Why is this guy still spreading false information? WoW has 4.5 million NA+Europe subscribers. 5.5 million in Asia. http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart11.html War has shipped 1.5 million copies to NA+Europe, we will see in an announcement soon (in less than a month) that all of these 1.5 million copies is sold out. And you claim that Xfire doesn't show any drop in WoW play time? Look at the WoW graphics: Aug 28 = 389k hours Sep 18= 297k hours Change from Aug 28 to Sep 18 = 24% decrease War just ate about 24% of the WoW player base! (P.S I don't give a crap about Xfire) Stop lying, it doesn't make WoW better!
Sep 23: 427 k hours of Wow ! Why did you compare a weekend with a normal week day,,.
Just look at your beloved WAR on Sep 24: A whopping 40% down drop for a NEW game in ONE day . Wow
Ohh that's sad.
Xfire? doesn' measure the people who are subscribing and not playing that day. Any NEW game will be played .... until you have to pay that subscription and than they all fall behind. But even then WAR "lost" 40% of its players........
So far the 24% eat thing.
Well here is some new HOT information:
I know one of the national shop keepers overhere and guess what? The damned thing doesn't sell. It's not on their top 5 PC games list (Spore is - WotLK in pre release is but not your WAR).
Just watch the general video sales on Amazon in the different countries.
Amazon.co.uk See? Now Amazon is even pushing the game because they took A LOT of stock in (just like the shop I know) and guess what BOTH chains have still a huge amount of CE in stock.
NOT a good sign for WAR.
Want some other proof? ----> 55 EU servers for WAR (different languages from It to Spain). 23 full at peak (for one faction that is). Servers are capped at 500/500 in WAR to avold lag.
Everyone knows population per server is factor of 3 to 1/ So you can guess there are about 3000 people per server (of which 1/3 play).
55 times 3= 165K players for Europe - ADD even another 20% and you will not even get to 200 K EU people.
No wonder the shops have huge stocks with all those copies shipped.
Add the US and I bet you they didn't even sell the full 500 K they had hoped for.
Just look around: stock everywhere (Oh btw the national shop chain already is seling the WAR product at a 10% discount).
It's weird... it seems warhammer is making no impact at all when it comes to wow subscribers. I haven't seen any warhammer talk in general chat, nor do i know people who left for WAR. The Xfire statistics for WoW aren't dropping either.
It seems to me that most warhammer players are comming from other mmo's such as lotro and aoc.
I preorder 2 copys of wh straight from EA for the beta.Never got either key so I canceled my order of it and will never play warhammer.As well look at ea and what they did to MCO, teaming with ea just hurt mythic further because now they have a game that can be closed at anytime with ZERO notice like motor city online was.Look at uo as well after ea aquired it.All reasons to stick with wow or better yet wait for a better game to come out.
My son still plays WoW on Maelstrom and a lot of zones are very empty now with Warhammer out. Not a lot of ganking around as usual, on the other 2 servers he plays it's the same way. War is having an impact on the PvP people of WoW for sure.
Originally posted by minrath I preorder 2 copys of wh straight from EA for the beta.Never got either key so I canceled my order of it and will never play warhammer.As well look at ea and what they did to MCO, teaming with ea just hurt mythic further because now they have a game that can be closed at anytime with ZERO notice like motor city online was.Look at uo as well after ea aquired it.All reasons to stick with wow or better yet wait for a better game to come out.
I have said it many times that EA's involvement was one of my main reasons for keeping my distance from WAR rather than jumping into the game as i initially intended to do before EA took over Mythic. I was one of the victims of EA's amazing decision to champion Sims online at the expense of the promising Earth & Beyond and from that point i said i would not get involved in another EA MMO again. I suppose i could not really say never as you don't know what will come up in the future, but i am always sceptical where EA is involved.
My worry for WAR is that it will not hit EA's dream target of subs, as EA will be looking for at least 1Mill+ and rising make no mistakes and if it doesn't do that or maintain it they WILL close it down with no thought for the players.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I agree that a mmo battle between 2 or more companies is just going to result in much higher quality games, lower subscription fees, better support and more content with every update. If i was a wow fan i would be praying for some competition. If warhammer is as fun as it is now in one year, i think your going to have that competition. I think your going to start seeing a impact from warhammer, if and only if, the end game content and long term playablility shows to be as fun as it is at the start. Give warhammer a few months, if it proves to be a long term game your going to see the most closed minded wow fans start to notice warhammer and possible see what the hype is about. if warhammer turns out to be boring after a month, expect no reasons to improve wow.
if warhammer turns out to be boring after a month, expect no reasons to improve wow.
Thank you. This is what has plagued WoW for 3 years now. Lets hope that they finally have a reason
ya and since aion as been delayed to march war as a lot more presure from blizzard
igo to warcraftrealms.com to chose a realm that way you ll enjoy the game a lot more
I am sorry but warcraftrealms.com can't be trusted anymore.
let me explain why....
He stopped charting at the end of June. People were indeed less playing back then. About 5.7 million characters played per day (level 10 + each minus the ones that change guilds and servers).
Now while this was up from the previous summer of 2007, it was down from the highest point on this 'track' Jan 2008 which was a whopping 7.3 million charatcers played.
In July a steady climb came and at the end of August we had 6.7 million characters played, which was awesome (almost winter stats).
And what happened ? Not ONE stat since the end of June ... Why? The daily stats proved Wow was very healthy (never had such a summer ) and still the man didn't publish ANY charts anymore.
Furthermore: his stats are based on a progam run on a client. it is ENOUGH that ONE client is NOT logging in for that day and the stats are complete out of order for that server the client logs in.
Now because of course of the BIG number of servers these stats show a trend but server wise they are all but thrustworhty.
He doesn't track any of the new Russian servers also (10 Russian severs replaced 4 english ones and a couple of germans).
---> So a good advice: look at a medium server and the moment it gets promoted by Blizzard jump in on it.
As for Xfire: the last 3 weeks are completely whacky: the weekend play stats are normal , but for ALL games the week stats are way off:
WOW" lost 40% from sunday to monday, but the new WAR lost even 42% from sunday to monday, which is NOT normal for a new game (as all of the top 30 games dropped around this figure).
So Xfire has some sample problems during the week (which wasn't up until a month ago btw)..
I preorder 2 copys of wh straight from EA for the beta.Never got either key so I canceled my order of it and will never play warhammer.As well look at ea and what they did to MCO, teaming with ea just hurt mythic further because now they have a game that can be closed at anytime with ZERO notice like motor city online was.Look at uo as well after ea aquired it.All reasons to stick with wow or better yet wait for a better game to come out.
I have said it many times that EA's involvement was one of my main reasons for keeping my distance from WAR rather than jumping into the game as i initially intended to do before EA took over Mythic. I was one of the victims of EA's amazing decision to champion Sims online at the expense of the promising Earth & Beyond and from that point i said i would not get involved in another EA MMO again. I suppose i could not really say never as you don't know what will come up in the future, but i am always sceptical where EA is involved.
My worry for WAR is that it will not hit EA's dream target of subs, as EA will be looking for at least 1Mill+ and rising make no mistakes and if it doesn't do that or maintain it they WILL close it down with no thought for the players.
I never understood why Earth and Beyond failed. Granted, I only played it for 2 months.. but it was a fun, very smooth and breathtaking game. Even after I had leveled a lot, i still remember just cruising around and being stunned at how awesome it looked.
There were other reasons besides EnB that caused me to dismiss EA in the MMORPG arena.. They 'ruined' UO twice.. once by not dealing with pvp correctly (Trammel) and secondly by completely gutting gameplay (AoS). Every MMORPG has 'that patch'.. UO has had two of them. They also drained the UO devs to work on UOX (new game) and then cancelled that at the last moment.
Originally posted by Azrile I never understood why Earth and Beyond failed. Granted, I only played it for 2 months.. but it was a fun, very smooth and breathtaking game. Even after I had leveled a lot, i still remember just cruising around and being stunned at how awesome it looked.
Don't get me started on that one again, lol.
It didn't 'fail' as such, EA just wanted a massive profit MMO and saw Sims online as that magical game. Unfortunately, although E&B was profitable, it wasn't the cash cow that EA wanted and as such they would not 'waste' their time with it and even went on to give 'inaccurate' sub numbers as a reason to close it down in the end. Although it wasn't massive, it still had a good market share (over 35k loyal subs at it's peak and one of the best communities of any MMO) and was gaining until leaked news of closure came out (after EA continued to say that it wouldn't close to save people cancelling subs). Sadly this also came on the back of the destruction and tearing apart of one of the most innovative studios, Westwood.
On the plus side and i hate to gloat, but it turned out that Sims online was a massive failure, costing EA millions in lost investment and revenue, a fraction of which would have kept E&B running and developing into a healthy money spinner. They even went as far as offering ex-E&B players discounted access to Sims online (who the hell thought that was a good idea i really don't know), but i don't know of many that took it up.
The worst part was that EA wouldn't even give or sell the code for E&B to anyone else even though they admitted that they had no intentions of using the code themselves. There are even postings from as recent as a few days ago on EA forums asking for the return of this game which just goes to show how loyal the player community is even five years after closure.
It really should serve as a warning to anyone about how EA treat their games, studio's and players and why i have genuine concerns for WAR.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
I never understood why Earth and Beyond failed. Granted, I only played it for 2 months.. but it was a fun, very smooth and breathtaking game. Even after I had leveled a lot, i still remember just cruising around and being stunned at how awesome it looked.
Don't get me started on that one again, lol.
It didn't 'fail' as such, EA just wanted a massive profit MMO and saw Sims online as that magical game. Unfortunately, although E&B was profitable, it wasn't the cash cow that EA wanted and as such they would not 'waste' their time with it and even went on to give 'inaccurate' sub numbers as a reason to close it down in the end. Although it wasn't massive, it still had a good market share (over 35k loyal subs at it's peak and one of the best communities of any MMO) and was gaining until leaked news of closure came out (after EA continued to say that it wouldn't close to save people cancelling subs). Sadly this also came on the back of the destruction and tearing apart of one of the most innovative studios, Westwood.
On the plus side and i hate to gloat, but it turned out that Sims online was a massive failure, costing EA millions in lost investment and revenue, a fraction of which would have kept E&B running and developing into a healthy money spinner. They even went as far as offering ex-E&B players discounted access to Sims online (who the hell thought that was a good idea i really don't know), but i don't know of many that took it up.
The worst part was that EA wouldn't even give or sell the code for E&B to anyone else even though they admitted that they had no intentions of using the code themselves. There are even postings from as recent as a few days ago on EA forums asking for the return of this game which just goes to show how loyal the player community is even five years after closure.
It really should serve as a warning to anyone about how EA treat their games, studio's and players and why i have genuine concerns for WAR.
I can't agree enough. I loved E&B. It was my first true MMO love and although it had many shortcomings (the questing especially), it had a lot of potential and had EA kept it around, it could have benefitted from seeing what other games did and incorporated that into their game. But alas, like you said EA is all about the bottom line and the bottom line was that it wasn't making enough money for them. EA has gotten fat with games like Madden where all they do is change the name and sell another million copies.
I do think that War will do quite a bit better than E&B did and I don't think that EA will close the doors on the game even if they only get a couple hundred thousand customers, but they may decide not to pour a lot of money into it if that happens and it may never see an expansion or many updates. That's a real possibility I fear.
Yeah I just got 3 more of my friends to start playing WoW, one of them is a women and basically she said she would never try WAR. WAR just does not appeal to most women that's a major downfall.
So in terms of asian market and female market WAR fails.In WoW everyone knows that 60 to 70% of female toons in game are actually guys i think in WAR it will be about 80 to 90%.
Well no one thought Motor City online would close either, They even went out of their way to state that if their so called hazard hollow improvements didnt pan out they would try other stuff..One day I went to log in and got a nice redirect to a url that said tough %^&* canceled in a polite way.
As well EA only cares about the bottom buck.Look at the interviews of the so called developers where they state they dont care if you quit or not, they got your money for the copy of the game.
As if that wasnt enough throw in the beta key fiasco where no one got what they payed for, preorders never sent out, beta keys recieved months after being ordered, the company couldnt even keep how many copys they sold straight.
On my table right now I got 2 copys of warhammer that I paid 114 bucks for from ea's site directly on sept.03.2008, was 1 week shipping, and preordered with beta codes < advertised on their site >.Now i didnt get the beta codes in email until yesterday when the actual games finally showed up on the doorstep.That order was canceled a week ago because I had never recieved them, yet they show up a week AFTER being canceled.
but hey thats not even the funny part..both copys are euro with euro beta codes..WTF good does that do me I live in north carolina the lag would be so unbearable I would feel like I was playing on a commie 64 and 300 baud modem.
Yes EA is a terribly managed company which is probably why they don't make a profit despite being massive. They have a tainted reputation with a lot of gamers due to various perceived or actual wrong doings to studio's and customers.
Anyway back to the original point, I haven't played WAR but my general feeling from what I've read about it is that it just doesn't have quite enough of the x factor to take very many subs from WoW.
I suspect it's because it's too focused in one direction and doesn't have enough diverse player goals to attract the wide variety of play styles that WoW does.
Anyway time will tell but I predict that it will not top 500k once the hype has died down and those players will not all come directly from WoW so it won't have much of an impact.
I've left WoW for WAR. I hate WoW's cartoony graphics and WAR's background is so much better.
Plus, its been around much longer. Warhammer was first developed in 1983.
From what I've heard, many people were playing WoW until WAR came out.
Keep in mind WAR just launched and is still in its birthing pains. That said, its still great fun and people love it.
Deep down, they'll never admit it but the Blizzard execs are scared of WAR.
Besides, why wage WoW when you can wage WAR?!
**Returned SWG Player** Yeah, I used to hate the game because of NGE as much as anyone, but I've been playing the game since Feb. 2008 and have honestly had a good time. If you hate the game, fantastic, move along. Its all been said before and your continuous griefing just makes you look like a sad individual with nothing better to do.
If the 1985 ford was the only car people ever bought and everyone defended it so extremely like people are defending wow we would all still be driving those and cars would never of improved. Sometimes people need to remember that the best thing for a company is not to get to comfortable and then get lazy. Why fix or improve something that is not broken?
I believe this is what happened to Everquest 1 absolutely. The game saw very little changes since launch and I stayed much longer than I should. World of Warcraft did a much better job, but I think they could push themselves if they had to...they have the funding to do it. I don't see any reason why they couldn't compete on a very regular basis.
Why does it even matter? Let people play the games they want to play.
At the end of the day, people will play what they want to play and nothing any of us can say will change that. For me though, as the years go by I take an interest in things that don't directly involve me like the news, a co-worker's sibling in the hospital (should they feel the need to share about it), economics, and population dynamics. There's a cause and effect to all things we do. If there is cause, we can better prepare for and predict the effect. We can lock ourselves up in our cozy bubble, then act surprised when it bursts, or we can observe the world as it happens around us and take an active interest in achieving the best possible outcome. Like it or not, being an MMORPG'er makes a person a part of a community.
My son still plays WoW on Maelstrom and a lot of zones are very empty now with Warhammer out. Not a lot of ganking around as usual, on the other 2 servers he plays it's the same way. War is having an impact on the PvP people of WoW for sure.
I did notice less ganking and have become more interested on playing the RPPVP servers I'm on. I admit, I hope it turns more RP with PVP elements now instead of PVP with next to nill RP. I do hope Warhammer and other PVP games do well to draw away powergamers. Blizzard was pretty brilliant as I see it with Outlands, Dailies and Battlegrounds because you don't see bored 70's griefing and harrassing those who are trying to level.
WoW stands alone, it is not part of the MMORPG crowd, it is completely in a league of it's own in terms of depth and polish. Age of Conan and WAR are competiing with each other, and older games like Everquest 1/2, CoX, and others. The mere fact that this game is a Blizzard game guarantees a rock solid loyal fanbase that will last beyond any of these wannabe games. You will always have a few unhappy people on forums like this one but their opinion is neglible, and not indicative of the real world at all. WoW dominates and will continue to be unphased at slightest by these mere distractions. WAR's honeymoon period ends with WOTLK.
WoW reminds me of the PnP AD&D days back in the 80s. It was a time when everybody and their cousin tried AD&D. When I'd talk to people as a kid back then, they'd often say, "Yeah man, I played AD&D once or twice in high school or elementry school." It was very popular back then. But, what it did not do was bring legions of new fans to the genre. It was a one time thing. The general populace got wind of AD&D (especialy with all those news stories linking it to Satanism) and tried it out for a short time. But, most of them remained stupid jocks and moved on to cable television.
The same can be said for WoW. It was the one breakout MMO that everyone tried out and now, at least they can say (and thus think they're cool) they tried WoW or played WoW. But, I'd say WoW did very little in actually bringing legions of fans to the genre. But what it did do was bring to the genre a younger audience.
And, just like with PnP rpgs, it was they who made the hobby (including the warhammer table top games) explode during the 90s. Here's hoping the same happens with MMOs. Those newbie kids playing WoW and it being their first ever MMO will be the very same people who facilitate this genre towards new heights of popularity within the next 5-10 years.
I really hope a chunk of WoW players move over though. It would force bliz to bring out better expansions or at least start work on another MMO.
OH GOD NO! let those idiots stay right where they are! I've been patiently waiting for a game to come along so I could get away from the sewage that is WOW's community, and I certainly don't want to deal with them in WAR. They can boast 10mil all they want, but when the vast majority are mouth breathers its nothing worth bragging about.
no, but really enjoy your "zone pvp" or "world pvp" thats open for 45 minutes every 6 hours, lol.
Comments
Sep 23: 427 k hours of Wow ! Why did you compare a weekend with a normal week day,,.
Just look at your beloved WAR on Sep 24: A whopping 40% down drop for a NEW game in ONE day . Wow
Ohh that's sad.
Xfire? doesn' measure the people who are subscribing and not playing that day. Any NEW game will be played .... until you have to pay that subscription and than they all fall behind. But even then WAR "lost" 40% of its players........
So far the 24% eat thing.
Well here is some new HOT information:
I know one of the national shop keepers overhere and guess what? The damned thing doesn't sell. It's not on their top 5 PC games list (Spore is - WotLK in pre release is but not your WAR).
Just watch the general video sales on Amazon in the different countries.
Amazon.co.uk See? Now Amazon is even pushing the game because they took A LOT of stock in (just like the shop I know) and guess what BOTH chains have still a huge amount of CE in stock.
NOT a good sign for WAR.
Want some other proof? ----> 55 EU servers for WAR (different languages from It to Spain). 23 full at peak (for one faction that is). Servers are capped at 500/500 in WAR to avold lag.
Everyone knows population per server is factor of 3 to 1/ So you can guess there are about 3000 people per server (of which 1/3 play).
55 times 3= 165K players for Europe - ADD even another 20% and you will not even get to 200 K EU people.
No wonder the shops have huge stocks with all those copies shipped.
Add the US and I bet you they didn't even sell the full 500 K they had hoped for.
Just look around: stock everywhere (Oh btw the national shop chain already is seling the WAR product at a 10% discount).
It's weird... it seems warhammer is making no impact at all when it comes to wow subscribers. I haven't seen any warhammer talk in general chat, nor do i know people who left for WAR. The Xfire statistics for WoW aren't dropping either.
It seems to me that most warhammer players are comming from other mmo's such as lotro and aoc.
I preorder 2 copys of wh straight from EA for the beta.Never got either key so I canceled my order of it and will never play warhammer.As well look at ea and what they did to MCO, teaming with ea just hurt mythic further because now they have a game that can be closed at anytime with ZERO notice like motor city online was.Look at uo as well after ea aquired it.All reasons to stick with wow or better yet wait for a better game to come out.
My son still plays WoW on Maelstrom and a lot of zones are very empty now with Warhammer out. Not a lot of ganking around as usual, on the other 2 servers he plays it's the same way. War is having an impact on the PvP people of WoW for sure.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
I have said it many times that EA's involvement was one of my main reasons for keeping my distance from WAR rather than jumping into the game as i initially intended to do before EA took over Mythic. I was one of the victims of EA's amazing decision to champion Sims online at the expense of the promising Earth & Beyond and from that point i said i would not get involved in another EA MMO again. I suppose i could not really say never as you don't know what will come up in the future, but i am always sceptical where EA is involved.
My worry for WAR is that it will not hit EA's dream target of subs, as EA will be looking for at least 1Mill+ and rising make no mistakes and if it doesn't do that or maintain it they WILL close it down with no thought for the players.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
i dont think other peep are coming its just other player moving from mm bland server to cool ,like me from guldan to ilidan.
my server is very quiet so i went to livelly server and even if i restart from scratch its worth it .
i went to recommended server ,ooo men there its trial account party.i didnt last there
but there will be lot of new player when wolk get out check last time expension ,lol they almost doubled .it probably will the same now
because of 2 factor low computer power requirement and very fiew bugs(i might had in game chat is a plus)
go to warcraftrealms.com to chose a realm that way you ll enjoy the game a lot more
if warhammer turns out to be boring after a month, expect no reasons to improve wow.
Thank you. This is what has plagued WoW for 3 years now. Lets hope that they finally have a reason
ya and since aion as been delayed to march war as a lot more presure from blizzard
I am sorry but warcraftrealms.com can't be trusted anymore.
let me explain why....
He stopped charting at the end of June. People were indeed less playing back then. About 5.7 million characters played per day (level 10 + each minus the ones that change guilds and servers).
Now while this was up from the previous summer of 2007, it was down from the highest point on this 'track' Jan 2008 which was a whopping 7.3 million charatcers played.
In July a steady climb came and at the end of August we had 6.7 million characters played, which was awesome (almost winter stats).
And what happened ? Not ONE stat since the end of June ... Why? The daily stats proved Wow was very healthy (never had such a summer ) and still the man didn't publish ANY charts anymore.
Furthermore: his stats are based on a progam run on a client. it is ENOUGH that ONE client is NOT logging in for that day and the stats are complete out of order for that server the client logs in.
Now because of course of the BIG number of servers these stats show a trend but server wise they are all but thrustworhty.
He doesn't track any of the new Russian servers also (10 Russian severs replaced 4 english ones and a couple of germans).
---> So a good advice: look at a medium server and the moment it gets promoted by Blizzard jump in on it.
As for Xfire: the last 3 weeks are completely whacky: the weekend play stats are normal , but for ALL games the week stats are way off:
WOW" lost 40% from sunday to monday, but the new WAR lost even 42% from sunday to monday, which is NOT normal for a new game (as all of the top 30 games dropped around this figure).
So Xfire has some sample problems during the week (which wasn't up until a month ago btw)..
I have said it many times that EA's involvement was one of my main reasons for keeping my distance from WAR rather than jumping into the game as i initially intended to do before EA took over Mythic. I was one of the victims of EA's amazing decision to champion Sims online at the expense of the promising Earth & Beyond and from that point i said i would not get involved in another EA MMO again. I suppose i could not really say never as you don't know what will come up in the future, but i am always sceptical where EA is involved.
My worry for WAR is that it will not hit EA's dream target of subs, as EA will be looking for at least 1Mill+ and rising make no mistakes and if it doesn't do that or maintain it they WILL close it down with no thought for the players.
I never understood why Earth and Beyond failed. Granted, I only played it for 2 months.. but it was a fun, very smooth and breathtaking game. Even after I had leveled a lot, i still remember just cruising around and being stunned at how awesome it looked.
There were other reasons besides EnB that caused me to dismiss EA in the MMORPG arena.. They 'ruined' UO twice.. once by not dealing with pvp correctly (Trammel) and secondly by completely gutting gameplay (AoS). Every MMORPG has 'that patch'.. UO has had two of them. They also drained the UO devs to work on UOX (new game) and then cancelled that at the last moment.
Don't get me started on that one again, lol.
It didn't 'fail' as such, EA just wanted a massive profit MMO and saw Sims online as that magical game. Unfortunately, although E&B was profitable, it wasn't the cash cow that EA wanted and as such they would not 'waste' their time with it and even went on to give 'inaccurate' sub numbers as a reason to close it down in the end. Although it wasn't massive, it still had a good market share (over 35k loyal subs at it's peak and one of the best communities of any MMO) and was gaining until leaked news of closure came out (after EA continued to say that it wouldn't close to save people cancelling subs). Sadly this also came on the back of the destruction and tearing apart of one of the most innovative studios, Westwood.
On the plus side and i hate to gloat, but it turned out that Sims online was a massive failure, costing EA millions in lost investment and revenue, a fraction of which would have kept E&B running and developing into a healthy money spinner. They even went as far as offering ex-E&B players discounted access to Sims online (who the hell thought that was a good idea i really don't know), but i don't know of many that took it up.
The worst part was that EA wouldn't even give or sell the code for E&B to anyone else even though they admitted that they had no intentions of using the code themselves. There are even postings from as recent as a few days ago on EA forums asking for the return of this game which just goes to show how loyal the player community is even five years after closure.
It really should serve as a warning to anyone about how EA treat their games, studio's and players and why i have genuine concerns for WAR.
It must be Thursday, i never could get the hang of Thursdays.
Don't get me started on that one again, lol.
It didn't 'fail' as such, EA just wanted a massive profit MMO and saw Sims online as that magical game. Unfortunately, although E&B was profitable, it wasn't the cash cow that EA wanted and as such they would not 'waste' their time with it and even went on to give 'inaccurate' sub numbers as a reason to close it down in the end. Although it wasn't massive, it still had a good market share (over 35k loyal subs at it's peak and one of the best communities of any MMO) and was gaining until leaked news of closure came out (after EA continued to say that it wouldn't close to save people cancelling subs). Sadly this also came on the back of the destruction and tearing apart of one of the most innovative studios, Westwood.
On the plus side and i hate to gloat, but it turned out that Sims online was a massive failure, costing EA millions in lost investment and revenue, a fraction of which would have kept E&B running and developing into a healthy money spinner. They even went as far as offering ex-E&B players discounted access to Sims online (who the hell thought that was a good idea i really don't know), but i don't know of many that took it up.
The worst part was that EA wouldn't even give or sell the code for E&B to anyone else even though they admitted that they had no intentions of using the code themselves. There are even postings from as recent as a few days ago on EA forums asking for the return of this game which just goes to show how loyal the player community is even five years after closure.
It really should serve as a warning to anyone about how EA treat their games, studio's and players and why i have genuine concerns for WAR.
I can't agree enough. I loved E&B. It was my first true MMO love and although it had many shortcomings (the questing especially), it had a lot of potential and had EA kept it around, it could have benefitted from seeing what other games did and incorporated that into their game. But alas, like you said EA is all about the bottom line and the bottom line was that it wasn't making enough money for them. EA has gotten fat with games like Madden where all they do is change the name and sell another million copies.
I do think that War will do quite a bit better than E&B did and I don't think that EA will close the doors on the game even if they only get a couple hundred thousand customers, but they may decide not to pour a lot of money into it if that happens and it may never see an expansion or many updates. That's a real possibility I fear.
Yeah I just got 3 more of my friends to start playing WoW, one of them is a women and basically she said she would never try WAR. WAR just does not appeal to most women that's a major downfall.
So in terms of asian market and female market WAR fails.In WoW everyone knows that 60 to 70% of female toons in game are actually guys i think in WAR it will be about 80 to 90%.
Well no one thought Motor City online would close either, They even went out of their way to state that if their so called hazard hollow improvements didnt pan out they would try other stuff..One day I went to log in and got a nice redirect to a url that said tough %^&* canceled in a polite way.
As well EA only cares about the bottom buck.Look at the interviews of the so called developers where they state they dont care if you quit or not, they got your money for the copy of the game.
As if that wasnt enough throw in the beta key fiasco where no one got what they payed for, preorders never sent out, beta keys recieved months after being ordered, the company couldnt even keep how many copys they sold straight.
On my table right now I got 2 copys of warhammer that I paid 114 bucks for from ea's site directly on sept.03.2008, was 1 week shipping, and preordered with beta codes < advertised on their site >.Now i didnt get the beta codes in email until yesterday when the actual games finally showed up on the doorstep.That order was canceled a week ago because I had never recieved them, yet they show up a week AFTER being canceled.
but hey thats not even the funny part..both copys are euro with euro beta codes..WTF good does that do me I live in north carolina the lag would be so unbearable I would feel like I was playing on a commie 64 and 300 baud modem.
Yes EA is a terribly managed company which is probably why they don't make a profit despite being massive. They have a tainted reputation with a lot of gamers due to various perceived or actual wrong doings to studio's and customers.
Anyway back to the original point, I haven't played WAR but my general feeling from what I've read about it is that it just doesn't have quite enough of the x factor to take very many subs from WoW.
I suspect it's because it's too focused in one direction and doesn't have enough diverse player goals to attract the wide variety of play styles that WoW does.
Anyway time will tell but I predict that it will not top 500k once the hype has died down and those players will not all come directly from WoW so it won't have much of an impact.
I've left WoW for WAR. I hate WoW's cartoony graphics and WAR's background is so much better.
Plus, its been around much longer. Warhammer was first developed in 1983.
From what I've heard, many people were playing WoW until WAR came out.
Keep in mind WAR just launched and is still in its birthing pains. That said, its still great fun and people love it.
Deep down, they'll never admit it but the Blizzard execs are scared of WAR.
Besides, why wage WoW when you can wage WAR?!
**Returned SWG Player**
Yeah, I used to hate the game because of NGE as much as anyone, but I've been playing the game since Feb. 2008 and have honestly had a good time. If you hate the game, fantastic, move along. Its all been said before and your continuous griefing just makes you look like a sad individual with nothing better to do.
I believe this is what happened to Everquest 1 absolutely. The game saw very little changes since launch and I stayed much longer than I should. World of Warcraft did a much better job, but I think they could push themselves if they had to...they have the funding to do it. I don't see any reason why they couldn't compete on a very regular basis.
http://www.allaboutgod.com/
At the end of the day, people will play what they want to play and nothing any of us can say will change that. For me though, as the years go by I take an interest in things that don't directly involve me like the news, a co-worker's sibling in the hospital (should they feel the need to share about it), economics, and population dynamics. There's a cause and effect to all things we do. If there is cause, we can better prepare for and predict the effect. We can lock ourselves up in our cozy bubble, then act surprised when it bursts, or we can observe the world as it happens around us and take an active interest in achieving the best possible outcome. Like it or not, being an MMORPG'er makes a person a part of a community.
http://www.allaboutgod.com/
I did notice less ganking and have become more interested on playing the RPPVP servers I'm on. I admit, I hope it turns more RP with PVP elements now instead of PVP with next to nill RP. I do hope Warhammer and other PVP games do well to draw away powergamers. Blizzard was pretty brilliant as I see it with Outlands, Dailies and Battlegrounds because you don't see bored 70's griefing and harrassing those who are trying to level.
http://www.allaboutgod.com/
WoW stands alone, it is not part of the MMORPG crowd, it is completely in a league of it's own in terms of depth and polish.
Age of Conan and WAR are competiing with each other, and older games like Everquest 1/2, CoX, and others.
The mere fact that this game is a Blizzard game guarantees a rock solid loyal fanbase that will last beyond any of these wannabe games.
You will always have a few unhappy people on forums like this one but their opinion is negligible, and not indicative of the real world at all.
WoW dominates and will continue to be unphased at slightest by these mere distractions.
WAR's honeymoon period ends with WOTLK.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...
Haha, that's pretty funny. Gives new meaning to 'fantasy gamer'.
I can see it now...
Game Reporter: So, as a Senior Executive Vice President of Blizzard, are you scared of Warhammer's release?
VP Exec (counting his cash): $4.1 billion... $4.2 billion... hm? Did you say something?
http://www.allaboutgod.com/
QFT
WoW reminds me of the PnP AD&D days back in the 80s. It was a time when everybody and their cousin tried AD&D. When I'd talk to people as a kid back then, they'd often say, "Yeah man, I played AD&D once or twice in high school or elementry school." It was very popular back then. But, what it did not do was bring legions of new fans to the genre. It was a one time thing. The general populace got wind of AD&D (especialy with all those news stories linking it to Satanism) and tried it out for a short time. But, most of them remained stupid jocks and moved on to cable television.
The same can be said for WoW. It was the one breakout MMO that everyone tried out and now, at least they can say (and thus think they're cool) they tried WoW or played WoW. But, I'd say WoW did very little in actually bringing legions of fans to the genre. But what it did do was bring to the genre a younger audience.
And, just like with PnP rpgs, it was they who made the hobby (including the warhammer table top games) explode during the 90s. Here's hoping the same happens with MMOs. Those newbie kids playing WoW and it being their first ever MMO will be the very same people who facilitate this genre towards new heights of popularity within the next 5-10 years.
OH GOD NO! let those idiots stay right where they are! I've been patiently waiting for a game to come along so I could get away from the sewage that is WOW's community, and I certainly don't want to deal with them in WAR. They can boast 10mil all they want, but when the vast majority are mouth breathers its nothing worth bragging about.
no, but really enjoy your "zone pvp" or "world pvp" thats open for 45 minutes every 6 hours, lol.
I guess the thread may be closed now:
http://www.edge-online.com/news/analyst-warhammer-base-level-off-250-300k
When a company like EA interferes you KNOW you're in trouble.
At 300K they are speaking of "break even production costs"
I could say: NEXT, but I think we're out of Wow killers ATM.
It seems to have hit the PVP side of WOW a lot more than the PVE.
I am guessing it will even out at around 400K. EQ1 still has around 250K or more.