Warhammer ends quarter with 300,000 paying subscibers

[Chockonuts]

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

Who in their right minds in this terrible economy is looking to hire 3- star talent? 

You want 5- star talent that you can snatch up and pay 3- star talent salaries.

[UnSub]

Blizzard's talent goes out on its own and to other developers often enough. Their success has been a mixed bag.

[Sir T]

Blizzards "talent" leaving to other studios means that when they release a game they have to do it without the Blizzard label of guaranteed success.

I tried Warhammer for a bit. I enjoyed the PVP which was fast pased and enjoyable. but it got stale very quickly for me. Never got to the higher tiers.

The "doorhammer" vid above is fricking hilarious.

[Fordel]

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

[UnSub]

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

Yes - Blizzard has a lot of resources (even more now) and has a culture of not shipping titles until they are happy with them. When someone leaves Blizzard, they leave that culture and resource set.

[Tmon]

Funny thing is that for most of the MMOs I've played I've known who the lead desgner/producer was but I don't really know who filled those roles for WoW.  It's just Blizzard's MMO, which leads me to agree that acquiring talent from Blizzard without also recreating Blizzard's culture isn't the key to the money hat locker.

[Trippy]

That's correct. Until the release of WoW, Blizzard never bothered to hype its lead designers and other talent. With WoW though they decided to give it a face and Rob Pardo became it, even though he wasn't the original lead designer and only joined late in the project. Allen Adham, who nobody has ever heard of (he was the Producer/Executive Producer on most of Blizzard's titles), is the original lead designer on WoW.

[Azazel]

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

EA has money, yes, but Blactivision isn't exactly small potatos. Isn't Blacitivision bigger than EA these days? Probably not the best thing to have on your resume, either.

[waylander]

[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

[/quote]

This should have happened a long time ago, and I am not sure anything can save Warhammer now. Land of the Dead was poorly done and Patch 1.3 didn't fix major issues players have been griping about for months. Expect a massive exodus when AION releases.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

[Shatter]

Jackass probably getting a douchebag bonus for leaving too.  Guy was useless, clueless and anooying as hell...good riddance

[01101010]

shocking... but only like an old person who has been dying for years finally exhaling his last.

[Shatter]

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

[Xuri]

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

Titanic was an unsinkable luxury liner. Before it's ill-fated maiden voyage, would you have jumped off a different, "sinkable" luxury liner to board the Titanic? Not unlikely.

[Hawkbit]

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.

[Shatter]

Needs to take Barnett with him

[March]

I, for one, am sad.

[Nebu]

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. 

[schild]

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.  

It'd be like Night of a Hundred Stars. An ensemble cast of A-List Celebrities that only do B-List Movies Because they S-uck at their jobs.

[Ashamanchill]

Not as long as the list of dickheads eager to pick up a copy.

[schild]

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

[Bismallah]

Soooooo, I wonder what the subs look like 

[ghost]

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

Yeah, but Amber Smith's hair is rockin' so cut her some slack.

[Azazel]

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

Paul Barnett

[waylander]

Soooooo, I wonder what the subs look like 

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!!

Expect a mass exodus of subscriptions over the summer. Patch 1.3 was the straw that broke the camels back for many guilds tired of a broken T4 RVR system, and no new producer's letter is going to work on them now.  AION is getting a lot of preorders these days, and many folks in the Warhammer community are talking about migrating there.  Its not perfect I know, but Mythic no longer deserves dollars just to keep giving us more PVE/RVE or one broken system layered on top of 5 other broken systems.

[Nebu]

Improvements to AoC and the arrival of Aion will cripple WAR.  I don't think WAR has any hope for a turnaround. 

[UnSub]

Soooooo, I wonder what the subs look like 

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!!

On topic kinda: this is why I think DCUO's approach to PvP will fall on its face. Having to stop PvEing to PvP (or vice versa) has a lot of issues related to it that I don't think the majority of players will like.

[Chockonuts]

It not the LOTD that will kill WAR. It's going to be the same thing that always hurt it; lack of vision and shortsidedness from Mythic.

LOTD is a fun area, but this zone does not work with just two factions. It's like paddling a rowboat with only one oar or riding a tricycle with only two wheels. With three factions you would have had one inside LOTD farming gear and two factions outside duking it out for control. This would have kept a decent power balance and people engaged in the RvR.

It's not like Mythic didn't have a choice, too.  I'm sure the thought of three factions had to at least cross their minds ONCE, as everything they do is pretty much copy from something else they'd made looking at their track record of games. But they made a conscious decision NOT to implement three factions, either- too difficult/confusing, expensive to develop, or IP busting.. whatever. They certainly had plenty of material already written (lore) to come up with a proposal to GW for three factions instead of two, so where was the innovation?

When copying the most successful MMO in history, you are not supposed to take what works well for them and implement it into your game unless you can do it better (two factions). You're supposed to take what they CAN'T do well and improve that. Mythic chose to copy the wrong ideas this time.

As the Emperor put it "You have paid the price for your lack of vision! Now, young Skywalker... you will die. ... " 

[Von Douchemore]

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.

[Redgiant]

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

I take umbrage at the beautiful part.

[Redgiant]

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.

Those active players on Ironclaw must be lonely ... both of them.

"Mornin' Sam."

"Mornin' Ralph."


AU servers are way dead.

[waylander]

I thought warheap was no longer being updated.

[waylander]

Never mind I see they did a recent update.

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.

[fuser]

Never mind I see they did a recent update.

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.

I found an old WoW PvP server terribly underpopulated and just checking with

WoW (80's only) alliance: 620 horde: 1236  (Anub'arak)
WAR  (40's only) order: 689 destruction: 751  (Dark Crag)


Thats pretty f'n damming

[Arthur_Parker]

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

7th May first to 13th May last
14th May first to 20th May last
21st May first to 27th May last
28th May first to 3rd June last

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 created in the last 4 weeks.