Warhammer Online Sees Massive Content Removal To Make Launch

Zonk is reporting that the Warhammer Online team has decided to keep their launch deadline firm. Unfortunately, in order to do so, they are pulling quite a few things from the game. Four of the six capital cities are being removed, as well as four of the character classes (two of which were considered the primary "tanking" classes for their race). The team emphatically claims that this has nothing to do with EA. Does this hurt their chances for success more than simply delaying the launch date?

Comments

This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[geekoid]

They know it's the game that counts, not some deadline.

It seems to me Warhammer is effectively castrating themselves.
TO which I say: "Good, I hate those bastards."

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[sgant]

Exactly. They don't give out a "deadline" and have always stated that it will be done when it's done.

Yes, it may be frustrating to people waiting for a Blizzard game, but at least they don't pull this crap.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[WilliamBaughman]

It's not just that Blizzard holds back their games until they are ready, it's that they have fans that will WAIT until Blizzard's games come out. That is a luxury that most other studios don't have. That said, Warhammer Online better have its features ASAP, first impressions are extremely important in MMOs.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Dorkmaster Flek]

It's not just that Blizzard holds back their games until they are ready, it's that they have fans that will WAIT until Blizzard's games come out. That is a luxury that most other studios don't have. That said, Warhammer Online better have its features ASAP, first impressions are extremely important in MMOs.

Perhaps the reason their fans are willing to wait until their games are ready is their track record, which is a direct result of said practice?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[sm62704]

Again, the Corporates shoot themselves in the feet with their own greed guns. The '00s are looking more and more like the 1920s, where thieves rule and the customer is an afterthought.

I think the answer to the question posed in the summary is a great big DUH!

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[redJag]

Exactly. If you don't have fans that are 'willing' to wait then you don't have fans, so why hurry the process in the first place? I put the willing in quotes because everyone hates waiting :) Take the time necessary to create a desirable product and presto, you have fans that will be waiting for your next release and creating a hype-machine for you in the meantime.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[fishbowl]

>they have fans that will WAIT until Blizzard's games come out.

They have fans that drop out of college, quit jobs, let spouses move out, etc., for the game.

One problem is that any other company has to compete with *that*.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[WilliamBaughman]

I never said it wasn't :) I had so much fun with Warcraft II that I visited Blizzard's website every day from the time Starcraft was announced to the time it launched, checking for updates. It seems like such a short time ago. Well, now I'm off to Starcraft2.com.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

The real castration happened when Games Workshop stopped funding Mythic, which eventually led to them being bought by EA, who essentially told them flat out "Re-work this into a WoW clone". The game Mythic had when funded by GW was *nothing* like the current WHO. What was once essentially Mythic's vision of Warhammer Fantasy RP brought online, is now a shell of its former glory. I saw it at Comic-Con shortly after they were bought by EA, and the complete overhaul was astonishing. Every possible detail that could be copied from WoW, was.

It's quite pathetic that the MMO segment is so absolutely and abysmally stagnant right now, with publishers grabbing anything that has popular IP and throwing a crappy Everquest-inspired gameplay clone behind it.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[ScytheBlade1]

Hmm, moderate or educate.

It has absolutely nothing to do with people who will wait for a Blizzard game. Those waiting on Warhammer will continue to wait indefinitely, just like how those who were waiting on World of Warcraft waited indefinitely for it too.

The same applied for the Burning Crusade expansion. They announced a release date, and then pushed it back ~2 months, if I remember. The forums lit up with complaints, whining, and many large capital letters. People had scheduled their jobs around this release date, and now suddenly they had all this free time and no game to play. And what happened? They bought the game anyway.

People will wait on games because they're looking forward to them. Blizzard's reputation of pushing quality games out the door was built on people getting pissed off that they were taking so long.

You say that "that is a luxury that most other studios don't have." And I disagree entirely. There is nothing stopping a studio from pushing their dates back. The only reason they don't is that they feel if they don't make their release date, then they will miss out of customers.

Which is entirely wrong. The entire MMO market is saturated right now, with WoW. Those who want to play other MMOs, such as Age of Conan or Warhammer Online will wait indefinitely for one simple reason: they are dissatisfied with Blizzard for one reason or another, and these are the people who are not only just dissatisfied, but will also remain dissatisfied indefinitely.

The thing that the Warhammer Online people are missing, and to some degree this applies to Age of Conan too ("hey guys! Let's launch a game where a core stat, strength, does entirely nothing!"), is that their playerbase consists almost entirely of people who are pissed off at WoW. Those people are not pleased with how Blizzard has taken WoW, and no degree of talking with them will change that.

The name of the game is "the grass is always greener on the other side." The vast majority of people who want to play Warhammer don't want to play it because it will be awesome, they want to play it because they are sick of WoW, and likewise, Warhammer suddenly becomes awesome.

The Warhammer devs saying "let's cut a huge amount of content" is ultimately what is going to kill them, at least in the short term. The people who are pissed at WoW will remain pissed, and they will always have that one shiny, better game out on the horizon. Why anyone would cut content and quality for release dates when almost their entire fanbase will be ex-WoW players who will join them the moment that games comes out - be it tomorrow or in two years - boggles my mind.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Incoherent07]

I feel obliged to point out that they never actually announced a November release for Burning Crusade; everyone just assumed that (and they may have stated that they wanted to release it in 2006 but not with any specific date).

The original WoW was released without a couple of the features they wanted to add (obvious example: honor system), but this seems somewhat more drastic than the honor system (which turned out to be a bad idea in the end anyway).

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Sethumme]

Of course, no one faults Blizzard for not having Outlands available at release, nor even most of its mid- and upper-level dungeons in Azeroth. In fact, at least a third of the character classes were completely gimpy when WoW 1.0 was first released.

I agree that gutting a video game just to meet a deadline is probably a stupid move, but if a game developer can ensure timely patching of new content (especially if that content is already mostly complete), then the earlier release means more revenue. Not to mention that there will be less of the inevitable bugs that slip through beta testing.

Still, MMOs are a waste of time anyway.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[geekoid]

"Except for how they're launching WotLK without the actual Lich King"
Cite? I couldn't find confirmation in the 30 seconds I looked.

"WoW is the next Sims."

How do you mean?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[poetmatt]

Additionally, DAOC was known to be a pretty damn good game. They have a lot of anticipation which could already have been measured by looking at their preorders.

This is just shooting their loyal customer base in the feet. EA has done this at least three times to them now. First by buying Mythic, second by saying that they have no intent to support Linux, and now by screwing over their loyal customers.

I honestly had pretty high hopes myself, but pulling of features? come on now.

Guess EA couldn't wait.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Endo13]

It's not just that Blizzard holds back their games until they are ready, it's that they have fans that will WAIT until Blizzard's games come out. That is a luxury that most other studios don't have.

Did you actually read what you just wrote? Read it again. And then think about it.

Who besides fans will wait on a game? And if you have good fans, they will wait. If you don't have an established fan base yet, it doesn't matter how soon you release - no one's waiting.

No matter how you cut it, it's always best to wait to release the game until it's ready for primetime.

Nothing to do with EA

Yeah right. Because EA has never done anything ever to screw over a good franchise they bought. Nope.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

Straight from beta...

They're currently discussing the possibility of rotating them out as each city is the culmination of all the RvR... and they do feel it will water down the experience at launch date with too much war front.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[haystor]

I suspect they want to avoid releasing head to head with Warcraft's expansion.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[74nova]

is that your opinion of DNF, screw deadlines? :-)

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[ScytheBlade1]

The exact release details are beyond me, yes. If it was never set in stone then I'll take your word for it. :)

And you're right, WoW launched without some *features* such as the honor system. They did, however, launch with all six capital cities, every single one of their classes, tens of hundreds of spells, and over 60 (or so? Exact numbers are beyond me) individual zones. WoW was largely content complete from the day it launched, just not feature complete.

When you compare this to Warhammer cutting 4/6 cities and 4 classes, things look quite a bit more bleak for Warhammer than they ever did with WoW.

Cutting a very large chunk of content just to make a release date is nothing good for the future of Warhammer.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[SBacks]

And, don't forget that Blizzard promised Hero Classes by release, and in-game weather.

Weather was added over a year later, and Hero Classes still aren't available.

That being said, all of these small details are nothing compared to ripping out two-thirds of the capital cities and 4 classes.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[aikouka]

Illidan wasn't included in The Burning Crusade either, but it's not like you had to pay for the patch to include the Black Temple nor will you have to pay for the patch that will add Icecrown Tower into WotLK.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Deadfyre_Deadsoul]

Another one of the announcements today was that Punkbuster would be used in Warhammer to detour cheaters. I think this is fab news. The classes and cities leave room for an expansion as well.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[negRo_slim]

A lot of content does not a good game make. Just look at Everquest and expansion after expansion. The game wasn't designed to support the huge amount of players that would of been required on the servers to make use of all the blasted content. In the end you had all this mid or used to be high level content just withering away in emptiness. It was really depressing in a sense. I'd much rather have content removed if it meant more social interaction or a better game over all.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[geekoid]

Money is the only reason I can see for keeping a hard release date in exchange for major content cuts.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[jayhawk88]

Let's not forget that Blizzard launched WoW in November of '04 in the US, right before the Christmas holiday. Let's also not forget that as (relatively) smooth as the WoW launch went, there were a lot of features that were missing from the launch version that Blizzard had clearly intended to be ready by launch, including some dungeons such as Maura, the honor system, etc. Let's also also not forget that in the fall/winter of '04, Blizzard was over a year removed from Warcraft 3, three years removed from Diablo 2, and five years removed from Starcraft.

Financial pressures affect every company, even Blizzard.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Grant_Watson]

Well, there is one more reason: sometimes you have to release now for the revenue. That's one of the things the team was plugging as a benefit of having been bought-- they could delay because the company wouldn't close if they didn't have cash right away.

Of course the discussions of what to cut wouldn't come up with EA-- why do the executives care what classes you cut, or zones?-- but the prospect of revenue very well might have. This makes me wonder if their Corporate Overlords are getting impatient.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[ScytheBlade1]

Got me there. If not releasing for another year means they go bankrupt, then sure, it'd be better to release now.

On the flip side, by releasing earlier they drastically reduce all chances they have of being successful in the long run.

The obvious proof of this statement is seen by comparing Blizzard to any other MMO company. One rolled a game that has 1-60 and 40+ zones, all of their classes and zones in-game. The other is cutting a HUGE amount just to make a date on a calendar (unless, yes, the real factor here is money).

Take your pick: a game where you know that you're missing 4/6 cities and 4 classes (HUUUUUGE balance implications), or a game which is actually considered mostly complete and sees regular content additions.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[PIBM]

I'll still keep waiting for it !

Wink =)

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[negRo_slim]

Even if he is correct, I don't feel like looking... Well it would make sense, Blizzard understands end game progression. You let the players learn the new stuff, let the gear dropped disperse unto the server's population, then add new content. It's a good system, keeps a good chunk of the server focused on a fewer areas and allows us all to get a taste before the content becomes boring for those players with progression in mind. Those same players are generally the backbone of any guild and there for it is important to keep everyone focused on the same thing.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[negRo_slim]

Maura

Hmmm, what zone would that instance be located in?

Or perhaps you were referring to Maraudon.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

While you're close to making a good statement, you're basing your entire post on the assumption everyone plays or has played WoW.
While WoW may be the mainstream MMO, it's certainly not perfect and certainly not for everyone.

To counter your example, Age of Conan doesn't consist of ex-WoW players only. A large portion came from games such as Anarchy Online, Everquest, DAoC, etc. Many of which never bothered to play WoW, which seems to target early teens as their audience.

Also, you're failing to factor in the insane costs of producing a massive online game.
Not every developer and publisher can afford several million a month to prolong development.
It has little to do with people waiting for the game indefinitely, it has to do with the total cost of development, which increases every time the game is delayed.

Increasing the total cost of development often also has a consequence of lowering the royalty rate the developer receives. This also motivates developers to stick to their deadlines, no matter the cost.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing stopping them from pushing their release dates back? How about a crowd of angry investors?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[ScytheBlade1]

Those investors will be even more angry a year from the release date when there are an entire nine people playing it.

I'm not saying it changes such a situation, I'm simply saying that it'll kill them in the long run.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Sethumme]

But put that in further perspective. WoW only had 2 cities that operated as major capitals - the 2 with auction houses. The rest were just bigger versions of any quest-and-merchant camp.

Furthermore, Warhammer was designed with a full 12 classes per faction (24 total), if I understand the game correctly. Removing 4 is not a huge loss. That is similar to the missing Hero Classes you mentioned.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[NoodleSlayer]

DAOC WAS a pretty damn good game (well, maybe not that emphatic but it at least was decent.) Then they started nerfing content, dumbing down content, devaluing and making PvE content nearly pointless. And then releasing two "expansions" that as far as content goes were extremely content-light, and yet still charged an extra $20 for them. (Labyrith, their last, at least had more content then Darkness Rising, but still).

There were a number of mistakes Mythic made in their handling of that game as it went on. The biggest one I think was caving into the incessant whining of their player base and nerfing class after class. For all the whining over Trials of Atlantis, it actually increased the size of the playerbase, not the other way around, and got people playing longer. Then they started driving away anyone that wanted to play PvE content by turning it into a defacto PvP-only game. Of course they didn't take into account that the PvP players typically aren't the ones that are going to be sticking around for a while either. But I think the biggest mistake they made was never raising the level cap. They kind of tried to with Master Levels and Champion Levels, but it never quite worked well.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[GrayNimic]

You say that "that is a luxury that most other studios don't have." And I disagree entirely. There is nothing stopping a studio from pushing their dates back. The only reason they don't is that they feel if they don't make their release date, then they will miss out of customers.

Not every studio has a bankroll like Blizzard. Lack of money to pay employees/rent/utilities tends to stop development.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[ScytheBlade1]

You're exactly right, I'm basing that entire post from a WoW player's perspective.

And sure, not everyone plays or has played WoW that will play AoC/Warhammer.

But if these are of any remotely correct value:
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart3.html
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart5.html

Suddenly you can see why I based my post off of that. Nothing even compares, even a little bit.

Every other MMO that has been released or will be released in the near future has been hailed by one person or another as the "great WoW killer" and in that regard, they have all failed.

It's just my opinion that they will all continue to keep failing until we get a company willing to push the release dates back enough to get a decent game out.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[snuf23]

2 new player races
Since Burning Crusade came out:

something like 10 new zones
15 new 5 man dungeons
2 new 10 man dungeons
7 new 25 man dungeons
Arena pvp combat
100s of quests

If this is lame, I wonder what you would call a good expansion.

1 expansion since the game launched 4 years ago. How is this similar to the Sims with 10+ expansions?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[goodmanj]

Except for how they're launching WotLK without the actual Lich King. He'll be patched in before the NEXT expansion comes out.

Well, they released the Burning Crusade without its arch-villain either (Illidan, who was the focus of all the trailers and promo stuff), and it worked out great. Players took a few months to burn through the lower-level content, and when they started to hit the content ceiling, Black Temple opened up. Call it "just-in-time game development", if you like, it worked out very well.

Putting the torch to 2/3 of your starting areas and half your player classes is not quite the same thing.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[LandDolphin]

I don't think there is going to be a "WoW Killer" until Blizzard decides to create another MMO. World of Diable/Starcraft?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard never announced a release date and pushed it back. They originally had an internal target release date around October/November, however that slipped back as alpha/beta testing continued. What happened is that they pushed beta testing back, without announcing a date. Don't mistake that for them announcing it, and failing to deliver.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly the opposite of quality.

Previously they had promised not to release the game until it was ready. Now they are cutting content to make the deadline...

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[ichigo 2.0]

In other words, they don't have faith in their own game?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Hognoxious]

they want to avoid releasing head to head with Warcraft's expansion.

Maye they just wanted to beat Duke Nukem Forever.

Karma be damned, someone had to say it.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[dtml-try MyNick]

Warhammer just lost a future customer.....
I'm a ex WoW player, thus very spoiled, got a bit bored from it and was really looking forward to Warhammer.

But if they are already cutting corners, taking out content just to meet their releasedate I'm willing to take bets that it will be just another 100 in a dozen mmo.

This simply tells me that they're just after the next big money machine behind WoW. And that they're not after the next big near perfect game (which will earn them even more money in the end I'm sure)

And *that* is a big mistake, the first studio that will do some serious damage to the WoW customer base will be the first studio that doesn't care about the release date. A MMO is something that's ment to be played for years, the players know that now, they know they need to look for solid end-game, solid designs and not hollow prommises like "it will be patched later"

My prediction, the first studio that will eat a large chunk out of the WoW customer base will be Blizzard itself.
No other studio has the balls to develop as long as they do. 1 or 2 more expansions for WoW, then Blizzard will announce their next MMO and people will buy that even if they have to pay for it with their souls.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Daswolfen]

Except for how they're launching WotLK without the actual Lich King. He'll be patched in before the NEXT expansion comes out.

I haven't seen this anywhere, but even if he isn't patched in on day one, they have stated from the beginning that it would take a whole raid full of 80s to take Arthas (you know him.. the Lich King.. undead guy on the frozen throne with Frostmourne). Considering the length of time it would take to gear up raids full of 80s, patching him later is a smart move. Besides... it is the SAME THING they did with Kael'thas Sunstrider in patch 2.4 when the introduced the Sunwell Plateau. You see... Blizzard has been really good about making content patches as well as bug patches, so anyone who has played WoW for more than a minute knows this.

Also, the instances/raids/zones of Dire Maul, various Battlegrounds, Blackwing Lair, Zul'Garub, Silithus, Ahn'Qiraj, Naxxramas, The Black Temple, Zul'Aman, and Sunwell were all released as free content patches (when other companies [i.e. Sony] would charge for them). This does not include all the 'fun' stuff like world events and changes to the environment.

Blizzard knows content is king, but they also know that you WoWheads will keep paying for their lame expansion packs.
Once again, your ignorance is showing. We are about to get the second expansion in the 4 years WoW has been around, if the rumored November release dates hold. Lets look at some of the other 'big' MMORPGS and see how they hold up.

Ultima Online Released 1997, Expansions released in 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2007 with one another on the horizon. Peak subscribers - 250,000.

Everquest Released 1999. Expansion released two expansion packs in 2000, 2001, 2002, and two every year for 2003-2007. That's a $30.00 expansion pack every 6 months! Peak subscribers - 430,000

Everquest II Released 2004 (going directly head to head with WoW). Expansions in 2005, two in 2006, and 2007. There was also 3 'Adventure Packs' released in 2005 and 2006 that were paid for equivalents of WoW's content patches. Peak subscribers - 350,000

Which brings us too...
World of Warcraft Released 2004, Expansion in early 2007, with a second to be relased this year acording to rumor. It has also released numerous FREE content patches (see above) that would be considered expansion packs in other MMORPGS. Peak Subscribers - over 10 MILLION worldwide.

So you keep drinking the 'Hater-ade' and 'QQ Moor' about something you obviously know nothing about, or at the very least bothered to google before spouting off and showing you are way south of GWB (or moss covered rocks, for that matter) in the intellect scale.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[genner]

Rumors are already spreading that diablo 3 will be a mmo.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[p0tat03]

Well. For many smaller studios they have very little funding, so not shipping now may mean not making the paychecks next month, so shipping an incomplete product is the lesser of two evils. Blizzard is sitting on top of a veritable mountain of money, they have the ability to wait.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Minwee]

That's "They know it's the game that counts, not when they run out of money to pay everybody".

Not every studio has infinitely deep pockets.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

And posts from the developers themselves are saying that it won't be. Maybe 3 months ago, it was rumored to be an MMO, but that is entirely false as of about two weeks ago.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS-]

Social interaction doesnt matter as much to me if I cannot kill and loot other players. Real pvp needs to have real risks and rewards.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Dorkmaster Flek]

Well. For many smaller studios they have very little funding, so not shipping now may mean not making the paychecks next month, so shipping an incomplete product is the lesser of two evils. Blizzard is sitting on top of a veritable mountain of money, they have the ability to wait.

Yes, but that fails on two points: 1) Blizzard was a small company once too. Everybody has to start somewhere. 2) These guys have EA behind them, so funding shouldn't be an issue. That is, if EA doesn't mind providing additional funding to finish the game properly...

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Bobartig]

This is NOT why Blizzard is so successful. When game companies delay products, even for just a month or two, the usual result is catastrophic losses, like losing 1/5 of projected sales.

In the industry, games get delayed all the time, and the rule of thumb is that it has a high probability of gutting your sales.

Blizzard succeeds DESPITE having no hard development deadlines, and working on a game "until its done". Their success is despite this practice, not due to it. Other game companies cannot make this model work.

As for Warhammer online cutting 4/6 cities and multiple character classes to launch, I don't know how much this really matters, or how this will be perceived. It is already understood within MMOs that content additions follow a steady schedule for years, so the amount that is "done" at launch is significantly less important in that respect.

If they can deliver a polished, engaging, cohesive experience with the content they have, then roll out the additional content in the next two months, then this could have no substantive effect for customers, besides the bad PR this will naturally generate.

If avid MMO fans get this game, and run out of things to do in the first month, and the delayed content takes 3 months to get done, it could be devastating for this game's success.

The worst is if the addition of the delayed content requires massive retrofitting and rebalancing to integrate. Having large game changes just months after a game releases is deadly to your fan-base. That, and adding what is essentially a core character class later in the game seems like it could precipitate this result.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing even compares, even a little bit.
 
Guild Wars does. To exclude it you have to define MMO in a very specific way and if you are playing with definitions you can make your stats say anything you want.... which is what they did.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Zondar]

"Blizzard understands end game progression"

Yeah, only if you like standing around looking for groups for hours and hours on end between "Tier 1" 5-mans and everything else.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[sflory]

Note that WAR is going to

A)launch with more classes that WOW has now even with removals! Sure you lose 2 tank, and 2 melee dps classes, but each faction still has 2 tanking classes, and 2 melee dps class. (F4 each type total) Wow has only druid, war, pally for tanking. And for dps rogue, war, and druid. (If you contend enhancement shammy, ret pallys count you've out of your mind, and I really hope to see you in 2v2 arena....)

B)have better capital cities that WoW does. When was the last time you were in a WoW capital city for more than quick stop at the auction house, and bank? Heck if Shat had an auction house I'd never be their. Even pre it was to pickup and drop off few quests and train. War is planning for over 100 quests in each city, and 2 dungeons. That puts WoW shame.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[morcego]

This is, unfortunately, a fallacy we also hear about software companies: software development always takes longer than planned.

I used to think that was true myself. Until I once met a software company with real professional leading the teams and on management. Not talking about MBA crap. I'm talking "software development management" professionals. During the 3 years I had contact with them, they never missed a deadline (and released earlier either). They were right on the spot every single time. That proved to me that, even if it is rare to meet a professional that can do it, it is possible to estimate total time and cost of development. For me, this thing about "having to remove features to release on the schedule date" screams incompetence.

The project executed by the company I mentioned earlier were not small, by the way. We are talking about 15-30 people for each project, with hundreds of lines of code, usually spanning 8 months of more of development.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[thrash242]

McDonald's has sold billions of hamburgers worldwide. That means they make the best hamburgers in the world, right?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Bobartig]

The only reason they don't is that they feel if they don't make their release date, then they will miss out of customers.

That, and the copious amounts of sales data over the years that confirms this directly.

The financial wizzes and people with "Chief" in their title at game publishers all know what significant delays can do to the sales numbers of their titles.

Now, if you are not a market analyst for a game company, or have never spent any time talking with game executives, then I would expect you not to know these things, but it is still ignorant to loads of empirical data.

The entire MMO market is not saturated right now. It is growing steadily, and incorporating more demographics. That is what continues to drive the spiraling number of MMO projects currently in development.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[dcollins]

"There is nothing stopping a studio from pushing their dates back. The only reason they don't is that they feel if they don't make their release date, then they will miss out of customers."

As a former computer game engineer, I'll have to disagree with this part. They reason most game companies run into a hard release date is that they're physically out of money right *now*, to the extent that they can't afford payroll or rent the next month.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Actually, I do RTFA]

) Take the time necessary to create a desirable product and presto, you have fans that will be waiting for your next release and creating a hype-machine for you in the meantime.

Sometimes, you cannot afford to wait until next time around. Like suppose you bought the rights to Warhammer Online? Your whole company might ride on that one product. You may even have to ship by an arbitary deadline or lose the rights.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[ejWasTaken]

...We are talking about 15-30 people for each project, with hundreds of lines of code, usually spanning 8 months of more of development.

Wow,*hundreds* of lines? Over 8 months? These guys must be code-ninjas!

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

People will wait on games because they're looking forward to them.

No, they will wait on the games because they are waiters or perhaps waitresses. The rest of us are willing to wait for games.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[McGuirk]

True indeed. They'd dug themselves a hole with all this new content that I liked to believe had made DAoC too old and patchy to be salvageable.

But, thanks to EA, it looks like we won't have a spiritual sequel to DAoC afterall.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Magneon]

Actually WoW had 6 capitol cities (3 per faction) and added 3 more (one per faction and a neutral one). Presuming capitol is defined as the leading city in a race/society as opposed to a faction. If you're going by auction houses, there are 12 or so if you count all of the goblin cities.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

Hush WOW would have been so much better if it only had orc/human war dwarf/undead priest and human/undead mage as the only playable classes/races...
Then everything can be perfectly balanced!

It is so funny cause i know so many people that have been waiting on this game since like Blackwings lair was added to wow. And now they have butchered like 80% of the content so they can attempt to sell there POS MMO.

WTB diablo 3 a real online pwnage game...

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Sethumme]

But that wasn't the case on release. For the first 6 months to a year, there were only 2 faction auction houses, and one goblin auction house that was rarely used (besides trading between a player's characters) Apart from the auction house, what makes one location any better than another? The "capital" cities that did not have auction houses were basically ghost towns at WoW's release. So they had quest givers and trainers, those could be found elsewhere. Just because Warhammer lost some "big" cities doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other cities to explore.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[myowntrueself]

When WoW came out there was a TON of stuff missing.

Go check the early patch notes.

sheesh...

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

EvE has had many free content patches and their subscriber count is maybe 300k.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[sorrowsjudge]

Gameplay videos have already been released. Not an MMO. http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3/media/index.xml#movies

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[brkello]

Your analogy fails. MMORPGs, for the most part, cost about the same. McD hamburgers are extremely cheap and that is why they have sold so many. Since price is not a variable in this equation, we have to analyze what makes the difference.

The parent post was simply stating that Blizzard does not release a ton of lame expansions. The have released much fewer expansions, and the expansions tend to be very large. They release plenty of content updates for free. This model works for them, so you would be stupid if you went in to the MMORPG market and didn't look to WoW to see what to do to get a large player-base.

Nothing is ever going to be "best" to everyone. But to the majority of people out there, WoW is the best MMORPG to date. you may not like it, but you have to be fairly daft not to respect what they have done.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Chyeld]

Well until Valve gets into the MMO business that is.

*Drools*

"Welcome. Welcome, to City 17. You have chosen, or been chosen, to relocate to one of our finest remaining urban centers. I thought so much of City 17, that I elected to establish my administration, here, in the citadel, so thoughtfully provided by our benefactors. I am proud to call City 17 my home. And so, whether you are here to stay, or passing through to parts unknown, welcome, to City 17. It's safer here."

"But, could you please bring us 10 headcrab fangs for... research purposes? Here's a cowbar."

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Kerkyon]

hundreds of lines of code, usually spanning 8 months of more of development.

Well, that's why they always met their schedules.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[geminidomino]

I think it's telling that you automatically equate "social interaction" with "PvP"

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Forrest Kyle]

Are you serious? "Hundreds" of lines of code? I have had small homework assignments that made it into several thousand lines.

Hopefully you meant "hundreds of thousands"?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Sparckus]

Where is the -1 Pile of shite option? Real pvp != shitloads of grinding after getting fucked over. Real pvp is outfoxing your opponent because of your skill at said game, not because he's been rodgered up the arse for the umpteenth time and had all his hawt shit nicked.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

An Expansion that makes the game less mind numbingly boring and repetitive? just a thought.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

Having played EvE Online, and having played WoW, and AoC - WoW is by far the best-made of them. I may not agree with everything they do, I may not like "the grind", but it is certainly the most polished.

  (no ship, though. Left the corp.)

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Opportunist]

Now, do you really want to tell me that the Warhammer franchise isn't strong enough to make people buy the game, no matter when it comes out? The world itself is so rich that a fan won't simply buy another game and go "meh, that's been done before" when WHO comes out.

Your argument may be valid for any vanilla fantasy MMORPG (it's not like there is any shortage thereof these days), but WHO did actually have the power to dethrone WoW. It has the same assets WoW had, i.e. a deep, detailed storyline, maybe more so than WoW ever did. But with a half baked game, they will first turn away those that buy it as "just another fantasy MMORPG", and finally the ones that like or outright love WH, pissed that their wonderful game was converted in such a wretched way into an MMORPG.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[toolie]

How is four classes our of something like 18 half?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Opportunist]

ToA opened a can of worms they couldn't handle in the long run. The first was that you pretty much needed a large group to get your gear. At first, this wasn't so much of a problem until most people had their stuff. Try to get any ToA gear now. You will not find a group. My guess is that this is why they introduced the "classic" server. Not to mention that the ToA gear made melee classes fairly point- and powerless. Standing in perpetustun isn't fun when you need to be toe to toe with an enemy.

What they tried with ToA was to give the players who already topped out something to do and something to keep them around longer. What it did in the long run was to give top level players an advantage gap no player who's still "climbing the ladder" could close at any rate. The power of a group of players in maxed ToA gear was unstoppable. How do you "level" your gear in PvP when your chance to die are ten times higher than your chance to make a kill?

Before you ask, I was in one of those zerg groups. It gets boring when you routinely mow down other groups without a single loss.

I stopped playing shortly after DR. DR pretty much told me that the good ol' days are over. Instanced dungeons that you better do alone (with a Vampire, it was your best bet, actually...), why bother playing an MMORPG?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[snuf23]

Obviously it's not for you. I suggest the Sims.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Opportunist]

Pulling out features to make the release isn't such an immediate killer. It depends what you pull out. When you pull some area and release it later, no biggie. It can even be a starting area, just rewrite the story and have the race start elsewhere, as "refugees" after their homeland has been overrun by something evil. You could even turn it into a server event to "unlock" the starting area once you're done with it.

But pulling four classes and pretty much crippling two entire sides by removing their main tank is a killer. How's this going to work out?

I smell another Earth and Beyond in the making.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Opportunist]

We're talking EA here, ok? If they're really down low enough that they HAVE to release it or it breaks their neck...

I dunno, should I be worried or rejoice? I get mixed emotions here...

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Opportunist]

That only works out if you have professionals on all levels. As soon as you have a beancounter without a clue about software sitting somewhere, it gets ugly. He will simply slash down your time. You want to finish in October? No dice man, my quarter reports are due in September, you'll finish in September...

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[rwillard]

He is correct, but it's not really as valid a point as he might think. End-game content is always patched in gradually, and the Lich King is the end boss of this expansion in the same way that Archimonde was the end boss of The Burning Crusade. If the expansion opened with the Lich King, it'd mean he was one of the early tier bosses. *shrug*

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[bug1]

EVE and WoW are opposites.

EVE is well very designed (its a crafter/traders wet dream) but the programmers are nubs, lots of little bugs get through. And there is the stackless python server that they love so much, crap server performance, server written using an interpreted language, and they wonder why they need the massive supercomputer that they have...

WoW has good programmers, you dont see the type of bugs you do in eve, but the WoW designers are very reactionary, eg nerf/buf classes based on their popularity in the previous 3 months and the amount of crying on the forums.

Is it too much to ask for a well designed and implemented game ?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that just it - They "will join them the moment that games comes out - be it tomorrow or in two years"?

Better give them some crap tomorrow, and get the two years of payments, since they're gonna join anyway, even if it is crippled.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[garylian]

The problem with the subscription numbers you are throwing about is that they have ZERO correlation to the content updates and/or expansions.

UO and EQ1 were the frontrunners. Before those 2, there really wasn't any MMOs worth speaking of. Sure, someone will pull some names out of their ass, but let's be honest about it. UO was the first major MMO, and EQ1 quickly put it to shame with its level of graphics and detail. It was a new age of online gaming. And EQ1 had an incredible run as the top dog, but it wasn't friendly to older systems, and it wasn't casual player friendly.

Blizzard had a LOT of time to sit back and say "well, we see part of what makes a game successful, but what can we do to improve on it?" Meanwhile, SOE decided "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", which was obviously not a smart move on their part.

So, you had EQ2 released about 2 weeks prior to WoW.

EQ2 went for the higher end gamer that would happily plunk down a ton of money to get the best graphics they could. Remember, EQ2 was released with graphics that even the top end machines couldn't run smoothly on the higest settings. They vastly improved the quest system, but they still had Corpse Recoveries (CRs) and they made the really bizarre choice of not letting you have your final character until level 20. The craft system was a tedious bore. In a nutshell, the game was chock full of time sinks that SOE believed made EQ1 so enjoyable.

Blizzard made some much smarter choices with WoW. Their graphics were cartoonish, and they didn't require a robust system to run, which has enabled millions more to play the game without spending anything on their machines. Gameplay was addictively fun early on, with a player knowing exactly what player class they would be from the first level. Crafting was easy. There was very little in the way of time sinks, and they had the Blizzard and Warcraft names that millions of gamers that had never played a MMO could look at and say "I'm going to try a MMO finally." I believe that numbers on those MMO charts will show they had about 3 million subscribers before the first month was done. As long as you weren't on one of the "Terrible 20" servers (I was, but survived it), the launch was nothing short of awesome.

Which brings us to today.

WoW has had 1 major expansion, and several updates via patches to add more content. The level cap has risen by 10 since launch, but once you hit cap, you either are stuck in the PvP rut, or you are just grinding for gear sets with crappy odds for a drop. If you don't like PvP and gear grinding, you can play alts, but once out of the race starting areas, a lot of the game is exactly the same. A lot of people play because they think there is nothing better out there. And for many of them, they are probably right.

EQ2 has had 4 major expansions, and some minor updates via patches. The level cap has risen by 30 since launch, and once you hit cap, it's gear grinding. If you don't like gear grinding, you can play alts, with a little more variety outside of the starting area than WoW, and a lot more class/race options, but eventually you are in the same rut. But the major thing is the game has gone through a lot of redesigns to make it more enjoyable. You now start the class you end up. CRs are a thing of the past. Tradeskills are quite easy. For some WoW players that have been looking for something better, this is the game. They just don't know it, or refuse to believe it.

So, if EQ2 has had more content added to the game, and has more playable classes/races than WoW, why are the numbers for WoW over 10 million, and EQ2 isn't growing that fast? It's simple.

MMOs are social games. You play them with friends, and make new friends while in game. When everyone and their brother is playing one game, and you want to start playing a MMO, which one are you going to choose? Heck, if I was just starting to play MMOs, I'd pick WoW, too. It's base learning curve is much shorter, and your odds of being able to play wi

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Actually, I do RTFA]

We're talking EA here, ok?

No, we're talking Mythic Entertainment. It may now be a wholly owned subsidiar of EA, but the people in charge of it don't have access to all of EA's cash, and don't want to lose their fiefdom.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[p0tat03]

1) Blizzard was a small company once too. Everybody has to start somewhere.

The level of investment required to produce a game when Blizzard first started was far less than what it is today. Remember that in the beginning it WAS actually possible for 3 guys in a basement to produce a game sold in local shops. Try that today.

The idea is that Blizzard built their fortune when the barrier to entry was still low. It is nigh impossible for a developer to do so now - the notable exception being Valve.

There's also a large element of luck and skill to it. If your team works well and puts out your first few games with no delays, then you've built up a significant leeway for your later projects.

2) These guys have EA behind them, so funding shouldn't be an issue. That is, if EA doesn't mind providing additional funding to finish the game properly...

So does every other major studio - everyone has a publisher backing them. But, when push comes to shove many publishers are unwilling to throw more money at an investment they already see as failed. Blizzard self-publishes, and are immune to this effect.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[vikstar]

"But, could you please bring us 10 headcrab fangs for... research purposes? Here's a cowbar."

God no, please no. Not more grinding gathering and kill quests...

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Artuir]

If you haven't touched Lineage 2 yet, you need to. And then realize how horrid the entire system is because it's a stupid, stupid idea.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[eharvill]

Nothing to do with EA

Yeah right. Because EA has never done anything ever to screw over a good franchise they bought. Nope.

I could be mistaken, but it is my understanding if EA did not come in a purchase Mythic, WHO would have been released 6 months ago or so and probably had very similar AoC type launch. That being said, I still don't agree with them launching without having major content ready. At least they are disclosing the information up front and not AFTER 500k people have purchased the game.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[TriggerFin]

If I had had any intention of buying this game, I would now wait until they had released patches that brought it up to the level it should have been released at. If there were any additional cost involved in getting them, or if they never materialized, they wouldn't get my money for this game.

Because of the EA connection, however, they won't be getting my money anyway, until I get a patch for SimGolf that makes the rewards you get, like Dinosaur Tarpits, actually available for placement again. (Not that I'll ever play the game again, but I have to stand by my principles.)

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[run4power]

Was the strength stat bugged or something? What do you mean it does nothing?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[DerWulf]

could go either way: if the reason that people are waiting for WAR is that they are through all the content (cause let's remember that most people probably don't quit WoW because they are infuriated about the game) then a WAR release after WOTLK could harm them. Generally I agree with you though: time to market is important but in the MMORPG market games get killed by lackluster releases (see AOC). I wonder why that lesson has not been learned. I also wonder why for all the great talent game studios assemble there seems to be nobody that is able to plan worth a damn. Had the WAR guys targeted their release for 2009 I think they would have completed the game in time and on quality (budget, maybe not but as always: pick two).

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[DerWulf]

You sound a lot like a person with this "Chief" in the title. I still have to disagree with you: premature releases (which is not the same as incomplete but incompleteness certainly indicates prematurity) kill games and make laughing stock of the company and publisher. Lost future sales because of this is not easy to estimate but I'll give you an example: I tried AOC and it was unoptimized, unbalanced, bland, incomplete and buggy. I told around 15 people who as a direct consequence did not buy the title. You can do the math ...

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Endo13]

I have no idea whether you're wrong or you're right. At this point, that can't really be considered more than a rumor. But EA's track record for PC games over the last 6 years speaks for itself: almost every game in that span has been released well before it was ready, and been full of bugs. Some were barely playable, not even finished enough to be considered a proper beta.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

And I want to play a game where any arsehole can kill me and take my gear... why?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets stop saying FREE.
"like in "World of Warcraft Released 2004, Expansion in early 2007, with a second to be relased this year acording to rumor. It has also released numerous FREE*** content patches (see above) that would be considered expansion packs in other MMORPGS. Peak Subscribers - over 10 MILLION worldwide."
So let's see. 12 dollars a month x12 x3 years. plus the game 30 dollars ( I will make it cheap)
These FREE upgrade cost you...432 US DOLLARS! SO STOP WITH THE "FREE" UPGRADES!

  Lets compare that with GuildWars. I paid 60 dollars, and DONT PAY ANYMORE! I had this game for 2 years, and I bought one expension...60 dollars and I played for another 1 year. Grand total for 3 years is 120 dollars. The game has FREE updates, patches, events. When I dont play, I dont pay, when I play I dont pay either.I did not had to pay for expansion either because everyone maxes out at 20 and IT IS ABOUT YOUR SKILL and NOT GRIND that WoW is the master of.

  So stop with that FREE bullshit updates with WoW's expensions.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[thrash242]

Ok, here's a better analogy: Windows vs. Linux. Windows has the vast majority of the desktop market, despite being more expensive than an alternative and lower in quality. People use it because it's what other people they know use, it's what's in stores, and they don't really know any better, which sounds very similar to why many people play WoW.

As far as expansions, Eve Online has never charged for an expansion and it's been around longer that WoW. There have already been two major ones out this year.

I don't respect WoW at all. It is the McDonald's of MMOs, or the AOL, if you prefer that analogy. It is a watered-down, dumbed down product designed to appeal to as many people as possible, while not offering any new game-play or innovations. It is just a mixture of things that worked in previous MMOs with a layer of polish. It is not innovative, and in fact, has set back innovation in MMOs, since most new MMOs seem to copy what WoW has done in a misguided effort to get some if WoW's success instead of trying new things. This always fails, as it's hard to out-WoW a company with the resources of Blizzard.

I firmly believe that MMOs as a genre would be better off had WoW never existed.

My main point, however, is that number of customers does not necessarily indicate quality. The number of users of Windows vs those of superior, free OSes illustrates this.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

In-game weather is a nice touch, but certainly not game breaking if it isn't there. Hero classes, well... I will admit I would like to be able to play a Death Knight right now, but all the actual player classes they promised were there on release.

I don't remember those being promised for game release though. Of course, I didn't have any interest in WoW until it had been out for a year, but friends of mine were into it from the early days (fans of the RTS games, even) and none of them have said anything about how those were supposed to be in at release.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Herkum01]

Great, I was just picturing one of the classes would be those commando guys. It would be played by griefers who run around saying "GO RECON" non-stop.

God forbid we even go to Counter-Strike Online, everyone running around with knives stabbing each other.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[SanityInAnarchy]

There go my mod points...

Ever play Gungame? It's 30 minutes of that. Start with a knife round, for practice (doesn't count) -- then level up from pistols, through each gun in sequence. The final levels are grenade and knife, though, to make the win difficult.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Mike610544]

It's not just that Blizzard holds back their games until they are ready, it's that they have fans that will WAIT until Blizzard's games come out. That is a luxury that most other studios don't have.

Really? Does anyone ever say "I've heard this new game is really incredible, but they didn't ship on time so I'm not buying it." I'm pretty sure the motivation to ship unfinished games comes from short sighted efforts to put good numbers on a quarterly spreadsheet.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

Blizzard was a successful company long before it came out with World of Warcraft, though. And it's not all that uncommon for large publishers to force a game out the door because they don't want to risk additional money on it -- although sometimes it's the other way around, the publisher says "this is too buggy, go work on it more".

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[ensignyu]

I'd sign up in a heartbeat for a game with a cowbar :)

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

WoW didn't have six capital cities it had 3. Wow was missing most of its end game content it had to be patched in. WoW was like every other mmo buggy and missing shit at release.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Daswolfen]

Your arguement makes you sound like a movie critic. You say such and such movie is bad, the acting is bad, the story is bad, etc... and yet the movie makes 300 million at the box office.

You say the numbers don't mean anything, but they do. They show that it is a product the people want, they want to play that way, and a vocal minority (like movie critics) are all that gets written about, so they make their statements with their subscriptions.

I play EQ2 when I want a break from WoW (or CoH/V) and there are some things in EQ2 that are great, but there is a lot that is pure crap (including the UI... but EQ2Naos us awesome... the rest... not so much). As far as what constitutes 'more mature' the chat I have seen in EQ2 rivals Barrens chat.

So you gave WoW 9 months? So you quit shortly after BWL was patched in.. you missed the opening of Silithus, the Dragons of Nightmare, the race to open Gates of Ahn'Qiraj, the nightmare that was Naxxramas.

You say that once you grind to the level cap, then all there is to do is either get gear or PVP...

Obviously you either have no raid experience whatsoever, or you missed the point entirely. Raiding is not about getting gear. That is a nice byproduct. Raiding is about testing yourself and your guild against the best the game world can throw at you. Its about the rush you get the first time you down Onyxia. Its about the scorching heat of battle in Molten Core. Its about wave upon wave of orcs, bugs, trolls and demons. Its about struggling through the reaches of the Black Temple and throwing down those who would make themselves out to be a god.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me Warhammer is effectively castrating themselves.

It's important to keep things in perspective. The capital city sieges were the over-riding goals of the war efforts, a reward culminating at the end of the majority of the gameplay where you get to sack/defend capital cities when you get to them. But you would spend less than 5% of your RvR time in these cities imo, and arguably focusing the players and content development on two of them could be better. The vast majority of our playtime will be in the open RvR areas and normal scenarios. So I do not see the cut as being too devastating â" however, they will probably need to open up those 2 war fronts within a year or maybe one front in 6 months.

Cut:
* Dwarf / Greenskin capital RvR
* High Elf / Dark Elf capital RvR
* Scenarios involved in sacking / defending these 4 cities.

Still in game:
* Empire / Chaos capitals, fleshed out with double the original content
* Dwarf, Greenskin, High Elf and Dark Elf capitals for PvE content are still in I believe.
* 80% of each of the... nine? tier 4 zones will still be open RvR with keep captures and other objectives. This is where the majority of the play will be imo.
* The rest of the scenarios... will need to find some more data on how many this will be.
* The end game PvE content, which is 20% of the nine zones and an instanced dungeon so far I believe.

That content, if its polished and high quality (important!) is more than enough at the release of the game imo.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had mod points, I'd mod you -1 sycophant.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[TeraCo]

It might have had '6 capital' cities, but all of Kalimdor was a joke compared to the Eastern Kingdoms.

Kalimdor is only just starting to compare to the EK with the revamp of Ashenvale and Theramore.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[NeMon'ess]

If Warhammer needs six more months too "cook", then what's stopping you from buying it six months after its release when all the cities and classes have been included?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[rtb61]

However pulling out features to meet cost budgets and then saying it is about deadlines does kill a product. Seems more like the product is being dumped onto the market with a reduced feature set, hence reduced cost, to see if their target market will accept it as it is ie. more profit. Then the features will be added 'er' charged for as an expansion pack ie. more profit. So EA at work, bean counters versus game developers, expect a full suit a bugs as customer pay for the privilege of being beta testers ie. even more profit.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[hatchet]

Crappy programmers make a lot of code that does nothing. Seems you are one of them.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

Iron forge, stormwind, darnassus, orgrimmar, thunderbluff, undercity... that's 6 i believe?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you fucking retarded? Go read some gaming news please.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[ildon]

You clearly don't even know what "tier 1" means.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Jealous

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[discord5]

Lets look at some of the other 'big' MMORPGS and see how they hold up.

Eve Online releases it's expansions free of charge, and it has been doing that for a lot longer than Blizzard has been running WoW.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[revengance]

Actually, the real problem is not that they have cave in to incessant whining but rather not solving the real problems of the game. There are a lot of good ideas but the implementation was pathetic. For example, they have this "class lead" idea where a player is chosen to take feedback from the player base, filter them and give feedback to mythic. Instead of acknowledging and fixing the problems to the game (after some tremendous work by the class leads), mythic usual reply was that the problems was "as designed". Another main problem was that there are serious "bugs" that mythic never get around fixing or take years to fix. I guess everyone had their patience, and when WoW came out, 90% of the players leave the game within a few months. Of course, some of the main problems and bugs was fixed after that, but by then, they already lose that players.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[revengance]

One of the indicators that WAR will fail was that it had taken so long to come out. I had read somewhere that DAoC (Mythic previous successful game) took like $5million and 18 months.). WAR is starting to sound like shadowbane.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[revengance]

I wish I have mods points to give you +1 funny

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[MightyDrunken]

I agree completely with you ScytheBlade1

The entire MMO market is saturated right now, with WoW. Those who want to play other MMOs, such as Age of Conan or Warhammer Online will wait indefinitely for one simple reason: they are dissatisfied with Blizzard for one reason or another, and these are the people who are not only just dissatisfied, but will also remain dissatisfied indefinitely.

One thing which occurs to me with Warhammer Online is many people already know a lot of the background from Games Workshop games. I would say it is a better than average fantasy setting with a huge history and world. Therefore if the game is fairly good it's possible for people who do like WoW would still be tempted to try Warhammer Online out. The most important thing for multi player games is a fairly broad player base, any game is more fun playing with your mates. Therefore releasing a MMORPG unfinished will just disillusion the people who would buy it anyway and their friends won't bother. WoW only became so dominating because of this bandwagon effect. Ah well I guess I will wait for the next so called "WoW killer". Warhammer 40K could rock.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[revengance]

Knowing Mythic, there will always be HUUUUUUGE balance implications

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Kaukomieli]

For all the whining over Trials of Atlantis, it actually increased the size of the playerbase, not the other way around, and got people playing longer.

While the number of subscriptions based on Mythics announcements increased after toa-release (http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html) people still argue this was due to an increase in buffbot-accounts, seeing a widerange adoption at that time.
ToA was a mistake, since it introduced overpowered abilities and classes that even today still have live with pathing- and LOS-bugs. It alienated especially casual gamers who did not have time or patience to sit through 6-10 hour-raids. While those raids might be common in other MMORPGS like WoW, too, players can enjoy the game without them. Mythic made the abilities acquired by those raids a must-have in DAoC-RvR, thus killing playing-experience for many players.

Mythic did learn something from DAoC, but they could have learned a lot more, especially regarding balance- and population-issues - and planned accordingly.
Mythic has a bad track record in balancing classes, introducing abilities that are inherently overpowered, or become so when combined with other abilities and afterwards overnerfing those classes.
I do not trust Mythic and especially not Mark Jacobs with my money before I have seen the final product work.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Daswolfen]

Eve Online is not one of the 'Big' MMORPG (they peaked at 100k in 2006 and from what I can find only have a 40k - 50k estimated player base today. So by the criteria I used for my post, Eve Online does not measure up. Yes, they may give away their expansions, but where has that gotten them? They have a core of niche players who are space simulator players and want space combat. At their peak, the were just barely 1% of World of Warcraft. Unless they do something spectacular, they will wither away quietly, never to be heard from again.

And this list was not meant to be all inclusive because I left out Lords of the Rings Online (which is only a year old), City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, Pirates of the Burning Seas, Dark Age of Camelot, Guild Wars and Final Fantasy XI just to name a few of the bigger ones, not to mention all of the failed (Matrix Online) and "free" MMOROGs.

There will be MMORPGS that come (I for one am excited about Stargate Worlds) and that go, but until Blizzard releases its next gen MMORPG, World of Warcraft will remain the big dog in the MMORPG yard. Even if the player base drops to 10% of peak, that is still 1,000,000 players, more than double what EQ (the biggest MMORPG before WoW) was at its peak.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[devnull17]

It's not the fans that make the difference; it's their incredibly deep pockets that let them fund additional years of development with no finished product.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[dtml-try MyNick]

For me, the mentality.

The fact that they are willing to release a unfinished game just so they can cash in at Christmas is reason enough to not buy it at all.

It's simply a display of money before gameplay and that is in my book the biggest fault any developer can make.
Six months after the release I want to see content added that was planned for a post-release patch, not the content that should have been in there in the first place.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Shinobi]

One of the great ironies with all this is that SOOOOO much of Warcraft/Starcraft/World of Warcraft is ripped straight from GW work, and not at all inventive.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[thesandtiger]

I won't buy it in 6 months because they've already established a precedent for rushing things out, unfinished, just to make a release date. If they'll do that for their launch, then it isn't much of a stretch to think they'll do that for anything else they add on to it. In other words, they have essentially issued a press release saying they are absolutely willing to put out a substandard offering to meet an arbitrary deadline.

Why would I want to buy a product from them now or in six months? Why would I want to play a game offered by a company willing to sacrifice quality in the name of expediency, knowing that such sacrifices will likely be made in the future as well since they're willing to fuck up their launch?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Forrest Kyle]

Crappy programmers go to colleges that don't assign difficult challenges on a regular basis, requiring more then a few lines of java. Seems you are one of them.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[fortunato]

World of Diablo would sell better than WoW I'd bet. But Diablo is sort of a semi-MMO already.

Honestly, I think half the success of Warcraft is the same reason MySpace is so popular. Its first a social hangout, game second. And the game is simple enough to learn that anyone can play it - as with setting up a MySpace page.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[fortunato]

The real reason Blizzard has only released (or will release) 2 expansion packs so far is that they DON'T have to release expansion packs to rack in the bucks. They don't need to get a burst of income in order to cover the cost of development of content. They are already racking it in. Expansions are just gravy and, I'd argue, really just to keep the game interesting enough so people keep drinking the Kool-Aid. ;)

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[NeMon'ess]

There are Diablo fans who would love the chance to play a 70% complete version of Diablo 3 six months before it's full roll-out.

So think of the launch as a partial roll-out. It's most of the game for people who will be happy enough just having that to play. Adjust your mentality and you'll have fun.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[NeMon'ess]

This is an MMO. HOW will this attitude change the reality of future content and expansions? New content will be done when it's done. So future content will come out as it's completed. New features will come out when they're done.

The only way their attitude will impact gamers is in the expansions. They'll announce an expansion has X, Y, and Z. Then they'll cut Z so you can get to play X and Y sooner. Then as soon as Z is finished, it'll be added to.

So you'll have gotten to play X and Y sooner than you would have if Blizzard was releasing the expansion. Then you'll get to play Z as soon as it's done. Adjust your mentality and look at it as a good thing, not a bad one.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[d_i_r_t_y]

All the more reason to wait on Darkfall, the only MMO worth the wait.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[bigstrat2003]

If it was several thousand lines of code, it wasn't a small homework assignment. A small homework assignment would be a few hundred lines of code. Several thousand lines is a fairly big homework assignment.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[KDR_11k]

I think it's more that they have a PUBLISHER who's willing to wait.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

I am afraid of the game that tries to compete with that. Everyone knows the WoW's code is clearly written by the devil to steal the souls of nerds. I've seen the game suck the soul out of someone inside of a half hour. Its ridiculous.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[KDR_11k]

Depends on whether content means locations, monsters, etc or gameplay mechanics.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[thesandtiger]

They are pushing out an unfinished product now, and in my experience with MMOs, when a company gets into the habit of pushing out now, fixing later, that sets the tone for the entire project. I have *no* reason to expect that they will change their behavior down the road and every reason to expect that they are going to keep up this kind of rush rush mentality.

What really nails it for me is that much of the removed stuff is "just" content - it isn't like they are saying "We wanted to add in x, y and z features which would be revolutionary and incredibly cool but it's just not technically feasible right now." They're saying "we couldn't have our art and content team finish 4/6ths of the game" - that screams of really bad project management, and really bad project management in MMOs generally leads to massive failure.

It will take a LOT of really glowing player reviews of WAR to get me to consider buying it, and it'll take longer than 6 months of said reviews, and both of those conditions are because of how they've handed their launch. If the game is still around, well received and going strong a year after launch, I'll consider it.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

Guild Wars barely qualifies as an MMO. Not disparaging it as a game, but when nearly every bit of actual gameplay is instanced that's hardly an MMO.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a cowbar.

Man, that must be a heavy weapon to tote around City 17.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[KDR_11k]

That's where Scotty accounting comes in: "We'll finish in February"

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[garylian]

I played EQ1 for 5 years. I have a LOT of experience with raiding. I have way too much experience with gear grinding, and progression grinding. I got tired of feeling like a gerbil on a freaking wheel.

Sure, the FIRST time you kill a mob, it's damn cool. But the whole reason you are there to kill that mob is the hope that some really nice piece of gear will drop, and you will win it. Well, that gets really old after a while, when you have 1 piece of your best set, and have killed that same mob 30-some times. Either your class piece doesn't drop, or it does drop, and someone else wins it. Or you have some darn DKP system set up, so you HAVE to go on EVERY SINGLE RAID to make sure you have a reasonable chance to win the item, and once you win it, you're most likely at the bottom of the totem pole waiting on the next piece.

Yeah, I played the game for 9 months, and ran out of stuff to do besides gear grind and PvP. And while they added a dungeon or so to the game while I was there, it was just one more place to gear grind in. And I didn't miss anything. I got out before those things were patched in, but I didn't *miss* them.

You have fun chasing that carrot on the stick (one of my favorite items in WoW, btw. That was a hoot when you first find it) while I'll try new things.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[KDR_11k]

They'll announce A,B and C for the first expansion, release it with A and B, say C gets patched in, announce the second expansion with C, D and E, release it with C and D, etc.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[KDR_11k]

I think there could be but MMO designers are thinking too much inside the box so all MMOs are alike and almost noone has the ability to beat Blizzard on even footing.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[KDR_11k]

I think if this was WH40k there'd be much more people who care, fantasy Warhammer doesn't sound particularly unique in the fantasy genre (especially since Warcraft already stole most of their ideas). The branding won't be enough to differentiate it from WoW and WoW has annihilated all other MMOs in the market by means of superior implementation, all you'd get here is another implementation of the same basic idea except it's likely not as good as the market leader.

And seriously, who gives a damn about yet another tolkienesque fantasy setting? MMOs need more dakka!

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[KDR_11k]

If WAR (that's the official acronym) relies only on the Warhammer fanbase it has no chance to dethrone WoW. WoW is successful because it appealed to a broad variety of gamers and even non-gamers. WAR could very well be a better game in the eyes of the fans but still fail to even dent WoW's numbers because being good for the fans does not automatically mean it's good for everyone else. There are even people who think the grind should be painful and death punishing just so they can feel elite for reaching the maximum level but most people don't want that.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[LandDolphin]

There are several MMO's that have different aspects (like Town building in Shadowbane, and Castle control in Lineage II). But there is only so much you can do different when your talking about a fantasy RPG setting. Maybe the move would be away from fantasy, but there have been those too. What would you think would be different of innovative?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Chyeld]

You must have never played any of the Half-life's if you think Freeman or you as his alter-ego would think anything of carrying around a cow. His typical weapons load out would make a full squad whimper to think about carrying it.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Dutch Gun]

This is NOT why Blizzard is so successful. When game companies delay products, even for just a month or two, the usual result is catastrophic losses, like losing 1/5 of projected sales.

In the industry, games get delayed all the time, and the rule of thumb is that it has a high probability of gutting your sales.

I'd love to hear where you get your numbers from. It's not that simple, saying that delaying for a few months means catastrophic losses. How in the world could you even measure something like that? It's speculation even in the best of cases, because you'd never have a control group to measure two identical scenarios against.

I've been a game developer long enough to see a variety of product cycles, and how the scheduling works. It actually depends on when your game is scheduled for launch as well as what type of game you're making as to the seriousness of slipping a schedule. Obviously, the Christmas holiday season is the most profitable time to release, but not all games are scheduled for that period. Some games with very long development cycles don't target a specific time frame, opting instead for a rougher timeframe, even internally, while others are scheduled right up front down to the release date, and these are hard dates - sometimes for budgetary reasons, sometimes because of seasonal concerns (sports games), or perhaps movie tie-ins.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

did any of you actually read the interview? Yes they cut 4 cities and 4 classes from the release to be added later via patches. But they doubled the content in the remaining cities to compensate until the rest can come out. Honestly i would rather they wait until they can create something good instead of releasing crap and adding stuff once the game starts. And for the classes if they released them then had to go through the cycle of buffing then nerfing everything to make it balanced you guys would just bitch more.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[GuyverDH]

Having been a member of the original beta of WoW, and one of the first to stop playing WoW after it's release, trust me - it had more than it's share of missing content, and broken features.

It's had a lot of polish time since release, and it seems a lot of people have forgotten the issues - such as unscheduled patch windows, weekly outages to reboot servers that apparently had memory leaks, database corruption issues, etc...
Back then, everyone compared the upstart WoW to Everquest, and not kindly...

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[NeMon'ess]

That's what I said, except I used X, Y, and Z as examples. So the players will get A and B or X and Y when the expansion is released before it's fully finished. Then C or Z gets finished and added. So the players get the content even faster than they would if Blizzard was releasing the expansion.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[KDR_11k]

You said it like C or Z will be added in a free patch.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[KDR_11k]

I was thinking more of moving away from the repeatedly-attack-random-mobs-to-level-up design. There are tons of (non-MMO) game designs that don't involve grinding and levelling at all. MMO GTA? Well, okay, that would still have some amount of "levelling" due to the money aspect but the GTAs I've played never required you to run around in one area, slowly beating people to death in 40 second battles. I recall Richard Garriott claiming he'll design an MMO from the ground up new but he still remained inside that old box. Sure, MMOs cannot have too much twitch so a more indirect game system is needed but RTSes provide plenty of that without having any grind. What about a squad tactics game in which one player controls a whole squad? Or, dare I say it, X-Com Online?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Kaukomieli]

If Warhammer needs six more months too "cook", then what's stopping you from buying it six months after its release when all the cities and classes have been included?

They delayed for one year so they can complete 2 cities. With the whole lot of bugfixes to be expected during the first 6-12 months of the gamerelease where do you think the ressources will come from that add so much content in 6 months?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[nefertari]

Except for how they're launching WotLK without the actual Lich King. He'll be patched in before the NEXT expansion comes out. I haven't seen this anywhere, but even if he isn't patched in on day one, they have stated from the beginning that it would take a whole raid full of 80s to take Arthas (you know him.. the Lich King.. undead guy on the frozen throne with Frostmourne). Considering the length of time it would take to gear up raids full of 80s, patching him later is a smart move. Besides... it is the SAME THING they did with Kael'thas Sunstrider in patch 2.4 when the introduced the Sunwell Plateau. You see... Blizzard has been really good about making content patches as well as bug patches, so anyone who has played WoW for more than a minute knows this.

If they want to tell a story in the next expansion like they did in BC with the sunwell patch (a new zone, changes in Silvermoon because M'uru was taken away) they have to patch him later in the expansion. They said they wanted to get rid of attunement quests, so there is only one way to force a certain order of the raid instances: Open them up later in the patch. In my opinion they should have done the same with BC instead of releasing slightly :) buggy raid instances which slowed down the raid progress.

They also said they wanted, that defeating a boss had consequences in the game world. There were plans like this in the sunwell patch (defeat the T5+-Bosses to open the gates for the sunwell), but in the end these changes were discarded.

I would like it very much, if the players had to help to conquer the final zone, such that in the end we can try to defeat Arthas. I liked the development on the Isle of Quel'danas very much. So I can imagine, that they could do a big amount of ingame story-telling in this way. So that in the end Northrend is a place where the undead and the lich king have been driven back a little bit, compared to the beginning of the expansion.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the investors that need it to release so the cash flow begins - has little to do with the game.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[WuphonsReach]

You missed one big feature of WoW - the Talent system and being able to re-spec in some cases to a completely different play style.

For example: Tired of your life as a healing priest? Re-spec as Shadow Priest and turn yourself into a DPS caster. Or the druids, which can be either healers, tanks, melee DPS or caster DPS. Some classes can be spec'd out different more then others (Warlocks and Mages are always caster DPS, they just re-spec for different styles).

All without having to re-roll your character from level 1.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[NeMon'ess]

I didn't comprehend all of what you wrote before responding.

So we'll have to see after the release how quickly they include the missing content, or if they wait to charge people for an expansion.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[NeMon'ess]

That's definitely the strange part. Hopefully they've seen what happens to the competition when a game is launched filled with bugs. Perhaps they're waiting to see if the game takes off and then if it does, they'll invest a pile of money in hiring a bunch of content designers. If it's not as successful, maybe they'll just keep a minimal crew developing it.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Onos]

You are missing a couple of things: 1. The game is supposed to have 3 battlefronts, each culminating with a battle for the respective capitals. Stuff done in the lower tiers (their name for zones) helps the fight for the capitals somewhat. By removing 2/3 pairing capitals you basically invalidate 2/3 of your game. Why would I fight in the dark elf/high elf zones when it will have 0 impact on the end game. I can go in the human/chaos zone and actually impact the end game that I will have to fight in. The capitals are the end game of WAR, they were not the end game of WoW, so they are not directly comparable. 2. It does have 12 classes per faction, and 24 in total, but those classes are mirrored. For example the orc tank and the high elf tank have similar mechanics. Different names for it, but the underlying mechanic is the same. By removing the 4 classes, they are actually removing mechanics in the game, and making the game somewhat imbalanced. Human tanks removal means they are removing tanks that base themselves on auras to fight/get aggro. (This was matched to the chosen who uses auras) DE tank removal means you lose the tank that gains power as his allies/himself get beaten on. (This was matched to the dwarf tank that gains power as his allies get damaged) Choppa/hamerer removal is the same. They were paired melee dps if I remember correctly, so again you lose mechanics that were supposed to be in the game. I think they had the idea of building momentum as they did more damage for both of them. Especially the DE/human tank removal is going to unbalance a game, that they felt should be mirrored, and that is supposed to be PvP (RvR) first. Remember all the crying of WoW paladin/shaman before BC, this is going to be quite similar I think.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[malf-uk]

You mean like the respec stones that Dark Age Of Camelot had a couple of years before WoW launched?

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[VickiM]

To be fair...I don't think you had to pay $15 a month to play The Sims. I know the expansion had a lot of data, but after paying $180 a year to play I'll admit to a little frown when buying the expansion.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[WuphonsReach]

Interesting, I never played DAoC. As usual, Blizzard did a good job of picking the best feature concepts from the other MMOs, and then bundling them up into a tightly polished game.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[snuf23]

$15 is two lunches at mediocre restaurants (including anything not on the discount menu at a fast food place) where I live. So sure if I ate two lunches a month for $15 I wouldn't think much of it. At the end of the year I might say "those McDonalds lunches weren't worth $180". The amount of money over time seems like a lot but you probably blow $15 a month on trivial items anyway. The classic example is a date for two to the movies with popcorn and a soda (over $25 in my town).
I'm not saying that WoW was worth YOUR $15 a month to you. That's of course your judgement. For many the entertainment they get is worth the nominal expenditure.
Concerning the Sims, yes it doesn't require a monthly payment. It doesn't have an ongoing monthly cost to the developers either. There are no servers to run, bandwidth to pay for etc. Once the release is gold the ongoing costs are minimal and the Sims team is off and running on making an expansion or sequel. MMOs are more service than product.
And yes Guild Wars did the "free mmo" thing but they also released 3 full price expansions in a short time frame. The game architecture is also less complex due to it's hub and instance structure.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Cornflake917]

I don't respect WoW at all. It is the McDonald's of MMOs, or the AOL, if you prefer that analogy.

Typical elitist comment made by an EVE player. Here's a challenge, try making a case about why WoW is inferior without sounding like an condescending ass. Seriously.

It is just a mixture of things that worked in previous MMOs with a layer of polish. It is not innovative, and in fact, has set back innovation in MMOs, since most new MMOs seem to copy what WoW has done in a misguided effort to get some if WoW's success instead of trying new things

Here's one thing I agree with. WoW was not innovative in terms of its individual features, and gameplay, but everything it had was done with quality. What I disagree with is that games tried to follow WoW and sucked because of it. Of all the MMO's I've given a test drive, they have all sucked because something they implement wasn't well done or was poorly thought out, not because it didn't have enough innovation. In other words, MMO's sucked because they sucked, not because they tried to copy WoW.

I firmly believe that MMOs as a genre would be better off had WoW never existed.

Better WoW became popular then EVE. Jesus Christ that game bored me to tears. WoW lost it's appeal to me after awhile, but damn at least it was somewhat immersing.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[brkello]

Oh, you play Eve. That explains the attitude about WoW.

Let me explain to you the point of an analogy. Analogies are used when something is difficult to understand. So if someone is having trouble understanding a complex quantum physics problem, someone might use an everyday example to simplify it. You are trying to explain something with an analogy that isn't hard to understand. And it is very easy to point out how your analogies are flawed since the problem is not one that requires an analogy.

Your argument is dumb because you are saying that everything that is more popular is worse than things that are less popular.

Innovation != good. Seriously, I don't see where this myth comes from. Some innovation can be fantastic and spawn a new genre. Most innovations are colossal failures that die a deserving death. So yeah, Blizzard isn't innovative in the field of MMOs. But their ability to polish everything is how they choose to be innovative. The game isn't dumbed down. The game decides to put the major challenge in the end game allowing leveling to be a more fun, casual process compared to its predecessors.

I played Eve awhile back. It is enjoyable at first but it falls short in so many aspects (mainly that it is nearly devoid of fun unless you PvP). The single player experience in Eve is one of the worst out there. One great thing about Eve is the leveling system. It is very cool that you can level stuff while not being online. But the level grind is replaced with the ISK grind. Unless you have a rich corp then can just buy you ships, you are going to be doing something horribly boring and repetitive. The fighting in the game is by far inferior to WoW. You click some orbit button, start shooting and jamming. PvP consists of either waiting outside of gates in a large group to gang rape some poor guy flying around. The large battles can be interesting but generally result in server problems where the side who comes out of lag first is the one that wins. Their refusal to have different shards means that they can't grow customers much more without causing horrible lag (the had around 30k when I was playing and the lag was awful in many areas and it took forever to get in on top of many crashes). Their devs are involved in the game and cheated on such a scale that one group will never be toppled since they were given such a huge advantage in information and ISK generation abilities.

But like I said, it is telling that you are an Eve player. I spent a lot of time in the Eve forums and came to realize that Eve players have some sort of penis envy of WoW players. They feel smaller since they have so few players so they have to make themselves feel better by telling themselves they are more intelligent or hardcore. The WoW forums is full of idiots and whiners, but at least they aren't constantly bashing Eve. Most probably don't even know it exists or cares.

But despite my hatred of Eve, I understand that some people find the risk in Eve fun. I think it is fine that you enjoy Eve and I have nothing against the people who enjoy playing Eve. I can't stand their attitude towards WoW, though, and have no problem bashing the people (and you) on Eve's forums who are like that. Stop telling other people what to play. Stop worrying that WoW has more players than you. And stop assuming that WoW appeals to only the lowest common denominator. There are plenty of intelligent, kind, and fun people who play that game. That is what Blizzard did, they built a game that can be enjoyed by all types of games rather than catering to a small niche (like Eve).

WoW has come out with one expansion so far that added a huge, huge amount of content. More than probably all the Eve upgrades combined. All those expansions add are a few new ships, some graphics, and new features like scrapping ships. That is equivalent to the free upgrades WoW puts out as well.

The reason why other companies fail is because they are not as good as WoW. The reason why Eve is small i

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[Snaller]

"It seems to me Warhammer is effectively castrating themselves.
TO which I say: "Good, I hate those bastards.""

To which Blizzard says: When it's ready.

Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful

[thrash242]

Eve players seem elitist because we know we're playing a better game, it's just that not everyone appreciates a good game.

Eve is a virtual world. WoW and games like it are virtual theme parks. If you like designed, guided experiences, you'll like WoW better. If you like a virtual world, where you can do whatever you want, and most of the worthwhile content is created by players, then you'll like Eve.

And BTW, talking about "the single player experience" in a game with tens or hundreds of thousands of players in one world/server is completely missing the point. If the only thing you like do do in games is repeatedly kill unthinking database entries and taking their stuff, then I can see why Eve would be lacking. Doing this is missing the point of Eve, however.

You criticize Eve PvP and defend a game that has no real PvP? Everyone I've talked to has invariably said that WoW PvP is a joke. WoW may have some PvP, but Eve is PvP.

Eve combat is far deeper than WoW combat and I've talked to and heard from many people who used to and still do play WoW who confirm this. In WoW, you target an enemy, click random skills and pick up loot.

Expansions in Eve add new systems, new types of gameplay, not just a few new dungeons, bosses, items, whatever that don't actually change the game. It allows players to create new content The economy is player-driven, politics are player-driven, the history is player-driven.

If you are happy with WoW, that's fine, but defending it as superior, when it's many orders of magnitude shallower is silly. Just say you like shallow, grindy games. Tons of people do, and that's ok. Maybe you just like repeatedly killing things whose "intelligence" you can exploit to feel better about yourself. Who knows.

INCOMING FAILGATE!

[bigdady92]

nothing like ripping out promised content and abilities to make it to release. why not let it cook a bit longer and not pull a flaghsipp'n?

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[geekoid]

Becasue they are loking at the numbers, and not the realities of the game market.
Blizzard is successfull becasue they release quality titles.
Blizzard has what, 3 titles? And they practically print money.

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[pitchpipe]

nothing like ripping out promised content and abilities to make it to release. why not let it cook a bit longer and not pull a flaghsipp'n?

Yeah, great idea! Let's see, where have I heard this before ... DNF.

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, on the other hand, you have Windows Vista.

They left in 8500 tons of graphical jiggly-window rubbish, but took out anything worthy of actual respect.

But, at least you have jiggly-window 3d-card-requiring bubble-screen-saver.

Sign me up! That's *way* more useful and desirable than XP!

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[D Ninja]

Exactly.

Blizzard's success is not because they push back release dates so they can put more/promised content in. It's so they can put QUALITY content in.

Quality is (practically) the only thing that matters in all of this. If Warhammer is released earlier, with less content, but that content is amazing...then they will still have relative success. (Maybe not as successful as WoW, but Blizzard has a huge following.)

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[Thaelon]

I'm curious to what titles you're talking about.

Because you can still - after eight freaking years - find Diablo II in stores. And it's not in the bargain bin, either. It's $40 plus tax for the game and the expansion the expansion. I think the base game is still $20.

Starcraft is alive and well in some parts.

Are those the two you're referring to in addition to WoW or...?

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[geekoid]

Sure, you need some internal goals, and if they are consistently not met find out why. But that's different then setting a hard deadline date. In fact setting a hard deadline data is risky.

This seems to be a big cut back on release. If they were cutting out a high level content for a few weeks, then I could see them releasing.

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[EchaniDrgn]

I believe he is referring to the big three themes irrespective of their sequels.

Diablo
      Diablo
      Diablo II
      Diablo III

Warcraft
      Warcraft
      Warcraft II
      Warcraft III
      Warcraft: TCG
      World of Warcraft

Starcraft
      Starcraft
      Starcraft II
      Ghost

I don't feel like researching all the expansions.

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[geekoid]

Three titles, not games.
Diablo, SC,Warcraft

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate Blizzard. My next year or two is spoken for, what with WoTLK, SC2 and D3 :(

They've had me by the balls since WC1. Bastards better stop making quality games with good gameplay :(

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[MadnessASAP]

/me Looks around carefully

I don't see any other titles around here do you? Blizzard is pretty much those 3 titles: Starcraft, Warcraft and Diablo.

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[Jesus_666]

They have more titles; they just don't have more active titles. Not that I'd mind a second^Wthird Rock N' Roll Racing or a second Blackthorne.

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[Smauler]

Funny, I said almost exactly the same thing about XP when it came out.

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[Fozzyuw]

nothing like ripping out promised content and abilities to make it to release. why not let it cook a bit longer and not pull a flaghsipp'n?

So, what's worse? Pulling content and announcing it far before release or releasing a game with really broken content or missing content and leave it for the player base to find?

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[MBGMorden]

A title IS a game.

Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft, are all franchises, not titles.

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[thrash242]

I don't know where you shop, but I got Diablo2 and the expansion for $19.99. No one in their right mind is going to change $40 for a game that old.

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually its current price on Amazon as of today. And it's ranked #50 highest selling in video games, #1 in many computer categories.

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[thrash242]

Well, that's a ripoff. $40 for a copy of an eight year old game? We're not talking about a rare out-of-producation copy off of E-bay. I got D2 and its expansion for $19.99 at Wal-mart a while back because I lent my original copy out and never got it back.

I wonder if they raised the price due to the hype now that 3 has been announced? I noticed that D2 is in the top 10 of requested guides on GameFAQs now.

In any case, I won't be getting Diablo 3 or any other Blizzard products ever again. The only franchise of theirs I liked was Diablo, but they didn't even create Diablo--they bought the company that was making it about six months before Diablo 1 was released. Now that the people that created and developed Diablo have left, I have no interest in Diablo 3, and its "WoW-y" look in the videos certainly doesn't help.

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, Mythic can't get anything right because Mark Jacobs has IP ADD. As soon as the game launches he will be looking for the next title to line his pockets with cash.

If Mythic would have concentrated on getting DAoC right (rather than chasing after stupid titles like romans in space or trying to copycat WOW), they could have a serious contender on the market now with an IP that they own.

The sad thing is they have the best PvP in the game, a real gem in the world of gaming, but they are so busy trying to be like WOW they ignore and loose all of the good things they've done.

Re:INCOMING FAILGATE!

[xouumalperxe]

I wonder if they raised the price due to the hype now that 3 has been announced? I noticed that D2 is in the top 10 of requested guides on GameFAQs now.

As far as I remember, it has never left to begin with. That's called a successful title, damn it!

EA, most likely

[the4thdimension]

Even though they say that EA is NOT behind this deal, I have to believe it is. This sounds too much like something EA would pressure them into doing. They were fine pressing back release dates BEFORE EA came on scene.

I am skeptical, to say the least.

Re:EA, most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Spore is being developed under EA, but has been delayed many times. This is not EA's doing, as they claim.

Re:EA, most likely

[Dorkmaster Flek]

Spore is being developed under EA, but has been delayed many times. This is not EA's doing, as they claim.

Yes, but even EA cannot stand up to the might of Will Wright when it comes to release dates.

Re:EA, most likely

[Chrono11901]

Except Will Wright has already made them millions upon millions with the sims and simcity. They aren't THAT stupid to tell the guy who basically prints them money what to do.

Re:EA, most likely

[illumin8]

Even though they say that EA is NOT behind this deal, I have to believe it is. This sounds too much like something EA would pressure them into doing. They were fine pressing back release dates BEFORE EA came on scene.

It's not just EA that is behind this, its the basic reality of the market. Wrath of the Lich King (the WoW expansion) is coming out next spring most likely, and if they try to release around the same time as that, they're pretty much guaranteed to fail at capturing any significant marketshare.

They pretty much have to release it this Fall or they're screwed.

BTW, I've been playing the closed beta, and I predict this game will be epic fail. The graphics are similar to 2004 era WoW graphics. Bugs and lack of content are everywhere. I love the Warhammer universe, since I grew up playing the tabletop games, and I had high hopes for this franchise, but the game simply fails to deliver. It might have been good if it came out 4 years ago, but people expect a game to have the same polished content upon release that WoW has taken 4 years to add. The market expects an unrealistically high level of polish and content, so pretty much any new challenger is guaranteed to fail unless it's made by Blizzard.

I've been having a lot of fun playing Age of Conan lately. Don't let the haters tell you it sucks. It really is a pretty good game, even though it has bugs. What MMO doesn't?

Re:EA, most likely

[mweather]

That's a Will Wright game, though. He has a bit of clout given the popularity of his previous games. Even if Spore sucks, it's a guaranteed blockbuster.

Re:EA, most likely

[dcollins]

"Even though they say that EA is NOT behind this deal, I have to believe it is. This sounds too much like something EA would pressure them into doing. They were fine pressing back release dates BEFORE EA came on scene."

The way MMORPG development goes, I do think it's more likely that it's Mythic that's run out of cash, and this is the point where the suits rip their hair hair out and demand income asap. Probably EA has done nothing except given them their last agreed-upon advance check.

It's really way more likely that it's Mythic running out of money than EA. Classic tragedy of computer game companies -- they know how to make stand-alone games, step up to an MMORPG and think they're all set skill-wise, and then get shocked by the time and money it takes, and freak out.

This cycle's all laid out in the book "Developing Online Games" by Mulligan & Petrovsky.
http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Online-Games-Insiders-Nrg-Programming/dp/1592730000

Re:EA, most likely

[AuMatar]

Umm, this isn't Mythic's first MMO- they wrote DAoC. In fact, I don't think they had any single player games.

Re:EA, most likely

[PIBM]

Sadly, it's not an MMO.

From level 25 to 45 I encounter a single player... beside he was angry and cursing at me because I had just finished cutting a tree he was on his way to loot, so I killed him.. I guess I was the only one left afterward =)

Re:EA, most likely

[negRo_slim]

I love the Warhammer universe, since I grew up playing the tabletop games, and I had high hopes for this franchise

I've always been aware of Warhammer but never took time to experience the series, could you recommend a good PC title to get acquainted with the series?

Re:EA, most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

They were fine pushing back release dates AFTER EA came on the scene, too. They've done it twice, maybe three times. This game was supposed to be out for Christmas of last year.

Re:EA, most likely

[AK Marc]

I haven't heard that WotLK was bumped. It was supposed to be out in November for Christmas release. I imagine that's also the push here. Get it in stores in time for Christmas. If WotLK isn't out yet, all the better for them. They will be the hot new MMO.

The real problem is the momentum of a good MMO. It takes a lot to pull people away from the games they've invested so much time in, and so many MMO gamers are already attached to a game. It's hard to steal people away, and even harder to attract new gamers to the MMO world.

Re:EA, most likely

[illumin8]

I haven't heard that WotLK was bumped. It was supposed to be out in November for Christmas release. I imagine that's also the push here. Get it in stores in time for Christmas. If WotLK isn't out yet, all the better for them. They will be the hot new MMO.

WotLK technically doesn't have a release date. Blizzard games never do... "When it's ready" is usually the way they operate. The open beta hasn't started yet though so I'm pretty sure it won't be ready by fall. Most likely early next year sometime.

Re:EA, most likely

[Chris Burke]

Even though they say that EA is NOT behind this deal, I have to believe it is. This sounds too much like something EA would pressure them into doing. They were fine pressing back release dates BEFORE EA came on scene.

They may have been fine doing it for a while, but developers cost money. I don't know the intimacies of their business, but my take on "EA is not behind this" is more like "EA would not front the cash that we would require to keep developing the game, so we're going to have to release what we have and hope that brings enough income to finish."

Re:EA, most likely

[drinkypoo]

It's long past time for "the people" to make a warhammer game and just sell it to the powers-that-be (whoever has the license at that point.) It's got to be better than the shit that's come out so far.

Re:EA, most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been having a lot of fun playing Age of Conan lately. Don't let the haters tell you it sucks. It really is a pretty good game, even though it has bugs. What MMO doesn't?

Wait... isn't that just the reason you criticized Warhammer?

Re:EA, most likely

[eharvill]

BTW, I've been playing the closed beta, and I predict this game will be epic fail. The graphics are similar to 2004 era WoW graphics. Bugs and lack of content are everywhere. I love the Warhammer universe, since I grew up playing the tabletop games, and I had high hopes for this franchise, but the game simply fails to deliver. It might have been good if it came out 4 years ago, but people expect a game to have the same polished content upon release that WoW has taken 4 years to add. The market expects an unrealistically high level of polish and content, so pretty much any new challenger is guaranteed to fail unless it's made by Blizzard.

I've been having a lot of fun playing Age of Conan lately. Don't let the haters tell you it sucks. It really is a pretty good game, even though it has bugs. What MMO doesn't?

What's wrong with 2004 era graphics? The #1 MMO seems to do well with them. I have also had the opportunity to take a peek a the WHO beta. I'll say the WOW artistry is more pleasing (graphics are subjective anyway).

I am curious as to what is unpolished from what you have seen so far. At least the lower levels seem to be fleshed out very well. At the same level as AoC, if not better. And Mythic are being up front about content not going to be in release. How is your "PvP" experience so far in AoC? Non-existent, eh? I've been "RvR"ing in WHO since level 4. I guess it's all in what you are looking for in a game.

As you stated, AoC has bugs. I say WHO BETA has fewer bugs than AoC, release +1 month.

Re:EA, most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

"This has nothing to do with EA," he said, pointing out that this was entirely a Mythic decision, and it isn't a directive from the company which many MMO players feel has a dubious history in our genre. "they had zero input in this. This is not something we went to them with and said 'hey guys, we need an extra few months...' and they said 'no, you must ship on this day'. They don't even know about it. It's not a discussion we would have with them."

---Article By: Jon Wood
Created On: July 11, 2008
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/239/feature/2041/page/3

Yep sounds like crap to me.
~B

Re:EA, most likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Why pay a monthly fee for something you can get for free with Guild Wars?

yep

[pak9rabid]

Zonk is reporting that the Warhammer Online team has decided to keep their launch deadline firm, unfortunately in order to do so they are pulling quite a few things from the game.

And this is the difference between companies like this and companies like Blizzard and id software, who have the balls to push back a release date in order to not sacrifice quality.

Re:yep

[poetmatt]

100% agreed.

This is bullshit.

I'm not buying a game at launch that is intentionally held back to keep EA happy. Fuck that.

Quality over quantity is why blizzard wins. Well, I guess Mythic did a great job with DAOC at first. Too bad this sounds like the last time Mythic does anything, as I suspect this is death throes now. Cancelled my preorder and informed my friends.

I'm not saying WOW is the best game in the world, but sheesh, get things ready for release. Congrats EA, you have throw another company out the shitter. Yet another reason to never buy a game from EA.

Re:yep

[Amisinthe]

As far as Blizzard goes, I'm pretty sure they don't even give a release date until maybe 2-3 weeks before hand, specifically to avoid disappointing people.

For their MMO, they've been hyping up the next expansion for possibly a year now, still no release date, not even a date when the beta will be available.

Re:yep

[sweede]

I would imagine that they announce a release date based on when manufacturing of the CD's is suitable to meet the demand they are expecting. With TBC it was roughly 4-5m people and I would imagine that they estimated a 90% buy rate. But currently pushing 10m subscribers(!) and having a +90% buy rate, I bet the release date announcement will a few months after the game actually goes Gold.

Of course, i couldn't imagine -any- cd manufacturing company & print shop NOT giving blizzard awesome pricing deals.

Re:yep

[AK Marc]

If they are smart, they will give something to those that download it. Bandwidth isn't free, but it's less than printing and storing a CD. And bandwidth scales more cheaply than millions of CDs. Let me download it a week before it goes live. I'll have the content on my computer and unusable until they activate it when I log in. Use bittorrent, everyone gets one copy from the closest place. That's as close to multicasting as the Internet is going to be for a while. Too bad there isn't multicasting. Imagine a single stream of content received by millions simultaneously. Send one copy, process one copy, make millions of copies. It would cut costs for Blizzard greatly, and it would ease congestion for all the ISPs that are constantly complaining about people using the Internet to download things.

Re:yep

[sweede]

Blizzard uses Torrent to distribute patches and they had a download available for TBC.

With the new Blizzard Store also having the Account Key storage section, you can purchase & download most blizzard games already.

However, I will be lining up at midnight at our local gamestop to pickup my copy (several at that) of WotLK so that i can begine playing it at 12:15 , which is the time it takes me to get home from gamestop.

I encourage anyone who wishes to do the same, to buy one of my shirts to wear :)
http://www.cafepress.com/bsodergren

Re:yep

[AK Marc]

However, I will be lining up at midnight at our local gamestop to pickup my copy (several at that) of WotLK so that i can begine playing it at 12:15 , which is the time it takes me to get home from gamestop.

You missed my point. If I had my way, I'd be playing at 12:00:05 (after the 5 seconds it takes me to type in my key I bought online) since I'd have already downloaded the content the week before and be ready to go when they flipped the "on" bit in the game. It isn't about waiting until after it's released and then buying it and downloading it and playing it. It's about asking for it before the release date, downloading the material, paying for it the day before it opens to get the key, then being ready to go at 12:00:00 while in my jammies at home, not having to be at a store at 12:00:00 and fight the other basement dwellers for my copy. Not to mention, sharing sales with the stores would decrease profit and increases costs over delivering it online directly. Both Blizzard and users should prefer online delivery, as long as that doesn't mean waiting until 12:00:00 and then have 10,000,000 people kick off FTP downloads. If you want to see backbones cry, soemthing like that would do it.

Re:yep

[sweede]

Blizzard uses their own torrent client to distribute content downloads.

You're not going to be able to download / install the game before midnight. blizzard doesnt do stuff like that.

Re:yep

[SL Baur]

Blizzard uses Torrent to distribute patches and they had a download available for TBC.

The download wasn't made available until about a month after the CDs were first sold in stores.

However, I will be lining up at midnight at our local gamestop to pickup my copy (several at that) of WotLK so that i can begine playing it at 12:15 , which is the time it takes me to get home from gamestop.

As will I and I suspect most of my fellow guild members.

Whenever they get around to releasing it is OK with me. Quality is the important thing and I am far from exploring all the currently available content as it is.

Can you say expansion pack?

[nycguy]

The exclusion of capital cities seems more reasonable than handicapping some of the character races. The former could be added in via expansion packs (free via download or otherwise). To start off without "tanks" for some of the races is just silly, though. Were I them I'd split the difference and make sure the game is balanced in a smaller scale world, then expand that world.

Re:Can you say expansion pack?

[rhombic]

Exclusion of the capital cities ruins the whole race vs race war aspect of the game; it turns something that could have been really deep into a WoW clone. Sigh. Hopefully it'll add back in later.

Re:Can you say expansion pack?

[PlatyPaul]

Hmm... it seems we're losing two "berserker-brawler[s]" [The Choppa and The Hammerer], one "heavy tank" [The Knight of the Blazing Sun], and (roughly) "a World of Warcraft Warrior" [The Blackguard].

(source)

There are still 20 of the original 24 promised classes, and there really wasn't an equivalent set of roles across all races anyway, so it may still work out.

Me, I'm still pissed about the lack of Skaven.

4-2=2

[DarthVain]

Um so what there is a "good" city and a "bad" city? Wow, just wow. (no pun intended!lol)

Re:4-2=2

[Shihar]

I wish I had my mod points.

Personally, I think Warhammer online is DOA. My impression of Warhammer is that it is just basically WoW with some turning and a few PvP game mechanic differences. In other words, it was a copy and paste from WoW that they tried to tune up a little. This is wonderfully ironic, because the entire World of Warcraft setting was basically stolen verbatim from Warhammer (and Starcraft a rip off of Warhammer 40K).

Warhammer had a real potential to strike out a new path and reclaim the setting that they once owned. Instead, they have fumbled along in WoWs foot steps. Whatever minor improvements they make are offset by the fact that WoW has a few years lead a few million people already bought in. No one is going to jump ship for minor improvements. Warhammer could have challenged the entire MMORPG gameplay style. Instead, they are going to plod along in the footsteps of WoW and get crushed.

The only consolation is that at least they are only making a bad Warhammer MMORPG instead of a Warhammer 40K MMORPG. The Warhammer universe, and especially the 40k universe are made for dominating the more Disneyfied Blizzard settings, they just need to get their shit together and offer game play worth playing.

Re:4-2=2

[Knara]

There is a 40k MMO in development.

Also, I wouldn't say that WH "could strike out on a new path". The realm vs realm thing was done very well in Dark Age of Camelot already, long before WoW came out.

Re:4-2=2

[192939495969798999]

Of course, there'll be Springfield and Shelbyville. Any hope that Ogdenville would get added back at this point is purely speculation.

Re:4-2=2

[KalgarThrax]

I totally and completely agree with you. The irony indeed... Furthermore some here suggest AoC is different. It is NOT. It is yet another WoW clone with minor, trivial differences. I think that to see innovation in the MMO scene, you would have to look away from the big players in the gaming industry. The amount of money required will always let business people be the main drivers in such projects, thereby destroying any potential in utero.

We just have to be patient enough for the indie game scene to catch up technologically, and organizationally. Independent MMO projects suffer from lack of direction and too much geekiness ("Everyone can be a God!"), not to mention insurmountable technological hurdles.

Re:4-2=2

[meglon]

A bad city is one that doesn't eat all of its veggies.

Re:4-2=2

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad there wasn't a pun intended, because Wow launched with 6 cities and now has more. So it doesn't work see?

Re:4-2=2

[AK Marc]

Different groups own the rights to Warhammer and W40k. We will see two competing games from two studios for those titles. Hopefully W40k won't be screwed up as well, but I can't help but think it will.

Re:4-2=2

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm personally waiting for North Haverbrook or Brockway, myself.

Pushed the pre-order a bit early

[Lord_Frederick]

Feels like a bit of a bait and switch for the folks that pre-ordered.

Re:Pushed the pre-order a bit early

[BrotherBeal]

I wonder if this could be grounds for a chargeback, if someone used plastic. Anyone have thoughts on how successful that sort of approach might be?

Re:Pushed the pre-order a bit early

[Broken Bottle]

In fairness to the WAR guys, THEY aren't the ones pushing preorders 2 years in advance. That would be the game stores that are taking advantage of the hype and trying to lock in your business way early.

Re:Pushed the pre-order a bit early

[Lord_Frederick]

The official Warhammer Online site has huge banner ads saying "Warhammer Collector's Edition: Pre-Order now!" and links to the EA web store. Sounds like they are on the bandwagon with the rest of them.

Re:Pushed the pre-order a bit early

[magus_melchior]

That's actually a good point, and possibly a solid class-action case. The best way that EA and the Warhammer developers could avoid one altogether is give an estimate or deadline for when the cut features would be released, and without additional charge (or a discount on the subscription fee).

This is why MBA marketers (EA) should never run a technology company without listening to the developers.

Re:Pushed the pre-order a bit early

[Komatag]

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I get the game I pre-ordered a little early. On the other though, I get some major content taken out..... I hope it's still good. I'm tiered of WoW

Re:Pushed the pre-order a bit early

[0xDEAD]

EBGames told me I could come back anytime before delivery and get a 100% refund for my WAR pre-orders. While I am such an old school Warhammer fan I will probably grin-and-bear-it this news is none the less very disappointing to say the least. Especially since I am an huge Dark Elf fan and was planning to play a Black Guard on release.

Re:Pushed the pre-order a bit early

[Fozzyuw]

EBGames told me I could come back anytime before delivery and get a 100% refund

EBGames/GameStop have always refunded pre-orders. In-fact, pre-orders are extremely safe. I tend to pre-order things I'm reasonably excited about and I've often gone back after more info. or some beta testing have revealed to me to cancel my pre-order. Typically, I just move the money to a game I do want.

I did that with Rock Band: Wii when I found out there would be no download content, amongst other games like AoC, after I beta-tested.

Re:Pushed the pre-order a bit early

[yayotters]

I'm sure people could work out a refund for the pre-order...I doubt they need any bad press about dropping multiple features and then locking pre-order customers in to having to pay for it still.

Re:Pushed the pre-order a bit early

[Broken Bottle]

Yeah, NOW they are since they're trying to stick to a release date but how long have you been able to preorder the game at Gamestop, Best Buy, etc... those store starting taking preorders long before a release date is a twinkle in the publisher's eye.

New "expansion"?

[mlts]

I hope they release the content after WAR goes online, but I have a sneaking suspician that these cities which are cut out will end up being put in the game as an "expansion".

I hope not.

Re:New "expansion"?

[chiger_bite]

If you look at Mythic's history with Dark Age of Camelot, I imagine that this will be a 'content update' and not an expansion.

Deadlines

[Wowsers]

Pulling stuff from a software product to meat a deadline, they must have learnt from the MS-Vista team.

Re:Deadlines

[RingDev]

meat a deadline

You ever see the move PCU (Politically Correct University)? There's a scene in it where they are tossing huge chunks of meat off of the top of some school building onto a vegetarian protest. Absolutely hilarious.

-Rick

Re:Deadlines

[e2d2]

Have I seen it?

"Can you blow me where the pampers is?"

Re:Deadlines

[drinkypoo]

Just one. And then I gotta go.

More like Warhammer offline

[Anonymous Coward]

Things do not look good for homestar runner

Also Removed:

[xC0000005]

The right mouse button, any attack other than "hit", support for the capslock key, and the number "4".
Cutting support for the number 4 alone reduces the number of xp and currency tests you have to do.

At this point, they ought to use CGA graphics and an atari joystick for all input as well.

Re:Also Removed:

[c1t1z3nk41n3]

Have you played any mmorpgs? Removing support for the capslock key would be the single greatest thing they could do.

Re:Also Removed:

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that's just what Everquest does/did. Capslock is disabled in EQ, so you need to hold Shift to do ALLCAPS typing.

Re:Also Removed:

[Jesus_666]

The devs have played MMORPGs - in Warhammer Online, players automatically type all-caps.

Re:Also Removed:

[c1t1z3nk41n3]

The sad thing is I have no idea if you are joking. I'll have to check back later and see how you've been modded.

Re:Also Removed:

[Dire Bonobo]

Also Removed: ...support for the capslock key

THANK GOD!

Rushed Releases have killed MMORPGs in the past

[Phrogman]

While no MMORPG is ever complete, and thus never completed when released, releases like this in the past have caused major problems in getting people to accept the game in the past. Vanguard was released with major elements of the game incomplete, Pirates of the Burning Sea had similar problems (although it was mostly feature complete and the changes made after release were tweaking that could only be made after large enough populations were logging in).

The missing elements and poor gameplay in Vanguard resulted in a mass exodus of players after release, and a similar thing happened in POTBS (eventually resulting in a server merge that took the game from 12 servers down to 4 I believe). Its always important to make a good impression when selling a product, and its doubly so for MMORPGs I think.

Given that WAR is considered the next likely candidate to challenge the supremacy of Warcraft (a daunting prospect for the developers I am sure), I can't help but think that this is a very bad idea generally speaking. The game needs to be as complete and ready to play as possible in order to attract the required playerbase. Taking the game live in a partially developed manner is no longer a viable option I think. Prior to Warcraft this might have been possible - Dark Age of Camelot went live with many features missing, but what it had was enough to attract people away from Everquest (which was its only major competitor at the time), but with Warcraft being such a complete product and so well designed (I may dislike it but 8m+ people disagree with me), any game that comes out now needs to be able to put its full featureset into gameplay right from release or it risks losing the majority of players who are pretty jaded and expect *everything now*. The time for incomplete products has passed, thanks to Blizzard.

Not only that, but if its missing the Tankers on all sides specifically thats a very bad decision as well. This will undoubtedly slow PvE leveling and thats usually the focus of any MMORPG early in its history as players build up their characters in preparation for the end game (yes I know you can PvP at any level in WAR, but realistically people will want to race to the end levels first and likely avoid PvP as they do in so many other games, even though the game attempts to balance it at all levels).

Since Jacobs has stated this is nothing to do with EA, its most likely an internal decision based on lack of development time and a desire to make a November release date that is key to getting Christmas sales for the game. It may also be a reaction to the success of Age of Conan (which is doing well by reports, although I didn't keep my subscription going so I am out of touch), or to some other major release thats coming at the same time. MMORPGs and their expansions tend to be timed to coincide with releases from other companies and that often seems to shift dates.

Mythic had an extremely successful product with Dark Age of Camelot, although they blew it in the long run, overdeveloping the game in some areas and inconsistently designing it in many cases. I have high hopes they can produce an excellent game with WAR but we shall see.

Re:Rushed Releases have killed MMORPGs in the past

[Shihar]

The "fix it later" mentality is the death of an MMORPG. Pirates of the Burning Sea is a great example of this. PotBS is one of the more unique games in existence. Combat is actually challenging and fun. It has the potential for one of the most kick ass economies in MMORPG history. The PvP potential is so good you can almost taste it. What happened?

They blew it.

The economy was launched with features that border between too stupid to contemplate and utterly missing (no sell orders, dumb "bidding" system, etc). Game balance was initially horribly out of whack (better these days). PvP quickly and very predictably devolved to the point where there is really one one type of regular PvP (6 level 50 vs 6 level 50).

The game has so much potential, it just isn't finished. It kills me to see games with so much potential be horrible wastes.

If there is any consolation in all of this, I never really thought that Warhammer had any potential. Other than it being the awesome original setting of the Warcraft universe without the Disney glossing that Blizzard gave it, it always sounded to me like Warhammer was just rehashing traditional EQ/WoW style game play and tossing in some revamped and uninteresting Dark Age of Camelot style RvR.

Re:Rushed Releases have killed MMORPGs in the past

[Sethumme]

You make good points, but I think you are generalizing. Perhaps I should have posted my previous message here instead... You claim lack of features is the cause of a game's failure, and then you prove it by describing how gameplay was one game's downfall, and admitting the other was actually released "mostly feature complete."

At this point, WoW has been around for a long time. When it was first released, it was a very different game. Many classes were incomplete, and many zones and dungeons were absent. What it did have was enjoyable single-player and multi-player gameplay and a captivating story line, at least for the first 30 levels or so. The rest was patched in months or years later.

Content isn't what makes a game succeed. The fun-factor does that. Content just keeps the subscribers to keep coming back.

Re:Rushed Releases have killed MMORPGs in the past

[metanoia3]

Case in point, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. It lacked content, it ran at horrible framerates no matter what your setup, and contained obnoxious bugs... but they released it anyway.

Re:Rushed Releases have killed MMORPGs in the past

[vitaflo]

Since Jacobs has stated this is nothing to do with EA, its most likely an internal decision based on lack of development time and a desire to make a November release date that is key to getting Christmas sales for the game.

It's not just xmas sales but also timing with Wrath of the Lich King. WotLK should be out around the same time and if they wait, they lose potential customers to Blizzard, who will most likely pick up the expansion in WAR's absence and want to take their time leveling to 80, playing out the end game, etc.

So you either launch this xmas or have to probably push back a good year out. Really the best time for WAR to launch is right now. People are waiting for WotLK, the end game of Burning Crusade is basically played out, and people are chomping at the bit for new content. They're pretty much between a rock and a hard place right now in regards to timing.

Re:Rushed Releases have killed MMORPGs in the past

[FreakinSyco]

Lets not forget Age of Conan. Reading their current patch notes reads like patches that should have been released in beta about 4 month before release.

Here I am, a customer, LOOKING for a MMO to give my money to. Yet none offer the quality that deserves it. Age of Conan fooled me for one month with thier half finished game. I won't let another MMO fool me again with half finished content.

Re:Rushed Releases have killed MMORPGs in the past

[snuf23]

Sure Wow had a lot of growing pains especially with class tweaking and server stability but there wasn't THAT much missing at launch. I don't know of any pre BC zones that were missing at launch (I could be wrong). As for dungeons, Molten Core, Dire Maul and Maraudon were added in the first 3 patches. There were no PVP battlegrounds or arenas either.
On the whole though, all the initial races and classes were present with home cities. Level progression through 60 was present. Almost all pre-BC dungeons with exception to those noted above and the further end game raids (Blackwing Lair, Ahn Quiraj, Naxx) were present.
There was a ton of content.

Re:Rushed Releases have killed MMORPGs in the past

[chowder]

Jacobs gives some lengthy explanations about the changes here: About removing the classes: http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/107897121/p1/?13 About removing the cities: http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/107896043/p1/?55

Re:Rushed Releases have killed MMORPGs in the past

[vikstar]

...PvE leveling and thats usually the focus of any MMORPG early in its history as players build up their characters in preparation for the end game (yes I know you can PvP at any level in WAR, but realistically people will want to race to the end levels first and likely avoid PvP as they do in so many other games...)

That's because I haven't seen any MMORPG that has stumbled upon the brilliance of gaining experience for PvP in addition to PvE. Back when grinding my nth character in WoW, it would've been so much more fun to kill 10 allies of the same level, than say gather 10 bear tongues for the same XP.

Re:Rushed Releases have killed MMORPGs in the past

[DerWulf]

I wonder about the PvP / PvE segregation in WoW as well and hope they'll integrate the two more tightly in the future. As you point out it would be cool to gain XP from killing players and that would also quickly put a stop to BG twinking (though I'm not sure if blizzard actually wants to encourage it). Also it could add more varity in a PvE raiding game if for example they would borrow the LoTRO PvP idea of player controlled monsters either recruited from the raid (e.g. random player becomes hostile to the raid) or a raid v raid battle versus an other raid in the instance.

Re:Rushed Releases have killed MMORPGs in the past

[Phrogman]

Well actually, DAOC has leveling by PvP. Sadly, its now a bit old in the tooth, and the population is dwindling but they recognized eventually that leveling by PvP would be the most popular approach, and you can level up pretty much entirely in the battlegrounds (which are limited by level ranges) in DAOC. Its still a pretty good game overall.

Thats one thing that gives me some hope for WAR, Mythic eventually got a lot of things right with DAOC - although they blew some calls in a major way IMHO - perhaps a bit too late as it turns out, but if they can capitalize on that learning experience, it should put them in a good position to make a very enjoyable PvP game.

There major flaw is the love of *fast* combat in PvP, which tends to reward the younger players, but hopefully they can learn from the combat system in POTBS, which has a slower pace but lots of tension as a result

No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[Jack9]

Dwarf,Undead,Orc,Human,Gnome,Dranei,Blood Elf,Troll in WoW. So what? Factions aren't a single race so it's not all that important which races have which classes.

Re:No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[Syrae]

The difference is that each race is a different independent faction in Warhammer. There's six faction (similar to WoW's two playable factions), and two of them now lack a tanking class and 4 of them lack capital cities. It's true that not all of Warhammer's factions are single race based, but most of them are.

Re:No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[loafula]

You forgot Night Elf :D

Re:No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[Jack9]

Night Elves and Tauren are the only races that CAN be druids.

Re:No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[Zuato]

Think of it this way - they are not only eliminating 4 of the 6 capitals, but 4 classes as well, two of which are tanking classes for their respective races.

That would be like eliminating all the faction cities in WoW except for Orgrimarr and Ironforge. Granted most interaction took place in those two cities prior to the BC expansion, but it significantly screws the story without the other cities. Think about it - each race has its own starting area, and a capital city. The capitals are pretty much a large defining portion of a race in an MMO. That is now gone for 4 races.

Re:No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[loafula]

Doh, you're right- my bad. I misread your entire post.

Re:No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[Jack9]

The difference is that each race is a different independent faction in Warhammer.

There's Destruction and Order. There are no other "Factions" other than rep factions. More importantly, there are differences between the class categorizations that are significant. The DE "healer" is more like a Monk. Part melee. Nobody is going to have a bunch of Monks as their (primary) healers in PvE. If you have any PvE experience, you'll recognize that the best Warbands will have a mix of races.

See:
http://www.warhammerinfo.com/ or any other of a number of sites.

Re:No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[Jack9]

My primary was a Gnome. I lived without it.

Re:No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[FrozenFOXX]

Those are the primaries. To my understanding (though, like everyone, I could be wrong. If so please let me know) while you had two major "factions," the thing was that each sub-race, in Warhammer-spirit, was really "on its own." You and your Dwarf friends don't like those Human pricks? Go over and STOMP their asses...who cares if you're both on the side of Order, they're Humans! They're not Dwarves! They can't be trusted and must die!

That was the kind of thing I thought was really interesting, the self-sustainability of each race. Without a home city for each it's going to look like a carbon copy of WoW regardless of what PvP changes they make...and that's very, very bad.

Re:No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[Jack9]

That was the kind of thing I thought was really interesting, the self-sustainability of each race.

It just amplified the number of "nerf this!" "buff this!" complaints by 6x as classes compare themselves to analogues in other races. How is that interesting?

Re:No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[snuf23]

Well it is in the game! Just as a destroyed gnome city dungeon not a functional city.

Re:No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[Walkingshark]

You were a gnome? Can you really call that "living?"

Re:No Druids for ....Dwarf, Orc....

[FrozenFOXX]

Probably because while there are roughly analogous classes on either primary side all the classes are unique. It's not like WoW where there's a very small pool of them, you have a much wider pool of classes which all interact differently, the only classes reacting exactly the same being within your own race.

Compare this to WoW. Take Warriors, for instance. Warriors are the same whether they're Horde or Alliance. What do we have in WAR? Nothing like it, the closest would be the Paladin/Shaman prior to Burning Crusade.

If you're talking about people bitching about their class not owning everything I think you're focusing a bit too much. That's not exclusive to WAR, that's a gamer thing. That's not something that can really BE fixed when you have different playstyles directly competing with each other.

However, whereas in WoW you've got a very black-and-white performance of classes (such as, shamans rock but paladins suck, or some other such view that's popular) in WAR you have many, MANY unique classes which will all work differently from each other, ensuring more chaos (which is good). For instance, "My Bright Mage sucks against the Goblin Shaman, but it's pretty good against that Chosen, and I'm not really sure how it does against the Riflemen." Already you're FORCING people to have to see the bigger picture. While you can't "fix" a gamer's desire to have the "right" playstyle that can kill everything else, this isn't a bad approach to get one step closer.

But that's just my opinion. You asked how I thought it was interesting, I don't ask you or anyone else to agree with it.

Warhammer Forever

[netsavior]

It is funny that everyone bitches when a company holds back a release *Forever* while the developers Duke it out over new technology, features, etc... Rather than Nuke a fer features in favor of a quick release. Yet when they trash a few features to make a release date, they get the same kind of flack.

Of course everyoen mentions Blizzard... I would be willing to bet that the difference is the marketing, I mean, Blizzard doesn't announce games untill they are good and ready... they don't need years of buzz. I would be willing to bet that they always have a good bit of feature chopping in every blizz game (in fact when you open and look at MPQ files, you could find lost character classes, never activated items, etc etc, it just happens BEFORE the marketing, rather than after.

Re:Warhammer Forever

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the same people complaining in both situations, doodoo-head.

Re:Warhammer Forever

[D Ninja]

I mean, Blizzard doesn't announce games untill they are good and ready... they don't need years of buzz.

Blizzard doesn't need to create buzz because they are so good at what they do, the buzz generates itself.

This is a position *every* company wants to be in. But, very few have it. The only way you get there is by constantly delivering good results, and (in the case of certain Blizzard games), chopping out the stuff that is going to be crap.

Unfortunately, egos and people on power trips don't typically like to let this happen. It makes them look bad. Meh.

Re:Warhammer Forever

[Tridus]

"it just happens BEFORE the marketing, rather than after."

Yep. Thats also why they don't announce release dates.

People flip out if you promise the moon and fail to live up to your own hype, even if the game is fun. Take away the promises, and people may find that the game is fun without thinking about some missing feature.

Of course, Blizzard's marketing department is a good deal more intelligent then that of most other game developers.

Re:Warhammer Forever

[malkir]

I'm sorry but I feel I have to correct you on some things.

Firstly: A 'few features'? I think going from 6 major cities in an MMO to 2 major cities, and cutting major races out of a game is more than just a 'few features'. I see 'features' as maybe skills or side-quests or things of that sort, not entire cities.

Secondly: Blizzard doesn't announce games when they're good and ready, Blizzard announces their games when they are stable, and then works to polish and perfect without announced deadlines. SC2 was announced last year - I played it at Blizzcon (it's amazing), and the game wont be released untill 2009-ish. Diablo 3 was just announced, that probably wont see light of day until Q4 2009 or Q1 2010.

The difference between Blizzard and EA subsidiaries is that EA is the epitome of corporate bullshit. They want that yearly revenue to boost stocks, not to make quality games. That's why continually EA will purchase a company, set a deadline, and the devs will scramble to meet it by cutting corners - otherwise they're fucked.

This game had a lot of potential, but knowing EA has their grimy paws on it just makes me not want to play it. EA wants what Blizzard has, but they don't go about it the same way.

Blizzard makes quality games, they know the importance of keeping their 3 main titles the BEST 3 main titles on the market - WoW (MMO), SC2 (RTS), and D3 (RPG).

Sorry Warhammer, I'm just glad I didn't pre-order.

Re:Warhammer Forever

[Taibhsear]

It is funny that everyone bitches when a company holds back a release *Forever* while the developers Duke it out over new technology, features, etc... Rather than Nuke a few features in favor of a quick release. Yet when they trash a few features to make a release date, they get the same kind of flack.

Of course everyone mentions Blizzard... I would be willing to bet that the difference is the marketing, I mean, Blizzard doesn't announce games until they are good and ready... they don't need years of buzz. I would be willing to bet that they always have a good bit of feature chopping in every blizz game (in fact when you open and look at MPQ files, you could find lost character classes, never activated items, etc etc, it just happens BEFORE the marketing, rather than after.

I see what you did there...

Re:Warhammer Forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... you used Duke and Nuke in the same post, and didn't even bother to mention "Duke Nume'em (takes) Forever"

Re:Warhammer Forever

[Anonymous Coward]

Note the presence of the words Duke, Nuke and forever in the first paragraph ;)

So?

[Hachima]

The article seemed a bit misleading. It made it sound like the game was dependent on races having all class types available for RVR, when it's not. It would be like saying Alliance in WoW is in trouble because they removed the ability for Gnomes to be priests. In WAR there are two factions, Order and Destruction. Order has the Ironbreaker and the Swordmaster as tanks, the White Lion and the Witch Hunter as melee dps. Destruction has the Black Orc and Chosen as tanks, the Witch Elf and Marauder as melee dps. Just because particular races don't have tanks doesn't mean the faction doesn't have tanks for the RVR.

Re:So?

[Anonymous Coward]

But each race has different starting zone, so there will be no main tanks for 2 of the starting zones.

Re:So?

[Hillgiant]

If you need a main tank in the starting zone, you are doing it wrong.

Right... EA had nothing to do with it

[Anonymous Coward]

Starting with Ultima Online, EA has the uncanny ability to turn anything they touch into absolute shit (they probably started ruining stuff long before this, but I've got mmo tunnel vision right now).

Gamers as a whole need to stand up, and send the message that we will no longer pay full price to participate in a beta test.

Re:Right... EA had nothing to do with it

[halivar]

I have not purchased an EA game since Ultima 9. There will be no forgiveness for that crap.

Re:Right... EA had nothing to do with it

[Anonymous Coward]

Good old Ultima 9, I remember that. I ran into 3 separate bugs within minutes of starting the game. Seems they permanently froze their forums 2 weeks after launch... due to the number of flames they were getting constantly about the game. Shortly after, you could barely find a trace that the game ever existed.

Re:Who cares?

[Red Flayer]

Who cares? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11, @02:25PM (#24155663)

It's a Friday. Go outside today and enjoy life. :)

I am outside and enjoying life, you insensitive clod!

(Gotta love wireless)

EA? Of course not.

[Anonymous Coward]

It has to do with Mythic - IE, the company that slew the greatest MMOG that ever was, Dark Age of Camelot - in their quest to make it into EverQuest Lite.

Paid Beta

[Holammer]

Looks like they're in a hurry to get to the "paid beta" stage asap. Whomever handles their finances is probably riding their ass because they're not cashing in already. Delaying the release would probably not hurt the general goodwill towards the game, but releasing it this early and they'll be the next major laughing stock since Vanguard.

Nothing to do with EA. Yeah, RIGHT! *Bridgesell*

[Chas]

"The team emphatically claims that this has nothing to do with EA"

Right.

EA, who essentially turf all projects that aren't their beloved sports games.
EA who has gone out of their way to buy healthy, actively developed games and kill them just shy of release.

Likely the WHOL guys got an ultimatum of "Ship or we shut you down". That's pretty much par for the course with EA.

warhammer expansion pack announced!!

[Anonymous Coward]

tomarrows news

Too bad

[Anonymous Coward]

That makes me sad, but I can't same I am surprised. If they have to pull that many features there's a good chance that some major bugs will still be around at release as well. Game over Warhammer.

This is..

[sTERNKERN]

Why I buy Blizzard games. They know when to release a game : exactly when it is ready.

Re:This is..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! EA will never learn. WoW had 6 major capitols when it launched. I had hope for Warhammer but now I don't think I will even try the beta.

Re:This is..

[hypergreatthing]

Everyone has a very short lived memory of how well blizzard does it's releases. Do you remember Betacraft when it first came out? It was highly unplayable, crashes, lag, broken skills, ect. Because they piecemealed the burning crusade expansion months before and delayed it until they knew it wasn't going to kill the servers you call them the gods of releases?

And you expect others to beat blizzard? Conan was more playable than wow was when it first came out. They both gave a refund of time back to the users because they were down so much.

Re:This is..

[DerWulf]

Server stability was in issue with WoW but then again, WoW success took the whole industry by suprise. Nobody is in a position to say "told you so" when a game sells in weeks what was projected for the whole year. Aside from that WoW is and was a highly polished game with an error rate that is probably lower than most other commercial software. AOC? Yeah, the did servers right but forgot to make stats work and have don't have any quests past 40 ... I would rather play an excellent game on shitty servers then vice versa.

Forgive me..

[Exanon]

What's Warhammer? I spent all my youth years dating very beautiful women and being a loveguru in Asia.

Nowadays I just sit on slashdot between my jobs as a underwear model judge.

Just like Vanguard

[LandDolphin]

Releasing Vanguard before it was ready killed it. I fail to see how Warhammer doing the same thing will have any other outcome. This makes me sad; I was really looking forward to Warhammer Online.

Re:Just like Vanguard

[snuf23]

Money was the issue with Vanguard. Honestly having played it I'm not sure another 2-3 years of work before release could have saved it.

Re:Just like Vanguard

[Hibbleton]

Vanguard was trying to build a player base from scratch. WAR will attract the table top gamers and if you dont believe that's a force to be recognized just keep in mind they have dedicated Games-Workshop stores all over the world.

Re:Just like Vanguard

[LandDolphin]

I don't think a majority of table top gamers will really be into the Video Game. From my experience, Table Top gamers enjoy the unlimited possibilities of Table Top that is not possible in a video Game. They tend to dislike being pigeon holed.

It doesn't take a genius...

[mpapet]

to figure out they have to have *something* to release for the all-important fourth quarter.

Launch it any other time of year and you won't get the same sales bounce out of a new release.

Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[zAPPzAPP]

...and not 40k?
Who thought we need yet another fantasy MMORPG with swordswinging, arrowshooting, fireball casting humans, orcs, dark/notsodark elves, undead etc etc etc?
They had access to the Warhammer franchise and chose this... I couldnt care less about their deadline, or if they ever make it at all.
Its not a Warhammer MMORPG for me, unless you give me a bolter and a power-armour.

Re:Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[geekoid]

I agree. Going after the fantasy crwod is going to be a tough sell.

Re:Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there is a Warhammer 40K MMO under development.

I would assume that they didn't actually have access to 40K, since THQ develops all the 40K games.

Re:Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[Knara]

There's a 40k in development, but its a few years out.

Re:Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[MagusZeal]

I take it you haven't heard that THQ's working on the 40k MMO than?

Re:Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[geek]

Because THQ has the rights to 40k. They have the Dawn of War RTS series which they announced would become a 40k MMO at some point. It's still years away however.

Re:Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Vigil Games is making a Warhammer 40K MMO...

Re:Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[cptnapalm]

THQ? Oh dear God...

Why could they not be humane and just take me behind the shed and shoot me in the head?

Re:Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. I gave up on Warhammer a while back and I'm glad I did - I don't like to hang around to see the end of things, it's depressing. Got my memories though. :) http://www.nexuswar.com I play that now, no bells or whistles but it's suitably complex enough to keep me interested. No Orcs but I have a fairly scary Infernal Behemoth!

Re:Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[MadnessASAP]

You mean This? Granted it'll have to do without EAs overbearing presence but there are apparently some people who consider that a good thing.

Re:Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[scanner_darkly]

"you have to go to WAR with the Army* you have, and not the Army you want" -Donald Rumsfeld *if by "Army" he meant "Intellectual Property"

Re:Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[SupremoMan]

Sci-Fi MMORPGs are not so hot. I dont know why, just because its sci-fi people tend to think there is no possibility of melee classes.

Re:Why Warhammer Fantasy...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually THQ is working on a Warhammer 40k MMOFPS.

Still should be fun

[EvilGoodGuy]

The summary is a bit misleading. 4 classes are out, but there are around 20 so it's not that big o a deal. And the capital cities aren't like that in EQ and WoW. You get to them later in the game for PvP purposes. So there will still be plenty to look forward to and have fun with in Warhammer :)

Does this hurt them more then postponing the game?

[christ, jesus H]

Yes, absolutely it does in my opinion. A combination of the two would have been the smarter move in my opinion.

Don't worry

[Meekrobe]

These features will be reintroduced as a pay for Expansion at a future date.

Jack Emmert said it best...

[Broken Bottle]

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=17549 "You are what you are at launch." WAR has been postponed a bunch of times. If they're going to launch with severely stunted *basic* content they're essentially crippling the game for the rest of its lifespan. Seriously, when MMOs launch there are always a bunch of bugs that need to be concentrated on in the first few weeks/months of the game's life. If they can't launch 4 of the 6 capital cities, how quickly can we expect to see those FOUR remaining cities given the other demands of the game's launch? Not good for them at all. They've been in development for a while and I'm sure that they have financial realities pressuring them but this isn't going to help the game at all.

Re:Jack Emmert said it best...

[Krater76]

And WoW has been so successful because they had all that casual content and raiding content in at launch, AMIRITE?

Re:Jack Emmert said it best...

[Broken Bottle]

?

Well, yeah, in part. They had a ton of content in at launch. But they also had a franchise that has been a massive mainstream success for many years prior to launch which also helped quite a bit. Warhammer has been around for a long time but unless the mainstream has moved to the table at the back of your local game store on a Tuesday night, they don't have the brand recognition that WOW had to help compensate for the weak launch.

Misleading headline/summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Four classes sounds like a lot in terms of WoW, but in Warhammer that leaves an entire 20 classes to play.

Here's a much better article with an interview from the President of Mythic:

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?PAGE=1&GAME=239&FEATURE=2041&BHCP=1&bhcp=1

Quality over quantity? Maybe they want to launch with what's working well rather than include more that needs more work.

why

[Anonymous Coward]

No! I do not like my games developed like Microsoft products. I don't mind small mistakes or a little ruff around the edges. However, I would like to see that get fixed as well. Did anyone learn the lesson from Tribes 2 or do we just like to repeat ourselves; broken games or unfinished products are no fun when spending $40-55 on a game.

Re:Nothing to do with EA. Yeah, RIGHT! *Bridgesell

[lantastik]

Let's look at the rest of that quote:

"This has nothing to do with EA ... they had zero input in this ... They don't even know about it. It's not a discussion we would have with them."

Now I know it's total bullshit. That's a discussion you better damn well have with your publisher. If I were your publisher and you chose not have that conversation with me and I found out about it through some interview on a website, you'd start losing funding and Mark Jacobs would be looking for a new job.

It's a cultural point

[smittyoneeach]

If they are trying to evolve into something like a gaming version of Gnome, where the schedule is fairly straightforward, than that might be a Good Thing.
The transition may be painful, and could even kill them.
Depends on the management.

I'm getting so angry for no reason at all! RAWR

[Aphoxema]

I really don't see the problem here. It's an MMO, they can and it's expected that they add this content later and much more.

I also don't see what the purpose of a release date, it's just marketing bullshit. The game could have been 'released' a long time ago, and if they honestly let people know that it wasn't ready for typical gameplay then anyone who felt hurt was expecting the wrong thing.

They could have just arbitrarily chosen any point in it's development to say, "Hey, this is good enough, let's stick it in a box."

I hate terms like 'alpha' and 'beta' and 'release' things like, especially when they're used so glamorously. Do you really ever want to call something a finished product? When something's 'out of beta' it's probably not going to get the same attention it had before. If something's still being called beta, someone's actively working on it, and it already kicks ass, then what wouldn't I have to look forward to?

It's just philosophical ideas made official, and it's useless. All that matters are version number. It's not like software becomes perfect when it's released or there's some magical point where it's instantly ready to be marketed.

Release dates are also stupid. It's more marketing bullshit about holidays and stuff. What's so bad about "We're working on it, it'll be done when we say it is and if you care you'll know when we say it."

If it wasn't for that kind of garbage, no one would have any reason to squeal over bugs in the 'final product'. The problems are there and they're expected to be there, and it's getting about time for the idea of software as a tangible object to come to an end.

Re:I'm getting so angry for no reason at all! RAWR

[Krater76]

When something's 'out of beta' it's probably not going to get the same attention it had before. If something's still being called beta, someone's actively working on it, and it already kicks ass, then what wouldn't I have to look forward to?

One man's finished product is another man's beta so you can't make assumptions about a product's ass-kicking status once it's 'out of beta'.

It's sometimes ok to not be product complete, WoW certainly wasn't when it launched. But people expect to play the game when they want - that means minimal server downtime and the ability to complete what they set out to do. Other than that, bugs are expected. As long as we don't have to later pay more for what we were supposed to get in the beginning I don't really see a problem. I'll be there on launch day.

Misleading Headline

[ACupOfCoffee]

Everybody Panic!

You would think the slashdot crowd would be refreshed by a company doing a public disclosure of changes like this.

Seriously though, this is not a huge deal (unless you had your heart set on one of those classes at release). There are still 20 classes with a large amount of variety and a good mix of standard mmo and new-ish mechanics. That's a large number more than many MMO's. see: http://www.warhammeronline.com/armiesofWAR/index.php

As for the cities, yes it's a definite loss, but two strong cities will serve that facet of end-game content well to start. (Yes it's only one of many possible facets.)

Yes, I've been in beta since the beginning, and yes the game is much more polished than people are expecting. I really can't comment beyond that with the NDA, but feel free to browse the public info: http://www.warhammeronline.com/index.php

-ACupOfCoffee

Re:Misleading Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

I also can't comment much other than to say, WOTLK is looking really good, no?

Re:Misleading Headline

[LandDolphin]

The loss of 4/24 classes is not that big of a deal. But going from six to two cities certainly sounds like a huge loss.

Re:Misleading Headline

[Danny Rathjens]

You would think the slashdot crowd would be refreshed by a company doing a public disclosure of changes like this.

I don't see what is refreshing about it. :) This seems like a well-known PR tactic. Release bad news about your product preemptively so that not only do you scoop any other sources of information but you get to spin the message your own way and get people used to the idea.

Re:Misleading Headline

[startled]

Seriously though, this is not a huge deal

Wait, WHAT!? Sure, until today, I had no idea how many classes Warhammer Online had. I also had no idea how many cities they have. And if they'd just launched a game with two capital cities, I would have been perfectly happy.

But now I know that they'll be launching with fewer capital cities than they thought they might. And how can I play a game with fewer capital cities!?

Not to mention the races. They went from what, X+4 to X? How am I supposed to play a game with only X classes!? Obviously Warhammer needed X+4 classes to be at all good.

I have to say, I'm still holding out a little hope. But if they cut any more things I've never heard about from some number to some other number, I'll be really angry!

Re:Misleading Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a lot of people who work at EA. I used to work at EA. And I don't know ANYONE who actually enjoyed playing Warhammer at any stage of development in the past 2 years, up to and including a few months ago.

The game is a failure, and tacking on talents and cutting classes at the last minute will not salvage it.

Everything to do with EA

[loafula]

I'm 100% this move was calculated by EA. They want to put the product out on time so they can start collecting subscription fees. This is all done at the expense of a more complete product. Let them get their money early, and let their MMORPG tank..

The Glass is Half Full....

[chiger_bite]

Everyone seems to show this announcement in a negative light. This isn't as bad as it seems.

Last I checked, the game was stable, fairly well balanced, and almost all the features they said were going to implemented were there. Bugs exist, but compared to other games, not that bad.

Let's compare that to WoW's release. Blizzard struggled (maybe still do?) with class balance for a very long time, they didn't implement a PvP system that folks wanted to use until months after release, and a lot of the content(e.g. instances) were buggy.

Now let's compare Warhammer to Funcom's Age of Conan which was released not long ago. AoC (Age of Conan) has balance issues, a partial PvP implementation, and a lot of bugs.

With Warhammer, you'll be missing some content and classes, both of which have viable alternatives implemented, but should have a fairly stable and balanced game.

Overall, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing as long as everything else releases well.....

got to make the November launch date

[rabt68]

I believe that since the suspected release date of Blizzard's WOTLK (the next expansion for WOW) is around November, that it is this and not EA that that is behind this decision. Once people get started in the WOW expansion, it will be very hard to lure them away.

Re:got to make the November launch date

[Komatag]

Can anyone verify this? Also, does anyone have any ideas as to when the open beta will start? I bought the collectors edition for that reason and if it's going to be released in November...well I was just kinda hoping that I would have gotten a little more time in the beta.

Re:got to make the November launch date

[AK Marc]

I've heard November, but then others here have said that was a soft date not officially announced by Blizzard. The latest guess is spring. But I don't know anything other than what I heard from people that don't know for sure either. There is no official launch date, and from what they usually do, the date will be announced just a few weeks before the release. I have no idea on the open beta.

To the business its the money that counts

[zenmasterV]

Sad to say but delaying launch means cost overruns. Its great if your company has huge deep pockets and investors who are viewing the long term potential of a great game vs. a decent one shipped on time. Blizzard enjoys this standing, not everyone else does. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a steaming hot mess, but this is most likely a short term financial decision. Businesses are usually about money, not quality, as most games prove to gamers over and over and over.

Quality over quantity.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't gimp a game like this. Wait until it is ready. Sure, some people will get pissed, but they will come back once they see the awesomeness of your game. If you release Early and leave out content, you are going to fizzle your release, and the initial reactions, and that is usually the most important part, especially for the prices we pay.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Call me when it's Warhammer 40k

Does it hurt?

[rob1980]

Absolutely it does. The first impression is what counts most, if you put out an unfinished MMO the early subscribers will jump off quickly, go back to WOW, and tell all their guildmates that your game sucked. That's millions of customers who in turn won't even try your game, let alone subscribe to it long-term. And I'm not talking "unfinished" as in new patches come out once a month, I'm talking the kind of "unfinished" that takes entire locations and classes out of a game.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk to my boss. :(

Article title completely misleading

[rushmobius]

The title of this article is completely mis-leading. I fail to see how dropping 4 classes out of 24, and some of the capital city sieges, is 'Massive'. Massive typically means a very large quantity of something. In terms of the game, while these delayed items will be missed, it is a small percentage of the overall game content. At least read the interview to understanding what was actually announced and the reasons behind dropping a few classes.

Re:Article title completely misleading

[toolie]

Because without the sensationalist title, nobody would think twice, there would be less views of the article and less ad revenue.

Gaming suggestion

[KalgarThrax]

There's really two branches of Warhammer, the Fantasy Battles (which WAR is targeting), and the 40,000 which takes 40,000 year in the future. "40k" as it is known, currently has a much better PC representation. Fantasy battles saw the release of some truly horrible ("Shadow of the Horned Rat") games on various platforms, and currently has no "go to" title in computer games. Both mythologies are similar, and equally rich and fleshed out.

For 40k, you can grab "Dawn of War" and its expansions. They are extremely faithful to the source material and their campaigns are kind of fun. If you are a competitive RTS player, you can really get into it online, as DoW tends to be somewhat balanced.

Or you could go to a gaming story and buy some pewter figurines :)

Re:Gaming suggestion

[dreddnott]

Hey, now...Mark of Chaos isn't that bad, is it? :/

Re:Gaming suggestion

[KalgarThrax]

That's one I had forgotten, thanks for reminding me. The reason I forgot it is I have not actually played it. The YouTube gameplay videos disgusted me so I opted out. Maybe I was wrong....

Re:Who cares?

[The Phantom Buffalo]

Some of us have to work, you insensitive clod!

content removal

[rpillala]

If they have to choose between removing content or removing game mechanics, I'd rather they take content out. Adding it in later expands the existing game. Adding new mechanics obviates some styles of play or changes a game completely.

Not that they have to remove anything - they could keep working till they complete the game they want to.

Failure of marketing

[Tridus]

I haven't been following this game (not interested), so I don't know how bad these changes are.

They LOOK terrible though. This is Mythic failing to live up to their own hype. Its disappointment and bad publicity created entirely by themselves.

Blizzard is a lot better at this. They don't put out release dates. They don't (generally) advertise features they won't actually deliver. They certainly don't remove 2/3 of the cities.

The most important thing in the first month of a new MMO is people having fun playing it. Unfortunately, people tend to have less fun if they're feeling let down by a game that fails to live up to the hype. Creating hype you can't possibly deliver on is bad. If you set more realistic expectations that you might actually meet, people won't focus on what you didn't do. Instead they might play the game and discover they like what you DID do.

Re: Release dates are a market reality

[RevEng]

I realize MMORPGs (and most online services) are quite different from typical box-and-disc packaged software, but there is a good reason for phases like alpha, beta, and release, and it's directly related to the "indefinite beta" syndrome.

Part of the problem is image. As loose as the terms are, alpha means that things will be wholly incomplete and fragile. Users know to expect nothing. Beta should be mostly feature/content-complete, but will undoubtedly have bugs to be fixed and polish to be added. Beta should be a good idea of what the finished product will look like. Finally, release means it's done. As in DONE. A person buying a product off of the shelf expects the product to work always and entirely. They pay a lot of money for what they consider to be the entire product; patches make the product look flaky, whereas to-be-released content makes the product look incomplete. Both of these things devalue the finished product.

The fact that MMORPGs use rolling release cycles, adding content gradually, allows them to get away with some of these sins. Knowing that there can be a nearly-infinite amount of content allows the total value of the product to remain enigmatic, such that the excuse, "Their is more 'free' content to come," keeps the customer patiently waiting to get his value out of the product. It also means they can push out fixes more-or-less silently. If nothing else, it has generated a culture that is tolerant of unfinished development that requires consistent patching.

Release dates also have their place, mostly from a marketing point of view. Most people only make their major purchases at specific times of the year, Christmas being the most obvious one. Releases often happen in August or September because that gives the product time for exposure, review, and everything else that it takes for word to spread and customers to solidify their intentions to buy at Christmas. It's the same reason the Sears catalog comes out months before Christmas.

In terms of quality, release dates are a complete hinderance. As a developer, I can tell you that they are met with hefty distain. Still, they are virtually unavoidable -- you can keep tweaking and adding content and otherwise expanding the product indefinitely. Eventually you have to put your foot down and say, "We're done." Release dates are clear milestones to accomplish development cutoff. Development is expensive and doesn't result in income, so release dates are also a way for investors and bean counters to make sure they turn a profit in a timely manner.

So, saying that release dates are useless, pointless, or stupid, is to misunderstand their uses. Yes, they suck, but without them development would continue indefinitely. When it comes to the retail market, there often is no 2.0. Customers buy your product at 1.0 and if they don't like it, they usually don't come back after the first patch is released. It's just the way the market works.

From One Who Has Played The Game

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in the closed beta. Have been for a while. Posting Anonymous because this is a NDA violation possibly.

For the first part that they are cutting: The Capital Cities

So what? Seriously so what? They won't be there when the game is released. I can flat out tell you you probably won't be able to see them until your in the Tier 4 section ANYWAYS so what's the problem?

Those are used strictly for end game content. They can afford to wait on that. It WILL take some time (though not as long as WoW) to reach a high enough level to even be able to do any of it really.

For the classes: I have to just ask WHAT ARE THEY THINKING!?!

The worst thing about some games is the "new" classes that come out later. Some of those classes I know people who were waiting to play them, and now I'm going to be missing some guild members potentially.

Especially since only 4 classes per race, that somewhat dissapoints me. The sides will still be balanced, but not the races. In PvE lacking a tank class will be horrible, even in the earliset parts of the game where one can't move between the realms.

I don't think I gave too much away, but this won't really ruin the game. The "lack of features" aren't going to be noticible barring the classes that are missing. Even then, the gameplay is sufficiently entertaining (for me at least) that I'm still going to play.

Note: I'm slightly biased. I HATED World of Warcraft PvP. The PvE was pretty great, except some of the raids (mostly the people I dealt with to get to them). But the PvE was a joke. PvP in WAR? Nothing but sheer awesome. PvE is the same level of entertainment but in the Warhammer universe which I also love more (I play tabletop).

Blizz gets it

[TallDave]

They get the game right, and screw the deadline.

Re:Blizz gets it

[Krater76]

If other game companies had millions in extra money laying around like Blizzard does they could wait forever in releasing their games too. Bottom line is that investors need their profits and want results NOW.

Most big companies can afford to push the release date and sometimes do. Microsoft does although they do it minus quality.

Project Management 101

[Anonymous Coward]

Scope, Schedule, Cost.

At most, you can hope to control 2 of these.

Warhammer Online's management team has chosen to control schedule (fixed release date) and cost - therefore, scope must suffer.

As many have said, Blizzard does well because they focuse on the Scope aspect as most important, meaning the other two suffer (in this case, increase).

Canadian Artists

[jessecurry]

They must have french-Canadian artists doing their collision files.

Maybe avoiding what happened to Auto Assault?

[mbourgon]

It seemed like the main problem Auto Assault had, on launch, was people just not showing up. If there's nobody to play with/against, an MMO is not nearly as much fun. Maybe they're simply trying to launch while people are interested, and worrying about fixing everything later. Not knowing what marketing (and the buzz for the game) is doing, it's hard to tell if this is a good idea or a bad idea.

Warhammer is dead

[Digital End]

You can say you heard it here first.

This game just died.

Release is everything to an MMO, and any idiot company (imagine EA being involved... noooooo) would know that looking at historys and dead games.

This game won't last a year. It's a shame too... I'd be pissed if it was my lifes work that was being spit on by schedualing monkeys.

Really Bad News for this Game

[skeptictank]

The only thing this game had going to differentiate it from WoW was the RvR content. Capturing capital cities is the ultimate goal of that RvR play. It appears that they are removing 66% of that, basically gutting the game. The removal of the classes is no big deal, 24 character classes is absurd - 20 is just slightly less absurd.

I am increasingly getting the sense that Mythic doesn't a have clear sense of direction or vision for WAR. If they knew where they were going with the game and had a plan to get there, they would just push the schedule out. This move smells of desperation: get it out the door, collect some sub fees and hope they don't get a class action from the pre-release buyers.

Better drop their slogan.

[ShagratTheTitleless]

EA - It's in the Game*

* Subject to feature availability at code freeze. Does not imply that marketed feature is in the game.

Re:Nothing to do with EA. Yeah, RIGHT! *Bridgesell

[Anonymous Coward]

They dream of a world where the only game to play is Madden.

"Coming in 2013...World of Maddencraft!"

Launching with incomplete content

[JDAustin]

Launching with incomplete content is not unusual for a MMO expansion. This goes back to the early days of Everquest.

The Planes of Power expansion did not have its final zone (Plane of Time) any where near complete. SoE actually made the final raid needed for access impossible to complete until Time was finished.

Re:Launching with incomplete content

[Krater76]

WoW 'unofficially' did this with Blackwing Lair (BWL). Some of the super high-end raiders made it real far when it released and after one of the bosses there was an area that was unnavigable via a 'bugged' door that mysteriously wouldn't open. It was fixed a few weeks later and quickly forgotten.

It could've truly been a bug since BWL wasn't open beta tested before it was released, but they couldn't have found that during closed testing? It was always suspect.

Real Issue - It's the bugs dummy!

[jd.schmidt]

As has been noted, WAR needs to not go head to head with WOTLK. They need to get people, if not angry with WOW, maybe a little bored and willing to at least try something new. So as a marketing strategy this is just fine. Also they seem to offer something new and interesting. I don't think they really see themselves as a WoW killer (you can't for a few more years), but hope to play in the same league. Also they focus on PvP so they are trying for a subtly different market.

Missing content isn't really a problem (OK, with the way they set up side symatry, missing 4 classes might be an issue, but missing tank is no better than missing healing or dps). So long as you keep adding content and there is stuff to do at the start you are fine.

BUT, if they rush a buggy unpleasant game out the door, they can just kiss their money good bye. That is what they should really be worried about. Also they shoudl worry about if it is actually fun.

Missing capital cities?

[mcvos]

From TFA:

the capital cities for the Dark Elf, High Elf, Orc, and Dwarf factions will not be in the game at launch.

I didn't know Orcs even had a capital city. And isn't the Dwarven empire in ruins? High Elves have Ulthuan ofcourse, but nobody else ever goes there, and whatever the Dark Elf capital is is on the other side of the world, so who cares?

What I'd like to know is if Bretonnia, Marienburg and Kislev are in it.

Somehow I don't think it's going to be my kind of game...

Yes, that DOES hurt in the long run

[Opportunist]

Another stillborn in the making.

Why so gloom? Well, look at the recent MMORPGs, all of which were dubbed "the one that kick WoW off its throne". And? None did. Why? Were they too complex? Too hard for the everyday player?

No. They just were not finished.

Now, no MMORPG is ever "really" finished. But WoW was to the point of being good enough for release, and that made it king. It wasn't so much its "noob appeal", it wasn't the comic style graphics, it wasn't the "rich" story (what rich story, btw?). Was it because it needed no insane box to play it (it did, just because it doesn't anymore doesn't mean it didn't).

It was simply and plainly that WoW was released when it worked.

I was in the WoW Beta. It was one of the longest betas I've ever experienced. And I was incredibly amazed how polished the game was already when it went into beta. Basically, WoW was when beta started (almost) as "finished" as many MMORPGs are now when they get released. And when they finally went into release, the key problems were resolved and you could play it. Namely:

CTDs: Rare.
Classes: All finished.
Skills: Worked (almost, but generally they did).
Quests: Worked (almost all).
Raid content: Existing (not a lot, but it was there).

Basically that's WoW's "secret". When you look at the failed MMORPGs, you'll notice a sharp pick up, especially when the hype was running rampart around it (and believe me, the WHO hype is), then an equally sharp decline and a slow and painful death. Either they kill their userbase by being as stable as a pig on stilts, they have classes that are unplayable, they got bugs all over the place, to the point where you can't even finish the newbie area without the intervention of GMs, or they simply have no high level content whatsoever. Many combine a few of those "features".

Essentially, this means WHO will be a stillborn, too. I predict a crispy start with many, many people wanting to play, then turning away in disgust after less than three months and the game being milked for as long as it's profitable, then shut down in a whimper.

Another WoW killer out of the game. Ok. NEXT?

Has anyone noticed...

[Artuir]

Has anyone noticed when there's a news article about World of Warcraft or some other MMORPG, a much higher percentage of completely misspelled replies are posted and get modded up? Are all MMORPG players English stupid? There needs to be a study done on this.

Give me a break

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost every interesting feature of Warcraft 3 was dropped by the release date. Their products of late seem to be engineered to make money rather than be interesting and entertaining. I'm not faulting them, but to suggest that they don't cut features is absurd.

Real PVP

[Molochi]

Don't they call that game Counter Strike?

Of course not...

[ocbwilg]

The team emphatically claims that this has nothing to do with EA.

Of course it doesn't. And anyone who says it does either doesn't work for EA or doesn't work for EA "any more". Because we all know that EA has never told one of its studios that it was time to either ship the product or kill it. EA has a terrible, terrible reputation in the games industry for being almost 100% deadline driven. You come out with a new product and release it on time, period. Then you come out with a refresh/upgrade of that product every year and on time, or else. It's their entire business model. It's also one of the biggest reasons that they are not known for quality products. Their goal is to ship it on time, and if it sucks they'll fix it in the next release. Unfortunately with an MMOG you don't have that option. There's no such thing as Warhammer Online 2008, followed by the sequels Warhammer Online 2009 and 2010. When they destroy their reputation with the initial release it will be much harder to recover. Not only that, but WO players will blow through what little content they have in the first month, then move on to the next big thing. If EA is lucky some of the WO players will spend the next 6-9 months waiting for content that should have been in the original release. Hopefully EA will have the good sense to NOT release that content as a for-sale add-on, but they have a pretty bad track record with MMOGs so I wouldn't get my hopes up.

GUESS WHAT

[One-FISH-]

-_- I found out I got into the beta today, and then I read this. I'm hurt.

What a relief!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mythic and EA must be very relieved by these posts. According to the knowledgeable Slashdot community they posses exactly the same fan base and therefore revenue stream and projected sales as Blizzard. Lucky them!

Unfortunately

[Sycraft-fu]

It probably will not fail regardless. Maybe if MMOs started failing, companies would work harder in to making sure they were good. However, to the best of my knowledge, no MMO has yet failed. Even games that were disasters seem to have been able to get enough players to maintain profitability. It seems there are currently enough players to sustain pretty much any MMO and that is part of the reason there are such quality problems. While games may fail to achieve the success that World of Warcraft has, they are still making money and that's really all that matters. Every company would like to make billions on a game, but so long as they can make back more than they spent, it is a worthwhile project.

Re:Does this hurt them more then postponing the ga

[Ryunosuke]

A combination is exactly what they needed to do. 4 cities in 4 months? At least 3 cities in another 2 months? Crippling the game at launch and forcing people to choose either 1 or 0 is lackluster at best. It's already been delayed. I'd pay for more content, not just "what I can get" Going to pass on this. If I can trust them to get it done "by launch" I do not trust them to add it back in, when the first few months of launch will be their busiest.

Same problem as Age Of Conan?

[StoatBringer]

Cutting content out so they can release sounds really bad, and makes me think it's simply not finished yet and they're rushing it out before Wrath Of The Lich King sucks up too many potential players. I cancelled my Age Of Conan subscription last week. It's very enjoyable up to level 20, when you leave the starting city, but gets annoying quite quickly after that. It feels like a beta version that is still a good few months away from being ready for release. It looks fantastic, but it's unstable, lacking high-level content, performance is flakey, and each patch seems to add major nerfs and buffs to classes which upset the players. Recently they seem to have messed up slope-calculations (so many players cannot walk up gentle slopes) and given world boss-mobs a one-shot-kill ability. You really get the impression that they're making changes in a panic and not testing them very well before shoving the patch out the door. If Warhammer is released in a similar state of unreadiness it will annoy the player base very quickly, regardless of how awesome the graphics may look.

Not sure what I think but...

[Evil Kerek]

I would mention that the 'it's only 4 - there are 20 classes' isn't really correct. Since there are 3 realms, this is cutting down the options in certain realms. Assume that a lot of people playing this game, since it is RVR, are guilds. The guilds are making decisions BEFORE the game comes out which realm they will be. So, not a train smash, but not trivial either that two classes in a realm are missing.

To put it in 'WOW' terms it would be like the warrior class being removed from ONLY the Horde side. Well hey, there are still six classes left..sounds ok unless you were planning to play on a horde team.

EK

lol no

[devnull17]

Enhancement and ret are both fairly playable in arena if you don't suck, and desirable in raids.

25 Years Breeds Loyalty

[Hibbleton]

Everyone keeps commenting that the player base will be made up of disgruntled WoW players. That may be partially true but I think you're overlooking the fact WH is a table top game with a global pressence and 25 years of history. Yes this is total BS but the game will be a success if even half of player base logs in. I wouldn't write the game off just yet. And yes Blizzard puts out a solid game but one would have to wonder how well they'd do if they had to come up with an original thought first...

And In Futher News

[kenp2002]

EA is proud to announce to our channel partners an excellent in-game advertising program we have integrated into our sports and MMO title. Now players of EA titles can experience rich in-game advertising. No when players die in Warhammer they must wait 10 seconds to respawn. Using our in-game advertising platform you can now send tailored context sensitive ads. Along with our billboard advertising options (you see those commonly in our sports titles as banners around the play field) we have extended that into the game for NPC battle standards.

Signed: Money @!#$ @!#$ Left Handed @!#$ @!#$ Mother @!#$ @!#$ Ben Affleck @!#$@!#$ @!#$ Rabies with a bad case of @!#$@!#$ @!#$ @!#$ Antelopes!

Good Actually

[kenp2002]

As someone who has tested it, many of the melee classes were redundant. With spec lines there just wasn't a need for them. The difference wasn't large enough to justfy them.

The cities? I'll take fewer cities with better quality rather then more cities with less quality. Last thing we need is another Thunder Bluff\Darnassus city taking up space iwth 4 people sitting in each of em...

Oh really?

[Snaller]

"Given that WAR is considered the next likely candidate to challenge the supremacy of Warcraft "

Considered by whom? Over emotional children? I don't for a second believe they will stand even the remotest change of doing more than a tiny scratch in the surface of the combat tank that is world of warcraft.

No, its not funny.

[Snaller]

Because its not the same people.