After 2,537 hours of playing Total War: Warhammer, I'm almost ready to say goodbye to Creative Assembly's best strategy series

Last year, I admitted to spending 2,379 hours in Creative Assembly's Total War: Warhammer trilogy. That dire stat now sits at 2,537 hours, thanks to my inability to separate from Total War: Warhammer 3. In the three years since it launched, I've done everything you could conceivably think of doing in a high-fantasy strategy series. Sail out to save the world with legions of High Elves? Check. Unite the disparate clans of Chaos to burn down the realm of man? Check. Lead armies of dino-riding Lizardmen in expelling hordes of minigun-wielding rats from the jungles of Lustria? Believe it or not, check.

Until now, I've never considered running out of things to do in Total War: Warhammer 3. Nearly every big name and unit from Warhammer's Old World setting has been added over the trilogy's course, but there are still a few absent celebrities (cough, Nagash) – not to mention the host of niche characters that are there for the taking if Creative Assembly wants to dig deep.

"Obviously, if we could do it all, we would do it all, but realistically, we'll try and do as much as we can," Creative Assembly told me last December. "There's some big, interesting things still out there, which hopefully we'll get the opportunity to do at some point in time."

Once, I would have been dismayed at the thought of Warhammer 3's updates coming to an end. But lately I've been revisiting my favorite campaigns feeling ready for something fresh, and as the game's DLC releases have slowed in favor of more quality-of-life updates – not to mention a recent blog post that feels like it's paving the way for a grand finale in 2026 – I can feel reluctance giving way to acceptance.

Witness true power

Pull 10 random Warhammer 3 fans off the street and ask them for a wishlist of things they'd like to see added to the game, and you'll likely get 10 different answers. My own feels pretty reasonable: Nagash and vampire queen Neferata are my must-haves for rounding out the undead factions, but I wouldn't say no to troublemaker-in-chief Thanquol or mercenary faction Dogs of War.

But beyond that (okay, and maybe Tzeentch cultist Egrimm van Horstmann), I appreciate that Total War: Warhammer 3 has to end somewhere. The game's last few years have felt a little muddled, with an unreliable release schedule and long-standing issues with AI taking some wind out of the swan song's sails. Yet while out-and-out new content is scarcer, the cadence of improvements and top-level faction reworks has vastly improved. Problems like clunky sieges and questionable AI decision-making are steadily being tackled, improving the content we already have rather than stacking more on top of it.

I think this is the right call. You only get the thrill of an all-new campaign once, but humbler race tweaks benefit factions forever. Just look at the trilogy's most effective reworks – Chaos is far and away my most-played faction since it was given another pass with tribe and fortress mechanics, and Kislev is in a much better place since recent tweaks made its theological divide less intense.

Part of my longing for Nagash – besides, you know, desperately wanting to play Number One Dad Necromancer – is the opportunity it presents for revisiting both Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings, two races which don't feel as shiny or in-line with their respective power fantasies as more touched-up factions do.

I'm currently drowning the Empire in a tide of zombies and wights as Vlad von Carstein, and while the last update's addition of sword-and-shield Blood Knights was fantastic, you can still feel that Vampire Counts were the trilogy's joint-first faction. A few other races have that barebones feel – I already mentioned Tomb Kings, but the likes of Bretonnia and Lizardmen are creaky too – and if Warhammer 3 is on the clock, it feels more meaningful in the long-run to make sure all playable factions are on parity with other, rather than widen the gap caused by power creep.

End turn

Aside from wanting the Total War: Warhammer trilogy to be left in the best state possible, the real reason I'm easing my grip on it is because I'm excited for what's next. Creative Assembly is working on a few different Total War projects right now – both historical and fantasy – and I'm itching to hear more on the latter, especially as there are rumors of it having a Star Wars or Warhammer 40K setting.

For a lot of people, the thought of Total War moving away from high fantasy – and further into gun-based combat – is worrying. I get it: if any of these rumors turns out to be true, I can't pretend to know how either would work. But I'm a lot more open-minded about the prospect, thanks to how much time I've sunk into Total War: Warhammer 3. After all, I had no Warhammer knowledge and zero interest in 2016's Total War: Warhammer until I realized it was high fantasy – now it's one of my most-played games.

Total War: Warhammer 3's sun may be setting – and who's to say when that final update will actually come – but it's no longer something to fear. After nine years of adoration, I'm ready to relive that feeling of leaving Total War: Rome 2 behind for something utterly unpredictable. Until then, I suspect I'll still be writing about the joy of Chaos long past the 3,000-hour mark.

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