Blizzard notes return of Warhammer and Age of Conan players
November 6th, 2008 by Colin Temple
According to Mike Morhaime, CEO of Blizzard, the majority of players who dropped their World of Warcraft accounts for Warhammer Online or Age of Conan have returned to Blizzard’s popular MMO.
It was in a conference call with investors that Morhaime pointed out that despite recent releases by competitors, World of Warcraft continues to grow in numbers. The game’s upcoming expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, contributed to the return of many players.
“To date, 68 per cent of the players who listed Age of Conan as their reason for cancellation and 46 per cent of the players who listed Warhammer as their reason for cancellation have reactivated their subscriptions to World of Warcraft,” said Morhaime.
Mythic, the company behind Warhammer Online, disagrees. When Paul Sams, another Blizzard exec made similar comments a few weeks ago, Mythic CEO Mark Jacobs called the assertion naive.
”Any comment along the lines of ‘well if they’re in my game they’re not playing in another game,’ flies in the face of all research that’s been done among MMO players,” said Jacobs. ”The idea that you only play one is really kind of silly.”
#1 FireShadow
November 7th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
MMOs probably demand many people to stay faithful to their games, but there’s no restriction to playing only one kind of MMOs at a time. I have a friend who had played 3 to 4 different MMOs during the same time span and not one after another.
#2 Colin Temple
November 7th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
That’s definitely Mythic’s take on it.
It’s also true. At one point I was playing FFXI, WoW and Tabula Rasa at once.
#3 mgoode
November 12th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
I think more MMO games should be released for your cell phone. It would be really cool if you could keep up with your character online AND on your computer. This would be especially cool on a phone like the Krave. With it’s built in touch screen keypad and full HTML browser MMO games could be come more than a fantasy. You can check it out online for yourself at motorola.com/krave. Ever since I started working with Motorola, the Krave has been my number one pick for my next cell phone choice.
#4 Colin Temple
November 13th, 2008 at 8:00 am
An HTML browser is going to enable an MMO game? Give me a break. We’re talking about things like WoW and Warhammer here — no cell phone currently on the market can run a game like that.
Do you really think the Krave will ever support an MMO? Because it won’t.
I know, I should stop approving these spam comments but I like to offer the counterpoint that Motorola phones ARE NOT VIDEO GAME PLATFORMS and that I really don’t like Motorola these days.