WAR to be released...

[UnSub]

... by Mythic Entertainment.

Part 2 of the interview is meant to have some exclusive announcements. Depending on what they are, I may look like a greater or lesser dick for choosing the subject title.

[schild]

I get it. But I really, really don't get it.

[photek]

Funny, just read this article an hour ago : http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=19325

And damn you, I thought we had a release date.

[Simond]

So is this genuinely "We're reclaiming our old name" or is it EA prepping Mythic for a sell-off?

[Jherad]

Slinking away to hide behind a bush just in case war tanks, ready to pop out again with a 'ta-da!' if it does well?

[Trippy]

So is this genuinely "We're reclaiming our old name" or is it EA prepping Mythic for a sell-off?

I can't read the article but with the Activision/Blizzard merger having been finalized it's highly unlikely EA would be looking to sell-off assets ATM.

[Triforcer]

Warhammer Alliance has a couple of posts from Mythic devs in their newsthread.  We've been assured by MBJ that one of the annoucements is NOT a release pushback.  Another thread at MMORPG.com seems to indicate that release date won't be one of the 3 things either. 

[Triforcer]

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/239/feature/2041

1.  Punkbuster!

2.  Four capital cities to be patched in post-launch!

3.  Four classes cut!

4.  Mythic employees are going to kidnap your rl pets!

The last one is fake...for now 

[Simond]

Well, that explains the "Mythic Entertainment" part - EA has set a deadline for launch which means two-thirds of the cities and one-sixth of the classes have to be cut (stick) and let Mythic change their name back to avoid total humiliation (carrot).

[Merusk]

WTB c&P of details for those who get "SURF CONTROL - ACCESS DENIED"

[tazelbain]

Drama!

[cevik]

And the cycle begins anew.

[NiX]

You don't need a cut and paste of the PB announcement. It's PunkBuster. It'll run processes when it doesn't need to and do a half assed job at preventing hacking. WHEE!

Originally, the plan for Warhammer Online was for each of the races in the game (Greenskin, Chaos, Dark Elf, High Elf, Empire and Dwarf) to come fully equipped with a “living, breathing Capital City”. These cities not only serve in the game as quest and social hubs, but also play a pivotal role in the game’s Realm vs. Realm design. As the war rages on, the game’s capital cities will gain and lose in rank, opening and closing new content, dungeons (yup, right in the city) and the like.

MMORPG.com has learned that a decision has been made to reduce the number of Capital Cities at launch from six down to two. Altdorf (Empire) and Inevitable City (Chaos) will stand at launch as the Capitals not only of their race, but of their faction as well.

The last subject that we tackled in our interview was the announcement that was neither a pure positive for the players nor a sort of mix of good and bad news:

“This isn’t something that I can say that it is really a good thing for the player,” he began. “We’re cutting out some classes. I can say that we are doing this for quality, absolutely. Unfortunately, what I can’t say, and I won’t because I’ve never lied to the player base and while this would be a great place to start, I’m not going to.”
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“Four of the classes that we’ve been working on, we just couldn’t get great,” he continued. “We looked at them and we said these careers are just not great… and we tried, and they weren’t coming out well.”

This left them with a decision similar to the one that they were left with for the cities, do they continue and try to get it, or do they shelve them? In the end, after looking at the metric data that they have been collecting throughout the beta process, they saw that there were four careers that just weren’t working for the players.

“We tried,” Jacobs said, “we tried to see if we could make them better and we just couldn’t make them great. So we had a choice. Do we put in some non-great careers just because they are iconic, or we cut them out and put them in post-launch if we can get them right, or do we not put them in at all?”

In the end, whether it’s the second or the third option is still unknown.

The four careers that are going may surprise players (and even includes one of Marks personal favorites). The list is as follows:

Choppa (Greenskin)
Hammerer (Dwarf)
Blackguard (Dark Elf)
Knight of the Blazing Sun (Empire)

[sam, an eggplant]

Good, they have way too many classes. The game doesn't really need six separate lightly armored melee DPS classes with six sets of slightly different mechanics.

Focus, cut, polish. Repeat.

[Triforcer]

Good, they have way too many classes. The game doesn't really need six separate lightly armored melee DPS classes with six sets of slightly different mechanics.

Focus, cut, polish. Repeat.

I don't have a problem with the class cut.  Things are always in flux before release on that front-- I believe AoC combined a couple classes (Lich, Druid of the Storm, etc) and WoW added Hunter a couple of months before launch.

What I AM worried about is the capital city cuts.  That entails quite a dramatic shift in RvR mechanics- a follow-up post on WHA indicates that you'll have to capture two of three campaigns to get to Altdorf/IC now. 

My prediction?  The capital cities NEVER make it in, because Mythic has discovered that routing attention three ways is bad.

[cevik]

My prediction?  The capital cities NEVER make it in, because Mythic has discovered that routing attention three ways is bad.

If only I could bring myself to believe it's a gameplay decision and not a release scheduling problem.

[WayAbvPar]

I would much rather wait another six months for release and have everything make the final cut. Scrapping things this far along makes it sound like they are hurrying, which doesn't bode well. Of course, I am not the one on the hook for the development costs either.

[sam, an eggplant]

Oh it's clearly a scheduling decision but it's one that I feel will help the game as a whole. Players need focused content-- trying to deliver three separate RvR endgames at release was foolish. Looking beyond simply developing quality content, what if you can't generate a critical mass of players at each site?

[Draegan]

These are very good cuts in my opinion.

[Triforcer]

Oh it's clearly a scheduling decision but it's one that I feel will help the game as a whole. Players need focused content-- trying to deliver three separate RvR endgames at release was foolish. Looking beyond simply developing quality content, what if you can't generate a critical mass of players at each site?

I wish I could agree with this, but the flavor in the Kool-aid is starting to seem a bit more like poison and a bit less like comety deliverance.  

[sam, an eggplant]

I always thought content dilution was DAoC's most profound failure too, and that was only 3 factions. Only 3 melee dps classes. WAR had six. Too much duplication of effort. Too many classes to balance. Too many factions to balance in both PvP and PvE, the most difficult challenge of all. Too much time spent on separate newbie zones, not enough on the elder game. Too many empty capital cities. Too many playthroughs required to experience the content. Too much dilution of content. Just too much.

Focus, cut, polish. Repeat.

[Rondaror]

It's difficult to create melee classes, that have unique tank/dps mechanics. So I don't really bother about the missing classes...20 instead of 24 is good enough.

4 out of 6 capital cities delayed is a manpower problem, which indicated that they do not have enough ressources to get them in before launch and it might be a sign that they are not going to delay the launch again. Which could mean that, besides the missing cities, there is missing content in general at launch.

[cevik]

Oh it's clearly a scheduling decision but it's one that I feel will help the game as a whole. Players need focused content-- trying to deliver three separate RvR endgames at release was foolish. Looking beyond simply developing quality content, what if you can't generate a critical mass of players at each site?

I can't imagine WoW being where it is today with only two release cities.  The amount of content and variety of content removed by scrapping 2/3's of the original cities has got to hurt.  Quality of content probably can't make up for it.

At least, the general gist of the AoC threads were that players need *more* content, not necessarily less content with more quality.  Though more content with more quality is good, of course, if you can afford it.

[sam, an eggplant]

So I don't really bother about the missing classes...20 instead of 24 is good enough.

Twenty is way too many, once you factor in specialization via WAR's version of talents. If I were developing WAR, I would have a single archetype for each class and give each faction's version different customization options. For example, all six factions would have a lightly armored DPS class, and all six classes would have different names, but share all base abilities and two out of three talent trees, cutting my work down a thousandfold.

Edit: Really? You think WOW would be substantially hurt if they had never positioned Darnassus, Thunder Bluff, Ironforge, and Undercity as major cities and had instead used them as leveling hubs like crossroads and theramore? Not that it's a valid comparison, really, since WAR's capital cities are the endgame.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Looks like EA(ok i dont pay attention) is pushing hard to release pre-WOTLK, this of course is going to be their biggest mistake.  I mean even is you only see in dollar signs, can't companies see that the policy of rushing things out the door doesn't make nearly as much as finished product? Has their been any game in any genre pc/console etc that was rushed and still made a ton of money?

edit for retarditude

[squirrel]

Looks like activision is pushing hard to release pre-WOTLK, this of course is going to be their biggest mistake.  I mean even is you only see in dollar signs, can't companies see that the policy of rushing things out the door doesn't make nearly as much as finished product? Has their been any game in any genre pc/console etc that was rushed and still made a ton of money?

Activision? You mean EA yes?

And yes there's been lots of rushed games that made money. There's been very few rushed games that were good, but make money? Yeah. 5/10 EA Sports games were rushed so they could be ready for the season (ie. NHL 2006) and sucked ass. But they sold lots.

[cevik]

Edit: Really? You think WOW would be substantially hurt if they had never positioned Darnassus, Thunder Bluff, Ironforge, and Undercity as major cities and had instead used them as leveling hubs like crossroads and theramore? Not that it's a valid comparison, really, since WAR's capital cities are the endgame.

Yes, I think without those cities the game wouldn't have nearly felt as full of content at the begining.  If everyone had been funneled to Org or SW after their newbie zone experiences it wouldn't have lead to the variety of content that WoW has.  As it was you could take so many different leveling paths to around level 30 (as we discussed in the other thread) that it felt like the game was absolutely full of content.

We'll just have to see if these "leveling hubs" that the cities will supposedly become feel like enough content for the game to feel real and full enough without those cities.  I suspect that this will make the game feel much less solid, probably more polished than having 6 crappy cities, but no where near as solid and polished as having 6 good cities, i.e. I do not think this decision bodes well for the game.

EDIT:  I suspect if they can't polish the cities they can't polish the leveling hubs, and what will happen is that everyone will funnel into the two capital cities at a much lower level, thus less repeatable content, thus less longevity to the experience.  WoW had longevity because it had so much repeatable content at the lower levels.

[eldaec]

Well, that's the first expansion sorted out then.

[UnSub]

Well, that's the first expansion sorted out then.

Basically, assuming no great problems with the launch that sees that work invalidated.

It's smart to make the cuts. To some extent, it would have been better to never comment on these things at all than cut them now, but that ship has sailed.

Someone could make an argument that AoC has prompted WAR to make sure the game it launches is solid if smaller in scope than having lots promised then under-delivering.

[Merusk]

There's still too many classes.  Way too many, and I still expect some sort of DAoC "this class sucks so much worse than it's opposite faction class" imabalance.  I mean ACTUAL problems, not the usual based-on-only-the-user's-imagination crap.

The removal of the capitals could be a good or a bad thing.  If there's enough content for the PvE portion, it's NBD.  The PvP is the endgame, and funneling more folks into fewer areas can only be a good thing for pvp.   Barring huge population imbalances, but then that's a major flaw of the design anyway.

[tmp]

If only I could bring myself to believe it's a gameplay decision and not a release scheduling problem.

They say the cities get cut to two at launch, so yeah that seems to be just problem with getting things done between scheduled launch date, and from the wording i'd guess they still intend to add full set later. On the other hand cutting the classes they couldn't make to work well enough sounds like sensible decision given how many they have.... a mix of bad and good, indeed.

[Nija]

Wow, the choppa went from being OP to cut. That's quite a change.

That's the unfortunate victim of this. The one fun melee DPS class getting axed because they couldn't figure out how to make the others worthwhile. Hammerer especially. Oh well.


edit: Wasn't there a wall of text when EA absorbed them about how this was a good move because they didn't have to launch unfinished games due to lack of money? A lot of good that did.

[amiable]

You would think that after enough failed MMO's are rushed out the door at least one company would learn from the industry leader and not try to rush out unfinished crap.

Any sensibly business-oriented person should understand the costs and rewards of competing in the MMORPG arena, and they should understand that the surest way to kill the long term profitability of a game is to rush it out the door unfinshed. 

Eh, I still pre-ordered.  I will remain cautiously optimistic.

[Simond]

Eh, I still pre-ordered.  I will remain a walking wallet.

And you wonder why the publishers never learn.

[murdoc]

Well crap, Choppa was the one class I was really looking forward to trying out.

I honestly didn't realize that there was 24 different ones though, which definitely is too damn many.