The Rise And Fall of Warhammer Online

We all know what it's like to watch an online game struggling from the outside, but what is it like to experience it from within?

A year ago, the future looked incredibly bright for Mythic Entertainment's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Mythic was an experienced MMOG developer backed by the deep pockets of EA and Warhammer was a beloved fantasy franchise. WAR had earned award after award at shows, had more than a million pre-orders, and early reviews were incredibly positive.

As Jeremy Monken writes in this week's issue of The Escapist, the days ahead looked promising for him and his fellow members of Mythic's Consumer Service Department:

My fellow CSRs speculated about how we would handle all the customers with just this one enormous room of people. Maybe we would get our own floor? Our own building? An office park?

Everything was perfect; we all knew we would be promoted to development within a year. I would be scripting quest chains and have my own toy-filled cubicle on one of the cool floors. It seemed, to all of us, as if our dreams had finally come true.

But then things went wrong. When growing dissatisfaction among the playerbase coincided with the launch of the second expansion to the world's most popular MMORPG, subscriptions dwindled. One by one, monitors went dark, and with them faded the optimism that had once been widespread. Though still afloat and alive, the game was struggling.

To read more about the fall from grace of Warhammer Online from an insider perspective, check out Jeremy Monken's "Casualty of Warhammer" in Issue 213 of The Escapist.