HELP! Who knows the name of the WAR hypeman?

Bulldoze

If anyone got swept up in the pre-release hype of Warhammer online; age of reckoning you will probably remember that guy on their videos who got everyone amped up for the launch (especially me)

What was his name? I can't remember and can't seem to find anything online

He did a great job of selling a pretty naff game and would be interested to know what he does now

Cheers

*edit* I found the guy after filtering videos of WAR to 2006 , he's called Paul Barnett.

Guy did the best PR job I've seen on an MMO. I was so hyped up for that release! Although me being 16 at the time probably had something to do with it.

TBH that game is probably a major reason why I'm pretty jaded and precautious when it comes to mmo's nowadays

Nothing hurts more than your first hype & flop 

Nilden

Paul Barnett?

Fuerchtegott

Yup, it is the one and only Paul Barnett.

Bulldoze, you are right, when you say that he did a very good PR job prior to the release of WAR. I despise him for exactly that. WAR and Barnett taught me never to trust PR. Never.

I remember his responses to things like crafting, housing, character customisation, basically everything not directly related to combat in WAR. It went something like "This is WAR. People don't grow flowers when there is WAR. People don't decorate their houses when there is WAR. There is only WAR!

I have to admit, it was a pretty good li(n)e. People only realized after release what he meant to say is that the game lacks social as well as non-combat features.

What he actually thought of the game was revealed only years later at a press conference that was meant to hype their never-to-be released attempt at a quick cash grab. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of that game anymore, otherwise i would have linked a video on youtube. In short, he hyped that game by telling the public that they just get rid of all the boring parts of WAR and focused on the fun, which, apparently, was the battlegrounds. So, in essence, 90% of their original game consisted of boring grind... This was at a time when they still had people paying a subscription fee for the 90 % of boredom.

I wonder whether they ever asked themselves why they just didn't create 90 % of fun instead... It is one of the injustices of the game industry that so many other people were fired but this guy still works at Mythic. On the other hand, now he is working on projects that fit his game design skills - casual games for cell phones. Truly, 90 % boredom.

I need to stop, whenever I hear this guys name, I start ranting.

Bulldoze

Originally posted by Fuerchtegott

Yup, it is the one and only Paul Barnett.

Bulldoze, you are right, when you say that he did a very good PR job prior to the release of WAR. I despise him for exactly that. WAR and Barnett taught me never to trust PR. Never.

I remember his responses to things like crafting, housing, character customisation, basically everything not directly related to combat in WAR. It went something like "This is WAR. People don't grow flowers when there is WAR. People don't decorate their houses when there is WAR. There is only WAR!

I have to admit, it was a pretty good li(n)e. People only realized after release what he meant to say is that the game lacks social as well as non-combat features.

What he actually thought of the game was revealed only years later at a press conference that was meant to hype their never-to-be released attempt at a quick cash grab. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of that game anymore, otherwise i would have linked a video on youtube. In short, he hyped that game by telling the public that they just get rid of all the boring parts of WAR and focused on the fun, which, apparently, was the battlegrounds. So, in essence, 90% of their original game consisted of boring grind... This was at a time when they still had people paying a subscription fee for the 90 % of boredom.

I wonder whether they ever asked themselves why they just didn't create 90 % of fun instead... It is one of the injustices of the game industry that so many other people were fired but this guy still works at Mythic. On the other hand, now he is working on projects that fit his game design skills - casual games for cell phones. Truly, 90 % boredom.

I need to stop, whenever I hear this guys name, I start ranting.

Although I don't despise him, I agree that it rattled me and has definitely had an influence on my outlook towards pre-release PR, in a bad way!

The game you're talking about was called Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes. I played it in beta for a while but it got boring. It was a lobby based MOBA  basically, which never made it out of beta. I think this was due to a contract ending with Games Workshop? and the game wasn't amazing anyway

It's pretty annoying how badly WAR turned out because Warhammer is one of, if not the best fantasy IP's you could hope of landing as an game studio. I always day dream about what would've happened if the game was developed by  a different studio that handled it better, although I should know better than to torture myself with these thoughts!