Greg Howson over at guardian.co.uk has taken a look at the competition WoW has got coming at it this year. When you see some of the titles due for release in the next few months, you can’t help wondering what’s going to happen. Will WoW simply shrug it off, like it did with LOTRO, or will it be taking some direct hits to its subscriber base? Can a game with over 10 million subscribers ever be toppled?
And it’s not just Conan and Warhammer that may threaten to take WoW’s crown, LOTRO is getting a chunky new update later this year, and there’s NCsoft’s Aion which looks very interesting (not to mention their MMO planned for 2009 on the PS3).
Or maybe the Free-to-Play model will come into its own this year and grab a large proportion of online gamers, who knows, but one thing is for certain - as the game companies try to out-do each other with better and better games, it’s us who will benefit 
For Conan and WAR… I dunno. They seem to have positives, but they also seem to be focusing on decidedly *not* appealing to such a wide audience that WoW does. Restricting your audience doesn’t seem to me to be a winning strategy. Maybe they will do good… I just don’t think Blizzard has all that much to worry about from them.
For LOTRO… I dunno, a game company that has a certain sound of desperation to get former players (Beta players) into the fold with offers of $9.95 box & $9.95/mo subscription price seems like it may be worried about something.
Haven’t heard of Aion… and the Free-to-Play model might work, might not. It is a curious direction, but I’m not sold on the idea that people are really going to chew too heavily into it.