Dates solidfying for WoW and War

Well the upcoming MMO war is getting it's start date a bit more solidified as time moves on. Many software retailers are marking down Warhammer with a September/October release date which seems to be consistent with the recent cut back of content by Mythic. What I find funny is that the Wrath of the Lich King beta was announced soon after Mythic made their move. Based on past betas run by Blizzard this put the release date somewhere around November. I get the distinct feeling that Blizzard is afraid of leaving the MMO market alone with Warhammer for too long. With the Burning Crusade we saw Blizzard extending their release date by a couple months to get everything nice and neat. This year I doubt they will be able to do this and we might get to witness the rare event of Blizzard actually making a deadline.

Mythic has a lot of content they recently cut from the initial Warhammer release and I bet it can easily be packaged into free patches for the game. Plus most of this content is going to be primarily PvP combat which has a longer shelf life then new raids or dungeons. Mythic can easily use the addition of more capitol cities as a method for introducing new scenarios and sieges into the game. Blizzard should be aware of the long lasting effect of PvP content since they haven't introduced a new battleground in years and they're still popular as hell. In my opinion Blizzard needs to throw down a lot of new content almost right on top of Warhammer if they don't want to lose a good portion of their subscribers.

I believe that Warhammer will easily set a new sales record for a MMO when it releases. We're probably looking at a number that reaches over the one million mark in the first week or two. A lot of these people are going to be coming from World of Warcraft, but aren't going to cancel their old subscriptions during the first month of play. After that time frame though a lot of people will start to make the choice to go with one game or the other. If the Wrath of the Lich King expansion isn't directly on the horizon at this point then most people are going to stick with Warhammer. The raiders will probably switch back as soon as Wrath of the Lich King comes out, but I don't think their numbers will be that high.

Quite frankly for the longest time a lot of people raided simply because World of Warcraft was the most appealing game around and its end-game was raiding. Blizzard has slowly been trying to introduce other activities oriented around PvP, but it's been an uphill battle. Warhammer is going to enter the scene with what looks like a very complex and rewarding PvP system right off the bat. Blizzard is trying to match Warhammer by introducing things like Lake Wintergrasp and siege engines. However, their most impressive content keeps on being PvE oriented like the Occulus dungeon or the new achievement system. I thought that Blizzard might be in a position to take the crown once again, but I'm beginning to wonder if they can do it without introducing some new PvP concept that Warhammer doesn't have.

The month of October will most likely be the showdown between these two games. Mythic will be announcing patches for Warhammer and experiencing that first steady surge of new players. Blizzard will probably be releasing lore and screenshot walkthroughs of its more impressive WotLK dungeons. As the first free month ends for Warhammer and the release date gets closer for WotLK we'll start to see the numbers moving one way or the other. While neither company will announce the declining growth of subscription numbers, both will trumpet rising subscription numbers. Thus depending on performance either Mythic or Blizzard will issue a press release and we'll know who is outperforming the other. Then again it could be that MMO players decide that 30$ a month isn't that much and both games have growth well into the new year.