Warhammer Online
Setting: Fantasy | Developer: Mythic Entertainment | Release Date: September 18, 2008 | Discontinued: December 18, 2013 | Payment Model: Pay2Play
A Warhammer MMORPG from the creator of Dark Age of Camelot? The hype for Warhammer Online was preordained. Accordingly, the launch went strong (800,000 subscribers at its peak). Even the reviews were positive because the spiritual successor to DAoC got a lot right. It garnered numerous awards. The servers were strained.
A private server keeps Warhammer Online alive:
Warhammer Online emphasized the fight between the factions Order (Dwarves, Empire, High Elves) and Destruction (Greenskins, Chaos, Dark Elves) – and the sieges and large-scale battles were a lot of fun. Moreover, the game utilized the license with all its classes and races excellently. There were also clever ideas like the trophy system.
Why did Warhammer Online fail? The intriguing question that many fans of the time ponder: What would have happened if EA hadn’t interfered and had given Mythic Entertainment free rein? The publisher pressured for a quick release, causing planned content to be postponed or cut.
In addition, the executives at Electronic Arts brought enormous expectations. Today, almost any game would make a deal with the devil for 800,000 monthly paying customers. Back then, that was insufficient for EA. Especially since the numbers gradually decreased as more and more genre fans returned to WoW and others.
When the licensing deal with Games Workshop expired in December 2013, the publisher ended the chapter and took the servers offline without the MMORPG ever having the chance to realize its potential.
The veteran developer Mark Jacobs later founded his own indie studio, bitterly disappointed with EA, to work on Camelot Unchained. Warhammer Online, meanwhile, continues to live on as a private server: If you miss the Warhammer MMORPG, you should give Return of Reckoning a chance in 2025
