There’s just so much to say about Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning that people don’t even talk about. I’m don’t mean innovations like Public Quests or the Tome of Knowledge or Open Groups or stuff like that, but stuff that really makes you sit down and go, “damn, why hasn’t any other game ever done this?” It’s that “I coulda had a V-8″ forehead slap moment.

I’d have liked to have been in that meeting where some nebbiish dev looked up from his books and said, in a quavering voice that would change the direction of the game forever, “why don’t we have DWARFS in our game?”.

The sound of helicopters… the tragedy of bunnies… Every person’s mind was immediately gripped by the tale of the dwarf Alderich, who forged a magic ring deep within a volcano’s maw, a single ring that would rule the entire world.

“Nobody has EVER done THAT,” agreed everyone else. “Nobody’s gonna figure out that we stole the idea from an OPERA!” And thus, the race of dwarfs was born, and among them, that stalwart example of dwarf obstinacy, the Ironbreaker.

Simulated Warhammer screenshot.

Standing four foot high on tippy-toes and waving their stubby little arms above their heads, you’d be forgiven for thinking the best way to deal with an Ironbreaker is by treating them like your annoying kid brother, who wants the toy YOU have, that you keep tossing back and forth with your sister on the other side of the room.

“Mine! MINE! I WANT MINE!!!” screams the Ironbreaker, his face going all red and cute, but he just can’t get the toy, can he? Can he? Here it is! Whoops! Over to Sis! Awwww.

Ironbreakers are the whiny little brothers of Warhammer, forever running around, hoping people will hit them so they can run and tell Mother. “MOTHER!!!!” cries little I.B., “He HIT me! And then SHE hit me! And then all these OTHER people hit me! MAKE THEM STOP!!!” and Mother comes out, looking like she wants to hit the little urchin, too.

Wait. YOU’RE an Ironbreaker? Sorry, I didn’t see you right away, crouching there behind the rock. Oh? Well, standing behind. Oh? OKAY. Standing on TOP of the rock, waving your hands. Well, so you’re an Ironbreaker, are ya?

Well, your job is to stand places. Yup. That’s it. Stand over here, stand over there, and be all whiny so people will hit you. You want to be hit. You CRAVE being hit. You want people to give you a real BEATING. To walk over to where you are, standing still, and then HIT you.

Yeah. You like being hit. Every bruise is a badge for you. You live for the moment when Mother walks up and you can say, “SEE what they did!? And I didn’t cry, not once!”

You’re one whiny, sick, Oedipal bastard.

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Wondering what your Warhammer career says about your personality? You won’t find that hot info anywhere else than here at Straight Talk Warhammer, where we know you better than you know yourself.

Ever since Blizzard created the MMORPG genre with World of Warcraft, generations of people wondered if the genre they invented would end with that game — it was just so good, such a shining gem of perfection, that to add or subtract any one thing to that game would just mar its sublime beauty.

And then Mythic dreamed of a new game, one as polished as WoW, but with things WoW had never imagined, like two sides forever at war — at WAR! — and battlegrounds where the two mortal enemies could meet in order to take on well-defined challenges for points. The name of this paragon of innovation?

None other than Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. That’s WO:AoR, which is kind of like how a ghost would say “war”. And there’s no WAR class better at turning people to ghosts than WAR’s own little mad bomber, the Dwarf Engineer.

Simulated Warhammer screenshot.

A dwarf engineer walks casually out of a post office, schoolhouse, shopping center, whatever. He scratches a match to fiery life on the back of his knuckle, lights a cigar, and — BOOM! — terrified screams are brought to a sudden end as the entire building goes up in flames. He takes a deep drag from the cigar, smiles, and walks slowly away.

Because Engineers don’t kill people one at a time. An Engineer isn’t happy unless he is killing people by the dozens. An Engineer isn’t happy unless he’s destroyed the peace and happiness of an entire nation.

Try and turn away all dwarfs at the border, and they protest and call it ‘profiling’ and tie up the international courts for MONTHS. The is why you must fight dwarfs THERE so you don’t have to fight them HERE. Take the fight to them. That’s the only way to kill an Engineer. Hit them where they live, hit them fast, and hit them hard.

And you don’t even want to KNOW what an Engineer can do with an eight ounce bottle of Listerene. Three ounce bottles of Listerene are okay, though. They can’t do anything with those.

Dwarfs are really pretty skinny — not many people know that they are wiry little guys and gals. Why do they look so round?

Reloads. A Dwarf Engineer was once apprehended by the virtuous agents of Chaos and found to be carrying three shot guns (one with a sawed-off barrel), ten grenades, enough plastic explosive to level a city, three bandoliers with two hundred shells each, a dozen detonators, two rolls of duct tape and a hundred meter spool of copper wire.

They would have had more, but they’d just been running down to the corner store for matches.

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Holy smokes! We’ve come to the end of another edition of Straight Talk Warhammer! Come back tomorrow, same time, same place, when we discuss the Dwarf Engineer’s less psychotic cousin, the Rune Priest. Remember, if it’s Warhammer, and it’s Online, there’s only one place to get the Straight Talk about it.