Warhammer Online Delayed Until 2008

To the surprise of almost no one, EA Mythic has announced that Warhammer Online won't be out until next year. Eurogamer reports: "'Since our acquisition by EA, we have been afforded many wonderful development opportunities and we plan to take full advantage of everything that is available. This includes taking several additional months to make the best MMORPG possible,' Mythic's Mark Jacobs wrote in a community newsletter." They're going to use the extra time to go back over the Dwarven and Greenskin areas to implement new ideas they've had since working on the original content. With the successful launch of LOTRO this week, and the continuing crash and burn of Vanguard , MMOG developers seem to be wising up to the importance of a really good launch.

Comments

Sounds like a Blizzard

[CogDissident]

You know, Blizzard is infamous for releasing games when they deem them ready, and not shoving them out the door unprepaired. Remember starcraft's release date problems? Remember World of Warcraft's? I really wish more game companies would follow this trend, releasing finished and high quality games rather than shoving stuff out the door and hoping to patch it later.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[Opportunist]

I know there's a Duke Nukem Forever joke in there somewhere, but I didn't get it finished so far.

Return soon for a new release date of the joke.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[happyemoticon]

There's that quote by Miyomoto: "A delayed game is eventually good; a bad game is bad forever." Some companies, I think, started to realize: "Hey, with patching capability on most consoles and PCs, we can release a game bad and make it good eventually!" The trouble is this never works the way they want it to. If the game is buggy when you ship it, people will always remember it as a buggy mess, and if it's bad, people will not give it a second chance.

Then there's another category of games: self-consciously shitty exploitation games. A lot of EA's brands fall into this category, for instance. They develop because the marketers say that there is no way Madden 08 cannot make a profit, and they ship because anyone muscleheaded enough to buy it will buy it bugs and all.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[CowTipperGore]

They develop because the marketers say that there is no way Madden 08 cannot make a profit, and they ship because anyone muscleheaded enough to buy it will buy it bugs and all. They ship it because they make lots of money with little development. The engine has not changed significantly in years - their biggest cost is now the exclusive licenses they paid the NFL and NCAA to guarantee their monopoly in this market (deemed necessary because of real competition from the 2K series).

1. Recycle 95% of last year's game.
2. Update rosters.
3. Create commercials using prerendered movies instead of anything resembling actual game play.
4. Profit!

I'm a long-time EA Sport gamer, going back to Madden and Bill Walsh College Football on the Genesis, but I stopped buying the new games three or four years ago after several years of disappointment. It seemed stupid to spend another $50 or $60 each summer to get the new rosters, especially when I play dynasties and quickly have my own unique teams. Also consider that industry recognition of this process means that used games lose 60 - 75 percent of their value within nine months of release and are usually in the $5 bin after a year. I'm still playing EA's college game from 2005, which I bought used for less than $10.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[elrous0]

The problem with that philosophy is that it has its limits. You can end up working on a game for so long that it becomes technologically outdated, forcing you to go back to the drawing board and start all over again. This can lead to an endless cycle that turns your game into a pathetic joke and has your shareholders calling for the developers' heads on pikes.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[Anonymous Coward]

moar liek warhammer online craft, m i rite?

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[k_187]

Indeed, unless you're an idiot or a stat freak, there's no reason to buy Madden every year. I haven't gotten one yet, but I'll probably get the first version for the Wii that has online play. Cause the Wii version is awesome. Same thing with tiger woods, even though I've already got '07 there.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[Anonymous Coward]

Just want to comment that Blizzard was known for this up until they released World of Warcraft. Their development strategy is leaning more and more towards the "patch the content in later" ideology. This is evidenced by their expansion, "released" on January 16 with the other half set to be patched in sometime in the next month.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[CogDissident]

This is why I did not mention the expansion. Blizzard recently has been taking a more "EA" stance on product quality since World of Warcraft has come out.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[Arykor]

World of Warcraft definitely had problems at launch. Servers crashing often, then having to wait in long login queues once they did come back up. I seem to remember the Archimonde server being unavailable most of the first week. The difference I think is that they were able to compensate for these problems in a matter of days, where problems with other launches have stuck around for weeks.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[Chris Burke]

The trouble is this never works the way they want it to. If the game is buggy when you ship it, people will always remember it as a buggy mess, and if it's bad, people will not give it a second chance.

Not just that, but games shipped as buggy crap tend to stay buggy crap, and the patches only make it perhaps somewhat less so. If they half-ass it on the initial quality so as to make a deadline, then the patches will probably be half-assed as well. Most likely in these companies most or all of the development team moves on immediately to try to finish a different game by its deadline, while the patch to fix their previous crappy game has no explicit deadline at all so it gets deprioritized.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[Endo13]

That's at least partially because a lot of their staff has moved on, like for instance the ones that formed ArenaNet to develop Guild Wars. And look at the high quality of that game. Yeah they're releasing patches all the time, but by far most of them are to tweak skills a bit as necessary (balancing things a bit) or to add/remove holiday scenery. Very few actual bugs, and none that have been game-breaking. And GW has to be the most stable, smooth-running multiplayer game of this size that I've ever played.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[Das Modell]

Infamous != famous.

1 : having a reputation of the worst kind : notoriously evil
2 : causing or bringing infamy : DISGRACEFUL
3 : convicted of an offense bringing infamy

I'm only saying this because it's such a common mistake.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[vivian520]

not only this ,just another way... a href=http://www.lord-of-the-rings-online-gold.cn>l kie some weapons in the MMORPG

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[CogDissident]

Well, to be fair, its not always good to have a repuation of never releasing a single game on time, ever, so it does fit the first definition of infamous.

Sounds more like EA

[CrazyJim1]

EA rushes everything out the door. Just look at how awful C&C3 is.

Re:Sounds more like EA

[Endo13]

Troll?? Seriously, must be some EA shill with mod points. That's not a troll, it's the bald-faced honest truth. Just because you don't like it/agree with it doesn't make it a troll.

C&C3 was so broken at release, they were already rolling out patches before it hit the shelves. And more patches in the first few weeks.

I really don't know how well they've got it working by now though, since I opted to not pay $50 for a beta, and as a result haven't bought the full release yet. Instead I decided to wait and see what the news would say about it. Sure glad I did. Maybe once the game hits bargain-bin pricing it'll be working more or less as it should.

Is there a market for this?

[EveryNickIsTaken]

I'm wondering if there's even a market out there for all of the "soon-to-be-released" MMOs/MMORPGs that are currently being developed. Given the amount of time that needs to be put into any of these games from a player's standpoint, is there room for another WoW? It seems as though when developers saw the subscriber numbers and cash that WoW was bringing into Blizzard, they all jumped into development of a "new ground-breaking MMORPG!"

Re:Is there a market for this?

[Diss Champ]

There's plenty of room more more good games to have decent sized audiences- there probably isn't room for another to succeed as well as WoW without going after WoW players and changing their addiction. I think much of the growth on the shallow end of the pool is WoW players bringing others into WoW- now that they have that area staked out they are harder to dislodge.

Myself, a 14 day trial of WoW was enough to bore me by the end. Eve is the game I'm currently hooked on, but while it is a great game there is still room to make something better on the deep end. The deep end takes a lot longer to grow audiences though, as aside from people who already had an affinty for it from non-MMO things in the past, there's probably a good bit of wading the rest of the potential audience needs to go through before they appreciate it. I did some wading in Shattered Galaxy myself before Eve hooked me, and tried several others at various times. I'll be trying others that get good word of mouth from the right friends.

Re:Is there a market for this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure there is. Even the most dedicated MMO players will try other games. I know a lot of guys who everytime a new game comes out they go at least give it a shot for a month or two. Long term? Not always. When VG came out the a lot of EQ2 players went over to it. When EQ2 got PvP, a lot of WoW players went over to it. Same thing will happen with WH.

Then there's always the hype factor. A lot of tight guilds move as units. So if a few guys in a guild get the rest pumped up, you got 50 people making a move together. I think the AMOUNT of total MMO players is about peaked, but they're like a swarm of insects. They move around.

Re:Is there a market for this?

[fotbr]

Yes, there is. There are a bunch of WoW players that are only continuing to play until the next good thing comes along. Most of the people in the guild I'm in will drop out of WoW for a month at a time to play GameXYZ when its released, if they like it, they retire their WoW account and play the new game. If its bad, they come back. When they get tired of the new game, they come back.

Most of them are gone playing LOTR right now -- we'll lose some, sure, but most of them will end up coming back. Likewise, I'll leave WoW when the Star Trek RPG finally gets released, but if it sucks, I'll end up going back to WoW.

Re:Is there a market for this?

[MeanderingMind]

I think the AMOUNT of total MMO players is about peaked...

I think you assume too much. If I recall, this same argument was used to note that WoW would not surpass EQ by much. The idea that there are a fixed amount of people who play MMOs is one that will likely fade in coming years.

If the Next Big Thing(TM) comes out tomorrow, we won't see Blizzard's subscriptions drop down to near nothing overnight. Drop perhaps, but not collapse. In fact, I could easily imagine Blizzard retaining even 75% of their current subscriptions while the Next Big Thing(TM) doubles what they have already.

In short, the userbase for MMORPGs is growing daily. New, excellent and appealing MMORPGs only serve to further this.

Er...?

[TimeElf1]

Why couldn't they of made a Warhammer 40K MMORPG first? In my opinion it's setting is more compelling than more dwarves and elves. Do they want to be blown out of the water by the juggernaut that is WoW?

Re:Er...?

[MeanderingMind]

Sci-Fi based MMORPGs are not as popular as their fantasy based siblings. I may be a neophyte, but the only reasonably successful Sci-Fi MMORPG I can think of is EVE. SWG strikes me as a train wreck. Meanwhile, we have EQ, EQ2, FF11, DAoC and WoW as easily recognizable examples of successful MMORPGs in the fantasy setting.

If Warhammer Online passes muster and is successful I think we can expect a Warhammer 40k followup MMO, much like the constant rumors of "World of Starcraft" (Heaven help Blizzard if they can't come up with a better name than that).

Re:Er...?

[doublefrost]

Mythic is targeting another niche - the PvP niche. So they can coexist with WoW. However, I don't see how Warhammer PvP will be better than Camelot's PvP, since Warhammer will have 2 teams instead of 3.

Re:Er...?

[Anonymous Coward]

THQ is going to producing a Warhammer 40K MMO. I might actually try it if it isn't an MMORPG. Same games, new skins. It would be interesting to take the system in a different direction. Say, MMORTS with complex resource production and territory development. Warhammer 40K: Total War On-line anyone?

Re:Er...?

[Cirak]

THQ has been working on a Warhammer 40k MMO.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=12947

Re:Er...?

[jfodale]

While I agree, 3 teams instead of 2 is preferred, Dark Age of Camelot was more of a PvE/PvP split game, where as WAR is being designed for PvP first and foremost. As a result, the PvP is much more integrated into normal gameplay (practically everything you do from PvP, to PvE, to even rolling an alt, generates Victory Points, which determine which side advances on a battlefront zone).

I was wondering the same

[Opportunist]

Unlike other games, that you play for a while and then stop, MMORPGs are geared to make you play "forever". You're not "supposed" to play C&C or BF for years to come, mostly 'cause the company making them would rather you to buy the next generation of their games than sticking with it for months and years, while with MMORPGs, it's sell once and keep milking.

Now, while I can well see buying 3-4 "normal" games within a certain timespan, I wonder how many people would really go and subscribe to 2, 3 or more MMORPGs at the same time.

Sure, one MMORPG can get you rich. But unlike with the normal game market, there isn't much room for many competing games. People will go and pick the "best". Singular. One.

Re:I was wondering the same

[Retric]

Your assuming they are all basicly the same. I play eve-online and WoW at the same time. Eve is like post 70 WoW in that you don't grind for exp only loot. WoW has much better PvE content and eve wins PvP. It adds up to together it's about 30$ a month but considering I spend more on cable and watch less TV I don't think of that as a major issue.

Re:I was wondering the same

[Opportunist]

Ok, but there is a vast difference between EvE and WoW. I don't see the same degree of difference in EQ2, Vanguard, WHO and all the myriad other fantasy-MMORPGs that come out now. And yes, even SWG and AO fit that pattern, they are all essentially the same.

Re:I was wondering the same

[Andy Dodd]

On the other hand, it's REALLY hard to come up with a good "endgame" to keep players forever.

The end result is that despite the fact that in general, MMOs are designed to keep players around for extended periods of time, burnout is frequent.

That's why I switched from DAoC to EVE. That's why after a year or so, I switched back to DAoC. (Admittedly with 2-4 months of "nothing but FPSes or outdoor activities" in between). After another two years, I'm back in EVE.

To be honest, I'm at the point where I'm burned out on both games and waiting for the next game that:
1) Appeals to me
2) Looks like it has a good endgame (DAoC's was great until the Trials of Atlantis expansion decimated the game's playerbase, which Mythic has been unable to recover from despite massive improvements over the past year and a half.)
3) Appeals to my friends (the only reason I'm still playing either game)

The fact is that even with frequent patches, expansions, and upgrades, games age. Fundamental aspects of their architecture and design become unworkable for a modern game, and/or the company makes a huge mistake that decimates their playerbase, making it impossible to attract "new blood" even after overhauling their game. (See SWG's NGE, or DAoC's Trials of Atlantis expansion for examples of "big mistakes", see DAoC's Catacombs expansion and many of the past year's "ToA Fix" patches for examples of great overhauls that just weren't enough)

EVE Online has the advantage of a more flexible architecture (which is one reason it has been growing steadily since inception), although it's main advantage is that it never had a huge launch and always has been more of a fringe game. Eventually EVE's devs will make the "Big Mistake" (They've come close with the BoD scandal and how they mishandled it) or it will age. (CCP has the good fortune of being the only MMO with even remotely similar gameplay - I suspect that another space-based MMO could easily give EVE a good run for its money, I know I would try it if it were from anyone other than SOE.)

Re:I was wondering the same

[Endo13]

There's other MMOs that are vastly different too, like for example City of Heroes/Villains.

And then look at the huge number of players that have multiple accounts for their MMO of choice. It's not that big a stretch to think that they might be willing to try a new game, and then drop one of their less-used accounts on the old MMO as they spend less time in it.

Also, you don't *need* 8 million subscribers for a game to be successful. Eventually those 8 million WoW players are going to get bored with WoW and start looking for other MMOs. Considering that most highly successful MMOs don't even hit 1 million subscribers, that leaves room for a LOT of competition as people move on from WoW.

Re:I was wondering the same

[jeffasselin]

Despite the trolls on Blizzard's boards, WoW had an very well-done end-game by the time of the expansion release in the raid content. It was a bit rough at opening, but after a couple years and refinements, it had evolved into very enjoyable content with different levels of difficulty for a lot of people to enjoy. Not everyone saw the end of it, but by the time Naxxramas was released, everyone and his dog could do Molten Core running "pick-up groups" for it and various other instances. The harder content was for serious players, but even the beginning of Naxxramas could be done by non-hardcore players. Innovative fights, fun dynamics... had it all.

And then they listened to the whiners and destroyed it completely with the expansion. Forcing people to do a 10-man instance before giving them access to 25-mans (down from 40, forcing guilds to scuttle their membership), giving little rewards for raiding, making it a farming game instead of a pattern-learning one. Not to mention the difficulty level of the new raids, which starts not at similar levels that were accessible to casual or semi-casual players, but at a level that approaches the hardest boss of the last raid from the original release!

Re:I was wondering the same

[Andy Dodd]

Doesn't sound like much of an endgame to me.

Before the playerbase was decimated and all but the most elite hardcore players left, DAoC's PvP system was (and at least in design, still is) the best system I've ever seen.

It's so different from most other systems that it has its own name, RvR (Realm vs. Realm). The basic idea is that there are three realms, and you cannot fight players from your own realm. Players from other realms cannot enter your realm's mainland (giving a safe PvE/farming/leveling area), but everyone can enter the shared "frontiers". In the frontiers, each realm has a landmass covered with keeps and towers. Essentially, DAoC's RvR system is a capture-and-hold game on a massive scale.

Re:I was wondering the same

[jeffasselin]

WoW is faction vs faction, but there is no permanent or even semi-permanent victory. Overworld objectives are extremely temporary and give little to max-level characters. No one cares about much more than their personal winnings, and faction results are pretty much irrelevant. I never enjoyed PvP much anyway in WoW, too short and unbalanced, no strategy involved, just big numbers: first-shot wins pretty much.

I actually enjoyed WoW's end-game before the expansion. The expansion scuttled it to supposedly cater to more casual players, but ended up pissing off the hardcore players and at the same time prevent the casuals from entering it. Really sad.

Re:I was wondering the same

[Opportunist]

When people multi-account, they usually don't do that 'cause they have too few character slots, but rather to buffbot and/or powerlevel themselves. I've been guilty of that myself (DAoC certainly begged for it). And I usually either had 2 or no accounts in a game. So I'd say people would not drop one account, they'd either stay with 2 or switch over and create 2.

And yes, you certainly don't need to be the biggest MMORPG to make a buck. EvE is certainly a good example for that with (afaik) less than 200k subscribers, and they're still going quite strong.

What I'm afraid of is, though, that studios see the 8 million players of WoW and put similar numbers into their calculations, expecting at least 2 million people. This will most certainly lead to desaster. One can only hope that they use more conservative approaches. MUCH more conservative.

Until WoW there was room for growth. By now I'd assume that the market is pretty much saturated, i.e. to get a subscriber, you have to draw him away from a game he is currently playing, you won't get a new player in that never played an MMORPG before. So I'd say it's safe to predict a lot of WoW clones in different settings but with similar makeup. Simply 'cause the game is SO successful that studios will assume that's what the players want.

In other words, I guess it will be a long time 'til I find an MMORPG again that I like. :(

Re:I was wondering the same

[Opportunist]

EvE has one huge advantage over most other MMORPGs: You can be successful without ever leaving the "newbie area" if you so desire. Yes, it takes longer, yes, it's less exciting, but you can still make your buck by farming Veldspar. There's a huge market for Tritanium, everyone needs it in insane quantities and that's not likely to change anytime soon. This allows for very different playing styles, from the "casual" player who runs around solo, collects some missions and money, mining in between where it's safe etc, to the hardcore "raid-clan" fanatic that becomes part of a huge corp holding some sector in the outer edges. And, surprisingly, both can be almost equally successful.

There was actually a "space MMORPG" from EA called "Earth and Beyond" a few years ago. It lasted for a bit under 2 years, mostly because of balance issues that were never fixed and actually got worse with a few additions. It also suffered from a really, really, REALLY tiny world and a lot of other problems I don't want to get into details of. But it's a good example for what mistakes you can make to bring a game with a killer storyline to its knees by ignoring the dynamics of your playerbase. If someone was to bring along an "EaB2" that deals with those issues, I could well see a killer space MMORPG, though I dunno if it would compete with EvE. The way it handled, it had more of a standard MMORPG.

But yes, almost every MMORPG makes a turn for the worse sooner or later. It's actually amazing how often a "perfect" MMORPG gets flushed down the toilet by an expansion. I've seen it way too many times. AO, DAoC, EQ, SWG, they all had some expansion down their existance path that either brought the game close to its demise or actually killed it. And I wonder why the studios do that. There is more often than not no compelling reason to release that expansion, most expansions come out when the game is doing good and players are quite happy.

Re:I was wondering the same

[Opportunist]

Actually BC might well be a dagger to the back of WoW. I've seen a lot of my friends who're dedicated WoW players turn away from it because of BC. Not because the expansion is "too hard" or "too easy" or "too bad", but because they feel cheated. An example of what a friend told me yesterday.

He had some 2handed sword. THE best 2h sword in existance pre-BC. No idea what made it so good, but according to him it was just THE sword. Took him months to finally get it out of a raid of whateverhowmany people. Now, in BC, he hacks down the first dungeon and comes back out with a green drop that makes his old epic look like a rusted piece of junk.

He felt like a moron. He really felt cheated. Understandably so, if you ask me. I can see the motivation of Blizzard to do this, trying to attract people again that turned away and trying to lure them back with the promise of not having to go through 3 years of hacking to actually "use" the new content in BC, but the old players who were and are dedicated, spending countless hours to pull out their epic sets, they feel shafted. And I wouldn't deem it impossible that more than a few will react like my friend and dump the game because of it.

Until now it was "keep playing to stay on top or you'll have to catch up". But with BC, you get the message that you don't have to keep playing, you can drop the game and come back with the next expansion 'cause then you'll be just where all the people who stayed are. Play for a month, get 60, hack down the first expansion dungeon and you're where the guys are who have been here for 3 years.

I don't see the "fall" of WoW anytime soon, but I do think that BC could be quite negative for their subscriber numbers.

Re:I was wondering the same

[Opportunist]

DAoC still holds in my eyes the holy grail of PvP. The idea was simply brilliant and the way it worked was flawless until ToA. But it was doomed to fail eventually, even without ToA and the rather insane high level RAs it would sooner or later have unraveled.

In the beginning, you could go into RvR when you were about lv 45. First of all, the fights were simply epic in size. Armies of countless heroes attacked and defended castles, it did simply not matter just how "high" you actually were. Most of your opponents were at best lv 50 and had mostly normal drop gear, some selected few had actually the epics but they were few and far between, and those epics didn't make them unstoppable.

After some time, it was pretty much mandatory to be lv 50 to compete sensibly in RvR, because everyone was 50, most had some good gear, but it "capped" somewhat. Sure, some had their RAs but they didn't make the big difference. My opponent may be able to sprint further or hack down longer onto me, but that means little when the fight doesn't last long. It was mostly beneficial for leveling.

Then came SI and the spellcrafting, which made it mandatory to have SCed gear. Which was allright, it was mostly affordable (well, it was after I opened my SC shop...) and everyone could rather easily jump onto the "good gear" ranks. It actually worked as an equalizing device.

Then came ToA. Epic gear that doubled and tripled your combat value easily. And that's when the "casual" gamer and pretty much anyone but the top hardcore gamers left. It was impossible to get your ToA gear against the farmers, buying it would have taken at least as long and the few items that you could get required you to have at the very least a full group. Then you had to level that gear. Nobody but the most dedicated hardcore gamers would go down that road. And without that gear you felt (and fell) like a meaningless pawn in RvR. No fun.

But even without ToA this would have become a problem eventually. The gap between the casual gamer and the hardcore gamer was open and it opened wider with every day. There was no "real" cap. Now, of course that kept the hardcore gamer playing, but it also meant that you could not really participate in RvR anymore unless you were at least close to a hardcore playing style.

I guess DAoC would have died, with or without the ToA desaster. ToA surely accelerated it, but Cats was not really a resurrection. It was more the last nail on the coffin when it became the "soloing expansion". Why bother playing a MMORPG alone?

Re:I was wondering the same

[Andy Dodd]

I would say that Cats had just the opposite effect of being a "soloing expansion" Once TDs were in play, getting a group was just a matter of going to the appropriate TD. It was very rare to spend more than 10-15 minutes LFG. (As opposed to, for example, praying your realm had DF and you could get an AoE DF Knights group.)

Either way, with the exception of the now massive difference between the "haves" and "have-nots" and the fact that while Mythic has added some rewards for keep/tower RvR, 8v8 is still the king of RPs and hence most of the best players actually steer clear of towers and keeps (and the rest of the realm) unless they can farm them with a bomb group, DAoC is dominated by the hardcore players and the casual ones (even the semi-casual veterans like myself) are screwed and quickly get frustrated and give up. While keep/tower warfare is clearly the primary goal in Mythic's vision for the game, they still can't give enough reason for the RP farmers to do anything other than grow there epeens and RP count in 8-man gank groups. Unfortunately, at this point, anything Mythic does to alter the balance in favor of keep/tower warfare will decimate the remaining hardcore player base because they'll hate it. But without a return to keep/tower warfare dominating RvR, Mythic will not be able to attract or retain new blood, and will continue to hemorrage (crap I KNOW I misspelled that but every attempt at spelling it otherwise looks even worse) the casual and semi-casual players. so basically, whatever they do, Mythic will either destroy the remainder of their existing playerbase in the hopes of gaining new players (SWG proves that this does not work), or fail to attract new blood and slowly lose their existing base, leading to the game's slow death over time.

I'm praying that someone releases a game with a DAoC-like PvP/RvR system, but learning from Mythic's mistakes made during the years of DAoC.

Unfortunately, the realm abilities system, while increasing the gap between the haves and have nots, also kept the game alive. Without the final (and nearly uncappable) goal of increasing one's realm ranks, there wasn't that much incentive to keep playing past 50. Without rewards in RvR past 50, what was the point of the PvE grind up to 50?

It's kind of sad - I loved the epic 200v200 battles in DAoC, but the mechanics of death in EVE mean that such battles are actually frowned upon by the devs. In DAoC, a small skirmish at a keep would escalate over time (with constant action) at a keep or tower. In EVE, once a battle starts, it's over within minutes. Usually, 95% of a "battle" is hours and hours of two fleets slowly escalating, afraid to engage the other fleet until they have enough people, since once you're dead, you're out of the action for a long duration. This hours of escalation without action is now considered "bad" for good reason by EVE's devs (in addition to the servers' inability to handle such large battles), meaning that 200v200 or largers battles may become a thing of the past.

Re:I was wondering the same

[Andy Dodd]

I think this is a fundamental problem with any MMOG in terms of expansions.

Basically, to sell an expansion, you need to offer rewards that are significantly better than existing content. But doing so causes a continuing arms race that widens the gap between "haves" and "have-nots". Either way, you're screwed. Either an expansion won't sell, or it will contribute to the death of the game.

By the way, I think (in addition to its initial and continuing "niche" appeal) that this is one of the reasons for the fact that EVE is one of the only MMOGs that is continuing to grow, years after launch. Unlike other MMOGs, EVE has never released an expansion. Some of EVE's major patches have been called "expansions" by CCP, but I consider anything that doesn't involve going out to buy a new box of content (or paying a one-time fee for an expansion activation in addition to subscription fees a la DAoC's latest expansions) to only be a major patch. That, combined with the fact that for the most part major patches only introduce stuff that is "different" (as opposed to better) and rarely requires grinding, keeps EVE's existing players around and makes it stay modern and attract new players.

I just wish the death penalty in EVE weren't so harsh, as while it in some ways increases the "excitement" of PvP and serves as an anti-inflationary measure (using the best equipment in the game isn't always a good idea since you might get it blown up), it prevents epic DAoC-style battles from occuring on a regular basis, and when such battles occur, they are preceded with hours of troop movements without combat, not a small skirmish that steadily escalates like in DAoC (see one of my posts close to this one regarding DAoC escalation compared to EVE escalation).

I think that fundamentally, no MMOG can get things completely right and stay around forever. EVE has a lot of attributes that contribute to long-term growth (such as the nonpermanence of any item except the most utterly basic equipment), but also cause many players to get bored (the aforementioned hours of escalation with no real action). A game that can keep people from that category (which includes myself) interested with constant action fundamentally will end up in an arms race of content and gear. You can't have constant action without a light death penalty (a la DAoC), and it's extremely hard (if not impossible) to prevent an arms race which eventually kills the game without a harsh death penalty (a la EVE).

As a result - A game can last forever (or at least a very long time), but there is a large category of players that such a game can fundamentally never attract. Games that can attract such a playerbase have major challenges at lasting forever (at least a very long time). Thus while some games (EVE) will almost permanently lock in some players, other games (such as EQ, DAoC, and WoW) will eventually die, giving their playerbase to new games. It's just a matter of how quickly they die. Some may stay around a long time (DAoC, WoW likely will too), some will become fundamentally dead in only a year or two (SWG).

Re:I was wondering the same

[Opportunist]

I can't add anything meaningful to the DAoC part. It's simply true the way it is.

So I want to say a few words to EvE. PvP in EvE is pretty much everything about PvP that I don't like. It's either an ambush, where you're getting your rear handed without a chance to actually fire back by a gatecamper, or it's 2 hours or preparing, waiting, sitting on either end of a gate with a growing group until one side decides they got enough people, then they jump, it's 2-3 minutes of lag and then it's over.

And over for good, at least for a good, long time. Death hurts in EvE (that's one of the reasons why I like it). And for a death like that, I'd like to have a li'l fun dying. Unfortunately, in neither situation of PvP dying is fun. In both it's more luck than skill that dictates who dies and who lives.

Re:I was wondering the same

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems there are two issues here. One is that Blizzard created an "end game" when it wasn't the end of the game. My understanding is the loot that came out of the last raid instances was insane compared to the 5 mans and world stuff. I had read an old page where the "end game" before the expansion was to have the instances have better looking gear, instead of much higher stat gear. They might have lost some that don't think fancy armor is a good enough reason to repeatedly run through the same instance hundreds of times, but it would have made pvp more balanced before the expansion and they wouldn't have raiders feeling cheated by the new instance gear after it.

      The other issue is why your friend is so upset about the new loot being better than the old raid stuff. Did he not have fun raiding? If it was just a chore to get virtual stuff, then he's an idiot. If he had fun getting it, then he shouldn't be complaining, because it was just something he got while doing something he enjoyed.

Re:Bunch dorks

[Pojut]

Sorry I missed church; I was busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian.

Thank you for playing, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

From going through your comment history, I get the impression that your account is supposed to be a humorous piss-take on ignorant and somewhat thick knee-jerk Republican bible-bashers. Unfortunately, you're just not as funny as you think you are. In fact you're not funny at all.

OTOH, if you were genuinely trying to masquerade as one, then you've totally failed. Similarly, if you were trolling, I've seen better. I'd suggest that you don't give up the day job (which as sure as hell *isn't* writing insightful satire).

Re:Thank you for playing, but...

[MBraynard]

But he did get you! So as a troll.... success!

Re:Thank you for playing, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

But he did get you! So as a troll.... success! Well, it depends; only if he considered any form of response as a result. It's unclear whether it was genuinely meant as an outright troll, or was simply a woefully inept satire/piss-take anyway.

Re:Bunch dorks

[TimeElf1]

I cast magic missile at the darkness!!

Re:Bunch dorks

[Anonymous Coward]

thats the third time this week!

Read between the lines

[Avatar8]

From TFA:

"Since our acquisition by EA, we have been afforded many wonderful development opportunities..."

Translation:
"Since we were assimilated, EA has separated our talented team and distributed them amongst several teams of numerous EA projects so that we can try and fix their problems. By the time we get back to working on OUR project, we'll be so burned out by EA politics, unrealistic timelines and 100 hour work weeks that what we have for Warhammer right now will be what we ship in 2008. We'll let the live product be the beta test and patch it every month, the EA way."

I hope the best for the Mythic buys, but according to history everything EA touches turns to crap.

Re:Read between the lines

[jfodale]

Could turn out that way, but so far EA is letting them run the show... It could turn out to be a positive, as Mythic will be able to benefit from EA's advertising.

Games Workshop also has a very big hand in this game and has to approve of everything. If the development process is going awry, they will not hesitate to pull the plug (as past evidence has shown).

"guys" not "buys"

[Avatar8]

Minor correction. My subconscious was thinking "EA buys everything."

Or maybe...

[Cathoderoytube]

Maybe, though this is fairly far fetched and borderline insane talk. The development team looked at what they did and looked at World of Warcraft and said 'You know, these things are really similar. I mean I know Warhammer has been around a lot longer than Warcraft, and technically they're ripping us off, but the majority of the population doesn't know that. You know.. Maybe we should just do something different. Why not Warhammer 40k? That'd be interesting'

Re:Or maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a point but a "standard" heroic fantasy universe is probably going to be much more successful with the general population who don't know much about Warhammer.

Re:Or maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not Warhammer 40k? That'd be interesting

I think the latest GameInformer Mag. lists the up-coming MMO's and if I recall, I think the 40K version is being developed by someone else. Which, not knowing much about Warhammer or Warhammer 40k, I cannot say I understand what's going on.

Re:Or maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the warhammer (fantasy) and warhammer (40k) IP licences are seperate. The 40k IP distribution rights are owned by THQ, and they've announced plans to develop a 40k MMO.

Which is quite disappointing, I would have have loved to see a 40k MMO from Mythic :\

Re:Or maybe...

[Hausenwulf]

Or maybe they'll eventually get people to understand that Warhammer is the original and Warcraft is the copy.

Re:Or maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure an MMORPG would work in a setting with automatic firearms. Futuristic weaponry doesn't mesh well with the traditional click to target mechanics of MMORPGs. You could throw out most of the traditional mechanics, but I'm not sure if you could do that without turning it into an MMOFPS.

dwarven district?

[Eternal_0ne]

Will I be able to transfer my dwarf character from WoW to WarHammer? I've been a long time bf2 player and EA tends to create products and fix everything except the actual bugs people complain about, the way i see it warhammmer 40k is just around the corner just like bf2 and bf2142

Re:dwarven district?

[Anonymous Coed]

Ummm are you kidding? When have you ever been able to transfer characters from one game to another, especially ones made by different companies?

Race Against the Clock

[Hackie_Chan]

The big question is, why aren't they?

1. Funding. Development time is a race against the clock. If they had money for 20 months of development but need three or six more months to polish and finish things - tough shit. Not all companies have large financial backing like Blizzard.

2. Quality. Even the crappiest game can't be fixed with additional development time. Releasing it today and raking in some cash is a better solution than releasing it later and still get the same sales (and bad reviews).

Re:Race Against the Clock

[CogDissident]

You have point 2 backwards. If a game is released quickly, and is a buggy unplayable mess, it will get bad reviews and will never sell. If its released late, they lose a tiny part of the market that isnt willing to wait for them, and they instead get better reviews and better sales.

Warhammer 40K MMORPG

[Metox]

FYI, there will be a Warhammer 40K MMO. There is a story http://www.gamespot.com/news/6166560.html?sid=6166 560 here about it.

Happy

[jfodale]

I'm happy they went ahead and delayed this so that they could layer on the extra polish. More game companies (including EA themselves) should take note.

Vanguard vs WoW

[SmallFurryCreature]

Vanguard is bugged, deep but unfinished. WoW is shallow but polished.

But that is not what sets them apart. The biggest difference is the playerbase. In many ways it reminds me of the difference between Operation Flashpoint and Counterstrike. Both are military first person shooters with counterstrike clearly the more polished easier to get into version. Yet if you desire to play with people whose balls have actually descended your choice is clear.

I tried Vanguard (Sony is one of the few MMO companies willing to accomadate non-credit card owners. Blizzard thanks to its huge success is lucky that stores stock its gamecards) and was amazed to find that you did not need to join a RP-preffered server to be able to be in a world were the majority of players do not use numbers in their chat.

In fact, the majority of players in Vanguard use plain english, are polite and helpfull and even those who still got crap nicks like 'warlord' at least manage to spell it correctly.

If you ever played WoW, well. You know.

Pity then that the game is so fucking bugged. In between the bugs it is actualy fun, and has a lot to offer. I might even say that it is a ton of fun, compared to wow's 1 kilo of fun. Pity that vanguard also gives you two tons of bugs while WoW has by now reduced it to a few grams.

So why am I not playing WoW? Two reasons, the population but mostly the kill X till Y drops and X turns out to be a number just short of infinity. Vanguard improves on both counts but geez gods, FIX THE BUGS.

But what about LOTRO. Well, I am looking at it. Just that so far I can't see any class I like to play. I wonder what route it will take. For me the real killer thing I am looking for in a MMO is for it to be playable and for it to reserve a few servers with a queens english only policy and a naming policy that is enforced with permanent bans. Enter a stupid nick and BAM, banned. No warning, no suggestions, no arguing. Instant ban.

On the other hand, you could just make it an 18+ server. Make that 30+. Nobody born in the 80's or later allowed. And get OF MY LAWN!

Re:Vanguard vs WoW

[Mike Buddha]

I liked WoW, but it really isn't in the same category as even EQ1. I really, really wanted to like Vanguard, but they boned it up good by not finishing it before the release date. It might be good at some point, but who knows? I refuse to subsidize their development by paying money to take part in Vanguard's Open Alpha testing.

Enlarge the market

[SmallFurryCreature]

While I don't like WoW (it is polished, it does exactly what it says, it is extremely well designed but I do NOT like it) its biggest claim to fame is NOT so much that it did extremely well in getting a couple of million subscribers but that it proved everyone wrong who pre-WoW claimed that any new MMO would have to get it subscribers from other existing MMO's.

Pity then that WoW now has more subscribers then ALL mmo's that came before combined, with the fact that those earlier MMO's still exist with their own player bases.

Blizzard did NOT eat everyone elses pie, they made the pie a lot bigger.

So now the question is, is this the maximum size the pie can be OR can someone else make the pie even bigger?

Compare if you like WoW subscription figures with other content sold worldwide. Pitifull ain't it?

Compare it if you like too say cable tv. You need to pay for it monthly and it sucks up time.

Would a tv show, say a new Star Trek series that manages to get 8 million viewers WORLD WIDE to be a success or a total and absolute failure unparraelled in history?

Offcourse MMO gaming ain't a tvshow but still, the claim that WoW has captured the maximum world wide market seems a bit unlikely.

Remember those stories that women are the majority online? Yet you don't see them?

Well, I am going to claim something else. Counterstrike is a failure. Nobody plays it. It is unpopular as hell.

Sure, here on slashdot perhaps you will find a lot of players BUT seen from the total audience of people online playing games the number of counterstrike, indeed ALL fps combined, is truly pathetically small.

Blizzard enlarged the market by remaking EQ and polishing it and giving it a good design. It worked BUT someone else could do the same.

Your question smells of IBM asking themselves what the total world market was for the personal computer. Google just how fucking wrong they were because they could NOT get their heads around the fact that the small market they saw was due to their version of the personal computer (expensive and of limited use).

If only patching worked that way

[Moraelin]

Mostly I'll aggree with you, but just to nitpick: but you seem to operate under the impression that the game is only buggy at launch, that it will be patched right, and that it's only remembered as having been once buggy.

My experience is quite the opposite: most games which were launched buggy (read: most games), their patches introduced at _least_ 1 new bug for every 2 fixed (though in some cases it was 2 introduced for 1 fixed), and the publisher gave up long before it was anywhere near good quality.

Basically: what makes anyone think that what wasn't fixed in 2-3 years of making the game, surely is trivial stuff that will get fixed in 1-2 weeks after launch? No, seriously. Debugging is stuff that takes 90% of the programming time, and is the hardest to get right. Writing code is _easy_. Debugging it to work _right_ is what's hard and time consuming. A game which got shoved out the door as soon as it compiled and showed the start menu (in some cases, literally) can be anywhere between 6 months away from being really ready, and essentially a failed project which will _never_ work right.

I remember fondly such cases as Ultima Online: 2 years after launch, Origin was still busy issuing half-arsed patches that did more damage than good... and then some of them had to be rolled back to contain the damage. Or "Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption" which only had 1 patch, and it introduced a couple of worse bugs than those it removed. Or Daggerfall, where after half a year trying to solve such problems as falling into the void as soon as you moved or bumped into a wall, Bethesda gave up and built in cheat codes so you could teleport yourself out of the void and to the start of the dungeon. Or Fallout 2. My favourite game, mind you, but also one of the buggiest games ever. Half the problems were never fixed. And just so people don't think only ancient examples are available: Gothic 3. It's still a buggy POS. 'Nuff said. Etc.

The thing is, even _if_ patching it later worked (and mostly it doesn't), I want to play the game _now_. The day I bought it, not 6 months in the future when it's finally patched. It's not just a matter of remembering a wrong first impression, it can be a matter of the _whole_ experience I've had with that game. And remembering it damn right, in all its buggy non-fun glory. I might play a game for as little as a day, or as much as 1-2 weeks. It doesn't matter if 2-6 months later a patch became available that fixed everything. (Mostly it doesn't.) Anyone who bought the game at launch, or preordered it, has _already_ played the buggy unpatched version.

And that's not including the inconveniences often visited upon the player if they _do_ stick around until some patches hit. Stuff like, "oops, my saved games don't work any more, I have to abandon all those tens of hours of playing and start all over again." (See: Fallout 2.) Or, "oops, the mechanics changed so much that my carefully built empire is going to pieces... and China is conquering the Byzantine empire." (See: most Paradox games, but as a concrete example, Europa Universalis 3.) Or, in at least one pathologic case, "oops, the game has been turned into a whole different _genre_ and my character, in which I 'invested' months, can't even play that class/skill-combination/role any more." (See: Star Wars Galaxies.)

And another thing that people miss when talking about patches is, basically: quality doesn't only mean "it doesn't crash to desktop". There are things like balance, game system, learning/difficulty curves, AI, story, which are damn hard and work-intensive things on their own. And are things which, when a game is shoved out the door untested, are also untested and unfinished. Most patches fix stuff like memory leaks or crashes to desktop, but stuff like balance or the game system rarely are touched at all by a patch. If they were shoved out the door unfinished, at the very least those aspects will tend to stay unfinished. For ever.

The latter was a major part of Blizzard's secret sauce, so to spe

Do you make license plates by chance?

[Anonymous Coward]

ya bt u cnt spl ur wy frm a ppr bg. ya rly. kthx by

Imperator Take 2?

[mmmbeer]

While on a smaller scale, isn't this just like the Imperator cancellation?

...our tremendous success with 'Dark Age of Camelot' set the standard for Mythic of releasing nothing less than triple-A games, and 'Imperator' was simply not meeting that standard.

A game shop so good that it can not produce a game good enough to be made by them! This should come as no surprise to players who would read the "Grab Bag" posts where weekly Mythic would correct themselves on how various aspects of DAOC worked. They didn't even know how their own tremendously successful MMOG worked under the hood, how could they design a new one?

Imperator was a miserable failure despite being hyped by Jacobs as a ground up rewrite designed to be ground breaking and compelling title. The concept of a game which was fun PvE and PvP turned out to be too hard to write, so they fell back to PvE only and still couldn't do it...

The problem is that because of the complexity of having both a PvP/PvE game, it is wisest for us to focus on one of those two elements. So now they landed a juicy development deal with a preexisting ruleset and a decent budget backed by a large set of resources (albeit the overworked and inexperienced resources of EA) and they are going back to re-do things?

Sounds to me like Mythic again has produced content which wasn't good enough to be produced by Mythic.

(All quotes from Mark Jacobs)

Re:Imperator Take 2?

[jfodale]

"Sounds to me like Mythic again has produced content which wasn't good enough to be produced by Mythic."

Which makes it sound like they are actually trying to churn out a decent title instead of cashing in quick, a la Vanguard.

Re:Bunch dorks

[meringuoid]

Sorry I missed church; I was busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian.

* Christian Mind Trick *

You don't want to be Elfstar any more. You want to be Debbie.

re:WARHAMMER ONLINE

[vivian520]

i'd like to play warhamer online .... you know,it is so intersting!u can find wars everywhere....which you will like Drawing from a quarter century of highly detailed source material, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will bring Games Workshop's fantasy world to life in a way that will allow players to create characters destined for great deeds and glory on the field of battle. besids,i want to gain more money making tips,that's very useful for me.