing agreement.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Mythic acquired the license shortly afterwards in 2005 and began restructuring from the ground up. They obviously couldn’t (or wouldn’t want to) use WHO as the acronym would have been associated with the older Climax iteration. Also, WHO isn’t exactly the best acronym for a Warhammer game… maybe better suited for a sci-fi Dr. WHOnline?

Anyway, this is where I have to start speculating as I don’t believe an official answer has ever been published by EA Mythic.

I believe they came up with a good acronym (WAR) and designed the game title around it. WAR truly captures everything about their vision for the game and it’s pretty darn catchy too. Catchy enough to stand up against WoW (World of Warcraft)? Sure, why not!

What evidence backs up my assumptions? Well, it’s actually a lack of evidence that backs it up. Nowhere in my research (although I admit that I’m a complete Warhammer lore n00b) have I come across the “Age of Reckoning” as a period of time or key event in Warhammer’s fantasy history. Please correct me if I’m wrong!

That doesn’t mean Age of Reckoning is a bad game title. On the contrary, when you consider the foundation they’re basing the game upon, it’s actually quite good:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flegler What does Age of Reckoning even mean? I doubt that any more will be reckoned than was in previous ages, it’s just a handy acronym.

Actually there’s going to be a lot of reckoning if you think about it. Ulthuan has been invaded by a fleet of Black Arks and half the island is openly crawling with Dark Elves now.

There’s going to be another Great Chaos Incursion into the Empire, which hasn’t happened in hundreds of years (Was it two centuries? I forget)

Karaz-a-Karak, the great dwarf city that has never fallen in all of history WILL fall to the Greenskin WAAAGH! in this Age (at least it will fall on a good number of servers) Great leaders like Karl Franz and Malekith will be captured (and rescued after being pelted with tomatoes).

If you were a seer or prophet and you had visions of the carnage that was going to happen in WAR once the servers go online, I think you’d be calling it a Age of Something Significant. But Age of Reckoning just sounds better.

(Source: Warhammer Alliance Message Boards)

Age of Something Significant? Lol, that’s a much worse acronym if you ask me!

So, what does this all prove, aside from the fact that it’s such a slow news day that I’m speculating about gaming acronyms? It proves, at least to me, at that Mythic are a pretty smart batch of cookies. They chose a great acronym and reverse-engineered a great game title out of it.

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