Analysts see into future, expect 650k US sales for WAR's first month

by Kyle Horner Sep 4th 2008 at 9:00AM

Filed under: New titles, Warhammer Online, News items

Here we go again, it's time for people to start predicting the sales of the next big MMO. So get out your thinking hat and grab ahold of your pie charts and bar graphs! Hm, somehow that sounded a lot more exciitng before we said it. Anyhow, Warhammer Online is nearly at launch day and has been given a 650,000 sales prediction for the first month in the United States from Lazard Capital Markets senior VP, Colin Sebastian. It's important to stress that this is for the US territory only, which means that's kind of a high prediction.

Our guess for the reason behind the European exclusion is because it's a bit of a wildcard. Warhammer being a much bigger property over there means its sales could land almost anywhere. It could also be because Lazard Capital Markets only deals in US sales predictions, but we like to think they're scared of Europe, instead. All in all with first month US sales being predicted at over half a million, we have to assume many are expecting Warhammer Online to perform pretty impressively overall.

Tags: analyst, ea, electronic-arts, euro, european, lazard-capital-markets, mythic, mythic-entertainment, war, warhammer, warhammer-online

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Daedren said on 9:08AM 9-04-2008

Man, you guys are just hyping the hype now!

http://www.r1ft.com/war/hyping-the-hype-from-conan-to-warhammer/

Wait, what?

;)

Marcellus said on 9:42AM 9-04-2008

For good reason Daedren. WAR is not even in the same boat with AoC in terms of pre-launch. People have tested the high-end content for one thing, and it'll appeal to a wider audience. Yeah, there'll be a fair share of people who say "it's just like WoW", but it offers improved features that, I think, people will come to enjoy. I just can't wait to see people's comments once the public can get their hands on it again.

MrGutts said on 10:05AM 9-04-2008

Someone removing posts?

They freaking wish for 650k lol... Nothing like that to get released prior to game release for the stock holders.

Ding Dong Dang said on 10:12AM 9-04-2008

Tested high end content?

you mean elder testers that are under a strict NDA? Sorry that exactly like AoC.

There is no doubt in my mind that the end game is lacking polish....how much its lacking and how fast they can polish it is the question and what AoC couldnt pull off

Nadril said on 10:41AM 9-04-2008

wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

"normal" testers can and are testing level 21/31/40 premades right now, taking a part of city sieges and all the other end game content.

And, even if that was true? Well NO ONE tested the sieges in Age of Conan except for maybe funcom employees. The did not let any testers have access to city sieges.

Seriously, Warhammer is an entire different ballpark than Age of Conan.

Barth said on 10:14AM 9-04-2008

I hope it does well, but I'd be surprised if it held onto that many people long term. All the "revolutionary" features feel pretty underwhelming in practice.

PQs are cool, but will get old fast, as they are scripted events and always the same.

The revolutionary quest system where you get credit for mobs you kill on the way to the quest giver actually only works for very few quests.. not at all how it was described in their posts and podcasts.

Tome of Knowledge is a cool idea, but is actually pretty cumbersome to use in-game.. I wasted a lot of time trying to find stuff in there that would have been much easier if they just made it a normal menu format rather than a book simulator.

I'm not trying to be overly negative, just pointing out that a lot of the hype surrounding how this game is so "different" is just hype. It's still a lot of fun, I just don't see it taking and keeping a great number of players. I still think experts are overestimating the MMO market greatly based on WoW being such a statistical outlier.

recursive said on 1:20PM 9-04-2008

Problem is all the people we have to rely on are, in fact, saying the exact same things that were said about AoC pre-launch.

There were quite a few critical notes about WAR on the Warhammer Alliance forums after the preview weekend, but the fanboys jumped on them and drowned them out in "go back to WoW", "that's going to be fixed at launch", "WAR is 20 forms of revolutionary" (where *everyone* can see it's not, one new type of quest does not revolutionary make) and "omg you hater" comments.

There's not a single critical one amongst you fanboys and we've been burned by empty promises several times before, so excuse us for being sceptical. We'll see soon enough, open beta in, what, a day? Though even that doesn't say much, the first 20 levels of AoC weren't that bad either, one can't help wonder why it'll be limited to 20. Personally what I've heard about instances and endgame doesn't match what you and the developers are saying.

Luckily, since launch is a week later we'll know the truth soon enough as well. I'll be glad to admit being wrong if it proves all true, but I highly doubt it. That wouldn't necessarily make WAR a bad game mind, I'm quite looking forward to it in fact.

Nadril said on 2:22PM 9-04-2008

Really I've looked at it objectfully, but my complaints were pretty much taken care of because of Mythics excellent communication within the community. The game has a WoW level of polish here and the RvR (a mechanic that really doesn't change except for different objectives, locals, ect.) was incredibly fun.

You can NOT COMPARE age of Conan's 1-20 and Warhammers. You just can't. Age of Conan was a largely single player game 1-20, and was incredibly and obscenely different than 21-80. Warhammers 1-20, on the other hand, is much closer to the idea of 1-30 in vanilla WoW. Not much changes except for end game when you hit 60.

I've seen all of the esteemed mechanics working in warhammer. I've watched player made city siege videos. I've watched player made castle siege videos. All of these were nice, smooth and looked fun to play.

I've taken part of HUGE RvR fights already (T1 chaos vs empire was at least a 75v75 over preview weekend just going back and forth, running near flawlessly).

Really I don't want to be a fanboy but I just can't see much that really... worries me about this game. Age of Conan I kind of blindly followed, but warhammer I've done my research. Most of the players who seem to really dislike it wanted a DAoC2.0 or are just waiting for Darkfall and frown upon any "easy mode" MMORPG's.

I will say that the amount of gear did worry me, but then I saw trophies. I was worried (horribly) that the combat would be slow, but I played it and it was great and they are improving on it more.

Really though, I know the AoC and WAR comparisons are inevitable, but please just compare them. Mythic is so much more open than Funcom ever was with their community. Plus, Funcom had AO behind them... Mythic had DAoC.

Grimjakk said on 2:02PM 9-04-2008

The "revolutionary" elements aren't PQ's or the Tome of Knowlege.

The "revolutionary" element is open grouping and one-click Warparties. That and the RvR (Us vs. Them) focus really changes the ovreall social atmosphere of the game. I tend to solo a lot in MMO's... but in WAR, I grouped more than I didn't. Not because I had to... but because it was so easy to.

ScytheNoire said on 4:43PM 9-04-2008

Keep on bashing WAR. Us who are playing are just laughing at you, because you are so ignorant and such hater's. So while you bash it, we'll be playing it and having a blast. We'll eventually see you in WAR though.

Reminds me of all the EQ fans who bashed WoW, and then eventually made their way over to WoW.

Keep on hating, cause we're laughing at you.

The Claw said on 2:10AM 9-05-2008

""normal" testers can and are testing level 21/31/40 premades right now, taking a part of city sieges and all the other end game content."

wtf? That is simply not true. Nobody is testing that part of the game except elder beta testers who are still under NDA.

Gogo said on 11:38AM 9-09-2008

Claw you have it wrong. "Elder" is the name that they gave to the "normal" beta testers. That seperates them from the CE and SE preorder testers and OB testers.

The "normal" beta testers from the public, 10's of 1000's of them, have been testing that content. And the NDA they were put back under was at a patch level. Stuff from before that patch they were free to share their experiences on. And even after the patch they were free to share experiences, just not on stuff introduced with that patch. So they weren't talking about things like the AH which were new with that patch, but were talking about the seiges and sharing videos, etc.
And of course, a lot of this changes today as the PW/OB starts and things like the AH is in the new patch for PW/OB.

So you're just confused about what they were under the NDA for. There's tons of videos and posts from people in "normal" beta about those things out there and they are free to talk about them.

Also, not every game is the same. Anyone that was being honest could tell that AoC had a lot of issues. A lot of poor mechanics. Some were easily fooled by their non-whack-a-mole combat that really was just whack-a-mole-x4. But still, AoC had no polish. Lacked content. Had almost no itemization. And was not ready for release.

WAR has a lot of polish. I'd say less then WoW at release, but then WAR has a lot more features then WoW at release. WAR is not going to have the mass exodus AoC had because WAR is a better game then AoC. A more polished game then AoC. It will never hit WoW levels because of the RvR/PvP focus. But it will have big numbers.

Just because AoC exists does not mean every game is like it. Every game has it's share of overly optimistic fans that preach nothing but joy before release. But with even the slightest bit of effort one can clearly find that the overall opinion of WAR is much higher then that of AoC for those that were in betas.