Mythic: WoW is Copying Warhammer

Mythic boss Mark Jacobs has claimed a bit of credit for the new PvP features included in the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King, which he says is “absolutely a reaction” to Warhammer Online.

In an interview with GamesIndustry, Jacobs claimed the new World of Warcraft PvP features are an imitation of those found in Mythic’s Warhammer Online, which features open-world player-versus-player and realm-versus-realm combat as a central aspect of the game. “You have a game that’s been out for four years, they’ve never put in world PvP like ours, they’ve never been able to level through PvP like in ours,” he said. “I think it’s absolutely a reaction to Warhammer. It wasn’t like all of a sudden the idea of open world PvP or leveling through PvP came into their heads and went ‘nobody’s ever done this before’.”

“I don’t think it was accidental that they’re talking about doing it when Warhammer comes out,” he continued. “Four years and suddenly, miraculously, at the same time Warhammer comes out that’s when they start talking about these things… I think it was Jeff Kaplan who said they like to look at other games and learn from them – well, I’m flattered.” Kaplan claimed last week that the Warhammer Online interface is “very similar” to the one used in World of Warcraft and said, “Any savvy game developer is going to play a lot of other games and pick from the best.”

Jacobs also admitted that despite a positive start, it’s difficult to tell what sort of success Warhammer Online will have in convincing players to subscribe to the game beyond the 30-day free trial period. “If we’re successful, we’ll have a high conversion rate and we’ll keep the vast majority of our subs. No one has been billed yet, so we won’t know this really for at least several months, in terms of how well we’re doing, unless we start off horribly,” he said. But he remained optimistic, adding, “Everything we’ve done internally, in terms of looking at internal polls, people posting on forums, emails from people, all we’ve seen so far is that we’re well on track.”