Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is thus far enjoying a strong opening, netting some 750,000 subscribers less than a month after it went live. It's the strongest competitor yet to face current MMORPG king World of Warcraft, though WAR developer Mythic believes a solid second place finish for their title is more realistic. WoW developer Blizzard itself addresses the situation of converts leaving WoW for WAR, with COO Paul Sam estimating in an interview at BlizzCon that "well over half" of these players eventually return to their title after testing out WAR. That said, Blizzard acknowledges the momentum WAR has managed to gain in just a short period of time, which Sams notes wouldn't have been possible without the help (and coffers) of Electronic Arts:
I think Warhammer is best positioned to succeed out of the various products that have come out thus far since World of Warcraft has come out. It seems to be a good game, certainly a great company, Mythic and Mark [Jacobs] over there and his team, they're very, very talented. But I think without EA they would have struggled as well, because EA fortunately for them has a lot of money and so they were able to put forward a lot of marketing dollars and were able to support the huge infrastructure that they require for these kinds of games.Mythic has already said as much previously when it touched base with the resources required to even run an MMORPG properly these days, a reality Blizzard also agees with. Both are experienced companies, and Blizzard in particular already had the tenure of maintaining the "largest online games network" with Battle.net back in the days before WoW.
Outside of WAR, Sams believes Blizzard isn't totally repellant to the idea of producing an MMO game for console platforms, even if it's not necessarily to deny the opportunity for console giants themselves to become leaders in this market. The publisher just needs to cook up the right product for the audience.
