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Warhammer Online Sees Massive Content Removal To Make Launch
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Jul 11, 2008 02:11 PM
from the bad-ideas-in-the-current-market dept.
from the bad-ideas-in-the-current-market dept.
Zonk is reporting that the Warhammer Online team has decided to keep their launch deadline firm. Unfortunately, in order to do so, they are pulling quite a few things from the game. Four of the six capital cities are being removed, as well as four of the character classes (two of which were considered the primary "tanking" classes for their race). The team emphatically claims that this has nothing to do with EA. Does this hurt their chances for success more than simply delaying the launch date?
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Warhammer Online Producer Discusses Game Features 54 comments
BigDownload.com has a great interview with Jeff Hickman, Senior Producer for Warhammer online, that offers a great preview of many of the game's features. The interview spends quite a bit of time discussing the "RvR" (Realm vs. Realm) style of gameplay and what that will mean for players. "We generally start everything in our game with a thought toward PvP. PvP isn't the first thing we think of, but it's one of the first things. We think of Warhammer Online as a PvP game that also has monster and PvE content. So, when we balance our careers, we balance the content around player verses player, not fighting monsters. We balance the classes against each other. Then, instead of balancing those classes against the monsters, we balance the monsters against the classes. Our philosophy is to make the best PvP game in the world and build the PvE content around it. We know how much damage each class can do and take, plus all the utility each class can provide. So, instead of balancing each ability, we just need to modify the overall damage output and absorption of each career."
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Warhammer Online Open Beta To Begin September 7th 144 comments
Mythic Entertainment has announced that the open beta for the long anticipated Warhammer Online will begin on September 7th, eleven days before the finished game goes live on September 18th. We've previously discussed WAR's delays and the content cuts involved in reaching this deadline. In the meantime, Mythic's Road to WAR website (which we talked about earlier this month) is still available. The press release notes, "Players can get into the North American open beta by pre-ordering Warhammer Online from select retail partners."
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Large Warhammer Patch In December, Two New Classes 55 comments
Eurogamer reports on an announcement from Mythic CEO Mark Jacobs regarding the future of Warhammer Online. Jacobs said the first big content patch will be coming in December, and it will contain two new classes, the Black Guard and the Knight of the Blazing Sun. These are two of the four classes lost to the pre-launch content cuts. A number of other changes are on their way as well.
"The Knight of the Blazing Sun is described as a tactical leader using Battlefield Commands, while the Black Guard is simply 'the embodiment of hatred and disdain.' The arrival of the two new careers will mean that every race in the game has a damage-taking tanking archetype. Of the originally planned careers, only the Dwarf Hammerer and Greenskin Choppa, both melee damage-dealers, will remain on the cutting room floor."
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This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:4, Insightful)
They know it's the game that counts, not some deadline.
It seems to me Warhammer is effectively castrating themselves.
TO which I say: "Good, I hate those bastards."
Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. They don't give out a "deadline" and have always stated that it will be done when it's done.
Yes, it may be frustrating to people waiting for a Blizzard game, but at least they don't pull this crap.
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Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just that Blizzard holds back their games until they are ready, it's that they have fans that will WAIT until Blizzard's games come out. That is a luxury that most other studios don't have. That said, Warhammer Online better have its features ASAP, first impressions are extremely important in MMOs.
Perhaps the reason their fans are willing to wait until their games are ready is their track record, which is a direct result of said practice?
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Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:5, Funny)
Maye they just wanted to beat Duke Nukem Forever.
Karma be damned, someone had to say it.
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Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:5, Funny)
I think it's telling that you automatically equate "social interaction" with "PvP"
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Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:5, Funny)
>they have fans that will WAIT until Blizzard's games come out.
They have fans that drop out of college, quit jobs, let spouses move out, etc., for the game.
One problem is that any other company has to compete with *that*.
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Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, moderate or educate.
It has absolutely nothing to do with people who will wait for a Blizzard game. Those waiting on Warhammer will continue to wait indefinitely, just like how those who were waiting on World of Warcraft waited indefinitely for it too.
The same applied for the Burning Crusade expansion. They announced a release date, and then pushed it back ~2 months, if I remember. The forums lit up with complaints, whining, and many large capital letters. People had scheduled their jobs around this release date, and now suddenly they had all this free time and no game to play. And what happened? They bought the game anyway.
People will wait on games because they're looking forward to them. Blizzard's reputation of pushing quality games out the door was built on people getting pissed off that they were taking so long.
You say that "that is a luxury that most other studios don't have." And I disagree entirely. There is nothing stopping a studio from pushing their dates back. The only reason they don't is that they feel if they don't make their release date, then they will miss out of customers.
Which is entirely wrong. The entire MMO market is saturated right now, with WoW. Those who want to play other MMOs, such as Age of Conan or Warhammer Online will wait indefinitely for one simple reason: they are dissatisfied with Blizzard for one reason or another, and these are the people who are not only just dissatisfied, but will also remain dissatisfied indefinitely.
The thing that the Warhammer Online people are missing, and to some degree this applies to Age of Conan too ("hey guys! Let's launch a game where a core stat, strength, does entirely nothing!"), is that their playerbase consists almost entirely of people who are pissed off at WoW. Those people are not pleased with how Blizzard has taken WoW, and no degree of talking with them will change that.
The name of the game is "the grass is always greener on the other side." The vast majority of people who want to play Warhammer don't want to play it because it will be awesome, they want to play it because they are sick of WoW, and likewise, Warhammer suddenly becomes awesome.
The Warhammer devs saying "let's cut a huge amount of content" is ultimately what is going to kill them, at least in the short term. The people who are pissed at WoW will remain pissed, and they will always have that one shiny, better game out on the horizon. Why anyone would cut content and quality for release dates when almost their entire fanbase will be ex-WoW players who will join them the moment that games comes out - be it tomorrow or in two years - boggles my mind.
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Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:5, Insightful)
The exact release details are beyond me, yes. If it was never set in stone then I'll take your word for it. :)
And you're right, WoW launched without some *features* such as the honor system. They did, however, launch with all six capital cities, every single one of their classes, tens of hundreds of spells, and over 60 (or so? Exact numbers are beyond me) individual zones. WoW was largely content complete from the day it launched, just not feature complete.
When you compare this to Warhammer cutting 4/6 cities and 4 classes, things look quite a bit more bleak for Warhammer than they ever did with WoW.
Cutting a very large chunk of content just to make a release date is nothing good for the future of Warhammer.
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Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a ex WoW player, thus very spoiled, got a bit bored from it and was really looking forward to Warhammer.
But if they are already cutting corners, taking out content just to meet their releasedate I'm willing to take bets that it will be just another 100 in a dozen mmo.
This simply tells me that they're just after the next big money machine behind WoW. And that they're not after the next big near perfect game (which will earn them even more money in the end I'm sure)
And *that* is a big mistake, the first studio that will do some serious damage to the WoW customer base will be the first studio that doesn't care about the release date. A MMO is something that's ment to be played for years, the players know that now, they know they need to look for solid end-game, solid designs and not hollow prommises like "it will be patched later"
My prediction, the first studio that will eat a large chunk out of the WoW customer base will be Blizzard itself.
No other studio has the balls to develop as long as they do. 1 or 2 more expansions for WoW, then Blizzard will announce their next MMO and people will buy that even if they have to pay for it with their souls.
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Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:5, Funny)
Well until Valve gets into the MMO business that is.
*Drools*
"Welcome. Welcome, to City 17. You have chosen, or been chosen, to relocate to one of our finest remaining urban centers. I thought so much of City 17, that I elected to establish my administration, here, in the citadel, so thoughtfully provided by our benefactors. I am proud to call City 17 my home. And so, whether you are here to stay, or passing through to parts unknown, welcome, to City 17. It's safer here."
"But, could you please bring us 10 headcrab fangs for... research purposes? Here's a cowbar."
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Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:5, Informative)
You're exactly right, I'm basing that entire post from a WoW player's perspective.
And sure, not everyone plays or has played WoW that will play AoC/Warhammer.
But if these are of any remotely correct value:
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html [mmogchart.com]
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html [mmogchart.com]
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart3.html [mmogchart.com]
http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart5.html [mmogchart.com]
Suddenly you can see why I based my post off of that. Nothing even compares, even a little bit.
Every other MMO that has been released or will be released in the near future has been hailed by one person or another as the "great WoW killer" and in that regard, they have all failed.
It's just my opinion that they will all continue to keep failing until we get a company willing to push the release dates back enough to get a decent game out.
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Re:This is why Blizzard is so seuccesful (Score:5, Insightful)
2 new player races
Since Burning Crusade came out:
something like 10 new zones
15 new 5 man dungeons
2 new 10 man dungeons
7 new 25 man dungeons
Arena pvp combat
100s of quests
If this is lame, I wonder what you would call a good expansion.
1 expansion since the game launched 4 years ago. How is this similar to the Sims with 10+ expansions?
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EA, most likely (Score:5, Insightful)
I am skeptical, to say the least.
Pushed the pre-order a bit early (Score:4, Insightful)
Feels like a bit of a bait and switch for the folks that pre-ordered.
New "expansion"? (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope they release the content after WAR goes online, but I have a sneaking suspician that these cities which are cut out will end up being put in the game as an "expansion".
I hope not.
Rushed Releases have killed MMORPGs in the past (Score:5, Insightful)
While no MMORPG is ever complete, and thus never completed when released, releases like this in the past have caused major problems in getting people to accept the game in the past. Vanguard was released with major elements of the game incomplete, Pirates of the Burning Sea had similar problems (although it was mostly feature complete and the changes made after release were tweaking that could only be made after large enough populations were logging in).
The missing elements and poor gameplay in Vanguard resulted in a mass exodus of players after release, and a similar thing happened in POTBS (eventually resulting in a server merge that took the game from 12 servers down to 4 I believe). Its always important to make a good impression when selling a product, and its doubly so for MMORPGs I think.
Given that WAR is considered the next likely candidate to challenge the supremacy of Warcraft (a daunting prospect for the developers I am sure), I can't help but think that this is a very bad idea generally speaking. The game needs to be as complete and ready to play as possible in order to attract the required playerbase. Taking the game live in a partially developed manner is no longer a viable option I think. Prior to Warcraft this might have been possible - Dark Age of Camelot went live with many features missing, but what it had was enough to attract people away from Everquest (which was its only major competitor at the time), but with Warcraft being such a complete product and so well designed (I may dislike it but 8m+ people disagree with me), any game that comes out now needs to be able to put its full featureset into gameplay right from release or it risks losing the majority of players who are pretty jaded and expect *everything now*. The time for incomplete products has passed, thanks to Blizzard.
Not only that, but if its missing the Tankers on all sides specifically thats a very bad decision as well. This will undoubtedly slow PvE leveling and thats usually the focus of any MMORPG early in its history as players build up their characters in preparation for the end game (yes I know you can PvP at any level in WAR, but realistically people will want to race to the end levels first and likely avoid PvP as they do in so many other games, even though the game attempts to balance it at all levels).
Since Jacobs has stated this is nothing to do with EA, its most likely an internal decision based on lack of development time and a desire to make a November release date that is key to getting Christmas sales for the game. It may also be a reaction to the success of Age of Conan (which is doing well by reports, although I didn't keep my subscription going so I am out of touch), or to some other major release thats coming at the same time. MMORPGs and their expansions tend to be timed to coincide with releases from other companies and that often seems to shift dates.
Mythic had an extremely successful product with Dark Age of Camelot, although they blew it in the long run, overdeveloping the game in some areas and inconsistently designing it in many cases. I have high hopes they can produce an excellent game with WAR but we shall see.
Warhammer Forever (Score:5, Funny)
Of course everyoen mentions Blizzard... I would be willing to bet that the difference is the marketing, I mean, Blizzard doesn't announce games untill they are good and ready... they don't need years of buzz. I would be willing to bet that they always have a good bit of feature chopping in every blizz game (in fact when you open and look at MPQ files, you could find lost character classes, never activated items, etc etc, it just happens BEFORE the marketing, rather than after.
So? (Score:5, Insightful)
Paid Beta (Score:4, Interesting)
Why Warhammer Fantasy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Who thought we need yet another fantasy MMORPG with swordswinging, arrowshooting, fireball casting humans, orcs, dark/notsodark elves, undead etc etc etc?
They had access to the Warhammer franchise and chose this... I couldnt care less about their deadline, or if they ever make it at all.
Its not a Warhammer MMORPG for me, unless you give me a bolter and a power-armour.
Still should be fun (Score:5, Informative)
Re:INCOMING FAILGATE! (Score:4, Insightful)
Becasue they are loking at the numbers, and not the realities of the game market.
Blizzard is successfull becasue they release quality titles.
Blizzard has what, 3 titles? And they practically print money.
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Re:Can you say expansion pack? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exclusion of the capital cities ruins the whole race vs race war aspect of the game; it turns something that could have been really deep into a WoW clone. Sigh. Hopefully it'll add back in later.
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