news about WAR... for those upset with changes read this

synn

 

General Quotes from Mark.

Quote:

A few things and then I'm probably signing off these threads as I've said here and elsewhere everything that I can say regarding these changes. Over the next few weeks we'll be talking a lot more, especially after the NDA lift. 1) For those that are saying that they should cancel their pre-order, that they feel betrayed after ordering it, well, if that's how you feel, you should do exactly that. That's why we made these announcements now and didn't hold them back just before release (when it would be too late to cancel) or not even make them at all. So, I can understand people being upset but saying that we weren't acting with integrity is just wrong. 2) Regarding this content going in as paid expansion packs, not likely. We want to give out plenty of free/subscription content, just like in DAoC, if you're a subscriber, you get the content as part of your monthly fee as these things are part of the plan. Now, just so we're clear again, I'm not sure that these 4 careers will go back into the game now or ever. They'll only go in if they are great. We want to get the next city pairing in as soon as possible but only after we are sure that we've had enough time to fix what will inevitably go wrong with the the first pairing and make sure that it goes into the second pairing. We do not, repeat do not, have any plans to make this content available as a separate expansion pack. 3) Regarding other MMORPGs and cut content, there has never been a single large-scale MMORPG that hasn't cut out ideas/content that might have looked good either on paper or even during development. That's just how it goes when you are working on a game that can take anywhere from 3-6 years to develop that has as many systems/features/content as these games. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't been paying enough attention to a MMO development or is being less than truthful. Things change all the time during development and sometimes things that are cut are cut for the best reasons. 4) Regarding the concept that everything was in the game and working great and that we only delayed the game for polish, sorry but that is not true. When we announced the delay for Fall I said: http://warherald.warhammeronline.com...le.war?id=111: "During the most recent phase of beta testing, two things have become clear. One was that our key innovations - Public Quests, Tome of Knowledge and Realm vs. Realm combat - were all coming along very well, as was the first stage of our innovative crafting system. The second, that the game would benefit from additional iteration time as well as adding a layer of polish or two. Fortunately, as part of Electronic Arts, we are able to do just that." Iteration time + additional polish time. Here on WHA I also talked about iteration time and polish time as two separate things. I'm sorry, like I said, I can understand people being upset but when they say I said that everything was great and all we needed was polish time, that's simply untrue.

More general notes.



 

Quote:

1) We are not cutting out 2/3 of the content, 1/3 of the content and frankly, what we are cutting out in terms of content is, in most cases, stuff that people have never even seen yet. While the capital cities were parts of the end game, a city capture is only supposed to happen once a month and even when you take out 4 classes out of 24, somehow this doesn't add up to a huge content change. All the starting areas, PQs, quests, zones, etc. that were not city-based are still in the game. And since the cities, prior to our decision to double-down on 2, didn't have all the PQs/Quests/etc. that they have now, we aren't losing a lot of content. 2) We announced this now, rather than in two months, precisely so people would not be surprised when they buy the box. If you feel that you don't want to play WAR now because we've cut classes/cities that you've never seen, you are certainly free to do so. Just like when we announced the last delay I said that people should not pre-order (or should cancel) and just wait till either we lift the NDA (coming soon) or until the game launches. Now, if we don't lift the NDA and if we hadn't made this announcement and then you bought the box, you'd have a heck of a right to get angry. As I've always said here and elsewhere (multiple times), that while we're in beta, things are set in mud and I've also said that we weren't afraid to cut things that weren't great.   3) The two capital cities are just the first two capital cities. Other cities will absolutely be done and put into the game post-launch once we see how all things shake out when we launch. Oh, by the way, the people who have said here and elsewhere that you're really paying for beta when we launch because I said that we will change things post-launch, LOL, nice try. One of the really unique things about MMOs is that we can make changes to the game after launch in order to make them better. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail. No MMO is any different, we all change after launch. How much we change and how much we change for the better is really the key. 4) Regarding Punkbuster, it will either work really, really well or we won't keep it in. We'll know as we progress through beta. 5) Regarding another pushback. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people who are saying that we should have delayed again were some of the same people that said last time that if we delayed again, they would lose interest, cancel their pre-order, epic fail, etc. I've addressed in great detail, why we have made the moves we did but we didn't make these moves to avoid delaying the game again. Frankly, I think another delay announcement would have had a dramatically worse effect on the community than this announcement. 6) As to whether this game is going to be unfinished at launch, well, depends on how you look at things. I've said over the years that MMOs are never finished until they shut down, that's the beauty of MMOs. However, if you mean by unfinished that "we're not going to have everything in the game that we hoped to when we started out" well, you'd be right. OTOH, no MMO that I can think of (WoW included) had everything that they hoped when they started out on the project. That's how these things go. Now, my definition of unfinished are treasure lists that are blank, spells that don't work properly, typos, graphical glitches and unbalanced classes. In terms of that, we will certainly not be an unfinished game when we launch. So, if you are not going to buy a game because it doesn't have absolutely everything that you'd hoped (or even that we hoped it had) it would have, then don't buy WAR, it's as simple as that. Of course, you would never buy any MMO ever and probably most games as well (unless the dev either doesn't talk about stuff that they would like to put in the game or they lie to ya). Stuff changes all the time during development and especially during beta. 7) Regarding the cities, the cities in WAR were not there to be the places people go to right away, this was not WoW or other MMOs. All the Tiered content is still there for each of the races. Regarding "Keeping our promises" and stuff like that. We are keeping our promise and that is to make a great RvR-centric MMO with Warhammer. We never promised that we would have in 24 careers but just that is what we were working on and hoping to put in. Frankly, one of the few promises I have ever made is that some of our decisions would piss people off and well, I've kept my promise. 9) I'll re-emphasize again that another delay would not have meant that the 4 careers would be still in and for certain, we wouldn't have launched with 6 cities, I don't care how much time we had. Six cities sounded really good on paper but we believe it wouldn't have worked out that way at launch. 10) As to how it's all going to work going forward, more details coming. Once things settle down we'll go into great detail about how it's going to work. Same game, some slightly different mechanics to make sure that people who do not have a CC yet are not put at a disadvantage but it's the same game. 11) On the whole smoke and mirrors thing, well, like I said in my response, we had a lot of information coming. If we wanted to engage in smoke and mirrors kind of behavior, we wouldn't have made this announcement, talked about it, etc. till the last minute. So, that's it for now. It's been a very long day and I've been posting a lot so I'm taking a break. In the end, I'm truly sorry that we had to announce any bad news but as I've said here before, I'd rather have you all pissed at us now than when we launch.

I like #1 especially.

SundersGhost

I think even for those who do not like the guy, or the game, if nothing else even a troll to a degree must admire or appreciate his  candor.

TheSheikh

Good deal, Mark summed things up pretty well.

oblivionate

Mark is right on the money.

Nobody is forcing anyone to keep their pre-order; in fact, people should be happy with Mythic, for being honest enough to come forth with this information, knowing good and well it would affect their sales.

Capn23

Very nice response by MJ.

 

makes me a little less anxious about how things will turn out.

jjo231

Good show chap.......

 

 

 

 

This is the exact reason why i have alot of faith in Mythic. How many other companies would come out like this and do it as well as MJ.

Zanthorn

Yea, Mark is the reason I am still going to play.He doesn't sugar-coat info,its straight to the point,which I respect a great deal.

Doing a GREAT job guys,keep it up,and thanks a lot for the candor.

tr289

Originally posted by jjo231


Good show chap.......
 
 
 
 
This is the exact reason why i have alot of faith in Mythic. How many other companies would come out like this and do it as well as MJ.

 

just quoteing this post because i was about to say the same thing .

Falcon4196

That honesty is why I'm not angry about the cities and classes being held back.  It refreshing to have a game company act like they care more about the quailty of thier game then squeezing every single penny the can out of thier customers.  In  return I think Mythic has earner the benfit of the doubt and so I'll keep my CE preorder.

arctarus

Another post by him

vnboards.ign.com/Message.aspx

Well, I can tell you this much regarding the changes we announced today:



1) The cities are better than they would have been if we didn't make this change. They have so much more cool stuff in them and they really are something quite special.



2) The classes we removed weren't cutting it. By removing classes that wouldn't have worked well at launch we will have fewer problems and issues to deal with after we launch. That will make for a better experience for the player.



3) If the way the realms are set up now do not work in this next stage of beta, we will find a way to make them work by either working with the existing classes or delaying the game again until we find a way to make it work with new or modified classes.



4) I've always said that this game will ship when it's great, I've never said it will only ship if it has 24 classes, 6 cities, 5210 quests, etc. Nothing has changed about that. If the game is great and ready to be launched, it will be launched. If it isn't, it will be held back.



5) As to WAR still being great for PvP players, I hope that what we've done will make it better for PvP players, not worse. A PvP player wants to, of course, PvP. If the fronts were too spread out, the city sieges too long in between occurrences, etc. PvP players would be the most disappointed. Frankly, I think these changes will make the RvR action in WAR more intense and city sieges happen more often. If we're wrong, we'll fix it before we launch.



6) We are in the process of opening new servers and letting in tens of thousands of people in this next stage of beta. If we didn't have faith in the game, that is the last thing we would do. It's because we have this faith, buoyed by the feedback we've been getting in beta so far, that I know WAR will be a great game when it's done.



As always, wait to see what happens and draw your own conclusions from what you see.



Mark

 

 

Look at post no. 3, game may be delay again.....

 

Btw all these msg flying around really hurts my head, wish they have an official forum...

 

 

Slashed316

Mythic has my full support because of this move!

arctarus

Yap, they have my support too.... Im now just bracing myself for another delay or other bad news..... so that wont be so sad if its true

roaland

I dont know why some people were suprised by the four cities being left out. I havent seen one video that showed any cities except Order and Chaos. As far as the four classes being cut, I have complete faith in Mythic. After playing DAoC and the amount of work they put into the classes in that game, i would think at this point they know what their doing. They added a good amount of free content for DAoC. Frankly most other gaming companies would have charged big money for the type of content Mythic added. I'm keeping my CE order and suport Mythic all the way. The game is still in beta. It will come out when they feel its ready. Do we really want another Vanguard? Good job so far Mythic.

just my two cents on this whole thing. I'm glad i waited a day or so before i formed an opinion on the situation.

butters88

Hmm... I must say, even after all the disappointment I felt yesterday and today, reading Mark's post eases my pain. That's not to say that I've completely gotten over it, but I can feel my hype slowly rising again.

fuzzylojik

What some people are worried about (me included) is that once launch occurs they will be too busy fixing bugs and contending with current issues that development of other cities and reworking of these classes may fall by the wayside.  Remember when WOW talked about adding sieges and hero classes? That was launch for years ago.......

synn

his comments seem to cover just about everything that has been tossed around this forum since the news came out.

 

 

severius

Originally posted by arctarus





Btw all these msg flying around really hurts my head, wish they have an official forum...
 
 

 

Think how big of a headache it would be for Mythic to have to sort through all of the noise if they DID have official forums?  This is precisely why Mythic does not nor have they ever (as far as I know) hosted and managed their own official forums.

Capn23

Originally posted by fuzzylojik


What some people are worried about (me included) is that once launch occurs they will be too busy fixing bugs and contending with current issues that development of other cities and reworking of these classes may fall by the wayside.  Remember when WOW talked about adding sieges and hero classes? That was launch for years ago.......

 

Yah, but Blizz and Mythic are different companies. I'm really not expecting that many bugs because of all the polishing they've been doing. They just don't seem like the type of company to put stuff off for later, especially something as important as cities and classes. It will happen, I have no doubt about that.

Tuck2000

The main issue I have is if their are anymore delays. This would be the 3rd if they end up doing it again. Mythic is a solid company and Mark is being a straight shooter on this which is good, but dev time on this surpasses LOTRO so i would expect at least a smooth game launch this fall to get players started. With the amount of beta hours expended on closed they should have things well it hand to get a release going. having a GREAT game is no good if you never get to play it.

As to the class drops thats fine as long as they add something back into replace them later which I am sure they will. They have plenty more races to add in expansions overtime.

Enforcer71

I really like what I am hearing from Mark, I mean its straight to the point, no sugar coating just plain old this is how it is. Mythic has earned a lot of respect I think by doing what they are doing, you may hate what you hear but you have to show respect for them willing to be honest and telling you why.

I will still be there on opening day.

Betaguy

Professional imo, I will keep my 3 pre-orders.

Antarious

Originally posted by sinjin


Professional imo, I will keep my 3 pre-orders.

 

I checked all the retailers doing pre-orders.

They assured me you have NO pre-orders.

 

*.*

 

Volkmar

Originally posted by fuzzylojik


What some people are worried about (me included) is that once launch occurs they will be too busy fixing bugs and contending with current issues that development of other cities and reworking of these classes may fall by the wayside.  Remember when WOW talked about adding sieges and hero classes? That was launch for years ago.......

 

The Difference here is that WoW never had those things and the Dev's was always a WISH to have those things in launch, they never confirmed it to be, it was always one of those "if we can make it right, we will do it" thing.

Here those were given for granted, those classes were INGAME and people had played them at Conventions and in beta. Dunno about the cities though but they also were given for granted.

Now they are cut out.

However, Mythic honesty is appreciated, I wonder though why this decision was made this late. I'm aure they could have noticed 4 classes and 4 cities not being good way before? Maybe they knew but thought they had the time to make them great before release and now realized they can't.

Well, anyhow, if the news about the RvR needing two full realms before sieging the lone capital is true (and about that, how it is gonna work? do you need to control the whole tier 4 like you would be sieging a phantom enemy capital or just the first neutral zone?) then the game will still work.

We will see but barring any more bad news, it is still going to rock.... Of course poor those people that wanted to make racial guilds of humans or dark elves. now they miss a tank.

gator64

Originally posted by Volkmar


However, Mythic honesty is appreciated, I wonder though why this decision was made this late. I'm aure they could have noticed 4 classes and 4 cities not being good way before? Maybe they knew but thought they had the time to make them great before release and now realized they can't.

 

My take on it? they saw grand but time constraint and actual gameplay balance keept it from ever making it.

 

And as for the classes? probably somthing to do with the mechanics, like the black guard hatred, and made them underwhelming or overwhelming, in anycase better take them out now and polish them for a later date then getting them out half-baked and having buff and nerf yell on every WAR forums in the universe.

Lithdov

1) For those that are saying that they should cancel their pre-order, that they feel betrayed after ordering it, well, if that's how you feel, you should do exactly that.

Cool. My guildies and I are planning to do just that. Bye.

And to all the inevitable "z0mg stfu troll!1!!" posts from the defenders here: sorry I'm not tripping all over myself to commend Jacobs' "integrity" over letting us know that they'd been stringing us along for almost half a year about features that they planned to cut.

Arcken

Pray tell, what classes did they cut?