That’s how you show your community you care about them and their opinions. Sega have announced they completely removed all restrictions on the Immortal Empire campaign for Total War: Warhammer III in one of the greatest TW launch trailers in the company’s history.
Storm clouds are gathering over the Total War headquarters once again…and it’s GREAT to see.
There has been a lot of negativity and anger in the Total War: Warhammer 3 community as Sega’s decision to bar solely Warhammer 3 players from playing the updated Immortal Empires campaign from Warhammer 2 has enflamed many people’s opinion on the company.
Huge Total War YouTubers, such as LegendofTotalWar, have cried out against the decision as it not only forced people to have to buy two games they’d never play (Total War: Warhammer 1 and Total War: Warhammer 2) as the feature they were looking for was in Warhammer 3 (the game they wanted to play, but were paywalled out of playing), but it also killed the excite and interest in the Total War: Warhammer franchise as a whole.
It’s no secret that Warhammer 3 suffered from poor sales after the initial launch of the game in February of 2022 that forced Sega to release major post-release updates. I mean, Sega’s president Haruki Satomi did say in one of the company’s investors calls last year that the sales “was not as good as expected thereafter, so we worried about it.”
And, seeing how Total War: Warhammer 3 had less than an average of 10,000 active players/day from April 2022-July 2022, with June 2022 having seen less than an average of 5,000 active players/day, the decision to hide the most popular Warhammer game completely at first (yeah, the base game didn’t have the Immortal Empires campaign), and then behind a ridiculous paywall later, was obviously stupid.
Thus, when Sega released the Immortal Empires campaign behind the less-restrictive “must own all three Total War: Warhammer games” paywall in late August, the player counts exploded to north of an average of 40,000 active players/day in September and then stalled out to around 15k-20k average active players/day up as most TWWIII players already owned the two previous installments.
Sounds like the end of the story, right? Under normal circumstances, that would have been the case.
However, Sega have just done the unthinkable: they showed they actually cared about their fanbase.
After dozens of Change.org petitions demanding the paywall removal, all of which garnering tens of thousands of signatures, Sega announced today in a grand trailer that they were allowing all Warhammer 3 players with no prior purchases of Total War: Warhammer games to play the extremely popular campaign.
And let me be the first one to applaud Sega for finally realizing the error of their ways and apologizing through releasing one of the greatest Total War game trailers ever.
Watching Emperor Karl Franz lead a roundtable gathering of all the “good” Legendary Lords of the various races (Elves, Man, Dwarves, etc.) in discussing how to take on the rising threats of Chaos, Skaven clans, the Dark Elves, Beastmen, Orcs, etc., with each of these evil factions given a mini montage, as the Immortal Empires campaign was revealed was the perfect homage to what makes us all love Total War in the first place.
The ability to make key, meaningful, and fun strategy and battle decision in world-threating stakes is all of us Total War players ask for, and Sega has finally shown that they recognize that with this latest trailer and paywall decision.
I know it’s the least Sega could have done in this situation, but sometimes the least one can do is the best thing to be done. This short trailer shows that some people at Sega still care about us fans and that they are dedicated to making the best Total War games possible.
And that’s good enough for me to get behind…as long as they don’t put anymore stupid paywalls in their games
So, as of this moment, Total War: Warhammer 3 has been saved from the black pit of irrelevancy by Sega…at long last!
Images Source: Featured Image: (Sega/Creative Assembly) (Total War: WARHAMMER III – Immortal Empires Launch Trailer – YouTube)
