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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  Warhammer Online (Moderator: tazelbain)  |  Topic: Warhammer ends quarter with 300,000 paying subscibers 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Warhammer ends quarter with 300,000 paying subscibers  (Read 333810 times)
schild
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Reply #35 on: February 04, 2009, 03:59:15 AM

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.

I get that but someone at EA really should've chucked his ass out on the street and denied him any recommendations after some of the stunts he pulled. Obviously Mark and Co. aren't going to.
FatuousTwat
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Reply #36 on: February 04, 2009, 04:01:47 AM

Mark seems like the type to need that kind of personality around him. I would bet that Paul is a huge yes-man (at least to Mark, he is most likely a huge dick to the people under him, evidenced by that fucking youtube video).

Of course, I don't know either of them personally, but that is the vibe I've always gotten.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
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Reply #37 on: February 04, 2009, 04:37:55 AM

Paul Barnett's history in his own words - MUD designer, consultant, consultant to Games Workshop, got shifted over to Mythic and worked his way up to Creative Lead on WAR. Jacobs seems to like him a lot.

I think Barnett is sharp at telling people what they want to hear, being smart enough to flow quickly when he needs to learn new things and charming enough to be fun to work with. Of course, he tries to make everything a joke, he speaks a lot without thinking and what he's told people hasn't nearly matched up to what was delivered.

Jacobs doesn't appear able to manage him, or to assess his own product, or understand players in the slightest.

Arthur_Parker
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Reply #38 on: February 04, 2009, 04:49:40 AM

He's good at hyping, which is good for box sales, but it doesn't help retention.  I don't think they need him any more, he said crafting was going to be awesome because Mark Jacobs was personally overseeing it, after release he admitted hyping was basically lying in a youtube clip, I can't be arsed finding the links.
Bismallah
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Reply #39 on: February 04, 2009, 05:00:52 AM

He is great at hyping. When I met him in Baltimore at a Games Day I walked out of the WAR briefing wanting to immediately buy WAR and play as my primary MMO. 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 clowning around but business wise what the fuck is he doing? Strategic hire to work PR magic? Well that failed... anyhow.

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

Put a blip off the chart at the top, 800k mark, then put a mark at 300k at half the distance of ONE tick at the bottom (one tick being 6 months). The closest representation of a plummet that bad is EQ from the middle of 2005 to 2006. Even then WAR's dropping line is staggering...

Now, the real kick in the balls is going to be Q1 2009 when they lose even more subscribers on their total numbers. When you see that number is barely breaking 200k (or lower) I suspect we see major shifts of power in the Mythic structure.

Nebu
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Reply #40 on: February 04, 2009, 05:53:22 AM

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

You must be new here. 

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

"Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other."

-  Mark Twain
Azazel
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Reply #41 on: February 04, 2009, 06:06:51 AM

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.

Changed your Burnett quotes to make them into Jacobs ones.

Those two assclowns really need to go for a long drive. Maybe Ted Kennedy can be their chauffeur.  Rimshot

http://azazelx.wordpress.com/ - My Miniatures and Hobby Blog.
Bismallah
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Reply #42 on: February 04, 2009, 06:32:08 AM

You must be new here. 

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

Yeah, I am. I didn't even know green was to denote sarcasm so I can't tell from your response what you mean. If you were to put WAR on that chart the drop in subs would be drastic compared to nearly every game that he tried to track (some good stats, some bad stats) in that range.
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Reply #43 on: February 04, 2009, 07:39:58 AM

F13 has a ... history ... with SirBruce, who runs MMOcharts. It's a varied history - there was laughter, there were tears, there was much response to trolling on both sides - but he's not welcome here.

Problem was with a lot of those numbers they are unverifiable. However, since more and more MMO companies are being publicly owned and announcing figures, it could become a lot more accurate. (Also: not all of the numbers are the same, since active subs != active players or any number of variations that have been reported).

WAR's numbers have been officially reported, so 800k to 300k is a 62.5% drop in active subscription numbers since launch.

Bismallah
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Reply #44 on: February 04, 2009, 07:44:56 AM

Ok, that history lesson helps, a lot. I heard the name SirBruce tossed around but never knew what it was connected to.

And yes, 800k to 300k in three months is nasty. Money wise that's a huge chunk of change they lost in monthly net income that they will never get back. Money that went to employees, development costs, server upkeep (upgrade), and many other things.

I expect that everything is not sunshine and happiness this week in Fairfax...

ghost
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Reply #45 on: February 04, 2009, 08:14:22 AM

Corporate will probably definitely be looking at trends and expect an answer from Jacobs at this point.  If they don't see a profitable venture I can definitely see EA pulling out of this one, particularly with their corporate earnings.  I don't think that a huge MMO workforce is something these companies would like to support if they don't have to.  You start involving things like medical benefits, raises, simple management of people and so on and it would seem difficult to rationalize keeping it going.  I know that I try to keep my own business as small as possible simply for the people management issues- and the fact that they are typically your biggest overhead expense. 

As a follow up to that, I wonder what MJs contribution to the company overhead is? ACK!
Bismallah
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Reply #46 on: February 04, 2009, 08:59:24 AM

I fully expect to see more layoffs in personnel for the Mythic section of EA, specifically those connected to WAR. Losing that much revenue over such a short period of time they cannot expect to support nearly 300+ employees full time. Protip: They can start with Paul, I bet he is charging them a pretty penny for his "skills".

schild
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Reply #47 on: February 04, 2009, 09:00:28 AM

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

Obvious news today will be obvious.
ashrik
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Reply #48 on: February 04, 2009, 09:09:14 AM

Oh shit, that SirBruce?

I always saw his name mentioned when someone breaks your post into pieces and replies to each piece.
Cyrrex
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Reply #49 on: February 04, 2009, 09:15:43 AM

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

OMGECONOMY!!! will probably be attempted as an excuse.

"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
schild
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Reply #50 on: February 04, 2009, 09:49:20 AM

As I was saying, Obvious news is obvious.
Nija
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Reply #51 on: February 04, 2009, 09:54:34 AM

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.
Shatter
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Reply #52 on: February 04, 2009, 10:19:50 AM

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.

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?
Jherad
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Reply #53 on: February 04, 2009, 10:25:45 AM

From the Herald:

Quote
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

The phrase 'as players become more familiar with the game' needs one huuuuge  awesome, for real

Edit: Schild beat me to it here, apologies.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2009, 10:40:31 AM by Jherad »
Nija
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Reply #54 on: February 04, 2009, 10:33:21 AM

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?

I have a decent internet provider. I pull about 2100 kps from newsgroups. I am, however, quite lazy. Tell me. Did you spend more time playing AoC than you did acquiring/installing/configuring AoC?
Draegan
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Reply #55 on: February 04, 2009, 10:40:19 AM

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.
Nija
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Reply #56 on: February 04, 2009, 10:44:50 AM

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.

Right. I mean I don't even have my gaming PC turned ON for 3.5 hours a day.
waffel
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Reply #57 on: February 04, 2009, 01:12:45 PM

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.

I actually spent MORE time installing and MORE time looking at forums to find out which classes were decent.

I swore I'd never do that shit again.

edit: Someone on some other forum made this chart, anyone care to check its accuracy?
« Last Edit: February 04, 2009, 01:29:57 PM by waffel »
Valmorian
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Reply #58 on: February 04, 2009, 01:41:37 PM

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

WTF is wrong with you?  3 Hours to install a game is INSANE.
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Reply #59 on: February 04, 2009, 03:00:16 PM

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.
schild
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Reply #60 on: February 04, 2009, 03:01:08 PM

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.
Link.
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Reply #61 on: February 04, 2009, 04:53:03 PM

From the Herald:

Quote
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.

Epic spin is epic.

Also, they don't need QA because they just put things to test out on the live servers.

Modern Angel
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Reply #62 on: February 04, 2009, 04:59:55 PM

You need MORE QA because consistent subs mean expansions, content patch pushes, etc. I feel for the guys who got laid off but that's some fucking disgusting Baghdad Bob shit right there.

Fucking own up to it, you fucking pussies.
Ingmar
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Reply #63 on: February 04, 2009, 05:17:33 PM

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.

The Transcendent One: AH... THE ROGUE CONSTRUCT.
Nordom: Sense of closure: imminent.
Triforcer
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Reply #64 on: February 04, 2009, 07:40:21 PM

Does this mean HRose comes back and becomes our rightful king?  He is a Mark Jacobs-centrist now  awesome, for real

All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu.  This is the truth!  This is my belief! At least for now...
Malakili
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Reply #65 on: February 04, 2009, 07:51:33 PM

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.

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

Its not like you have to sit there the entire time and watch the progress bar, whenever i'm doing a big install I Just put a disk in, and go do something else, check back, swap disks, etc.

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Reply #66 on: February 04, 2009, 08:32:29 PM

Maybe there is a list out there of who was let go (yeah, I know that's cold) but I'm amazed that Carrie Gouskos, who has the entire Tome of Knowledge feature of WAR attributed to her, was let go. The ToK was one of the few really interesting things in WAR.

However, I guess that the ToK is already designed and done, so it really doesn't need any further designswamp poop

Fordel
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Reply #67 on: February 04, 2009, 09:14:33 PM

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

and the gate is like I TOO AM CAPABLE OF SPEECH
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Reply #68 on: February 04, 2009, 09:44:00 PM

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

I'm hoping she's going to Cryptic.

Triforcer
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Reply #69 on: February 04, 2009, 09:48:24 PM

DCUO.  I want goat-killing achievements in DCUO.


All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu.  This is the truth!  This is my belief! At least for now...
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