Predict: How Much Longer Does Warhammer Have?
By now, many of you have read my article What Went Wrong with Warhammer Online? Is it a failure? Since I wrote the article, new leadership really has not done much to address those issues. In a recent interview, the head dev. of Warhammer put the blame for WAR’s problems on the game being too easy, the lack of a good economy, and no need to make friends. Yeah… he missed the boat big time.
The game is down to 6 servers and population continues to fall. Aion and CO both delivered additional subscriber hits to the game.
So the logical question is: How much longer does Warhammer have?
I predict 6-12 months. I think in about 6-8 months they will announce the game is shutting down 2-4 months later. At some point they will give people 1-2 months free to login and participate in a last hurrah. During those final 1-2 months, people will at first wonder why the game died, then shortly realize how broken it still is and say “oh yeah, that’s why.”
What are your predictions?
I haven’t been following Warhammer since I quit back in December, but I don’t think it’ll last more than another year or two. I can’t see EA keeping it going very long. Pity too, that game was actually pretty good, and had some great innovations(eg public quests). All it takes though is a couple big mistakes, and Warhammer definitely had some of those.
I don’t see any way it is possible for WAR to reach its 2nd anniversary (short of EA just stubbornly keeping it around out of pride).
The word now is that it is hovering around 100k subs at best, and possibly even lower. There are 6 servers, and at least 2-3 of those are ghost towns.
I’ve only recently begun digging into the tabletop Warhammer. I like it quite a bit, but the more I dig into it, the less interested I am in WAR. I simply have no interest in a game that cobbles together MMO tropes and slaps a license on top that is based on a game that is totally different. I want to play Warhammer and plot intricate long-term strategies and engage in multiple squad tactics. WAR could never capture that. (Not that it should, exactly, but this does explain why *I’m* not into WAR… beside the whole “me too” MMO design and subscription model.)
Of course, I’m also something of a purist in that I don’t even think a RTS Warhammer is what I’m looking for. I *want* something careful and deliberate, completely turn-based. I *love* chess. The heart of WAR is completely in the wrong place to scratch that itch.
That said, I do applaud their efforts to make some new MMO design elements. I hope the better ones stick.
Speaking of licenses…. I am generally not a fan of licenses being used to make MMOs (unless it is a license that was ALWAYS an MMO). I think it tends to hamstring the development and the design.
There are exceptions of course – particularly when the license owner gives the dev team a lot of freedom and flexibility. And another way to be smart about it is to use the license, but choose a time period that is far away from all the canon. That is what SW:KOTOR did, and appears to be what SW:TOR is doing as well.
I love how someone just makes up numbers. How do you know the population?
I am playing the game and it is great and getting better.
When I roll a newbie character there are tons of people in tier 1 saying they are new to the game.
Then why are the server populations shrinking, rather than growing? Why are servers closing rather than opening? EA won’t release numbers, because it is too embarrassing. But sites like http://www.warheap.com/ track it, and it is an ugly thing indeed. Phoenix Throne is down to an activity rating of 961. It was more than double that two months ago, and 5 times that 6 months ago. And 6 months ago were still 10-20+ servers.
I am glad you are having fun. Really I am. But the game is in freefall, and the population continues to drop.
I’m glad it is on the way out. How much more DIKU do we have to put up with?
I bet 10 globs of ectoplasm that WAR will suck and most won’t play it. But there will be one more expansion if not more and it will still be alive in December 2010! I demand 10 globs of ectoplasm from you if they are still online in December 2010, Muckbeast!
Do you accept the challenge?
10 globs of ectoplasm? I’ll have to check my ecto-balance before I can agree to that.
Normally I would agree with you, that Warhammer will be shutdown within the year.
It’s certainly a failure in regards to it’s ambitions and it’s big budget.
However I remember recently reading an interview where someone on the Warhammer team said that with the current subscriber count they are making enough to pay for the development team and keep things running.
So it sounds like they are making money at their current subscriber count, which means they could limp along for a while.
They probably are trying to pull an ‘Eve Online’ where they limp along for years, slowing gaining more and more subscribers.
That will only happen if the Warhammer developers are all dedicated to staying in it for the long haul and improving the game.
If too many developers leave the project, it simply won’t be able to survive.
I don’t think that WAR will shut down any time soon unless AION or the likes will be able to do what most MMO’s couldn’t: hold their initial subscriber number.
While WAR will be a small game, it is still unique enough to attract a crowd, mainly the ones that love DAoC but can’t bear to play it after so many years and hope that Mythic will make WAR more like DAoC – so far this hope was crushed with the recent patch that removed even more oRvR in favor of 24/7 instanced city sieges that petty much avail to nothing anyway.
Eve Online is not “limping along” when they have TRIPLE the subscribers of Warhammer and did not have a $100-200 million developer budget. Furthermore, Eve does not have a gigantic publicly traded owner like EA.
When you are talking about Wall Street, a division has to do more than break even. In the eyes of Wall Street, a division that is consuming X resources and showing a small return is effectively as bad as a division losing money. Why? Because the belief is that the money, resources, staff, etc. devoted to that weak division could be dedicated somewhere else to make a larger return. When the marginal utility of keeping WAR running reaches a low enough point, it is just good business for EA to shut it down. Furthermore, Wall Street loves it when companies sack underperforming divisions.
I must say that eve online only recently has about the same subscription base as warhammer does right now..
That is not true.
Warhammer hs infact grown in the last few days as the aion free 30 days has expired, more people are returning to warhammer…
From there being 2 active servers at aion launch , 1 month later there are now 6 active servers and the mac version is comming out tommorrow.
This as you know there are not many br8 games for mac and therefore I suspect that all six of those severs will go high population.
As for the fact that warhammer as made mistakes, I agree but remember warhammer was the first game to ever have:
a default starting area Guild,
a leveling guild
tracking your charachters history
public quests
focussed pvp leveling
and now there latest first: the apprentaship system which allows lv 1 players to become lv 20-40 apprentasis giving them lv 40 stats…This makes them level up to 10 times as fast and able to go fight in the end game even from lv 1.
WHAT firsts does aion have..you can have ariel combat..yippeee..sigh
it’s like swimming in wow.
Think about it…War will do great, it just had over eager developers and project managers that underestimated the market.
Warhammer is alive and well and infact, now growing again
Join the war WAAAAAAGGGGHHH!
According to server stats (http://www.warheap.com/servers/active/?s=health&o=desc&l=all) Warhammer’s population continues to decline. In fact, the removal of forts has been a BAD thing for the game, as the cities are being sieged constantly which means people cannot participate in scenarios (since they are all turned off during a city siege). So people who like that part of the game are basically locked out.
As for pioneering features, the only one of those features you listed that WAR actually pioneered was public quests.
Probably the worst example was the apprentice system, which has existed in City of Heroes for over 5 years. It has also been replicated in a number of games after that, including Everquest 2, Champions Online, and more.
WAR’s problems went far beyond “over eager developers.” If anything, they were under-eager. 2 realms instead of 3 was a critical error. The entire design of Tier 4 RvR was flawed at its core. The ultimate aspect of RvR (city siege) requires that one side is absolutely dominating the other, and a successful siege leaves the losing team even weaker (stars deducted from their city).
Crowd control and Bright Wizards are still a titantic problem – now more than ever with the AP regen bug they introduced. BW and Sorcs are the only ones with a true counter to the AP regen bug. So bomb groups continue to reign supreme.
They continue to make stupid mistake after stupid mistake.
And EA has basically written the whole thing off, putting Bioware in charge of MMOs and giving WAR barely enough resources to keep running. That’s how things work with EA. EA is legendary for giving lots of resources to high performing divisions (Madden, Sims) and barely any to low performing (WAR).
[...] I know, I know, some would say that WAR is dying and should be taken out back and dumped on the Tabula Rasa heap. Some might suggest I give [...]
Despite the shouts that the Game is dying i can’t help but really want to play the game again,deciding to re-sub later afterall who cares if there are empty servers as long as the server you choose is populated what does it matter ?
The main reason it matters is because with less people and less money, you get less new content and less general attention, bug fixing, etc. Also, investing a lot of time into a character on an MMO that may be shut down when EA gets tired of the trickling profits and continued embarrassment is a risk.
Also, if the reasons why there are so few people still exist (bad game balance, bugs, server problems, etc.) then the game will still have the same brutally painful issues.