If you're a fan of  Warhammer Online, beware. This is not the expansion you may have waited for in the last few years. I got tricked as well for a few seconds.

Bioware announced today during the EA keynote at Gamescom the ucoming release of Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes, a free to play stand-alone spin-off  of the MMORPG, that features squad based 6vs6vs6 multiplayer.

The registration for the beta is already open and available on the official site.

To be honest, as a long lasting Warhammer and Warhammer Online fan, I find seeing the game's assets cannibalized to create a twitchy/brawly spin-off (instead used to improve the game to the benefit of it's existing subscribers) a little disheartening, but I'm sure that's just me...

Warhammer Online's community manager Kai Schober just published a Producer's letter, explaining that EA will continue to support and develop the MMORPG, showing some new sets of armor and teasing the return of fortresses in some form.

You can see some screenshots and the trailer of Wrath of Heroes below. You may also notice that between the selectable heroes there seems to be some belonging to the Vampire Counts faction. We can only hope to see them playable in Warhammer Online as well, sooner or later.

http://www.youtube.com/v/XVZgJi3gP64?version=3&hl=en_US