Remembering Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
Games Workshop has created a huge, ever-expanding universe built around war and brute force. One of the games created in this universe was Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. The game became one of the few projects to have failed in the Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy.
The game opened up with marvelous statistics that threatened many renowned MMORPGs at the time. Firstly it sold more than one million copies and peaked at 800,000 subscribers. The type of numbers that means great profit, impressive forecast, and an investment magnet.
Notably, the game was created with unique war settings. These were created around three racial pairings: Dwarfs versus Greenskins, Empire versus Chaos, and High Elves versus Dark Elves. Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning featured a Realm versus Realm (RvR) combat system.
Age of Reckoning is an RvR game with two factions: Order and Destruction. Each faction has three armies and four career options. Warhammer Online’s career (class) system conformed to archetype roles. For example, the Warrior Priest was a support or healer archetype, but he also had many melee DPS elements
Why Did This Game Close?
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning could have stood the tests, but poor management seems to have been the main cause. These are the main indicators as the company wound down.
- Reduction in Users: Games need paying players to survive. The company was unable to retain players. December 2008, the number of active WAR subscribers had decreased to over 300,000 paying subscribers
- Poor Performance: After hitting one million units, the product lost traction and dwindled in revenue generation. By March 2009, the company reported a loss of $1.08 billion in the financial year 2009. This brought financial woes including the company’s stocks and investor confidence.
- Resource Reduction: The management made more bad decisions and chose to reduce the number of servers supporting the game. Consequently, the number of servers was drastically reduced. This resulted in slow gameplay, failures, and downtime.
- Shell Company: The game was slowly reduced to nothing. In December 2011, the game was down to three servers, one for the US, one for Germany, and one for the rest of Europe.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning closed its doors in December 2013. A great game was destroyed by poor management.
