Total War: Warhammer 3 player numbers went up tenfold after Immortal Empires released
From under 10,000 concurrents to over 100,000.
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The Immortal Empires megacampaign forTotal War: Warhammer 3was long-awaited, thanks to the popularity of its predecessor, the Mortal Empires campaign for Total War: Warhammer 2, and to Warhammer 3’s default Realm of Chaos campaign being a bit underwhelming on the second playthrough. Since Immortal Empires came out in beta, Warhammer 3’s player count on Steam has shot up like a Doom Diver.
Warhammer 3’speak concurrent player counton Steam was 166,754 when it launched on February 17. That quickly dropped, and for the last three months it’s been hovering between 8,000 and 12,000 players. With the beta release of Immortal Empires on August 23 it zoomed back up, hitting 119,166 that day. It’s remained high since then, and today reached 103,952, putting it at #11 onSteam’s list of top games by current player countjust behind Rust.
It probably helps that there’s aSteam sale on the seriesat the moment, with thefirst two Total Wars Warhammerses in a bundle for 75% off. (You need all three base games to play Immortal Empires.)
Our own Fraser Brown got into the beta early andplayed a campaign, concluding that, “It should be too big, too unwieldy, and it’s certainly very messy and hard to wrap your head around—there must be a limit to the number of unique faction mechanics the human brain can juggle—but it’s all just brilliant.” Sean Martin has been playing Immortal Empires as well, and managed tobreak the campaign with a Black Ark super fleet, though he certainly had fun doing it.
With 278 factions and 86 playable legendary lords to choose from, I suspect it’ll be a while before players get tired of Immortal Empires. It adds Realm of Chaos campaign villain Be’Lakor as a playable lord with his own faction, and gives dedicated factions to existing lords Grombrindal, Helman Ghorst, Volkmar the Grim, Sigvald the Magnificent, and Kholek Suneater. Sea lanes, which let you move armies between distant lands, are another addition, as are randomized endgame apocalypses that throw an extra challenge your way just as you’re getting to the point where victory seems inevitable. If you feel up to it, you can even turn them all on at once inUltimate Crisis Mode.
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Jody’s first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia’s first radio show about videogames,Zed Games. He’s written forRock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue,GamesRadar,Zam,Glixel,Five Out of Ten Magazine, andPlayboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody’s first article for PC Gamer was about theaudio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he’s written aboutwhy Silent Hill belongs on PC,why Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, andhow weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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