Originally posted by ericbelser

If WAR were to do badly enough that EA or Mythic decided to cut it loose, what happens would depend on a whole lot of legal mumbo that no one here is privy to. Never forget that GW owns the IP and I am sure attached some mighty tough strings to it when they signed on.

Aside from that, EA is unlikely to cut Mythic loose unless EA closes up shop totally. Mythic is a solid studio with lots of other potential uses.

If (and its a pretty big if) WAR is doing badly enough in 12-18months that it is in danger of closing, a likely possible outcome would be GW reacquiring control and dumping it on that THQ-spinoff which is working on the 40K MMO and whoever they are distributing through...but something like that is a really really long odds bet.

Likeliest, WAR is doing "okay", enough happy subs to keep the lights on and keep the checks from bouncing for the next 2 years+, probably longer...it eventually gets shuffled to the backseat when Mythic moves to a new project.

 

 

 

GW "reacquiring" control? Not a chance, I highly doubt the strings attached are in any way that strong, people overestimate the control GW has over the game as a whole. As an IP sure, they make sure they don't put in flying superheroes in pink wetpants or something but as far as the game itself and closure/no closure goes, I *highly* doubt that's in GW's hands.

Thats an easy one, SOE would buy it of course.

Not that WAR is any kind of financial trouble at all, and the number of players on my server and most of them are fine anyway.

I'm sure someone would just because of the Warhammer name.  I don't see it happening for a long time though, it may not be bringing in WOW numbers but it's one of the few decent MMO's on the market atm.  Before the times of WOW, the numbers WAR is holding now isn't  "that" bad dude.

Originally posted by Aocnewb

You realize you are not going to make AOC look good by posting crap in the forums of other games.  EA/Mythic is a huge company and has 1000's of employees.  It's not some no-name company from Norway  with no other titles.

Unfortunatley, both EA and Funcom are not doing great right now. I hope that neither WAR or AoC closes down, a lot of players like those games but it is not impossible. But I doubt it it will happen 2009, 2010 is more likely then.

PC gaming have lost a lot to consoles lately and the entire world economy is going crap so some MMO companies will die. My bet is more to Cheyenne mountain however but EA have killed MMOs before so it is not impossible. But it all depends on how well WAR do in 2009, if the game will slowly lose subs the whole year things would be extremly bad, but if Mythic turns things around and start gaining subs again things will look bright. I don't see the closing as a probable thing but it is not unlikely. AoC have started gaining players lately and WAR needs to do that too, butit will hopefully happen soon as Mythic keeps tweaking the game, the slide have almost stopped now so one or 2 good patches and the game should be starting to gain players. Of course Mythic can mess it up also, who knows?

Personally I had rather Mythic made Daoc 2 and left Warhammer to some other company because I am a fan of Warhammer and the game is quite far from the RPG and tabletop, but it is kinda like seeing a movie after reading the book and there are many parts of the world I really miss from the RPG, they totaly cut out the dark horror theme that is a big part of Warhammer. And the level thing goeas against everything that GW worked so hard with (I played Warhammer fantasy roleplaying game for 18 years).

All that said I really don't think WAR is a bad game and wishes them good luck. I don't see any other company buying WAR the next 5 years, maybe DaoC.

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Originally posted by ScamMan
I'm asking because I'm worried about my toons, which I spent a lot of time leveling.
Discuss.
 

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Nobody would buy it.

 Oh come on, not even one SoE reply?

The masters of buying up games? 

Ok,then let adventurine buy it

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Originally posted by Pitt_Hammer
Thats an easy one, SOE would buy it of course.
Not that WAR is any kind of financial trouble at all, and the number of players on my server and most of them are fine anyway.

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This would be feasible if such a scenario happened possibly, but I don't think it would go bankrupt. We'll have to see what MJ's grandmaster plan is going to be when he spells it out this week for the six month step-up program that he says is coming. People will just have to pony up the $90 subscription and keep busy somehow until his plan comes into fruition over that time.

If SOE took it over, I could see their angle... they don't have any real pvp games in there so they'd get that to put in their "stable", since SOE is PvE stock. But if didn't like the game enough so that it went bankrupt, I doubt SOE would be making any changes to the game that would have anyone want to sign up. You'd also have to assume SOE has better coders and people to fix it up better than Mythic does right now, or what would be the use?

ORvR doesn't work well with only some people, as we have seen so far. So maybe even SOE would be smart enough not to invest in a game that depends on huge populations to run when they know they wouldn't be getting any without a fix up. With the coding changes needed in this game, I doubt SOE would even want to tackle that one after picking up Vanguard.

Would there finally be a game SOE wouldn't touch? Who knows, lol.

Would be hard for a MMO with a relatively healthy playerbase to bakrupt.  You dont go under when you have hundreds of thousands of people paying you $15 a month for a game that is already made and just needs to be maintained like any other MMO out there. 

 If Mythic would just......release.....DAoC.....ORIGINS!!!!!....ARRRGGGH!!!

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Originally posted by WesKhan1
 If Mythic would just......release.....DAoC.....ORIGINS!!!!!....ARRRGGGH!!!

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I feel your pain Wes.. but you do realize that ship has sailed, right?

MJ won't even mention the word "origins" at all. It's not in his best interest to do so for a long time, if ever again.

Mythic is part of EA, not a separate entity.  I think the likelihood of EA having some kind of fire sale of it's games is very unlikely.  And... I think if Blizzard was capable of making a game better than WAR, they would.

WAR is a great game, our guild grows every single day.  I don't think the sky is falling. 

I only up and quit war because of an attitude of their customer service guy I was dealing with, I was messed around 2 full weeks of my first month with a character totally broken. It took 2 weeks of trying to get it sorted before finally he told me only in game customer support could help me.

Ok why the hell did it take him that long to realize this and interupt the dam time I had paid for that was included in the purchase of the game??

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Originally posted by Salvatoris
Mythic is part of EA, not a separate entity.  I think the likelihood of EA having some kind of fire sale of it's games is very unlikely.  And... I think if Blizzard was capable of making a game better than WAR, they would.
WAR is a great game, our guild grows every single day.  I don't think the sky is falling. 

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Games no. They won't have a fire sale on their "games". But "game"?

EA is in business not just to stay afloat. In business you grow or die because your base is always shrinking (unless you're Wow) and you're trying to TURN a profit upwards not one that's "doing fine". Breaking even is not good business for any company because 1 or 2 things go the wrong way, now its a liability. Companies drop things that "break even" all the time and people always wonder "WHY? It was a good product." Well, for the company even though their product is in the black, there are many other factors to think about, not just that a product is making an overall 5% profit. That's chicken feed.

WAR is headed to the point where it may just end up retaining enough base so the game doesn't go in the red, but what would EA do with a profit margin of 7% a month? Not much considering how big the company is. If your asset basket is made up of just break evens, its not worth keeping for a multinational company.

EA could very put Mythic up for sale if conditions are right, and they don't have to be losing money for them to do it. The fact that its a "great game" is immaterial and while your guild is growing, lots of others are folding on servers like IB and Hoch, you may just be getting those refugees.

I used to wonder why networks would take popular TV shows that got good ratings in their time slots and plenty of advertising dollars, but the network would scrap it. I'd say to myself "Dang, that was a good show. Wonder why they got rid of it?" There was plenty other considerations for a huge company to think about other than some fans liked the show and it did ok for its time slot. For them, it made sense to dump.

As far as I remember, Mythic has complete rights to WAR when they joined EA. They were left in complete control of expansions and game mechanic changes. EA has nothing to do with WAR other than to publish and possibly server infrastructure.

Besides, EA is laying off in several of their subentities. Including the 2nd best selling console game division Tiburion, makers of NFL Madden 2009.

The entire US economy took a nosedive over the last year. Apparently people who have lost their homes and or jobs since then realize that maybe they can't afford to play MMO's either. Everything, yes, even the MMO industry is affected by our current economy.

I'm not playing WAR cause I personally think it was a worse version of DAoC and served no other beneficial gameplay. However, Mythic is a lot more successful than most MMO indies, even though they lost their independance. My guess would be, Mythic would separate from EA and maintain WAR on their own, paying some royalties to EA due to a contract breach or some silly thing like that.

I think your assessment of the population and overall success of the game is inaccurate, but it's not something either of us can get hard numbers on... just my feeling as current subscriber. 

  Unfortunately, I think if EA decided the game was never going to be a success, they would simply shut it down rather than sell it.  They don't really have a history of playing nice.

Originally posted by Rhoklaw

As far as I remember, Mythic has complete rights to WAR when they joined EA. They were left in complete control of expansions and game mechanic changes. EA has nothing to do with WAR other than to publish and possibly server infrastructure.

Besides, EA is laying off in several of their subentities. Including the 2nd best selling console game division Tiburion, makers of NFL Madden 2009.

The entire US economy took a nosedive over the last year. Apparently people who have lost their homes and or jobs since then realize that maybe they can't afford to play MMO's either. Everything, yes, even the MMO industry is affected by our current economy.

I'm not playing WAR cause I personally think it was a worse version of DAoC and served no other beneficial gameplay. However, Mythic is a lot more successful than most MMO indies, even though they lost their independance. My guess would be, Mythic would separate from EA and maintain WAR on their own, paying some royalties to EA due to a contract breach or some silly thing like that.

While they said they would have total control over the content and direction of the game in production, Mythic is a wholly owned Subsidiary of Electronic Arts.  EA would be within their rights to bundle the studio up and sell it, but that is because they own it outright.  They are not just the publisher, Mythic is a division of EA now not a prtner under contract. 

You failed to mention the 100+ companys EA has boughtout and shutdown also throughout the years. Also last time I checked Westwood was not doing all so great and on the verge of getting the shaft for EA.

Anyone that thinks Mythic is safe under EA is doing nothing but fooling themselfs. I mean look at EA's track record for closure of MMOs. There has only been one game that has stood the test of time and that was UO. And it was about be closed down until MJ from Mythic managed to talk EA into keeping the game running in hopes that there work on the new 2d graphics for UO would help the game out.

There's only one guy that can save UO and that man is currently looking to pick up / or get back into work on the Ultima franchise.

As far as WAR goes. 2009 will be the telling year. If Mythic can pull a rabit out of the hate then theres a good chance for WAR to stay around. If they can get WAR into a more profitable status then it is now its almost a given EA is going to cut the game off. And Mythic will have nothing to say on the matter since they are a owned company of EA. One thing is for sure with EA is that there board of directors likes to make lots of money, not lose money or break even. They are one company that will just outright kill anything that doesn't bring in profits and large profits at that.

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Originally posted by Salvatoris

  Unfortunately, I think if EA decided the game was never going to be a success, they would simply shut it down rather than sell it.  They don't really have a history of playing nice.

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Maybe, but a shutdown gets them nothing at all. Even a fire sale on a game to someone like SOE could bring cash and other considerations. EA is not abandoning plans for its Star Wars MMO, that much is certain as the coming morning. So they don't really NEED Warhammer to hold on to.

EA being a huge company never looks shortterm. Most big companies look down the road so the question is, what could EA possibly see that might make a sale of Mythic make sense? How about this:

Warhammer is doing just ok at the moment, not withstanding fanboi or hater arguments. It's just OK... its turning a profit but Mythic won't say how much because it's sure not what they know is respectable given the hype of the game. EA knows the true numbers and they also see the game's niche: PvP marketplace. The PvE in it is bad, it doesn't stack up to a true game like LOTRO or Wow. They've got a problem with the crux of the game, sieges and loot, so that's a huge bump. So EA knows it has a pvp product that's still not soup yet, thats it.

They see (they aren't blind) other companies with Pvp games coming out Mortal Online, Aion, GuildWars2, (Darkfall? hehe) etc. EA looks at all those games coming and knows it has a coming fight, and it's still duking it out right now with EVE. If just those three games are mildly successful but polished, combined they will easily pull away at least a 1/3 of WAR's existing base. Face it.. you can play a game that you rolled 7 alts on in the last 4 months, or play a brand new PvP game that's fixed.. who gets your $15?

So if EA holds onto Mythic through those games releases, WAR is no longer in the black, now its red. And that small profitable margin it once had is now a huge dark stain with 400 employees and potential longterm costs with an even less pool to pull from.

Again, you may think its just fine and it may have some profit, but think like a company longterm and what's coming... a strong showing by one or two of the new pvp games puts a nail in WAR, I'd say.

It's not too late, of course. But time is not on Mythic's side like it once was. When you factor in the economy now, they are up against it whether anyone wants to believe it or not.

Wait... EA is making a starwars MMO?