Slippery When WAR

Posted by Stropp on March 28, 2008

I think it’s fair to say that Warhammer Online will be one of the bigger MMO launches this year, if not the biggest… if it makes a 08 launch that is.

The news dropped today that the release of Warhammer Online will pushed back to sometime in Fall. This is, what… the second or third time the release has been pushed back now?

All in all, this is good news on probably three fronts.

First up, time has been slipping away. May is getting closer and there is still no sign of an open beta. Companies also tend to like to give at least a couple of months notice for buyers to hit the marketing trail and really build up that anticipation. This is a pretty good sign that the game is still needing some work. A later release date lets the devs use that magical debugger of smashing to crush a few more bugs.

And as much as I’m keen to see the game, I’m even keener to see a bug free game. Looks like someone is learning from the Vanguard disaster.

This is also good news for Funcom. Age of Conan does have a firm release date, unless it gets shifted too, for late May. That’s about the time Warhammer Online was going to be released. This will give Age of Conan a reasonable good window to release, gather subscribers, and firm up their content before the behemoths of Warhammer and Wrath of the Lich King hit the streets.

I reckon the other beneficiary of this delay is Blizzard. I’ve got a bit of a hunch that they are aiming the Wrath of the Lich King release to coincide with Warhammer’s. It’s clear that Blizzard see Warhammer Online as a threat. The fact that they are retooling World of Warcraft to be a more PvP oriented game lends credence to the idea that the PvP of Warhammer is worrying them. A strategic release for Wrath of the Lich King to do as much damage to Warhammer Online is a good bet.

The delay of WAR then gives Blizzard more time to polish up WotLK and add those features that might not have made it into a May release.

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