In war, there will be casualties. This week, Mythic Entertainment revealed the extent of those casualties, saying that 43 North American and 20 European Warhammer Online servers have been closed, following mandatory character transfers."As I've already said, if WAR was a PvE game, we wouldn't have closed those servers but since WAR is RvR-centric, leaving those servers open with their current population would not be a good idea," commented Jacobs in a forum post. "While these servers have been low population for quite a while once we told people to transfer off of them their population dropped too low for an RvR-centric game." 

While the server shutdowns could be construed as negative indicator of Warhammer Online's overall population, Mythic general manager Mark Jacobs believes the move was a natural step in fostering a healthy player experience. He also noted that the game's paying subscriber base continues to rise. After peaking at 750,000 subscribers three weeks after launch, Warhammer Online's subscription base stood at 300,000, according to EA's most recent accounting in February. For more information, check out GameSpot's previous coverage of Warhammer Online.