Age of Warhammer Craft?

This past Tuesday witnessed one of the most furious days in MMO history in quite a while. Age of Conan finally launched after a 4 1/2 year dev cycle, City of Heroes/Villains released their Book 12 update, and even Warhammer Online got into the mix with a fresh round of beta invites (rumored to be the biggest beta invite wave ever, and no, I was no included in those invites).

After what looked like a prelude to a disastrous launch, Funcom pulled off a major miracle patch, announced a stunning 700,000 units shipped (albeit not sold — yet), and was widely lauded for a smooth launch day. It further benefits from being the only AAA MMO title to be released with a comfy six-month buffer on either side, partially in thanks to WAR’s delay to fall 2008. It’s not hard to imagine crowds of bored, itchy gamers — many of whom might well be from WoW’s slow-as-molasses fold — jumping onto this game like the only life preserver in the middle of a desolate ocean of summer gaming. In any case, AoC has had an enviable launch that WAR fans might pray happens to our boy as well. It remains to be seen whether Conan will have legs past this summer, particularly when the Lich King-WAR duo hits the field, however.

Although it might be disheartening to WAR fans to see AoC (the “competition”) striding boldly ahead instead of falling flat on its face like many predicted, I think a different and much more positive point of view is called for here. AoC’s launch is the first real proof of the growing theory in MMO circles that not only is World of Warcraft vulnerable to serious competition, but also that the gaming audience in general is quite ripe for new blood to come reap this growing field. Not even LOTRO, which, in my opinion, had a much stronger IP than Conan, hit the starting gate with such a powerful surge. So what’s different between now and back in the yore days of 2007?

For one, World of Warcraft launched their Burning Crusade expansion only a couple months before LOTRO, whereas no expansion so far in 2008. For another, dev studios are finally getting it through their thick skulls that these titles need to be tested and polished within an inch of their life before release — thanks we owe in part to Vanguard. Finally, we appear to be on the cusp of a new step in MMO evolution, where studios are trying to push past standard MMO conventions to take risks and make the games more accessible to a wider market.

Translation? What has WAR players so concerned — AoC’s successful head start and the upcoming Lich King battle — might not be the dire issues we’ve made them out to be. If WAR is polished, is a genuinely fun title to play, and pushes out a smooth launch, there’s a huge demographic of unsatisfied gamers out there ready for plucking. And WoW’s once-terrifying stranglehold on the market is no longer relegating other titles to niche roles only, but is making room for other mega-MMOs to share the spotlight.

The MMO genre was previously predicted as hitting its peak — in terms of total subscribers — twice. The first prior to 2004, when analysts claimed that all new titles would be vying for subscription dollars from existing players in other MMOs, and the second following a year or two of WoW, when that title’s potential had not yet been reached, but there was still no proof that it was being the type of “gateway” MMO some wanted it to be. These are the same people who, again and again, claim that the fantasy MMO genre has been tapped out and gamers will refuse to jump on board of another sword-and-sorcery title.

Really, all bets are off. I’m now more excited than ever to see what happens come this fall.