Warhammer Online Delayed Until 2008

To the surprise of almost no one, EA Mythic has announced that Warhammer Online won't be out until next year. Eurogamer reports: "'Since our acquisition by EA, we have been afforded many wonderful development opportunities and we plan to take full advantage of everything that is available. This includes taking several additional months to make the best MMORPG possible,' Mythic's Mark Jacobs wrote in a community newsletter." They're going to use the extra time to go back over the Dwarven and Greenskin areas to implement new ideas they've had since working on the original content. With the successful launch of LOTRO this week, and the continuing crash and burn of Vanguard , MMOG developers seem to be wising up to the importance of a really good launch.

Sounds like a Blizzard

[CogDissident (951207)]

You know, Blizzard is infamous for releasing games when they deem them ready, and not shoving them out the door unprepaired. Remember starcraft's release date problems? Remember World of Warcraft's? I really wish more game companies would follow this trend, releasing finished and high quality games rather than shoving stuff out the door and hoping to patch it later.

Sounds more like EA

[CrazyJim1 (809850)]

EA rushes everything out the door. Just look at how awful C&C3 is.

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[Endo13 (1000782)]

Troll?? Seriously, must be some EA shill with mod points. That's not a troll, it's the bald-faced honest truth. Just because you don't like it/agree with it doesn't make it a troll.

C&C3 was so broken at release, they were already rolling out patches before it hit the shelves. And more patches in the first few weeks.

I really don't know how well they've got it working by now though, since I opted to not pay $50 for a beta, and as a result haven't bought the full release yet. Instead I decided to wait and

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[Opportunist (166417)]

I know there's a Duke Nukem Forever joke in there somewhere, but I didn't get it finished so far.

Return soon for a new release date of the joke.

Re:Sounds like a Blizzard

[happyemoticon (543015)]

There's that quote by Miyomoto: "A delayed game is eventually good; a bad game is bad forever." Some companies, I think, started to realize: "Hey, with patching capability on most consoles and PCs, we can release a game bad and make it good eventually!" The trouble is this never works the way they want it to. If the game is buggy when you ship it, people will always remember it as a buggy mess, and if it's bad, people will not give it a second chance.

Then there's another category of games: self-consciously shitty exploitation games. A lot of EA's brands fall into this category, for instance. They develop because the marketers say that there is no way Madden 08 cannot make a profit, and they ship because anyone muscleheaded enough to buy it will buy it bugs and all.

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[CowTipperGore (1081903)]

They develop because the marketers say that there is no way Madden 08 cannot make a profit, and they ship because anyone muscleheaded enough to buy it will buy it bugs and all.

They ship it because they make lots of money with little development. The engine has not changed significantly in years - their biggest cost is now the exclusive licenses they paid the NFL and NCAA to guarantee their monopoly in this market (deemed necessary because of real competition from the 2K series).

1. Recycle 95% of last year's game.
2. Update rosters.
3. Create commercials using prerendered movies instead of anything resembling actual game play.
4. Profit!

I'm a long-time EA Sport gamer, going back to Madd

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[k_187 (61692)]

Indeed, unless you're an idiot or a stat freak, there's no reason to buy Madden every year. I haven't gotten one yet, but I'll probably get the first version for the Wii that has online play. Cause the Wii version is awesome. Same thing with tiger woods, even though I've already got '07 there.

If only patching worked that way

[Moraelin (679338)]

Mostly I'll aggree with you, but just to nitpick: but you seem to operate under the impression that the game is only buggy at launch, that it will be patched right, and that it's only remembered as having been once buggy.

My experience is quite the opposite: most games which were launched buggy (read: most games), their patches introduced at _least_ 1 new bug for every 2 fixed (though in some cases it was 2 introduced for 1 fixed), and the publisher gave up long before it was anywhere near good quality.

Basic

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[Chris Burke (6130)]

The trouble is this never works the way they want it to. If the game is buggy when you ship it, people will always remember it as a buggy mess, and if it's bad, people will not give it a second chance.

Not just that, but games shipped as buggy crap tend to stay buggy crap, and the patches only make it perhaps somewhat less so. If they half-ass it on the initial quality so as to make a deadline, then the patches will probably be half-assed as well. Most likely in these companies most or all of the developme

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[elrous0 (869638)]

The problem with that philosophy is that it has its limits. You can end up working on a game for so long that it becomes technologically outdated, forcing you to go back to the drawing board and start all over again. This can lead to an endless cycle that turns your game into a pathetic joke [wikipedia.org] and has your shareholders calling for the developers' heads on pikes.

Race Against the Clock

[Hackie_Chan (678203)]

The big question is, why aren't they?

1. Funding. Development time is a race against the clock. If they had money for 20 months of development but need three or six more months to polish and finish things - tough shit. Not all companies have large financial backing like Blizzard.

2. Quality. Even the crappiest game can't be fixed with additional development time. Releasing it today and raking in some cash is a better solution than releasing it later and still get the same sales (and bad reviews).

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[CogDissident (951207)]

You have point 2 backwards. If a game is released quickly, and is a buggy unplayable mess, it will get bad reviews and will never sell. If its released late, they lose a tiny part of the market that isnt willing to wait for them, and they instead get better reviews and better sales.

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[CogDissident (951207)]

This is why I did not mention the expansion. Blizzard recently has been taking a more "EA" stance on product quality since World of Warcraft has come out.

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[Endo13 (1000782)]

That's at least partially because a lot of their staff has moved on, like for instance the ones that formed ArenaNet to develop Guild Wars. And look at the high quality of that game. Yeah they're releasing patches all the time, but by far most of them are to tweak skills a bit as necessary (balancing things a bit) or to add/remove holiday scenery. Very few actual bugs, and none that have been game-breaking. And GW has to be the most stable, smooth-running multiplayer game of this size that I've ever played.

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[CogDissident (951207)]

Well, to be fair, its not always good to have a repuation of never releasing a single game on time, ever, so it does fit the first definition of infamous.

Is there a market for this?

[EveryNickIsTaken (1054794)]

I'm wondering if there's even a market out there for all of the "soon-to-be-released" MMOs/MMORPGs that are currently being developed. Given the amount of time that needs to be put into any of these games from a player's standpoint, is there room for another WoW? It seems as though when developers saw the subscriber numbers and cash that WoW was bringing into Blizzard, they all jumped into development of a "new ground-breaking MMORPG!"

I was wondering the same

[Opportunist (166417)]

Unlike other games, that you play for a while and then stop, MMORPGs are geared to make you play "forever". You're not "supposed" to play C&C or BF for years to come, mostly 'cause the company making them would rather you to buy the next generation of their games than sticking with it for months and years, while with MMORPGs, it's sell once and keep milking.

Now, while I can well see buying 3-4 "normal" games within a certain timespan, I wonder how many people would really go and subscribe to 2, 3 or mor

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[Retric (704075)]

Your assuming they are all basicly the same. I play eve-online and WoW at the same time. Eve is like post 70 WoW in that you don't grind for exp only loot. WoW has much better PvE content and eve wins PvP. It adds up to together it's about 30$ a month but considering I spend more on cable and watch less TV I don't think of that as a major issue.

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[Opportunist (166417)]

Ok, but there is a vast difference between EvE and WoW. I don't see the same degree of difference in EQ2, Vanguard, WHO and all the myriad other fantasy-MMORPGs that come out now. And yes, even SWG and AO fit that pattern, they are all essentially the same.

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[Endo13 (1000782)]

There's other MMOs that are vastly different too, like for example City of Heroes/Villains.

And then look at the huge number of players that have multiple accounts for their MMO of choice. It's not that big a stretch to think that they might be willing to try a new game, and then drop one of their less-used accounts on the old MMO as they spend less time in it.

Also, you don't *need* 8 million subscribers for a game to be successful. Eventually those 8 million WoW players are going to get bored with WoW and s

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[Opportunist (166417)]

When people multi-account, they usually don't do that 'cause they have too few character slots, but rather to buffbot and/or powerlevel themselves. I've been guilty of that myself (DAoC certainly begged for it). And I usually either had 2 or no accounts in a game. So I'd say people would not drop one account, they'd either stay with 2 or switch over and create 2.

And yes, you certainly don't need to be the biggest MMORPG to make a buck. EvE is certainly a good example for that with (afaik) less than 200k sub

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[Andy Dodd (701)]

On the other hand, it's REALLY hard to come up with a good "endgame" to keep players forever.

The end result is that despite the fact that in general, MMOs are designed to keep players around for extended periods of time, burnout is frequent.

That's why I switched from DAoC to EVE. That's why after a year or so, I switched back to DAoC. (Admittedly with 2-4 months of "nothing but FPSes or outdoor activities" in between). After another two years, I'm back in EVE.

To be honest, I'm at the point where I'm burn

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[jeffasselin (566598)]

Despite the trolls on Blizzard's boards, WoW had an very well-done end-game by the time of the expansion release in the raid content. It was a bit rough at opening, but after a couple years and refinements, it had evolved into very enjoyable content with different levels of difficulty for a lot of people to enjoy. Not everyone saw the end of it, but by the time Naxxramas was released, everyone and his dog could do Molten Core running "pick-up groups" for it and various other instances. The harder content wa

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[Andy Dodd (701)]

Doesn't sound like much of an endgame to me.

Before the playerbase was decimated and all but the most elite hardcore players left, DAoC's PvP system was (and at least in design, still is) the best system I've ever seen.

It's so different from most other systems that it has its own name, RvR (Realm vs. Realm). The basic idea is that there are three realms, and you cannot fight players from your own realm. Players from other realms cannot enter your realm's mainland (giving a safe PvE/farming/leveling area),

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[jeffasselin (566598)]

WoW is faction vs faction, but there is no permanent or even semi-permanent victory. Overworld objectives are extremely temporary and give little to max-level characters. No one cares about much more than their personal winnings, and faction results are pretty much irrelevant. I never enjoyed PvP much anyway in WoW, too short and unbalanced, no strategy involved, just big numbers: first-shot wins pretty much.

I actually enjoyed WoW's end-game before the expansion. The expansion scuttled it to supposedly cate

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[Opportunist (166417)]

DAoC still holds in my eyes the holy grail of PvP. The idea was simply brilliant and the way it worked was flawless until ToA. But it was doomed to fail eventually, even without ToA and the rather insane high level RAs it would sooner or later have unraveled.

In the beginning, you could go into RvR when you were about lv 45. First of all, the fights were simply epic in size. Armies of countless heroes attacked and defended castles, it did simply not matter just how "high" you actually were. Most of your oppo

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[Andy Dodd (701)]

I would say that Cats had just the opposite effect of being a "soloing expansion" Once TDs were in play, getting a group was just a matter of going to the appropriate TD. It was very rare to spend more than 10-15 minutes LFG. (As opposed to, for example, praying your realm had DF and you could get an AoE DF Knights group.)

Either way, with the exception of the now massive difference between the "haves" and "have-nots" and the fact that while Mythic has added some rewards for keep/tower RvR, 8v8 is still t

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[Opportunist (166417)]

I can't add anything meaningful to the DAoC part. It's simply true the way it is.

So I want to say a few words to EvE. PvP in EvE is pretty much everything about PvP that I don't like. It's either an ambush, where you're getting your rear handed without a chance to actually fire back by a gatecamper, or it's 2 hours or preparing, waiting, sitting on either end of a gate with a growing group until one side decides they got enough people, then they jump, it's 2-3 minutes of lag and then it's over.

And over for

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[Opportunist (166417)]

Actually BC might well be a dagger to the back of WoW. I've seen a lot of my friends who're dedicated WoW players turn away from it because of BC. Not because the expansion is "too hard" or "too easy" or "too bad", but because they feel cheated. An example of what a friend told me yesterday.

He had some 2handed sword. THE best 2h sword in existance pre-BC. No idea what made it so good, but according to him it was just THE sword. Took him months to finally get it out of a raid of whateverhowmany people. Now,

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[Andy Dodd (701)]

I think this is a fundamental problem with any MMOG in terms of expansions.

Basically, to sell an expansion, you need to offer rewards that are significantly better than existing content. But doing so causes a continuing arms race that widens the gap between "haves" and "have-nots". Either way, you're screwed. Either an expansion won't sell, or it will contribute to the death of the game.

By the way, I think (in addition to its initial and continuing "niche" appeal) that this is one of the reasons for the

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[Opportunist (166417)]

EvE has one huge advantage over most other MMORPGs: You can be successful without ever leaving the "newbie area" if you so desire. Yes, it takes longer, yes, it's less exciting, but you can still make your buck by farming Veldspar. There's a huge market for Tritanium, everyone needs it in insane quantities and that's not likely to change anytime soon. This allows for very different playing styles, from the "casual" player who runs around solo, collects some missions and money, mining in between where it's s

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[Diss Champ (934796)]

There's plenty of room more more good games to have decent sized audiences- there probably isn't room for another to succeed as well as WoW without going after WoW players and changing their addiction. I think much of the growth on the shallow end of the pool is WoW players bringing others into WoW- now that they have that area staked out they are harder to dislodge.

Myself, a 14 day trial of WoW was enough to bore me by the end. Eve is the game I'm currently hooked on, but while it is a great game there is

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[fotbr (855184)]

Yes, there is. There are a bunch of WoW players that are only continuing to play until the next good thing comes along. Most of the people in the guild I'm in will drop out of WoW for a month at a time to play GameXYZ when its released, if they like it, they retire their WoW account and play the new game. If its bad, they come back. When they get tired of the new game, they come back.

Most of them are gone playing LOTR right now -- we'll lose some, sure, but most of them will end up coming back. Likewis

Enlarge the market

[SmallFurryCreature (593017)]

While I don't like WoW (it is polished, it does exactly what it says, it is extremely well designed but I do NOT like it) its biggest claim to fame is NOT so much that it did extremely well in getting a couple of million subscribers but that it proved everyone wrong who pre-WoW claimed that any new MMO would have to get it subscribers from other existing MMO's.

Pity then that WoW now has more subscribers then ALL mmo's that came before combined, with the fact that those earlier MMO's still exist with their

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[MeanderingMind (884641)]

I think the AMOUNT of total MMO players is about peaked...

I think you assume too much. If I recall, this same argument was used to note that WoW would not surpass EQ by much. The idea that there are a fixed amount of people who play MMOs is one that will likely fade in coming years.

If the Next Big Thing(TM) comes out tomorrow, we won't see Blizzard's subscriptions drop down to near nothing overnight. Drop perhaps, but not collapse. In fact, I could easily imagine Blizzard retaining even 75% of their current

Er...?

[TimeElf1 (781120)]

Why couldn't they of made a Warhammer 40K MMORPG first? In my opinion it's setting is more compelling than more dwarves and elves. Do they want to be blown out of the water by the juggernaut that is WoW?

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[MeanderingMind (884641)]

Sci-Fi based MMORPGs are not as popular as their fantasy based siblings. I may be a neophyte, but the only reasonably successful Sci-Fi MMORPG I can think of is EVE. SWG strikes me as a train wreck. Meanwhile, we have EQ, EQ2, FF11, DAoC and WoW as easily recognizable examples of successful MMORPGs in the fantasy setting.

If Warhammer Online passes muster and is successful I think we can expect a Warhammer 40k followup MMO, much like the constant rumors of "World of Starcraft" (Heaven help Blizzard if they c

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[Cirak (992412)]

THQ has been working on a Warhammer 40k MMO.

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=12947 [gamasutra.com]

Read between the lines

[Avatar8 (748465)]

From TFA:

"Since our acquisition by EA, we have been afforded many wonderful development opportunities..."

Translation:
"Since we were assimilated, EA has separated our talented team and distributed them amongst several teams of numerous EA projects so that we can try and fix their problems. By the time we get back to working on OUR project, we'll be so burned out by EA politics, unrealistic timelines and 100 hour work weeks that what we have for Warhammer right now will be what we ship in 2008. We'll let the live product be the beta test and patch it every month, the EA way."

I hope the best for the Mythic buys, but according to history everything EA touches turns to crap.

"guys" not "buys"

[Avatar8 (748465)]

Minor correction. My subconscious was thinking "EA buys everything."

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[jfodale (1032534)]

Could turn out that way, but so far EA is letting them run the show... It could turn out to be a positive, as Mythic will be able to benefit from EA's advertising.

Games Workshop also has a very big hand in this game and has to approve of everything. If the development process is going awry, they will not hesitate to pull the plug (as past evidence has shown).

Or maybe...

[Cathoderoytube (1088737)]

Maybe, though this is fairly far fetched and borderline insane talk. The development team looked at what they did and looked at World of Warcraft and said 'You know, these things are really similar. I mean I know Warhammer has been around a lot longer than Warcraft, and technically they're ripping us off, but the majority of the population doesn't know that. You know.. Maybe we should just do something different. Why not Warhammer 40k? That'd be interesting'

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[by Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the warhammer (fantasy) and warhammer (40k) IP licences are seperate. The 40k IP distribution rights are owned by THQ, and they've announced plans to develop a 40k MMO.

Which is quite disappointing, I would have have loved to see a 40k MMO from Mythic :\

dwarven district?

[Eternal_0ne (1094215)]

Will I be able to transfer my dwarf character from WoW to WarHammer? I've been a long time bf2 player and EA tends to create products and fix everything except the actual bugs people complain about, the way i see it warhammmer 40k is just around the corner just like bf2 and bf2142

Vanguard vs WoW

[SmallFurryCreature (593017)]

Vanguard is bugged, deep but unfinished. WoW is shallow but polished.

But that is not what sets them apart. The biggest difference is the playerbase. In many ways it reminds me of the difference between Operation Flashpoint and Counterstrike. Both are military first person shooters with counterstrike clearly the more polished easier to get into version. Yet if you desire to play with people whose balls have actually descended your choice is clear.

I tried Vanguard (Sony is one of the few MMO companies willing to accomadate non-credit card owners. Blizzard thanks to its huge success is lucky that stores stock its gamecards) and was amazed to find that you did not need to join a RP-preffered server to be able to be in a world were the majority of players do not use numbers in their chat.

In fact, the majority of players in Vanguard use plain english, are polite and helpfull and even those who still got crap nicks like 'warlord' at least manage to spell it correctly.

If you ever played WoW, well. You know.

Pity then that the game is so fucking bugged. In between the bugs it is actualy fun, and has a lot to offer. I might even say that it is a ton of fun, compared to wow's 1 kilo of fun. Pity that vanguard also gives you two tons of bugs while WoW has by now reduced it to a few grams.

So why am I not playing WoW? Two reasons, the population but mostly the kill X till Y drops and X turns out to be a number just short of infinity. Vanguard improves on both counts but geez gods, FIX THE BUGS.

But what about LOTRO. Well, I am looking at it. Just that so far I can't see any class I like to play. I wonder what route it will take. For me the real killer thing I am looking for in a MMO is for it to be playable and for it to reserve a few servers with a queens english only policy and a naming policy that is enforced with permanent bans. Enter a stupid nick and BAM, banned. No warning, no suggestions, no arguing. Instant ban.

On the other hand, you could just make it an 18+ server. Make that 30+. Nobody born in the 80's or later allowed. And get OF MY LAWN!

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[Mike Buddha (10734)]

I liked WoW, but it really isn't in the same category as even EQ1. I really, really wanted to like Vanguard, but they boned it up good by not finishing it before the release date. It might be good at some point, but who knows? I refuse to subsidize their development by paying money to take part in Vanguard's Open Alpha testing.

Imperator Take 2?

[mmmbeer (9963)]

While on a smaller scale, isn't this just like the Imperator cancellation?

...our tremendous success with 'Dark Age of Camelot' set the standard for Mythic of releasing nothing less than triple-A games, and 'Imperator' was simply not meeting that standard.

A game shop so good that it can not produce a game good enough to be made by them! This should come as no surprise to players who would read the "Grab Bag" posts where weekly Mythic would correct themselves on how various aspects of DAOC worked. They didn't even know how their own tremendously successful MMOG worked under the hood, how could they design a new one?

Imperator was a miserable failure despite being hyped by Jacobs as

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[Pojut (1027544)]

Sorry I missed church; I was busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian.

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[meringuoid (568297)]

Sorry I missed church; I was busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian.

* Christian Mind Trick *

You don't want to be Elfstar any more. You want to be Debbie.

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[MBraynard (653724)]

But he did get you! So as a troll.... success!