Warhammer’s Blockbuster Beta

Posted by Stropp on April 2, 2008

Keen over at Keen and Graev’s Gaming Blog has posted a note on the Warhammer Online beta. According to an interview with Mark Jacobs, EA Mythic are expecting to get one million beta applications once they start taking applications for their Asian partners.

Keen notes:

That’s pretty impressive. I think that’s slightly higher than WoW was before it hit the Asian market

EA Mythic do owe some thanks to Blizzard. When World of Warcraft entered beta, the number of players in the MMO space was much, much smaller than it is today. Over the last three and a halfish years, World of Warcraft has encouraged many new players, not just into MMOs but into PC games as well.

There are quite a few of my guildies that had not played a computer game other than Minesweeper before getting into World of Warcraft. You probably couldn’t have said that about Ultima Online, or Everquest, or even Everquest 2.

In any case the number of beta signups that EA Mythic is expecting for Warhammer Online is a good sign that WAR will be a serious contender for World of Warcraft.

I don’t expect that WAR will dethrone WoW, but it’s looking more and more like Blizzard is going to get a good run for its money.

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