Warhammer holds its ground with 300k subs

Well I wouldn't say the level is stable given the promotions and launches required to reach static, but good for them.

There could be some tough times ahead with more competitors reaching market, but I'm most intrigued to see where there first full expansion (presumably to be announced after The Land Of The Dead) is headed.

If it's just adding more of exactly the same then WAR's off my radar for good, but if they aim to carve out a bigger niche (e.g. credible PvE or dynamic siege areas) then that could be one more roll of the dice on their part.

Well, it's good to hear the decline in population has slowed down.

mmo's don't need 10 million subscribers let alone 500k. I wish developers would have some passion and look at their mmo's as games and not just as a sole source of income, then we might just see some progress that benefits the playability of the game.

And all the rabid hatebois that seem want every game to 'die', what exactly makes you so bitter and jaded? You win some, you lose some. Suck it up if a game hasn't been made that meets 100% of your criteria. You expect way too much, and if it's the hype thats made you like this then it's your own fault for buying it (and you are still buying it with some of the comments I've seen about upcoming games). I doubt any of you will ever enjoy an mmo again, so you might as well get out now and do something productive with your lives =)

a bit toooo PVP centric for many people's liking. I considered WAR and watched it's development closely for a while but the only thing they ever spoke to was PvP this or RvR that, which implied that PVE was something of an afterthought and nowhere near the main focus of the game. For such a heavily PVP centric game 300k players is probably a pretty good number.

Well, I’m surprised. I had thought it was going to be around 200-225K, but I didn’t take the Russian release into account. I was talking to my friend about this last night over the phone (me a former player; him a current one), and one resounding term kept coming up over & over:

Potential.

He stillreally enjoys the game (mostly b/c our guild is good peoples) and is interested in seeing the TK areas, but his frustration w/ stability is growing as well. Especially City Sieges and Forts. And I agree. But, for me to return I want to see a more engaging aspect in RvR. Like many others have said: its keep swapping. Additionally, the lakes are ill used, as 90% of each lake isn’t used. 4 BOs and 2 keeps. People ONLY battle at those specific locations. There needs to be more reason to play tactfully. To spread the zergs around. Lastly, the Keeps & Forts need to be redesigned to spread people around. They take an already small area (the Fort) and cram 200+ people into a 10x20 room. It’s just pointless.

And I want to be able to play on my Qcore (on low settings even), and not worry about horrific lag. My computer far exceeds the requirements (or even suggestions) for this game, yet I still have to pay to endure awful frame rates, clipping, stuck animations, and other issues b/c of their design & code.

But, there’s potential w/ this game. Lots. I think if Mythic gets there ass into overdrive and fix the core problems, the game could be huge and fantastically fun, w/ few interruptions. Despite all the typical “Oh, this game sucks and (insert next release here) is totally going to be the best game ever”. Those people have gone from TR > AoC > WAR > DF > w/e is next. They’re invalid, as they’ll never actually “like” anything. They just want to be “Hip” and “Cool” and “in the know”.

The Massively writer is correct in that the 300k number is unchanged from the previous quarterly report, and the 300k number is largely due to the recent russia expansion, recruit a friend, and other promotional activities done during this last quarter. If it wasn't for those things, then War probably would have clocked in at around 250k or below, and also don't forget that all the 6 month subs expired in April so those won't show up until the next quarterly report.

Wahammer requires a critical mass of players for it to be enjoyable, but the server can't handle the large battles the game advertised. T4 PVP is a lag fest, Fortress fights are unfun due to the population caps, crashes, bad lag, or all of these factors at the same time. The end game city sieges are too dependent on PVE'ing a mob to advance, too dependent on ward gear, and there are problems queuing up for city invasion instances.

As others have mentioned, there is a lack of a community feel for this game. The PQ's are too numerous in each zone, they don't reward group play, and solo questing is the fastest way to level up if you can't get a lot of PVP scenario fights per hour. Leveling itself is pretty boring in this game, and I don't think I could stomach leveling another character to 40 and then having to gear him out for the end game.

The tier 1-3 RVR is decent, but its in T4 where this game truly breaks down. The sad fact is that most people don't even make it to T4 due to the slow leveling, barren feel of the game community in lower levels, and the boring PVE.

Warhammer doesn't have a serious competitor yet, but that doesn't mean it won't slowly bleed subscribers if it doesn't turn around quickly. Patch 1.3 and the Land of the Dead expansion are going to make or break the game for a lot of players, so if core issues are not addressed at that time then Mythic is going to have to continuously expand to new regions to maintain a 300k+ user base.

You know what really kills it for me in this game? Its just the developers whole outlook on most of the classes. A lot of the classes are gimped, more so on Destructions side, I mean, out of the 12 classes and their mirrors, 10 of them are clearly more powerful on Orders side. Some, to the point , thats not even funny.
Witch Hunters obliterate Witch Elves

Engineers are tons better than Magii.

Bright wizard, although nerfed recently are still better than Sorcs.

KoTBS are better than the chosen now that they got slammed for no apparent reason with the nerf bat.

Rune Priests are better than zealots since they dont need to use a bugged skill to debuff their targets

Warrior Priests are just better than DoK, even after getting hit with the nerf bat as well!

The only Destruction character thats csuperior to its counter part is the shaman, and who knows how long thats gonna last!

The Devs have no love for destro, and most of the dedicated destro pop is quitting or gonna quit when other pvp oriented fantasy games come out.

I, for one, cant wait till Aion comes out, their assasin class is smexy, its what the WH and WE should have been!

It is worth noting that the minimum system requirements for Aion are slightly lower than for WAR. This may not make a difference for a lot of people, but it does for me. WAR was just a tiny bit more than my system could handle, and that's the main reason I had to quit. Of course the game suffered from poor performance generally for most users, which did not help matters.

IF Aion avoids the performance pitfalls and IF the game is truly playable at the advertised minimum specs, it has a far greater chance of attracting and retaining a solid player base than WAR. That's a lot of ifs, but I think there's a pretty good chance they'll pull it off. For whatever reason, Asian companies don't seem to have quite as much trouble with technology as developers in the US and Europe -- or perhaps they are just less sloppy about releasing games that are unstable.

Koreans are good for the code their games employ, really stable and efficient. Its just that most of their games have bad design in general. Massive grind fest for the most part, but still fun.

I played a lot of RO back in the day, although dated right now, I loved their WoE and grouping up to go MVP hunting. Also, the classes where insane in that they where so inba, but every one them could kill you with something.

So in the end, there was some faux balance in that a person could press that IWIN button and end you, but then your mate would press his IWIN button and end him!

Funny thing about WAR is some free to play mmo's are much better than WAR if it's not being back-up by a huge company carrying it and having a loud speaker behind it.

Take like Atlantica Online, yeah yeah, but try to play it for 1 week and you'll going to love the gameplay and everything in it. Any F2P games have bad reputation but if you know what is good and not then you'll be fine. Runes of Magic is also a good one compared to WAR. I thought WAR's gonna be like what they said about it from reviews and the developers. But they didn't deliver the hype. Again, epic failed.

"No one knows lotro's subscriber numbers." its pretty easy to understand why when the numbers are noting to write home about do not release them!

Also even if this 300k are all subs them it still not add up with the War boxs sales and it loses are more big them it subs! War is a crappy game where the product that was market never make it too the store in the place we got cut content and rush release! Like every other mmo that was the so called next WoW-killer!

WAR did not add noting to the mmo it just did take the stuff that was already here and the RVR crap is just a other way for say WoW's Battle gronds but with changing maps!!

WAR was a failure ever since they conceived it, because of its being addressed to casual messers, office workers, people who're chilling before heading back to work for the afternoon turns.

But precisely because it attracts this class of person, it can't expect them to STICK with the game forever, being casual players, they naturally intend to change game every 2 or 3 months.

That's the difference with EVE 300k subs, the EVE people aren't random casual part-timers, they are ALL seriously committed folks.
And i seriously doubt WAR has those 300k, people keep reporting empty servers. Those 300k (if true), will go down 20k per time every month, i wager.

Good to hear they are holding their subscriber base.

I really wanted to like this game. The idea of it is great though but the combat is buggy, unresponsive. I like my combat more twitchy or left up to the player to make his own style. Oh well I played two characters to 40 and enjoyed pvping to level before I got extremely bored or frustrated with the clunky buggy combat.

Wow if feel like I need a shower after reading these nerd-rage comments. For those that hate that game so much but actually want to play a game like it what would you recommend? Other than the gankfest Darkfall I don't know of any other games that are even close to Warhammer for fantasy PvP. Suggestions?