It'll support at least five years of content, anyways
Electronic Arts Mythic wants to come out swinging if it hopes to even dent World of Warcraft's mega-armor with Warhammer: Age of Reckoning. Speaking in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Josh Drescher provides reassurance that the Warhammer Online team will planning for the long haul in order to attract and keep subscribers.
...you need to spec the game out in such a way that you actually have those progressions in mind for later - so you don't wind up trampling all over the earlier experiences every time you expand the game. We have actually five years' worth of numerology out in front of us in terms of all that.
Content will definitely be important, if we're to keep the MMORPG war in perspective. Consider that the runner up online RPG in terms of sheer number of subscribers is in fact the free-to-play Runescape, at least according to the NPD Group's newest Online Subscription Tracker report. Their current MMORPG ranking is as follows:
- World of Warcraft
- RuneScape
- Lord of the Rings Online
- Final Fantasy XI
- City of Heroes
With Funcom's Age of Conan also on the horizon, this list stands to be shaken up in the near future. Will these new titles last against the current old guard of MMORPGs?
forums
RSS Feeds
I think WHO has great ideas and a great foundation to build upon.
But looking at videos and judging the gameplay mechanics and graphics, it's straight out of 2004 technically speaking.
Visually, you can't separate it from WoW, in fact, the art in WoW may put it on top of WHO. So there's either something missing in the design team goals or they're purposely going for "fun to play" hard to look at MMO.
My $.02.