Mythic expects WAR beta apps to reach one million

by Samuel Axon Apr 2nd 2008 at 10:00PM

Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Forums, MMO industry, New titles, Warhammer Online, News items

Forumites at the Vault Network boards started a thread speculating as to whether or not EA Mythic's Warhammer Online will reach one million beta apps when all's said and done. Mythic CEO and WAR lead designer Mark Jacobs promptly responded (as he's been known to do), assuring everyone that he and the WAR team have every expectation of achieving that goal.

"I'd be surprised if we didn't hit 1M once we start taking beta apps for our Asian partners," he said. "Even without Asia, based on our current sign-up rate, we should blow through 750K and we have a decent shot at 1M." He also noted that his original goalpost was 500,000 in North America and Europe, a goal which EA Mythic has "far surpassed."

Maybe Funcom should take this as a throwing down of the gauntlet. Age of Conan's 500,000 beta sign-up number is impressive, but it looks like Funcom will have to do better than that to beat Warhammer!

[Via Keen and Graev]

Tags: age-of-conan, applications, beta, ea, ea-mythic, forums, funcom, ign, keen-and-graev, mark-jacobs, million, mythic, vault-network, war, warhammer, warhammer-online

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

What? said on 4:36AM 4-03-2008

Considering that 500k was in was in Feb for AoC they probably have plenty more by now, as well as Warhammer, according to their official ticker has 644.5k, not a big gap between the games

Scopique said on 5:56AM 4-03-2008

So it's a pissing match, eh? See how many beta testers can get in on the action before a game's release? Anyone realize that the point of beta testing is to stomp bugs, and not to get a head start on playing the game? Isn't the one of the sites where I have frequently seen mention of how Richard Garriott said that letting so many beta testers into TR was a bad idea?

Jeni said on 8:09AM 4-03-2008

Err. Signups =/= testers. ^__^ The more people that sign up quasi equal the number of people interested in the game.

Excelsior said on 12:54PM 4-03-2008

Since when did it become a contest of how many people you have signed up for beta instead of concentrating on releasing the game?

Mark said on 1:19PM 4-03-2008

WAR will have a larger customer base simply because it is designed to run on three year old PC architecture. With AoC you need a fairly modern rig because the game is MUCH more demanding technically.

Green Armadillo said on 1:48PM 4-03-2008

@Mark: Older system specs means more potential market, true, but it also means less differentiation between Warhammer and older games. On a medium end rig, LOTRO is noticibly a step above WoW graphics wise, and I think that probably helped Turbines' numbers. Of course, the game itself is what matters in the end, but the first impression is what gets people in the door to try the game.

As always, applications to beta "test" the game for free do not equal commitments to purchase the game and pay a recurring fee to play it. With Warhammer, there's an additional wrinkle that these beta signups have actually been live for a year now, so we can't even be sure how many of those "applicants" would actually sign into the beta tomorrow if they did get in. Don't get me wrong, a higher number is certainly better than a low number, but I'll be impressed when their paying customer base - not the "signup" counter - breaks 500K, 750K, 1 million, etc.

Dan said on 10:33PM 4-03-2008

Scopique you need to realise that beta has become a very powerful advertising tool in the gaming industry these days, companys have been known to run betas on things which are completly bug free simply to build momentum for release, and right now warhammer has a hell of alot of momentum and will probobly get alot of attention from the media because of this.
This attention directly translates into product sales and subs.
So they really have somthing to brag about here.