The BBC Reports that Games Workshop is launching an online version of their Warhammer role-playing game that will compete with World of Warcraft. As a retired game designer, I took an interest in some of the things they were pushing as advantages of their system:

Ditched in WAR has been item damage which sees weapons and armour degrade in quality as they are used until they break. Also gone is the need to ghost run from a graveyard back to a corpse when a character is killed. From the start everyone also gets a bag big enough to hold all the loot they gather.

Well, it is a “fantasy” after all, so who cares if equipment never breaks and one small backpack can hold thousands of gold coins and several suits of magic armor without getting heavy, right?

Still, I did like what they said about providing an open gaming environment rather than creating an objective for playing that everyone has to aim for.

Meanwhile another BBC report reveals that computer gamers are actually fairly fit compared to the general population, but they are more prone to depression.