f13.net

That quarter ended in Dec 2008, didn't it? 

300k counts US AND Europe btw.

Warhammer's not unsalvagable; it just needs someone new at the helm, obviously.

Warhammer's not unsalvagable; it just needs someone new at the helm, obviously.

I think Paul should release a video with an EA Exec dressing him down about how the 'bug' in subscription retention went unnoticed and unfixed for several months.

P.S. Because not everything that I hoped to talk about was in the earnings call (they had other things to talk about obviously), I'm waiting on guidance from corporate to see if I can add a few additional bit of information that weren't contained in the call before I write a longer post than this.

AoC:

1.2 million boxes sold to stores

800k boxes sold to players

EDIT - 700k activated boxes first month

415k subscribers a quarter out from launch or so

So, WAR:

1.5 million boxes shipped

1.2 million boxes sold

800k activated boxes first month

They'd have to pull a turnaround of EVE proportions, and that's taken CCP YEARS.

Then there's the engine problems Nebu's alluding to.

It seems that WAR tanked harder than AoC.

Warhammer Online was just voted the The Most Accessible Game of 2008 (http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/110171737/p1/?38)!

Woohoo!

They're probably still counting 3 month subs, and I'd wager a fair number of those are gone by now.  The numbers posted at the end of Q1 2009 should be... interesting.

Eurogamer: Do you have a number of players in mind that you'd consider a success?

Paul Barnett: I don't know what the business people have - they have all sorts of crazy numbers, and things to do with shareholders, and things that would probably get me fired. But we're having a staff pool. I put down my bet: a million within the year, and then three million.

Paul Barnett doesn't add anything though. I don't even know how he got into gaming. Seems his previous career was snake oil salesman. What a damn worm.

I think you could find someone like him in any company. Some people (morons) find his type of personality charming, can't see past the charm, and hire them.

On topic though, put WAR on this chart: http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart2.html

He is great at hyping. ... The more I see him the more I want to throw up. He is a pompous ass and has no place in EA/Mythic. He might make people laugh ... but business wise what the fuck is he doing? ... Well that failed... anyhow.

You must be new here. 

Fabricated chart contains fabricated numbers.  The rest of the story is a lot more... colorful. 

I fully expect to see more layoffs in personnel for the Mythic section of EA

Corporate will probably definitely be looking at trends and expect an answer from Jacobs at this point. 

It's going to be hard to have a turn around for WAR or Conan or anything that has a client as large as these games do.

In order to give a person a trail with decent options, you're talking about a lot of art assets just for the various races and animations, not to mention items and zones and music and that sort of thing.

Basically, you'd have to give me a pretty good goddamn reason to bother downloading your 4-8 gig client. I was thinking just the other day that I'd like to try a Conan trial, to see what has changed since the pathetic beta. When I really think about it though, I don't want to download 4-8 gigs to play a couple hours.

Maybe that's one reason why the Eve turn around happened. That client could fit on a single CD for years and years. I'm not sure how much the new client is with the better graphics, but it's still probably a tiny fraction of the size of most MMOs.

Another instance of me not wanting to bother re-installing massive clients is EQ2 this past summer. They gave me 2 or 3 months of free EQ2, and I even have the dvds in a drawer somewhere. I didn't bother even installing the game, as I didn't want to mess with the hdd requirements and, special to EQ2, the interface modding requirements. Shit I didn't bother with the TRIAL OF THE ISLE for a long time either, shit that was a few gigs wasn't it?

F it.

GL WAR. I hope that douchebag Barnett gets fired. He'd be better off selling shoes to fat chicks at one of those walkabout stores.

Folks,

Mythic has always been committed to maintaining a high level of development and customer service to our MMO players. In anticipation of rumors regarding staff reductions here at Mythic today, this seems like a good time to provide some insight into the future of development, customer service, quality assurance and play testing at Mythic. Though we are resizing the team to move from a pre-launch to a post-launch size, we remain fully committed to creating and delivering the best WAR experience.

We have a very exciting schedule planned for new WAR content and that schedule is unchanged.  Over the next few months, the announced "Call to Arms" live expansion events, new careers, new Tomb King themed area and RvR dungeon will be made available to our players as planned.

With respect to customer service, quality assurance and play testing, prior to the launch of WAR, we hired additional people to deal with the rush of demand associated with an MMO launch and to insure the best possible experience for our players.  We accomplished that goal and as a result we had the smoothest-ever launch of a major MMO.  Since the launch last year, the demand for customer service has gone down as players become more familiar with the game.  Obviously, demand for a large QA and play-testing staff also falls after launch.  As a result, we saw a staff reduction which is in line with the company-wide initiative. In no way does this conflict with our commitment to customer service.  Staffing numbers will always map to consumer needs – it goes up when we launch new products and expand popular ones, and comes back down as players become familiar with the game.

Although we now have fewer developers on the game than we did leading up to the launch, WAR still has a larger dev team today than we ever had for Dark Age of Camelot. At Mythic, we’re committed to maintaining the trust of WAR players – we’re going to deliver the content and service that keeps you playing.

Mark

Sounds to me like you are one of the laziest people ever.  Either you cant be bothered to install a game or you have shit internet?  Seriously, is this really your complaint lol.  I re-installed AOC 2 weeks ago and had it up and running within 3 hours while I played other games.  You make it sound like its surgery or something.  wowjustwow.  Do you need someone to hold your d*ck when you piss too?

It took me 3.5 hours to install EQ2 the other night.  This was from the disks of the latest expansion mind you.  That's fucking crazy long.

I re-installed AOC 2 weeks ago and had it up and running within 3 hours while I played other games.

I got interested in EQ2 again maybe... 8 months ago. Installed everything, logged in with a new account, saw the interface/textures/character models and seriously had to wonder why I ever played the game. I logged off after 10 minutes. I don't remember the game looking that bad when I played it a year after release, oh well.

Just FYI you can get a high res character pack that does AMAZING things the the character models. It makes it a whole new game.

From the Herald (http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=607):

Right. I mean I don't even have my gaming PC turned ON for 3.5 hours a day.

Maybe Blizzard can hire her so she can put a similar thing in for WoW.

I mean I don't even have my gaming PC turned ON for 3.5 hours a day.

Lum's take on it is pretty apt. It is the final fuck you, lay them off and then post up on the website that they weren't really very important.

I'm hoping she's going to Cryptic.

WoW is definitively in the hour+ range, at the best of times.

I think you could find someone like him in any company. Some people (morons) find his type of personality charming, can't see past the charm, and hire them.

It took me 3.5 hours to install EQ2 the other night.  This was from the disks of the latest expansion mind you.  That's fucking crazy long.

Eeeegads anyone want to reminisce when they first installed Final Fantasy Online and set up their play online account and their game account. You warned people it took that long to install they just looked at you like you were daft.

Oh, I can attest to that. I vividly remember the day. Something had borked my XP install so I did restored from disc and planned to re-install FFXI that afternoon and be up and playing with my buddies at the weekly afterschool LAN party. Started at 3:15pm. Ended at 8. By that time they were done and packing up to head home.  Stupidest godsdamn patcher I ever saw.

If WAR drops below 250k subs EA will drop them like a red headed step slayer. What I really want to know is what is going to happen to Bioware when SWTOR doesn't meet expectations either?  :ye_gods:

Well, at least I'm getting my money's worth out of rubbernecking this trainwreck.  Watching the flames is more fun than playing the game. :awesome_for_real:

Maybe Blizzard can hire her so she can put a similar thing in for WoW.

If that happens, I will need a new pair of pants.

Paul Barnett doesn't add anything though. I don't even know how he got into gaming. Seems his previous career was snake oil salesman. What a damn worm.

b) have at least one (1) shirt with a wolf on it and c) fuck you.

Actually I think he even damages WAR / Mythic with his public appearnce on youtube/blogs etc....
A lot of people are disappointed, because WAR did not deliver a great game at launch. And a lot of people see Paul as being one responsible for hyping the game pre-launch.
He didn't change his behaviour after launch and does in his public appearance not take into consideration, that there have been a lot of staff-cutting taking place at Mythic right now.

So for me people think his either a clown or a stupid, ignorant pile of sh**.

FYI for the omniscient denizens of F13, Paul Barnett was seconded to EA Mythic by Games Workshop. In other words, he ultimately reported to GW, not Mark Jacobs or the CEO of EA Mythic (which Mark is not).

Barnett disclosed some time ago that he would be returning to GW after WAR's launch. His sole responsibility while working with the staff of EA Mythic was to ensure that the game's content was consistent with the Warhammer IP, e.g. the appearance of the Chosen in WAR should be consistent with how GW has depicted Chosen in the past. He had nothing to do with the core design of the game.

You might also have noticed, if observant (which the lot of you clearly aren't), that GW retained full title and ownership of, and to, the Warhammer Online IPR. EA Mythic / EA only has a license for it. You might have remembered the demise of the prior incarnation of Warhammer Online, and how GW handled that, but alas, you have short memories and tunnel vision. Petulant children, the lot of you.

Perhaps now you understand better why Paul seemed like a "loose cannon." Or more likely, you don't.

The man is an unprofessional fucking clown. Are you suggesting GW think a clown should be the primary promoter of one of, by extension, their products?

FYI for the omniscient denizens of F13, Paul Barnett was seconded to EA Mythic by Games Workshop. In other words, he ultimately reported to GW, not Mark Jacobs or the CEO of EA Mythic (which Mark is not).

Barnett disclosed some time ago that he would be returning to GW after WAR's launch. His sole responsibility while working with the staff of EA Mythic was to ensure that the game's content was consistent with the Warhammer IP, e.g. the appearance of the Chosen in WAR should be consistent with how GW has depicted Chosen in the past. He had nothing to do with the core design of the game.

You might also have noticed, if observant (which the lot of you clearly aren't), that GW retained full title and ownership of, and to, the Warhammer Online IPR. EA Mythic / EA only has a license for it. You might have remembered the demise of the prior incarnation of Warhammer Online, and how GW handled that, but alas, you have short memories and tunnel vision. Petulant children, the lot of you.

Perhaps now you understand better why Paul seemed like a "loose cannon." Or more likely, you don't.

I see you've never dealt with Games Workshop. Petulant, unprofessional assclowns are the very definition of GW people.

Barnett is a douchebag no matter who he reports to. Jacobs is a douchebag for letting him continue to embarrass the company.

FYI for the omniscient denizens of F13, Paul Barnett was seconded to EA Mythic by Games Workshop. In other words, he ultimately reported to GW, not Mark Jacobs or the CEO of EA Mythic (which Mark is not).

Barnett disclosed some time ago that he would be returning to GW after WAR's launch. His sole responsibility while working with the staff of EA Mythic was to ensure that the game's content was consistent with the Warhammer IP, e.g. the appearance of the Chosen in WAR should be consistent with how GW has depicted Chosen in the past. He had nothing to do with the core design of the game.

You might also have noticed, if observant (which the lot of you clearly aren't), that GW retained full title and ownership of, and to, the Warhammer Online IPR. EA Mythic / EA only has a license for it. You might have remembered the demise of the prior incarnation of Warhammer Online, and how GW handled that, but alas, you have short memories and tunnel vision. Petulant children, the lot of you.

Perhaps now you understand better why Paul seemed like a "loose cannon." Or more likely, you don't.

Petulant children, the lot of you.

Mythic are the second development company to work on Warhammer Online, They got the project based on an easy no outlay, commision based deal from Games Workshop!,

Our experiences of Paul Barnett were, he known nothing of the games industry and gets by with a little Warhammer knowledge, a little business knowledge and alot of verbal diarrhorea. It just seems very evident that in several years not much has changed lol.

When I mentioned games front, I should have said games development front. I WOULD be interested to here what Mythic has to say on what they are developing instead of the monkey on the Mythic grinder.

I am ecstatic to hear that Mythic has taken over the project and that the old team has been kicked. The only developer I'd have been more pleased to take over development would have been Blizzard.

Also this thread is absolutely wonderful (http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/90200061/r90268741/).

NCSoft: You have an indispensabe asset in Richard Garriott. In a field comprised almost entirely of unoriginal copycats, Richard is a standout creative genius who has given us RPG games of legendary stature: the early Ultima games. Those games ventured into previously uncharted territory by forcing the player to consider the potential ethical ramifications of their actions. I loved them and as a child played them when they were released.

The meddling of beancounters and plastic suits in Origin ruined the final few Ultima games. I've read Garriott's account of how it happened, and don't doubt it.

NCSoft, don't repeat Origin's errors. Believe in your man. Have faith in him. I do -- and so do many thousands of computer RPG fans.

I had the pleasure of meeting Richard at E3 this year. Although I am an insignificant nothing as far as the global gaming business goes, Richard kindly spent more than 10 minutes talking to me about Ultima, Tabula Rosa, and other topics. He is a wonderful man.

I am an insignificant nothing

linky (http://vnboards.ign.com/tabula_rasa_general_board/b22750/72947054/p1/?9)


 :drillf:

  :awesome_for_real:  :awesome_for_real:  :awesome_for_real:

> Grief Title

Too obvious and easy and no one wants him coming back anyway.

The game concept is marvelous, and after experiencing the new build, I'm beginning to believe Auto Assault will successfully make the development leap from fantastic on paper to fantastic end-product. It is still too early to be certain that the game will fully deliver on its promise, but I've pre-ordered.

What struck me most was that whole of Mulligan's presentation had the weight of one of the balloons floating over his head. Nothing like the brilliance which undeniably shines from designers like Peter Molyneux in any interview. Mulligan comes across much better in his writings; he is undeniably very bright, but not particularly gifted at thinking outside the box.

You may consider this as my notice to Microsoft and Turbine that I intend to compel them through appropriate channels to indemnify any losses suffered by myself and others similarly situated (including without limitation purchase price, additional shipping expenses, and hardware upgrades) permitted under Taiwan law and / or federal or state law in the US, including claims for punitive damages / penalties permitted under the laws of the jurisdiction(s) in question (including those which may be available under any consumer protection statute) resulting from any false and / or negligent misrepresentations, and other tortious and / or illegal or prohibited acts, of Microsoft and Turbine.

Barnett disclosed some time ago that he would be returning to GW after WAR's launch. His sole responsibility while working with the staff of EA Mythic was to ensure that the game's content was consistent with the Warhammer IP, e.g. the appearance of the Chosen in WAR should be consistent with how GW has depicted Chosen in the past. He had nothing to do with the core design of the game.

MMOG Nation: For folks who don’t necessarily have a good grasp of where you’re coming from, could you give us a sense of what led you to your position [Creative Director] on the Warhammer project?

Paul Barnett: Complete flukes, and mistakes and bureaucratic errors, and the inability for someone to look at the work I’ve done and realize I’m a charlatan and a fraud. How does that sound?

Well it's been a month and a half since the last subs number was tallied. Anyone guessing the over-under of 300,000 currently?

I'd just scratched the surface really.

(Starfucker Crazy)

Holy shit. That fucker humps more leg than both my male dogs.

I'd just scratched the surface really.

Nice try, but I am not the vn board user tianzi38. "Tianzi" is a common user name for people who speak Chinese, just as "Archangel", etc. is for people who speak English.

Wiki:

Tianzi, a pinyin of the title (天子) used to describe the Emperor of China

Google the term.

...

He's not Chinese, he just speaks it.  I believe he's from the USA but lives in Taiwan.  It's 100% definitely the same person, his email address from f13 gave the vn post as the first google hit, that's why I quoted it in the first post, so tracking him wasn't in any way difficult.  I never expected him to be crazy enough to deny it though.  :drill:

He's not Chinese, he just speaks it.  I believe he's from the USA but lives in Taiwan.  It's 100% definitely the same person, his email address from f13 gave the vn post as the first google hit, that's why I quoted it in the first post, so tracking him wasn't in any way difficult.  I never expected him to be crazy enough to deny it though.  :drill:

Ugh, you could'nt have just kept quite while he posted some more gems could you? way to go spoil my day. Had great expectations from our visitor. Next time, just keep quite, giggling to yourself and after we've wrung all the fun from them, THEN go TA-DAA! Gotcha!

He's not Chinese, he just speaks it.  I believe he's from the USA but lives in Taiwan.  It's 100% definitely the same person, his email address from f13 gave the vn post as the first google hit, that's why I quoted it in the first post, so tracking him wasn't in any way difficult.  I never expected him to be crazy enough to deny it though.  :drill:

Ugh, you could'nt have just kept quite while he posted some more gems could you? way to go spoil my day. Had great expectations from our visitor. Next time, just keep quite, giggling to yourself and after we've wrung all the fun from them, THEN go TA-DAA! Gotcha!

Wasn't banned. Posts from banned users show as posts from guests.

He's not a regular. He's been registered since 2004 and made 7 posts, 3 of which are in this thread.  I imagine he'll wander by sometime again and post something pithy that he thinks settles things on his terms and makes us all out to be asses.

Well, semi-retired. I am still a licensed member of the Virginia State Bar, and also have a license from the Taiwan Ministry of Justice to practice foreign and international law on an independent basis in that country (I live in Taipei). I don't do that much actual work now, that's all. It certainly beats being obese, and working 12+ hour days under enormous pressure 6 or even 7 days a week, and that was me, day after day, year after year, until a couple of years ago--I was well on my way to an early grave like many other members of my family.

I read voraciously, play chess, and try to maintain proficiency in Mandarin Chinese, all of which are good for my mind.

Let's see if I understand this correctly.

So you believe I'd enhance the bioavailability of my 500mg Biotivia Transmax resveratrol by simply cutting open the resveratrol capsule, cutting open my soy lecithin capsules, mixing the contents of both in a glass of water, and then drinking the water on an empty stomach? That's the "liquid suspension"?

By the way, do you have a link handy to the article in Nature magazine in which Sirtris discloses some details of their proprietary resveratrol formulation?

The Immortality Institute (ImmInst.org) is an international, not-for-profit, membership-based organization ("501-3-c status" in the United States).

Its mission is "to conquer the blight of involuntary death".

The Immortality Institute (ImmInst.org) is an international, not-for-profit, membership-based organization ("501-3-c status" in the United States).

Its mission is "to conquer the blight of involuntary death".

Resveratrol is a phytoalexin produced naturally by several plants when under attack by pathogens such as bacteria or fungi. Resveratrol has also been produced by chemical synthesis[1] and is sold as a nutritional supplement derived primarily from Japanese knotweed. In mouse and rat experiments, anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, blood-sugar-lowering, chelating and other beneficial cardiovascular effects of resveratrol have been reported. Most of these results have yet to be replicated in humans. In the only positive human trial, extremely high doses (3–5 g) of resveratrol in a special proprietary formulation have been necessary to significantly lower blood sugar.

Yeah well, he'll still be around to make stupid posts on random internet forums long after the lot of you are dead.  Mark my words!  :why_so_serious:

Then you should be very surprised this morning. happy EA reported that our sub numbers were at about 300K recently. I can also happily say that that we are not at 100K and we are doing just fine. If our subs had truly dropped from 300K in Dec. to 100K now, that would indeed be bad. Good thing they didn't eh?

Oh, and the whole 1.2 resulted in people quitting thing. Not according to the numbers I've looking at (and this doesn't take into account new subs from the trials) today.

Sorry to spoil a nice "Sky is falling" thread but...

Mark

From Mark today (http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/110436022/r110443353/)


I don't believe for a second that they have 300k subs currently, unless by 'recently' he means 3 months ago.

Means he's happy the game stopping hemorrhaging subs.

He didn't say they weren't, just that they haven't dropped below 100K yet.

Well given that UO is still around, as long as EA manages Mythic staffing levels and expenses, I don't see why they would shut it down.

Aaaaaaaaand we go from a post where mark says subs are fine to:
The planned closing and merging of 43 servers.

Amazing. You really can't make this stuff up.

Is MJ a lawyer?  After a day spent going through insanely complicated pharmaceutical contracts, I'm still impressed by that statement.  It SEEMS to give good news, but the exact word choice tingles my lawyerly spidey sense so hard the desk is shaking.  

Are there any other RP servers left?

WAR just needs a bold, visionary Head Designer to take them back to the top.

http://www.brokentoys.org/2009/03/06/a-brief-meta-note/

Mission Accomplished!

Chaos Wastes. It's also getting nuked.

Yeeeeeah, I'm pretty low on the list (http://www.brokentoys.org/2008/08/01/burn-them-at-the-stake/) of their prospective hires.

Yeeeeeah, I'm pretty low on the list (http://www.brokentoys.org/2008/08/01/burn-them-at-the-stake/) of their prospective hires.

In truth, has any warhammer thread made been really about warhammer?

Hi, this isn't about me, thanks. Go post about me in the appropriate company thread!  :awesome_for_real:

That would be awesome. Having even a minor Blizzard dev posting here would unleash a perpetual tardstorm on the order of the Great Mark Jacobs Starfucking Debacle.

EDIT:  Fuck you, I still do green.

Hi, this isn't about me, thanks. Go post about me in the appropriate company thread!  :awesome_for_real:

it IS Blizzard.

Triforcer's correct

Madness engine

Way to invalidate your opinion with the last 2 questions. :oh_i_see:

I finally pulled my head out of my ass. May 9th and WAR is no more on my PC. I'm kinda depressed about it because I looked forward to this game and going back to RvR style gameplay. I liked the lore, the world, and some of the classes but I can't justify their shit anymore. That doesn't mean that I didn't have fun; I did. I just disagree with the direction they're going and I can't put up with their lack of quality control anymore.

can i haf ur stuf ?  :awesome_for_real:

Ya, don't fuck up the the survey. We are counting on you to knock some sense into Mythic.

Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning®, an MMO from EA’s Mythic Entertainment studio, ended the quarter with over 300K paying subscribers in North America and Europe.

Previous quarter results was:


Now @300k ? Looks like it's bleeding out slowly. It's interesting how its not even mentioned in this quarters release... grimm? maybe not but they sure are hiding it away from investors and the news.

300k essentially worldwide. I wouldn't call that a slow bleed. Didn't they sell 1.5-2.0M worldwide?

If they have half that many next quarter, I'll be surprised.  When I quit playing, many of the larger guilds were talking about giving it up.  As soon as something new releases, WAR players will jump ship in droves.

It's pretty easy. 

Step 1: form a closed WB

Step 2: run WB into a zerg

Step 3: while in lag hell, the WP's macro spam their ae/group heals while the BW's macro spam their ae damage. 

Step 4. Collect rewards

Step 5: Return to step 2.

Awesome fun.  It's almost unbelievable that WAR isn't a big hit.  :why_so_serious:

Haha so true.  As a melee class(WH any assassin) I have learned that I get more reknown realm points killing solo and avoid the big zergs which is a bonus cause of the lag anyhow.  I have figured out that if X keep is under attack I go to their main route to it, or milegate, and pick off people solo :) 

Stealth at milegates... haven't heard that lingo since old frontiers.

Eve Online Is Six Years Old Today

“In the past couple days we surpassed the impressive milestone of 300,000 active subscribers. That doesn’t include trial accounts. We’ve broken our peak concurrent user record 3 times this year alone, standing now at an impressive 53,850 in the same universe. That is exponential growth. We couldn’t think of a better birthday present than having more people playing EVE Online than ever before.”

1) He looked exhausted. Lacked a lot of energy in his delivery.

Interesting part of the video, "our biggest rvr battle so far was in the 450 people range".

1) Some (hopefully all) of the causes of the crashes/performance issues that have occurred during some sieges have been identified. Both are linked to the number of people who are involved in the events. Last night for example we had about 800 people descend on one fortress at the same time. The results of that were indeed a crash unfortunately. Of course, an 800 person battle is certainly large-scale and epic RvR and shows that lots of people are out on the servers engaging in oRvR.

2) The team is working on a server-side fix to solve the crashing issue(s) while we are also looking at whether a 800+ person fortress battle is doable even under the best of conditions.

Yeah, remember this quote from last year? (http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/109556050/p1).

I like Sessler, but I wish he would have asked them why their game is dying.

ended the quarter with over 300K paying subscribers in North America and Europe. that was Feb. I thought Russia was before 2009 but it was after then, so yeah its even worse.

So yeah, about those 450 person rvr battles? they just lowered the caps on forts again.

Whoa, what?

In a further effort to improve server stability during Fortress raids, we have adjusted the population cap limits in a Fortress area when the campaign has advanced to the Fortresses. Population caps for both sides have both been slightly lowered, however the ratio of attackers to defenders remains similar.

In a further effort to improve server stability during Fortress raids, we have adjusted the population cap limits in a Fortress area when the campaign has advanced to the Fortresses. Population caps for both sides have both been slightly lowered, however the ratio of attackers to defenders remains similar.

There is this general illusion that WAR can ultimately survive as a niche game, which is why for example they still insist that cross-server ques for scenarios is a bad idea, despite all the language from EA and Mythic saying otherwise. I'm just waiting for the rude awakening  :drill:

Cross-server queuing was being put forwards as a solution to underpopulated scenarios back when the projected subscriber numbers were in the range of several millions.

Niche game? Yeah if Patch 1.3 bombs out, Warhammer will be competing in the sub 150k subscriber market within 6 months.

In conclusion, go fuck yourselves with a handful of broken Warhammer Online cds.

BANGALORE, June 9 (Reuters) - Taiwan-based online gaming software firm GigaMedia Ltd (GIGM.O) reported a fall in quarterly profit, missing estimates by a cent, due to a fall in revenue citing weakness of the euro against the U.S. dollar.

The company said it expects continued revenue pressure through the summer months due to normal seasonality and the effects of the global economic downturn.

The second quarter would remain flat to down sequentially in Asia and down in Europe, Think Equity analyst Atul Bagga said.

The company, however, seems to be confident about its Asian online gaming business in the second half of the year, driven by a strong pipeline.

GigaMedia is launching a slew of titles this year, including Electronic Arts Inc's (ERTS.O) Warhammer Online and NBA Street Online, and a Korean game Luna Online, it said in conference call with analysts.

"Electronic Arts was very positive about Warhammer's response in Taiwan. They said it was well exceeding their expectations," analyst Bagga said.

I suspect "expectations" aren't what they used to be.

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSBNG49025020090609


I suspect "expectations" aren't what they used to be.

GigaMedia is launching a slew of titles this year, including Electronic Arts Inc's (ERTS.O) Warhammer Online and NBA Street Online, and a Korean game Luna Online, it said in conference call with analysts.

If you read the first sentence carefully, they missed their profit estimates "by a cent".  Clearly, they are operating on a very, very small scale here.

On low-population servers, the War in Warhammer is removed, and replaced by doors. Stalwart fighters on Order side combat boredom along with Destruction during infrequent keep sieges.

Nerf saw

-Sincerly, Hammer.

Doorhammer Online: Age of Carpentry (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEedUeDJ7Us)

To be completely fair, that was the traditional method of medieval warfare as well. Armies did all they could to avoid open field battles where the outcome wasn't already determined by overwhelming numbers.

However, that makes for a really shitty shit game. Not to mention that in said medieval warfare, sieges weren't just about breaking down a door. Walls were undermined or bombarded, opening holes in the walls. Some people infiltrated the keeps either by tunneling under or somehow climbing over. And that's without magic. The reason people turtle is because it funnels every single person through one area of attack.

Game = fucked.

I believe it says: "PAUL IS DEAD"

He's absolutely not dead. I haven't resubbed.

To be completely fair, that was the traditional method of medieval warfare as well. Armies did all they could to avoid open field battles where the outcome wasn't already determined by overwhelming numbers.

However, that makes for a really shitty shit game. Not to mention that in said medieval warfare, sieges weren't just about breaking down a door. Walls were undermined or bombarded, opening holes in the walls. Some people infiltrated the keeps either by tunneling under or somehow climbing over. And that's without magic. The reason people turtle is because it funnels every single person through one area of attack.

Game = fucked.

I hope you recycled that garbage.

Based heavily on that feedback, our current “Top 5” areas that we are giving significant attention to are:

1. Addressing concerns related to Crowd Control and Area of Effect abilities.
2. Continuing to improve client and server stability and performance.
3. Strengthening and improving the Tier 4 experience.
4. Improving server population distribution – both in terms of overall population and realm balance.
5. Improving itemization and the overall distribution of “carrots” (rewards) throughout the game.

While this is not anywhere near a complete list of what we’re working on, I wanted to make it clear that these are major priorities for the team and that we’re applying significant effort, attention and resources to addressing them at the moment and will be the topics of discussion for the final part of my letter.

What I want to knowm, is where is Mark Jacobs and why hasn't he come out to comment on any of this? Is he even still employed there? Without MJ, there is no Mythic other than in company name.

Post Removed - Inappropriate Language

Please sort Executive Producer's letters in reverse order next time.
 
Part 3
Part 2
Part 1

Post Removed - Inflammatory
 
If you have nothing civil and constructive to contribute to the topic at hand, please do not post.
 
Thank you.

Honestly, the only thing I want right now, is Server Merges.
 
Please please please! Please give us server merges, I dont care how.  We need population.  I would rather have a person I can attack and get an error saying to far away, then not having a person to attack at all.
 
<3 daoc days

Folks, while I understand the interest in Mr. Jacobs, let's keep the discussion on topic about EPL: Part 2, alrighty?

Thank god I was fanboi enough to get me into the beta. Otherwise I could've made the mistake of actually buying Failhammer.

Continuing to improve client and server stability and performance.

WTF? The game has been out for almost a year, missed all subscription targets and they are still trying to fix these issues(and every letter it seems)?

Wait, haven't they merged down to less than 1 quarter of the number of servers that they had on release? And they still need more? Is it really that fucking bad?

WTF? The game has been out for almost a year, missed all subscription targets and they are still trying to fix these issues(and every letter it seems)?

This game has delivered more laughs than anything since Horizons. I'm just looking forward to see how land of the dead and low population servers interact... should be fascinating.

It ain't called Land of the Dead for nuthin'.

A failure of design followed by a failure of execution immersed in a failure of management vat.

Wait, haven't they merged down to less than 1 quarter of the number of servers that they had on release? And they still need more? Is it really that fucking bad?

Hey all,
 
We realize that many of you are currently unsatisfied with the population of your server currently. We're actively pursuing ways in which we can alleviate the issues faced with low population while ensuring that larger problems are not created.
 
We want to avoid past situations where significant realm imbalances were created or leave a number of players who wish to remain on the original server. From past experiences we have a large selection of metrics, and improving the negative aspects is a key goal.
 
We want to ensure everyone has a satisfactory place to call home, however, rushing to do so can alienate even more people due to unforseen repercussions.
 
That said, we know, we've heard you, and want to ensure everyone playing WAR can benefit from the activities of a higher population server.
 
Thanks everyone for your patience and cooperation, we'll discuss this more in the near future.
 
Cheers,

 
James Nichols
Community Forums Manager
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

They constantly say they are 'gathering metrics'

GigaMedia Ltd (GIGM) and Mythic Entertainment™, a studio of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), today announced that the highly acclaimed fantasy MMORPG Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning® (WAR) will launch in Taiwan on June 25th
...
Subscription Rates:

Monthly Subscription: 450 NTD
Hourly Time Deduction Fee: 5 NTD.

I wouldn't expect to see any more server merges before 1.3.  Looks bad.  AFAIK, this game was doomed the minute they bought an engine that can't handle large-scale RvR battles.  You know, the CORE of their game? 

They constantly say they are 'gathering metrics' and 'actively pursuing' things but it's been out almost a year and many launch problems remain unresolved.  I really don't think there is anyone at Mythic who is great at their job.  Hell, I bet even the intern who makes Jacob's coffee burns it.

courtesy of VN

(http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/4508/milkcarton.jpg)

Some analysts have predicted between 200-300 thousand subscribers, do you believe that is an accurate and realistic prediction?

Mark Jacobs: No. I don't think it's a very realistic expectation at all. I read that from one analyst and I think his numbers were way off for the industry. That kind of number, which I think he mentioned, was under 50 per cent [of registered users]. Those numbers are considered very low for the industry, very low.

The game that just keeps on giving.

The VNBoards are complaining that the population cap code doesn't work in the new patch. Once it locks in it doesn't recognise the population dropping due to deaths. End result being one faction holding a fort while the other faction (including those who wiped) is entirely locked out leading to an effortless defence unless the keep is defeated on the first attack.

That's some really impressive QA there.

Interview from October 2008 (http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/mmo-war)

War is already on the downslope but blizzard has already added battleground queuing from anywhere and next patch adding battleground exp with talk of adding loot for winning.

Is it me or does it seem like blizzard took warhammers attempt at a coup a little personally and are now twisting the knife?

the WAR crafting system.  :oh_i_see:

War is already on the downslope but blizzard has already added battleground queuing from anywhere and next patch adding battleground exp with talk of adding loot for winning.

Is it me or does it seem like blizzard took warhammers attempt at a coup a little personally and are now twisting the knife?

It does look like twisting the knife a bit.

 Seriously though, has anyone thought of poaching some of Blizzard's talent? 

It isn't just 'talent' though, Blizzard has a whole system from the ground up, one that obviously works and everyone buys into.

[indent]Today we have important news to share with the community. EA is restructuring its RPG and MMO games development into a new group that includes both Mythic and BioWare. This newly formed team will be led by Ray Muzyka, co-founder and General Manager of BioWare. With this change, Ray becomes Group General Manager of the new  RPG/MMO studio group. BioWare’s other co-founder, Greg Zeschuk will become Group Creative Officer for the new RPG/MMO studio group. Rob Denton will step up as General Manager of Mythic and report to Ray. BioWare’s studios remain unchanged and continue to report to Ray.

Mark Jacobs, current General Manager of Mythic will leave EA on June 23, 2009. We thank Mark for his contributions at Mythic and wish him the very best going forward. Mark played a major part in the success of Mythic with his contribution as General Manager and Lead Designer of WAR.

Mythic retains a strong team led by Rob who co-founded Mythic in 1995. Rob played a critical role in the development of Dark Age of Camelot. In his previous role as COO, he was responsible for all day-to-day management of the studio including all development, operations and support.

Please join us in celebrating the union of these two award-winning studios.[/indent]
Source (http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=841)

Would you jump off a luxury liner to board the Titanic?

Well, now he can get around to that "How to run a multi-million dollar investment into the ground by being absolutely out of touch with your customers For Dummies" book that's always needed to be written.

The list of authors for this book would be long indeed.  

Seriously, check out this list: http://www.lasplash.com/publish/Celebrity_Talk_102/Night_of_a_Hundred_Stars_-_Where_Beautiful_People_Come_to_Watch_Beautiful_People.php

The most famous person there is Lou Diamond Phillips. loooooooooooooooool

Chalk this up to another MMO person/company I wont play a game of

Brad McQuaid
SOE
Mark Jacobs
Funcom

I know im forgetting 1 or 2 more

Soooooo, I wonder what the subs look like  :grin:

As many predicted, the Land of the Dead patch killed RVR.  With one faction inside Land of the Dead, the other side has to RVE to gain access. Then they get 15 mins or so of slaughtering small clusters of people engaged with mobs, and once everything is clear the winning side gets to.................................................................PVE!!!!  Man what exciting RVR!!

Seriously, check out this list: http://www.lasplash.com/publish/Celebrity_Talk_102/Night_of_a_Hundred_Stars_-_Where_Beautiful_People_Come_to_Watch_Beautiful_People.php

The most famous person there is Lou Diamond Phillips. loooooooooooooooool

Any data on the current number of subs?

The numbers you get from Warheap are scary.

I hope the supposed RvR revamp coming in September doesn't fail, DAoC is too old a game for 2009.

Never mind I see they did a recent update. (http://www.warheap.com/servers/?s=health&o=desc&l=all)

Man if Dark Crag is their best server now they are in deep trouble. DC is going to take a big hit when AION releases, Volkmar is horribly imbalanced towards Order despite the activity rating, and Skullthrone by all reports is already a ghost town.

Noticed the vn boards seem very quiet, so counting official forums accounts again.

 7th May first (http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/profile?user.id=37620) to 13th May last (http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/profile?user.id=38282)
 14th May first (http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/profile?user.id=38283) to 20th May last (http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/profile?user.id=39047)
 21st May first (http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/profile?user.id=39048) to 27th May last (http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/profile?user.id=39617)
 28th May first (http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/profile?user.id=39618) to 3rd June last (http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/profile?user.id=40216)

Splitting the last twelve weeks into three groups of four weeks each.

5212 new accounts (1803, 1337, 1170, 902)
3368 new accounts (849, 1133, 731, 655)
2597 new accounts (663, 765, 570, 599)

LOD gave them a minor boost on new forum accounts, a few hours of the 1st of July still to go and they have already had 2820 new accounts (http://forums.warhammeronline.com/warhammer/profile?user.id=43036) created in the last 4 weeks.

What it does give us is a comparison to past rates of new forum registrations.  As long as player behavior remains somewhat consistant (which it will short of a promotion which encourages people to sub in greater than normal numbers), it gives us a rough idea of the rate of new subs compared to previous periods.

I would love to be at the staff meeting after Aion launches.

I almost feel for the Warhammer developers. The game is still bleeding population, the gameplay is highly dependant on having an active and balanced population, there are multiple systemic issues and the player morale seems to be really low. They've got to be very close to losing critical mass and I would love to be at the staff meeting after Aion launches.

Even if they make all the right moves from here on the game just simply may not be recoverable due to the negative feedback system of low populations, no new population to keep the earlier tiers alive and no progression in the end game to keep the veterans happy. Admitting that though would be a major loss of face and leave the studio really vulnerable itself.

"BioWare has told Eurogamer that Mythic Entertainment will "without a doubt" help out on Star Wars: The Old Republic, as there are "absolutely opportunities to share and learn" within the newly formed RPG/MMO group.

Chances Old Republic will suck just went up by a couple dozen orders of magnitude.

OR.... they mean share and learn what-the-fuck NOT to do.

Look on the bright side, it's not exactly like getting knocked into lava will break canon.  :why_so_serious:

It is STILL shocking to me that a AAA title like WAR has crashed and burned so thoroughly.

How do you feel about Vanguard and Tabula Rasa? 

The thing that WAR and TR had in common were their development budgets.  Isn't that what makes a title AAA?

but those 3 months were fun as heck.

the Creative Director still has a budget for travel and self promotion: http://www.develop-conference.com/developconference09/biog_detail.shtml?id=2812

Look on the bright side, it's not exactly like getting knocked into lava will break canon.  :why_so_serious:

I can't link a source for this for obvious reasons, but I believe it to be accurate.

GOA had an internal meeting in Dublin recently, over 50% of jobs are to go (that's well over 100 staff), subscription numbers for WAR in the US are currently standing at just under 15k, Europe has a touch over 80k.  No figures for Russia or Taiwan were mentioned.

:popcorn:

That can't possibly be right

It just pisses me off all over again. The base idea is FUN. The license... Jesus wept, the fucking license. HOW CAN YOU FUCK THIS UP YOU PHILISTINES?

I dig. That's just awfully low. Unbelievably low.

If it IS true, that's a singular, historical MMO failure. Nothing would compare. Nothing. To go from one of the golden, surefire license in the hands of a reputable company with a big budget and EA advertising to less subs than AO or Vanguard is... I mean that's serious business there. That would also mean I expect the plug to be pulled any time.

That was still a slow burn. Nothing like 1mil subs (give or take) to less than 100k total and 15k in NA in nine months.

Job losses are expected to hit in September, so I guess it might be a while before anyone confirms it

Every fucking time. :awesome_for_real:

Wow.  Didn't Tabula Rasa have more subscribers when they pulled the plug?  What does it say about you when your game fails harder than a legendary nightmare of a game developed by a man who could well be clinically insane?

Ok, after thinking about it for awhile... Maybe the guy meant that War in the US has 15k PEAK subs logged in at the same time? Maybe?

Ok, after thinking about it for awhile... Maybe the guy meant that War in the US has 15k PEAK subs logged in at the same time? Maybe?

That's 1250 per realm peak?  I thought some were ghost towns and the most populous would be possibly hitting 1200 max at peak.  Of course, this is all based on what I've heard, not any official numbers.

Let's say 20% of your population max is logged on at any time (I remember this figure from MUDs/EQ days. When EQ hit 100k peak online, they were hovering at around 500-550k subs): that'd put subs at around 75K.  Still a terrible, ritual suicide inducing number, just not as jaw dropping as 15k.

Best bet for getting more info would probably be when quarterly reports are filed.

I heard about the layoffs too (it's hard to lay off people and keep it quiet, since, you know, the people were laid off and looking for work and stuff).

As for the subscription numbers... uh, everyone I've asked has said "omg no way". Then again below management level, no one really KNOWS the subscription numbers. So it's kind of impossible to confirm (since anyone in a position to know would never leak it).

Best bet for getting more info would probably be when quarterly reports are filed. (FWIW I'd believe 75k over 15k.)

Let's say 20% of your population max is logged on at any time (I remember this figure from MUDs/EQ days. When EQ hit 100k peak online, they were hovering at around 500-550k subs): that'd put subs at around 75K.  Still a terrible, ritual suicide inducing number, just not as jaw dropping as 15k.

I don't get why you would give out that sort of information to likely disgruntled people on their way out the door.

You could try to work it back from the 300k figure they announced last.

If Europe is 80k, that leaves 220k. Let's say Russia is at least 100k. That leaves everywhere else with 120k. If the US really is 15k, where are the other 105k located?

The under 15k number for US is wrong, there was a mix up as it was being compared to the EU figure.  US figure is just under 15k more than the EU figure.  So Europe has ~ 83k & US is ~ 97k, so combined total is 180k (excluding Russia).  Sorry, honest mistake.

Given the state of the game, the expected model likely will not give accurate results.

More likely, the only people left are the most hard-core, "I LOVE this game!!!" types.  They're likely more dedicated to being on when they can, which would skew the concurancy:account ratio to a much higher degree than a game with a draw from several quarters.

I'm not sure why people find the numbers so hard to believe.  A good deal of us have played it, some have tried to go back and quickly regretted it, and it's almost unanimous that it just isn't fun.  It's a PvP game where  PvP isn't the focus.  Of course it has no subs.

we are expecting to resolve our long term population issues on our lower population servers and see high populations regularly as part and parcel of server merges that are currently in discussion.

Yeah, I'm surprised EU isn't more than the US as well.  As for funding, I'm interested to see if EA commits to a paid expansion.  If they don't, then all the new regions they open in don't matter because the end is inevitable

It doesn't matter what they do at this point.

T4 is horribly broken, and the people they are losing are entire guilds as well as smaller groups of players in the level 40 range.  Patch 1.3 simply introduced more RVE, and prior to that the RVR token system created a population limit per zone issue that screwed over organized PVP.

Until they re-design T4 and fix the CC and class imbalances now, they will just merge servers to see them slowly die off every 3 months.  Not to mention there is some hack I recently read about called Warbuddy that people claim will let you do all sorts of weird things.

I am not proclaiming the doom of Warhammer, but I do feel that it will be consigned to the niche mmo gaming market because of Mythic's failure to listen and failure to do anything about the core issues that make the game broken.  Land of the Dead didn't need to come before a T4 revamp, and RVR tokens shouldn't have come before they figured out how to redesign fortress fights.

I removed WAR from my harddrive after resubbing twice.  Until they do a class balance overhaul and eliminate most of the cc, I advise people to avoid WAR like the plague. 

Now I need someone to talk me out of going back to DAoC.  Playing the Aion Beta until I make up my mind. 

I removed WAR from my harddrive after resubbing twice.  Until they do a class balance overhaul and eliminate most of the cc, I advise people to avoid WAR like the plague.  

Now I need someone to talk me out of going back to DAoC.  Playing the Aion Beta until I make up my mind.  

Play some console and/or non-MMO PC games or I'm taking away your gamer card.

I've actually been playing my PS2 a bit and am considering moving on to a ps3.  My big problem is that I get bored with single player games very quickly.  I'm not sure why it is.  Perhaps I played them to death in my younger years and find most newer titles to be more of the same with prettier graphics. 

I'm with Nevermore, if the CC in WAR was too much I have no idea why you'd ever go back to DAOC where it was much, much worse.

I seriously do not get the compulsion to be playing a MMO at all times.  I understand even less the PVPer compulsion to play any shit game that comes along as long as it has glorious PVP.  :awesome_for_real:

Wait, you don't like the CC in WAR so you're considering going back to DAoC?  :headscratch:  Did they actually make the CC in WAR worse than it was in DAoC?  The game that opened with Stungard and has (had?) minute long mezzes?

cc in DAoC is little more than a temporary annoyance.

100K users can fund a studio. Of course, there's the matter of making production costs and Games Workshop licensing fees, but given that the US studio has already had pretty severe layoffs they should be sustainable if they can keep/build on those numbers.

At 15K users you have to start asking yourself if it's paying for the 1 server you have left.

Another 5 dead US servers, leaves 10 US now.  Anyone know how many US LOTRO has?

This is pretty vague, but we can bet it's staff from Warhammer.

EA/BioWare/Mythic is producing a new game.

Warhammer is, and has been tanking for some time.

DAoC is actually gaining subscribers.

From Facebook:
Dark Age of Camelot has regained Lori as an official part of its team and additional developers will be joining her in the near future.

Who the fuck is Lori?

And I'd be a fucking liar if I said I wasn't left with an itch to try DAoC again. I never really did much with it so it would be fresh for me... but the quality of the gameplay and engine put me off.

It probably doesn't matter who Lori is, since both games are circling the bowl..... :grin:

It probably doesn't matter who Lori is, since both games are circling the bowl..... :grin:

DAOC is paid for and provided it makes a satisfying enough profit, it can continue indefinitely.

WAR still has its development costs to cover, appears to have a worldwide player base of less than 300k and will soon run out of new markets to expand into. Looking at the population figures, I'm even starting to doubt if it will continue operation into 2010.

EA could try selling it off to someone else, I guess, to make some money back, but I don't know who would want to pick it up at anything less than bargain basement prices.

EA could try selling it off to someone else, I guess, to make some money back, but I don't know who would want to pick it up at anything less than bargain basement prices.

11, according to the LOTRO forums.

Even City of Heroes still has 11 US servers.

I still play LOTRO with my wife, we are on the least populated server (Firefoot) and everytime we log on their are tons of folks starting PUG's, PvPing, even PUGing some raids (none of the hard ones).  Not just in Moria either I have friends who just started who are PUGing their way through the low level zones and they seem to not be having much of a problem either.  So at least they are doing well enough to maintain their current population.   

As far as craftsmanship I think LOTRO really is in a league of its own, if only it had a more responsive combat system I think it would have done far better.

11, according to the LOTRO forums.

From the possibly the worst source ever (http://vnboards.ign.com/warhammer_online_age_of_reckoning_general_board/b22997/111312725/p1/?0).

Mythic Entertainment and Gigamedia have announced that Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will launch in Taiwan on June 25th. The game will be available on GigaMedia's game platform, FunTown, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

I don't even understand how that's possible.  Did they just pull numbers out of a hat when they were deciding how many servers to open?

As far as craftsmanship I think LOTRO really is in a league of its own, if only it had a more responsive combat system I think it would have done far better.

I haven't paid attention to WAR since before it launched so I don't know the details of the beta testing they did in Taiwan but the Chinese MMORPG players are notoriously fickle. Or more accurately they like to try out the new games en masse but won't stick around if it's not good (according to their standards, natch) since there are so many other games competing for their attention (they have a ton more MMORPGs over there than we have here).

Up on test center today.  Couple highlights

* Immovable: Root immunity and knockback immunity have been combinedinto a new single immunity effect, and its duration has been increasedover the previous effects. When affected by either a root, knockback,or pull effect, you will become immune to them for 30 seconds. Thisimmunity will also persist through death.
*Resolute Defense: This new ability is now available for purchase fromRenown trainers. When activated, your character will become brieflyimmune to all Crowd Control effects. Please note that this ability willnot remove any pre-existing effects; it is a tool to help you preventyourself from becoming afflicted in the first place! This one reminds me of those trinkets in WOW
*Unstoppable: The duration of this stun, knockdown, disarm and silenceimmunity buff has been increased from six times the duration of thedisabling effect to 10 times the effect duration, and will now persistthrough death
*The Field of Glory buff currently grants a 100% Experience bonus in RvRLakes when killing players. Players will now receive an additional 50%bonus to Experience and a 150% bonus to Renown when killing playersnear Battlefield Objectives or Keeps.


Patch also includes the big AE nerf which hits pretty much every class. 
Evidentally the next patch includes an additional ramp in keeps(not sure about Forts)

We’ll continue to look at improving the RvR campaign by better incentivizing Keeps that are defended and upgraded.  The plan is to base the value of rewards handed out on how many enemy players are present, and by the upgraded Rank of the Keep.  Players will receive a boost for both XP and RP, plus additional gold bags handed out for a successful attack or defense.  Now you’ll have even more reason to seek out your enemies for the most rewarding experience.

It also seems a bit silly at this point to base incentive bonuses on enemy population, considering that if the enemy has too many people in the zone, the population cap hits them and they start losing members.

Wow, an ass-load of negativity on what I think are good changes.  I'd really like to play a WAR that can sustain some degree of fun that I had in WAR from 1-15, 1-20.  This is at least a start toward something worth coming back for.  I hope they can keep it up with the next couple patches.

This is the first time that they have made the right decision in a long time.  I mean, old Mythic would have extended the length of the ccs, or had a picture of Paul's face show up on your screen yelling 'waaaaagh' every time you were disabled.  It's just a an extreme case of a day late and a buck short.

AoC is doing it right now and these games were in almost identical states.

Just because 15 people on F13 gave it a go doesn't mean it's booming.  AoC is still pretty dead. 

AoC is more than fine now.

As an educated guess?  Yes.

We had Jacobs here, and laid out exactly what they needed to do.  It was a pretty solid consensus, too, so it's not like we were giving conflicting signals.

It's really not that populated.  Chat consists of the same 20 people making sex jokes.  There's no sense in arguing about it though. 

the fundamental difference is that with AoC you don't need an equal and opposite number of rival players to have fun.  So yeah my money would be on AoC pulling a LotRO than for WAR pulling an EVE.

-fixed or changed some magic setting so that large RvR isn't a slide show for people who, while well above the minimum specs, are not on the bleeding edge?

LOTD first while Jacobs was at the helm.

Watch. I bet they start ramping up fixes to XP, CC and other stuff real quick. That doesn't mean they fix the underlying design flaws but it's going to be EXACTLY like Conan's trajectory.

I think someone at Mythic is going to have a Age of Conan moment where Funcom realized that while their main gameplay (ganking) was cute the real dollars were in their under funded enterprises (pve). Thats the only way i see Mythic slavaging WAR, understanding that RVR regardless of incentive isn't going to save their game. 

Define "save". Depending on their costs and overhead, they can chug along with the subs they have, maybe less. How EA affects things is a different matter but in a vacuum it's fine. Not a raging success but enough to keep a company on.

PvE?  Are you serious?  PvE is the PROBLEM in WAR not the solution.  The designers massively f-ed up by creating a mandatory slog through their crappy PvE to get to the fun stuff (RvR).  You will NEVER out PvE the competition (LOTRO, WOW), the only way WAR will ever have a hope of getting any revenue back is to focus like a laser beam on RvR, encourage the elements that are fun and remove the elements that are not.  Hint:  They should spend some time analyzing why Tier 1 and Tier 2 RvR was terrific but the rest of their RvR game sucked.  

I know your missing the point. If Mythic had real balls then they would have stopped the progression at tier 2. But they didn't so here is what is wrong with the game. RVR is boring, not everyone who found WAR enjoyable in tiers 1-2 found it fun because you can steam roll people in rvr lakes, it was because you could pve and the scenarios were fun to play and was not treated as a method to grind xp/rr. When you hit tier 3 and finally tier 4 only 1 game type is supported by WAR and that is keep seiges. By that time you run out of pve to slog through and scenarios are blatantly only exist as a tool to grind. People avoided doing rvr because rvr is boring, and when you ask all 500k subscribers to bang their dick against a castles door or leave then it should be no surprised they left. Adding incentives to bang dick against doors keeps the current player base and aids in Mythics survival mode for WAR. Actually providing something else for players to do not only saves WAR but provides a playerbase rvr actually needs to survive. Age of Conan could have closed all pve severs and added full loot on death and would have kept 50k subs and paid the light bill that way. But Funcom decided that making money is kinda important so they decided that people might actually want to do something besides ganking each other. Fuck EVE supports a playstyle besides camping warp gates.

I have always said that I'll be the first to give them a pat on the back when they do something right. They're doing something right. That's good. It's to be commended. Mind you, it's okay to laugh about it happening all of two weeks after Jacobs gets shitcanned the same way it was okay to laugh about Conan doing the exact same thing two weeks after Gaute was.

I know your missing the point. If Mythic had real balls then they would have stopped the progression at tier 2. But they didn't so here is what is wrong with the game. RVR is boring, not everyone who found WAR enjoyable in tiers 1-2 found it fun because you can steam roll people in rvr lakes, it was because you could pve and the scenarios were fun to play and was not treated as a method to grind xp/rr. When you hit tier 3 and finally tier 4 only 1 game type is supported by WAR and that is keep seiges. By that time you run out of pve to slog through and scenarios are blatantly only exist as a tool to grind. People avoided doing rvr because rvr is boring, and when you ask all 500k subscribers to bang their dick against a castles door or leave then it should be no surprised they left. Adding incentives to bang dick against doors keeps the current player base and aids in Mythics survival mode for WAR. Actually providing something else for players to do not only saves WAR but provides a playerbase rvr actually needs to survive. Age of Conan could have closed all pve severs and added full loot on death and would have kept 50k subs and paid the light bill that way. But Funcom decided that making money is kinda important so they decided that people might actually want to do something besides ganking each other. Fuck EVE supports a playstyle besides camping warp gates.

they promised instead they would look at EACH INDIVIDUAL ability and adjust them as needed.  Instead all they've done is nerf everything by a set number, and call it a day.

I just logged back in with the 10 free trial thingy. Getting stuck inside torches in Keeps in T2, unable to unstuck since I'm in combat. UI settings cannot be saved, but you have to manually edit the XML file on your harddisk if you want to adjust your settings. The game won't even start if your desktop resolution is different from the one you selected in game... Fucking amateur hour.

Thank you, I will no longer confuse your posts with someone who knows what the hell they are talking about.

Just as long as there isn't another rvr game being made that isn't wow with asian graphics i'm happy.

I don't believe that it makes financial sense for EA to attempt to save that game. 

we can expect EA's Q1 earnings presentation by July 28 or 29th. Maybe Paul will host?  do a dance?  WAUUGGH!

Ultimately that is what is going to kill WAR. If breakeven is 500k players and they are struggling to make 300k, WAR is going to die even if the devs do everything right from here on in. When they do switch the servers off, players are going to rant that WAR had turned the corner, with Jacobs gone things were improving, that if they only leave it running a bit longer things will be fixed (just like with TR). However, the truth (unless EA is making killer profits elsewhere it needs to hide, so WAR serves as a nice buffer for that) is that it can't be making enough money to pay back its development costs.

Assuming that Jacobs was accurate with his figures, of course. And I think he was, because he really wanted to boast about how much money got poured into WAR and how big the player base was going to be.


Barnett's a rock star, so I expect an 8 minute guitar solo while he's dressed only in sliver sequinned pants.

Even if the breakeven point were 300k, EA would still not be smart to put more money into this, because they need a decent return on the incremental investment from here forward. 

So Daoc and Ultima Online gets sacrificed before the alter of SWTOR?  :drill:

The sad part of this is that reading these threads over the past few days is making me want to play through T1 Greenskin again.  But I know how that book ends, with me unsubbing because of mid-T2. 

Everytime someone posts this, I scratch my head and ask myself what exactly was so much fun about T1.

Accessible pvp.  Little to no CC.  Decent balance, particularly among groups.

After the second alt, you start to realize that all of that only applies from levels 8 to 10. 1-7 is pretty much /yawn.

Accessible pvp.  Little to no CC.  Decent balance, particularly among groups.  Rapid progression.  Small, but fun maps.  

For us ex-DAoC players, it feels like Thid v2.0

You may have read the Producer's Letter from yesterday (if not check it out!) and thought to yourself "How long am I going to have to wait to sink my teeth into 1.3.0b?"

The answer? As long as it takes you to patch your PTS client! (How to access the PTS Server)

To make things a bit more exciting, we've also turned on the Return to Nordenwatch weekend event, so no matter what Rank you are, you can duke it out in this beloved Scenario as you get back to basics and tell us what you think on the 1.3.0b Public Test Forums!

It's been about a month since 1.3 rolled your way and we started discussing "The future of WAR." Since you've been fighting in the sands and exploring the ancient Necropolis of Zandri and Tomb of the Vulture Lord, we've been working tirelessly to bring some of our goals to life.

1.3.0b primarily focuses on Combat & Career changes with an emphasis on area-of-effect and crowd control abilities, in addition to delivering the revised Mastery trees and improvements for the Archmage and Shaman. To top it all off, we've got a host of other tasty changes to better sate your appetite.

We're not done yet though, and this is only one step of many we have planned for accomplishing the goals we set out to achieve with the release of 1.3. So, read on for the 1.3.0b PTS Highlights and Patch Notes, and join us for the PTS of 1.3.0b. Be sure to visit the official forums to share your feedback and help to squash any bugs you come across!

1-7 is pretty much /yawn.

After 4 days of testing massive AOE changes and they roll the retard onto the stage. Brilliant!

Readind is a bit hard today, I take it?

The Herald headline is 1.3.0b Public Test Server - Now Live!. The mistake at first glance is understandable, though it's pretty obvious in the actual notes that they're talking about a new test build.

Our Game Update 1.3.0b Public Test has come to a close, and Warpstone is currently down in preparation for the launch of 1.3.0b this week.

 
Thank you to everyone who participated in the 1.3.0b Public Test. Your feedback and contribution is much appreciated.

Really, is there anything to lose at this point?

By doing this they didnt go through each class, just the general ability type and nerf every class that uses it across the board. 

Yeah... many Marauders will be either quitting or rerolling to an OP class due to the lack of thought put into this patch. 

Another band-aid fix for a game that needs a heart transplant. 

Yeah... many Marauders will be either quitting or rerolling to an OP class due to the lack of thought put into this patch. 

Really?  I thought Marauders were more focused DPS than AOE; I know White Lions were, when I played.  A global AOE nerf would seem to me to make melee DPS more viable (less "ranged DPS chucks AOEs at front line, tanks get healed [in theory, anyway], melee DPS goes down again").

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Simply amazing watching WoW continue to rise, and WAR continue to swirl around the bowl.

We will be bringing all North American and Oceanic servers offline this morning for Game Update 1.3.0b.

Wait, the complete AOE nerf went live to the actual paying public servers with how much testing? I see the first note in this thread about it is on July 18th, and the live date is July 21st. Did they really test this for no more than 3 days? Shit, if it got less than 2 weeks of testing, that's just :ye_gods:

5 days of public testing on an across the board AOE nerf?   :ye_gods:

Somebody is smoking something fierce.

At this stage they have nothing to lose, really.

Agreed.  If its not going bring down the server, it needs to go out the door.  They have nearly a year's worth of catch-up.

GG:  So there are always rumors, but are there any plans for future races implemented within WAR?

Josh:  Obviously, when we launched, we did not use all the armies.  Certainly one of the things that we would potentially be looking to do in the future would be adding more.  The thing you have to be careful of, and this is just a lesson we’ve learned from making these types of games for 15 years, is you can get to the point where you’ve potentially added way too many and you wind up watering things down.  At the moment, our focus is definitively on improving the stuff that is currently within the game, so you want to fix things before you add additional things.  That’s a bit of a dodge, but absolutely one of the things that’s on the table though would be adding new races.
...
At the moment, one of the discussions we are having, obviously based strongly off of player feedback, is “What is the appropriate role of Crowd Control?”  I’m sure you have talked to Nate (Levy, C&C Strike Team Lead) and his guys about this at great length, but those are legitimate questions and we’re obviously not happy with where the game is in terms of that now.  You know some of those things are fixing actual bugs that are causing things to behave incorrectly.  But then there are also fundamental philosophical questions and discussions that need to be had about whether or not we currently have things set up in the right way in terms of how we expect those different archetypes to behave on the battlefield.

Over the next 6 to 9 months, you are going to see a lot of that type of internal soul-searching going on trying to really ego-check a lot of decisions we have made.  Because it is very easy to look back on something that you know in your gut is wrong and try to construct a defense around it.  That is almost never the right answer.  The right answer is almost always to go “It doesn’t matter why we chose to do this thing, but that it turned out not to work the way we would like it to.”  The only thing that matters is that we have the clarity of vision and the sort of fortitude necessary to look straight at it and go “OK, we need to make some changes.”  And that is where we are right now with a lot of things.

What Jeff (Hickman) was talking about over the last couple of months in his Producer’s Letters has been an effort to be as open as we ever can be about those types of things.  I realize that there is always a level of frustration because people want there to be some sort of Frost/Nixon moment where Jeff just lays bare all of the internal workings of the studio and explains in great detail exactly when certain changes are coming and so forth.  We can never be that detailed because it’s always in flux.  It’s always a fluid sort of process.

But we’ve been trying to send a message though, over the last 3 or 4 months, that we really are in a position now where we, as a studio, feel confident that we can look with a critical eye at a lot of the choices that were made over the development of the game and that we are supported on all sides.  From above, from below, from all around…EA is with us.  BioWare is with us.  Our own internal leadership is with us saying “The right thing to do is to make the best possible choices for improving the game.”  So that does not limit us in some sort of way.