wotlk took alot of the player base. we are just starting to see old faces coming back to our server who left for wow. the game gets better every update and is far from being in trouble...but go ahead and root against it for what ever reason lol.
Sure and while you see two old faces, ten times as many at least leave, sounds to me like it's a great deal. Take a step back and look at the facts, the game is bleeding subscribers away, not gaining at all.
I would have guesstimated a number near 250K so this probably isn't that far off. Not a roaring success, but certainly enough perhaps to keep the doors open.
It's kind of sad when you think about it. Warhammer from all the stuff I read on it. Is a very well liked IP, that if anything could have easily snagged 500k to 600k subs in just the US alone. 350k for US and EU combine is just really sad.
Before any of the fans start screaming off with his head. That's just my personal opinion on it. Mythic after what they did with DAOC + Warhammer IP. I sure enough thought it would be like A1 sauce on the most juicy steak ever. Instead I got a hamburger with ketchup. Not bad by any means, but not the mouth watering steak I was expecting.
Whatever happened to the million that applied for beta and teh million boxes they sold?? IS it that bad of a game that only 30 percent of the people that bought the game are still playing it only a short time later??... They invisioned this game getting millions of subs at one time (AoC also but WAR even more).........
The game had a number of problems at launch which stemmed from core design flaws, and on top of this Mythic lowered the xp gain at the 11th hour so all the data they had from the beta testers telling them that they had it spot on went out the window. As a result once you hit level 20 or so the grind hit you like a hammer.
The game itself had a pretty flawless launch apart from the queues to login, one of the best of any MMO to date. It also had stuff that no other game had, public quests etc. In fact the recipe was there to make WAR the best game ever but like so many other promising recipes someone forgot to add the salt. The game design quickly showed it's fatal flaws, flaws that were missed in beta due to the focus testing regime. In beta when the PQ's at a certain level were being tested there were always enough people there to do them and to make sure that they worked. In the real world of the live game however if you were ahead of or behind the herd then there were never enough people around to do them, which led to a great deal of frustration. What's more the rewards for the three PQ's in an area were the same and all tied into the same influence pool. This had two undesirable effects. Firstly there was absolutely no incentive at all to do all three so everyone just stayed in the first one and ground out the Influence until the bar was full, and secondly there was absolutely no incentive to do all three because said influence bar was common to them all. Once you had the three Inf rewards that was it and you could get these from doing just one PQ over and over. A way to alleviate this would have been to split the Influence bar between the three PQ's so that it was only possible to get a third from each and to make the rewards for each PQ different. Alas my plea to the devs on this fell on deaf ears.
Next was the much hyped open field RvR, a main backbone of the game and one that really didn't take off. Way too often the open RvR areas were empty which again just added to the frustration of those that wanted to get into this aspect. The problems here were simple, not enough xp for this style of play and pretty crappy rewards. Compare that to the scenarios that had good xp and really decent rewards ( especially if you took the time to loot the dead players ) and I don't need to tell you where all the players were. There were other minor things as well but core design flaws are hard to fix and all kudos to mythic for trying, I think at some point in the future they will sort it out but sadly the game has already lost thousands of players that will not return when they do.
I'm so confused by the posts on this website. All this talk of subs dropping below <insert random number> and EA will pull the plug!
You do realize EQ1 and DDO (random examples) are still running with easily (I'm guessing just as everyone else) subscribers than WAR has, presumably less than WAR will have a year from now.
Heck even Shadowbane is still online, granted with maybe a patch or three a year at best but even at the whopping fee of ZERO dollars a month that game is still online. So on what alternate plane of reality is this expectation that the game will poof and vanish?
It's even possible for a game to find a stable player base that isn't #+ million AND be successful/enjoyable.
Perhaps just perhaps the world might take a look at history and realize only one western MMO has accomplished this. Maybe it isn't mean to happen repeatedly? Pre WOW the average player base of any given game was 100-300k. It wasn't unusual or bad business.
I think they also have a six month plan or something regarding fixes, content and other. Six months is entirely too long based on the current gaming climate (new products) and the economy where people are having less money.
People will keep one subscription in the future to a MMO, but probably not two anymore like the old days. So if someone is gonna keep one game, they are going to go for what they see is the best and most fun. If something new comes out and its good, I think you'll see a really big line because people will say they'll check WAR in six months when they claim they are done fixing things, and they'll try the new game in the meantime. GM just said today they are paying people $25,000 cash and a $25,000 voucher for a GM car. Times are getting really bad really fast.
Six months is way too long a plan given people want to be entertained now, and the company that does it is going to get those subscriptions that have been leaving.
Again, the Warhammer won't die.. it can survive on 100k subs easily. But the thing is, who would pick it up if EA dropped it because its not pulling its load?
I think they also have a six month plan or something regarding fixes, content and other. Six months is entirely too long based on the current gaming climate (new products) and the economy where people are having less money.
People will keep one subscription in the future to a MMO, but probably not two anymore like the old days. So if someone is gonna keep one game, they are going to go for what they see is the best and most fun. If something new comes out and its good, I think you'll see a really big line because people will say they'll check WAR in six months when they claim they are done fixing things, and they'll try the new game in the meantime. GM just said today they are paying people $25,000 cash and a $25,000 voucher for a GM car. Times are getting really bad really fast.
Six months is way too long a plan given people want to be entertained now, and the company that does it is going to get those subscriptions that have been leaving. Again, the Warhammer won't die.. it can survive on 100k subs easily. But the thing is, who would pick it up if EA dropped it because its not pulling its load?
The six month plan is their "expansion". No, they're not packaging it separately and charging $39.95 for it six months from now. It's just a series of live events and free updates. They will still be doing patches inbetween these things of course, such as the 1.2 Patch which has nothing to do with the expansion but will be a major class balance patch, Zone Domination activation patch, etc. I agree with everything else you've said though, people will simply look at the 6 months and say, "okay, the game will suck till then. Not worth my money...", without further understanding.
-------------------------------------- A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
Perhaps just perhaps the world might take a look at history and realize only one western MMO has accomplished this. Maybe it isn't mean to happen repeatedly? Pre WOW the average player base of any given game was 100-300k. It wasn't unusual or bad business.
While its true what you said about "pre-Wow" success, you forget one important factor. The pre-Wow economy was in a totally different place than today. It was not uncommon for people to run two or three subs on different MMOs at the same time back then. The fees were cheaper and the economy and stock market was in great shape. People weren't losing their jobs and then their homes.
Nowadays, there isn't that much extra money around. People will sub one game, but how many will sub two and three games anymore? Especially when they don't perform as they advertised? People leave games in good times just because they are broken. In bad times, its even easier to make that decision, which is what we've seen with Warhammer. Maybe they once had 800k subs, but 500k people (or more depending on January figures) decided not to keep their sub running and either they stopped WAR due to economic reasons, boredom, brokenness or another game... they didn't come back.
The world is a different place now economically, so any "pre-Wow" numbers don't apply, but you see this thrown around as an excuse constantly.
Perhaps just perhaps the world might take a look at history and realize only one western MMO has accomplished this. Maybe it isn't mean to happen repeatedly? Pre WOW the average player base of any given game was 100-300k. It wasn't unusual or bad business.
While its true what you said about "pre-Wow" success, you forget one important factor. The pre-Wow economy was in a totally different place than today. It was not uncommon for people to run two or three subs on different MMOs at the same time back then. The fees were cheaper and the economy and stock market was in great shape. People weren't losing their jobs and then their homes.
Nowadays, there isn't that much extra money around. People will sub one game, but how many will sub two and three games anymore? Especially when they don't perform as they advertised? People leave games in good times just because they are broken. In bad times, its even easier to make that decision, which is what we've seen with Warhammer. Maybe they once had 800k subs, but 500k people (or more depending on January figures) decided not to keep their sub running and either they stopped WAR due to economic reasons, boredom, brokenness or another game... they didn't come back.
The world is a different place now economically, so any "pre-Wow" numbers don't apply, but you see this thrown around as an excuse constantly.
What?
Back then?? You mean 98-2004 before WOW? The world isn't that different a place.
Anyone who has lost a job or a home probably isn't paying for even one sub but ok.
Bad economy doesn't trickle down as hard as some people seem to believe it does. Short of relying on investments as your source of income or all out loss of job, a bad stock market doesn't effect a 25 year old like myself who has been with his employer for 2 or 3 years. I'm still being paid as usual and any investments I have are for retirement, a drop in value on my 401k now isn't factoring my decision to sub a game or not. It's reciprocal. I'll worry about a drop in it a few years before retirement in 40 years.
and yes pre-WOW numbers absolutely apply. We are not talking about 20 or 30 years ago., further I'm pretty sure at best a decade ago the cheapest sub to a major MMO /might/ have been $10 instead of $15 but even more likely around $12 for some. Anyway my post had little to do with this, or why people were leaving, I just wanted to add that all the doom and gloom is hardly called for. Short of actually being someone who stands to profit from the number of subs, why care? If the games boring due to population... move on.
None of these games will be around in 20 years anyway.
Back then?? You mean 98-2004 before WOW? The world isn't that different a place. Anyone who has lost a job or a home probably isn't paying for even one sub but ok. Bad economy doesn't trickle down as hard as some people seem to believe it does. Short of relying on investments as your source of income or all out loss of job, a bad stock market doesn't effect a 25 year old like myself who has been with his employer for 2 or 3 years. I'm still being paid as usual and any investments I have are for retirement, a drop in value on my 401k now isn't factoring my decision to sub a game or not. It's reciprocal. I'll worry about a drop in it a few years before retirement in 40 years.
and yes pre-WOW numbers absolutely apply. We are not talking about 20 or 30 years ago., further I'm pretty sure at best a decade ago the cheapest sub to a major MMO /might/ have been $10 instead of $15 but even more likely around $12 for some. Anyway my post had little to do with this, or why people were leaving, I just wanted to add that all the doom and gloom is hardly called for. Short of actually being someone who stands to profit from the number of subs, why care? If the games boring due to population... move on. None of these games will be around in 20 years anyway.
Please calm down. I understand you are upset.. these sub numbers are kind of shocking to a lot of people, upsetting to some but remain calm.
The gaming world is a different place than before Wow, this is not really a dispute among most people. The economy was certainly different four years ago than when you were just being allowed to drink legally. Wages have gone down, jobs have vanished and there is quite a bit of uncertainty everywhere. This is outside your window just today:
MIAMI 2/03/09-- Despite chilly temperatures, hundreds of people camped out in the hopes of applying for a job with the Miami fire department. Some of the jobseekers lined up Saturday afternoon to hand in their application Monday morning. Despite chilly temperatures, more than 1,000 people camped outside a Miami firehouse in the hopes of applying for 35 spots with city's fire department, The Miami Herald reported. Some of the job seekers lined up as early as Saturday afternoon to hand in their applications Monday morning, pitching tents and eating out of coolers and pizza boxes, the Herald reported. "We've never had this kind of turnout," city spokeswoman Kelly Penton told the paper. "This is unprecedented."
NEW YORK 2/03/09 General Motors Corp. will offer buyouts to all of its hourly employees, a spokesman confirmed Tuesday, as the troubled automaker continues to slash costs.
GM spokesman Tony Sapienza said the buyouts will mainly target GMs 22,000 retirement-eligible hourly employees, though any union employee can take the offer.
News of the buyouts first broke on Monday. A union official told The Associated Press then that GM would offer $20,000 in cash and a $25,000 car voucher for workers who retire early and those who simply leave the company. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because workers were not yet notified of the packages.
How many of these people do you think are worried about Warhammer? Probably never heard of it. But a lot of them have heard of Wow and this is what people are discussing here. They don't have extra money anymore and when they go to play a game, they aren't subbing two. They will pick one.
Four years ago, this didn't exist and gaming companies had time to play around for six months re-tooling and giving gimmicks. That time is over. If your game is not right, it will not survive the new economy. Look at AoC. Look at Tabula Rasa. Look at the poor ones that didn't even make it out of the gate. This may not affect you as you say in your economic situation, but this is a reality and affects a lot of MMOs. This is what people are discussing here.
Games have to produce or fall to the wayside. Warhammer is no exception today. It's a forum for discussion about Warhammer. If you don't want to participate that is fine, but why would you deprive others who want to discuss it the opportunity? You know, you really don't have to click the link and post if you feel so strongly about it.
Perhaps just perhaps the world might take a look at history and realize only one western MMO has accomplished this. Maybe it isn't mean to happen repeatedly? Pre WOW the average player base of any given game was 100-300k. It wasn't unusual or bad business.
While its true what you said about "pre-Wow" success, you forget one important factor. The pre-Wow economy was in a totally different place than today. It was not uncommon for people to run two or three subs on different MMOs at the same time back then. The fees were cheaper and the economy and stock market was in great shape. People weren't losing their jobs and then their homes.
Nowadays, there isn't that much extra money around. People will sub one game, but how many will sub two and three games anymore? Especially when they don't perform as they advertised? People leave games in good times just because they are broken. In bad times, its even easier to make that decision, which is what we've seen with Warhammer. Maybe they once had 800k subs, but 500k people (or more depending on January figures) decided not to keep their sub running and either they stopped WAR due to economic reasons, boredom, brokenness or another game... they didn't come back.
The world is a different place now economically, so any "pre-Wow" numbers don't apply, but you see this thrown around as an excuse constantly.
What?
Back then?? You mean 98-2004 before WOW? The world isn't that different a place.
Anyone who has lost a job or a home probably isn't paying for even one sub but ok.
Bad economy doesn't trickle down as hard as some people seem to believe it does. Short of relying on investments as your source of income or all out loss of job, a bad stock market doesn't effect a 25 year old like myself who has been with his employer for 2 or 3 years. I'm still being paid as usual and any investments I have are for retirement, a drop in value on my 401k now isn't factoring my decision to sub a game or not. It's reciprocal. I'll worry about a drop in it a few years before retirement in 40 years.
and yes pre-WOW numbers absolutely apply. We are not talking about 20 or 30 years ago., further I'm pretty sure at best a decade ago the cheapest sub to a major MMO /might/ have been $10 instead of $15 but even more likely around $12 for some. Anyway my post had little to do with this, or why people were leaving, I just wanted to add that all the doom and gloom is hardly called for. Short of actually being someone who stands to profit from the number of subs, why care? If the games boring due to population... move on.
None of these games will be around in 20 years anyway.
There's quite a difference premarket and now. Price though imo is not one of them. Yes things were cheaper then but *everything* was cheaper back then, also the price range isn't *that* significant.
As for the economy. I don't know about you guys but the cheapest way for me to have a months worth of entertainment *is* to play a MMO rather than anything else. I've seen reports actually that mentioned subs going *up* for MMO's at times of economical downturns which only seems logical to me. (although multiple subs might go down)
As for the market post WoW? Please. The western market is a about 5-10x bigger now than back then. The sheer initial sellout AoC and WAR got are numbers games back then could only dream off. Yet within months they have both already fallen back to preWoW subscriber numbers and they both have a lot of core complaints to go with it. Make the comparison all you like but compared to games back then this is a significantly less success, and that's not mentioning the development costs for WAR which were apparently between 50-100 million somewhere which is probably also much, much more than what most of those prewow MMO's cost.
in terms of pre wow subs, your forggeting a huge factor back then when 250 to 500k subs was a massive success.
the cost to make the game.
there was a huge difference back then, computers werent as potent as they are now. the grafics are nothing to what they are now. you didnt need to market those said games as much as they are needed now. the work force was much smaller than what is needed now to make a mmo.
i bet back then it didnt cost mythic 100 million dollars to produce dark age of camelot. or it didnt cost sony that same amount to make everquest.(the amount is just an example)
since they invested less money to make these ole games 300k subscribers would be a financial success.
as for mmos of the late. More money is needed to produce them. so they need to make that money back. if their subs cannot make the amount they invested to make the game it becomes a flop. If people keep leaving the game there may be no chance in making back what was invested. thus shutting down jobs and even the game.
Tabula rasa was a flop and its closing, its in no shape to make back the money invested into it.
Vanguard was also a flop, however sony bought the ip for pennys on the dollar, This is why Vanguard is still running. what sony has invested into vanguard they have recuperated and are making a profit from the game.
Its sad to see how warhammer turned out. After dealing with tabula rasa i would never jump on a new mmo again which is why i havent subbed to this game. In a way this is all Mythics doing.
I remember when i got into mmos, my 1st was ffxi. once i got to lvl 50 i quit and got into daoc. granted trials of atlantis was out and the next expantion was on the makes. when i got into this game and got into a guild i was quickly brought to a very high lvl place to sit there as others grinded mobs to powerlvl me. i was given many atlantis weps and many players hated that expantion claiming it ruined their game. I was so strong mythic even made a sevrer without that expantion. everything that was told to me was all about end game rvr. But back then 1 char and 1 sub was NOT enough, you needed your 2nd sub and your "buffbot" It took very long for mythic to finally cripple the benifit of a support char. why , well many players had more than 1 sub.
I didnt like the idea from the begining that Mythic was to make the game based on the ip of warhammer.
the creaters of warhammer should have made the mmo themselves just like blizzard did to their warcraft ip.Blizzard never made a mmo before and look where it took them, but they were very smart on using their earnings to polish and advertize their game to the masses making it the success it is today. I bet the creators of warhammer would have done a better job making their mmo than what mythic done.
all mythic had going for them was their cliche rvr. they havent made a game that kept a healthy amount of subs for a long time. sony, dispite being the a hats they are still have games , very old ones with over 100k subs.ffxi has a healthy portion of subs ect. Mythic should have bettered their rvr, and instead of copying of of blizzards formula, they should have improved it.
Just damn look at blizzard. their new expantion after 2 damn years. just 1 new class, and a few instances with 3 endgame raids 10 and 25 man. oh and a small husk of an island to explore. Just mentioning this you may think well they dont do much for their subs. but damn its well polished and the pve storyline is epic. They managed to bring millions more back to the game and quitters back to resubbing. mythic is gonna need to up the beef on warhammers pve content. As far as i know Warhammer has Massive ammounts of Lore that could easly bring tons of subs back or to try the game.
Mythic wasted to much darn time on their RvR than working the warhammer lore into the game. I bet the game would have succeded more if the lore was completely implemented and rvr would have came a few months after.
pheace beat me to it
Watching Fanbois drop their soap in a prison full of desperate men.
I didnt like the idea from the begining that Mythic was to make the game based on the ip of warhammer. the creaters of warhammer should have made the mmo themselves just like blizzard did to their warcraft ip.Blizzard never made a mmo before and look where it took them, but they were very smart on using their earnings to polish and advertize their game to the masses making it the success it is today. I bet the creators of warhammer would have done a better job making their mmo than what mythic done. all mythic had going for them was their cliche rvr. they havent made a game that kept a healthy amount of subs for a long time. sony, dispite being the a hats they are still have games , very old ones with over 100k subs.ffxi has a healthy portion of subs ect. Mythic should have bettered their rvr, and instead of copying of of blizzards formula, they should have improved it.
Mark Jacobs would highly disagree with you on that point. From an earlier interview:
I asked if Mythics parent company EA spent $100 million on Warhammer Online. No, but you look at what we did spend, it was lot of money, he said. Jacobs would only tell me that theyve spent south of $100 million on Warhammer Online, and thats because he and his team have the experience and the technology behind the game. We are one of the most experienced MMO teams in the industry, and we had to delay the game obviously more than once, he said. And if we had that happen, when you have an experienced team with great tech whos done this before, how much harder is that for somebody whos never done it? No matter how talented the team is, theyre going to make mistakes.
I can tell you coming from WoW that how many total subscriptions there are in a game doesn't matter. I don't care how many others are playing as long as my server and my friends are having fun, and my server has lots of people (which it does), 300k is plenty when there's like 10 main EU english servers.
It just doesn't help me that WoW has millions of subscriptions, the game is still boring. If you spend your time measuring how much fun you're having based on how many others are doing what you're doing, even if they're not doing it with you, that's just sad
WAR is just more fun than WoW, with better graphics, class balance and a more immersive world - and me and my guild and the others I see around us are having a blast, that's really all that matters
I used to supply this quote months ago when talking numbers to the "WAAAGGHH" fans and told to show proof. The sane ones listened, but got called a troll by the others and said this guy was pulling numbers out his butt.
September 23, 2008:
Edge Online stated that Arvind Bhatia at Stern Agee has predicted that the game will settle with between 250,000 and 300,000 subscribers after the first six months or so. He also states after in checking with retailers, sales of the game have met, but not exceeded, expectations.Agee predicts Warhammer Online will bring in between $55 million and $60 million in revenue for September.
I didnt like the idea from the begining that Mythic was to make the game based on the ip of warhammer.
the creaters of warhammer should have made the mmo themselves just like blizzard did to their warcraft ip.Blizzard never made a mmo before and look where it took them, but they were very smart on using their earnings to polish and advertize their game to the masses making it the success it is today. I bet the creators of warhammer would have done a better job making their mmo than what mythic done.
all mythic had going for them was their cliche rvr. they havent made a game that kept a healthy amount of subs for a long time. sony, dispite being the a hats they are still have games , very old ones with over 100k subs.ffxi has a healthy portion of subs ect. Mythic should have bettered their rvr, and instead of copying of of blizzards formula, they should have improved it.
Mark Jacobs would highly disagree with you on that point. From an earlier interview:
I asked if Mythic’s parent company EA spent $100 million on “Warhammer Online.” “No, but you look at what we did spend, it was lot of money,” he said. Jacobs would only tell me that they’ve spent south of $100 million on “Warhammer Online,” and that’s because he and his team have the experience and the technology behind the game. “We are one of the most experienced MMO teams in the industry, and we had to delay the game obviously more than once,” he said. “And if we had that happen, when you have an experienced team with great tech who’s done this before, how much harder is that for somebody who’s never done it? No matter how talented the team is, they’re going to make mistakes.”
For me Mark Jacobs falls into the same basket as mr mcquaid and lord british.
Back then they made succesful games. The come up now and well they stink. they all flopped thier titles. These titles could have been much better, but vision and the most experienced mmo team in the industry means jack.
Why. All 3 made games when computers were pretty limited on what they can preform. so their games were based on what they could do. Also before when their games came out there werent many mmos. Those who tried them endured what now is considered timesinks and also harsh penalties. for the players these were how mmos should be.
I remember back on the alakazam forums when i joined FFXI how the everquest players would call the game i played alight version of everquest. and it wasnt even a mmo , no weapon loss ect. just lost of exp and the potential delvling.they enjoyed their punishment.
When wow came out it changed how many people see mmos. they eliminated tons of cruel punishments and actually rewarded players for completing quests with exp. other games followed suit and during these times these said developers where nowhere to be seen.
Then suddenly Mcquad comes to the sence. Zomg the very man who made everquest. he has come to make the next big thing. The next generation mmo. the MMO of MMo , vanguard Z.O.M.G. A DAMN MMO VETERAN WHO HAS EXPERIENCE AND KNOW WHAT HES DOING. but FLOP he had NO damn clue what he was doing and hyped the lump of poop with visions and promises.
But wait here come Lord british with OMG Tabula rasa which means CLEAN SLATE. yeah lets Renew the MMo with a futuristic fps mmo. Im so damn Hyped Im going to the moon and im taking my players dna up there Huzzah. flop n burn. the father of mmos the most experienced of all 3 abandoned his baby in the parking lot. and now ncsoft is putting it to sleep after lordbritish and its baby chewed it up.
This was a major letdown for me. as mr british did show his passion for his work with ultima online and his ultima games. he Lived in his creation and participated with the players. it seemed that it was going to repeat itself with tabula rasa, even calling out the player who killed him in ultima online. This alone hyped me to play the game i wanted to meet its creator. But as the game flopped i did my reaserch and saw that he scrapped his 1st version of the game. he abandoned it, scrapped it and tried to rush up some other idea that came out. He wanted to make his own language in the game, the logos, but since he scrapped everything the time he had was nil and the logos were poorly implemented. it had no purpose. So they used the auto assult engine and in little time they just made a pile of dung and candy coated it with his previous success.
now mark jacobs comes to play claiming his team is the MOST experienced mmo team out there. He managed to get Ea as his publisher and sucked out tons of money to make an incomplete game at launch and now is adding content that should have been there. He took a extremely well known and good ip and RUIN the chance to make a mega succesful mmo. He didnt aim for what the masses wanted. HE TOOK THE IP TO ATTEMPT TO REVIVE HIS CLICHE RVR BACK. since he destroyed DAOC with trails of atlantis.
Look at 2 companies with NO experience. Square. They blew alot of money on a movie that ruined them. They made a MMO by themselves with No experience on it. and their game is still running with a hefty amount of subs.
Blizzard No mmo experience. did an attempt on their own and look where there at.
but guess what. Back then Mcquaid, Lord british and Mark Jacobs never made a mmo themselves they once were 1stimers.
As for EA they know they are hurting for doing what they did.
warhammer is bleeding out to many subs. The only one here to blame is Jacobs for making to damn many mistakes.
Watching Fanbois drop their soap in a prison full of desperate men.
Under normal cirumstances 300k subs is a more than adequate number. The problem occurs when you take a look at the wider picture and see that 450k subs have been lost in the past few months. Those of you who think WAR is going to be fine need to realise that EA is a greedy company that is feeling the burn of the economy like many other publishers. I'm sure they'll be having a review of their products in a month or two and be cutting out the dead wood. A game that has haemorraged that many subs in such a short time is going to be high on their list of items for the chop. It's not like they're above such tactics.
Under normal cirumstances 300k subs is a more than adequate number. The problem occurs when you take a look at the wider picture and see that 450k subs have been lost in the past few months. Those of you who think WAR is going to be fine need to realise that EA is a greedy company that is feeling the burn of the economy like many other publishers. I'm sure they'll be having a review of their products in a month or two and be cutting out the dead wood. A game that has haemorraged that many subs in such a short time is going to be high on their list of items for the chop. It's not like they're above such tactics.
they have already axed some Ips that didnt preform well last year.
Watching Fanbois drop their soap in a prison full of desperate men.
The problem is that the economy IS important, it was announced yesterday that Iceland in the last 6 months went from 1% unemployment to 10%, 75% of it's businesses went bust and it's economy is now on life support.
Ecconomists and companies are worried witless that this is just the start and Iceland is ahead of the curve, so now games by definition are a luxury product will fail to attract funding.
Lookiong at the games releases for the next year on PC,Xbox and PS3 and it's a very scant list and lets not forget that EA pulled the plug on Earth & beyond even when it had a hard core of fans.
So yes Mythic has made a ton of mistakes, my biggest 2 is letting GOA run the EU fiasco and letting the game turn into a scenario grind, but EA and GW are looking at the bottom line and I wouldn't put it past them to give the game until the end of 09 to get numbers up or face the chop.
It amazes me how people want a game to fail so bad when I look around in the game forums. Maybe I am missing something? Do they give out a prize if the game fails.
I can almost see the drool of the haters, as the dig through websites trying to find negative press about games so they can post it.....
As for the market post WoW? Please. The western market is a about 5-10x bigger now than back then. The sheer initial sellout AoC and WAR got are numbers games back then could only dream off. Yet within months they have both already fallen back to preWoW subscriber numbers and they both have a lot of core complaints to go with it. Make the comparison all you like but compared to games back then this is a significantly less success, and that's not mentioning the development costs for WAR which were apparently between 50-100 million somewhere which is probably also much, much more than what most of those prewow MMO's cost.
As usual Pheace is spot on.
I too was wrong. I would have tought the western market now would have looked like 4M to Wow, 700K to War and 400 K to AoC. And this was my conservative guess.
It now in February 2009 (looking at Xfire - as long as not one of those games get an Xfire promo stunt), it looks more like 250K for War and 100K for AoC.
It's time developpers do LESS hype and do more effort to just make good games.
In a sense we can be glad that less polish and less gameplay value is not rewarded with high subs. If you love AoC or War, no problem, have fun...
... but most expected a LOT more "awesomeness" from those games (isn't it Paul?).
I wouldnt put WAR in the same boat as AOC... That game wasnt even playable at launch. WAR was, it needed some help but it wasn't in no were near the shape as AOC was. I think what we are seeing is more than WAR failing, but the power of WOW.... Check out LOTRO as well, great game but how many subs do they have? I am sure it would be a lot more if it wasnt for WOW. WOW is the Microsoft of MMO's the rest are trying to get the scraps.
If a game like WAR or LOTRO would have released a year or so before WOW they would have both done better.
im sorry but i played War for a couple months and i am a huge DAOC fan, i wanted this to be DAOC2..big let down..very boring game.little to no dugeons/instances.scenario grind is all it is...i dont usually play F2P games, but i got bored and found Runes of Magic..i like dugeons,comunity and pvp..and this game has it all for me.im really suprised at how this game makes me want to stay on and play, unlike Warhammer did.if you are tired of War and try this free game out doesnt cost you anything to try it, .it plays like alot of really good mmo;s like EQ/DAOC.and WoW.though i didnt like WoW's comunity it was not a bad looking game..anyway take a look at it.
Hope now the dev will take a good look at warhammeralliance user to user support part. And solve the ctd, stuttering, lag, choppiness etc issues that players have been crying out since headstart!
As for the market post WoW? Please. The western market is a about 5-10x bigger now than back then. The sheer initial sellout AoC and WAR got are numbers games back then could only dream off. Yet within months they have both already fallen back to preWoW subscriber numbers and they both have a lot of core complaints to go with it. Make the comparison all you like but compared to games back then this is a significantly less success, and that's not mentioning the development costs for WAR which were apparently between 50-100 million somewhere which is probably also much, much more than what most of those prewow MMO's cost.
As usual Pheace is spot on.
I too was wrong. I would have tought the western market now would have looked like 4M to Wow, 700K to War and 400 K to AoC. And this was my conservative guess.
It now in February 2009 (looking at Xfire - as long as not one of those games get an Xfire promo stunt), it looks more like 250K for War and 100K for AoC.
It's time developpers do LESS hype and do more effort to just make good games.
In a sense we can be glad that less polish and less gameplay value is not rewarded with high subs. If you love AoC or War, no problem, have fun...
... but most expected a LOT more "awesomeness" from those games (isn't it Paul?).
I wouldnt put WAR in the same boat as AOC... That game wasnt even playable at launch. WAR was, it needed some help but it wasn't in no were near the shape as AOC was. I think what we are seeing is more than WAR failing, but the power of WOW.... Check out LOTRO as well, great game but how many subs do they have? I am sure it would be a lot more if it wasnt for WOW. WOW is the Microsoft of MMO's the rest are trying to get the scraps.
If a game like WAR or LOTRO would have released a year or so before WOW they would have both done better.
This is probably very true in my opinion. A lot of games developers want to make something that can sit alongside or surpass the numbers WoW pulls in, but it's like trying to scale a cliff with an elephant sitting on your head. It's no more likely to happen than some company coming along and announcing (to back up the above posters analogy) a new O.S. that suddenly sweeps the market and takes out windows - not gonna happen, too many people already use windows and don't particularly care what spiffy new features the new O.S. has because they're perfectly happy to continue with the existing one 'and anyway a new windows will be along soon - so i'll just wait for that'
Warcraft is an anomaly, it, regardless of what you think of the game, was well put together, had core gameplay implented in a way that made it easy to get into, and specs wise appealed to as many users as possible.They where clever about it - and it hit just at the right time to become a phenomenon.
I really don't see this happening again unless it's the next blizzard mmo which will automatically pick up millions of subs due to brand loyalty, franchise fanbase, the fact that a lot of players don't care to look into other mmos - multiple reasons.
It's a vicious cycle . WoW has the numbers, it's a household name now, pretty much guarenteeing a constant influx of new players all the time and a steady core fanbase.
MMO devs who seek to emulate this sucess are dreaming. Use it as a benchmark sure, something to aim for - and who knows? miracles might happen - i just don't think so.
As long as quality mmos are being developed and can survive on the level underneath the monster, it doesn't matter. Is 300,000 subs enough to guarentee survivability - it used to be, guess we'll have to watch and see.
I hope so because a market where there's only one choice is never a good thing.
Played: WoW, Lotro, AoC, Eve, CoX. Shortly be playing: WAR and champions if the release date holds.
Hi I can tell you coming from WoW that how many total subscriptions there are in a game doesn't matter. I don't care how many others are playing as long as my server and my friends are having fun, and my server has lots of people (which it does), 300k is plenty when there's like 10 main EU english servers. It just doesn't help me that WoW has millions of subscriptions, the game is still boring. If you spend your time measuring how much fun you're having based on how many others are doing what you're doing, even if they're not doing it with you, that's just sad WAR is just more fun than WoW, with better graphics, class balance and a more immersive world - and me and my guild and the others I see around us are having a blast, that's really all that matters
Under normal cirumstances 300k subs is a more than adequate number. The problem occurs when you take a look at the wider picture and see that 450k subs have been lost in the past few months. Those of you who think WAR is going to be fine need to realise that EA is a greedy company that is feeling the burn of the economy like many other publishers. I'm sure they'll be having a review of their products in a month or two and be cutting out the dead wood. A game that has haemorraged that many subs in such a short time is going to be high on their list of items for the chop. It's not like they're above such tactics.
I agree with most of that however if the game's population has stabilized and makeing a profit I can't see them axeing it, but if the population numbers are still falling and if it goes under the magic 250k for an extended time the game could very well be axed.
Comments
Sure and while you see two old faces, ten times as many at least leave, sounds to me like it's a great deal. Take a step back and look at the facts, the game is bleeding subscribers away, not gaining at all.
It's kind of sad when you think about it. Warhammer from all the stuff I read on it. Is a very well liked IP, that if anything could have easily snagged 500k to 600k subs in just the US alone. 350k for US and EU combine is just really sad.
Before any of the fans start screaming off with his head. That's just my personal opinion on it. Mythic after what they did with DAOC + Warhammer IP. I sure enough thought it would be like A1 sauce on the most juicy steak ever. Instead I got a hamburger with ketchup. Not bad by any means, but not the mouth watering steak I was expecting.
Whatever happened to the million that applied for beta and teh million boxes they sold?? IS it that bad of a game that only 30 percent of the people that bought the game are still playing it only a short time later??... They invisioned this game getting millions of subs at one time (AoC also but WAR even more).........
The game had a number of problems at launch which stemmed from core design flaws, and on top of this Mythic lowered the xp gain at the 11th hour so all the data they had from the beta testers telling them that they had it spot on went out the window. As a result once you hit level 20 or so the grind hit you like a hammer.
The game itself had a pretty flawless launch apart from the queues to login, one of the best of any MMO to date. It also had stuff that no other game had, public quests etc. In fact the recipe was there to make WAR the best game ever but like so many other promising recipes someone forgot to add the salt. The game design quickly showed it's fatal flaws, flaws that were missed in beta due to the focus testing regime. In beta when the PQ's at a certain level were being tested there were always enough people there to do them and to make sure that they worked. In the real world of the live game however if you were ahead of or behind the herd then there were never enough people around to do them, which led to a great deal of frustration. What's more the rewards for the three PQ's in an area were the same and all tied into the same influence pool. This had two undesirable effects. Firstly there was absolutely no incentive at all to do all three so everyone just stayed in the first one and ground out the Influence until the bar was full, and secondly there was absolutely no incentive to do all three because said influence bar was common to them all. Once you had the three Inf rewards that was it and you could get these from doing just one PQ over and over. A way to alleviate this would have been to split the Influence bar between the three PQ's so that it was only possible to get a third from each and to make the rewards for each PQ different. Alas my plea to the devs on this fell on deaf ears.
Next was the much hyped open field RvR, a main backbone of the game and one that really didn't take off. Way too often the open RvR areas were empty which again just added to the frustration of those that wanted to get into this aspect. The problems here were simple, not enough xp for this style of play and pretty crappy rewards. Compare that to the scenarios that had good xp and really decent rewards ( especially if you took the time to loot the dead players ) and I don't need to tell you where all the players were. There were other minor things as well but core design flaws are hard to fix and all kudos to mythic for trying, I think at some point in the future they will sort it out but sadly the game has already lost thousands of players that will not return when they do.
I'm so confused by the posts on this website. All this talk of subs dropping below <insert random number> and EA will pull the plug!
You do realize EQ1 and DDO (random examples) are still running with easily (I'm guessing just as everyone else) subscribers than WAR has, presumably less than WAR will have a year from now.
Heck even Shadowbane is still online, granted with maybe a patch or three a year at best but even at the whopping fee of ZERO dollars a month that game is still online. So on what alternate plane of reality is this expectation that the game will poof and vanish?
It's even possible for a game to find a stable player base that isn't #+ million AND be successful/enjoyable.
Perhaps just perhaps the world might take a look at history and realize only one western MMO has accomplished this. Maybe it isn't mean to happen repeatedly? Pre WOW the average player base of any given game was 100-300k. It wasn't unusual or bad business.
I think they also have a six month plan or something regarding fixes, content and other. Six months is entirely too long based on the current gaming climate (new products) and the economy where people are having less money.
People will keep one subscription in the future to a MMO, but probably not two anymore like the old days. So if someone is gonna keep one game, they are going to go for what they see is the best and most fun. If something new comes out and its good, I think you'll see a really big line because people will say they'll check WAR in six months when they claim they are done fixing things, and they'll try the new game in the meantime. GM just said today they are paying people $25,000 cash and a $25,000 voucher for a GM car. Times are getting really bad really fast.
Six months is way too long a plan given people want to be entertained now, and the company that does it is going to get those subscriptions that have been leaving.
Again, the Warhammer won't die.. it can survive on 100k subs easily. But the thing is, who would pick it up if EA dropped it because its not pulling its load?
"TO MICHAEL!"
The six month plan is their "expansion". No, they're not packaging it separately and charging $39.95 for it six months from now. It's just a series of live events and free updates. They will still be doing patches inbetween these things of course, such as the 1.2 Patch which has nothing to do with the expansion but will be a major class balance patch, Zone Domination activation patch, etc. I agree with everything else you've said though, people will simply look at the 6 months and say, "okay, the game will suck till then. Not worth my money...", without further understanding.
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A human and an Elf get captured by Skaven. The rat-men are getting ready to shoot the first hostage with Dwarf-made guns when he yells, "Earthquake!" The naturally nervous Skaven run and hide from the imaginary threat. He escapes. The Skaven regroup and bring out the Elf. Being very smart, the Elf has figured out what to do. When the Skaven get ready to shoot, the Elf, in order to scare them, yells, "Fire!"
Order of the White Border.
While its true what you said about "pre-Wow" success, you forget one important factor. The pre-Wow economy was in a totally different place than today. It was not uncommon for people to run two or three subs on different MMOs at the same time back then. The fees were cheaper and the economy and stock market was in great shape. People weren't losing their jobs and then their homes.
Nowadays, there isn't that much extra money around. People will sub one game, but how many will sub two and three games anymore? Especially when they don't perform as they advertised? People leave games in good times just because they are broken. In bad times, its even easier to make that decision, which is what we've seen with Warhammer. Maybe they once had 800k subs, but 500k people (or more depending on January figures) decided not to keep their sub running and either they stopped WAR due to economic reasons, boredom, brokenness or another game... they didn't come back.
The world is a different place now economically, so any "pre-Wow" numbers don't apply, but you see this thrown around as an excuse constantly.
"TO MICHAEL!"
While its true what you said about "pre-Wow" success, you forget one important factor. The pre-Wow economy was in a totally different place than today. It was not uncommon for people to run two or three subs on different MMOs at the same time back then. The fees were cheaper and the economy and stock market was in great shape. People weren't losing their jobs and then their homes.
Nowadays, there isn't that much extra money around. People will sub one game, but how many will sub two and three games anymore? Especially when they don't perform as they advertised? People leave games in good times just because they are broken. In bad times, its even easier to make that decision, which is what we've seen with Warhammer. Maybe they once had 800k subs, but 500k people (or more depending on January figures) decided not to keep their sub running and either they stopped WAR due to economic reasons, boredom, brokenness or another game... they didn't come back.
The world is a different place now economically, so any "pre-Wow" numbers don't apply, but you see this thrown around as an excuse constantly.
What?
Back then?? You mean 98-2004 before WOW? The world isn't that different a place.
Anyone who has lost a job or a home probably isn't paying for even one sub but ok.
Bad economy doesn't trickle down as hard as some people seem to believe it does. Short of relying on investments as your source of income or all out loss of job, a bad stock market doesn't effect a 25 year old like myself who has been with his employer for 2 or 3 years. I'm still being paid as usual and any investments I have are for retirement, a drop in value on my 401k now isn't factoring my decision to sub a game or not. It's reciprocal. I'll worry about a drop in it a few years before retirement in 40 years.
and yes pre-WOW numbers absolutely apply. We are not talking about 20 or 30 years ago., further I'm pretty sure at best a decade ago the cheapest sub to a major MMO /might/ have been $10 instead of $15 but even more likely around $12 for some. Anyway my post had little to do with this, or why people were leaving, I just wanted to add that all the doom and gloom is hardly called for. Short of actually being someone who stands to profit from the number of subs, why care? If the games boring due to population... move on.
None of these games will be around in 20 years anyway.
Please calm down. I understand you are upset.. these sub numbers are kind of shocking to a lot of people, upsetting to some but remain calm.
The gaming world is a different place than before Wow, this is not really a dispute among most people. The economy was certainly different four years ago than when you were just being allowed to drink legally. Wages have gone down, jobs have vanished and there is quite a bit of uncertainty everywhere. This is outside your window just today:
How many of these people do you think are worried about Warhammer? Probably never heard of it. But a lot of them have heard of Wow and this is what people are discussing here. They don't have extra money anymore and when they go to play a game, they aren't subbing two. They will pick one.
Four years ago, this didn't exist and gaming companies had time to play around for six months re-tooling and giving gimmicks. That time is over. If your game is not right, it will not survive the new economy. Look at AoC. Look at Tabula Rasa. Look at the poor ones that didn't even make it out of the gate. This may not affect you as you say in your economic situation, but this is a reality and affects a lot of MMOs. This is what people are discussing here.
Games have to produce or fall to the wayside. Warhammer is no exception today. It's a forum for discussion about Warhammer. If you don't want to participate that is fine, but why would you deprive others who want to discuss it the opportunity? You know, you really don't have to click the link and post if you feel so strongly about it.
"TO MICHAEL!"
While its true what you said about "pre-Wow" success, you forget one important factor. The pre-Wow economy was in a totally different place than today. It was not uncommon for people to run two or three subs on different MMOs at the same time back then. The fees were cheaper and the economy and stock market was in great shape. People weren't losing their jobs and then their homes.
Nowadays, there isn't that much extra money around. People will sub one game, but how many will sub two and three games anymore? Especially when they don't perform as they advertised? People leave games in good times just because they are broken. In bad times, its even easier to make that decision, which is what we've seen with Warhammer. Maybe they once had 800k subs, but 500k people (or more depending on January figures) decided not to keep their sub running and either they stopped WAR due to economic reasons, boredom, brokenness or another game... they didn't come back.
The world is a different place now economically, so any "pre-Wow" numbers don't apply, but you see this thrown around as an excuse constantly.
What?
Back then?? You mean 98-2004 before WOW? The world isn't that different a place.
Anyone who has lost a job or a home probably isn't paying for even one sub but ok.
Bad economy doesn't trickle down as hard as some people seem to believe it does. Short of relying on investments as your source of income or all out loss of job, a bad stock market doesn't effect a 25 year old like myself who has been with his employer for 2 or 3 years. I'm still being paid as usual and any investments I have are for retirement, a drop in value on my 401k now isn't factoring my decision to sub a game or not. It's reciprocal. I'll worry about a drop in it a few years before retirement in 40 years.
and yes pre-WOW numbers absolutely apply. We are not talking about 20 or 30 years ago., further I'm pretty sure at best a decade ago the cheapest sub to a major MMO /might/ have been $10 instead of $15 but even more likely around $12 for some. Anyway my post had little to do with this, or why people were leaving, I just wanted to add that all the doom and gloom is hardly called for. Short of actually being someone who stands to profit from the number of subs, why care? If the games boring due to population... move on.
None of these games will be around in 20 years anyway.
There's quite a difference premarket and now. Price though imo is not one of them. Yes things were cheaper then but *everything* was cheaper back then, also the price range isn't *that* significant.
As for the economy. I don't know about you guys but the cheapest way for me to have a months worth of entertainment *is* to play a MMO rather than anything else. I've seen reports actually that mentioned subs going *up* for MMO's at times of economical downturns which only seems logical to me. (although multiple subs might go down)
As for the market post WoW? Please. The western market is a about 5-10x bigger now than back then. The sheer initial sellout AoC and WAR got are numbers games back then could only dream off. Yet within months they have both already fallen back to preWoW subscriber numbers and they both have a lot of core complaints to go with it. Make the comparison all you like but compared to games back then this is a significantly less success, and that's not mentioning the development costs for WAR which were apparently between 50-100 million somewhere which is probably also much, much more than what most of those prewow MMO's cost.
in terms of pre wow subs, your forggeting a huge factor back then when 250 to 500k subs was a massive success.
the cost to make the game.
there was a huge difference back then, computers werent as potent as they are now. the grafics are nothing to what they are now. you didnt need to market those said games as much as they are needed now. the work force was much smaller than what is needed now to make a mmo.
i bet back then it didnt cost mythic 100 million dollars to produce dark age of camelot. or it didnt cost sony that same amount to make everquest.(the amount is just an example)
since they invested less money to make these ole games 300k subscribers would be a financial success.
as for mmos of the late. More money is needed to produce them. so they need to make that money back. if their subs cannot make the amount they invested to make the game it becomes a flop. If people keep leaving the game there may be no chance in making back what was invested. thus shutting down jobs and even the game.
Tabula rasa was a flop and its closing, its in no shape to make back the money invested into it.
Vanguard was also a flop, however sony bought the ip for pennys on the dollar, This is why Vanguard is still running. what sony has invested into vanguard they have recuperated and are making a profit from the game.
Its sad to see how warhammer turned out. After dealing with tabula rasa i would never jump on a new mmo again which is why i havent subbed to this game. In a way this is all Mythics doing.
I remember when i got into mmos, my 1st was ffxi. once i got to lvl 50 i quit and got into daoc. granted trials of atlantis was out and the next expantion was on the makes. when i got into this game and got into a guild i was quickly brought to a very high lvl place to sit there as others grinded mobs to powerlvl me. i was given many atlantis weps and many players hated that expantion claiming it ruined their game. I was so strong mythic even made a sevrer without that expantion. everything that was told to me was all about end game rvr. But back then 1 char and 1 sub was NOT enough, you needed your 2nd sub and your "buffbot" It took very long for mythic to finally cripple the benifit of a support char. why , well many players had more than 1 sub.
I didnt like the idea from the begining that Mythic was to make the game based on the ip of warhammer.
the creaters of warhammer should have made the mmo themselves just like blizzard did to their warcraft ip.Blizzard never made a mmo before and look where it took them, but they were very smart on using their earnings to polish and advertize their game to the masses making it the success it is today. I bet the creators of warhammer would have done a better job making their mmo than what mythic done.
all mythic had going for them was their cliche rvr. they havent made a game that kept a healthy amount of subs for a long time. sony, dispite being the a hats they are still have games , very old ones with over 100k subs.ffxi has a healthy portion of subs ect. Mythic should have bettered their rvr, and instead of copying of of blizzards formula, they should have improved it.
Just damn look at blizzard. their new expantion after 2 damn years. just 1 new class, and a few instances with 3 endgame raids 10 and 25 man. oh and a small husk of an island to explore. Just mentioning this you may think well they dont do much for their subs. but damn its well polished and the pve storyline is epic. They managed to bring millions more back to the game and quitters back to resubbing. mythic is gonna need to up the beef on warhammers pve content. As far as i know Warhammer has Massive ammounts of Lore that could easly bring tons of subs back or to try the game.
Mythic wasted to much darn time on their RvR than working the warhammer lore into the game. I bet the game would have succeded more if the lore was completely implemented and rvr would have came a few months after.
pheace beat me to it
Watching Fanbois drop their soap in a prison full of desperate men.
Mark Jacobs would highly disagree with you on that point. From an earlier interview:
"TO MICHAEL!"
Hi
I can tell you coming from WoW that how many total subscriptions there are in a game doesn't matter. I don't care how many others are playing as long as my server and my friends are having fun, and my server has lots of people (which it does), 300k is plenty when there's like 10 main EU english servers.
It just doesn't help me that WoW has millions of subscriptions, the game is still boring. If you spend your time measuring how much fun you're having based on how many others are doing what you're doing, even if they're not doing it with you, that's just sad
WAR is just more fun than WoW, with better graphics, class balance and a more immersive world - and me and my guild and the others I see around us are having a blast, that's really all that matters
300k +1 i renewed my sub yesterday :P
but seriously i think 300k sounds about right
I used to supply this quote months ago when talking numbers to the "WAAAGGHH" fans and told to show proof. The sane ones listened, but got called a troll by the others and said this guy was pulling numbers out his butt.
I bet his boss gave him a raise.
"TO MICHAEL!"
Mark Jacobs would highly disagree with you on that point. From an earlier interview:
For me Mark Jacobs falls into the same basket as mr mcquaid and lord british.
Back then they made succesful games. The come up now and well they stink. they all flopped thier titles. These titles could have been much better, but vision and the most experienced mmo team in the industry means jack.
Why. All 3 made games when computers were pretty limited on what they can preform. so their games were based on what they could do. Also before when their games came out there werent many mmos. Those who tried them endured what now is considered timesinks and also harsh penalties. for the players these were how mmos should be.
I remember back on the alakazam forums when i joined FFXI how the everquest players would call the game i played alight version of everquest. and it wasnt even a mmo , no weapon loss ect. just lost of exp and the potential delvling.they enjoyed their punishment.
When wow came out it changed how many people see mmos. they eliminated tons of cruel punishments and actually rewarded players for completing quests with exp. other games followed suit and during these times these said developers where nowhere to be seen.
Then suddenly Mcquad comes to the sence. Zomg the very man who made everquest. he has come to make the next big thing. The next generation mmo. the MMO of MMo , vanguard Z.O.M.G. A DAMN MMO VETERAN WHO HAS EXPERIENCE AND KNOW WHAT HES DOING. but FLOP he had NO damn clue what he was doing and hyped the lump of poop with visions and promises.
But wait here come Lord british with OMG Tabula rasa which means CLEAN SLATE. yeah lets Renew the MMo with a futuristic fps mmo. Im so damn Hyped Im going to the moon and im taking my players dna up there Huzzah. flop n burn. the father of mmos the most experienced of all 3 abandoned his baby in the parking lot. and now ncsoft is putting it to sleep after lordbritish and its baby chewed it up.
This was a major letdown for me. as mr british did show his passion for his work with ultima online and his ultima games. he Lived in his creation and participated with the players. it seemed that it was going to repeat itself with tabula rasa, even calling out the player who killed him in ultima online. This alone hyped me to play the game i wanted to meet its creator. But as the game flopped i did my reaserch and saw that he scrapped his 1st version of the game. he abandoned it, scrapped it and tried to rush up some other idea that came out. He wanted to make his own language in the game, the logos, but since he scrapped everything the time he had was nil and the logos were poorly implemented. it had no purpose. So they used the auto assult engine and in little time they just made a pile of dung and candy coated it with his previous success.
now mark jacobs comes to play claiming his team is the MOST experienced mmo team out there. He managed to get Ea as his publisher and sucked out tons of money to make an incomplete game at launch and now is adding content that should have been there. He took a extremely well known and good ip and RUIN the chance to make a mega succesful mmo. He didnt aim for what the masses wanted. HE TOOK THE IP TO ATTEMPT TO REVIVE HIS CLICHE RVR BACK. since he destroyed DAOC with trails of atlantis.
Look at 2 companies with NO experience. Square. They blew alot of money on a movie that ruined them. They made a MMO by themselves with No experience on it. and their game is still running with a hefty amount of subs.
Blizzard No mmo experience. did an attempt on their own and look where there at.
but guess what. Back then Mcquaid, Lord british and Mark Jacobs never made a mmo themselves they once were 1stimers.
As for EA they know they are hurting for doing what they did.
warhammer is bleeding out to many subs. The only one here to blame is Jacobs for making to damn many mistakes.
Watching Fanbois drop their soap in a prison full of desperate men.
Under normal cirumstances 300k subs is a more than adequate number. The problem occurs when you take a look at the wider picture and see that 450k subs have been lost in the past few months. Those of you who think WAR is going to be fine need to realise that EA is a greedy company that is feeling the burn of the economy like many other publishers. I'm sure they'll be having a review of their products in a month or two and be cutting out the dead wood. A game that has haemorraged that many subs in such a short time is going to be high on their list of items for the chop. It's not like they're above such tactics.
they have already axed some Ips that didnt preform well last year.
Watching Fanbois drop their soap in a prison full of desperate men.
The problem is that the economy IS important, it was announced yesterday that Iceland in the last 6 months went from 1% unemployment to 10%, 75% of it's businesses went bust and it's economy is now on life support.
Ecconomists and companies are worried witless that this is just the start and Iceland is ahead of the curve, so now games by definition are a luxury product will fail to attract funding.
Lookiong at the games releases for the next year on PC,Xbox and PS3 and it's a very scant list and lets not forget that EA pulled the plug on Earth & beyond even when it had a hard core of fans.
So yes Mythic has made a ton of mistakes, my biggest 2 is letting GOA run the EU fiasco and letting the game turn into a scenario grind, but EA and GW are looking at the bottom line and I wouldn't put it past them to give the game until the end of 09 to get numbers up or face the chop.
It amazes me how people want a game to fail so bad when I look around in the game forums. Maybe I am missing something? Do they give out a prize if the game fails.
I can almost see the drool of the haters, as the dig through websites trying to find negative press about games so they can post it.....
As usual Pheace is spot on.
I too was wrong. I would have tought the western market now would have looked like 4M to Wow, 700K to War and 400 K to AoC. And this was my conservative guess.
It now in February 2009 (looking at Xfire - as long as not one of those games get an Xfire promo stunt), it looks more like 250K for War and 100K for AoC.
It's time developpers do LESS hype and do more effort to just make good games.
In a sense we can be glad that less polish and less gameplay value is not rewarded with high subs. If you love AoC or War, no problem, have fun...
... but most expected a LOT more "awesomeness" from those games (isn't it Paul?).
I wouldnt put WAR in the same boat as AOC... That game wasnt even playable at launch. WAR was, it needed some help but it wasn't in no were near the shape as AOC was. I think what we are seeing is more than WAR failing, but the power of WOW.... Check out LOTRO as well, great game but how many subs do they have? I am sure it would be a lot more if it wasnt for WOW. WOW is the Microsoft of MMO's the rest are trying to get the scraps.
If a game like WAR or LOTRO would have released a year or so before WOW they would have both done better.
im sorry but i played War for a couple months and i am a huge DAOC fan, i wanted this to be DAOC2..big let down..very boring game.little to no dugeons/instances.scenario grind is all it is...i dont usually play F2P games, but i got bored and found Runes of Magic..i like dugeons,comunity and pvp..and this game has it all for me.im really suprised at how this game makes me want to stay on and play, unlike Warhammer did.if you are tired of War and try this free game out doesnt cost you anything to try it, .it plays like alot of really good mmo;s like EQ/DAOC.and WoW.though i didnt like WoW's comunity it was not a bad looking game..anyway take a look at it.
Hope now the dev will take a good look at warhammeralliance user to user support part. And solve the ctd, stuttering, lag, choppiness etc issues that players have been crying out since headstart!
RIP Orc Choppa
As usual Pheace is spot on.
I too was wrong. I would have tought the western market now would have looked like 4M to Wow, 700K to War and 400 K to AoC. And this was my conservative guess.
It now in February 2009 (looking at Xfire - as long as not one of those games get an Xfire promo stunt), it looks more like 250K for War and 100K for AoC.
It's time developpers do LESS hype and do more effort to just make good games.
In a sense we can be glad that less polish and less gameplay value is not rewarded with high subs. If you love AoC or War, no problem, have fun...
... but most expected a LOT more "awesomeness" from those games (isn't it Paul?).
I wouldnt put WAR in the same boat as AOC... That game wasnt even playable at launch. WAR was, it needed some help but it wasn't in no were near the shape as AOC was. I think what we are seeing is more than WAR failing, but the power of WOW.... Check out LOTRO as well, great game but how many subs do they have? I am sure it would be a lot more if it wasnt for WOW. WOW is the Microsoft of MMO's the rest are trying to get the scraps.
If a game like WAR or LOTRO would have released a year or so before WOW they would have both done better.
This is probably very true in my opinion. A lot of games developers want to make something that can sit alongside or surpass the numbers WoW pulls in, but it's like trying to scale a cliff with an elephant sitting on your head. It's no more likely to happen than some company coming along and announcing (to back up the above posters analogy) a new O.S. that suddenly sweeps the market and takes out windows - not gonna happen, too many people already use windows and don't particularly care what spiffy new features the new O.S. has because they're perfectly happy to continue with the existing one 'and anyway a new windows will be along soon - so i'll just wait for that'
Warcraft is an anomaly, it, regardless of what you think of the game, was well put together, had core gameplay implented in a way that made it easy to get into, and specs wise appealed to as many users as possible.They where clever about it - and it hit just at the right time to become a phenomenon.
I really don't see this happening again unless it's the next blizzard mmo which will automatically pick up millions of subs due to brand loyalty, franchise fanbase, the fact that a lot of players don't care to look into other mmos - multiple reasons.
It's a vicious cycle . WoW has the numbers, it's a household name now, pretty much guarenteeing a constant influx of new players all the time and a steady core fanbase.
MMO devs who seek to emulate this sucess are dreaming. Use it as a benchmark sure, something to aim for - and who knows? miracles might happen - i just don't think so.
As long as quality mmos are being developed and can survive on the level underneath the monster, it doesn't matter. Is 300,000 subs enough to guarentee survivability - it used to be, guess we'll have to watch and see.
I hope so because a market where there's only one choice is never a good thing.
Played: WoW, Lotro, AoC, Eve, CoX.
Shortly be playing: WAR and champions if the release date holds.
Didn't you start playing like 5 days ago?
I agree with most of that however if the game's population has stabilized and makeing a profit I can't see them axeing it, but if the population numbers are still falling and if it goes under the magic 250k for an extended time the game could very well be axed.