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Warhammer Online Delayed Again
EA Mythic CEO Mark Jacobs, in a new 'State of the Game' address on the Warhammer Herald site, revealed that Warhammer Online has been pushed back to at least April of next year. The game was originally slated for release this fall, and then was pushed to around February of next year. As always, the fearsome demon of polish is what's keeping the team hard at work through the holidays: "When we looked at our options, two paths lay before us: 1) Ship the game on time with fewer features and less polish, or 2) Extend the development cycle and spend the needed time and money to make WAR great. We chose the latter path - to invest additional time and effort in implementation and polish to make WAR great. Fortunately, we have the resources and support of EA behind us to extend our development cycle; time that will be used to make sure the game is everything we want it to be. WAR is coming, and it will be glorious." He notes also that they'll begin a new phase of testing next month, kicking Beta back into high gear.
It's good to see them taking the time to release the best game they possibly can rather than pushing an incomplete project out the door and trying to make money from it with the promise of finishing later. It never happens.
In my opinion, this is a very good decision.
If I only had a moose...
Polish? No. They ran out of paint.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I may get trolled for this but oh well. I have played Daoc for over 5 years and the game was going so so then EA bought Mythic. Now when they update the servers and they say they will up by 5pm est they are not running till 1am the next day. Items are missing when you log in, the game randomly crashes. I had a friend who ported from one area in the game to another and it he got stuck in limbo. He had to remove and reinstall the game just to get his character back. Now for the troll part. I think Warhammer could be a good game, I hope it is a good game. But I doubt they are putting it off to polish it up. I imagine they just have so many bugs in the software that they will not pull a vista and ship it early. I know you are probably thinking "Polish and remove bugs are the same thing" Not exactly. Removing minor bugs is what I would consider polishing up, or changing a tire on a car would be a better example. I imagine the game is getting its transmission replaced. Just with past experience on how EA operates. I mean how bad are the managers where they cannot guess how long it will take them to develop a product (yes I develop software). Or how many "bugs" are in the software that you need an extra 6 months to fix the game (fall 07-April 08)? EA has been "testing" warhammer stuff in DAOC for a while now. They changed out how DAOC's chat windows worked (added tabs), how their quest work (added way points), they made the game easier for everyone (dumbed down crafting, Master Levels, and Artifacts). It is like they have been testing new interfaces win DAOC, and testing how easy they can make the game to keep people interested. DAOC is their test bed, and sad to say DAOC is going down hill. Because EA changed so much of the game they have alienated part of their user base. I wish Warhammer luck but I think it will have a good user following at the start then once people get into the game they will be searching for a new game. I could be wrong.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
Sounds like the folks over at Warhammer online need to get their story straight.
Last time they delayed it (and actually shut down the beta!) it was to "refine and polish the games core mechanics". To me there's a big difference between "polishing the game" and "polishing the CORE MECHANICS".
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/08/2120228&from=rss
So which is it? Are they just "adding more features and polish"? or are the core mechanics still in need of work?
Yeah, the "Duke Nukem Forever" Award. ;)
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
..."spend the needed time and money to make WAR great"
So what are they saying? The game sucks now and can't be released so let's put another 6 months and polish it.
And what if it still sucks next april after putting in the extra polish? Will the EA hype marketing machine save you then?
I might be in minority, but I don't really care about polish. If you make a good game and the core mechanics work, the players will come and you can do the polish later (and get extra cred from your players because you're actually improving their experience by releasing upgrades for free). Of course if you notice your core machanics suck after 5 years of development, you're down the creek anyway.
The problem (IMHO) here might be that they're trying to go after WoW marketshare instead of just making a good game. The difference is, Blizzard has had 3 years to polish their game with input from couple of million live players and it's tough to beat. I'd much rather would see them create a great, gritty, bloody, PvP (or RvR) experience for that particular niche market (of say, 2-4 million players) and forget about the "every home has to have WAR box" mentality. If the game is good, the players will come. Forget WoW already!
They know they're competing against World of Warcraft, a game that's had 2.5 years to iron out all the bugs, improve the interface, and turn it from an okay to a great experience. This is their core market, they are seeking to take players from WoW (mostly bored ones, of course) so they have to get it absolutely right on launch, or they'll lose momentum.
WoW is the game that brought MMORPGs into the mainstream - existing MMORPG players from pre-WoW are a small part of their audience. WAR is going to be aiming for that same audience, so they have to actively lure people away from one game into another.
As one of those WoW players, I am hugely looking forward to WAR and have been for a long time, I'm happy to raid SSC/BT for a couple of extra months to make sure they get everything right.
And let me into the beta, damnit.
A bug free or complete MMO does NOT exist. Although new standards are being set, quit frankly we can only say that MMO's are improving at the moment because what came before was so god awfull.
I am not just talking Ultima Online or Everquest or Star Wars Galaxies here. WoW was a bugged piece of crap as well, it is only in comparison with what came before that it seemed okay. Really, go through to patch notes and see just how much had to be fixed.
Same thing with Lord of the Rings Online, reviewed as the least bugged MMO in history. Does that mean it is bug free? No, it is like how windows users say XP is stable, as in it didn't crash once, during the posting of their comment.
Now we got an MMO company saying they need more time. Is that good or bad? Frankly no MMO ever launched on time, so it being delayed is about as much news as that the sun came up this morning. Will they really be fixing things that need to be fixed so the forums won't be filled with bugs within a day of launch? It is possible. Unlikely, but it is possible.
Since MMO companies have a long history of launching with bugs, how serious are the bugs still in the game that force it to be delayed. Game crippling bugs? Why are they still there after all this time? Is it gameplay instead that is flawed? Wouldn't be the first time that an MMO went through years of development only to realize at the last moment the game just didn't work.
I seen some comments in other forums that the game balancing ain't complete yet, but perhaps, just perhaps this company is finally trying to achieve what nobody has done before. A bug free MMO launch.
No, I don't believe it either, but hey, it is possible.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
damned if you don't. There was no easy answer. Either they put out an unfinished game or they take the time to do it right. Kudos for taking the time to do it right.
if all else fails, blame the polish....
Stick a fork in them, they're done. They gave it a good effort but they bungled it, and with EA over them they have had to throw out some core mechanics and inject other to satisfy their new overlord. This is not a case of "oh we just want our game to be perfect", it's a case of "we have no idea how to make this work and be competitive so we're going for our SECOND rewrite."
I really wanted Warhammer to work but their team has collapsed under the new pressure from EA to beat Warcraft. They don't need to beat it, just be competitive, and they can't with their half thought out game design. Like DDO they will just limp along for a while until they are put out of their misery, and the next person can take a crack at the license.
It's a shame that Warcraft co-opted so much of Warhammer's ideas and was so successful doing it. It was a guarantee that Warhammer would look like a late to the game clone of Warcraft, with a bastardized Dark Age of Camelot design for the core mechanics.
This is EA we're talking here, ok? The company that has a record of building bananaware. Now they're telling us they push back the release to "polish" the game? They don't even polish their normal games where you more or less expect a "complete" game at release, now they claim the do that for a MMORPG which is kinda supposed to ship half baked?
Sorry. Either this means "it compiles but we'd drown in support calls if we shipped it now" or something's quite fishy here.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In SSC now (Hydross down, Lurker to 30%, should go down this week), but as WAR is delayed til April, I'm sure I'll be in BT by then :)
> Warhammer Online Delayed Again
Says the lead developer, "We didn't realize it at first, but it turns out Warhammer sucks."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Me. It was a silly, bandwidth wasting convention that looked stupid.