Slashdot Log In
"Live Expansion" Announced for Warhammer Online
Posted by
Soulskill
on Thu Jan 29, 2009 01:04 PM
from the stepping-up-their-game dept.
from the stepping-up-their-game dept.
Zonk brings word that Mythic has announced their plans to expand Warhammer Online in the coming months using a series of live events that will open up new careers, gear, and zones. The first event, planned for sometime in March, will allow access to the Dwarf Slayer and the Orc Choppa, as well as a new RvR scenario. Later, players will race to unlock a massive new zone, the Lands of the Dead. The expansion itself is titled "A Call to Arms," and it will be rolled out free of charge.
Related Stories
[+]
<em>Warhammer</em> Team Hit By Layoffs 89 comments
Zonk notes that Mythic Entertainment, developer of Warhammer Online, is being hit by another round of layoffs. The report estimates that between 60 and 130 staff were let go as part of Electronic Arts' reduction of its workforce. This comes alongside news that the number of Warhammer subscribers has settled to around 300,000. Mythic's Mark Jacobs was quick to affirm that while they were "resizing the team," their plans and schedule are unchanged, citing lower demands on QA now that the launch period has passed. Hopefully this means that their upcoming "live expansion," A Call to Arms, will not be affected by the layoffs.
[+]
Mythic Shutting Down 63 <em>Warhammer</em> Servers 137 comments
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.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
"and it will be rolled out free of charge. " (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. " (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They're gouging the hell out of casual players. When was the last time they ever added anything for casuals, (read: those who don't have to "clock in" for a raid or arena)
I haven't been paying attention for the last 14 months, but in the 3 years I played, the only and last one was Dire Maul.
Also, if you've been playing since release and bought the expansions, you've paid $700 (50 mo x 15 + 50 x 2). Since when was $700 reasonable for a game?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
also 700 dollars for 4+ years of entertainment, I've logged only around 200-250 hours(i'm low balling it) on my account so 700 dollars for that sort of time (i took most of 2008 off so you could cut 180 off that for me) is a good deal, to spend the same amount of time in a movie theater would have cost me a great
Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. " (Score:5, Informative)
- Netherwing quest hub
- Shatari Skyguard quest hub
- Ogri'la quest hub
- Zul'Aman 10-man raid and associated quests
- Sunwell Isle, including multiple quest hubs and a new 5-man instance
- Added a new quest hub in Dustwallow Marsh for people leveling new characters
They also progressively nerfed the crap out of the raid content to make it more accessible for casual players.
On top of that the vast majority of content in the TBC and WLK expansions is for "casuals". Look at the amount of quest content, the number of 5-man dungeons, new battlegrounds, etc. as compared to the amount of raid content.
If anything Blizzard is completely catering to the casual player.
Parent
Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. " (Score:4, Insightful)
If anything Blizzard is completely catering to the casual player.
Really? Catering to 95% of their player base? What crazy rebels!
Parent
Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. " (Score:4, Informative)
... seriously. Is it "catering" at that point or "producing the product their player base is expecting?"
I never said it was bad. The OPs point is that Blizzard only cares about and only releases "free" content for raiders, which is demonstrably not true.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Hate to break it to you buddy, but having to gather 10 other people of specific classes at the same contiguous timespan is not casual.
If it can't be reliably done in an hour including the time to get a group together its not casual. Not saying its bad or good, but there it is.
Then you don't consider even 5-man non-heroic instances to be casual (at least, certainly not instances prior to Wrath, and even then a typical PuG takes more than an hour especially including time to get the group together).
I mean, I
Re: (Score:2)
Hate to break it to you buddy, but having to gather 10 other people of specific classes at the same contiguous timespan is not casual.
Is gathering 5 other people of specific classes for a contiguous timespan casual? You do realize we're discussing a multiplayer game, right?
ZA was getting cleared by trade-channel PuGs before too long. The instance was designed for casual players - the timed run for the warbear mount was thrown in as a bone for raiding guilds.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Also, if you've been playing since release and bought the expansions, you've paid $700 (50 mo x 15 + 50 x 2). Since when was $700 reasonable for a game?
If you're a casual player, and you log in 10 hours per week, then you're getting 2000 hours( = 50 mo x 4 [wks/mo] x 10 [hr/wk]) of gameplay for those $700 dollars. Let's round that to 3 hours per dollar. The alternative, to a casual fantasy-loving gamer, would be to keep up with the steady stream of console RPGs that keeps coming out. If you don't care about getting the infinity plus one sword or reaching 101% completion (which you don't, because remember that you're a casual gamer), then it takes roughl
Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. " (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As a generic form of entertainment, $15 a month for ~10 to ~40 hours of entertainment a month is a damn good deal.
A movie will run you $8 and only get you about ~2 hours of evertainment.
Re: (Score:2)
MMORPGs are a different model than a typical video game. Does Crysis have admins on 24/7? Do they update content constantly? D
Re: (Score:2)
Uh, speaking as someone who clocked in every day to run a non-casual guild, I can tell you that we were more than a little annoyed about just how much they did give the casuals.
Badges of Justice, nerfing content, removing attunements to content, daily quests, etc.
I'm not saying that WoW is awesome for casuals, but they certainly haven't been ignored.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ya, it'd be nice if they added new instances without having to pay for a new expansion...
MC (shudder), BWL, Dire Maul, AQ and Original Nax were added to the retail release.
Burning Crusade had BT.
WotLK is coming up on the next CONTENT patch which will add a new raid instance.
Yup, no free expansions there.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
BT was part of BC, true, but Blizz did roll out Quel'Danas (with its 25-man, Sunwell Plateau... though I don't know many raid guilds that ran that particular raid too much.) And that was "free" (or, from a more cynical perspective, it was part of Burning Crusade but delivered very very late).
But, yeah, Blizzard seems to be living well off the maxim "Charge what the market will bear".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What are you babbling on about? You didn't pay for Naxx? What's the first raid dungeon in WOTLK? Oh yeah... that one. And not everyone that played WoW raided.
The Naxx [wowwiki.com] you're talking about? That's not the same Naxx [wowwiki.com] he's talking about. Unless you want to talk about lore - but we're talking content.
As for raiding - I suppose you're wanting to talk about the Battlegrounds then?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep in mind that in addition to paid expansions, Blizzard does add content for free too. (Think Ahn'Qiraj, for example.). Plus WAR has proven to have a lot of deficiencies that need to be corrected for it to be competitive... Although rather than add new classes (which always makes class balance harder) I wish they'd fix the existing major realm population and effectiveness balances - At least as of November, Destruction far outpopulated Order on nearly every server to a great deal because their classes
Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. " (Score:5, Informative)
I completely forgot, but Mythic has a bit of a history with "Live Expansions".
Typically their cycle in DAoC would be a free "Expansion" during the late spring/early summer timeframe, with a paid expansion in the late fall/early winter timeframe.
Examples of free "Summer" expansions would be Foundations (housing) and New Frontiers, and sometimes major game mechanics patches (such as spellcrafting the year before Foundations). There were fewer of these than paid expansions.
The paid expansions were typically yearly up until the past year (or was it two years ago they stopped?), when instead of another DAoC expansion, WAR was released. The paid expansions were Shrouded Isles, Trials of Atlantis (which led to DAoC's demise), Catacombs, , and Labyrinth of the Minotaur.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
grr somehow one of my entries got deleted, there was an expansion whose name I can't remember between Cats and LoTM.
Re: (Score:2)
Darkness Rising.
Which wasn't a paid expansion, as I recall. Though it's been so long my memory is fuzzy on which I paid for, and which just happened.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Although rather than add new classes (which always makes class balance harder) I wish they'd fix the existing major realm population and effectiveness balances
Not in this case. Every Race is supposed to have a melee DPS, tank, ranged DPS, and support/healer. Currently Dwarves and Greenskins don't have their melee DPS. Was pretty bad for Empire and Dark Elves since they didn't have their tanks until a few months ago. The game is balanced around each side being able to have these kinds of roles, and for a new game its balanced pretty well.
A lot of players don't realize what is happening in combat so they cry out that a specific class is overpowered. They're wr
Re: (Score:2)
Nice. I wish Blizzard did this. They sure as hell have the money for free expansions.
They do. Routinely.
Molten Core was added after launch as a free patch.
The entire Silithus zone was redone in a free patch, and two new raid zones (Ahn'Qiraj) were added.
Zul'Gurub was added as a free patch.
Naxxramas was added as a free patch.
And that's just the stuff that was added after retail... Tons more stuff was added, free of charge, after Burning Crusade was rolled out.
Black Temple was added as a free patch.
The whole Sunwell Plateau thing was a free patch.
Zul'Aman was added as a free patch.
And that'
Re:"and it will be rolled out free of charge. " (Score:4, Interesting)
I am a relatively casual player and I have spent thousands of hours in those zones over the years.
"Thousands of hours"?? That's more time than most people spend at a full time job in a YEAR. (40hrs/wk * 52 wks/yr = 1680hrs/yr) and you spent thousands of hours in just 5 Warcraft zones? How much time did you spend playing WoW not in those zones?
I think your definition of "relatively casual player" is seriously askew.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
There *are* people who play that much WoW. Usually, however, they aren't all that good at playing or they are just there for the social aspect. The better you are at WoW, the less time you end up playing, I found.
Re: (Score:2)
40 hours / week * 52 weeks / year = 2080 hours / year
Yep, mistyped as 40x42 when I did the calc. Still the point stands even if though I was out 400hrs. Of course, once you factor in vacation, and days off etc, the total drops below 2k again.
Re: (Score:2)
Still though, you're comparing a SINGLE year of a full time job to "years" as he said of play time.
Lets assume for example, that this guy has played since launch. Lets assume 2000 hours as a minimum time spent here. The game has been out now for 4 years and 3 months. Roughly 220 weeks.
So if he'd been playing since launch, he could have broken 2000 hours putting in just 9 hours per week, which is pretty tame and casual for most MMORPG's, and isn't really anything I'd consider excessive. Hell I know people
Of course its free (Score:5, Insightful)
Its just content that was originally planned for release that got cut just so they could beat Blizzards Wrath Expansion out of the gate.
Re: (Score:2)
So all the Orcs will yell... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.walloftext.info/2009/01/mythic-was-right-no-official-forums.html [walloftext.info] An interesting way to do an announcement at least...
Please! (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: PLEASE COME BACK! We know millions of you tried our game when we launched but then Wrath of the Lich King came out and you all went back to WoW and dropped us but we'd REALLY like it if you came back. Please. Pretty please.
Ok, smartass comment out of the way, I feel bad for the Mythic crew. They had the best chance to take a substantial bite out of WoW's rather massive pie. But, in the end, they're playing in the same fantasy-genre sandbox and they just cannot compete with WoW. Yes, Warhammer may do some (or even many) things better than WoW but WoW also does many things better than Warhammer. More importantly, 11.5 million people play WoW. That's a MASSIVE player base and, given that the type of game is a massively multiplayer online game, that "massive" part is kind of important.
In my opinion, it will take a long time before another fantasy MMO comes out that has a similar real chance to take a substantial chunk of the market from WoW. If Warhammer couldn't do it, with all it's legacy behind it, it will require something truly spectacular to do it. Blizzard will need to screw things up at the same time that another company does a lot of things REALLY well with a hot IP (kinda like what WoW did to Everquest...). Warhammer had it's chance but missed the target. It'll be a while before another game has a shot. In my opinion.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
More importantly, 11.5 million people play WoW. That's a MASSIVE player base and, given that the type of game is a massively multiplayer online game, that "massive" part is kind of important.
And how many of those players play on one same shard? The massive part matters only if I can actually interact with those other players and the biggest US realms have about 35k characters of levels 10+ [warcraftrealms.com] rolled on it. That's characters only, mind you.
I don't have any numbers on it, but if you could count only actual accounts/players (and/or players logged in at the same time), those numbers would be way less than that, too.
Anyway, if you're gonna go with this argument, EvE Online beats the whole bunch in
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What he is saying though...is that you probably know someone who plays WoW...thus making it more likely you would want to jo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A few points at random...
I played wow early on got the collector's edition, and everything. Eventually got very bored and quit. I mostly like PvP, but if you do pure pvp in wow, you don't level. I got tired of the grind and quit. In Warhammer you can level all the way to 40 without killing a single NPC monster. You even get great gear from it.
Re:Please! (Score:4, Insightful)
Strange how every article about MMOs is quickly filled with EVE fans telling everyone how great and unique it is, even though no-one cares because EVE is boring as hell.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
In my opinion, it will take a long time before another fantasy MMO comes out that has a similar real chance to take a substantial chunk of the market from WoW. If Warhammer couldn't do it, with all it's legacy behind it, it will require something truly spectacular to do it. Blizzard will need to screw things up at the same time that another company does a lot of things REALLY well with a hot IP (kinda like what WoW did to Everquest...). Warhammer had it's chance but missed the target. It'll be a while before another game has a shot.
I played WoW, TBC, and then just did a 10 day trial of LK. I'm of the same opinion. WoW will have to die of it's own natural cycle and then in it's place will need to be a new option for people who enjoy MMOs.
Loving this game... (Score:4, Interesting)
They Had Me, Then They Lost Me (Score:4, Informative)
That game brought my machine to it's knees, and I have an Intel Q6600-based quad-core machine with 4GB memory with an nVidia 8800GTS video card. It wasn't bad in most of the world, but when I was in the chaos city it became completely unusable.
When I first logged in, there were some people in the beginning areas. Then I didn't log in for a couple days, and those areas were completely deserted. I couldn't find anybody to do the group quests in. I was also getting tired of being one-shotted from a ridiculous distance if I happened to stray to close to an order town.
In the end I was completely underwhelmed with the gameplay, disgusted by the performance, perplexed at the unbelievable linearity of the game, and simply unwilling to waste any more time on it.
Re:They Had Me, Then They Lost Me (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting; I have a very similiar system (Q9300, 4 GB, nVidia 8800 512 GT), and it ran pretty well on max settings, 1680x1050 in a Window (on 1920x1200 desktop).
Did you update your drivers? If I recall there was a known issue with older nVidia drivers.
The server migration did wonders - they overestimated expansion based on early demand and expanded too quickly, but by allowing people to migrate from lower pop servers to some mid pop servers, things really picked up.
That said, I did get bored and quit after a month, but I get bored of every game after a month or so (even WoW).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I have almost your same configuration and I'm running it without a problem:
MB: EVGA nforce 780i
CPU: Q6700 (not much difference)
MEM: 4GB OCZ
VIDEO: 8800 Ultra
I even tried it in a friend's Toshiba laptop and it worked perfectly. I don't know why it didn't ran well on your machine.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What did annoy me is that ranged had SUCH a far range that if an archer was on top of a hill he could blast you and you could not get
Notes? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Nice to see another Vortex member. Of course if you're an *evil* Vortex member then I hate you.
To All Those Posting About System Requirements (Score:4, Informative)
I am going to post this because I have seen so many people complain about system requirement issues in warhammer.
There is a CUSTOM button in your preferences for graphics.
If you click this button, you can do the following:
You can set spell abilities to off, yourself, your party, or everyone.
You can adjust the buffer to use more of your cards RAM (this is set to 0 by default but moving the slider 3/4 of the way speeds the game up immensely for me).
You can change the resolution.
You can change the way shadows are displayed.
You can adjust the detail level of the textures in the game.
I run a 2.4 ghz dual core intel with 2 gb of ram and a 3870 vid card and the game runs fine. I've taken keeps with 4 warbands (thats 96 people folks) and have had some slowdown, but it was not a slideshow.
The game handles massive amounts of people very well, and adjusting your in game resolution settings should be a no brainer for anyone playing video games on their PC.
With all that said, i am VERY pleased to hear of the updates that are coming.
A suicidal dwarf and a berzerking orc will be fun to get to play around with.
Getting new lands? I'm still exploring the ones we have!
But yeah, this game is rocking along very well and I have to say, the devs have been really responsive on whats being done.
I have no complaints, and have absolutely no reason to get into another MMO with how fun this game has turned out to be.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Shame it doesn't have good defaults - I've read at least 3-4 players they lost over that alone.
New mmo's don't seem to understand that you need to appease new players within the trial period or they may never come back. Sometimes they have even less time if they are already happy with an exist MMO (like WoW). This whole release now, and patch later thing really doesn't cut it anymore - even though WoW had a lot of launch issues as well.
warhammer, shmorehammer (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Good point. In addition to the realm balance issues, the graphics requirements are one of the main reasons I stopped playing.
While my system was more than fast enough, a friends' system and his wife's couldn't play it acceptably even though their machines are great for WoW. My girlfriend's system is even more of an issue - She can just barely play WoW on it, there's no way she could play WAR without buying a new system in (at the very least) the $500-600+ price range.