Is Warhammer the WoW killer?

If anybody is crazy enough to read the World of Warcraft forums before long you will see posts from disgruntled players claiming they will be leaving for another game.  It is funny to note they are still subscribing to wow and posting on the forums while they do this of course.  Over the last couple of months everyone was saying that Age of Conan would be the WoW killer but now that has been launched and failed to meet expectations, the tide has turned to the next MMO to be launched and the claims are that Warhammer Online will break Blizzards monopoly in this field.  Will it?

I will unequivocally say no.  Not a chance in hell.  And furthermore, I say that there is nothing even on the horizon that will hurt World of Warcraft.

My opinion doesn't come from playing the beta of Warhammer, in fact I haven't even seen it.  My opinion comes from Age of Conan, but let me explain.

Age of Conan is a damn good game.  I played in the beta and on the launch and I think it has far more to offer than world of warcraft.  Most importantly I think it is a thousand times better than wow was at launch, but I fully concede that AoC is doomed to go the way of so many others and continue with a small customer base that pales into insignificance compared to WoW.  Why you might ask?  Go on, ask!  Ok, I will tell you.

First and foremost I noticed that almost everyone that played AoC had played WoW and compared them to each other.  But AoC had to compete with Warcraft after four years of ongoing development and upgrades rather than an equal comparison.  There is just no way in the world a new game can compete with that, but even more so, everyone who did the comparisons was a wow addict through and through.  They fed of each other in the game and the forums and the disappointment and dissatisfaction snow balled and got bigger and bigger until the players left in droves.

I honestly believe that this will happen regardless of which MMO is launched and how good it is.

The simple truth is that in my opinion people don't want a new game.  They want a better World of Warcraft, and only Blizzard can do that.

Secondly, despite all the whining, Blizzard really do continue to change World of Warcraft but also slowly answer the fans complaints and requests.  You want a way to make gold, tah dah now we have dailies.  You want to raid but can't form big raid groups, no prob we will make them smaller.  Can't find tanks for 5 mans, here ya go, lets create more and easier to play tank classes.  Siege warfare .. coming.  Lol, Blizzard are even trying to make the Oceanic players happy by doing rolling restarts outside of their prime time.

So in my opinion, as long as Blizzard keeps listening and changing the game to suit the majority of players, and as long as everyone continues to look for a better World of Warcraft instead of something different, I don't believe Warhammer Online or any other MMO has a chance of knocking WoW off it's throne.