The blogosphere is buzzing today about Mythic’s decision to close down a major chunk of the Warhammer servers; merging the players into larger, more active servers. It’s interesting to see the varied ways people are spinning this. The anti-Warhammer and major MMO blogs (most of whom know little about the game, even as they form loosely educated opinions and share them with the world) folks are doom and gloom, declaring this a sign of the end times for WAR. The fanboys are in damage control mode, trying to declare that this is a good move, that the player base is happy about it, and that it will mean good things for WAR in the future.
I’m a WAR player. I love the game. I don’t consider myself a fanboy, but I am an optimist and I try to find the brighter side of things. Therefor, in this case, I lean towards the view of the loyalist bloggers who see this move as a very good thing for the community. More players spread across fewer servers means more RVR action, and dropping the server count down to 17 is going to make for some epically fun struggles.
That said, this is awful press for a game that has already had it’s fair share of it lately. The firings, the frequent downtime, the dramatically lower subscriber numbers than Mythic was (foolishly publicly) hoping for, and now this. People who don’t have a first hand account of the game are going to see this latest move as another nail in the coffin. That, of course, isn’t the case; but it makes sense for the world to see it as such. WAR is doing fine on subscribers, even if those numbers are far lesser than they had wished for. Mythic grossly overestimated the amount of servers they needed, and this is the result we’re seeing for it today: the servers simply aren’t necessary, so it’s time to downsize. The writing for this has been on the wall for a long time, with one voluntary server move after another being announced. It was only a matter of time for them to start shutting down these “legacy” servers with so few players.
So, don’t panic. WAR isn’t going anywhere- they’re just scaling back to a more realistic server count. Take what you’re reading out there with a grain of salt.
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