FAIRFAX, Va. - September 26, 2008 - The Armies have assembled and the Worldwide WAAAGH! is Underway! Mythic Entertainment, an Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) studio, today announced that in the first week since launch over 500,000 new players have registered for fantasy MMORPG, Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning™ (WAR), in North America, Europe and the Oceanic territories. EA's most highly pre-ordered PC title, WAR has now become the fastest-selling new MMO of all time.

"In just one week we have a half a million people playing WAR online, and the ranks of Order and Destruction are growing at a record-breaking pace for a new MMORPG," said Mark Jacobs, co-founder and general manager of Mythic Entertainment. "We spent years working to provide players with the most stable, epic, and polished online world we could, but it is the players that have truly brought the Age of Reckoning to life."

Based on the popular tabletop war game from Games Workshop, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning features revolutionary Realm vs. Realm™ conflict that will provide an engaging battleground for years to come. Available for PC and rated "T" for Teen by ...

Special Monsters
Representing what in the past have been referred to as super-unique monsters, these baddies are always generated in the same location in the game. They may provide excellent opportunities for "rushes" or for the layman, repeated returns to particular locations in the game to pump monsters for loot and experience.

Providing an extra challenge and different combat experience, special monsters are often considerably larger, stronger, and difficult to kill than the standard affair monsters one encounters in Diablo III. They always possess a particular quality enhancing their potency, be it a curse affecting an enemy's defense or a resistance or immunity to certain elemental or physical attacks.

The development team chose to use scripted events in greater frequency and detail than previous games in the series this time around. Bosses like the Thousand Pounder are summoned by a group of Dark Cultist class monsters, an event triggered by one's character arriving in the fateful room; we get to watch them swallowed up into the demon's form and blown away. Somewhat similar to the foreboding earthquake event that occurs when, in Diablo II, the Lord of Terror hims

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PVP levels and statistics

This update now activates the PVP leveling system. You can now gain PVP levels by engaging in your normal PVP activities, be it world PVP, siege encounters or defeating your foes in the PVP mini-games. There are ten PVP levels in total that you can work through to prove your worth on the battlefield.

Your PVP stats are now also active in your character tab, keeping track of your performance in PVP.

In addition your new PVP armor ratings come into play now that the system is active. These provide additional mitigation of damage against damage that comes from other players. The new PVP armors will be the primary means of raising these ratings, although we will look to add additional means of raising these PVP defensive ratings in the future.


Diminishing Returns
Diminishing returns have also been set on PVP XP. This means that you receive less and less of a benefit from killing the same person in quick succession. This is an area that we will most likely continue to tweak and adjust over time. It is the type of feature that will require some additional feedback from the live servers to get exactly right. For the launch we have tried to set it a lit

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Improved Battle.net In-Game Functionality

Any quote from Blizzard clearly states that while they won't talk much about Battle.net 2.0, we will be blown away or be very impressed. It's a given that all current features for Battle.net will be included and improved! Blizzard has said they have learned a lot from WoW on infrastructure, and features from WoW will definitely also be seen. So Battlenet 2.0 WILL feature:

    * Excellent Ping
    * Channels and Chat in-game
    * Ladders and Rankings, secured against cheating.
    * Extended stats, with possibility to see who D/C etc
    * AMM-type Matchmaking
    * Avatars, Images and Icons to represent yourself
    * Diablo III Hardcore mode
    * Friends/Ignore Lists with advanced management (see accounts below)
    * Clan Support
    * Automated Tournaments

As an example, we just found out that Diablo III players will possibly deal with all their trading directly by whispers in the new network. With this in mind, we can expect many simple and useful features directly in the system.


Achievements
Just ...