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Warhammer Online Delayed Until 2008

Posted by Zonk on from the hold-off-on-your-waugh-for-a-bit dept.

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.

5 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds like a Blizzard by CogDissident · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Sounds like a Blizzard by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Sounds like a Blizzard by happyemoticon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    3. Re:Sounds like a Blizzard by CowTipperGore · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

  2. Read between the lines by Avatar8 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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.