WAR has only just begun to compete with WoW, declares Mark Jacobs
If you've been following this particular exchange you'll know the score, but let's recap: Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan just like turned around and said some stuff about Warhammer Online, about how he wasn't even in the Beta and stuff, and Mark Jacobs was like whoa, and he totally turned around and said some stuff about World of Warcraft, and now Mark Jacobs is all, like, dude, bring it, and everybody's like, ohmygawd, it is so on.
In his discussion with gamesindustry.biz, Mark is upfront about competing with Blizzard. 'We're in this space to be successful and, when you have a competitor that is as successful and important to the games industry as WoW has been, you don't go into this space unless you're willing to spend money and spend time and really compete against them.'
He also makes the point that the first major patch to WAR is indeed one way of competing with the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, as observers had surmised.
But bellicose statements aside, Mark raises a point that's all too often missed by many advocates of particular MMOs: 'Any comment along the lines of 'well if they're in my game they're not playing in another game,' flies in the face of all research that's been done among MMO players... The idea that you only play one is really kind of silly.' This isn't tribal warfare; you don't have to pick one competing game and fly its standard above all others.
