Mythic Entertainment is looking to extend Warhammer Online's hot start with some major additions to the new fantasy MMO.

While World of WarCraft's forthcoming expansion title Wrath of the Lich King will see the Blizzard MMO hit 12 million users, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has garnered 750,000 within its first month. While this represents only 6 percent of WoW's total subscriber base, it's an impressive number given that many other new MMO titles, like Age of Conan and Tabula Rasa, have seen dwindling numbers to the point of servers being merged just to maintain a strong population.

At least some of Warhammer Online' success stems from the intellectual property's 25-year-old history, starting as a tabletop game and evolving into fantasy novels, role-playing games, various real-time strategy titles, and even spawning the futuristic Warhammer 40,000 series. However, much of the MMORPG's success has to do with Mythic Studios and its MMO experience, including titles like Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot. With triple A titles like that under your belt, a strong start is to be expected.

With a five-month-long beta, many changes were made to the final product, including the elimination of several classes that were not considered ready for launch time. However, in his first "State of The Game" address, Mythic General Manager Mark Jacobs announced that some of those classes would be returning in December. "I'm happy to announce that in December, the Black Guard and the Knight of the Blazing Sun will officially be part of WAR," Jacobs wrote. "When they were cut from the game launch plans earlier this year, I said that the Black Guard and the Knight would be part of WAR only when they were great and deserved their place alongside all of WAR's other compelling classes."

Adding two classes is not a small game update by any means; a change of this magnitude usually comes in the form of an expansion. However, Mythic will be releasing the update for free. "I also said that we would not charge any additional fees for this new content or put it in a separate expansion pack; that's not how we operate," Jacobs stated. "We've kept to that plan and with the introduction of these two classes, Mythic shows that once again we are happy to keep giving players more value for their subscription dollars than any other MMORPG developer."

While the class additions were certainly the biggest piece of news, Jacobs had even more updates users can in the near future. "Over the last month the team has been looking at all the careers and building up a list of issues/concerns to address. Almost every career is going to see some changes." WAR fans can also expect 14 new quest chains and two new Lairs. If Warhammer Online can extend its current short-term success into staying power, it could make for an exceptional alternative to the Blizzard behemoth.

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