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Warhammer Online : More Layoffs at Mythic
Posted Jun 17, 2010 by Michael Bitton
Continuing the tumultuous series of events that have plagued Mythic since the launch of Warhammer Online in 2008, it appears that EA Mythic has been hit with a new round of layoffs this morning. Josh Drescher, a key player in the development of WAR and well known to fans, is no longer employed with EA Mythic as of 11AM this morning according to a tweet posted on his personal Twitter account.
The news left many of his followers on Twitter wondering if he had been fired, but a more recent post confirms that this was indeed another round of layoffs:
FYI: I can't get into details (and, in fact, don't HAVE many more details), but it was a layoff. I wasn't fired and I still love Mythic.
We'll have more information as this story develops. Josh previously served as a senior designer at Mythic.
Jesus christ. WAR dying, dying, gone.
Good company is slowly dying before our eyes. WAR was a clusterfuck but I blame EA for rushing it out the door more than Mythic. Tis a shame they accepted the buyout from EA...shortsighted.
Im 100% certain that all the former Mythic workers wished they never got in bed with EA.
I feel for the guy. To be layed off during financial crisis is bad.
I see this so many times (and in my own personal experience as wel).
Large company buys smaller company, initial round of layoffs to get rid of redundant people and eventually there are more layoffs if the main company needs to save money.
what's the difference between lay off and fired?
When he gets laid off the position he filled wont be filled again. There's simply no need for one like him on the team anymore. Where as had he been fired they would be looking to refill that position again.
Afaik >_>
When you are laid-off, the company is looking to reduce staff in order to stay in the green, but the position may be filled in the future if the company's bottom line is met. When you are fired, you are typically being replaced because you are at fault for some reason.
Also, if one is laid off one can (in this country) receive unemployment benefits and there might also be a severance package.
If you are fired "not so much".
It's time to face facts. EA isn't pumping any more money into Mythic and any activity with WAR is nothing more than shuffling deck chairs as the ship sinks into the briney. Jacobs and his crew talked a line of crap to both EA and their customer base and couldn't meet deadlines. Releasing WAR in the state it was in killed the game before it even got off the ground. They should have spent less time jetting all over the world promoting and actually working on releasing a finished product. Warhammer could have been great, but what it needed was a different development team.
I have a feeling that Vigil is going to show these guys how it's done.
This.
He should go to Trion Wolrlds an work on Rift ^^
in what paralel universe of rainbows and lollipops do you live?
EA allowed Mythic to delay WAR twice, and we could presume each time they had to inject more money than budgeted into the project.
there comes a time when investors want to see a return, and no one but Mythic can be blamed for failing to meet deadlines and not adjusting to budget.
No many companies in the real world would be given such out-of-jail cards, and STILL they failed at epic levels with what amounted to be a horrible, horrible game in all aspects.
how can you blame EA? Mythic brought this shitstorm onto themselves alone...
You can notice the slow and painful demise of WAR, Some of Mystic was working with bioware last i heard for SW:TOR. Ironic enough you hear " in the face " and other commonly used ref. in the new bioware tweets/news. Then you got "pvp lakes" shows they might try to do what WAR did wrong.........Give content to a game ontop of a good pvp expenence.
I'd imagine they are just trying to keep it in the green for a final end of the year shut down or sell off to sony online. AS once Swtor hits and Rift WAR will be down to 5k subs. My sub ended today, not even gonna bother to renew as I lost interest now i see this thread and it's sad.
Atleast he gets unemployment!
its so sad so see such a great company just five bomb , YOU SHOULD HAVE WORKED ON DAOC. instead they took the easy way out and it has had its consequense.
This game is on life support, EA is tossing all its eggs into one basket (SWTOR) everything else will be lucky to stay running.
This, people love to scapegoat EA but they have to face the facts, mythic made this game what it is.
Alas, another piece of negative news to pile on the rest of the negative news, further obscuring how GOOD THE GAME ACTUALLY IS.
Seriously...
You sleep in the bed you made... WAR could have been awesome, they botched it, and now they are paying the price for it. Hopefully other companies will learn from EA/Mythic's mistakes.
So I'm guessing from now on WAR patch updates will be written by two janitors and the kid who delivers the sandwiches.
I had a lot of fun in WAR, and it's a shame to see the layoffs come so soon on the heels of the previous round. Hopefully it will survive in limbo the way Vangaurd currently does (though perhaps that's not the greatest comparison to make...)
The game wasn't/isn't great, but I never thought it horrible, just not for me. Such a shame that a talented company can fall so far, so fast. It just sucks that once again, the lower-level employees have to take the brunt of a backlash due to decisions by morons in upper management. That's the corporate world for you.
I feel bad for EA.
They thought they were acquiring a leader in the MMO genre and what they got was a one hit wonder has been crap factory.
The only good MMO Mythic has made was the orginal DAoC in 2001 which they themselves ruined with yearly crappy expansions.
EA wasted tens of millions on this bait and switch lame duck company.
Amen to that brutha!
They were steadily improving with the last couple of patches, too. I don't know if Josh had any input on them, but he certainly was one of the more recognizable faces amongst the WAR staff.
Shame.
Take a close look people. This same thing is going to happen to Bioware.
Blizzard, too. And ArenaNet. And CCP. And SOE. And... eh, what the hell, let's throw in Turbine as well.
Or did you have any evidence to suggest that it'll only happen to BioWare?
Soooooooooo many signs that the game is dying (if not dead).
Its almost dead already, last time time when i played it was very empty.
they need to do somethi9ng about that maybe add a big major continent or expansion or make war f2p :)
Actually, I can blame EA. I've seen them part out too many other companies. They're greedy SOB's, and it has only gotten worse as time has gone on.
It really is a shame after the strides that Mythic has made to correct issues and improve the game.
One person being laid off doesn't constitute "a new round of layoffs".
Is it just one guy or were others let go?
Dear MMO Developers,
If your game is not better then WoW on *ALL* aspects and fronts, open your source folder, hit Ctrl-A then the Delete key.
Thanks.
So the only mmo besides WoW would be Eve then?
Nothing compares to WoW when it comes to themepark or sandbox with the exception of eve due to it being radically different from everything else on the market.
The kid was laid off already, sorry.
You forgot Vigil aswell.
well, this is from his twitter account:
Quick note, then I'm going offline for a while: WAR isn't dying. The game is better now than ever before and more goodness is on the way. about 1 hour ago via web
@70ms I honestly have no idea who else was let go. They marched me out first. about 2 hours ago via web in reply to 70ms
FYI: I can't get into details (and, in fact, don't HAVE many more details), but it was a layoff. I wasn't fired and I still love Mythic.
Damn, that's a sad shame. Perhaps we'll never see DAOC 2? :(
Because EA doesn't own Blizzard, ArenaNet, CCP or SOE.
The main point there is that when Mythic and Bioware signed on with EA they became simply brands within a large corporate structure. There is no more Mythic or Bioware, any more than there is a Bullfrog or Origin Systems.
They're slapping the Bioware sticker on TOR because it suits their purpose. Bioware has a good reputation in the gaming community and EA will trade off that reputation as much as they can. Mythic's very public failure with WAR (be it their own fault, EA's bad management or a combination) virtually assures the Mythic brand will eventually be put out to pasture - sooner rather than later if TOR proves to be a hit.
I'm more inclined to blame EA since they have a reputation for being greedy fuckers that treat their employees like shit. Also just about every game they release is severely over rated since thye rely heavily on their publishing/advertising hype machine.
I guess we'll see what the deal is once TOR comes around. I'm still pissed for EA shutting down EnB in favor of the fucking sims online. It is true though, if their MMO isn't competing realistically with WoW or the 'big dogs' in general almost out of the gate they see no reason to give it full support. Maybe they can figure out a way to exclusive rights to making MMO's so they can be mmo giants the same way they are NFL giants lol.
Mythic took a gamble going with EA, and unfortunately it bite them butt.
I hope other developers/companies sees what happens when you dabble with EA.
Others were let go too but they were not as important as Josh.
I never cheer or get excited when someone is put out of work.
However when the game they made was a disastor and a giant poorly designed mess, I don't have sympathy for the outcome either. When you make a terrible product, and your company can't get back it's investment/make a decent profit off of that product, you are going to be let go.
How a product like WAR got out the door with such a big budget and a big company behind it in this modern age of MMOs is baffling. It is sad how long they are letting it dribble on before just closing the doors and cutting their losses, the game will never draw in a big crowd, ever. It's only going to keep going downhill, so just close it.
WAR sucks anyway...let it die and start development on DAoC 2.
Feel sorry for Josh but he will be back to work asap I hope. He was actually on of the better workers there at Mythic.
Im surprised they did not just absorb these people into the group that is making SWTOR. The way its shaping up, and with how many "we cant talk about that now" answers we are getting, it seems like they could use as many people as possible to get this out for release.
I'm still suprised that Mutt and Jeff are still working at Mythic. All I remember was seeing those 2 clowns crack jokes on there WAR trailers knowing full well the game was incomplete. If anyone needs to go then they need to go first not Josh.
aww man that stinks. I liked Josh quite a lot
You did; it was called WAR. They delivered a mediocer product and this is what happens.
Being video gamers, it might not be immediately obvious to you, but the Warhammer universe (both 40k and fantasy) is one of the largest settings for miniatures gaming. MMOs are only the latest in a series of RPG markets to latch onto these settings and try to hybridize them into something playable, with limited and various levels of success. Knocking WAR for being unoriginal is, itself, unoriginal. But don't act surprised that a successful IP was tapped to make a MMO. *cough*TOR*cough*STO*cough*
Well when the producer dojour states that "if you don't like the game then why are you here?" You pretty much know the game is dead. Having a shitty PVE game then instead of improving it gutting it in favor of Counter Strike with swords was prehaps the most stupid thing any devloper could do.
Then there is the total lack of crafting gathering, or anything else that would keep the non scociopaths playing. Yes I know kill them in the face..guess what? It only made more people quit.
GW actually apologzied for WAR at the Baltimore games day, and said it would not happen to the next GW MMO or GW game period. They are angry embarassed and they have every right to be.
WAR is fail fire that idiot producer and sunset the game, THQ will be bringing us a much better experiance.
Just go free to play already. Also smart move laying off the person who actually listened to the community and responded. Yet Jeff, and Gouskos are still around. Wow.
Go to ArenaNet, hell go to Turbine.
Numbers?
Link?
I'm not disputing what you say, but I've learnt over the years to differentiate between fact and speculation. Evidence is the key to that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upenR6n7xWY
Go to Trion where Adam is!
This is bad news. The game needs an expansion not lay offs.
I agree that with EA its all about the profit, but of course they do cause they are a massive company if one game doesn't work they don't keep pumping money into it they cut their costs. Does this mean anything for Bioware, sure it does. If ToR doesn't perform with the 2 million subs then it will see cuts. EA aren't going to keeo pumping money in if it doesn't work or make a profit.
Sadly though Mystic isn't going to get out of its rut if it isn't invested in. I wish this game could work out but this looks like the begining of the end.
Actually, many of the employees sacked in the initial round mentioned the positive impact of EA, bringing stability and better workpractices. This was reported multiple times via blogs that many of the employees continued to write. They never blamed EA for their layoffs. And do you know why? It is quite simple, it is because it was not EAs fault.
Without EA we would never have seen WAR at all, so I guess we can actually blame them for something. But EA had no hand whatsoever in the design of the game. The game failed due to abysmal design not because of EA rushing it out the door.
^^^ FULLY agree. I don't have time for MMORPGs any more, but if I did ... I'd go back to Warhammer Online in a second. It's consistently fun, and never once felt like a grind.
Aww man I liked Josh ... I hope that Barnett guy still works there.
And here I was thinking WAR was getting heaps better and possibly had a bright future.
The only similarities between DAOC and WAR is PVP is called RVR. They are completely different other than that. DAOC had three factions and didnt look like a WOW clone graphically
its not an EA/Mythic thing.
Trust me, as a journalist I would like nothing more than to write up a story about hoe there is some kind of internal turmoil and drama going on with this company, it would be an interesting read.
But since I DO cover mmorpg's I have to honestly tell you all this is not just happening at mythic. Its just the economy.
EA has has layoffs all over as have most gaming studios over the past year.
and it has nothing to do with the games performance. Microsoft is one of the more profitable companies in the world and XboX is a very successful platform. Xbox had layoffs , as well as other portions of microsoft.
WAR was a poor game and the graphics were overwhelmingly dull and bland but if you think they bore any resemblance to WoWs cartoony brightness then I think you need to seek professional help (not sure who really, maybe an optometrist is not enough, possibly someone dealing in balances in brain chemistry because your peception filters seem really out of whack).
daoc2 thats all I am going to say
actually Mythics cant blame EA since they decided to clone WoW instead of making Daoc2.
Never post again, please?
EA destroys another company!!
First Origin Now Mythic!
thanks assholes!
Honestly I am not a follower of computer games in general so I guess I don't understand the history behind the rabid hate for EA. I swear if some of you guys read a news story that EA donated a billion dollars to help find a cure for cancer some people would abuse them for not choosing diabetes instead.
No matter what company bought Mythic (and they desperately needed it) the result would have been the same. The game was already designed and much too far along and that was ALL Mythic. EA threw money at Mythic expecting WAR to be a success and allow them to make some money. Unfortunately the gamble did not pay off.
I really don't know of course but I would guess that EA probably regrets deciding to buy Mythic, they have a much better prospect in Bioware. But that is a rather simplistic take on the issue I am sure. There were probably a large number of considerations for EA to acquire Mythic.
I don't know how anyone who had the title of producer when WAR launched kept their job. You would think EA would have purged all of the leadership responsible. And how Barnett and Hickman are still employed is beyond me. As far as I know, those two were the most responsible for WAR in production.
I think you need to ask yourself that.Lets look at past history shall we?
EA involved failed mmogs
Motor City Online-Shutdown
Sims Online-Shutdown
Earth and Beyond-Shut down
WAR-on it's deathbed
Mythic failed mmogs
0
You don't see what the fail ingredient is there? Pretty obvious to most of us.
The age of reckoning seems to be upon them.
Well he have at least partly right. Mythic should have made a game either for Mythic fans or Games workshop fans, but they did say that they would take over millions of players from Blizzard.
Warhammers brilliant system taken away and replaced by the tired old EQ mechanics and all the best stuff taken out from the world.
It is clear that they could have done a lot better job, or they wouldn't be fired at a unseen rate for MMO companies. It could be a lot worse, WAR do have some good points but they really raped the IP with the game.
As for putting the blame on EA or not, it is EAs fault that the game was released in the shape it was with much important content removed including the intended endgame. It is however not EAs fault that Mythic messed up my beloved Warhammer, they should either have made DaoC 2 or actually played some Warhammer game and try to recreate the same feeling in a MMO.
Only Altdorf looks like Warhammer.
this is what bioware gets to look forward to.
everyone swore this wouldnt happen to mythic when ea bought them. people called me crazy for saying "as soon as things go south with this game, ea will start gutting the company"
this is ea's m.o.
theyve been impatient with mmo's since earth and beyond. this isn't changing anytime soon.
i give bioware another 2 years in the industry, tops. before ea starts gutting them too that is.
lol, so many carebears in this thread. They are only hating on the game because they suck at it. Seriously guys, the game is great, but there hasn't been any content out for a year people. How can they expect to get more subs with the same content they have.
In a way its kind of funny to see how so many people can't figure out who to blame the most, EA or Mythic for Warhammer's decline. In the world of corporate economics though when a product is doing well and then after a short time starts to dive like Warhammer you have to start there first. If it had continued to be profitable EA would never have had to bail Mythic out. Who pays the money into the game? You and me, not Mythic, not EA.
Why did we stop? Because Mythic never corrected the mistakes they made with imbalanced characters. I can't tell you how many times my toon was killed within 5 seconds. Over a period of months it was so evident and yet all we got was promises of corrections and nothing ever happened. To this day after I checked their official forums the imbalance still exists and players are still leaving for it. Anything after that is just secondary reasons. Several of us mentioned Vanguard several times, because they had done the exact same thing. Hype an unfinished product, have millions of players to buy it, then they find out about imbalances and cheating, then they leave when nothing is corrected.
The sad part of it is both of these games had such great potential, but the corporate leaders were to shortsighted to fix the real problems.
Firstly I think we are forgetting that people have lost thier jobs over this, and so should spare a moment to think about how much it must suck to be now looking for a job in todays ecconomic climate. I really hope all the people being laid off can find employment quickly.
If as has been hinted at that it is rather the ecconomic climate rather than the state of the game that has prompted these moves then I wonder what this might mean for Star Wars The Old Republic will we see a change in the launch day so that EA can start bringing in some of the money they have invested. Or is Bioware still in the honeymoon period where they are immune to such lay offs. Or worst of all are they seeing lay offs and likely to prolong the development process or see features cut as happened to WAR.
As for WAR I found the game to be fun, the problem was as mentioned the horrible imbalances and the lack of content. It was almost like an MMO lite with the main content being the RvR lakes. Which when you have horrible imbalances and no place for tanks a some what short sighted approach. And sadly with the lay offs I can't see the content or the balance issues being fixed any time soon so it will likely drive more players away and see the game destroyed. It will be interesting to see what this will mean for ToR are they also going to seem like an MMO lite experience with Story which once complete leaves little reason to stick around?
First off it makes angry as hell seeing that guys like this fat british idiot called Barnett and his bigger buddy Hickman are still having a job and others getting fired and fired the only one I'm happy for is Josh Dresher because he's responsible for this bullshit like the two others.
I really wish all the others well hopefully you've learned your lesson: don't work for EA, Activisionblizzard or Sony! They are evil, bad and only there for shareholders screw them all.
They'll shut the game down as soon as Tor will come out, maybe giving the reamining War players some thing like 3 months of ToR for free.
His elgibility for unemployment benifits. If your fired 50/50 chance you cant get it depending on what your fired for, and 0 chance if the company fights it. Your laid of it's golden and you get those benifits.
Bioware will be fine as a whole and wont go anywhere for a long time. SW:ToR could fail totally and they'd still suvive. Remember that Biowares main experiance and income generation is not in MMO's but its single player games, an area in which it excells. As long as Bioware can keep turning out games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect et-al they will be fine.
SW:ToR is thier first foray into the MMO market and its success or failure wont immediatly doom the company and cause EA to "hack it up" as some seem to think. Now if they start producing nothing at all in the SP game market and ToR fails .. that could prove messy, but I highly doubt they will do so. Hell they could knock out a DA2 and that alone will secure thier short term future within EA's corperate structure.
EA wont dismantle Bioware until it fails totally, which unfortunatly is what Mythic has done. MMO's was Mythics "one trick" and to fail at it without having anything else to offer is the cause of thier downfall.
As a long time DAoC player and then a WAR supporter I am saddened to see Mythic fall so far, but in all honesty I dont blame EA. EA was acting mainly as publisher and I cant expect them to support the "dream" ... they are a company with an obligation to concider profit lines after all. They too have people that need to be paid and wont risk a giant loss and lay-offs within thier own company to funnel money into a project thats not netting returns.
Bottom line is WAR is on Mythic and not EA this time. After all if the players wont support WAR (Pay subs) why should EA dump huge amounts of cash into it? They have done the forcasts and know whats going on .. prob best for them to cut thier losses and move on rather than keep supporting a game the player base wont support.
Do you pay your mechanic for "promising" to fix your car? or Fixing you car? Same with EA ... they wont support Mythic on promises alone, they want results which its apparent after over a year are not forthcomming.
no.. if he was any good war wouldnt been shit.. its easy to blame ea.. but mythic once released barebone doac.. which somehow survived 10 years ago.. and supposedly was hit ( which in numbers it wasnt.. it was just fans screaming louder than others )
and same shit happened here.. do you think it was ea fault that war servers had max 2k ppl per realm.. or 1k at launch.. and 2k 2 weeks after.. i dunno if they ever increased it.. it wasnt mmo.. game was divided into like i dunno 50 zones.. and wasnt open world.. you would have 5 players if ur lucky per zone.. that was what killed the game.. you can blame early release.. but game ran better in beta than it did in retail.. design choices which werent made by ea killed the game , poor networking codding is the biggest reason.. wow had 5k server capacity on 2005.. and 10k soon after.. i dunno if its any more now.. but when you launch game in what was it 2008? with 2k.. at best.. ur just screwed oh look pvp game without noone to fight with
I suppose EA is laying people off on division basis. So far in EA's MMO division they have Bioware and Mythic
Mythic has seen 4 rounds of layoffs, dunno how many people were let go this time, but in the other 3 it was well over 300 people...and not just support/marketing guys, but also plain game developers, modelling artists, programmers, etc.
Plus remember than a chunk of Mythic programers were rearranged to help bioware in network infrastructures for SWTOR
now...
How many rounds of layoffs has Bioware experienced?
How many people from Bioware has been let go?
How many relocated in other projects/studios?
I can answer to that 3 questions with one word: none.
No matter how you try ti spin this, WAR is dead in the water and EA are getting rid of Mythic's dead weight....
I don't want to sound cruel but..there is some truth in this...all of the guys who are getting laid off are talking about how proud they are of WAR and what a great company Mythic is. How can you be proud of that steaming pile of shit? And I don't say that lightly I saw the potential, saw the foundation they laid for true living cities, saw that at one time a deep story based PVE game was planned saw the beginnings of a PVP game that rivaled DAoC, but they half assed the whole shebang. And the only ones who are saying its good now are the six counterstrike kids they have stupidly listened to from the start.
WAR could have should have been a huge hit, but laziness poor management and just idiotic decisions made it otherwise. Personally I would not hire any of these guys, you don't say that you are proud of a broke dick game like WAR. Especially when your IP holder (Games Workshop) apologizes for it at their biggest game convention. (Baltimore Games Day) and swears that it will never happen again to one of thier products.
And even today they still just don't get it, look at their webpage they have that stupid killing people in the face blurb, and the just out of touch brainless producers letter, and you can bet your ass the site won't be updated for another month or two, but they want you to believe that everything is a-Okay
Is that a pre-rendered cinematic basket with or without voice overs ?
Very few people understand the MMo world and EA's next catastrophe is already in the making.
You know it, I know it and a handful of others. But isn't it amusing to see this all coming... months/years in advance?
According to Mark Jacobs, WAR would have had around 3 to 4 million subscriptions 2 years after launch.
To watch how this industry unfolds is better than 30 episodes of the Big Bang theory.
The day I saw the video of Mark Jacobs raving about the innovative and amazing WAR crafting system, I knew the game was in trouble. While WAR was arrogantly calling themselves the Led Zepplin of the gaming world (WoW being the Beatles), they were developing a product that had engame about 1/4 as interesting as the Blood Elf Island quests toward the end of BC in WoW. They were too arrogant and short sighted to see they had a flawed product. The last 2 years has been spent fixing issues that most MMO's do before they even launch.
It's not as amusing as seeing the same people posting the same kind of fuzzy logic viewpoints determinedly hoping/yearning for upcoming MMO's to fail that isn't their pet MMO.
It's sad, petty, but even more, I find it the ultimate joke and great forum entertainment.
Fixed for you, matey
yes, its really obvious now
about EA
you cannot blame EA for E&B, they allowed it to go for well over 1 year, and when they closed it, it had around 20k players total. Huge failure. Compare it to Tabula Rasa, it was canned far faster, when it had easily 5 times that players, and i dont see anyone grabbing the pitchforks to the NCSoft HQs...
More or less, its the same with the rest. Except for the sims, none of those games were developed by EA internally, it was all business adventures that failed because the games...well, simply failed. And failed projects get canned
boooo hooooo, that business company behave like a business company, they are SO EVIL....
The worst anyone can say about EA is that they have terrible tastes when it comes to MMO studios (apparently they improved, since they got Bioware), and its obvious that their legs dont shake when they have to close down something
But all those MMOs were failures long before pulling the plug, and since (xcept for the Sims) EA didnt write a single line of code nor boycotted them marketing-wise (more like the contrary), we could assume they would have failed even harder without them.
Now about Mythic
DAOC was saved by EA, without the money Mythic got from signing with EA, DAOC would have died shortly after. Mark Jacobs said that himself, that signing with EA saved DAOC.
And anyway in general terms DAOC could be considered more a failure than a success
Mythic ruined a great game they created with pathetic ongoing development that prove they know jack shit of gaming, they dont understand their playerbase, and they never understood why they succeeded the first time
pure dumb luck
Then you have Imperator, the MMO that never was, even tho they were working on it for 5 years they had absolutly nothing to show.
I guess thats the reason why they signed with EA, they were so in the red after:
- DAOC declining steadily because of their own screwups
-Imperator going nowhere
- and WAR's resources all spent in what in early stages of beta was pure shit..if you think WAR is bad now, you should have seen it in early beta, it was the worst crap ever known to man. Thats all Mythic is capable of doing
EA's contract would look like a god's gift for them
And then there is WAR, with this Mythic proved once again what they really are: absolutly incompetent.
All this while creating a legendary development record of HORRIBLE patches that invariably created far more problems than they fixed.
I feel sorry for EA, they think they are hiring 5 star studios, then those studios prove they are fucking shit undeserving of living in a competitive market, and still idiots blame THEM...
I just wanted to point out that the last MMO published by money hungry EA was ... WAR and the next MMO published by EA will be SWTOR.
Both have already a lot of things in common .Just one example: the lack of real 3D full rendered worlds and resort to painted 2D background borders.
You can ask in which world this "shortcoming" is more painful, in WAR ? or in a space opera where you can't even fly because of the fake 2D/3D bordering.
Like I said first: the entertainment one gets these days in sheer incompetence seen by game designers is unmatched.
I really want to meet these EA guys that check upon the games to be approved by their staff.
Harsh. But if true and from what others have said I have to think it is also fair.
To me WAR is over, if Gameswork shop a massive money grubbing company is washing its hands of it and appologising then its game over. Sad because I saw great potential in it, I was very excited about it even before Mythic took over and there was talk of Dogs of War and other elements such as being a rat catcher under the city of Aldoff. Instead we get a very cartoonish game with little customisation maybe 4 or so faces and hair. With the devs talking always about the armour sets, which are nice but it's real customisation. And then the experience was very bland with little to make the player think that was amazing. RvR was fun but nothing special and the bugs and balance issues made it unplayable.
Now where the blame should be aimed seems to be up for a lot of debate. Is it Mythics fault or EA's. To me all are equally to blame, the game didn't offer the gritty world that the IP could have offered. But instead tried for the cartoonish look of the world leader and ended up with nothing special and felt like a rip off. Which maybe unfair given WoW borrowed most its ideas. But once you have an industry standard you can't just repeat the forumal with lots of shouting about RvR and expect people to play it. Someone at EA or Mythic should have realised this and taken the game in another direction.
Which now looking to the future it would be interesting to see what this means for ToR. Whether by using a very similar forumal even down to the use of Cinematic trailers instead of gameplay they will see similar results as WAR. With a lack of innovation and delays in release date leading to a luke warm resepection and little to encourage MMO gamers to part with their cash to play it. Personally given the official announcement in 2008 and a target date of 2011 ToR is already set to follow WAR. Too little too late as it were while more innovotive games come onto the market and no longer try to peedle the same old tired WoW material.
what do u expect this is what happens when u put out a crappy game and take years to even get it to be a 1/10000th decent game. hope they go bankrupt to teach all these other mmo companies thawt they need to stop looking so much at a quick buck and more in the long run
Of course DAoC wasn't a WoW clone. DAoC was out first,. How do you clone something that doesn't exist yet? As to the rest, all we have to do is look around and see. Wolfpak consumed by Ubisoft, shortly after, Shadowsbane fails, former Wolfpak employees sacked, etc etc. EA is in the business of making money. Mythic was in the business of making games. To say EA had nothing to do with WAR is to fool yourself. They put unrealistic deadlines and constraints on the devs because they wanted a product that was making money now, not when it was done. This happens all over the computer industry. If you really wanna blame the root of it all, blame Bill Gates. Microsoft was the root of all this push it out even if it's buggy scheme.
I don't like EA, but you can't blame EA for WAR. They are the publisher, and the game was released in as good of a condition as one can reasonably expect in an MMORPG these days. The Mythic team was given alot of money and they didn't produce anything but a mediocre, niche game.
Terrible idea.
Adam, the man quoted all over the message boards at war, to this day, about "Shadow Warriors aren't getting any worse this patch, that's for sure." Only to be followed in that patch with class breaking, performance hindering bugs and nerfs. This on a class that was already at the bottom of the power scale.
Sorry,but no. Adam has lost credibility.
EA is not the publisher!!!!
They wholly and completely own, 100%, WHAT WAS Mythic Entertainment. Just another office inside EA called "EA Mythic" for 2 years now.
god people pay atttention.
just like BIOWARE ISNT A COMPANY ANYMORE. What WAS Bioware is just another office insde ea now known as "EA Bioware"
It's all just EA now. Just plain old EA at the end of the day.
Agreed heck just read what the guys over at cotw wrote Seems like EA was drinking the same Koolaide we all were.
u know nothing of the warhammer universe warhammer world has been in existance for decades before that crap game WoW.
Umm 1984, like 12 years before the first Warcraft game .:) Hardly decades. I have been playing Warhammer Fantasy Battles since then. And that Crap game wow stil has 11 million subs and acording to that article I just linked looks like WAR will be moving to one server. I call that fail of epic proportions
AdamG was a joke. I think they took his posting privileges away after he kept promising things that wouldn't be delivered. A big thing he said was that they would implement RvR weapons. He just didn't elaborate that it would take over a year to deliver from that point.
Q F T
and sadly Bioware will be the next one. I'll give them 1 month after release till the first layoffs. There is NO Bioware anymore its EA Bioware now and we all know (despite the fanboys) what this means :(
Mythic has nothing to blame but them self's in this matter... end of story.
Damn pitty the Climax version was scrapped, it was so much more promising and more warhammerlike from this crap.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkQvPQJ1_Dk
Amen,........... Mythic has been pumping out crap since 2003...
They should have dumped this current dev team a long time ago. Bring in some people with better ideas and have some kind of concept on how to make a decent combat system. I thought WoW had a mindless style of combat lol untill i played this 1 button smashing piece of garbage.
Is to wonder WHY so many people left War. Of course there were many reasons, crashes, inacceptable lag (especially scenarios), complete ignorance on any feedback .... i have been returning from time to time to discover there were some fixes, but not enough. And last reason when i quit for good about month ago when discovered they made respawn rate of mobs even shorter. 30 secs in many cases! Barely enough to kill next and previous is already respawned. Very cheap way to put players in constant grind state. I really hate this. And as it looks ... was my last try to return anyway ... does not look war will survive for long ... if not before then when 40 comes out.