style="margin: 10px; float: left; "
border="1">

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/62436/preview"
width="200" border="0">

It wouldn't be hard to assume that a large part of the players in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning are old school Warhammer tabletop fans. For those of us that are familiar with the tabletop miniatures/fantasy game, this week's revelation of the new Live Expansion for WAR, A Call To Arms, got us more than a little excited about the impending additions. It got some of us hoping and looking to the future of WAR (No, not that future! If you hit Warhammer 40k then you've gone too far!) while we play in the present. With the opening of a piece of The Land of the Dead, there are implication driven by the lore of Warhammer of things we will be seeing, in a future a little closer than we might have earlier thought.

The Land of the Dead lies to the south of the Marshes of Madness, so since both Destruction and Order have access to the Marshes, this will probably be the avenue you'll travel to get to the Tomb of the Vulture Lord. The fact that they're opening up a dungeon in the Land of the Dead indicates that we can expect to see this area take its place as a realm, possibly in the first paid expansion. While Jeff Hickman did mention during the most recent Loading... Live Vooncast we had here at Ten Ton Hammer that there was nothing in the works currently for the Tomb Kings to step up as a playable race, one would think that the idea wouldn't be too far outside of their minds.

Taking a quote from a recent Ten Ton Hammer interview with Jeff Hickman,

"Imagine that the kings of the realms have discovered an opportunity rising in the distance, and this opportunity is a new land that has been discovered. The kings want to check out and invade this land in order to gain more power and help with the war efforts."

It's almost a forgone conclusion at this point that Nehekhara will be opened up as a realm to run around in in the future, and the new Dungeon is just a taste of the coolness that lies behind curtain #1, even if the Tomb Kings never come into the game as a player race. With a wealth of lore to draw from and several high level "Boss" types settled into that region based on said lore, such as Settra the Imperishable, High Queen Khalida, or Nagash, who performed the Great Ritual that brought the Tomb Kings into existence, there's something for everyone in the Land of the Dead... possibly even the advent of Vampires.

style="margin: 10px; float: right; "
border="1">

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/62437/preview"
width="200" border="0">

If (when) a later expansion adds the Tomb Kings as a player race, they'll need an opposing army to balance them out. They're not mercenaries after all, like the Ogres, being united under Settra the Imperishable's rule, so they couldn't be neutral and work for anyone. Since the supposed death and exile of Nagash from the Lands of the Dead, the Vampires and the Tomb Kings have been at war. Nagash's ability to control the Vampire Counts allowed him to use them in his vast armies of undead that he unleashed against Nehekhara. Nagash later waged war on the early empire of Sigmar and now lies in his tomb in Nagashizzar, in the upper mountain area of the Land of the Dead, setting up the possibility that he could regain control of the Vampire armies he once commanded and rise against the armies of the man-god Sigmar or the Tomb Kings again.

While this Live Expansion shows Mythic's willingness and desire to strive to keep WAR interesting and fresh, you can believe that they have plans for a paid expansion down the road. Based on the content being introduced and the excitement at the announcement of the Tomb Kings, you can also believe that the paid expansion or another free expansion down the road will involve the entire Land of the Dead. Whether that involves new player races is still a mystery, but the implications of a new dungeon in the realm of Nehekhara seem to point to these things being true... and thousands of Warhammer fanboys/girls screamed with joy at the thought of it.