Hammer Falls On Warhammer Servers

In case you didn’t get the hint the last time ‘voluntary’ ‘suggested’ ‘server transfers’ were announced, Mythic just announced that 40 of its 57 US/Oceanic servers are going away soon. For those of you who find math hard, that leaves 17 servers total (including 1 test server and 1 reserved for beta testers). No word yet on European servers (which account for another 43 servers and, like World of Warcraft, are effectively a different company for purposes of billing, server and community management).

It’s an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, you need a critical mass of players for a PvP-focused game – or for any MMO at all, really – to be at all fun. On the other hand, it’s really hard to spin this as in any way a mark of success when you are closing 2/3 of your servers. On the gripping hand, well, I suppose someone decided that there was a better use for all that hardware than keeping up servers everyone had already been encouraged to transfer off of and could no longer create characters on.

So, good news if you’re a current Warhammer player, good news if you’re a bitter ex-Warhammer player looking for axe-grinding grist, and good news if you’re another EA project that needs a server array. Those for whom this is bad news is left as an exercise for the curious reader.