The case for WAR

No. It's not unfair. It's what they do.

The challenge with releasing any online game is the competitor has the advantage. You're not only up against the game they built and launched, but you're up against the game they ran for a number of years and have grown.

At some point you have to get out there with your product and you have to compete. We were offering a very distinct experience with realm versus realm play. People still love the experience and are coming back now.

People are always looking for the next game they want to play. We've focused on the core players that have discovered what it is that's unique and fun about Warhammer. And that word is getting out there.

Maybe we attempted too much early on, making sure the player versus environment experience was as meaningful as the RVR experience.

Right now, everything we're doing and where we're going and what the path of the game is is focused on RVR. We know that's our strength. That's what our players who are playing right now want. And that's something we have a pretty good handle on. We know our strengths and we're playing up to those as best we can.

We don't disclose that – the joys of being a public company.

Yeah. The other reality was that we found ourselves releasing the game at the front of one of the biggest financial crises for a long time.

What's the challenge of any new MMO? Taking people away from a community they're enjoying playing with.

A new MMO comes along and they don't want to abandon their old community. They want to try a new experience. If that means they have to subscribe to a couple of games for a while, that's more difficult in this climate.

One of the biggest effects we had on our community was the release earlier this year of our endless trial, where we were able to present a new trial experience that gave people the time to discover what was great about the game. They weren't worried about trying to discover that in 10 or 14 days.

We're still getting tens of thousands of people a month coming through trying that experience.

The free-to-play model has huge advantages but my opinion is you either have to design a game from scratch to drive that free-to-play experience, or there is a significant amount of work to re-engineer your game to deliver something that can drive the same amount of revenue.

We've looked at free-to-play and how that works. One of the biggest problems we have is it's very difficult, especially in Western markets, to monetise RVR-based experiences.

You're basically saying, in order to make it meaningful, you've got to let people pay for power. That feels wrong. You want people to be able to earn it.

We've definitely looked at free-to-play long and hard, but at the moment we don't have a need to.

We're happy with the players we have and the level of engagement they have with the game.

You want to make sure you're not diminishing the value of what people have played and paid for this entire two year period. You want to make sure they feel that it's worth something.

No. Never. Never. No.

We wouldn't do it. I'm surprised they did it, and for a group that is so close to their community, it was amazing that they misread it that poorly.

I'm pleased to see them reacting to the community. We should all learn to listen to our communities.

I would fight that tooth and nail. I've had some very personal, really bad experiences in online communities with that. Personally, I'm against it.

Their community made it very clear what the right answer is.

We're not ready to talk about that but we will be very soon.

Probably not gamescom. That's very, very soon.