Oh what a difference a year makes.  This time last year, the interweb's darling MMO game was Warhammer Online.  Many people, including yours truly, were singing its praises.  GameSpy gave it a 5/5 rating.   The game had 500,000 accounts after just one week.  All the signs pointed to this being the next big thing.  Just about a year ago, I even went as far to say, "Warhammer Online will compete with World of Warcraft...like it or not.".  Uh...yeah. Note the picture to your right, which depicts me eating those words.


Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to cast Warhammer Online as a failure, but they (EA) fell far short of the crazy WoWish numbers they were hoping to get.  Many people were starting to believe that the good start meant crazy high subscription numbers were attainable.  We were believing the hype created mainly by Mythic, but partly from the fan base.  Many of us simply wanted to be a part of the next big MMO sensation to sweep across the land, and we were ready to anoint Warhammer Online as our savior.

You know the rest of the story.  After the free month was over and people had to put their money where their mouths were, subscription numbers dropped.  The WoW tourists began to go back to old faithful in droves.  At its height War's subscription numbers might have been creeping up on 800k.  But when the dust settled, the numbers were actually down to about 300k.  Eventually, servers that once had crazy queue times were being closed and Mark Jacobs own words came back to haunt him.

By most measures, the 300k subscribers War had by last count makes it a very profitable and successful game.  I'm not quite so sure they still have even that many subscribers any more, but I'm not going to go down that path in this article.  I will however go on to state that the purpose of this article is that of a cautionary tale, one that many fanboys of mediocre performing games can tell.  The story is short and sweet: don't believe the hype, its that easy.  I don't even necessarily mean developer hype, I mean the hype of the mob.  The mob is fickle.  I was a part of it, and now I blow the horn of caution at every MMO release.  I will do my damnedest to never hype a game like that again (Looking squarely at BioWare and SWTOR as I say that) and give a game many weeks, if not months, before I begin singing its praises as the next MMO savior.

The moral of the story is to temper your enthusiasm about a game until you've experienced more of it.  Alot more of it.  Just a dose of reality for those enamored with Aion, Fallen Earth, or even Champions Online right now.  Give it time before singing its praises, you could end up eating your words.

Related articles

• Sitting Pretty with SW:TOR (darthhater.com)
• 10 Things Mythic Did Right With Warhammer (biobreak.wordpress.com)
• BioWare Comments on Mythic Merger (xbox360.ign.com)
• The WAR Birthday Party Speech (overlypositive.com)
• Ex-Mythic Boss Confirms Departure (pc.ign.com)