I am not a big fan of MMORPGs and I am certainly not a fan of World of Warcraft, however I don’t dislike it so much that I will go claiming that Warhammer Online has to be a success against it for the good of the games industry. However one man has made that claim, that man is Mythic Entertainment’s studio VP Mark Jacobs.

In this MTV Multiplayer interview he claims that if Warhammer Online fails to succeed with the support of EA and the Warhammer IP then it will show that the audience is only willing to play WoW.

“If we don’t succeed with EA behind us, the ‘Warhammer’ IP behind us, with one of the most experienced teams in the industry, that’s not going to be good for the industry. We need to show the world that it’s not just Blizzard who can make a great game, and that the audience is absolutely willing to try new things and to play a game other than ‘WoW.’”

That just stinks of a jealousy of what WoW has achieved, I am of the belief that the western MMO market can’t support two 10 million plus subscriber games without an expansion into the consoles. I get the feeling that companies are starting to churn out MMO after MMO in an attempt to capture the success that we can see with WoW. The problem is that they are all going after a very similar audience, The Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan and Warhammer Online are all at their base fantasy MMOs.

In a world where WoW totally dominates the fantasy MMO market then developers and publishers are going to have to create the ultimate game to have a chance of fighting with WoW. They are much better off targeting a different audience who are willing to take the leap into that of the MMO world.

Really I am just annoyed that someone thinks that the industry is so reliant on WoW that if no other game can capture the same level of success then the industry will fail as it shows that people aren’t willing to try new things. The developers should learn to try new things and form their own direction, not copy that of Blizzard.

It seems these days that Epic don’t know where their minds are at. First off they are members of the PC Gaming Alliance which is a nice enough thing for them do seeing as they have been PC aficionados for so many years. Then we had Cliffy B claim that PC Gaming was in disarray which was followed by Mark Rein calling him an idiot.

More recently Tim Sweeney commented that mainstream PCs are no good for gaming and now we see Tim say that Unreal Engine 4 will be console focused!

TG Daily: Let’s talk about your game visions for the future and the next Unreal Engine? Where is EPIC going with the Unreal Engine 3.5 and 4.0?

Sweeney: The Unreal engine is really tied to a console cycle. We will continue to improve Unreal Engine 3 and add significant new features through the end of this console cycle. So, it is normal to expect that we will add new stuff in 2011 and 2012. We’re shipping Gears of War now; we’re just showing the next bunch of major tech upgrades such as soft-body physics, destructible environments and crowds. There is a long life ahead for Unreal Engine 3. Version 4 will exclusively target the next console generation, Microsoft’s successor for the Xbox 360, Sony’s successor for the Playstation 3 - and if Nintendo ships a machine with similar hardware specs, then that also. PCs will follow after that.

From TG Daily interview.

Epic really don’t know what they want, they are members of the PCGA which is aiming to promote the the PC and improve it as an all round platform…but then we have other Epic guys saying they are going console focused. Someone needs to get their act together at Epic and make sure they are all speaking from the same page!