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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?
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."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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?
Wheel of Time: Book by Book and Sumview (summary review) Bigdady92 style: http://bigdady92.blogspot.com/
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.
Crackin' Wise - Blogging about whatever we want
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.
Um so what there is a "good" city and a "bad" city? Wow, just wow. (no pun intended!lol)
Feels like a bit of a bait and switch for the folks that pre-ordered.
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.
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.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
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.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
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.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
...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.
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 :)
Yes, absolutely it does in my opinion. A combination of the two would have been the smarter move in my opinion.
Ohh spiteful one tell me who to smote and he shall be smolten!
Have you played any mmorpgs? Removing support for the capslock key would be the single greatest thing they could do.
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.
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.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
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
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.
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
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.
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...
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?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
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.