Yet another great image from the team in the shape of these two Gobbos! Like the other characters and monsters we’re creating for the game, these will come with a number of interchangeable body parts and so the two guys you see here (one actually, but in two different poses!) are as nekkid a greenskin as you’ll ever see. In common with the Orcs, Beastmen and other inhabitants of the game world, in due course we’ll add a variety of weapons armour and equipment to these guys to provide our players with a very obvious and user friendly monster conning system – if it looks mean it probably is mean!

I’ve already talked a bit about the systems we are aiming to implement for the creatures and monsters in Warhammer Online. These are being designed to deliver a new approach to combat in an MMOG and hopefully create a more exciting (scary!) player experience. Our main targets are the ‘coloured bar’ method of examining monsters that tells the player the likely outcome of a fight – all very worthy, but all very dull! We also want to tackle the problem of a group of players ‘pulling’ monsters one at a time and then beating them to death in an orgy of violence.

As you might expect in the Warhammer world, when you encounter Orcs, you’ll also get Goblins, and where you get Goblins, you’ll also find Squigs, Giant Spiders and Trolls! What we’re aiming to deliver is a dynamic environment where the monster spawn procedures are aware of and take account of what is already in the environment.

What this means in practice is that when you and your band of adventurers decide to ‘pull’ that lonely Gobbo ambling through the woods – just beware. He might have one or two mates…

In the immortal words of Morglum Necksnapper – “The only good Stunty is a dead Stunty and the only thing better than a dead Stunty is a dyin’ one who tells you where to find ‘is mates!”