Mythic Shutting Down 63 Warhammer Servers

Gamasutra reports that Mythic Entertainment is consolidating a number of their Warhammer Online servers to keep population levels within an acceptable range. 43 servers are set to close in North America and Oceania, and 20 more in Europe. Mythic posted details of the character transfers at the game's website. CEO Mark Jacobs also made a "State of the Game" post, highlighting the live expansion that's currently underway, as well as the changes and updates they have planned for the near future.

Comments

OUCH

[SupremoMan]

That has to hurt. The game was well executed, it was no Age of Conan that's for sure. I guess good question would be how many servers did they start with?

Re:OUCH

[dtml-try MyNick]

Way to many. That was their mistake.

Their goal was the smoothest launch ever, in which they actually succeeded.
To accomplish this they opened up loads and loads of servers to ensure players wouldn't end up in queue's when logging on to the game.

The problems started when after a few weeks the biggest hype was over and players started looking at their real lives again. After that the active server population declined rapidly.
I think this move to close servers was unavoidable, it's nearly impossible to keep as many active players as right after the launch period.

Re:OUCH

[RuBLed]

The problems started when after a few weeks the biggest hype was over and players started going back to WOW.

Fixed it for ya. This is what I had seen in our guild.

Re:OUCH

[chonglibloodsport]

I played Warhammer for a month and change after to released. I admired the amazing artwork and character designs, definitely top notch. However, the game itself was sorely lacking.

The entire game seemed to be designed like an amusement park combined with an assembly line. Your character is basically funneled through a series of increasingly difficult areas along a linear path that left nothing to the imagination. Exploration was pointless because you knew where you came from and where you were going.

Aside from the character stats and shiny purple magic items, this game could hardly be called an RPG at all. Interaction was kept to a bare minimum, both with NPCs and other players. The only real interactions you have are taking on 1000s of mundane fetch quests from NPCs or PvPing with players.

Speaking of PvP, the system is supposed to be the central crowning jewel of the game. Problem is, there are no consequences for it: death and failure are meaningless, you do not lose items on death and the loss a fortress or even an entire territory are barely noticed. Within a short period of time, these assets can be recaptured at no expense. The entire exercise quickly begins to feel repetitive and boring. You have no personal stake in anything in the war and therefore no real incentive to help.

In terms of gameplay, it is a major step back from the old days of UO 1997-1999. A real shame. It seems most of this industry is too caught up in trying to copy WoW rather than pushing the envelope with new paradigms for interactivity and gameplay.

Re:OUCH

[Decado]

I think they did the right thing, they started with a lot of surplus capacity and now are scaling back to what they are actually using. Unless (by some miracle) they could guess exactly what capacity would be needed then they have two options, provide too much or provide too little. From a customer service standpoint it is certainly much better to err on the side of providing too much.

I feel a bit bad for Mythic in that this will probably be spun as some sort of death knell for the game when in fact it is simply the logical outcome of the company doing the right thing at launch.

Re:OUCH

[AuMatar]

Except that people hate server merges. Especially if a server needs to be split and partially merged with multiple servers. They would have been better off renting capacity but keeping it dark, and lighting it up as needed instead.

Re:OUCH

[AuMatar]

Personally, I had more fun in War PvP than any other MMO, because of the very same reasons you hate it. Death *shouldn't* have consequences. A game is about having fun. The point of a PvP game is to kill, you shouldn't be afraid to die because it will cost you hours of time.

As for reason to help- two major reasons. One its fun. If you don't enjoy PvP, why did you buy a PvP game? Two- pride. I play to win, always. So I always try my best to further the objectives of the game, in this case its trying to move the battle forward to eventually siege the enemies city. If we do that, I win. That in and of itself is fun, there is no other reason needed.

Re:OUCH

[Tridus]

According to what I've found, there's 16 servers left in North America, where I believe 40 of the 63 being shutdown are.

Just another Age of Conan, they massively overhyped to get a ton of initial box sales, and wound up with 2/3 of those people leaving in a couple of months.

It is actually much better now

[Anonymous Coward]

This problem also plagued the EU version launch: there were too many servers and the population was spreaded too thin, meaning that you would log in and find no one else but you on a certain zone.

With the new patch and the server transfers everything is much fine now: cities are quite populated and there is massive outdoors PvP going on every night :)

No, Warhammer Online isn't dying.

[Anonymous Coward]

At launch, they had *far* too many servers, they had wayyyy more servers than WoW had at launch.

Their launch went extremely smoothly, but the game population was spread so thin that people were having a hard time finding other people.

They should have done this 2 weeks after launch, not 6 months.

That said, this isn't indicative of Warhammer's impending demise, nor of a lack of players, they really did just have way too many servers and should have fixed the problem months ago.

Oh well, I'm still having fun with the game :D

(also, anyone thinking this was a WoW killer was delusional, it was never intended to be such, it's a very PvP centric game and attracts a similar, but different crowd)

Someone at Mythic must be biting his own tongue...

[acid06]

About 6 months ago, during this interview, Mythic VP and lead Warhammer Online designer Mark Jacobs said some interesting things regarding MMO development, including their own game. In particular:

According to Jacobs, another way to measure success is to look at the number of servers a game has added in a six-month period. "The corollary to that is if you've seen a game consolidate servers, you know it's in deep, deep trouble -- that's not a healthy sign for an MMO," he said, citing Sony's January-released "Pirates of the Burning Sea" as a recent example. "It will be the same for 'Warhammer.' Look at us six months out. Look at us six weeks out. If we're not adding servers, we're not doing well."

Looks like they're not doing that well - according to their own standards.

Heres an idea

[Rockoon]

Stop segmenting your playing population into multiple independent copies of the universe.

Instead, segment your universe.

Re:Heres an idea

[Tridus]

That'll work really well when a new WoW raid comes out and a million players are all milling around outside using the summoning stones and dueling.

Hell, Naxx's entrance is crowded on most nights right now, and that's with hundreds of servers. It'd be unplayable to put them all together.

This single universe thing doesn't scale beyond a certain point when the players all have a reason to be in the same place.