"Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello expects EA Mythic’s upcoming MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning to perform well, but not at phenomenal World of Warcraft levels.

Warhammer Online [will be] a strong entry in the MMORPG space," Riccitiello said at the William Blair & Company’s investor meeting Tuesday. "No, I don’t think it’s going to rival WoW, but no one would ever predict that. But it is a strong game that will ... get our returns for us. We’re proud of it.

The MMORPG is slated to release later this year.

In addition, EA’s new internal studio BioWare is prepping a single-player RPG experience in the form of Dragon Age for the PC. Riccitiello attempted to assure investors that this particular new piece of IP isn’t that big of a risk to the company."

MMORPG Center Editor’s Note:

While WOW did a great job gathering atention from all people to the MMORPG Genre, it a game made for everybody, and while it polished, the game design recipe is flawed, old, and grindy, with static content, made just to get your buck every month, and is fun for a while..

This news can only mean good things for the mmorpg gamers that wait WAR to be a next step in this genre, by pleasing the current mmorpg players, and not by driving them by hand into game, so anybody can play the freaking game, and get the company rich.

If they deploy well what they promises so far, WAR will probably have around 1-2 mil of subscribers active (see AOC...), after 2-3 months, im my humble opinion, a number which would do lots of good things for EA Mythic, as in money, and reputation.

Time will tell.