Why not just make it official right now and announce you are merging servers, cutting staff, and going F2P? Love of god, why are GamesWorkshop IPs being treated like half-asses movie adaptation games and getting so screwed? Why can’t this happen to the Twilight IP, or Barbie, or DC Comics… wait never mind that last one, but come on, 40k?
Pro-tip: Unless you only need those 1 million WoW players for a month or two to be successful, I’d suggest you start spinning why you failed right now. Get a head start; lay some groundwork, save face/jobs. Start making stuff up about GW leading you down the wrong path, announce on twitter that your key developer got hit by a bus, make a facebook update that someone critical to the team lost their grandma, whatever. All of that is more believable than you getting 1 million WoW to stay longer than three months.
Sad.
Ninja-edit Chuck-o-the-day: Jawbreakers were originally in the shape of Chuck Norris’s fist.
Hardcore Casual 
Its like this game is being made in an alternate universe where WAR was never made, and no one learned from their mistakes.
HILARIOUS I JUST posted the same thing
http://thewarrealm.com/?p=2216
Nothing like making a bold statement like that curse your just average MMO before it even leaves the gate. Well played THQ loud mouth, well played.
Another contestant sets sail for fail. Why do they all think that the MMORPG market is 100% covered by Blizzard, and the only way to get a loyal customer base is to take away a million of that?
In fairness, you know these press sites are just waiting for any exec at all to say anything at all about Warcraft.
Even if they say something jokingly and innocuous like ‘Ya — we’d love to take a million players off Blizzard’s hands’ it suddenly becomes all about them failing because they tried to be Blizzard.
But at the end of the day, every MMO (be it EvE, Darkfall, whatever) is going to draw comparisons to the biggest MMO on the market and is going to have to make some statement about how they view Warcraft. Only a fool who wants to lose all his investors is going to say “Well, we don’t think people who play Warcraft will like our game.”
What exactly does “very friendly to the WoW player” mean? It’s a way too ambiguous to provide any context.
I’m not saying I’ll like the game or that it won’t be a WoW clone, but I feel like I have to at least hold off being judgmental until it’s at LEAST in beta.
Fairness? Hahaha.
But in fairness to your fairness, the guy rather directly said he wants 1 million WoW players to populate WAR40k, which somewhat directly tells us what kind of game WAR40k is going to be, and in turn how big the incoming fail will be.
More WoW tourist data just makes me look better though, so they have that going for them.
Let’s look at what he said, not at what the author of the article wrote:
“They’ve got 14 million players! Gimme a million and I’m good! We’re real good at a million, right? We don’t need everybody to migrate. We just need some of them — and I’m full confident we’re going to get them,”
I read that as an off-the-cuff remark that is as much a joke as it is serious. The only real takeaway is that they want some Blizzard customers.
Who the hell doesn’t?
I’m sure Tasos would love to take a million too. But wanting something doesn’t speak to the strategy of how you plan to accomplish it. Tasos might WANT those million extra users but would clearly would never take the approach of imitating WoW.
All I’m saying is that there is nothing wrong with desire at this point. They should want to take away business from Blizzard. It’s healthy to consider your competition.
But none of that desire actually speaks to the approach of HOW they will take those players.
Depends on what ‘million’ he wants… there are a lot of WoW players that actually aren’t that big on ‘MMORPGs’ per se, they are Blizzard fans and WoW fans, and actually dislike a lot of things that actual RPG fans like.
WoW’s playerbase is made up of very diverse demographics compared to mose MMORPGs — it’s the height of ignorance for someone to say they just want to steal ‘some WoW players’ as if they’re a homogenous group and all like the same type of gameplay.
You obviously couldn’t go through the trouble of actually reading the quote apparently?
He DIDN’T say that, actually far from it.
I’ll say it before, I’ll say it again……LEARN 2 READ
Hold of on judgement? This is talking about video games on the internet!
The problem is they seem to be aiming at WoW players by making their game very like WoW. I believe the industry jargon is UI familiarity. I think “very friendly to the WoW player” is code for “we’re copying WoW’s look and feel”.
As we know quite a few MMOs have tried this and discovered WoW fans would love a new game that’s just like WoW for a month. If it doesn’t clash with a WoW expansion or patch.
But not many non-WoW fans want a game that plays like WoW (and if we did WoW does it best).
It’s a disappointing use of the 40K IP. They’re playing it safe. Even SWTOR is more daring and innovative.
Even SWTOR is more daring and innovative.
KOTOR with multiplayer instances? Meh, not that innovative.
But the perfect game nonetheless.
I need me some Chuck!!
Damnit! The fail was so strong in this news that it overwhelmed even Chuck!
Fixing this grave error now.
While you’re at it how about adding an s onto jawbreaker, you know, so it makes sense.
har har har
Thank you – this title gave me my first afternoon chuckle.
I thought the business model for MMOs post-WoW was to make a large amount of money off the initial box sale and then downsize to maintenance mode. Basically the model movies use.
I never thought the big games companies were suited to the service industry model that we’ve ended up with and I’m pretty sure most of them would be more than happy to lose it for good.
Thats not their business model, its just so many MMOs fail now it appears that it must be planned.
I was all ready to agree with you, and then Sid67 had to go and be all reasonable and sensible. As the quote clearly shows, all the developer said was that they’d love to get 1 million of blizzard’s players. That’s it. No “we need 1 million or we fail” (ala WAR) statements, not even a “our goal is to get 1 million WoW players”. He’s just saying what he’d like — and what game wouldn’t LIKE to get 1 million subscribers?
So really, just another case of sensationalist journalism from the gaming media. Shocking, I know.
I’m wondering what you expect them to do, to be honest. I can’t really see this game thriving either way.
“We’ll copy WOW so we are bound to get at least 10% of their numbers right?”
Assuming Bilson is not a complete idiot my guess is he is saying that for investors not for gamers. Anyone who has been watching mmorpgs for the last few years knows that strategy is a route to failure but it might sound good to a non mmorpg playing investor.
Don’t put quotations around something you invented for this post.
this feels like austrian economics…
no matter how much reality proves them wrong, the remedy is ALWAYS more of the same…
For a guy that hates wow he sure writes about it one hell of a lot.
I know that reading over 3 lines of text can be extremely difficult for wow players, but try to stay with me here: the article was about war40k, not wow.
REALLY!?!? I mean his references and the context with in the topic subject.
Too bad, W40K is such a brilliant IP and has been for years. Honestly, though, I can’t say that I ever really thought it would make a good MMORPG … RTS, definitely. It might even be interesting as an FPS ala Space Hulk. But even without the Warhammer dejavu, I have my qualms about how interesting or fun it will be.
Hopefully we area proven wrong!