BioWAAAAAAGH!

[Flimgoblin]

Mythic Entertainment | Warhammer Herald

Mark Jacobs is out...
Rob Denton in charge of Mythic.

Bioware chief looking after both studios.

 

[Xandax]

Well - perhaps somebody can save Warhammer now.

 

[svartalf]

I guess the mindset is, "Duuuh ... two MMOs?! Um balance sheet say we only need one company! Get everybody working double as hard!". I think it's a positive thing, because Bioware have thus far been so fantastic.

 

[pikeh]

Bioware good!

 

[cHodAX]

The braindrain begins, anyone worth having at Mythic is moved over to SW:OR (which will be a massive hit) to get that monster out the door. WAR will be left to rot and when it starts losing money the CSR's will start being phased out as well.

 

[Ctuchik]

The braindrain begins, anyone worth having at Mythic is moved over to SW:OR (which will be a massive hit) to get that monster out the door. WAR will be left to rot and when it starts losing money the CSR's will start being phased out as well.

WAR wasn't doing good to begin with. and its quite obvious that they will never be able to fix the game good enough so that they can lift the population cap on the most pupular zones.

fairly certain that those parts of the game are pretty deep down and would require a total rewrite, and i dont think EA is willing to fork out that kind of cash on a problem that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Mythic had the chance of a lifetime with this game, unfortunately the dodgy coding means they blew it.

 

[cHodAX]

WAR wasn't doing good to begin with. and its quite obvious that they will never be able to fix the game good enough so that they can lift the population cap on the most pupular zones.

fairly certain that those parts of the game are pretty deep down and would require a total rewrite, and i dont think EA is willing to fork out that kind of cash on a problem that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Mythic had the chance of a lifetime with this game, unfortunately the dodgy coding means they blew it.

100% in agreement, WAR will live on for a while but that is the deathknell for serious future development of the game sadly. The game is fundamentally flawed and requires a massive rewrite to fix, 10's of millions of dollars of investment which EA will not spend.

 

[Xandax]

The braindrain begins, anyone worth having at Mythic is moved over to SW:OR (which will be a massive hit) to get that monster out the door. WAR will be left to rot and when it starts losing money the CSR's will start being phased out as well.

Seriously - I hope Mythic don't get to mess up TOR as well. It is enough they messed up DAoC and Warhammer.


But there is no doubt that this move by EA is due to Warhammer not living up to expectations.

 

[pikeh]

Pfft, but I don't like SW :<

 

[Ctuchik]

Pfft, but I don't like SW :<

you burn! you burn in hell blasphemer!!!

 

[Flimgoblin]

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Change of leadership could be interesting.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Lets face it - they cant fuck it up more than he did. Terrible leadership of WAR - constant spin and reversals of policy, snap decisions, poor roadmap for the game etc.

Frankly i could have given it to a monkey and it would have been handled better - Jacobs was obviously in trouble from a few months ago when subs dipped below 300k which was the success threshold.

Lets just hope they keep him well away from any future games - i'm sure he's a great fundraiser and overall manager, but the proof is in the pudding and it's taken nearly a year of post-release and intensive patching to get WAR into a halfway-decent state (and it's still not there).

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Oh and at the risk of being a smug fucker, i predicted this about 3 months ago

 

[Raven]

I doubt very much it will make any difference to WAR. It blew its single chance ages ago.

Good news for Mythic but surely they must be worried, they have one wank game out and one ancient wheezing game, will they be closed down by a money grabbing EA who are more than happy to shut down failing departments.

 

[Genedril]

I doubt very much it will make any difference to WAR. It blew its single chance ages ago.

Good news for Mythic but surely they must be worried, they have one wank game out and one ancient wheezing game, will they be closed down by a money grabbing EA who are more than happy to shut down failing departments.

Do they wait til they fail now?? After all job cuts happened at Mythic not that long after EA turned up (no one needs testers & QA for MMO's do they???)

 

[`mongoose]

I have to say that my feelings echo the sentiments of many people here.

As I bombed around empty zone after empty zone in t4 last night whilst watching the bonused order hammering t2/3 and lotd I did find myself wondering just how mythic could have shot the bolt as badly as they did.

Giving one side complete access to a new zone for 24 hours is a spectacularly dumb decision. It leaves fully half of their player base twiddling their thumbs for a day with nobody to fight in pvp and no reason to login.

the few brave souls on order side who did venture out into pvp zones were instant zerged by bored angry destro on norn who were sat waiting for zones to flip domination style so they could pve for another hour or so in Altdorf.

Total fail and it's just another example of how mythic who got things so right in daoc are getting things so wrong in war


*edit* the sad thing is I love playing my marauder, shaman and magus and when war works - it's incredible. The PVP is fun and fast. levelling isn't onerous. It's so close to being a cracker it just seems to lack that final 10% of polish and that little bit of longevity in end game.

M

 

[scorge]

i feel sorry for games workshop, fantastic background, badly implemented.

I can see more and more resources moved away from WAR, and they will trikle feed teh subscribers they have, i wouldnt be expecting any expansions soon...

 

[Ctuchik]

Do they wait til they fail now?? After all job cuts happened at Mythic not that long after EA turned up (no one needs testers & QA for MMO's do they???)

so who would you rather have fired then? the dev team? fat load of good the QA's would have been then

 

[Downanael]

Wonder was he fired due to Warhammer falling pretty hard,maybe we now get Origins

 

[Genedril]

so who would you rather have fired then? the dev team? fat load of good the QA's would have been then

None of them as you need both to do dev work properly. Fat lot of good devs are if the code doesn't work outside of the office.

 

[Ctuchik]

None of them as you need both to do dev work properly. Fat lot of good devs are if the code doesn't work outside of the office.

so who would you have fired then? because its either devs or QA's to choose from. well, CSR's and GM's aswell, but they arent nearly many enough to make a financial impact even if you fire all of them.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

None of them as you need both to do dev work properly. Fat lot of good devs are if the code doesn't work outside of the office.

Yup.

I think it's very likely that they blew so many financial targets, subscriber targets and developmental goals with WAR that EA just pointed at the door during the last meeting and told MJB not to let it hit him in the arse on the way out.

Thing is you don't get a second chance to make a first impression, and WAR has already lost a vast number of subs. I also can't see Rob performing miracles especially given that he has been Mark's yes-man for a long time - your ops managers etc end up being that as they are good at managing, not being the head of something - i.e. they are given a direction and they drive the team there. They usually do not set the direction.

Ultimately, while i think MJB leaving while it is a good thing overall, it spells the beginning of the end for Mythic as an independant entity.

EA do not allow their purchases to operate independantly for long if they are not massively successful and lets be frank, while many aspects of WAR are enjoyable, there is no way you can call a 25% subscriber retention less than a year into release a success.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

so who would you have fired then? because its either devs or QA's to choose from. well, CSR's and GM's aswell, but they arent nearly many enough to make a financial impact even if you fire all of them.

I suspect Jacobs refused to sign up to a greater equity share in exchange for blown targets, and had to find the extra cash somewhere.

Cutting headcount was probably the only area he could easily find a cost-saving in.

Seen this pattern before with SCi and what is now SCEE.

 

[Genedril]

so who would you have fired then? because its either devs or QA's to choose from. well, CSR's and GM's aswell, but they arent nearly many enough to make a financial impact even if you fire all of them.

Honestly? If it was a fire or shut then I'd get rid of anything that wasn't software based - I'd have kept a minimal staffing of GM's but art/storyline/tea lady/management would all have been gone.

The code was in trouble from the start so instead of working on new things the only option is to fix it. In order to fix it you need dev's & QA's. You don't need fluff at that point as if the codes is as broken as it was/is then all the eyecandy in the world isn't going to save you when people realise.

I suspect they thought they might have time to fix T4 issues originally & were under pressure to get the product out there. Then the QA's were shown the door & all the attempted fixes aren't going to help if no one tests them thouroughly first.

For the record Devs are just about the worst people to test their own code & automated test proceedures are only good up to a point, after that you need proper people trying to do all the stuff that may happen in the most unlikely of circumstances.

 

[old.Osy]

Hopefully - Origins gets revisited.

 

[Everz]

Yup, be interesting to see what they do with the old girl DAOC..

Origins in the pipeline still?.. yum .

 

[Ctuchik]

Honestly? If it was a fire or shut then I'd get rid of anything that wasn't software based - I'd have kept a minimal staffing of GM's but art/storyline/tea lady/management would all have been gone.

now i'm not so read up about game developing companies but i think most of the mentioned departements are pretty vital when it comes to developing a mmo.

take the art team for example, if the devs decide to make a new monster and the art team isnt there anymore. who do you think would make those monsters show up? all u'd have is the code that says the mob is there but you wouldn't see it.

and without a management, who's gonna tell the devs wich way to go on the next patch? or you planning to let them decide for themself individually?

that would be fun, having 100 odd ppl working on 100 different things and neither would have a clue what the other is doing. would love to see something like that happen when its time to compile it all into a working patch

wish we had a game developer here that could explain this stuff :/

 

[Santa's little helper]

Like posted all over: FUCK YOU MARC JACOBS! You ruined daoc, and now you are bye bye!

 

[Genedril]

now i'm not so read up about game developing companies but i think most of the mentioned departements are pretty vital when it comes to developing a mmo.

take the art team for example, if the devs decide to make a new monster and the art team isnt there anymore. who do you think would make those monsters show up? all u'd have is the code that says the mob is there but you wouldn't see it.

and without a management, who's gonna tell the devs wich way to go on the next patch? or you planning to let them decide for themself individually?

that would be fun, having 100 odd ppl working on 100 different things and neither would have a clue what the other is doing. would love to see something like that happen when its time to compile it all into a working patch

wish we had a game developer here that could explain this stuff :/

You need a #thin# management team (not something EA is particularly known for). What's the point in adding new mobs if your underlying code is bourked? Fix that first.

The initial round of patching (though judging by the state of it & number of complaints then 'initial' could be forever & a day) would be fixing the underlying code issues. After you've fixed that then you worry about art & new mobs & balance issues & storylines.

The alternative would be to get it right before you release it as you wouldn't have thousands of subscribers complaining about the shoddy code while demanding new content. TBH sticking new content on something that's handling things as badly as it was/is is like trying to stick an elastoplast on someone who's cut their arm off with a chainsaw.

 

[Garaen]

Cut their losses with WAR imo and develop a completely new MMO - there's no way WAR will bring back the amount of users it lost, it's had its first impression period and failed.

I hope someone on the Bioware side realises there is potential to make a quick and easy money by having a look at DAoC.