Seriously, Total War: Warhammer III has gone from under 10,000 concurrent players to over 100,000, and that’s just because of the new campaign…
Total War: Warhammer III’s Immortal Empires mega-campaign has been a long time coming, thanks to the popularity of its predecessor, Total War: Warhammer II’s Mortal Empires campaign, and the fact that Warhammer III’s default Realm of Chaos campaign fell slightly short on the second playthrough. Since the release of the Immortal Empires beta, the number of Warhammer III players on Steam has skyrocketed like a cannon shot.
Warhammer III’s concurrent player count on Steam was 166,754 when it was released on 17 February. This quickly fell back and has hovered between 8,000 and 12,000 players over the last three months.
With the release of the Immortal Empires beta on 23 August, that number shot up again, reaching 119,166 that day. It has remained high since then, reaching 103,952 yesterday, which puts Steam in 11th place on the store’s top list of current players, just behind Rust.
It probably helps that there’s currently a Steam sale on the series, with the first two Total Wars Warhammers bundles at 75% off. (You need all three base games to play Immortal Empires.)
There are 278 factions and 86 playable legendary lords to choose from, so I suspect it will take a while for players to get bored of Immortal Empires.
The Realm of Chaos campaign’s villain Be’Lakor is coming as a playable lord with his own faction and adds separate factions to the existing lords Grombrindal, Helman Ghorst, Volkmar the Grim, Sigvald the Magnificent, and Kholek Suneater. The sea routes that allow you to move armies between distant lands are another addition, as are the random end-game apocalypses that provide an extra challenge when you’re just getting to the point where victory seems inevitable. When you feel ready, you can even turn them all on at once in Ultimate Crisis mode.
