I love the Total War formula, and I’m a long time fan of your franchise, though not as long as some; I’ve played almost everything from Medieval II on. I have thousands of hours in your historical titles, and thousands more in what I lovingly have nicknamed “Total Warhammer”. Even so, I don’t claim to be the beating heart of the fan community, because I know from experience that there are enough stripes and differences within your fan base that there’s simply no single position that everyone agrees on, except perhaps that at the end of the day, we actually want CA to succeed. Because if CA loses, then we all lose.
Still, I hope this message nonetheless strikes a chord with a critical mass of us, because I believe some decisive action needs to be taken as soon as possible.
Perhaps obviously, your brand is in trouble: the launch of Total War Pharaoh has not gone well, a major project (Hyenas) was recently canceled after years of development, and steadily declining player numbers in Warhammer 3 – just to name a few. This is not a victory for disgruntled fans, because at the end of the day the only reason we’re disgruntled or even using our voice loudly is we CARE.
The million dollar question would seem to be “why” the brand is in such trouble, but it doesn’t take much skimming through the fan communities out there before it clearly coming down to a lack of attention on the right things. The cost of DLCs, yes, but that is probably secondary and incidental to the attention deficit.
With regard to the lack of attention, there’s a lot to say. Since Rome II, there have been many false starts and tepid launches, a major game (Three Kingdoms) has basically been abandoned, and now tragically Warhammer 3 – the final installment in this ambitious and successful series – is suffering under the weight of many long-standing bugs and general inattention. It seems that even Warhammer is at risk of being abandoned, a situation which is frustrating and perplexing to behold given the massive and raw interest in the IP and of course in your game.
From the beginning of Total Warhammer, we players understood that we would be given a complete experience in that world, and in the days of Warhammer 1 and 2, our expectations and CA’s delivery were more or less matched up. The high active player base was a testament to this. Forget the misstep of the Realm of Chaos campaign; such things happen and the fan base can get over this if the game gets the right attention.
But it hasn’t and, as I said above, we’re watching CA simultaneously spend a great deal of time and money on projects that most of us don’t care about (Hyenas) or a Total War saga-esque historical title (Pharaoh). The row over DLC price is just a symptom of the greater problem I’m laying out here; if we’re honest everything is more expensive for us these days – food, gas, and yes even payroll at CA due to market forces – but I don’t think we’d be generally having this pricing conversation if our relationship was in a good place.
Please give existing titles the care and polish they deserve. Please ensure that any DLC you release has matching content for the price. We all, in one way or other, want CA to rebound from this and give us what we’re paying for. It will be a long road, but it’s still doable, and anything less I believe will lead to places none of us want to go for Total War.
Thank you for your time and consideration.