Gamespot have posted a Q&A with Robin Dews of Games Workshop's Warhammer Online Ltd. division and Matt Sansam, executive producer of Climax Nottingham, to discuss the background behind the Warhammer Online project. Here is part of the Q&A:

What can you tell us about the setting for Warhammer Online? Details on the area and the time period? Is it a generic fantasy, such as one of Tolkien or one like EverQuest, or is it the dark, gothic fantasy of the Warhammer world?

The preproduction design and development of Warhammer Online has really been an extended conversation between the Games Workshop staff and the Climax staff. I think that it's also true to say that having gone through this process, we've now got a team that has a fantastic insight into the potential and possibilities of an online game set in the Warhammer world. Strange as it might sound, before we started out on this project, none of the Games Workshop staff had ever played a persistent-world online game such as EverQuest or Dark Age of Camelot. We've since made up for it, but at the outset, I think it was a real asset that we were not bound by the conventional "wisdom" of what will and will not work.

We refined it down to the area of the Reikland, which has become the focus for this game. For readers who are not familiar with Warhammer, the world is a kind of a distorted version of the "real world," currently centered on western Europe, but also including areas of Canada and North America (dark elves), South America (Lustria--home of the lizardmen), central Europe (chaos dwarves), North Africa (undead). The time period will be contemporary with the current Warhammer timeline. This is the same one we use in our Black Library fiction and comics, as well as for the tabletop battle game. It means that Karl Franz is the Emperor on the Throne in Altdorf, and the hordes of chaos are currently at bay.