Mythic wages WAR in the East

by Brooke Pilley Jun 20th 2009 at 8:00PM

Filed under: Fantasy, Warhammer Online, News items

While NCsoft prepares to invade the West with Aion this September, Mythic has their own preemptive RvR strike planned for the East. Both Mythic and Gigamedia are bringing Warhammer Online to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau on June 25th. This means people can now play WAR in North America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia. That's quite a global presence.

It will be interesting to see what impact this has on WAR's subscriber count in the next quarter. When WAR originally launched in September 2008, they sold over 750,000 copies. That number dropped to 300,000 by December 2008. After a couple big marketing campaigns (recruit a friend and re-enlistment) and a launch in Russia, WAR's numbers held steady at 300,000 in March 2009.

Could this Eastern launch propel them beyond the 300,000 mark again? Based on all the Land of the Dead coverage and impressions we've seen, the new live expansion should have some sort of positive effect on the game as well. I guess we'll have to wait until the next EA earnings call to find out, which should take place in August.

Tags: ea, gigamedia, hong kong, HongKong, land-of-the-dead, macau, mythic-entertainment, subscription-numbers, taiwan, waaagh, war, warhammer-online

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Graill said on 9:23PM 6-20-2009

Indeed, we shall see if the rest of the world is as gullible.

TheNilvarg said on 9:39PM 6-20-2009

Weird that the logo would be in both Chinese and English. Does it say "Ching-Chong Online"?

cozz said on 11:38PM 6-20-2009

Nilvarg, please take your biggotry elsewhere

Wjowski said on 12:01AM 6-21-2009

Why bother? He fits right in with all the other Asiaphobes drawn to MMOs these days.

Cofcos said on 10:09PM 6-20-2009

While I love WAR-- That's some stupidity, right there. Didn't they already try that with WotLK? You don't launch just before something bigger than you; you launch some months after. Gamehoppers are likely to stay with your game longer and normal people are less likely to view your game through the hype lens of the bigger game.

To the above poster: have you never seen a Japanese or Asian game or media? Many, story light, Japanese games can be played perfectly well while knowing only English because they often put the menus and technical terms in English.

Cofcos said on 10:13PM 6-20-2009

Oh, wait. Aion's already out there...

Andrew said on 1:47AM 6-21-2009

Hmm, wonder if there is any issues with all the skeletons in game.
Will the government ban this game or make them change all the skeletons into ghouls?

This was the main reason WOLTK was not approved.

Qoo said on 5:51AM 6-21-2009

This is Taiwan, not Mainland China.

Gwyd said on 5:52AM 6-21-2009

Well without the western fans of the Games Workshop IP or deluded ex-DAOC players, I doubt the game will attract many Asian players with it's current level of ingame performance and balance issues.

cozz said on 9:14AM 6-21-2009

actually... I knew that Games Workshop is really BIG in Singapore and somewhat so in Malaysia along with Magic card.

Not so sure with Hong Kong though, I guess they would have done their research for this...

Conquests said on 10:21AM 6-21-2009

"It will be interesting to see what impact this has on WAR's subscriber count in the next quarter"

We will see the impact of nobody cares.
Trying to get the eastern nutjobs is really the last act of desperation for such a failure of a game.

Hardy said on 12:28PM 6-21-2009

WoW's been over there for a long time, and we know how much of a failure WoW.

It's a better MMO market. There's less idiots like you roaming around, and in fact, it seems the Asian market is more open to trying something new, unlike the west that seems to fear a different game like it was some witch trying to turn you into a frog or something.

Conquests said on 4:29AM 6-22-2009

Lol, now World of Warhammer online craft is "new"?

Hades said on 3:16PM 6-21-2009

Land of the Dead really didn't change things on the North American Servers. All it did was throw more content around for people to grind while continuing to ignore the core things that have caused people to quit.

1. Bad client performance
2. Slow and boring leveling
3. Too much PVE
4. End game RVR is fundamentally broken
5. Population imbalances

Over half the US servers have low populations for at least one realm in prime time, and at best 5 servers have medium populations. All in all the Land of the Dead expansion has failed to motivate people to want to stick around, and instead AION is betting huge buzz in the Warhammer player community.

Increasingly Warhammer is moving into a niche game market as the North American and Euro server clusters bleed players, and adding new regions isn't bringing in more people to fight. Its just creating more regional hubs that will suffer from the same issues dragging down the US and Euro hubs.

crsh said on 3:25PM 6-21-2009

So Aion is the next big thing, aka the upcoming game title that's going to become completely over-hyped by locusts who jump from one game to another every 3-6 months only to trash it endlessly for not meeting their unrealistic expectations.

MF said on 2:21AM 6-22-2009

How is PvPing boring? Would you rather have shitty wow quest grinding instead of scenarios, which actually have fun combat unlike 99% of MMO's grind?

Also, I still have minimal problems with lag/client issues on Warhammer.

Ugkul said on 11:31AM 6-22-2009

Been trying Warhammer and boy it's quite unpolished as compared to WOW even now. Still leveling and it is very much a pain, and it sucks when you're the only one doing public quests. Pity because when there's enough ppl PQs are a great mechanism.