One of the biggest problems developers face when creating MMORPGs is having enough content to keep players coming back for more. This doesn't seem to bother the EA Mythic team working on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

Josh Drescher, the senior designer working on the game, was recently interviewed by gamesindustry.biz where he let slip that in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, "all the under-the-hood numbers all actually scale through the next five years."

Yes, that means what you think it does. The game's content for the next five years have already been planned out. He explained that planning this far ahead is important to provide gamers with a good and fluid gaming experience:

You need to spec the game out in such a way that you actually have those progressions in mind for later - so you don't wind up trampling all over the earlier experiences every time you expand the game.

With the amount of cash invested in Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, it's probably a given that the developers are in it for the long haul. That said, it's nice to see that the developers are taking a structured approach to providing content for users and are not working on these major updates on the fly.