Warhammer Online Population Drops to 300,000

[uppitycracker]

I think the issue is now that most people have seen what happens after playing an MMO for four years and the idea of doing it again is lestened. I loved the Beta and spent the better part of last year waiting for it. However, after 2 months I cant help but feel that I have been here before.

I do not consider myself a player of MMOs anymore, which is a shame. I think most the people my age, 25-30, can't justify spending 20 hours a week playing a game, with families and jobs etc. I dont think I could justify spending 20 hours doing any hobby.

Just my 10 cents.

Ya know man, after being a devout player of SWG from the launch to the NGE, and then spending so much of my life in WoW, up until BC, I have been really thinking, what is it that is keeping me from enjoying MMO's? I LOVED warhammer, absolutely connected with the game. But I cannot get past level 24. Why? I just don't have the patience for it. And ya know, your comment basically nailed exactly why. I'm a 25 year old single guy with a daughter that lives with her mom, but still, despite all my free time, I just cannot justify playing the game. You, sir, have hit the nail on the head.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

...So it's Warhammer 300k?

*badumptsh*

 

[Reaperman Wompa]

Sucks, but as MMO's go it was just a bit too samey, and like others have said, leaving WoW is like quitting a job as a professional Gimp. You're job involves you going through hell and mistreating your body but you love it, and just don't want to leave. They're just too rooted in WoW to ever move on.

Still hoping for The Old Republic to be good.

 

[thiosk]

I suppose again doesn't account for the people who never played any MMOs before, huh? arrogant much

I have to agree with Max about the player drop. I know a bunch of people who went to WAR, only to run back to WoW because they had invested more time in it. When you've invested that much time into a game, you'd be reluctant to just leave it

Hence, again. I don't see why you felt it necessary to get all smarmy. As has been mentioned several times in this thread, more orcs, more humans, more high fantasy. again. Revolutionary game changer it is not. And everyone went right back to wow as soon as wotlk came out. Should have put the development effort into a war40k original ip and hope that more people than disgruntled shaman, tanks, and raid healers would head over.

I think we could call it "new game smell."

 

[Lampdevil]

Warhammer Online is a freakin' sweet game. It's pretty and it's fun and it's, well, okay, more of the same fight-PvP-grind business that we've all seen before. It does it well, so we can't fault it for that!

Problem is? Everyone plays WoW. EVERYONE. I swear, every single person in my immediate circle of IRL friends plays WoW on some server or another. The reason I keep getting dragged back in? "Hey, I play WoW! Come play with me! I gots a great guild and we shall level and do fun things and C'MON C'MON C'MON" and out comes the credit card for another month... I play MMORPGs for the interaction with others these days, and WoW's got the highest likelyhood of your friends already being there.

 

[Kongming]

I loved warhammer, it was a hell of a lot less grind then WoW (well, it didnt feel like grind with the PQ's) i loved WoW to, right up the point in which they fucked up in BC... the reason i quited was that i could not bother to be online everyday x o clock and do stuff...
For most people the reason to play WoW is, in my opinion, the hole it leaves in their lives. Many of my friends from WoW quited, then came back. Half of my mates msn list is WoW friends, he has many chars on max lvl, and he really enjoys the fact that there is always something that can be done... To many options, but quiting isnt one of them...

 

[whindmarch]

An MMO can absolutely thrive on 300,000 players ? if they're budgeted for that. 300k players at $14/month is a nice, solid revenue stream. The trouble is that WoW has created unrealistic expectations for developers (and their investors). Look at EVE Online, though, which is quite proud (and quite successful) with its roughly 300k audience. They had realistic goals and knew better than to jump off a cliff in pursuit of the next "WoW-killer."

Maybe Mythic knew better, too, and they can keep their operation running with 300k steady players and occasional spikes and cash infusions when expansions come out.

 

[Abedeus]

I was playing WAR, till they destroyed my character (Engineers were unpopular before, one-trick ponies - now they are just plain useless), didn't give me ORvR I loved so much...

Hahaha I knew it.
I was right about Age of Conan and I am right now and I'll tell you something:

Every MMO which's main selling point will be "beign better than WoW" will fail just as miserably as AoC and WAR.

Bzzt, fail. They never said they want to be better than WoW. Especially since 90% of people that left are PvE tards that came, hoping for easy grind and a lot of levels. Then they've found out they have to PvP (IN MY PVP GAME?! NEVER!!) to actually get far in the game.

Ouch.
They are far from being WoW aren't they?

A 4-months old game having fewer people than a 4,5 year old game? Blasphemies!

They need to give high fantasy a break. WoW, AoC, LOTRO and WAR are all pretty similar as far as setting goes. We need something fresh! Where's a Pokemon MMORPG when you need it?

OK, I'll settle with Old Republic. Maybe.

All those games you mentioned except for WAR are focused on PvE. Sure, WoW has "pvp". But I don't consider ganking a form of PvP.


I still don't get it, why people have to talk about WoW everywhere. The game is freakin' boring, and I'm saying that as a Blizzard and Diablo 2 fan. I don't think I would play it for free, maybe if someone paid me $15 a month...

 

[EvilMaggot]

im just waiting for some patching to be done lol

 

[Ranooth]

Hahaha I knew it.
I was right about Age of Conan and I am right now and I'll tell you something:

Every MMO which's main selling point will be "beign better than WoW" will fail just as miserably as AoC and WAR.

Like Paul Barnett said, WoW is The Beatles. Try being the Beatles and you'll end up like The Monkeys. WAR is Led Zepplin, the next generation of rock!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

 

[Zykon TheLich]

If I wasn't such a cheapskate, I would play WAR, simply because of the IP. Since I am such a cheapskate, its Guild Wars for me (occasionally).

 

[Pyre1million]

It's intriguing that some people believe A high fantasy MMO has to be a WoW clone. To these beautifully, intensely stupid people, I respond with Everquest. Around long, long long before WoW, easily as addictive in its day, and, oh! Lookit that! High Fantasy!

No MMoRPG will ever be a "WoW-killer" barring really damn weird circumstances. No MMORPG can stand up to WoW, not at release anyway, for all the reasons people have already given, ESPECIALLY the one regarding time devoted. I just lost all my PS3 data (flipped a switch a half-second too early. At least it was my own fault and not the system killing itself like if I'd bought a 360), and it is crushing. On the one hand, I like Devil May Cry 4 and Resistance: Fall of Man enough to replay them, and getting all the stuff I had back won't be too hard.

But Final Fantasy XII? That was 80+ hours of play. And a lot of that time was leveling and sidequests. I have a PS2 and a spare memory card with plenty of space, but right now even thinking about picking the thing up again kicks in a strong aversion for me. And this is a SINGLE-player RPG.

I can't imagine one where I have friends involved as well, a ton of stuff, significantly more time and a good deal of my social life, which is to my understanding what WoW is for its players. And since everyone in the entire world who likes MMO's is playing the game, this leaves only a small percentage of people who could be interested in the concept to get involved in any new MMO that comes out.


A high fantasy MMORPG is not by needs a WoW clone, and you are a very special kind of stupid if you think it has to be. Emphasis on special. And stupid. Hell, I can just put "WoW fanboy", with the notation that you're embarrassing even that group. But a high fantasy MMO cannot help being compared to WoW, and no matter what that's going to hurt it.

And again. Almost every MMORPG fan is already playing WoW. It doesn't really leave you with a big pool to draw from.

 

[Fearzone]

Yeah, WoW did the standard MMO thang almost perfectly, and so if you want to compete with WoW, you have to break the mold. Though WAR skewed toward PvP and made the leveling grind a little less onerous, it was still the boring hours-wasting MMO grind that I was already long sick of with WoW.

A lot of times MMOs are fantasy-themed or space themed chat rooms-- that's fine, nothing wrong with that. Mythic didn't recognize that and failed there.

I cancelled my subscriptions to both WoW and WAR the end of December. I can't see going back to WoW--WotLK killed it. NOTHING new in WotLK; just variants of the same thing, and a whole lotta good content was effectively lost between starting area and end-game. Burning Crusade had similar problems but at least we had flying mounts and Illidan is cooler than Arthus. Given the generally low enthusiasm which surrounds WotLK I'm finding it harder and harder to believe Blizzard's numbers.

WAR I can see going back to, maybe, someday, if I have that MMO need and nothing better comes along. Heck, the orc choppa already has me curious. Give me an MMO that truly focuses on PvP and almost completely removes leveling (at least PvE leveling) and I'm there. Even a couple of months ago most people on the IGN forums were figuring WAR would stabilize with numbers in the 250k-500k range--it would have been really surprising if things were higher than that.

Well WAR was ok. I wish it the best but I never got really passionate about it, unlike WoW, where in its heyday I was.

 

[ipeut14]

AoC hasnt failed :3 i stil play it and so do many. go home fanboi. blizzard already has enough ppl like you sucking there tiddlewanks

 

[sanzo]

I suppose again doesn't account for the people who never played any MMOs before, huh? arrogant much

I have to agree with Max about the player drop. I know a bunch of people who went to WAR, only to run back to WoW because they had invested more time in it. When you've invested that much time into a game, you'd be reluctant to just leave it

Hence, again. I don't see why you felt it necessary to get all smarmy. As has been mentioned several times in this thread, more orcs, more humans, more high fantasy. again. Revolutionary game changer it is not. And everyone went right back to wow as soon as wotlk came out. Should have put the development effort into a war40k original ip and hope that more people than disgruntled shaman, tanks, and raid healers would head over.

I think we could call it "new game smell."

I was merely calling out your claim that it's the same old thing, which doesn't apply to people who never played WoW, such as myself. My point still stands: people are reluctant to leave a game they've invested so much time in

EDIT: Oh, and about it being another high fantasy RPG? yeah, they should have went with futuristic, cause it worked out so well for Tabula Rasa. (This isn't really a response to the quote, just felt like stating it)

 

[backster]

I jumped at the chance to play WAR and I loved working on my Herder but the game as I went on to higher levels became the same crappy grind,repair,re-equip, get attacked by some godly level putz who had nothing better to do than run through and one shot anything or anyone! The graphics were great but they still seemed to be done to mimic a bit of WOW. I noticed that most of the people that I was playing with started to lose interest as the feel wasn't really there as it is when you are playing WOW. I left because the game was worse than WOW in it's directional quests and it just seemed to be a WOW PVP server copy without all the cool things that makes WOW good. Also when I played WAR it seemed to feature more a-holes than a convention center crammed full of rectal experts but that could have just been the timing as it was soon after schools let out for the day!

 

[Dogstile]

I just lost all my PS3 data (flipped a switch a half-second too early. At least it was my own fault and not the system killing itself like if I'd bought a 360)

any system that has the ability to lose all of its data is bad, i honestly don't see how you managed to type that without feeling like an idiot.

also, my xbox has got the RROD twice (grr) and i've never lost data, so i have no idea how you got the system wiping its own data information.

 

[Erana]

Damn, I know more Korean grinders with a higher population than that...
It hurts to hear this.