Im personally rooting for WAR. AOC feels stiff and rather uninspired from the trailers and gameplay footage. Pirates I couldnt care less for, but thats just personal I think.

The real question here is what do the developers of the myriad games see as success. If they're really looking for WoW level success they will most likely fail. Unless they're patient. WoW didn't become the giant it is overnight. I also hope they've learned something from the mistakes of others, ie: don't do what S.O.E. did with Star Wars Galaxies and alienate the majority of your userbase. Obviously SWG is still netting them profits, but they don't have anywhere near the number of players they used to have.

These games will be good but they're for a different market than the majority of wow players imo.

WAR might do well.

AoC looks like it'll attract action-rpg fans (ie. Fable) and be more geared towards more hardcore players. Should do ok, but not nearly as good as WoW.

Pirates is going to fail miserably. Everything SOE touches turns to ***. It's like the midas touch for poo.

One thing that people have to remember though is MMORPGs dont need 10 million subscribers to be successful. Back when UO came out they only expected 10,000 subscribers, but they got over 100,000 in the first year and that was considered HUGE. 100,000+ subscribers is more than enough for a game to be a success. 100,000 x 60 = 6 million and 100,000 x $15 = 1.5/month. Don't tell me a game thats bringing in 1.5 million a month as well as 6 million initially is a failure. 100k is a low number too, most games sell a lot more than that at first, how many of them continue to subscribe is a differant story though.

WAR sounds fun, if what im thinkiing the pvp effects main towns and prices then that would be aweeeeesome. The type of pvp im looking for, but im not gonna ditch wow for it. Wish wow had it, lol someone let me kno if thats what they mean.

Conan: different crowd, the have yet to show anything good for that game, that wasn't in wow and that doesn't break all the world's rules (like low to none magic)?

Pirates: aehm... hello? even the concept is boring.

WaR: it's basically wow, so if you already got a level 70 char with top-notch gear, you probably want to keep that. the only thing that COULD save this game, is it's very different and devious humor, that actually appeals to me, but certainly not to a lot of players out there... so nope.

all those 3 will get their customers, but not many from wow will switch permanently.

In regards to the SOE comments about Pirates, SOE had nothing at all to do with the development of the game -- they're publishing it through their Platform Publishing program.

WAR will imo be a good game, and could really compete with WOW. It offers a more pvp (or RVR) aproach to a mmorpg.. which means more fun for us who like skill more than mindless pve battles and nonstop grinding.
What about AION? It's also sheduled for 2008 and it really looks like a great game.. Graphic looks top and they got some nice ideas (wings and so on).. the only thing i am not sure about it is the gameplay..

lets hope that war will have a more mature membersip than wow

all can play wow

Wasn't there something just like this a little while ago?...

Anyways, Conan doesn't have a chance, as there is little to no fanbase that is going, "FINALLY! The Conan experience I was hoping for!" Secondly, as fun as Pirates are... um.. they seem to get the short end of the stick for adventures and the such, so "Challenge' is probably the wrong word for these two.

Warhammer though, is probably the only one that can threaten WoW. It has Fanbase, a unique and deep combat system, and RvR (Or as WoW likes to call it, X-realm BGs).

And ROFLcakes @ more mature membership base.. you'll never find one when it comes to any game.

Hehe, its exactly what they mean, its openworld pvp with citysieges and battlegrounds, it brings some really nice alternatives to raiding, and with WoW already pushing all its players into PvP (which is quite poorly supported tbh) WAR is probably going to do unexpectedly well.

I just wish these MMO companies would stop being stupid and doing what every other company does. The reason WoW reigns supreme is because its a broad game, not fine tuning only one part like questing, pvp, or pve; but all of it. Most games coming out today seem to think that if they say "The BEST PVP EXPERIENCE!" or "AMAZING AND EASY LEVELING!" their going to get members.

Warhammer seems the only contender in this battle, and not really because of any of the features it provides, but the endless amount of Warhammer fans out there (like me) who will even play the game if it sucks.

And by that definition of success, WoW was an absolute landslide compared to any other MMO to date. Sure it might seem low now, but the amounts of players that started in the first few months was completely insane by previous industry standards.

Are you kidding me? Not one of those titles has the name recognition that Lord of the Rings has. If LOTRO, which is a very nice game, to be sure, can not topple WoW, those three don't have a prayer. Just because POTC's 3 movies were printing money does not mean everyone wants to be a pirate.

Agreed.. They had, I think like 75k collector's editions that all sold in just the first few months, not to mention all the thousands who didnt luck up on the CE for WoW.
Things it took months, even years for other MMOs, WoW only took a month, two tops to reach.
Within the first 3 months a LOT of the realms had queue times and were reading as full from pve to pvp.

Wired has no clue about MMO market if put PoTBS in list. This game will hardly get 300k subscribers. Aion could become the killer since whole Asia is drolling on this game and we all know how many MMO addicts there are in China and Korea. So the most obvious pretenders:
1. Aion
2. Warhammer Online
3. Age of Conan

No surprise then that Blizzard will be announcing it's new MMO sometime this year.

I actually agree with you in terms of true "challenge." Aion may very well be the sleeper MMO this year, in the US and Europe, mostly, since it's fairly anticipated in the Asian market.

Personally Id love to see a game that will at least make Blizzard get back on their toes in terms of WoW. Its obvious at this point that very little effort is put into the game. For example the latest PVP fiasco. Blizzard created a PVP BG free item giveaway system that ruined the gameplay for alot of players. And at this point the only way to counter it is for BLizzard to put most of their GMs to punish those leechers instead of providing service to others that are making tickets ingame.

The sad thing about this all is that a good game like WoW has been half destroyed at this point to implement some kind of PVP into it. It has failed horribly and most of the pvpers will be looking to get the heck away from the unbalanced and exploided content at first chance.

Now - That doesn't mean any of those 3 games mentioned can ever challenge WoW. To do that they need to take pretty much everything that was/is good about WoW and implement it to their game. Sadly thats where games like LOTRO failed misserably. Basic and childis errors like bad looking UI, even worse looking items and weapons, and very unreal looking movements of characters and mobs are the biggest drawback to that game. Even tho alot of the quests and storyline are great. Sadly I think its to l8t for Turbine to change these things meaning LOTRO is a flop and will suffer from now on because very low playerbase.

Of these 3 games I think Warhammer will probably do best. It is a game that will be talking alot from the WoW basics and improve on many of the small things that can make it even more enjoyable. It will be simualre game with something new! That will hit the spot I think. AOC is at this point abit of unknown size and like LOTRO is largely based on how good they will do with the basics. Sadly I noticed that the characer animations seem to be sluggish moving instead of fluent like the less grapix heavy WoW has manged to produce. POTBS - Dont know anything about it - I dont like Pirates

All in all WoW is by far the best package out there atm even tho things are turning abit ugly in many ways. Big part of the succsess to WoW is down to the animators and the open source addons that allow the players to create their playing enviroment. And that is very important in a MMORPG where you spend months playing. I hope some DEVs will take note of that and really work on the UI features to allow the players to make their own UI world without to much hassle.

well no positive comments about the pirates game yet, so i'll just go ahead and say i like the idea of the pirate genre. Sid Meyer's Pirates kept me entertained for quite a while, so an MMO in that vein could probably be pretty fun for me. I don't see any on here, but probably there are folks out there who would agree. :)