Fool's errand?

For those that can remember back to the hype of early 2008, Funcom's Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures and EA's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning were both supposed to be killers... World of Warcraft-killers, that is. See, World of Warcraft has been top of the MMO heap for a long while now and some thought that these games had the chops to take the crown.

Well, in 2009 we can decisively say that World of Warcraft has not been killed, and is arguably stronger than ever. With nearly 12 million subscribers worldwide, the game's almost unfathomable success continues unimpeded by other games, a weak economy or anything else. Its status is such that we feel any sort of direct competition with it is simply foolhardy.

Given the recently announced expansion World of Warcraft: Cataclysm (which is likely to only increase the subscriber base further) we thought we'd detail the reasons that confronting World of Warcraft is like dueling the Lich King – it's just not going to end well.