Is Warhammer Online Doomed?

16 Nov 2009 at 00:00:00 by Bill Vaughan

Last year Mythic launched its long-awaited MMO, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. In the run up to its release, many people, fans and professionals alike, claimed this was going to be the game that finally pushed Blizzard's World of Warcraft off the top of the MMO charts for good, the fabled 'WoW killer'. With the vast WAR lore behind it, not to mention the team that created Dark Age of Camelot, WAR had a pretty good chance to accomplish something special, but with recent news of job cuts at Mythic and disappointing subscription figures, things aren't looking good. Did the game fall short of expectations, or was it just unlucky? And will it still be around this time next year?

As a WoW player with little to no interest in PvP, last year's news of Mythic's upcoming MMO didn't excite me at all, but it did get me slightly worried. Guild mates, colleagues and even people that hadn't tried MMOs before were positively buzzing over the impending release of WAR, and the term 'WoW Killer' was beginning to pop up more and more. People were curious, even I was curious, what a company like Mythic could do with an MMO that had the benefit of being developed in WoW's shadow.

There are things about all games that we would like to see changed or improved. In the case of WoW, PvP is always a hot topic and Blizzard is constantly tweaking and altering features in an effort to make it more enjoyable or fair. However, many players feel WoW's PvP is fundamentally flawed and point out that the majority of features such as battlegrounds and arenas were stapled on as an after-thought. Warhammer Online revolves around Realm versus Realm combat, making PvP an integral part of the game. Speaking to friends before the game launched, people that intended to quit WoW in favour of WAR, this was one of the main reasons behind their intended move.

Of course, the game had more going for it than its PvP. The well documented lore was already in place, with many followers worldwide. Mythic did indeed take a look at what MMO players wanted, and offered some other nice features such as customisable armour, collision detection, and public quests. A Tome of Knowledge was also announced, and an achievement system, incidentally something that was added to WoW quick smart and has proven to be immensely popular there.

Mythic's general manager, Mark Jacobs, laid out his expectations for WAR, in which he stated that anything less than 500,000 subscribers would be considered a failure, as would having to merge servers. The company was clearly confident in its game (Paul Barnett infamously labelled WoW as Blackpool while referring to WAR as Vegas) and, keen to provide a home for its potential players, laid on almost 100 servers to cope with demand. After all, WoW had around 11 million subscribers at the time.

The game launched on 18 September 2008, and two weeks later Mythic announced that 1.2 million copies had been sold and WAR had 800,000 registered users. I knew plenty of people that were among the first to venture into WAR, mostly WoW players, and on the whole they were positive about their experience. I did note, though, that few of them actually cancelled their WoW subscriptions.

However, just two months after WAR went on sale, WoW's second expansion 'Wrath of the Lich King' was released. The game sold 2.8 million copies in the first 24 hours alone. Blizzard also reported that around 46% of players that had cancelled their subscriptions and given WAR as the reason had returned. In December, three months after WAR's launch, Mythic reported that the number of subscribers was now “over 300,000”. Oh dear.

But, remaining positive, Mark Jacobs told press that the fall in subscribers was expected with the launch of Lich King, and that it was a tough time in the market. Furthering the idea of a playerbase tug-of-war, he also claimed that players were already coming back to WAR after trying out WoW's expansion.

Things settled down over Christmas and New Year, but in March another blow was dealt to WAR. Mythic closed over 60 of the game's servers after conducting a huge character transfer campaign to merge the scattered communities. I bet Jacobs wished he'd kept his mouth shut. May brought more bad news, as EA executives confirmed WAR still had only 300,000 subscribers as of March, and the company as a whole had made a loss of $1.08 billion USD in the last year.

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