Warhammer Online Server Dead Pool

[ghost]

The F2P model for this game may not be too bad of an idea.  As it is now, I don't have terribly much time for any serious MMO play or even gaming at all.  Warhammer could have a niche for more casual gaming if they would let themselves go more that direction instead of insisting on the "end game" concept.

As it is, they've made a lot of good changes to the game.  They've funneled everything down into one grouping, so there is no more "dodging" the fight.  The perpetual trialers up to level 11 have made it super active in the evenings in T1.  I'm just not sure how well it will do if they stretch the population over the 6-8 (or whatever number there are) tiers to get up to max level and the city sieges if they make the whole thing F2P.  It might be a better idea to just cut it off at T3, or maybe LOTD.  I've never done a city siege though, and I'm not sure what sort of future changes they are planning to actually make to that part of the game.


I'm having a lot of fun right now running through New Emskrank though.  I'll probably be dinking around with this for a while since I no longer get any enjoyment out of any of the quest based MMOs.  Thirty minutes of delivering pies in LOTRO just doesn't cut it when you don't have a lot of time to play.

[Soukyan]

WAR can wake me when it goes F2P.

I don't think you'll be waiting long, what with LOTRO going that way.  The first tier is pretty busy on all the servers and then it's pretty much dead.  F2P seems like the logical next step.

Not dead at all post-T1. But then again, they may be converting free accounts now. I rolled up a new mage a couple weeks ago, and a large group of folks who I was playing with at the time are now still playing in T3 with me. And we've been fielding 1.5 to 2 warbands (so 36-48 people) per night in open RvR. It's been a real blast.

On Saturday, there was a wonderfully fun (shades of DAoC) keep battle at Thick Muck keep. Order had it claimed and it was at level 5. Destruction brought between 1 and 2 warbands and Order was fielding 1 of defenders. The battle started and I played for about an hour, back-and-forth, just trying to get this keep.

I logged and went to do some lawn work and house cleaning. I came back 2-3 hours later and the battle was still raging. I jumped into the overflow warband and played for another couple hours. Destruction finally took Thick Muck at ~9 AM today.

I don't know about you, but the fact that both sides were fielding people to fight for that keep over so a long period of time is awesome. Add to that the sheer fun of the battle and the determination to win. I'm sure there are elements of that in other games, and every keep battle certainly is not like that, but this game has moments that are out and out PvP excitement, which I really enjoy.

As for the F2P model, I'm sure they could manage to convert it. Simply make emblems and such purchasable as well as winnable in scenarios/RvR/etc. Lower the drop rate a bit and those who want to buy them will, those who don't, won't. In a similar model to the one proposed by LotRO, make people who subscribe VIPs and give them all the perks and expansions, extra classes, etc. as part of their subscription fee. Those who do not want to pay a fee can purchase those add-ons a la carte.

It's a very compelling model. I think Turbine has a good plan laid out and other MMOGs might do well to copy it. We shall see. But I will continue to play WAR because I'm having a lot of fun.

[Arthur_Parker]

http://twitter.com/JoshDrescher

Anybody looking for a devastatingly handsome, well-seasoned producer/designer?

FYI: I can't get into details (and, in fact, don't HAVE many more details), but it was a layoff. I wasn't fired and I still love Mythic.

@70ms I honestly have no idea who else was let go. They marched me out first.

Good luck to everyone affected.

[01101010]

And if a tree falls in the forest...

[Trippy]

@70ms I honestly have no idea who else was let go. They marched me out first.

Gotta love layoffs where the layoffees are escorted out of the building.

[Nebu]

Gotta love layoffs where the layoffees are escorted out of the building.

They were probably concerned he would steal retail copies of WAR for all of his friends.   

[ghost]

Hopefully it wasn't at gunpoint.

[stu]

So, I started going over this thread after patching and re-subbing. The over billing errors are startling. Just doesn't seem worth the risk. :/

Since they already had my info, I created a Chaos healer. The noob zone is well done although a lot of the animations seem stunted. I canceled but I'll leave the game installed for now. My play/patch ratio is kinda upside down.

[Ashamanchill]

Gotta love layoffs where the layoffees are escorted out of the building.

They were probably concerned he would steal retail copies of WAR for all of his friends.   

Lol. I wish I had of been drinking something when I read that, because it would have been all over the screen.

[Arthur_Parker]

June 25, 2010 - Transition to Mythic Service

Today we announce that GOA will cease publishing, operating and subscription services for Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning® (WAR) in Europe and transition the operation of the game to Mythic Entertainment.

We have enjoyed a lot of great times with you. Over the past couple of years we have fostered a fantastically vibrant and active community; we saw the world’s first Tchar’Zanek and Karl Franz kills pre 1.3.5 and hosted undeniably some of the most professional guilds to ever play WAR.

Over the next few weeks we will be working very closely with the Mythic Team to ensure you all get settled as smoothly as possible. We wish to assure you that all characters, guilds and account information will be migrated to Mythic servers and will be available to present and past players.

We will share more information on next steps, together with a FAQ, in the coming days.

Can't remember if this was mentioned before.

[IainC]

GOA is being wound down as a unit, the other games that they run (League of Legends and Pangya) have already been transitioned back to their owners. This is GOA closing down rather than EA taking their ball home. If there is a games unit at FT after this it will probably have the Orange brand and be run out of Paris rather than Dublin.

[Arthur_Parker]

Producer's Letter - June 2010

We hear that your requests in this regard and clearly it is our wish to you the summer to give a better impression of the end for what we intend to long term with WAR. Some critics do not hesitate to make fun of that "we were so incredibly excited" and "yes oh so in the fingers itch would very much us," some "really cool news to reveal" (yes, we read the comments pert) and this case, we would like it from the rooftops hinunterbrüllen love ... but still.

The new German version, translated back in English, of the “P-Letter” just seemed to read better to me.

[IainC]

The most interesting part of the producer's letter was this part:

As you now know, we are working with GOA to transition the European community over to Bioware Mythic (Like the fancy new name? We’re still getting used to it ourselves)

Who wants to bet that in a year it will be Bioware East?

[Soulflame]

It'll just be Bioware, and the Mythic offices will be closed.

[Tmon]

The scaling bonus he talks about for outnumbered realms in an RVR lake sounds good, but I can only imagine the bitching when some poor sucker wanders in and tips the balance away from the max possible xp scale.

[Arthur_Parker]

Wacky, zero evidence, rumour time.

When the producer dujour Carrie G (who has zero clue about the industry despite her supossed ten years in it)  cut the throat of the PVE game  (which was already in shambles) and killed any hope of ressurecting the hopelessly broken crafting in lieu of "Killing People in the face" PVP she basically put a dying MMO out of it's misery.
EA is going to shut it down later this year I know that for a fact, the entire team is being retasked and the dead weight is being laid off,  GW is quietly taking the license to a new company I have i on good authority that THQ will get that as well as they are working on a yet unannounced WHF RTS similar to Dawn of War. But don't expect it till 2015 way after the fail of WAR has been forgotten
And no links no way to prove any of this I just know folks at GW who like to talk after a couple pints. :)

Just enough extra fluff to start a good rumour", "Killing People in the face" is the kind of annoying in-crowd fad that would secretly annoy people & a WHF RTS from THQ does makes sense.

[Modern Angel]

There's no way they let this thing stumble into walls for another couple years. Any comeback they were going to get was going to be driven by people who know more about MMOs than the average casual WoW guy (ie the people who bought a million boxes at release) and that potential was squelched by the billing fiasco. I know at least ten people who were willing to give it a second look until that happened. Hell, despite my vow to never give them another dime while Barnett was there I was tempted just to see after decent feedback. It's dead as fuck. Just a matter of time before they off the patient.

It's a valuable IP. I wonder who GW's shopping the IP to. The conspiratorial side of me is suddenly wondering if the 40k MMO looks an awful lot like WAR specifically because they're in the know and want to do a WAR done right eventually with both IPs, thereby increasing potential overlap.

[Arthur_Parker]

want to do a WAR done right

So much of the design flows from the decision to have levels or not, they knew WAR PVP didn't work with levels, they even dropped levels in scenarios and yet they still based the whole game around levels.  From the Dark Millennium Online E3 video, it has levels too.  I'm convinced it's going to be crap too.

[Modern Angel]

I am, too. Especially with the whole LOOK HOW CLOSE WE ARE TO WOW spiel they seem to be spouting constantly.

What I'm saying is that THQ would be the obvious landing spot, just as they were for the 40K MMO. And it follows thusly:

1) A million people, give or take, bought WAR.
2) Well into the four or five month post-release period WAR had 500k+ subscribers, meaning people found something they liked prior to the bulk reaching endgame.
3) The 40K MMO looks so much like WAR it's uncanny. This can't be an accident. I refuse to believe that THQ is so clueless about the MMO made with the 40K sister IP that they don't know.

This is all a tenuous thread of logic here. I'm just saying that there's a proven customer base for WAR done wrong. You can bank on WAR done right, appeal to the WoW players and get a million plus subs out of the gate. You can then angle for the Warhammer IP, take your 40K which is actually WAR and then do the whole thing over again.

[IainC]

THQ have the exclusive rights to exploit the Warhammer and Warhammer 40k IP in computer gaming with the specific exception of WAR. As I understand it (and I'm pretty sure I'm right here), the Mythic deal was in early negotiation when THQ asked for exclusive rights. As THQ had no interest in a WFB MMO at that time they agreed to the Mythic exception and took everything else but the exception was for Mythic specifically not for MMO rights in general so if Mythic lose the licence then THQ will also inherit those rights.

At least that's how it was explained to me.

[Modern Angel]

Makes perfect sense.

[Arthur_Parker]

2) Well into the four or five month post-release period WAR had 500k+ subscribers, meaning people found something they liked prior to the bulk reaching endgame.

Just to be pedantic, they had 800k accounts shortly after release, the maximum number of subscribers claimed by them was only ever 300k.

[Modern Angel]

I stand corrected, then. Still nothing to sneeze at but I did think they had about a million boxes sold and hovered around the 500k mark for a good while before everyone reached grind/endgame.

[Setanta]

2) Well into the four or five month post-release period WAR had 500k+ subscribers, meaning people found something they liked prior to the bulk reaching endgame.

I'd love to see the stats on how many actually made it to the endgame. I got to 32 on my Ironbreaker and gave up.

[Hawkbit]

Such a shame, such wasted potential.  I hope, at the very least, that some people learned valuable lessons. 

[UnSub]

2) Well into the four or five month post-release period WAR had 500k+ subscribers, meaning people found something they liked prior to the bulk reaching endgame.

Just to be pedantic, they had 800k accounts shortly after release, the maximum number of subscribers claimed by them was only ever 300k.

Adding to say that the 500k figure was their break-even point and it is arguable that the 300k active sub number lasted as long as it did because WAR launched into multiple markets that would have hid its decline in NA and EU.

I'll be shocked if WAR makes it to Xmas. The only way it does is if EA doesn't want a MMO closing before SWOR launches or WAR goes F2P.

[Sheepherder]

The only way it does is if EA doesn't want a MMO closing before SWOR launches or WAR goes F2P.

They also might decide to off WAR right before launch to see if SWTOR will cannibalize WAR's remains.

[Jherad]

From:         donotreply@mythic.ea.com
Sent:    Thu 7/08/10 2:38 AM
To:    xxx
Mythic Entertainment
Password Change Notification

Your password for Mythic Entertainment Master Account for Warhammer Online and Username xxx has been updated via the Account Management site.

If you did not authorize this, please contact support at (650) 628-1001. Phone support hours are 10:00 am - 10:00 pm eastern time, Monday through Friday. You can find further information on account security at http://help.warhammeronline.com.

Thank you!

Same thing happened in May, after which I changed the passwords to a longer alphanumeric. My PC is clean, and although I have password change notification emails, I don't have 'click here to reset your password' ones. I am (very) confident my email account hasn't been compromised.

It is possible I guess that the account password was bruteforced, though my passwords are usually a bit too strong for that to be practical. I haven't subscribed to WAR since January '09, and a bit of googling suggests a lot of old accounts have been hacked and reactivated with free trials. Each time, the passwords were changed, but no personal information was modified. I haven't logged in (no sub, heh), but the character copy page suggests my old characters are still there.

Anyone else had similar emails?

[Trippy]

What's the header of that email look like?

[Jherad]

Header:


Looks legit to me, and the password /was/ changed. I changed it again myself using the 'lost your password?' type thingy, as the associated email address hadn't been changed.

No biggy - I don't use the account, and there is no attached credit card. Just found it curious, and I'd rather not have some gold farmer running around with an old account of mine.

[fuser]

As we continue to integrate with the BioWare family we are pleased to announce our plans to bring two great communities together. Next week the Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning forums will join the BioWare Social Network where you will have the benefits of being a part of a larger community, one with a passion for gaming as big as our own.

And now the offical forums die, folded into BioWare's gaming graveyard.

[Jherad]

... We're gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B.

[Tarami]

Just putting it here because starting a new thread seems pointless... I got this mail today and I haven't had an active WAR account since it released. The mail seems legit and I didn't notice anything suspicious on my bank account, but I figured you might want to check if you still got a valid credit card entered.

Mythic Entertainment
End of Subscription Notification

Your subscription for Mythic Entertainment Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning for Game Account xxxx_EUR has ended for the following reason:
    * Subscription is not set to renew

If you did not authorize this, please contact support at (650) 628-1001. Phone support hours are 10:00 am - 10:00 pm eastern time, Monday through Friday. You can find further information on account security at http://help.warhammeronline.com.

Thank you!

This is an automated email from the Account Management site for Mythic Entertainment.

It's not that hard not to fuck up in everything you do, Mythic.

[Tannhauser]

I got the same thing.  I honestly thought about re-subbing for the lulz, but I don't want them to charge me $800.

[IainC]

It's because you once had a Euro subscription. When the service transitioned back to Mythic from GOA, all Euro accounts were reopened free for a few weeks to try the new service. That mail is just your notification that this free subscription period has expired. I got one too and I've never subscribed (my account was an internal one).