Who will win in November?

In November we in the United States will vote on a number of issues. State and local ballots will be cast as well as deciding who will be the President of the country. Those votes are important, but what about the votes that matter, the votes for your dollars? Will Warhammer Online get your vote or will it be World of Warcraft's next expansion Wrath of the Lich King? WAR is campaigning early, which may lead to some serious vote-taking. In fact it may be causing people to stop playing WoW. In Videogamer's article "Warhammer Online: Worth Stopping WoW For," Wesley Yin-Poole says that Warhammer Online may be a game "...well worth dabbling in while you wait for Wrath of the Lich King to come out." According to Wesley:

"For this reason we reckon WAR is going to have a much tougher time bringing new players into the MMO genre than WoW did when it was first released a few years ago. Sure, there will be fans of the Warhammer universe, perhaps players of the popular table-top game, who are sure to enter the fold. But WAR Online is, after all is said and done, unashamedly hardcore and, by its very nature baffling to anyone who's never played an MMO. Instead, we reckon Mythic's focus is to steal players from Blizzard's virtual world. This is something we can see it doing in spades."

The article continues to extol the virtues that we've seen discussed in just about every Ten Ton Hammer Warhammer video, but also points out that WAR may be in a good spot to pilfer a few hundred thousand (million?) subscribers from WoW.

As I read through the reviews being posted about the first few levels of Warhammer, or the discussion from Boomjack's Loading... column this morning, WAR has come out firing with both barrels. The launch has been smooth, and according to XFire's WAR playtime numbers, it is holding its own. Combine all of these positives for WAR with some grumbling in the WoW camp and the fact that we are entering the exact point in the development cycle where the last WoW expansion got delayed by 3 months and WAR is looking like a solid contender.

I am enjoying the heck out of WAR and my WoW characters are sitting idly by, but that doesn't mean they will be neglected for long (even though I bagged on my raid this weekend). My original plan was to enjoy WAR until Wrath of the Lich King comes out just like the author of the article referenced above, but what if I never go back? What if the Lich King launch gets pushed and it comes out in January like Burning Crusade did, would that change things? I've shared my internal dialog, it's your turn to share yours on our forum.