WAR (Warhammer Online)

My guess is a peak over $1M subs with a sustained population of something over 500K for the first 6 months. This is by far the best title to come out since WoW and LOTRO had 300K people 6 months in btw.

WoW's western world population is only something like $4M right now so if they can break $1M it will put a real dent in WoW even though it won't be a 'WoW killer'. It obviously wont' touch the eastern subscription base at all.

Originally posted by grimfall

Funny thing is people were saying this about EQ and EQ2.

They also said it about Ford and then General Motors

They also said it about Doom and then Half-Life

I will say one thing though, MMORPG's have to be very careful with barriers to entry.  WoW was able to cream EQ because you could get to max level in WoW in 15 days and in EQ it took about 60, at the time.  With each expansion and level cap raise, you are raising your barriers to entry for players who want to join the game.  WoW with it's 2nd expansion is going to be catering to it's existing customers, but making it more difficult for new customers.  That's the same thing that EQ did, which helped topple it from the throne, and probably restricted it's popularity.  It was extremely daunting for a new player to come into EQ and see that he was 64 levels, 500 AA points and 9 planar flags  behind the 'end game content' players.  Now WoW is going to put their new players 79 levels behind.

It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.  WoW tried to address it by increasing the experience gain for players levels 1-60 (I think), but they didn't balance other parts of the game with that increased experience rate - like crafting and aquiring gear.  EQ has done the same thing, now, with their Hot Zones.

This is so wrong man,

Blizzard completely focuses on new players with every expansion. In fact, the best time to join as a new player is right after a new expansion.  Everyone effectivly starts over.  All that T5 T6 gear is obsolete.  The ez mode solo quest rewards are better than the previous raid gear.

If anything wow does not cater to their existing customers and caters more towards getting new players involved in the end game with the release of their expansions.

Leveling to 79 is not the hard part of WoW, it will be gearing for t7 t8 etc... all of the stuff you do after you hit the level cap.

My guess would be around 300K to 400K in 4th month, I think they will match AoC sales but I doubt they will keep majority of subscribers.

Just wanted to point out that a certain game called Guild Wars - which also is PVP-focused - sold 5 million copies and probably has close to a million regular players across the world. If Mythic does everything right,  I could easily see the game having a million subscribers by 2009. I really wouldn't discount the table top fans of Warhammer, who number several million if you look at both the US and Europe.

Personally, I think the fact AOC did so well initially shows the MMORPG market is growing. We're no longer in an era where WOW completely dominates and everyone else is lucky to have a mere 100K subscribers.

I'll be honest here. I have no idea how this game is going to stack up against any MMO. Most mmorpg's take at least 5 years to make, WAR took 1.5 years. It looks like Mythic used World of Warcraft as their model and went from there. And hey, let's all be honest here, all bullcrap aside, the only thing that I see that's different is RvR, everything else is a complete copy of what World of Warcraft's foundation with some poor content here and there. Some people say that WAR is shaping up, I say that's a bunch of crap and that's pure smoke coming from their ass. And from what I've played, I don't see WAR really being a contender for awhile.

Like it or not, this game is unfinished by a long shot.

WAR should pop over 1 million subs easy without Asia, probably closer to 2 million. Most of your PvP players from WoW will come to WAR, the hard core PvE boys will stay in WoW.

Now the staying power of WAR is the thing, will there be enough new content and so forth to keep it going and interesting is to me the big question.

Originally posted by BattleFelon

Just wanted to point out that a certain game called Guild Wars - which also is PVP-focused - sold 5 million copies and probably has close to a million regular players across the world. If Mythic does everything right,  I could easily see the game having a million subscribers by 2009. I really wouldn't discount the table top fans of Warhammer, who number several million if you look at both the US and Europe.

Personally, I think the fact AOC did so well initially shows the MMORPG market is growing. We're no longer in an era where WOW completely dominates and everyone else is lucky to have a mere 100K subscribers.

The difference is Pay to Play. GW is a free game. No subs.

Again Xfire: GW is rated as being daily played at 30K (Wow about 400K+). that mean the numbers of players in the western world (Chinese don't use Xfire) is 13 to 14 times less in GW. Could be around 300K players.

So 300 K active players for a freebee game. How many would continue if they had to play 15 dollars a month?

This has nothing to do with the potential of WAR of course, but it is a sign.

Originally posted by Riechman

Now I know that this question has been asked at least once on this forum. I'm not going to go searching for it, because its probaly buried under 100s of threads. So, I am going to ask it again.

WoW vs. WAR?

I know WAR is still in beta and scheduled for release on Sept. 18th, but from what some of you beta testers have played and experienced, how does it compare to WoW?

NOT, wel I need to be honost, it IS a fantasy MMORPG so is WOW but for me it ends there. I only was a Rank 31 due to the limitation the beta gave me when I entered and not even made it to lvl 32 due to limited time (rl) but already I felt it had much more then WOW has, so many thing are completly different and not compareble with eachother. But then again many are completly WOWIFIDE and will see WOW even in Pong

Will it dent WoW's population? If so, by how much?

Perhaps, wait and see when the game is out about 3/6 months before you could say it put a dent into WOW, afcourse release would probebly take some of the subs of of WOW but then this happens with almost any new released game, I bet ya that many MMORPG will lose some subs during hte release of WAR it's a natural thing that always has happend, so like I said ask that question again after WAR is released and out in the open for about 3/6 months to get a more realistic view if WOW or other MMORPG have gotten this dent.

Is it possibly a WoW killer? ( I know that was a stupid question. )

Agree it is a stupid question and in my opinion no game has to  another gamekiller, we need more games ....you hear me....... MORE .......and they do not need to be killers they just need to be fun and entertaining. The more games the more chances we have people finding the game to enjoy, people who want other games to be killed or fail should not even be into gaming. Just my opinion.

 

gdi lrn2