Mythic Entertainment rebuts Jeff Kaplan's WAR critiques

by Michael Zenke Oct 17th 2008 at 10:30AM

Filed under: World of Warcraft, Fantasy, Warhammer Online, Opinion

Yesterday we noted an exchange between MTV Multiplayer's Tracey John and Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan, talking about Blizzard's exclusion from the closed Warhammer Online Beta. After that article went up, John put up another post touching on Mythic Entertainment's response - specifically, a phone call from the company's head Mark Jacobs. Jacobs specifically called out the following:

World of Warcraft featured a number of lengthy queues just to get onto servers when the game first launched in 2004.
Jacobs noted that EverQuest and his own DAoC featured customizable interfaces long before World of Warcraft was even launched.
Though WAR does have many similarities to WoW, the team developing the game made many choices specifically to stray from WoW's template. "If you look at the innovations in Warhammer, you'd be hard-pressed to find as many in WoW."

Ultimately he goes on to note that Warhammer has just launched, and that they're really happy with the way the game is going so far. "The game stability has been unbelievable and it blows away any other online game ... we're going to be continuing to be doing a lot for the game over the next six months, or nine months, or six years."

Tags: blizzard, mythic-entertainment, war, warhammer-online, world-of-warcraft, wow

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

JP said on 10:57AM 10-17-2008

Well, personally, I think he should have just blew off Kaplan's comments. I can understand that Kaplan reaches a much broader audience, but Kaplan just looks desperate and petty to me.

WAR is the first game (that I can think of) that had Blizz come out and say disparaging comments at all. That says a LOT more to me, then petty, minor complaints.

But, I'd chalk one up to Kaplan, at getting Jacobs to bite.

S'ok though. Mythic as a whole is leaps & bounds above Blizz in the implementation & innovation dept in my book. So, I forgive him.

As an aside: Anyone find it funny how the gaming industry is SO political now. Reminds me of the music industy through the 90s.

Mr Angry said on 12:52PM 10-17-2008

Arashikou said on 6:53PM 10-17-2008

I would find it funny if I didn't find it so frightening.

The one ray of light is that the indie gaming scene is in a very different place than the indie music scene was at roughly the same point in the modern recorded music industry's development, their path altered partly by a trend towards simple, casual games among certain parts of the population and by the indie music scene itself and the residual effects of its resurgence on other forms of entertainment.

KingJames said on 11:06AM 10-17-2008

As long as WAR keeps healthy server balances I could care less as a player if it is EVER as popular as WoW. I quit WoW because of knee jerk arena class changes. Lack of innovation, lack of content improvements and length of development time. The problem with Blizzard is they can't see over their noses anymore. Hating on a game 1 month old when 1 month into WoW it would take me over 1 hour JUST TO GET IN THE SERVER, let alone a BG. Eat his ass for lunch Mark!

The MMO industry as a whole is worse than two women fighting over a guy anymore. It's childish from players to devs. The thing that amazes me is how someone can bash a game for innovation when WAR is going to have released 2 classes in 3 months as WoW has taken 4 years to release a single new class. If Kaplan never talks to the media again it will be too soon. Blizzard would see it fit to keep a leash on this fool.

censorman said on 11:11AM 10-17-2008

Industry isn't that political yet. The fact Kaplan admitted he played WAR gives points to Mythic. Doubt he'll admit he played AoC (god what potential that no-end-game title had).

Jacobs fails in his rebuttal tho (and I'm a WAR player not a WoW fanboi). He brought up 'WoW had 4 years and billions of dollars, bla bla bla'. Sure, it's unfair for a game to come out today and have to compete against 4 years of polish - but if you're not prepared to put out that quality of a game, save us time and money and make an SP game. WAR is not competing against WoW 1.0, it's up against WoW 3.0. The game has something for everyone (expect pvpers). WAR seems to have something for some pvpers.

Too bad there are only 2 factions... once end cities exchange hands a few times, I foresee a mass exodus of bored pvpers. Wonder where they will go, though.

ScytheNoire said on 11:31AM 10-17-2008

All Jacobs had to do is ask how their latest patch is going.
LOL

For those that don't know, Blizzard has been rushing things, and the latest patch is making things unplayable, causing crashes, tons of bugs and problems. Bunch of friends who still play WoW are really pissed about how they just screwed up the game with the last patch.
Just peak into WoW's official forums for some amusement.

Then of course, he could've asked what Blizzards next new IP will be, because they already ripped off Games Workshops two main franchises.

Or could have asked how many more things from Warhammer Online Blizzard is feeling the need to rush and put into their game.

Seriously, Kaplan is an asshat.

crsh said on 12:22PM 10-17-2008

No matter how much I like playing WoW (I'm going on 4 years), I can't help but feel like Kaplan is acting like a self-righteous jerk.

WoW didn't invent anything, it's been a compilation of elements from other games from the very first day. It's especially ironic to me that Kaplan tries to trash Mythic on things WoW doesn't do so well; server stability and PvP system, etc.

Blizzard is good at what it does, but let's give credit to where credit is due. It's not because you have 11 million players that your game in inherently better; quantity vs quality, and all that jazz.

Oh, and Kaplan, don't make a Gaute Goddager out of yourself and just shut the hell up next time.

JoeF said on 12:41PM 10-17-2008

While I find the entire dialog between these two people to be completely pointless, I'm going to point out one correction:

"World of Warcraft featured a number of lengthy queues just to get onto servers when the game first launched in 2004."

This is not a true statement. When I started playing WoW on Nov 23, 2004, there were no server queues. It wasn't until 2 months later, when the game grew in popularity faster then Blizzard expected, that the queues arrived.

Vino said on 2:48PM 10-17-2008

3.0 killed my server, its been offline and unplayable for 2 days. i actually hope i get some time to play this weekend.

Why do i put up with this? because i actually want to play a mmo thats good. sure wow has had server problems since the beginning and ever patch after that, but its still better than the alternative.

WAR is just boring. I dont raid, i pvp in battlegrounds mostly and warcraft pvp is a lot better than WAR pvp as it is right now.

And those seige things they are talking about? well that was done a long long time ago. Look at Lineage the blood pledge. that came out around the same time Diablo was out, and that had castle seiges.

musachy said on 3:03PM 10-17-2008

"WAR is just boring. I dont raid, i pvp in battlegrounds mostly and warcraft pvp is a lot better than WAR pvp as it is right now."

lol, you are lame beyond limits.

DrunkenPandaren said on 3:57PM 10-17-2008

Raiding in my WAR?

I don't think you even touched the game.

Tasogare said on 5:33PM 10-17-2008

If you think WoW's pvp is better, you must be playing either a ret pally or a druid. WoW pvp is nothing but twitchy, FOTM garbage. It's more based on what toys developers want to give their favorite class and gear than it is on skill. Not to mention that any pvp that wasn't solely based on bg's and arenas died a long long time ago, and even then, anyone try AV in the last year? It's more of a pve race than a pvp objective based battleground.

brian said on 3:06PM 10-17-2008

i love how mmo devs are always saying "we specifically swayed away from what wow is doing, were unique" instead of just taking the good things wow has brought and expanding on them, there is a reason that wow has 11million or whatever players. Another thing is the new wow patch deleted all my mounts and pets. however blizz fixed everything for me in no time and i was doing fine. when i was trying to get the war beta to download it was problem after problem, I am sticking with wow, not because of innovations but because of their commitment to customers.

Quinnae said on 3:12PM 10-17-2008

This little spat is amusing, certainly. Both sides have their vested interests.

I think it's a bit telling that Jacobs, after saying a few weeks ago that he understood he had to compete against WoW 3.0 and not 1.0 and thus wasn't going to cry about it, sort of reneged on that. Nevertheless it's a somewhat valid point. WoW and several other games were plagued with far worse stability issues than Warhammer on launch.

Kaplan's comments do not necessarily speak to desperation but they are more specific than we've heard him or any Blizzard employee get in a long time apropos rival games. Blizzard has little reason to be 'desperate'- it'll take a cratering of the East Asian market plus a massive Western exodus in order to gut the game's subscribers. The former is even less likely than the latter.

But WoW's finally having to share the limelight with another game that doesn't suck. Despite the complaints of some, as these launches go Warhammer has largely lived up to its hype. Whether it can stand the test of time is another issue- but I think we're forgetting that Warhammer has the luxury to worry chiefly about expanding the game's content and balancing it.

Contrast that AoC and Vanguard who were outright missing vast swathes of leveling content- and in the case of AoC a conspicuously absent PvP system.

Lastly, every MMO is derivative. I love WoW and it'll always hold a special place in my heart- but to say that it's even a mostly original game beggars belief. The only way it was truly original was- admittedly not a small thing- its organisation and presentation of content in such a way as to be friendlier to a less hardcore set. Beyond that, however, the constituent bits themselves are just hand-me-downs from older titles.

*Every* MMO does this. Jacobs exaggerates a bit when he claims Warhammer is more innovative than WoW if only because he's not putting handles on that statement by providing context. More innovative than WoW was at its launch? More innovative than WoW today? Either thesis there would need several caveats at least.

But for WoW to claim strident originality is a bit silly. It owes a lot of EQ and Asheron's Call for sure- and every modern MMO owes a bit of something to UO.

It's only evolution, baby.

kongeroo said on 7:35PM 10-17-2008

I really can't stand Blizzard's approach to its gaming base. The general philosophy is "keep them subscribing" through long winded grind rather than the WAR approach of just have fun (which is the mantra of all other online PC games or console games). I hope WAR succeeds just to give some competition in a stagnant MMO genre. No other PC game genre has so much money poured at every month.

And about the WoW patch - I queued for 1 hour to get on Thursday, then received world server down on two servers (game card is due to expire in November I might add). The pitch forks would come out if that was Conan or WAR. People just need to give other MMOs some patience and stop expecting version 3.0 games when they arrive. Take a look at Paladins in WoW right now, and the forever "class XXX is overpowered" problem the game has, it's not perfect it just has a very very strong game engine that is hard to beat.