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Author Topic: Warhammer ends quarter with 300,000 paying subscibers  (Read 333864 times)
schild
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Reply #630 on: July 23, 2009, 06:08:35 PM

Suck on that MJ you chubby bastard asshole

Unnecessary. Stop taking games so seriously, it makes you look like the bigger asshole.
UnSub
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Reply #631 on: July 23, 2009, 08:06:19 PM

looks like they need DBA's, gear awards borked

Quote
Regarding the decision to not retroactively change the items in existence, there were a number of potential risks involved that were too significant to permit. Inevitably the owners of the items now will grow out of them and the risk of item loss to a player resulting from a mistake on our part is absolutely unacceptable.  

So: "The items were overpowered to a stupid degree, but we aren't going to remove those overpowered items because we don't like players losing items because then they'll ragequit. We couldn't think of a system were overpowered items could be replaced by correctly balanced items automatically, or even let our CS team handle the transfers. We're sure that players will outlevel the overpowered items and the problem will solve itself."

 Ohhhhh, I see. Ohhhhh, I see.

Mythic: STUPID! is everywhere!

EDIT:
DAoC holding steady on players and is gaining devs. New servers planned and ex-players seem to be taking a closer look.

That's likely so a lot of Mythic people don't get fired when EA takes a close look at WAR.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2009, 08:07:50 PM by UnSub »

DLRiley
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Reply #632 on: July 23, 2009, 08:41:14 PM

As soon as SWTOR starts getting into financial trouble, which it will, Ultima Online, DaoC and WAR are going to be on the chopping block. I'm guessing EA is less likely to let a game made by bioware tank and would rather get mythic properties off the balance sheets, even the ones that are making enough to pay the bills. Either way WAR is screwed unless it pulls 300k subs before SWTOR gets released. Its a race against time! DRILLING AND MANLINESS
« Last Edit: July 23, 2009, 09:22:51 PM by DLRiley »
Triforcer
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Reply #633 on: July 23, 2009, 08:48:14 PM

Is "SWROT" a typo or an annoying new meme?

All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu.  This is the truth!  This is my belief! At least for now...
DLRiley
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Reply #634 on: July 23, 2009, 09:22:11 PM

Is "SWROT" a typo or an annoying new meme?

typo for swtor.
UnSub
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Reply #635 on: July 23, 2009, 10:52:28 PM

Is "SWROT" a typo or an annoying new meme?

But when SWOR comes out and sucks, we've got the name ready that will just BURN them for sucking!  why so serious?

Arthur_Parker
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Reply #636 on: July 24, 2009, 04:30:44 AM

nm.

« Last Edit: July 24, 2009, 05:49:18 AM by Arthur_Parker »
Arthur_Parker
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Reply #637 on: July 24, 2009, 05:02:17 AM

nm.  posted in AC2 thread instead.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2009, 05:52:14 AM by Arthur_Parker »
Shatter
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Reply #638 on: July 24, 2009, 06:40:02 AM

6 to 9 months..lol.  Aion will wipe a nice percentage of their player base...6 to 9 months from now there wont be more then 3 servers left.

The quarter after AION releases is going to have a big impact on the future of WAR.  I think the recent mergers created 10 US servers, and out of those the populations are still out of whack. I don't know about 3 servers being left, but I could certainly see them only having about 5 US servers with medium/medium populations in prime time.  Either way that has to be a disaster for that game.

I was thinking the same thing. Aion really seems to be billing its self as the next "PVP" game, and at the same time trying to go for "WoW but better". I can imagine it is going to draw a lot of subs away from WAR and AOC percentage wise, and a smaller percentage, but maybe a larger number, from WoW.

I see WAR losing up to 50% of their remanning active accounts.

Cant agree more.  AOC and WAR which both fell on their face in the area of PvP(and WAR is a PvP game sadly) will lose a lot of those who were interested in that side of MMO's.  PvE people wont likely leave their current games other then for curiosity sake.  WOW's PvP player base will take a hit from Aion to some degree, and again some PvE fans who will be curious.  Then there are other games with PvP like EvE, Darkfall, COH, Champions, EQ2, etc etc who will all lose people who are looking for the next big PvP game.  Will Aion be a huge hit in NA?  I think it will definitely fair better then any NA MMO that has come out since WOW and will retain a larger percentage of that over the next few years
Arthur_Parker
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Reply #639 on: July 25, 2009, 04:41:31 PM

The State of Warhammer Online

Quote
This week, at Comic Con in San Diego, CA, ZAM had the chance to sit down with James Nichols, Community Manager for Mythic Entertainment and talk about WAR.
...
ZAM: Despite the recent 1.x patches, players still seem to be facing problems with lag in large-scale sieges and ORvR battles. Producer Jeff Skalski said "There is no uber solution, just a whole bunch of little things we can do that will, in time, add up to something bigger." Why isn't there an "uber" solution?

James Nichols: The reason there really isn't an "uber" solution is that we can't really control how many players come into a battle. We can to a degree, but one of the [biggest] aspects of Warhammer is large-scale RvR. So from a technical aspect, we want to support as large a battle as possible, but there are also technical limitations to that.
...
ZAM: What about WAR's collision mechanics, which reportedly accounts for a substantial amount of the lag? Will they ever be re-coded? Or just removed?

James: Collision is important. Imagine fighting someone and [being able] to walk straight through them. That's more of a technical question for our senior programmers, but [collision] is an important and integral part of the game that's an original feature. We're going to try to do what we can to improve performance without impacting the actual gameplay.
...
James: I'd say that ORvR and PvP aren't [necessarily] for everyone, but for those people who really enjoy it, we've made a ton of improvements.
...
James: Like I said, career balance is an ongoing thing. There's definitely room for improvement in a lot of areas—we're aware of that. But we're also working on helping players to understand how their class actually is effective. One of the ways [we're] doing that is through toning down the over-burdening effects of AoE and crowd control, like I mentioned. What this really shows is that there are careers that have pretty strong single-target abilities that were kind of overshadowed, but there are other careers that do need additional adjustments, besides that. There's no real simple answer to it. We listen to the feedback, we analyze it and we see what we can do to best affect the game in the amount of time we have.

There's the constant question of, 'Why can't you do this now?' But we can't do everything now—it's impossible. We don't have the time or the manpower to do that. So what we do is look at what would be most beneficial to help the most people, without negatively impacting others. It's always hard to take power away from people; there are several classes that players think we've toned down too much—and we do look at feedback and try to analyze that. But when you're on top, it feels good to be king—you know? When you come back down, it's always hard to accept the fact that you're not as powerful as you once were. We try to avoid "flavor of the months," but in any MMO, career balance is probably the most controversial and complicated thing you can have.
...
ZAM: Obviously EA/Mythic (and players) would love to see 1 million subscribers, but what's the most realistic scenario if subscriber numbers continue dropping?

James: I'm not going to talk subscriber numbers because it's out of my realm, but Warhammer is successful; we've got a great player base.
...
ZAM: What are the next two careers we'll be seeing? Any hints?

James: As far as I'm aware, there's are no new careers on the horizon right now.

That was fairly depressing.
Rondaror
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Reply #640 on: July 25, 2009, 05:36:25 PM

5 days of public testing on an across the board AOE nerf?   ACK!

Somebody is smoking something fierce.

Fights are way better now, so it helped. They should smoke more of that stuff.
nurtsi
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Reply #641 on: July 26, 2009, 12:07:04 AM

I'm actually still playing my 10 day comeback thingy. They fixed the UI bugs I whined about few days ago and the game is pretty fun (or there's no alternative to it). I haven't touched PVE as I don't seem to be able to do it in any game anymore.

I'm still in T2, but there's plenty of ORVR going on. Solo-killing a single player at this point nets me around 6000 exp. Doing a scenario is about 10000 exp. So yeah, ORVR it is.

I should reach T3 during my 10 days, so will see if I rage quit after that. At the moment though, I'm considering subscription (never had one, since I just quit after the first month when the game came out).
March
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Reply #642 on: July 26, 2009, 07:58:46 AM

Poor Guy, the Magic Wand question:

Quote
ZAM: If you could wave a magic wand, go back in time and change one or two things about WAR's development or launch period, what would they be?

James: Extra time would always be nice. More beta testing time would always [have been] great. If the proverbial "magic wand" existed and there were no such thing as budgets and schedules…absolutely. More time would probably be it.

I don't fault him for not giving a solid answer... how could he?

I wish our Game Engine (or architecture) could support the game we set out to design?
I wish we had not been forced to build a highly fragmented world because of said engine?
I wish we could have trusted our instincts that a dynamic and fluid RvR endgame is perhaps the best endgame?
I wish we had recognized that an engaging advancement system like T1/T2 should have carried forward into T3/T4... but then, see #3 above, we would have had to have built a sustainable RvR endgame.
I wish we had *either* truly made DAoC2 *or* stuck to our guns and built GuildWars Warhammer edition... doing both poorly was really doing neither?
I wish we could have told the rockstars that ran the organization that a good idea does not a genius make (hello PQ's)?
I wish we had more 5-star talent to tell us that our design and direction were wrong and less 3-star talent pedaling as fast as they could in the wrong direction?

Time was not the problem here... more time would only have increased the cost of development and thereby made the fall all the more spectacular.  The fact that a year after launch the game cannot handle large RvR, and that they are re-designing the Capital City mechanics of the pinnacle of end-game simply show that their game is a collection of animated artwork looking for a design to suit it.
columba
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Reply #643 on: July 26, 2009, 01:35:05 PM

I see he is still desparately clinging to collision detection.  Here's a hint - with your game engine and coding, collision detection should have been avoided at all costs.
waffel
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Reply #644 on: July 26, 2009, 04:14:36 PM

Well, they originally intended RvR to be scenarios and openfield BO fights. So in that case, I guess collision detection could be kind of nice. However, a large majority of beta testers demanded keeps (for good reason) in which case, collision detection would be an absolute mess.
columba
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Reply #645 on: July 26, 2009, 05:48:23 PM

Well, they originally intended RvR to be scenarios and openfield BO fights. So in that case, I guess collision detection could be kind of nice. However, a large majority of beta testers demanded keeps (for good reason) in which case, collision detection would be an absolute mess.

I agree.  Mythic should have stuck to their vision and at least offered a functioning game.  It may have attracted fewer players, but at least the game would have run properly.  To change it to open rvr so late in the game seems extremely ill-considered.  I would have imagined that a few of the developers must have been aghast, knowing that the game couldn't handle such a change.
Lantyssa
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Reply #646 on: July 26, 2009, 10:27:53 PM

I agree.  Mythic should have stuck to their vision and at least offered a functioning game.  It may have attracted fewer players, but at least the game would have run properly.  To change it to open rvr so late in the game seems extremely ill-considered.  I would have imagined that a few of the developers must have been aghast, knowing that the game couldn't handle such a change.
Bolded the important part.  Remember Jacobs saying if it didn't get 500k subscribers it was a failure?  Now that might not be the true break-even point, however it was clear from the begining that they did not want fewer players.  He was gunning for WoW, even if all of us knew it was a huge mistake before beta even began.

Hahahaha!  I'm really good at this!
columba
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Reply #647 on: July 26, 2009, 11:24:04 PM

Indeed.  He set himself up for failure by having a business model that demanded at least 500k, with a game that wasn't strong enough to hold that many.  A great scenario based game that ran really well may have been able to hold 200k players.  Better than holding 50k players.
Shatter
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Reply #648 on: July 27, 2009, 06:21:28 AM

On a fairly busy server SC's pop fairly well, but if they had made scenarios cross server so they pop much more frequently across all tiers, which in turn allowed people to level faster via PvP that alone would of been a major step up.  Leveling via RvR is slow and far less effective and not many people want to level through PvE in a PvP game. 
Draegan
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Reply #649 on: July 27, 2009, 02:35:40 PM

I'm trying out the 10 day for free thing because of boredom.  I got to level 6/6 or whatever.  T1 is still fun.  I'm entirely skipping the PVE content.
Morfiend
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Reply #650 on: July 27, 2009, 05:33:00 PM

I'm trying out the 10 day for free thing because of boredom.  I got to level 6/6 or whatever.  T1 is still fun.  I'm entirely skipping the PVE content.

T1 has always been fun. Once you hit level 11, its all downhill from there.
Rasix
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Reply #651 on: July 27, 2009, 05:35:03 PM

I'm trying out the 10 day for free thing because of boredom.  I got to level 6/6 or whatever.  T1 is still fun.  I'm entirely skipping the PVE content.

T1 has always been fun. Once you hit level 11, its all downhill from there.

You mean 12.  At 11,  you're at your maximum pwnage level for tier 1. 

Ugg, I don't think any of my characters got past level 15 or 16. 

-Rasix
waffel
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Reply #652 on: July 27, 2009, 06:56:09 PM

Q1 earnings call coming up in the next few days. Looking forward  awesome, for real
Morfiend
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Reply #653 on: July 27, 2009, 07:40:04 PM

I'm trying out the 10 day for free thing because of boredom.  I got to level 6/6 or whatever.  T1 is still fun.  I'm entirely skipping the PVE content.

T1 has always been fun. Once you hit level 11, its all downhill from there.

You mean 12.  At 11,  you're at your maximum pwnage level for tier 1. 

Ugg, I don't think any of my characters got past level 15 or 16. 

No, I actually meant 11. Cause level 11 is the best the game gets. So its all downhill from there.
Velorath
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Reply #654 on: July 27, 2009, 08:14:42 PM

Q1 earnings call coming up in the next few days. Looking forward  awesome, for real

They've got a webcast of their annual stockholders meeting on Wednesday at 2pm pst, but their actual Q1 FY 2010 results will be released on Aug. 4th after the market closes.  Of course there's a good chance they won't bother saying much about WAR at this point.
Ashamanchill
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Reply #655 on: July 27, 2009, 09:04:46 PM

Ugg, I don't think any of my characters got past level 15 or 16. 

Smart characters.  They reap the win and let all the other suckers players advance to the suckage content.

A poster signed by Richard Garriot, Brad McQuaid, Marc Jacobs and SmerricK Dart.  Of course it would arrive a couple years late, missing letters and a picture but it would be epic none the less. -Tmon
Arthur_Parker
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Reply #656 on: July 28, 2009, 03:54:11 AM

Games Workshop had a good year.

http://investor.games-workshop.com/latest_results/Results2009/downloads/GW_year_end_09.pdf

Quote
Finally, royalty income has increased from £1.7 million to £3.5 million. While we don’t rely on this income, it has made a very welcome contribution to our cash flow from operating activities, up from £10.7 million to £18.1 million. As a result we have been able to reduce our net debt from £10.1 million to £1.6 million by year end.

That obviously covers all royalties, so Dawn of War etc etc.

http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssConsumerGoodsAndRetailNews/idUSBNG47846420090728

Quote
Shares up 6 pct
...
The company, which makes tabletop fantasy and futuristic battle games, posted a pretax profit of 7.5 million pounds for the year ended May 31, compared with a profit of 1.1 million pounds a year ago.

Edit, well teal is easier for me but ok.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2009, 05:52:39 AM by Arthur_Parker »
Trippy
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Reply #657 on: July 28, 2009, 03:59:38 AM

Stop using Teal to highlight your text. You are making that text harder to read, not easier.
Modern Angel
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Reply #658 on: July 28, 2009, 06:01:12 AM

Goddamn, that's the first stellar year they've had in probably ten years.
Bismallah
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Reply #659 on: July 28, 2009, 02:05:07 PM

GW has also had some good table top turn arounds recently too. The Space Marines new codex was a good one. Daemons for Fantasy was a pretty big hit. The new box set for 40k is a deal and a half: 5 Terminators, 1 Dreadnaught, 1 Captain, 10 man Tac squad, bunch of Orks, Ork boss, 3 Ork helicopter things, small rulebook all for 75 USD. The Terminators and the Dreadnaught by themselves cost over 75 bucks.

I dont keep up with LOTR so not sure how sales have gone with them, but I am just about 20m from the GW HQ (Glen Burnie Battle Bunker) in the US and they are still turning a pretty good profit up there. I think, and dont quote me, but pretty sure GW had a good sales year for table top with the release of Apocalypse and their reduced prices on the Battalion boxes for both Fantasy and 40k. They also put out new tank models that you can purchase outside of Forgeworld, Baneblade for one. You can purchase Valkyries in plastic too.

All in all they have made some good changes for their table top gaming, now if they can ever get to redoing the fucking Dark Eldar codex I would be happy.
Modern Angel
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Reply #660 on: July 28, 2009, 02:09:20 PM

The Terminators and the Dreadnaught by themselves cost over 75 bucks.



This right here, though, is why they lost me. Even if they're cutting some decent deals here and there to get people hooked (and they are) that shit above is ridiculous. Their prices outstrip inflation and the cost of the materials several times over.
Bismallah
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Reply #661 on: July 28, 2009, 03:28:37 PM

The Terminators and the Dreadnaught by themselves cost over 75 bucks.



This right here, though, is why they lost me. Even if they're cutting some decent deals here and there to get people hooked (and they are) that shit above is ridiculous. Their prices outstrip inflation and the cost of the materials several times over.

Oh I don't disagree there. Only way I buy stuff these days is Ebay and they have these things called "Bizarre Bazaars" where you can swap and trade models and sell them in the store. At retail price the models are highway robbery.

How much in royalties did they get from Warhammer Online??
Sir T
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Reply #662 on: July 28, 2009, 05:56:31 PM

Games workshop lost me on 2 phases. Phase 1 was when my friends at the time were talking about the fact that they would have to rebuild their entire Space mariene armies because workshop had put out new armour. I asked what the difference was and this said, deadly seriously "They used to have a line on their shoulder pads. Now they have 3 dots."

 swamp poop

The second was when they redid Epic and, just to ensure you could not even use your old infantry models (about 2 mm high) they made the official base a rectangle rather than a square.

Fuck that shit. Oh and I forgot, when they decided to make the new models out of tin allow rather than lead alloy and this resulted in models that were harder to work with, but cost a lot more. Despite the fact that tin was cheaper than lead at the time.

I would still buy a few of their models to paint up, if the price of them were not stupidly expensive.

There was a tabletop game called Warzone: Mutant chronicles that was far far better than Warhammer and the models were far far cheaper, but they never bothered marketing themselves, and its almost impossible for other games companies to even reach the ears of potential customers at this point anyway.
« Last Edit: July 28, 2009, 06:01:12 PM by Sir T »

Hic sunt dracones.
ghost
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Reply #663 on: July 28, 2009, 06:51:49 PM

While it sounds fun, the only people that play Warhammer around where I live are 15 year old kids.  Not my cup of tea, really.  It was pretty sad when I had to leave all my buddies that played.  I don't have time for that now anyway.  Every 6 months or so I get out some models and paint them, but that is even getting more uncommon.
Modern Angel
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Reply #664 on: July 28, 2009, 08:06:31 PM

While it sounds fun, the only people that play Warhammer around where I live are 15 year old kids.  Not my cup of tea, really.  It was pretty sad when I had to leave all my buddies that played. 

That was me. I still remember the last game I played. 27 years old, surrounded by 13 year olds in a shitty gaming store with some wage slave smelly fucker playing Comic Book Guy. I didn't have space to have a full sized table at my house anymore so I was forced to go to the local store. I *loathe* 99% of gaming stores. Looked at my good friend I was playing with and just shook my head as the adolescents were screaming in my ear, shook my head and promised to never do it again.

Re: Epic bases. They actually specifically said that either base size would work fine when those rules came out. They did that because the Specialist games guys have always had a more realistic view of what they're doing. It's the three main lines that get stupid.

Someone there has to know that they can't keep doing just miniatures forever. It's part of the reason why I can't see WAR folding; even odds that if EA decides to close it they offload it cheap to GW so they can run it firsthand. Same area as their US offices.
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