Warhammer 40k MMO playable next year
Launch between April 2012 and March 2013.
Promising massively multiplayer game Warhammer 40k: Dark Millennium Online will be playable at next year's E3 trade show, THQ has confirmed.
"Next year, I promise you, next E3," was THQ core games boss Danny Bilson's response when Eurogamer asked him when we'll get to play the MMO.
"I've already got plans for what the booth is like. The centrepiece of the booth will be that MMO."
Developed by Darksiders creator Vigil Games, Dark Millennium Online is set in the 41st Millennium and players will get to choose from multiple races.
Little is known about the game, but Bilson said work is progressing well.
"We have the new build," he said. "I was playing because the Games Workshop guys are in town. We took them through a little tour through a zone and some of the instances.
"It looks fabulous. I like it. I can't speak to it now, or people will kill me. But, I'll tell you what, it plays differently. A little bit.
"I'm a big MMO guy. I've played EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, WOW, City of Heroes... I've sampled a lot of them. I love MMOs. This thing is gonna be special."
Bilson said when DMO does come out it will compare favourably to MMO behemoth World of Warcraft and BioWare MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic.
"We're going to come out when we come out in a big way. I feel like we're fully competitive with the other guys," he said.
"It'll be seven years in the making when it comes out. We're competing with the best games in the world. You can't mess around with this thing.
"We're competing with two of the biggest brands in the world: World of Warcraft and Star Wars. We have to be really good to get people to want to play it. We will be really good."
Bilson confirmed Dark Millennium will launch at some point during THQ's next financial year – between April 2012 and March 2013.
Last year Bilson let slip some tentative details on the game in an interview with Eurogamer.
"If you've played WOW you'll be able to pick up and play this instantly, and you'll find all these things that feel like upgrades, in a way," he said.
"How soon you get vehicles, how many vehicles there are in the universe. If you know 40K, you know the things in the universe. You know the races. You know things like ranged combat is going to be important for the bolters. You know the chainsword matters, and having both.
"You know being an ork is a completely different experience than being a Space Marine, and being a Space Marine alone is a very different experience than being a scout or an Imperial Guard or any of the other Imperium of Man that you're going to see in this trailer.
"What does being an Inquisitor mean? That's down the road somewhere. I always say too much in these things, but I get excited.
"It has a lot of the same qualities of WOW in terms of ease of use and how the interface is. I want to say that if you play WOW, you'll be able to jump into Dark Millennium Online really easy.
"But you won't be able to be a Space Marine right away, because that's a very unique class, if you know the universe. The road there is a great road, and they are in the game."