Why Warhammer failed

[Thorwyn]

good read...

EA Louse | Bye Bye Mythic

 

[PLightstar]

Interesting read, not sure about the Star Wars rant though, seems a bit far fetched.

 

[Ezteq]

"want to know more?..."


no not really, disgruntled employees ususally are entertaining but I gotsta get my report written. Thor stop tempting me away with your alluring posts you temptational temptress!!!

 

[Raven]

She is right though. The game wasn't ready to be launched and has got worse since. Mark Jacobs is a clueless moron. They do take over decent small devs, put their own man in charge and proceed to grind any creativity into the ground.

I really don't trust EA when it comes to something new, sure they can churn out millions of clones and sequels but when was the last time they did anything original that wasn't utter shit? Its taken them nearly 15 years to get Fifa right.

I don't have much hope for their star wars MMO.

 

[ford prefect]

Interesting read, not sure about the Star Wars rant though, seems a bit far fetched.

Aye $300 million does sound rediculously steep.

I can't see myself ever playing another EA related MMO to be honest. I think in the past few years they have really gone down hill with their game releases. Its a shame for such an old company - they used to make some quality titles.

 

[Chronictank]

just sounds like a whine by someone who got fired to be honest :/
entertaining nonetheless

 

[Sparx]

I stopped playing EA games online on Xbox Live after every single one i played had the most horrible lag, even the most recent Skate 3 had horrible online lag

 

[ford prefect]

just sounds like a whine by someone who got fired to be honest :/
entertaining nonetheless

Actually I think there are some fair points there - especially about the state of Warhammer on release. It looked and felt like an early beta, it was buggy, hogged system resources uneccesarily, had memory leaks and felt unfinished. Sure it had some nice elements from DAoC and WoW in it, but none of them where had been gelled together.

Given another 9 months of development, Warhammer could have been a really good cutting edge MMO that would have stolen a lot of thunder from WoW.

I agree with the marketing stuff as well. Lets face it, Mythic weren't exactly great at advertising DAoC where they? But you would have thought with a project as big as Warhammer and with EA on board, they would have gone to town on it, when all they did really was focus on advertising on the odd MMO related website.

Mamangement obviously weren't great as they were feeding all kinds of crap down to the CSR's who were having to repeat it to paying customers, who were not only getting more irrate, but could also see straight through all the nonsense.

As for the rest of the article, to be fair yes there is an element of sour grapes as you would expect, but I daresay there is an element of truth behind the Mark Jacobs stuff too.

 

[Vasconcelos]

Old news, i remember back in 2209 i saw a similar report (if not the same one).

WAR failed cuz it wasnt a finished product. Not even they had their concepts polished.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that DAOC was just a case of sheer luck by Mythic, thus, a DAOC2 is completely outta the question

 

[Everz]

Worst thing to ever happen to Mythic was to be taken over by EA, spells death of every company it happens to, and as can be seen in the huge decline in products since.

 

[ECA]

Warhammer had a few niggling problems that killed it rather than any single big issue.
That entry didn't touch on a single gameplay issue it just lambasted people he didn't like.

 

[georgie]

Old news, i remember back in 2209 i saw a similar report (if not the same one).

Are you a Terminator sent back to post on FH, Vas?

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Its just foaming dog fever. EA-haters can lap it up as confirmation of whatever they already believe. It all might be true, it might not. There are no facts presented. It could even have been written by a competitor attempting to discredit the launch of Old Republic.

The only thing I can concretely agree on is that WAR was not finished at launch, nor was it finished by the time I gave up on it a year later.

That entry didn't touch on a single gameplay issue it just lambasted people he didn't like.

This.

 

[Tuthmes]

We sold mor ethan a million boxes, and only had 300k subs a month later. Going down every 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 make more money than our biggest project.

Everyone knew that as soon as EA took it over it whas d00med. What Raven said.

Every MMO maker nowdays goes for the bling bling looks of their game, not thinking about gameplay. Fair enough, it has to look good, but when 200 players collide it has to be playable aswell to be succesfull. Not to mention if its only playable on the newest computers, then you'll loose (a lot) players aswell (something Blizzard acknowledged(sp?) right away).

 

[ECA]

One other thing, it states that the marketing for the game was terrible - and then goes on to state they sold over a million copies in the first week. ( contradict yourself much? )

What sold the game was the really good weekly dev videos highlighting aspects of the game, it was free marketing that sold the game - not spreads in magazines that people dont give a fuck about.

 

[Tuthmes]

Its just foaming dog fever. EA-haters can lap it up as confirmation of whatever they already believe. It all might be true, it might not. There are no facts presented. It could even have been written by a competitor attempting to discredit the launch of Old Republic.

The only thing I can concretely agree on is that WAR was not finished at launch, nor was it finished by the time I gave up on it a year later.

There are no facts presented? How about to little active subs? About everyone complaining about a buggy, bloated game at the start (like you said not finished). Fixes took too long, etc.

EA took over, its their responsibility. All they did whas layoff more workers to save in costs.

 

[Sparx]

You will always find the people who complain will always complain more and louder than the people who are happy. The ones who are happy are too busy playing the game while the complainers all clump together and will constantly go on about it

So to me thats never real evidence

 

[Jiggs]

If you played Warhammer after playing DAoC for a long time, it really was a genuine "wtf happened here?" moment playing through the levels.

Interesting getting the gossip on Sanya's departure but beyond that not much to get your teeth into. Dawn of Camelot - I guess that was Origins.

The Star Wars stuff doesn't worry me - the game will be released soon enough and the comments will either be vindicated or proven false, it's just a question of waiting to see how it pans out. Not a game I'm waiting on tbh.

 

[Tuthmes]

You will always find the people who complain will always complain more and louder than the people who are happy. The ones who are happy are too busy playing the game while the complainers all clump together and will constantly go on about it

So to me thats never real evidence

True.

 

[Helme]

No what sold the game was the fact that it was Warhammer and that it was released during a no-patch period of WoW. What truly killed it was that Wrath of the Lich King was released a month later.

That said I totally believe the guy about the Star Wars MMO, yes it sounds good on paper but to be perfectly honest - the gameplay looks shit. It seems to run like shit and an endgame focused on epic questing isn't going to work all that well if you want to keep your customers(look at Lord of the Rings Online, their subscribers come in cycles with the patches and goes away when the new content is finished in a month).

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

There are no facts presented?

Nothing about the internal goings on, no inside scoop with any weight.

How about to little active subs? About everyone complaining about a buggy, bloated game at the start (like you said not finished). Fixes took too long, etc.

EA took over, its their responsibility. All they did whas layoff more workers to save in costs.

Nothing we didn't already know or had worked out for ourselves.

It might have been written by a disgruntled employee, or not. Given the guy is staying undercover, its fairly meaningless other than a mildly entertaining read.

 

[Shagrat]

It was released too early, but then again isnt that the common problem with most mmo's (if not all games).

Get it in a moderately working state, get it released, use the sales money to fund the dev team to patch the holes......


disappointing thing is its actually a decent pvp mmo. Im playing the come back week thingy atm and enjoying it at the moment.

 

[ECA]

Mourkain mountain was so much fuckin fun ^^;; just a shame it wasnt a t4 scenario.

Really it could have been very successful, but they didnt fix like 4 minor things they could have fixed in 10 minutes if they were not busy sucking a bag of dicks.

 

[Punishment]

CCP Have my money now , atleast they know how to run an mmo properly

 

[BloodOmen]

sounds about right tbh can't see why Old Republic would be any different in that respect, it'll be released before its finished.

 

[GReaper]

Given another 9 months of development, Warhammer could have been a really good cutting edge MMO that would have stolen a lot of thunder from WoW.

Another years worth of development may have solved some of the bugs, but would it have actually made the game fun?

Whilst I think whoever designed the crap obviously had interesting ideas, they clearly never had to endure the suffering of their own creation. Amazing how a company which had a hugely successful MMORPG didn't learn anything from it.

 

[Raven]

They did have a good solid MMO 6 years ago, they have been trying their best to destroy it ever since. I really don't think anyone at Mythic has any idea at all of what makes an MMO playable.

 

[Dreamor]

Aye $300 million does sound rediculously steep.

I can't see myself ever playing another EA related MMO to be honest. I think in the past few years they have really gone down hill with their game releases. Its a shame for such an old company - they used to make some quality titles.

APB spent £90 million, so given the time and effort (and size of the team) its not that far fetched... heck I've seen here how much the average game costs. That said most of that 300 will be marketing which EA and other companys just love to spend.

 

[Vasconcelos]

Amazing how a company which had a hugely successful MMORPG didn't learn anything from it.

Thats why i lend to think DAOC success was just sheer luck 'ala Matrix I

 

[pikeh]

Was I the only one that liked WAR at the start then?
The leveling was the best fun I've had in any MMO yet, its just the endgame being a total clusterfuckzergcake that spoiled it after a year.