Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning®, an MMO from EA’s Mythic Entertainment studio,ended the quarter with over 300K paying subscribers in North America and Europe.
The good news is that 300,000 is not a shabby subscriber level to be at — probably well ahead of such competitors as Age of Conan and City of Heroes.
For the number two spot, Jacobs reasoned that “Warhammer” would need at least a half-million subscribers, which he guessed was close to what “Final Fantasy” and “EverQuest 2” have now. “Let’s just say north of half a million would mean we’re successful. Now how a far north? I wouldn’t mind being a little bit cold.”
Well, given the drop from 750K to 300K, I suspect there have been some particularly arctic moments. And given the general state of the economy – and of Electronic Arts - things will only get chillier.
The industry needs a hit from a company not named Blizzard, please.
…as for the new careers, what can I say but they are both very, very cool. Players have asked us for a year whether we would put the Choppa back in and many have asked (especially here on the Vault) that we please add the Slayer.
But hey, that’s not all. Darkness Falls is back! (Which is cool, I loved Legion and he loved me, especially in a stompy sort of way.)
I think it is very safe to say that DAoC’s Darkness Falls was one of the most successful addons to the game. Over the last few months we’ve gotten a ton of feedback and requests (once again, here on the Vault) asking us to create a next-generation DF, and we are in the process of doing just that.
I’m pretty sure this is the first serious MMO bug copped to via Youtube.
I worked with Colin Shannon when I was at Mythic. He is one of the best programmers out there and Mythic is damned lucky to have him. Internet yutzes who clearly would NEVER leave a bug in an MMO EVER on all the MMOs THEY’VE coded? Kindly STFU, thanks.
Most of this video was, as usual, funny, in a veddy dry British Paul Barnett(tm) sort of way. This part was not:”Now, code’s general plan has been to blame the designers for this. Now, I’m about to prove, definitively, that this is code’s fault. Watch… and learn.”
Yeeeeeeeah. It wasn’t funny, even if Colin (who in addition to being a great coder is also an almost supernaturally tolerant person) was up for it. You don’t even do that sort of thing in team meetings. Jokes like that break morale like a twig. I’ve seen dark jokes like that (and to be fair, participated in them) from both sides of the fence. As a coder, I had a, let us say, adversarial relationship with one particular designer. When trying to explain to him what was possible and not possible, the response was almost always “But I designed it that way!” Which became such a tag line I finally wrote it on my whiteboard. Note: this was not a healthy relationship. And I guarantee you that there are team members who are not laughing when watching that video. Though they may be writing things on whiteboards.
Note to Mythic: I love you guys, but Designer vs Coder isn’t a valid playstyle.
Paul and Colin were trying to be funny. That’s Paul’s style and Colin is one of our most trusted, talented and valued guys. If they can poke a little fun at things…
And by the way, Paul also makes fun of himself and doesn’t take himself too seriously (well, most of the time ).
Bugs happen, design errors happen and nobody’s perfect. Well, except for some folks on the Internet who never make mistakes at their jobs and neither should anybody according to their posts.
A sense of humor is a wonderful thing and necessary, especially nowadays.
I would rather hear William Shatner and Roseanne Barr singing a duet while having my fingernails pulled out one by one while sitting in a pool of molten lava than have Mythic’s own Official Forums for WAR.
How’s that for clarity?
Mark
That would explain why Garthlik’s post was called “The William Shatner and Roseanne Barr Christmas Album”. (Note that this is still classified as rumor until Mythic makes some sort of announcement. Or, failing that, the faint cries of Roseanne Barr’s wassails can be heard in the distance.)
When the Heavy Metal live event begins on November 17th, players who log into WAR will see a new tab in the Tome of Knowledge. Clicking on this tab will open the Live Events page, where each day we’ll place a new daily task. Completing these daily tasks earns influence, just like you’d earn in a public quest. There are rewards for Basic, Advanced and Elite influence, culminating in the ultimate prize: the chance to play WAR’s new classes a full week before they’re released to the public! This last reward won’t be easy to earn, and players who want to get to the Elite level will need to log in each day and complete on the daily event.
Not that, you know, anything else is going on in the MMO world in mid-November.
I’m trying to cut down on the Warhammer stories, really, but then I see links to media interviews or posts and I can’t help myself. It’s got all the drama of Dawn, but surrounding an actual fun game. How can a blogger resist! Anyway, in today’s media clipping, Mark Jacobs smacktalks back at the Blizzard boys.
Do you believe Blizzard’s plan to introduce open world PVP into World of Warcraft is an attempt to position themselves against WAR?
Oh absolutely. I think imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. You have a game that’s been out for four years, they’ve never put in world PVP like ours, they’ve never been able to level through PVP like in ours.
I think it’s absolutely a reaction to Warhammer. It wasn’t like all of a sudden the idea of open world PVP or levelling through PVP came into their heads and went ‘nobody’s ever done this before’. I don’t think it was accidental that they’re talking about doing it when Warhammer comes out. Four years and suddenly, miraculously, at the same time Warhammer comes out that’s when they start talking about these things… I think it was Jeff Kaplan who said they like to look at other games and learn from them – well, I’m flattered.
He’s right, of course (smacktalk based on truth is always the best smacktalk!) Considering that Blizzard’s designers were avid DAOC players, this isn’t precisely a new development. And hey, if Blizzard takes one of Warhammer’s best features (levelling in PvP from level 1) I’m all over that.
Until they nerf death knights. Which you know is going to happen sometime in January, right? Just checking.
Welcome again to Broken Toys, your Warhammer Online fansite. (I’m sure Mythic’s community team will GET RIGHT ON sending me the invites to fan junkets.) Oh by the way, there was also a somewhat major World of Warcraft patch this week, which broke all the servers. So, there’s your WoW news: servers fall down, go boom, and you probably lost half your mounts. ANYWAY. Enough about the game with 11 million subscribers, let’s dish about the game with .75 million! Why? Because Mark Jacobs is just so gosh darned spunky. You never see Rob Pardo give “State of the Nation” addresses, do you? Well, DAOCplayersbecamesomewhatusedtoreadingthem, and now it’s Warhammer’s turn!
I’m happy to announce that in December, the Black Guard and the Knight of the Blazing Sun will officially be part of WAR.We have very special plans around their appearance and in our next newsletter we will provide full details about that exciting and rather novel event.
In other words, Order (Empire) and Destruction (Dark Elves) both get a new tanking class. Prooobably not a coincidence – trying to do a scenario without a tank is usually an exercise in frustration. Almost as much as doing a scenario without a healer. But wait, there’s more!
The Combat and Careers team has spent the last month looking at the changes that they want to make with an eye towards making improvements and buffs, not removing or weakening abilities.I won’t go into details here but the vast majority of careers all have nothing but love coming their way.
Ooh, candy! We like candy. But that’s not all!
In 1.1 (and beyond) we will be doing a myriad of things for our RvR players, including improving gear drops, increasing drop rates, and implementing an RvR-influence system to compliment the current PvE-influence system.
New stuff, always good. But wait, if you order now, you ALSO get…
We are working hard on deploying a substantially improved mail system for this patch. We will continue to enhance WAR’s mail system until it is one of the best mail systems found in any MMORPG.
Ooookay. Well, I guess that’s important, I know that a functioning communications infrastructure is key to any high fantasy army, amirite? But is that all? No, that is not!
We will also be offering the first server transfers to our players to continue to help even out the server populations.These transfers will be free of charge but they will be limited to moves off high-population servers to select mid-population servers or off of low-population servers to a selection of mid-population servers.
“The corollary to that is if you’ve seen a game consolidate servers, you know it’s in deep, deep trouble — that’s not a healthy sign for an MMO,” he said, citing Sony’s January-released “Pirates of the Burning Sea” as a recent example. “It will be the same for ‘Warhammer.’ Look at us six months out. Look at us six weeks out. If we’re not adding servers, we’re not doing well.”
According to the War Herald archives, the last servers were added on September 19, a day after the game’s official release, when 5 high-population servers were cloned to new servers. Well, to be fair, they still have a week! And, to be less snarky, in a PvP-focused game, a high population is important to a proper target-rich breakfast of eight essential dwarven vitamins and elven fibers. But still, you have to wonder if the first month’s billing cycle coming up this week is making Mythic’s CEO, Lead Designer and spokesperson somewhat uneasy.
Well, thanks everyone for having the reaction I thought you all would:
1) Trolls – OMG, is this all there is? WTF, addition of two new classes, new content, new influence system, mail system fix, class balances and more, to the game? Is that all you guys can deliver in a month? Yawn
2) Objective folks – Sounds good but still need to deliver on it as well as the other issues with the game!
3) Fans – YIPEE!
So, to the trolls, well, you’ve shown why you should continue to be ignored here. Please show me another MMORPG which has added new classes to the game without charging the players through an expansion pack.
I can’t think of one right now but even if there is one that I am forgetting, the vast majority don’t.
Take THAT, gotcha liberal blogosphere!
We’re in this for the long haul and as I said in an interview yesterday, success in the MMO world should be seen as a marathon and not a sprint. We’re off to a great start but we’re not there yet. No successful MMORPG hit its peak within the first year, let alone the first month and that’s the approach we’re taking with WAR.
Seems like everyone’s talkin’ about Warhammer these days. Including, you know, those wacky guys who work on the most popular MMO ever made. Jeff Kaplan in particular had a few things to say:
Now that “Warhammer Online” has been out for almost a month, I wondered if Kaplan had gotten a chance to try it. Even though he’s been busy working on “Wrath of the Lich King,” he revealed he has spent a little time with it.
“My character is like level 13 right now, and I’m playing Destruction on a server that’s imbalanced,” he said, referring to the factions in the game. He also said leveling his character has been going a bit slowly. “I’m at the point where I’m thinking about quitting because it feels like the best way to level up is in the battlegrounds,” he explained.
Hmm, sounds kind of familiar. And you’d think it would make sense for the Lead Designer of World of Warcraft to keep himself aware of the state of the MMO marketplace, right? However, the interviewer decided to poke Kaplan a bit about Mythic’s somewhat draconian beta/NDA policies:
I asked Kaplan why he thought he and other Blizzard employees weren’t allowed into the “Warhammer” beta. “That’s a great question,” he said. “I’m always fascinated by betas in general and [non-disclosure agreements] and how tight-lipped they tend to be. It’s Blizzard philosophy that if you’re really confident in your game, then you have nothing to worry about. So I guess that would be my big take away from that.”
WELL then. That’s a pretty diplomatic way to say “O SNAP”, I thought. Surprisingly, Mark Jacobs disagreed.
Frankly, what got me steamed is a piece at MTV where the guy talks a bit of smack about WAR, our Beta policy and stuff like that. My reaction to that was, interesting.
You don’t say.
I’ve always said nice things about WoW as I thank Blizzard for expanding the market, bringing more attention to this space, most important MMO of this generation, etc. But for Kaplan to shoot off his mouth about our beta policy, lack of confidence or criticism about WAR is just BS and it’s wrong. And so, I deviated from my long-standing policy of not criticizing other developers, especially on subjective issues. It will be an interesting read.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, I remember one interview with Pardo prior to WoW’s launch where he saud that WoW’s PvP system/realm point/honor point/etc. would be, unlike DAoC, useful. Hmm, how many times have they redone that system? Developers should stick to worrying about their own games and companies as none of us are perfect. People who live in glass castles and all that.
“I’m disappointed with the decision from a leader in the MMO industry to go down a path which in the past, has been an anathema to them and remains so to just about every other MMORPG company in the industry. I think that not only supporting the sale of in-game characters, items and currency, but also taking a ‘cut’ of those sales, is not only a mistake but one of the worst decisions in the history of the MMORPG industry,” says Jacobs.
They have made billions off WoW and they really don’t need Kaplan dissing, in any way, a competitive product. That’s just wrong, period. I didn’t diss EQ/AC/UO when we were developing DAoC and that’s always been a standing rule of mine. If another developer doesn’t want to play by the same rule, I reserve the right to respond, which I did. In Kaplan’s case, talking about “his issues” with WAR during it’s first 30 days is laughable especially since WoW had plenty of issues of their own at launch and considering that they spent 2x as long working on WoW as we did on WAR, some of their issues were just as bad or worse than ours. And his nonsense about our Beta is even more laughable considering Blizzard runs internal-only (NDAed by employment agreements) alphas at the same point where we would already be inviting thousands of regular people (under NDA) into our game.
I’m not normally a conspiracy kind of guy but within a few days of each other the COO and the Game Director of Blizzard both diss our game (though Paul did damn us with faint praise) does make me wonder.
Yes, of course the fact that, you know, Warhammer Online launched last month and garnered almost a million subs and people in the MMO industry might have opinons on that is besides the point: BLIZZARD IS GOING TO TAKE MYTHIC DOWN. Oh, if only a corporation with very large pockets stood behind plucky little Mythic.
Referring to Kaplan’s mention of the 30-45 minute wait times for battlegrounds (called “Scenarios” in “Warhammer Online”), Jacobs said that “World of Warcraft” also had long queues just to get into the servers to play the game when it first launched in 2004.
Well, yes, to a neophyte on online games (like, dare I say, the MTV reporter), sure, that’s a fair cop. Of course, Blizzard’s queue times (which were often far greater than 45 minutes) were the result of half the known world trying to access the game servers, and Mythic’s queue times are the result of, well, half the known world choosing Destruction. Note to Mythic: not buying enough servers is something your Ops team can fix. Making one side have heavy metal Vikings who can turn their arms into battering rams and the other side having poncy elves? Um, that’s not something Ops can fix.
Responding to the user interface similarities, Jacobs said that “World of Warcraft” wasn’t the first game to feature customizable interfaces. While he credited them for polishing it, he also said that it should be pointed out that “World of Warcraft” learned from Sony Online’s “EverQuest” and Mythic’s “Dark Age of Camelot.”
Again, Mark taking advantage of a credulous reporter’s lack of knowledge here. Actual MMO players would know that there is a WORLD of difference between the ability to skin an interface (seen in EQ and DAOC) and the ability to SCRIPT an interface (seen in WoW and Warhammer). Now, if Mark had simply said “Yes, Warcraft’s interface scripting set the standards for user interfaces, much as Everquest set the standards for easy UI skinning and the whole getting 40 friends to kill a dragon thing”, that would have been more accurate. As it is, I have to wonder if he’s been giving debate advice to John McCain.
“If you look at ‘Warhammer,’ there were so many points [where] we consciously made the decision not to be like ‘WoW’ and to try to push the envelope. I think you’ll find that if you’re actually going to compare the two products, I would say ‘WoW’ is certainly a more polished game now than ‘Warhammer is — of course they’ve had four years and billions of dollars — but if you look at the innovations in ‘Warhammer,’ you’d be hard-pressed to find as many in ‘WoW.’”
Billions? BILLIONS of dollars? Um, no. Bobby Kotick said it would TAKE a billion dollars to compete with WoW – which, ironically enough, Mark Jacobs quite correctly called him on. To date, the most expensive video game production has been Grand Theft Auto 4, whose budget is in the $100 million range. But that’s a side tangent – the point is that if World of Warcraft and Warhammer developers are going to get into a slapfight over which team was the most derivative, um… er… I think we’ll all laugh quite a bit. And then both developers can collapse, tired and beaten, into their HUGE VATS FULL OF MONEY.
For more cranky bastard commentary, see the relevant f13.net thread, where I ganked these thread links from (apologies for the inexact direct linking, but, hey, you know, Vault Network.)
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