Slashdot Mirror
Why Warhammer Online Failed — an Insider Story
sinij writes "An EA insider has aired dirty laundry over what went wrong with Warhammer and what could this mean for the upcoming Bioware Star Wars MMORPG. Quoting: 'We shouldn't have released when we did, everyone knows it. The game wasn't done, but EA gave us a deadline and threatened the leaders of Mythic with pink slips. We slipped so many times, it had to go out. We sold more than a million boxes, and only had 300k subs a month later. Going down ever since. It's 'stable' now, but guess what? Even Dark Age and Ultima have more subs than we have. How great is that? Games almost a decade [old] make more money than our biggest project."
The (unverified) insider, who calls himself EA Louse (named after the EA Spouse who brought to light the company's excessive crunchtime practices) says similar trouble is ahead for the development of Star Wars: The Old Republic. EA has not commented yet. God of War creator David Jaffe has criticized the insider for having unrealistic expectations of working in the games industry.
The problem is that PC gaming is dying as online console gaming gains ground.
Most new exciting games are being released for consoles. There are only a few really hot titles for the PC.
Warhammer just doesn't have the namepower that something like Starcraft has, and so a minor game on a dying platform is simply a losing tactic no matter when they release it.
Ooo. I can do ToA stuff in a day or two now? So, how much grinding do I have to do to get a decent number of players in the game? How about my guild? My alliance?
Fanboy all you want - nothing will change the fact that Mythic is a shortsighted group that not only failed to understand their player base, but failed to understand the MMO market itself.
And sorry - the catastrophe they inflicted upon DAoC is very relevant, when you have an anonymous troll whining about how EA is entirely responsible for the death of WAR, despite all evidence to the contrary.