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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.
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.
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Which is quite disappointing, I would have have loved to see a 40k MMO from Mythic
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.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
THQ has been working on a Warhammer 40k MMO.
t ory=12947
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?s
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.
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