Why Warhammer Online failed

oakpack4 — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 21:14:16 GMT

And I played in 2006 days of vanilla, very nice :3

oakpack4 — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 21:13:45 GMT

As of May 5, 2009, EA execs confirmed in an investor conference that they have 300,000 subscribers as of the end of March 2009[42], shortly after the company reported an FY2009 loss of $1.08 billion-QFT

TheOneGuardian — Mon, 11 May 2009 00:49:16 GMT

Did anyone actually play the orginal WoW? Better known as Vanilla WoW. One thing alot of us seasoned WoW players talked about was how Warhammer is going through excactly what WoW went through when it first started. Complaint after complaint, more patches and more patches, more content and more content.

On a side note, I personally feel WoW is going down the crapper especially with they're new expansion, the game seems to be too cluttered with too many skills and majority of good gameplay is left at 39 and 49 twinks which is all I play now but I'll probably stop and just play my warhamemr account because I enjoy the PvP.

As far as grinding WoW is the worst the ONLY way you can levle in wow is grinding and questing but in Warhamemr I can level from doign PvE or PvP.

and as far as ur comment: "knight of the blazing sun does not feel totally different from the Swordmaster"

As long as I have enough AP (mana) I can use any skill on my skillbar. As a Swordmaster you have Normal, Good, and Perfect Balance. and you have to start with usign a skill form normal balance then you can use a skill from the next balance. How is this not any different?

Zeroes — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:07:15 GMT

I think you're just angry that you wasted money on this when you could have paid for a few more months of WoW instead =P

Karalas — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:53:02 GMT

To start with EA's finacial status has nothing to do with Warhammer but the crisis in the economy as a whole and the worse thing EA could do is cut something that makes a profit.

While though there are many things wrong with Warhammer, (could keep sieges be any more like the last keep siege?!?) The points you bring up in your blog tend to be nothing more then this game isn't like WoW. So I guess your Subject is appropriate compared to WoW Warhammer has failed.

Do you honestly expect any company to compete with an 11million subscriber base. Lets face it even Blizzard won't be able to top WoW (market share wise..) So lets take WoW out of the equation it being the unstoppable Juggernaut it is and compare WAR to the rest of the MMO market. It is crushing the competition (once again if you take the elephant out of the room.)

Maxscunion — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:31:08 GMT

Lol, I didn't know it failed. When did this happen?

The game that this is loosely based off of had more than 30-45k people on per night at its peak and the first expansion sold 110k copies. This game is still around today but with only about 3k per night Prime time after almost 9 years.

My point? This game sold more than that in the first month by almost 5 times the amount of their first expansion. And there are very many more people playing per night than that so it stands to reason that this game will be around for a very long time to come.

What exactly would you like to see from a game cause if you take all the things away that you're talking about.... errrm there just isn't a game. Let me know when you develop one so I won't waste my time on it.

A grind? Where? I played WoW from the beta till about 6 months into it and then picked it up a year later for another 6 months and quit again and picked it up again and played it till WAR Beta landed on me and I still don't have a even a lvl 50 in WoW. That was a grind to me. Highest I ever got was 36. Yes due to switching servers just about everytime I went back but 6 months is too long to worry about getting into endgame, not to mention there was no endgame there, just pointless ganking for months and months. In WAR I have a 40 Tank and a 40 Healer in the same amount of time it took me to casually get to 36 in wow. I don't care what happens in between its all just filler Im out for the end game which in WAR I enjoy greatly.

I have never heard of anyone complaining about the loading screens either, so you're the first for me.. I personally wouldn't have thought about it if I hadn't heard if from you.

I'm sure you're next going to complain about balance even though the way you make it seem the classes are cookie cutter images.

Prodigal — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:30:00 GMT

I thought overall the classes were well done, except for the lack of fluff/utility abilities all around the board. This was one of the things I thought they did well.

It bothers me more that the game 'world' acts as a lobby for when you're queued for scenarios - which is what most people playing are doing. This dilutes the population in the actual world and with people constantly coming and going frustrates the players working on PQs or ORvR.

Indelible — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:46:04 GMT

Oh yes, I thought I'd mention that I am a WoW player, not a WAR player. My WAR sub has been inactive for quite a while ;-)

Indelible — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:45:28 GMT

I was going to respond to your blog post in my own blog... and then I read your last comment.

You spent the entire time you wrote this blog making redundant comments. Almost every point you claim led to WARs failure inspired a, "just like WoW," response from myself (aside from 1 or 2). From your comments about the lack of cities, to the comments about the class layout, this entry just SCREAMS ignorance on a grand scale.

As for your last comment about it being shut down by August... well... I don't think you could be further off the mark if you tried. Industry analysts are still predicting 1,000,000 players for WAR by Q4 2009. EA are still piling money into marketing and development. Mythic have received massive praise for their latest content offering and critics are all suggesting that the latest fixes and changes will see people come to WAR rather than leave.

Whilst WAR certainly missed a few marks that it is now having to make up for, declaring its death when you blatantly don't understand the reasons for its perceived failure is ridiculous. I think you need to realise that even 350,000 subs will still be turning over a profit for Mythic and EA, so shutting it down won't be on their to do list just yet ;-)