MJ knows the score.  He was hoping AoC would pull away and be a decent success for the reasons he gave.  Mostly to reset the tone of the chattering class.

I think he was hopeful at first but then he saw what happened after Tortage and knew that AoC would not do that and it had nothing to do with WoW or the audience or pre-conceptions and had everything to do with Funcom's bad management.  In some ways puzzlingly bad considering the money thing he mentioned.

So now Mythic has to blaze that trail and Funcom won't be doing the initial dirty work like he hoped.  He is not discouraged or throwing stone per se.  Because in the end he knows its on Funcom's shoulders.  He just wished they were more competent so that they could have lessened the "But WoW did it this way, you should do it this way!  This is just a WoW clone it has a 50% similarity and is therefore a clone, just like EQ1 is a WoW clone."  paradox.

This interview gave me and a few of my close friends the reassurance we needed to go all in on WAR. Even if the game turns out to be mediocre Mythic deserves their 10% of the box sales we give to them just because of their honesty.

Originally posted by kaishi00

Originally posted by Neanderthal

Originally posted by //\\//\\oo

He added, “If we don’t succeed with EA behind us, the ‘Warhammer’ IP behind us, with one of the most experienced teams in the industry, that’s not going to be good for the industry. We need to show the world that it’s not just Blizzard who can make a great game, and that the audience is absolutely willing to try new things and to play a game other than ‘WoW.’” 

 

See, I don't really like what he's implying with this statement.  It seems to me that he is trying to subtly shift the blame for failed mmorpgs to the players. 

Let me paraphrase the part that gets to me:

"show the world that the audience is willing to try new things and to play a game other than "Wow'".

I think it goes without saying that the audience, mmoprg gamers, are willing to try new things.  In fact, I'd say that quite a lot of us are verging on desperation for something new.

How many people tried AoC?  Close to a million?  People were certainly willing to give it a chance.  If the game didn't hold them, and it appears that it did not hold a very large percent of them, who's fault is it?  They gave it a chance so is it the fault of the players that the game didn't live up to it's promise or is it the fault of the devs?

The same thing happened with Vanguard.  A lot of people gave it a try.  What more can be expected of gamers?  Developers can't expect people to continue paying for an unfinished or simply un-fun game.

Warhammer will have the same chance.  A huge number of people will jump in to give it a try.  But at that point the game will sink or swim on it's own merits.

He also said, "If we don’t succeed with EA behind us, the ‘Warhammer’ IP behind us, with one of the most experienced teams in the industry, that’s not going to be good for the industry."

Uh..no.  Like I said, a game has to sink or swim on it's own merits.  I haven't tested or tried Warhammer and I know very little about it.  But if Warhammer fails it will be because it's either unfinished or just a crappy game in general.  That doesn't hurt the industry one bit.  It only hurts Warhammer and the people financially invested in it.

The thing that would hurt the industry even more than failed games is if unfinished and/or crappy games started becoming successfull.  Then nobody would even try to make quality games because they wouldn't need to to be successfull.

Sink or swim on your own merits.  But if your game is full of holes you can't expect thousands or millions of players to hold their breath and let you stand on their shoulders so you can keep your head above water.

 

The way I interpret it was basically, people have their heads so far up blizzard's ass, that everything is held in comparison to wow, and how wow already has everything perfect. Just because peoeple did things different than wow, it was automatically bad.

The way I interpret it is people are sick of paying for fail-games, unfinished games, games missing promised content. In this retrospect, when a new game like Warhammer comes up, people will naturaly assume it is just another fail-game. This is why he notes the "trying a new thing" and why "Warhammer failure will "not going to be good for the industry" - if Warhammer fails, it will just add to the general disappointment of the playerbase. MMORPG market is not doing that great already (due to so many failures and disapoointments), any additional failure will only make people more cautious (they wont try anything new, they will just stick to the good-old-warcraft) or even push them away from MMO genre completely.

If WAR fails with an experienced crew like Mythic, and EA backing, then I suspect future companies might think twice, before they try to make a mmorpg. Or maybe they will just reconsider it entirely, as it could seem as too big a risk. Which I think would hurt the genre as a whole.

I really hope a game like Earthrise or whatever Bioware is cooking up, will succeed.

Wait ...

Protus-WAR?

nevermind, I see where Protus-AOC jumps into the thread. For a moment, I thought he may have jumped ship.

Thanks to Mr Obvious to tell us what everyone already knows. ;)

But seriously, I am glad someone does not chime into the usual PC trash of saying always nice things about the competitors. He says the truth, but as I said, we all knew it. Ok those die-hard tin-heads of fanbois EVERY game has dont know, but they will never know. Even if a game closes down, its always someone else's fault.

It will be the same with the more than mediocre SW The force unleashed, mark my words, but thats another topic.

Originally posted by Neanderthal

Originally posted by //\\//\\oo

He added, “If we don’t succeed with EA behind us, the ‘Warhammer’ IP behind us, with one of the most experienced teams in the industry, that’s not going to be good for the industry. We need to show the world that it’s not just Blizzard who can make a great game, and that the audience is absolutely willing to try new things and to play a game other than ‘WoW.’” 

 

See, I don't really like what he's implying with this statement.  It seems to me that he is trying to subtly shift the blame for failed mmorpgs to the players. 

Only in the sense that if players don't play a game it fails.  So, ultimately it's always up to us players whether or not a game is a success.  We could just keep lowering our standards until a game like AoC qualifies as a great game (sarcasm).  You know it's possible since even in its current damaged state AoC does have a small fanbase (sadly, not sarcasm).

Originally posted by Malickie

Originally posted by Hydrakana

Most pc gamers don't want games to be like console games because they are too short, simple and lacking depth.  I remember the days when 40 hour length games were considered average...now they are considered long.

I can sort of see what you are saying, there is something missing in most mmo's, but I would say its an addictive quality, not gloss.  Blizzard seems to be one of the only game developers that know what that something is, every game they make is like crack.  Every genre they try, they end up dominating it.

 

AoC definately doesn't have it and I'll tell you why.  Funcom listened to the wrong people, the ones who were tired of doing the same old thing.  People cried about being heal bots in raids - Funcom removed that role.  People cried about having to farm/grind for better gear - Funcom removed the importance of gear.  People cried about traditional mmo combat systems - Funcom tried to do away with that but covering up timers with direction combo's....I could go on for ages, but basicly, what Funcom did was remove what makes an mmo adictive.  Sure their goal was good, but they feel short and came off worse for it.

 

The Conan IP has many limitations, something we see in regards to how armor looks etc.  When you chose to make a game based on an old establish IP which has no flexability, you will run into many problems trying to make the game fun and addictive.  They really should have made up their own IP, conan style but with the freedom to make it how they wanted to.

 

Well said, I completely agree. The same could be said for any game carrying a major I.P.

I also agree with your assesment on why AOC came out how it did. However, I slightly disagree with your opinion of the end result. I'd consider AOC more a glorified multiplayer game, rather than a true MMORPG (much like GW). To me that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a different approach.

 

I'd have to agree to an extent.  It is just a multiplayer game rather than an mmo...more like a free roaming FPS type of game.

I think if you like that sort of thing, the game is fine and dandy.  Personally, my tastes have grown over the years and this type of game does not cut it anymore.

Originally posted by Mark Jacobs

 

http://onlinegamesareanichemarket.wordpress.com/

What does WAR’s success or failure mean for the MMORPG market?
Posted on September 3, 2008 by Mark Jacobs
So, in an interview with MTV, I said that it was important for the MMORPG market for WAR to succeed. Of course, this point has been taken a bit out of context by a few people (no shock there) who seem to think I’m a bit full of myself or a way too proud of WAR. Actually, neither is true. My point regarding WAR’s importance to the MMORPG market is based on a number of things:
1) Since WoW’s launch, no new Western, subscription-based MMORPG has sustained a population of 500K subscribers. While their exact numbers aren’t known, both LoTRO and AoC have failed to hit that mark. And as anyone who knows anything about MMORPGs could tell you, the one thing you don’t keep secret if you are doing well is your monthly subscription numbers.
2) Since WoW’s initial launch the market has seen a number of high priced properties crater spectacularly as well a number of MMORPG studios shut their doors. While back in the day, 100K monthly subs would have been seen as quite a success, if you are spending 50M or more on a game all in, 100K doesn’t quite cut it. Even 250K subs (30M gross + box sales for let’s say 10M in profit pre-tax), doesn’t look great to investors when you are spending 50M or more on a game and have continued high expenditures for updates, xpacks, etc. and lots of new competitors coming online.
3) With the increased competition of free-to-do-almost-nothing-fun games and other models, there’s a lot of chatter in the investment community about whether high-end, subscription-based MMORPGs are a good investment. As I said during a panel at GDC, there was a lot of very dumb money in this space (Hey, let’s give 25M to guys who know nothing about MMORPGs and sometimes nothing about online games other than they played them. What could possibly go wrong with that?) and that I thought the money would start to leave this space once some of the games I expected to tank did just that. The money guys run very, very hot and cold and right now, they are getting on their winter coats.
4) AoC’s apparent rapid loss of subscribers is encouraging talk that today’s players won’t stick with new MMORPGs very long any more. Now, I think this is total b.s. as I think today’s players will happily stick with great games (WoW) but won’t stick with mediocre or poor games. Thanks to WoW though, the bar has been raised so that games that might have been considered good/great 5 years ago are not considered that way by the players any more. This is no different than in Hollywood when a breakthrough movie raises the bar for the competition (think about the race for the best special effects in Sci-fi films).
5) Mythic is being backed on WAR by EA’s money and distribution system on one hand and by a fantastic license on the other hand. This leads to increased expectations and demands from the players.
6) This is the 3rd MMORPG that Mythic has worked on. While we have lost some experienced people from our DAoC days, we are still one of, if not the, most experienced MMORPG teams, especially in dog years.
7) Since 1997, you can count on two hands the number of MMORPGs that have held on to more than 200K monthly paying subs for any substantial period of time. OTOH, you would need all the fingers and toes of a baseball team to keep track of the MMORPGS that have failed to maintain that number and/or even launch. C’mon kids, you can try this experiment at home, no plastic bag required! Count all the MMORPGS since 1997 that have had great numbers and then think of all the abysmal failures. Not only have we had lots of failures to launch, we’ve had failures that set a new bar for failures.
So, knowing all this, why do I think that WAR is so important to the MMORPG market? Well :
1) If WAR fails, we won’t have the excuse (as some devs have had) of not having the money or the license.
2) If WAR fails, investors will rapidly look to other business models for MMORPGs especially ones that require less of an investment and development cycle to bring to market. We may be coming very close to the tipping point where investors have seen far too many games fail on release and even more of them fail to even launch for them to be comfortable investing large sums in this market. They will prefer to invest in safer things, like large-scale, cold fusion reactors.
3) If WAR fails, players will see yet again another MMORPG fail to live up to its promise. Given the high expectations and tremendous pre-sales we are getting, the fall will be that much harder to take. One of the problems of having high expectations for a game is that if you fail, the fall will be much longer and will hurt that much more when you hit pavement.
4) If WAR fails, publishers will be even less inclined to take on Blizzard whether it’s WoW or their next MMO. This will drive more developers out of the market and fewer AAA, subscription-base MMORPGs will start. Just look at how few MMORPGs are in development at studios (as opposed to getting outside financing) today. Does anyone really think that if WAR is a failure that this will increase the number of MMORPGs in development? If you think so and you happen to have a few spare million, I’d love to sell you some oceanfront property I own in Idaho.
OTOH, if WAR succeeds:
1) Investors will flock back into the market. Investors don’t mind taking chances if there is a decent chance of success and if WAR can break the 1M barrier in terms of monthly subs, investors will get excited about making lots money in this space.
2) The whole “Only Blizzard can do it” mentality will go away. The deeply ironic thing about this is that after DAoC was a success publishers/investors said over and over again, “If Mythic can do it, anybody can!” Nothing but love right back at ya baby!
3) The subscription model will be validated (again) to be alive and well in North America and Europe. This model has been pronounced dead more times than Kenny has been killed in South Park (well, maybe not but I love to get a South Park reference in there, I loved that show).
4) Publishers will be willing to take more chances in this space again.
Now, the same would have held true for AoC or any other MMORPG that has come out in the last 3 years. Unfortunately, only LoTRO can be considered any sort of success and even then it didn’t come close to WoW’s numbers (despite a license which in the past has been referred to as a license to print money). I’ve been making online games forever and I want this space to be hugely successful and continue to expand. However, if we developers can’t create games that people not only want to play at launch but play and pay for at least six months, then we are failing at our jobs and we deserve whatever happens to us as do our games.
Ego talking? Nope, just cold hard facts.
Mark

 

Well sayd Mark I`m srry for Funcom but then again it`s theres fault that they hawe lied community as for Blizz I think that they didnt offer anything new in xpansion "more pve orientated"=more grind like they dont got that allready .

Funcom could learn alot from Mythic, truth being first on the list and how to make a game being second.

Wonder how many of the Funcom programmers are waiting for War to come out so they have a good pvp game to play?

The thing I love about Mythic is that it seems like all the developers are very genuine people, trying to get you to buy their game by being honest and listening to its fans and beta testers. If they succeed with WAR (I think they will, played PW) then they will become the new standard for MMO makers.

Originally posted by Battlekruse

The thing I love about Mythic is that it seems like all the developers are very genuine people, trying to get you to buy their game by being honest and listening to its fans and beta testers. If they succeed with WAR (I think they will, played PW) then they will become the new standard for MMO makers.

I think Mythic has always deserved more positive recognition than they have received.  In the history of MMORPG's DAoC was the first game to utterly capture my heart and soul.  Mythic was the first to provide highly detailed patch notes whenever they patched DAoC.  They always included quality of life fixes and additions to DAoC with each patch.  And most of all, their patches consistently fixed bugs and rarely created new ones. 

Everyone may not aggree with some of the changes they made to DAoC over the years, but they have always been honest and open about the changes.  In this industry, where many developers don't seem to care about their customers personally, Mythic always made me feel cared for.  Yeah, this got a little more lovey-dovey than I expected.  But like I was saying: I don't think Mythic has gotten the appreciation from the MMORPG community that it really deserves.  I feel confident that their handling of WAR will be successful. 

Originally posted by Rhoklaw

I'm so glad I quit AoC, cause after reading how Charon reacted to it and the comments of other posters, I have seen first hand now just how piss poor Funcom is and how they are handling their own mess. Funcom is stopping at nothing to becoming the worst MMO company in history. SOE can finally relax now I guess, lol.

I'm going to burn for this one but i think you are correct $OE is off the hook.