News from ign.com: It is reported that, the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is nearing completion. And will go gold some time next week.

Creative director Paul Barnett told IGN that the client code, basically what customers will pay for in the box, will go gold sometime next week. With the big Games Convention in Leipzig scheduled for next week as well, it wouldn't be surprising to see Mythic make the big announcement there. Barnett also said that Mythic will work on tweaking and optimizing the server code right up until launch in mid September.

Aside from that, the game was on display, showing off its relative high state of polish as large-scale player-versus-player battles were under way. Warhammer Online has entered its beta testing phase, and Barnett said that 50,000 players were recently admitted to the game. Another number that he threw around was that apparently there have been 130,000 pre-orders for the game, which he described in classic Barnett style as "all the best bits of fantasy with all the crap bits thrown out."