Some times you really have to smile when game producers say things. But Paul Barnett is on a slightly higher pedestal than others are. And when he says he expects upwards of 3 Million subscribers at some point in WAR, many people will listen and believe. He's careful coaching that figure, and doesn't indicate a time frame as far as I can tell. But he does say he believes WAR will have 1 Million subscribers within the year. Now that I can believe. Massively recently announced that Mythic had shipped 1.5 million copies of WAR. Which doesn't necessarily mean that many will sell, but there is a lot of pent up anticipation for WAR right now.
I myself have been tempted to try WAR out, but I wasn't very happy with the requirement to order WAR to try it out. So I've sat on my desire. And frankly, I'm glad I did because reports from various bloggers are beginning to circulate that WAR is really so-so. That it doesn't have the massive appeal most expected afterall, and based on that I expect any WoW players that try it out will be back in mid-November when the Wrath of the Lich King ships. In fact I expect in the week or two prior to the WotLK release, that we'll simply stop hearing about WAR all together.
Lets be honest here. What have we heard about WAR that we haven't heard about every other MMO that's debuted in the past two years? Nothing, really. The last one, Age of Conan, has been such a dismal failure that it's lead developer has recently "resigned". Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Conan fan. Read all the books growing up; have both the movies; and would have loved to have played Conan. But I was put off by the system requirements, and the utter lack of content outside the starter zone. And that's sort of the feeling I'm getting from WAR writers as well.
WoW offers a vibrant end-game. In fact, more than one. Raiding is a huge part of the end game. But it's not the only portion of it. Players can ignore PVE raiding all together and can simply PVP instead, in the form of battle grounds and arenas. If anything people gripe about the amount of time between expansion, instead of what's in them. Players are generally happy with raiding or PVPing, but the most hard core of raiding guilds move through the content entirely too fast. What does WAR offer? I'm still kind of confused about it myself.
WAR appears to be a PVP oriented game. However that PVP has been labled as "care-bear" (and here). Which doesn't speak well for those hard core players that otherwise would have been most interested in WAR.
I'm happy that EA/Mythic is releasing WAR. But I don't think it'll rise to the level that Paul hopes it does.
