General Discussion

Eurogamer is reporting that the launch date for EA Mythic's Warhammer Online will be delayed untol the Fall of 2008.

The announcement, they report, was made at a recent event in Paris.

MMORPG.com will continue to follow this story as it develops and will speak with EA Mythic's Mark jacobs about the issue.

Good it needed it.

As much as I want to play it, I'm glad they are taking the time to polish the game.

Originally posted by Stradden

MMORPG.com will continue to follow this story as it develops and will speak with EA Mythic's Mark jacobs about the issue.

You will huh?  Seems to me Mythic favors other sites far more than this one, and give us no love.  Which is a shame as this is the only site I bother to visit, but if you guys don't feel slighted good luck and I'll be waiting here to read what you find out.

Talk to mark about the delay.

www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php.php?t=31118

Folks,

Zyzus:

1) You stated this next release date is set in the mud, however.. Do you have an opinion on having any other delays after this new one? Like, do you believe this will impact the release significantly, by numbers of players, etc.
Still set in mud. We have no intention of releasing anything but a great game. We've worked too hard on it already, GW expects it, the community wants it and EA bought us in the expectation that we will make a great MMORPG. I've made lots of promises and I intend to keep them.

2) Is this delay caused mainly by the feedback from the beta, or overall feelings from the team? Or combination of both?
It's a combination of a lot of factors just like the last time.

3) Is this a polish issue, or more so a gameplay issue. Or once again, a combination of both?
Combination of both.

4) Is this going to impact the Collector's Edition of it at all?
Nope.

5) How is the developing progress going for the game, is it more than 50% done?
Lot more than that or we would be saying a Fall 2009 ship date.

6) Is this going to be impacting the availability of the game in Australia when it's released?
Maybe, maybe not. We were only planning for a simultaneous release in North America and Europe so the extra time *might* allow us to get servers up elsewhere earlier than we intended. As I've said in other threads, setting up Oceanic servers is a possibility but I don't want to promise something we can't deliver on.

Genesis885:

1) eta. When will we see more of an outline for it?
Soon we hope, depends on how the next stage of beta goes.


Fexxe:

1) Have you consideret making the beta an open-beta, since you now have more time on your hands?
Lol, I don't think we have more time on our hands since we are using it to finish the game but no, this doesn't change a thing with our plans for open beta. We have a good group of beta testers and we're getting lots of good feedback. Making it an open beta at this point would be a huge mistake as it would take even more resources and would, most likely, not result in a lot of new feedback but just a lot of the same.

Aenigma:

1) Will the push-back have any effects on Open Beta, or on the lifting of the NDA
Only by delaying it a bit. When we delayed the release, other things in our plan get pushed back. Now, I'm hoping we'll be able to lift the NDA sooner than you might think because of the delay but that'll depend on how well the next stage of beta goes.

Anomader,


1) Were there any particular aspects that stood out as just not being ready?
Nope, not at all.

2) Do you worry that delaying it too long could be counter productive?
Yeap, this isn't too long. Keep in mind that only one successful MMORPG has ever been developed in less than 2 years, DAoC. And I'm also not aware of any other successful MMORPG which was developed in less than three years (AC, EQ, EQ2, CoH, WoW, UO) and a whole lot of ones that took a lot longer and failed. WoW proved that lots of extra time + polish + smart decisions + game design = success so since WAR hasn't even been in development for 3 years now, I'm not at all concerned.

3) Finally, do you have plans in place to sustain hype over the coming months?
Yeap, keep the beta test going and keep telling people about what's in the game. If people like what they hear, they'll be excited about the game. If they don't, they won't. It's as simple as that.

Tianzi,

1) Is there specific new content on par with the keep siege system that is being added in this period that otherwise would not have been?
Maybe. Won't be anything big but it might be an expansion of some things that we would not have had time for otherwise. No details yet of course.

Filogreek:

1) I have been wondering though, will the upcoming WOW expansion affect the success of WAR, taking into account this new delay?
Well, they are the 2-ton gorilla in the PC market so only a fool and/or a liar (and I'm not either) would say that when it releases it won't affect us. All I can worry about is making sure that WAR is great and then everything else will fall out as it may.

Mark

Folks,

Laughing God:

1) My impression from recent interviews (like IGN and Gamespy) was that the game was looking somewhat solid for a Q2 release. Is it something that has recently changed that have forced the pushback?
Nope, not at all. The game was and is looking solid if we wanted to release something good but not something great. The fact that IGN and Gamespy (and more previews coming this week) saw the game, said that, etc. is testimony to how good the game is already. However, based on what we've seen and heard from our beta test, we just need a little bit more time to work on it.

Blaim:

1) I would like to know if the information about the game that has been steadily given out is going to take the same course over the next period of development.
Yeap and I may be willing to release more information earlier than the new schedule would seemingly call for but we'll see how the next phase of beta testing goes.

Wanton:

1) "Will you be expanding the closed beta/bringing forward the open beta as a consequence?"
Maybe, we'll see how it goes. I'd love to be able to do that but until we do a lot more RvR testing, it's too early to say.

Chakar:

1) s this delay ONLY to polish and make the game better in general? Or have you something speciell planned to add to the game that you need to delay for?
Polish, iterate and balance. I wish I could say the delay was for the "MOST UNBELIEVABLE NEW SECRET SAUCE THAT WILL MAKE US RULE THE MMORPG UNIVERSE" but that wouldn't be me and it wouldn't be true.

Chrismorris

1) Tho i would like to ask if now you will do alot more BETA invites?
Hope so.

Vit:

1. Will I have possibility, like my friends, to buy preorder box in Asia?
Details for different countries in Asia are still being worked out. As of now we have only announced a deal for Taiwan but when more deals happen and/or plans made, we'll be happy to announce them. Please keep in mind that we have never said we would have a simultaneous launch in NA/Europe and Asia so we still have a bit of time to sort out things. The Asian market is very important to us and we've been working long and hard to get the right deals in place and not just the deals right now.

Syp:

1) Is there ANY WAY that this is a slightly early April Fool's joke and in a few days we're all going to be laughing about it and smoking cigars over freshly minted boxes of Warhammer Online?
Sadly no.

2) I'm glad that you guys decided to announce this at the same time as the CE as to not deceive buyers, but at the same time I can't help but feel like this is a bit of a bait-and-switch...
Hardly. If we had keep the decision to ourselves then you might have a reason to say that. I wish we could have announced the date last week but we made the decision to announce the delay when it was clear that the CE was going to go on sale on time. And like I said, I've been telling people not to buy the CE/pre-order until the event, I've been downplaying the hype surrounding it, etc. By announcing it at the show and having Jeff Hickman there to talk about it (as well as other things), it would reach a lot more people than me just doing this here or just by a press release.

Javaira:

1) Will these beta keys work without a CE preorder and will any of the pre-ordered CEs miss out on keys?
No pre-order CEs will miss out on keys. And we are looking into what has been talked about here regarding certain stores.

Tianzi:

1) How will EA Mythic respond if Blizzard/ Vivendi Universal, seeing an opportunity to squash a potential competitor, moves WotLK's release date so that it is always one week in advance of WAR's?
Right now we can only worry about making WAR great, everything else will shake out as it does.

Lobster Mooch

1) Will this delay affect when we will start being able to pre-order the CE?
Nope, not at all other than now you know the currently planned release date as opposed to the last one.

2) EA-Mythic be combining with Games Workshop for any special release events or packages (IE: For X amount of bucks, you can get a Warhammer TT box set plus a copy of WAR)?
Time will tell but keep in mind that GW likes to keep the "hobby" away from the game. That's one of the reasons we get to create a cool new thing like the "Age of Reckoning" versus trying to fit WAR into something else.

Mark

Seems  Jacobs is is deep water.....again.

If a delay means they release a game with WoW's level of polish and a similar amount of launch content, then they can take as much time as they need.... as long as I'm playing by Xmas :P

To be honest, I was worrying over which one to try first. WAR had the edge over AoC but at least now I've got that as a filler. if it turns in to a long-term sub then WAR will still be there when I'm done with it.

Gee, the Q&A dept. here seems a bit cut and dry ...short.

I would assume with another release date push back they would be more open, just seems they are a bit conceded about themselves, especailly getting in release range of WoW's next expansion. Dangerous. lIke the Demcoratic nomanation has come to.

Owell,  I don't understand marketing or politics

But I can bbq a mean rack of ribs

....Not know everything, Yoda does

I don't really think the problem is the delay. He's right, the game is still within the standard "3 year" window for mmo development.

The real problem is thinking they could do it in less and then telling people they would release it on "x" date. It just riles up certain people to the point of being unreasonable. Sure, players will get dissapointed. Especially since EVERYONE (read me as well) wants to move on to something new and hopefully better.

But the fact is, as soon as a game launches and it's not amazing, players are going to be all over the forums and the game is pretty much going to struggle for that fateful quote "the game wasn't great on release but the dev's really have worked on it".

ugh.

I've played in a few betas where the game released and it was painfully obvious that it shouldn't have been released.

Heck, even Gods and Heroes, which seemed pretty good as far as quality (some technical issues but nothing that couldn't have been fixed by their release) just didn't have "it". I wasn't excited by it. There were some really nice things but in the end it was just another game with fields of mobs all standing around waiting to be slaughtered. I think this just can't be anymore. Even when I sign into LOTRO I have to roll my eyes at all the mobs just standing around, basically causing impediments to where I want to be.

I remember during LOTRO beta when I reported what I felt was an issue where I killed a mob and a minute later another of the exact same mob spawned right next to me. Yawn.

So, it's nice that they are listening to their players and that they realize that they just don't have it yet. It's like they are making a stew and allowing some to taste it and responding to their remarks of "hmmm, needs more salt".