It’s that time of the year again. Another major MMO is launching and it’s setting itself up as the “Destroyer of Worlds… of Warcraft”. The harbingers of MMO doom are starting to charge up and fill the streets at the time left on their canceled accounts ticks down. Their gold is being thrown into the streets for all to pick up and some are even brave enough to begin deleting their armor to show their loyalty to Warhammer Online. From here, like always, it’s only going to get worse.

However, like every “WoW Killer” that preceded it, it’s not going to kill WoW. Let’s go ahead and get that one out of the way. WoW is not going to give up that easily just because another kid has arrived on the block. Your guild may be asunder right now, your raiding scheduled wrecked completely, and you may even be holding your purple items in your hand screaming towards Elune asking why has this befallen you. You may even be tempted to leave, which is normal, because you may have that anxiety again.

Let’s look at a few things first. The first major point is that WoW has over two million North American subscribers and an additional two million in Europe. That was at the start of this year, a year after the last expansion came. We can only imagine what those numbers are at now. We’ve got essentially four million players playing right now.

However, here is some scary news. Warhammer Online is predicted to sale over one and a half million box copies (meaning one and a half million players in the first month) in North America. There are two million players in North America and one and a half million wanting and waiting to play Warhammer Online. This can only mean one thing right? Well, before you say it, you’ll need to know a small tidbit about Warhammer.

Warhammer Online carries a license that you may not be familiar with. That’s the “Warhammer” license. Warhammer is a very popular table-top RPG. It spans way past that with trading cards and various video games. It’s got its own separate community that is consumed with the game with a playerbase that I would assume could easily devour the WoW playerbase. Not only that, but the amount of money poured into the tabletop game could make most WoW players think gold buying is a cheap way to get ahead.

So you’ve got a very dedicated fanbase of both the tabletop games and the standalone PC gamers grabbing their swords getting ready to get into the next big thing within their gaming sphere. That’s going to account for a good portion of the players jumping into the game. It might not be the entire playerbase on launch day, but it’s going to be a solid group that’ll be sticking with the game for awhile and a group that doesn’t exactly come from WoW.

Then you have the naysayers jumping onto the next bandwagon. These are usually the people who have been playing WoW for a long time and have grown bored without anything to do. No one can blame them really. They’ve done all the dailies, they have the mounts, they have the raid gear, and they’re just in limbo until the next expansion.

These players generally are the ones that flood the forums and general chat talking about the next best game. They then pre-order it and wait until release day. They then rush into the game expecting, well, WoW. Now some find their home in the new game and that’s fine. If a game is good and it’s something you enjoy then that’s great. However, many players began playing MMOs for one reason. That reason is WoW. It’s nothing else. Their friends play WoW, they play WoW, and sometimes even people they know in real life play WoW.

So it’s a weird experience. You’re a level seventy Rogue who can plow through people in PvP and see all of the rarest dungeons in the game. People in Ironforge or the Undercity know exactly who you are. Then a new game comes along and you’re in the proverbial sewers killing rats to hit level four. The game isn’t for you and then you’re back to what you love. Especially when what you love adds in an entire expansion that gives you several months (before patches) of new content to chew through.

So, the reality is, is that people play WoW for what WoW is. That’s a game that they love. Sure you’ll see a few people leave and you’ll see a few new faces, but it’s the same old thing as it always will be. Warhammer will probably be more successful than many of the other recent MMOGs that have launched recently. It’ll probably even take a good few WoW players. However, that’s fine. That's even good if you consider growing the MMOG community and more variety in games a good thing. It’s not going to decimate or destroy WoW. The only thing that can do that is time itself. Eventually, one day, WoW will be old and boring to most everyone. Luckily though, should that time come ten or fifteen years from now, we’ll see the next MMOG that Blizzard has in store for us to move on to. For right now it's doing fine and will continue to do so through this game launch and many others.

What’s your comments on this? We’d love to see them in our forums.

Looking for more to read? Check out this excellent editorial by Coyote.

Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Ten Ton Hammer network or staff.