Warhammer Online Delayed Again

EA Mythic CEO Mark Jacobs, in a new 'State of the Game' address on the Warhammer Herald site, revealed that Warhammer Online has been pushed back to at least April of next year. The game was originally slated for release this fall, and then was pushed to around February of next year. As always, the fearsome demon of polish is what's keeping the team hard at work through the holidays: "When we looked at our options, two paths lay before us: 1) Ship the game on time with fewer features and less polish, or 2) Extend the development cycle and spend the needed time and money to make WAR great. We chose the latter path - to invest additional time and effort in implementation and polish to make WAR great. Fortunately, we have the resources and support of EA behind us to extend our development cycle; time that will be used to make sure the game is everything we want it to be. WAR is coming, and it will be glorious." He notes also that they'll begin a new phase of testing next month, kicking Beta back into high gear.

Re:RvR?

[BlowHole666]

The fascination with it in DAOC is the high you get when you kill another player other then a computer controlled character. It is like seeing who has the biggest dick. The more kills you have the more respect you get. On top of that you get to retake castles (this sometimes takes hours) and by taking back the castles you get your realm (or faction) things like +5% to experience earned for everyone in the realm. Also when you kill people in RVR you get bounty points. With these points you can gain new abilities to use in battle or new armor etc. So it adds a fun element to the game rather then the normal grind, or do this quest. It is dynamic content because it is PVP.

Remember this is an MMO

[SmallFurryCreature]

A bug free or complete MMO does NOT exist. Although new standards are being set, quit frankly we can only say that MMO's are improving at the moment because what came before was so god awfull.

I am not just talking Ultima Online or Everquest or Star Wars Galaxies here. WoW was a bugged piece of crap as well, it is only in comparison with what came before that it seemed okay. Really, go through to patch notes and see just how much had to be fixed.

Same thing with Lord of the Rings Online, reviewed as the least bugged MMO in history. Does that mean it is bug free? No, it is like how windows users say XP is stable, as in it didn't crash once, during the posting of their comment.

Now we got an MMO company saying they need more time. Is that good or bad? Frankly no MMO ever launched on time, so it being delayed is about as much news as that the sun came up this morning. Will they really be fixing things that need to be fixed so the forums won't be filled with bugs within a day of launch? It is possible. Unlikely, but it is possible.

Since MMO companies have a long history of launching with bugs, how serious are the bugs still in the game that force it to be delayed. Game crippling bugs? Why are they still there after all this time? Is it gameplay instead that is flawed? Wouldn't be the first time that an MMO went through years of development only to realize at the last moment the game just didn't work.

I seen some comments in other forums that the game balancing ain't complete yet, but perhaps, just perhaps this company is finally trying to achieve what nobody has done before. A bug free MMO launch.

No, I don't believe it either, but hey, it is possible.

Last nail in the coffin for Warhammer

[rbanzai]

Stick a fork in them, they're done. They gave it a good effort but they bungled it, and with EA over them they have had to throw out some core mechanics and inject other to satisfy their new overlord. This is not a case of "oh we just want our game to be perfect", it's a case of "we have no idea how to make this work and be competitive so we're going for our SECOND rewrite."

I really wanted Warhammer to work but their team has collapsed under the new pressure from EA to beat Warcraft. They don't need to beat it, just be competitive, and they can't with their half thought out game design. Like DDO they will just limp along for a while until they are put out of their misery, and the next person can take a crack at the license.

It's a shame that Warcraft co-opted so much of Warhammer's ideas and was so successful doing it. It was a guarantee that Warhammer would look like a late to the game clone of Warcraft, with a bastardized Dark Age of Camelot design for the core mechanics.