We could be seeing Total War: Warhammer 3’s redemption after months of backlash
Sales for the sale throne, reviews for the review god
Yesterday, coinciding with the release of the Thrones of Decay DLC, Total War: Warhammer 3 jumped 90 places in the Steam charts, trailed closely by the three lord packs that make up the strategy game's latest expansion. Those lord packs are now the three top rated expansions in the series’ history, and the base game itself saw a huge uptick in positive reviews. The last day also saw a peak player count of around 66,000, putting it ahead of giants like Palworld, Rimworld, and Fallout 76. None of this would be especially notable, however, if this wasn’t a complete turnaround from how things have been for the best part of a year now.
On the Twarhammer side, the deterioration of Creative Assembly’s relationship with their fans started with the announcement of Shadows of Change. Specifically, its price.
DLC prices had been rising before then. The Forge Of The Chaos Dwarfs, for example, was around 25% higher than comparable releases, although the quality and size of this expansion meant that a few rumblings never transformed into the full blown revolt that occurred when it was announced that Shadows of Change would cost the same amount. Particularly irksome to the community here was the explanation that the increase from the standard two updated factions to three precipitated the mark up, but that the customary accompanying free lord wouldn’t be happening.
Fuel to this fire was a follow-up statement from CPO Rob Bartholomew. “This is the business reality of supporting WARHAMMER III and ensuring we’re able to offer the years of extra content that are currently planned,” wrote Bartholomew, which was taken by many as veiled ‘buy it or we’ll kill it’ threat, warranted or not.
SOC released in August to a mixed Steam reception, veering on the negative. October saw the release of Total War: Pharaoh, which many fans saw as middling and overpriced (personally, I reckoned it was more an issue of budget and time constraints). Following all this, a moderator on the Steam forums locked certain discussion threads around Warhammer 3, writing “the right to discuss is a privilege – it is not an entitlement you earn by playing the game,” which went down about as well as you’d expect.
Throughout all of this, CA were still reeling from the cancellation of Sega’s most expensive game to date, Hyenas, just as it was about to release, and the subsequent layoffs.
What followed was a long, long silence. In November, Sega announced that Creative Assembly would be refocusing their efforts on “offline RTS games,” but the developers themselves stayed schtum. Then, all of a sudden, CA reappeared with one hell of an olive branch: a huge free content update for Shadows of Change, and a price reduction for Pharaoh, alongside partial refunds for those who had already purchased it. This goodwill morphed into full on hype when Thrones of Decay - by that point known as ‘Thrones of Delay’ in the community - started to reveal itself.
Phew. And that’s where we are now. For what it’s worth, I loved Thrones of Decay, and believe it deserves this success, although it’s clear that most of these reviews are coming from a place of emotion rather than experience, since the content has been in the wild for less than a day.
That said, CA did take a different approach with pre-release marketing this time around, showing off all the content in detail before players could access pre-orders, so this positive reception isn’t coming from blind faith - if you’ve played the game for any amount of time, you’ve generally got a solid idea of what the DLC entails.
Still, it’s a fair indicator that this perhaps slightly premature jubilation is as much a review of CA’s approach to this content as the content itself. A gauge of how happy the fanbase is with the company - as Steam reviews often are, for good or ill. Notable changes during this marketing cycle include the aforementioned holding back on pre-order links, as well as having the developers feature as talking heads in the trailers injecting commentary on the content.
A nice little detail I noticed was that the devs would often talk about the weaknesses of the new units and lords as much as they hyped them up. This said a lot, I think, about how in tune they were with a player base that’s much more enthusiastic about interesting new additions than purely powerfully ones. Also, savvy revenue-minded change or not, splitting the DLC into three cheaper packs this time surely didn’t hurt.
There’s also just the simple fact that the fanbase, myself included, love the Empire, with the Dwarfs and Nurgle being fan favourites too, all of which feature in Thrones of Decay. As Sean Martin pointed out for Wargamer a good while back, the essence of the setting is never felt more keenly that in the image of ranks of conscripted bakers with spears, braced to hold off the multitude of horrors of the Warhammer world.
Whatever the reason, it’s great as a fan - and, I imagine, anyone who’s been following the CA layoffs and cancellations - to see so much positivity around the game again. Whether or not this marks a run of wins for the title, as some have speculated, like Warhammer 2’s game-changing ‘Potion of Speed’ update, it’s definitely exciting to see the corrector counts answering CA’s summons.