14 DAY TRIAL // Mythic Entertainment is sending word that its MMO Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has now managed to ship more than 1.5 million game copies to retailers as it prepares for its worldwide release which takes place this week. Electronic Arts also says that the MMO has generated the highest number of pre-orders in the history of the company.
By comparison, Funcom's Age of Conan, launched earlier in the year, shipped around 700,000 game copies to retailers as it prepared for its release, so the parallel looks good for Warhammer Online. Sadly for Mythic, the first expansion for World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, managed to sell and ship some 2.4 million boxed copies in the first 24 hours.
The people that pre-ordered Warhammer Online can now pre-download it (a lot of pre- things lingering around gaming lately). Because Mythic offers those that pre-oder and those that buy the Collector's Edition a few days of advanced play, there are already a lot of players on the game servers and there are already people complaining that the Destruction side is too crowded as most players seem to be interested in the evil side of Warhammer.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will officially be launched on September 18, which means that it has less than two months to establish itself as a competitive MMORPG before Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion for World of Warcraft, launches. The developers are probably hoping that the game is good enough, with its focus on Player versus Player and with the Realm versus Realm combat to get players hooked on, because a massive exodus of players in November will really hurt the title. The lore of Warhammer is guaranteed to draw in players and previews have been generally positive, but that's no guarantee for the success of a MMO.