General Discussion

MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood had the opportunity to speak with Mythic Entertainment boss Mark Jacobs about GOA, forums and Mythic accountability.

Just before the launch of Mythic Entertainment's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk about the game. We covered a lot of ground in our short interview, and in this half, we talked about talking about everything from the finished product itself to the GOA head start issue to Mythic's decision to forgo official forums and his thoughts on accountability.

I started out my conversation with Mark by asking him a question that I asked both Jeff and Josh before him. Was there anything that got into the finished product of the game at the last minute that you were worried wouldn't make it? His answer was the same as Jeff's. "I'm glad the auction house got in on time," he answered with a bit of a chuckle. "That one was touch and go there for a while."

Read the first part of the interview here.

 He really has his head in the dirt.  He will come around and be eating his words.

Very nice interview, Jon. Well done. I'll look forward to Part 2.

I've heard Mark's logic on Mythic's aversion to Official Forums and I still disagree. Saying that community managers are somehow disconnected is a flippant statement and simply untrue. Many is the time I have seen on Official Forums where a Community Manager would continue pressing the development team until they got an answer to some particular community concern.  Tiggs and Caydiem immediately come to mind. Did they suffer abuse? Definitely. But they managed to keep us informed and make us feel like we were valued as customers. Mark either suffers from selective memory or limited experience. He really should know better.

Its all looks good.  Someone made a comment about sticking his head in the dirt.  Sorry I just don't see it.

I work in software, I know it's hard to get a release out of the door and on time.  WAR obviously has some outstanding issues - I found at least 10 bugs within my first few days of play and I had to wonder what the beta testers were doing - some of these bugs were blantant and surely quick wins for the developers.   But it is early days and I'm sure the developers will not have had much slack time since the launch, they'll be releasing bug-fix patches for months (same thing happened with WoW).

But anyway... the comment about getting the "auction house in on time", great, but after my brief encounter with it I think it still needs some work.  It's buggy and the UI is frankly a nightmare.  The rest of the game looks amazing and they've really done Games Workshop proud by materialising their vision, but when it comes to dialogs these guys need to get some business oriented UI/UX experts on board to smarten that bit up.

I completely agree with the forums position.  In my opinion Warhammer Alliance is the best forum I've ever used because I know I'm not going to get flamed or banned by a mod for disagreeing with Mythic/GOA like I did on the Age of Conan forum (and then never touched the game as a result).

In conclusion, overall I think WAR is awesome.  They've pushed the envelope in terms of some MMO concepts and stripped out some of the crap that people can't be bothered with.  I can see elements from WoW, Dark Age of Camelot (which I played for ages) and a fair few other games, but ultimately I think they've found the best combination of PvE and PvP in any mmorpg currently available, subscription based or otherwise.  (That said, I don't understand why all the servers aren't Open RvR, but hey ...)

So Welldone to Mythic and I have to extend my congratulations to GOA as well who have surpassed my expectations (given my previous experiences with DAoC).  Oh and let's not forget Games Workshop who own all the back story and lore - this is their vision that's come to light!

Originally posted by Lethality

 He really has his head in the dirt.  He will come around and be eating his words.

 

 

you have no idea what you're talking about. mythic certainly know what they're talking about and communication with the players is amazing..you don't see blizzard taking time out for stuff like this. Guys like mark are the type of people that deserve 10 million subs and not those cheats at blizzard.

Originally posted by LordDraekon

I've heard Mark's logic on Mythic's aversion to Official Forums and I still disagree. Saying that community managers are somehow disconnected is a flippant statement and simply untrue. Many is the time I have seen on Official Forums where a Community Manager would continue pressing the development team until they got an answer to some particular community concern.  Tiggs and Caydiem immediately come to mind. Did they suffer abuse? Definitely. But they managed to keep us informed. Mark either suffers from selective memory or limited experience. He really should know better.

But in this situation you get the best of both worlds.  There's at least one developer I've encountered on Warhammer Alliance and that person has been responsive and informative, plus you get the herald and a freespeech forum all in one place.  You just don't get that with owned forums (e.g. Age of Conan, forum fascists ).

Originally posted by brindy666

Originally posted by LordDraekon

I've heard Mark's logic on Mythic's aversion to Official Forums and I still disagree. Saying that community managers are somehow disconnected is a flippant statement and simply untrue. Many is the time I have seen on Official Forums where a Community Manager would continue pressing the development team until they got an answer to some particular community concern.  Tiggs and Caydiem immediately come to mind. Did they suffer abuse? Definitely. But they managed to keep us informed. Mark either suffers from selective memory or limited experience. He really should know better.

 

But in this situation you get the best of both worlds.  There's at least one developer I've encountered on Warhammer Alliance and that person has been responsive and informative, plus you get the herald and a freespeech forum all in one place.  You just don't get that with owned forums (e.g. Age of Conan, forum fascists ).

I beg to differ. There is no such thing as a "free speech" forum. With fansites, there is no accountability and some toss around the word "ban" as a fun thing to do. AoC's big problem, apart from having a dismal launch was their attempt to get cheap damage control by appointing volunteer moderators. People had a right to be upset, the forum mods made things worse. Developers will often post on the WoW forums, particularly on the Test Server Forums. The same can be said for the City of Heroes forums. Official forums are an added value to subscribers. The only games that I can recall that don't use them are Dark Age of Camelot, Tabula Rasa, and now, Warhammer. See a pattern here? Heck, even Dungeon Runners has their own forum.
 

Remarkable that he really compares us, the customers, to a Tyrannosaurus. There is no excuse for the lack of official forums. Period.