Names, Punks and Cuts
July 11, 2008
Possible CE sell-outage aside, the past 24 hours has witnessed a whirlwind of major Warhammer announcements, which some will be apathetic to, some supportive of, and some will fling up their hands and run around like Chicken Little with a severe case of hotfoot. We haven’t seen a day this surprising and chaotic since the delay and CE was announced back in March.
So what’s going on, and what’s my take? Let’s break it down, team:
Mythic changes its name from “EA Mythic” back to “Mythic Entertainment”
Um, good. I like. I’ve always felt a little dirty writing “EA Mythic” on this blog, like I’m on the company payroll or something, so I’ve just fudged “Mythic” instead for the most part. It’s nice they’re reclaiming their brand name, giving their company a distinct identity under the EA umbrella a la Bioware and Pandemic. Plus, it made Mark Jacobs happy, and that means no employees at Mythic will have to brave the Gauntlet of Piano Wire today.
Mythic partners with Punkbuster for anti-cheating/hacking software.
Awesome. Terrific. Perfect. We at WAAAGH! are firm in our stance that hackers, keyloggers and gold farmers only serve to cheapen a product, drag a game down into the mud, and ruin the experience for the rest of us. Punkbuster is a powerful weapon to fight these guys, and hopefully they’ll shy away from WAR looking for easier targets. Hey, look at Runescape! Look at them! All defenseless like that!
Four capital cities cut from the launch game, to be patched in later.
Honestly? This is no big surprise. I haven’t been alone in the WAR community in saying this — we’re far too along in the dev cycle to have only seen two of the capital cities in any great detail (or, hey, any detail at all). It was a huge worry point that they were falling behind on the other four, and considering just how much detail, features and focus is placed on capital cities in WAR, they have to be done right. It’s not just a vendor/quest hub, it’s guild taverns, city sieges, the living city system, and numerous public quests and instances.
However, I won’t lie and say this isn’t disconcerting. There’s an upside to this cut (more on that later), but WAR is going to take a public perception hit from this, no doubt. Yes, they’re doing it for the right reason, and yes, that is a huge testament to their dedication to quality and polish. But a lot of people aren’t going to see that; they’re going to see “cut features” — especially features that are at the HEART of the RvR system — and cry “liar liar pants on fire” or “robbery”. Again, we’re in beta, and the game is subject to change(tm) at any point, but for a lot of people (including fans), the game’s features have been set in stone in their minds for some time now. To take some of those features away might appear to cheapen the end product (you’re not getting as much for your dollar, etc.).
Another expected wave of anger from the fans might stem from the fact that we’ve swallowed two delays so far, the last cited for “polish and iteration”. For those not in the beta, pretty much everyone assumed after hearing Mythic talk was that all of the core features and gameplay was in place, it was just a little spit and polish and testing from then on out. They were willing to go along with the delay for polish and iteration, but now that major features are to be cut, I expect a lot of people to (rightfully) be upset that the delay didn’t even serve to give time to include these features. It seems a bit hinky to me — “polish” isn’t “let’s get the good stuff great and cut large swaths of content from the game that isn’t up to par yet”.
I’ll be willing to give Mythic the benefit of the doubt, as always. I’m sure they have a good reason, a great reason, many reasons — as Mark says, they were looking at this issue months ago. But what I immediately think of is that only having the Empire and Chaos cities, most people will be tempted to roll Empire and Chaos at the start, or barring that, move their characters to those zones ASAP. Will RvR still work or be meaningful in the other two major sections? I guess we’ll wait and see.
The good news is that Mark is promising “fabulous” polish and content on the two included cities, and the fact that there will be end game city content (sieges, dungeons, etc.) for those who get up to 40 fast.
Four classes cut from launch, to be patched in later.
More than capital cities, this is a big blow to many folks. The Choppa, Hammerer, Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun (two tanks, two melee DPS careers) are being held back from launch for further testing and polish. According to Mark, they weren’t exciting or distinct enough, and if included in launch, would require a whole lot of changes and tuning to make work right post-launch (which players tend to hate).
Is this a surprise? Um, yes. Even though we’ve heard so little about these four classes lately (especially the notorious Black Guard), I don’t think it crossed anyone’s minds that WAR’s much-vaunted 24 classes would be lower at launch. 20 classes is still a heck of a lot, of course, but I know some folks had their heart set on making one of the cut four their mains, and that has got to sting.
As Mark admits, this decision doesn’t really have an upside, apart from “we’re not including crappy, half-assed content” into WAR. A lot of what I said for the capital cities cuts applies here as well — players are going to feel cheated or robbed from the full experience, people will start biting their fingers worrying about population balance (especially with two tanks out of the mix), and it is going to be negative publicity for Warhammer. Many antagonists of WAR are just waiting for ammunition to spit at the game, stating as proof that this is a clear sign of failure, of failed promises, of a flawed and faulty launch day like other MMOs in the past.
In rebuttal, understandably hurt WAR fans will nevertheless point to the fact that their devs weren’t trying to hide this — in fact, they went out of their way to let us know as soon as possible so we could go into launch with reasonable expectations. There’s a lot of trust between WAR fans and the dev team, and this does strengthen that.
Although they don’t need me to tell them this, Mythic needs to make these final four classes their #1 priority post launch, once they get everything smooth and stable. With 20 brand new classes to pick from, players won’t be smarting too long, and most everyone will have something to play that they’ll like. And who knows? A few months down the road, and the announcement that these classes are to be added back in will be cause for much excitement and celebration (as will the capital cities).
Listen, I hate these cuts just as much as you. I can see the upside and the downside, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t worry me or make me feel a bit uncertain about the game when it comes out. The one best thing I’m taking away with this — reading between all the lines — is that these cuts would NOT be happening if Mythic was planning on delaying the game any further. I think this is a solid sign that we’re on track for release in the fall, and they’re going to make it happen, even if that means some sensible cuts to get there.
Given the choice between an earlier launch with some delayed features or a much later launch with all the features, I’m sure a majority of WAR fans would go with the first.
Well nuts, blackguard was close to the top of my list of classes I was interested in.
As for the cities change, i think it is a good idea for now, there is nothing worse in an MMO than having content spread too thin. So now we will get 2 fabulous cities. and they will be adding the others at later dates, perhaps weaving them into a new fork of story line. The classes that are being cut does sadden me, but that being said this also plays in to future expansion packs. so now they have a lot of opening classes and 4 more for expansions. without reaching for new class ideas. off topic does anyone know if they are using the same con system as DAoC? cuz i loved my purple ganking
I don’t mind any of the cuts, I mainly want the game. The only thing that worries me here is this:
Holding the Capital Cities and Classes back and not releasing them except with the first of many planned once-a-year expansions that I’m sure is due next fall.
This content was pushed to be available at game launch and should come free as a content update, not as an additional bonus to any future expansion.
I do however, see this as Launch might be coming late September/early October though.
Just curious where the news of the cuts came from, I don’t see it on the official site anywhere.
Do you smell that?…….It smells like….no it can’t be….the last time I smelled failure was May 24, 2008….That can’t be right….but what if it is failure?
Hmmmmm……….
My only concern is, that wanting to play a dwarf, how will my zones populations be? Will I be trying to RvR by myself?
Also, I can only wonder what the Dark Elves are going to be like without a tank. Empire shouldn’t be too bad since a lot of other players are most likely going to go there as soon as possible to play since it has the city siege.
However, these are pretty obvious concerns. I’m sure Mythic is aware of them and has a plan to address them. If they didn’t, they would just have to delay the game cause there would be no way for it to work then. But…yeah. I’d much rather have the game partially complete, than have it delayed again.
What i really want to know now is how the racial pairings will be affected in tier 4? are the two cities going to be at the end of just the empire vs chaos zones or what. Only two capital cities is a big let down, i don’t care how fabulous their saying they are and I’d be 100% positive they could have made these cuts known to us before the last delay. Only good thing to be had from this news is that they might be able to release in the fall.
Not good news at all.
Especially if you were intending on rolling one of the 4 delayed classes. The class delays doesn’t hurt too much. They could have just stuck them in and we would have ended up with what WoW had in the form of their warriors and hunters when they released. basically craptastic classes with very few reasons to play them other than to wait for the class to get fixed.
What has me concerned is the delay of 4 of the capitol cities. This could potentially skew the initial gameplay drastically from what the devs had intended. There won’t be 3 fronts of fighting any more. Now we’ll be stuck with only one that truly matters. If there is no Capitol Cities for greenskin vs stuntie and High Elf vs Dark Elf, then there will be no real reason to even bother with the third tier or even fourth tier areas. Sure, you could go there to get the perks of the keeps, but without anything to progress to after taking control of your enemies 4th tier zone why bother?
One other concern I have dealing with the withdrawal of 4 capitol cities. Where will those races go for their quests/guild hubs/all that fun stuff they’ve been touting in their video’s? Are all 3 races going to be stuck at the one city until they release the others? Or will they release the others in part, and just not have them invadable/upgradeable, so that the orks don’t have to suffer the pansy ass dark elven plot quest lines.
In all, not very welcome news. Other than the fact that as you said, they seem to be doing it to stick by their Fall release date.
I think its a good move and will allow player buildup in the capital cities and stuff. Personally I wont buy the game for a while until I read glowing reviews cuz I am a cautious person and tired of wasting my money but I believe it has a better chance for success if they focus their efforts like this.
Just yesterday I decided to roll Magus first…..go me
The announcements were made on MMORPG.com.
I’m disappointed that we won’t see 4 of the capital cities, but it’s not game-breaking. For a long time a certain MMO had only 2 cities with Auction Houses and such, and they were the main hubs while the other cities were ghost towns. To me, it means that when they ARE released, it’ll be new things to explore and do.
The class cuts are tough as well, but I’m hoping that it’ll mean that they’ll be better when finally released. I’ve played games that had boring classes/content at launch (Turbine, I’m looking at you) and that drove me away fast. I’d rather have some cool features to look forward to than have boring/unbalanced features in the present.
And I give kudos to Mark and Mythic for being upfront and honest about what’s going on. I seriously doubt you would see that from most other MMO companies.
Actually there is no guarantee that those 4 classes are only going to be delayed, Mark actually says they may get them into the game later if they can ever make them fun. That means they may be gone entirely and forever. Maybe.
A great deal would depend on the time scale between launch and the patching in of the cities and classes.
Anyone heard when we could expect to see the missing content?
I think Hammerer, Chopper, and Black Guard just need some more time to come into full form. However the KotBS…Just looks like a standard sub-par buff botting tank like the Conq in AoC. They might scrap it.
Also they stated on warhammeralliance I believe that to advance on the capital city you would need to control at least two of the Tier zones. IE to go to tier 3 you need to control the Chaos/empire tier 2 and the greenskin/stuntie or Delf/Helf Tier 2 zones. Just what sounds like the most plausible solutions.
I completely agree with you Syp, but would like to add one more thing into the mix.
There were 2 choices here. Cut content or delay the game …again. One of the larger factors in favor of cutting content and releasing an “unfinished” game is probably (in my opinion) related to the suspected release date of the WoW expansion.
I feel that WAR will do much better (granted even more so if they didn’t have to cut content) if they released their game *before* the next WoW expansion. If they wait (or delay) until after the WoW expansion, all of the WoW players will be heads deep in that new content and won’t come up for air for another 6+ months. By releasing WAR before the WoW expansion, they take advantage of the current end of patch boredom that the current WoW itteration is experiencing. Knowing that a MMO’s launch is critical to its long-term success, beating WoW to the punch will only serve to help Warhammer suceed in the MMO space.
That in mind, the success of their game depends (at least in some part) to keeping their Fall release date. Thus, it only leaves one solution. Cut out the sub-par content.
Hey Syp, I agree with just about your entire analysis. As someone who used to have a WAR blog, ahem, I want to point out that I don’t think this is all bad news. In fact, I think there were probably too many classes to begin with. If the four “deleted” classes are introduced over the months following the game’s release, I think this will be a nice bonus for people who are in the game for the long haul.
I am a little more upset about only two capital cities. I love big, sprawling cities that you can explore, gaze at and ultimately defend and conquer. However, if these “deleted” cities are integrated into the game over the first three to six months, this will really give us so much to look forward to.
I would much rather have a very polished game come out in three months than have a) a not so polished game come out, or b) a very polished game come out in six months. The removed content can be added later. But you cannot unring the bell of a buggy, unpolished launch. Bring it on.
Im not too worried about being ’stuck in a city’ as I plan to be out in the field fighting most of the time. So long as actual RvR is fun, I will be happy.
Wow, that’s pretty amazing. At the same time, I think I’d actually rather have the game and be able to play it while waiting for that content than have the entire game postponed, but yowsa — that’s going to hurt the perceptions for sure.
I was on the fence between Choppa and a Shaman, but I guess that’s a pretty clear cut choice now. Black Orcs look neat too though…WAAAAAGH!
Those 2 cities that are coming out must be awesome and when you make something so perfect in the beginning you would hate to do worse just to get it done. That is half-ass work. I’m with Mythic. People have been saying for months: “no more delay”, “the game will be done when it is done”, and “quality not quanity”. Well Mythic is giving quality and not slipping like you asked. It is a MMO and it is a living, growing game. Give it time to grow and evolve. The day the other cities release you will be 40 and you will be as happy as release day. The day a new class for free comes out the same feeling will rise in you belly. It will be great. They have made a game in 3 years. That is super fast for a MMO. Give them a break. They are working very hard and are just as disappointed as you but they wanted the best for you just like your parents always want the best for you. I got 1thing to say about it, Thank you Mythic!
I dont really understand the fear that the whole game mechanic is now broken.
1) Mythic wouldn’t let that happen. Why spend the whole development cycle touting this ideal of a finished and polished game on release, and then break the RvR element within the last 6 months (shorter please)?
2) From my admitting lacking knowledge of the system Tier 1-3 was simply a matter of getting the points to transfer to the next sections. If tier 4 is the Empire vs chaos battles then all is good in terms of mechanics.
Only problems I foresee are the numbers pouring into these areas designed for only 1/3 of the player base. And the result that these announcements will have on fickle people following WAR.
I can see that the extra cities( and classes) could be included maybe 1-2 months after release before the majority of people have a character to top level. So no harm done. Maybe.
I think my main concern comes from the fact I do not think Mythic from the start has had the right mind set on how long it takes to develop a triple-A title MMO and make it good. Yes they made DAoC in less than 3 years but honestly the standards have changed and it take 4+ years (as long as you don’t have to make a major graphics upgrade) to get everything right. Although, if they intend to make a fall release this news may hurt sales if things continue on their current path, which leads me to believe that Open Beta will hit sooner than we expect to help smooth over the news. I’d also like to iterate that I do not think the gameplay will be bad, but I am upset that 4 major portions of content and reason for realm pride will be missing at release and adding that content later will not have the same effect as that for the Empire and Chaos at release.
I also forgot to mention its better to have heard it now than get in game and find out later that there wern’t 4 cities and 4 classes you expected there.(AoC I’m looking at you!)
How does the game even function without four of the six capitol cities? I’m presuming the leveling content for the other four realms will still be in the game. Is there rapid travel to the two cities that will be ready for launch, or are those players from other realms in for a really long haul every time they want a bank/AH? What happens if someone actually pulls off a city siege, half the server loses access to their non-black market banks and auction houses? All this and two of the realms won’t have their tanks?
I suppose launching with some of the content and having it ready is better than launching with it and having most of it suck, but they would probably have been better off delaying the game instead of cutting so many promised features. After AoC’s famously unfinished launch, there isn’t going to be much patience for charging full price for less than full content.
this is sad news. i wanted to play the black guard but its no big deal for me if thye just add it at the next patch or something.
Yes I agree with your points. All the cut features are not really bad, it’s done because they can’t make the careers and cities the way they want without delaying the release further. I think it’s a good thing, it show they really care about making a great game and won’t give us stuff that ain’t done although it might give them bad PR.
Other people will not see it in that light, but as if they have been cheated of features that were promised. I read the comments on Massively and found this:
“Bad news, sounds like a rushed product. Well looks like I’ll make WoW my permanent home with ocassional trips to Moria”
It just make me sad. And frustrated.
I 100% agree with and applaud Mythic’s decision to drop the other cities and drop the 4 classes. They should continue to drive to push out the most polished game possible.
It’s the typically the mistakes that people remember rather than the 100 other things done right. Why not remove the broken pieces until they are fixed and ready to go? We all see what’s happening with AoC, players apparently leaving due to unfinished or broken content. Mythic appears to understand these lessons.
If you listen to the latest Massively podcast (13), there’s an interview with former EQ2 lead, Scott Hartsman, and it’s actually eerie to hear him talk. The struggles and decisions made by his team on EQ2 were very similar to Mythic’s. The conclusion I can draw based on his industry experience is that this is the right thing to do.
The final thing we must all remember is that it’s the vast silent majority of users who probably have never spent any time combing the net for Warhammer Online news that will make or break this game. They will be drawn into the game from good word of mouth and not care or know about missing cities or classes. In fact, the fact that these are coming in a future release will probably keep them hooked.
Thanks Mythic for doing the right thing!!
i think people are missing the biggest announcement of all… Punk Buster is going to be their anti-cheat program… This game wont be ruined within a month like AoC!
and the biggest problem with WoW is the economy… no matter how many patches wow sends out – the damage is done.
Lots of thoughts here and elsewhere guys… I appreciate that a lot of you aren’t being purely emotional about this, but reasonable and thoughtful. Very good points all around!
I think the missing classes are a bigger blow than the missing cities, although personally it won’t affect me much as I wasn’t planning on playing those classes anyway.
As far as the cities go, well..
At release WoW had 3 or 4 end game dungeons? LBRS/UBRS, Strat, Scholo? I don’t think MC was ready, or it was at least too hard for the majority of players. There were no battlegrounds at all. When WAR comes out we should have 3 end game dungeons per side plus fully working keeps and city seiges, and quite a few scenarios. There’s still pleanty to do, more than WoW had, more than AoC has. Then we’ve got even more end game content coming when they release the new cities.
I think the best thing to stem all the nerd rage would be, if they could, to promise to a) fill those missing class spots with either those same classes reimagined or alternative classes somewhere down the line and b) say that it will be in free patches, not paid for expansions.
Punkbuster is what scares me the most, as I’ve had terrible experiences with in the past, although I’m glad that Jacobs said they can just turn it off if it doesn’t work out in the beta.
I’m sure the lack of 4 cities won’t be as bad as I originally thought, but I hope it doesn’t take them too long to release that content. Having 2 cities will keep the community closer at launch, which is good, but I don’t want to be waiting around for over a year just to experience a city siege in my own city.
Still, I have faith in Mythic.
[...] as his site, which focuses on the Greenskins, just lost one of their classes and their capitol; Syp from Waaagh seems mixed, mostly upset with how the news was delivered; and Keen from Keen and Graev feels the [...]
I hope they wont charge for the missing content as part of an expansion pack or something.
PunkBuster will probably cause so many problems it will lead to a huge headache for Mythic. It’s a horrible piece of software that doesn’t work right or work as advertised. It’s akin to DRM, and we know how well that has turned out.
So on top of all the others problems Mythic has been having and all the bad press, they are going to get lambasted when PunkBuster screws over paying customers and messes things up.
Mythic sure doesn’t seem to learn from the mistakes of others.