Rumor: Warhammer Online to open official forums in 2009

by Michael Zenke Dec 6th 2008 at 1:15AM

Filed under: Fantasy, Forums, Warhammer Online, Rumors

Somewhere, somehow, William Shatner and Roseanne Barr are singing a duet. That appears to be the implication of a highly unexpected rumor reported on the Warhammer Alliance forum. Apparently, Warhammer Online will soon be launching company-sanctioned official forums. Back in March of this year, Mythic Entertainment's Mark Jacobs went on a ranting rampage about the very concept of official forums. In that whole discussion, he at one point stated he'd rather hear the two above celebrities slam out a duet together than bear the thought of official forums. His statements came during a period were other companies were making similar announcements, and some companies with official forums were even thinking of shutting theirs down.

So this (at this point) rumor as offered by Warhammer Alliance is something of a surprise. Forum admin Garthilk states this comes from "unofficial people in and out of Mythic, as well as inside EA, all tell[ing us] the same thing." He goes on to say that, if true, this will be a boon for the unofficial fan community. It will take pressure off of their taxed volunteer resources and allow them to better serve the community. We'll watch for an official response from Mythic, as well as further developments on this story.
[Via Broken Toys]

Tags: breaking, cm, community-management, forums, mythic-entertainment, official-forums, war, warhammer-online

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Rubin said on 2:45AM 12-06-2008

I guess it was only time. I do hope that they have more success in preventing it from becoming a place where people QQ, say the game will fail and other negative comments. For me, I only use the official forums in Wow for any announcements from Blizz and my dose of daily drama :P. Otherwise when I am looking for info related to the gameplay which is really the only time I head over to forums that discuss WoW I'll head over to non official sites. I expect the same to come true for WAR players. Sadly it always turns out that the fan sites have a more mature and constructive forum than the dev's.

Reader said on 3:15AM 12-06-2008

Warhammer Alliance took the place of the official forums. Lots of teens and other idiots. Luckily VN is pretty popular, though it's full of complainers (what forum isn't...).

The Claw said on 3:05AM 12-06-2008

Given that none of Mark Jacobs' other ideas have brought the game much success, it's probably a good idea to reverse this one too.

Osmosis said on 9:26PM 12-18-2008

A boon? I would think it would be more of a bust for the unofficial forums. When users look for a place to discuss a specific game or find support via a forum, why would they go to anything other than they official forum? Users of the sites hosting the unofficial forums will be loyal to a degree but anyone visiting the site solely for warhammer information will most likely just go to the Mythic site.

Jess said on 3:23AM 12-06-2008

While still a rumour it wouldn't surprise me one bit if it were true. Mythic also stated for the longest time that there would be no stealth classes in WAR. We all know how that went....

Mythic lost a ton of credibility when they sold out to EA. The decision to implement stealth into WAR when they said they wouldn't was bad enough, but if Mythic actually approves official WAR forums, you know damn well that any whatever credibility they had left as an independant MMO development company is gone.

Nadril said on 3:39AM 12-06-2008

How you figure exactly? Say what you want but Mythic would be in a much worse position right now without EA's money. if you think the game has issues currently then I don't see you would want to see them without EA.

I would like it if Mythic at least had a tech support forums, because trying to use Warhammer Alliance for tech support is real poor. If you compare dev posts in WHA's user to user support versus, say, Blizzard's tech support forums the differences are staggering. And with all the tech problems the game has currently they need to out reach to all they can.

Vulturion said on 5:53AM 12-06-2008

The picture that Massively made for this article = pure greatness !

Re : official forums - don't care, would only visit for announcements.

The City Of Heroes o.f. and Guild Wars o.f./wiki-thing have good atmospheres though, so they aren't always a den of despair... WAR's clearly would/will be though.

InfamousBrad said on 6:32AM 12-06-2008

This is actually a very good time for it. Patches 1.0.6 and 1.1 are bleeding a lot of negativity out of the community. And NCsoft is laying off or has just laid off some of the best official-forum moderators in the entire industry. I've been wondering what game company would be smart enough to snap them up; hopefully I'll get lucky and it'll be EA/Mythic.

smi04 said on 6:48AM 12-06-2008

Finally somewhere the WAR devs can read my concise and well written concerns about class Y being just too darn powerful. Also, Class X could really use a buff because obviously the devs dont play class X, but I am an expert at it.

If the devs are worried about people from Class A complaining, I will be sure to remind them about how Class X is the natural counter to Class A, as they intended.

BLUE PLX READ OR I QUIT!

ScytheNoire said on 8:33AM 12-06-2008

They only need support forums, for real problems. People who complain about things that aren't bugs or technical problems, get banned. It's pretty simple.

One major reason I stopped playing WAR is because there is no support currently for the game. Their in game system is poor, their GM's even worse, and the website support which deals with EA support, is so bad, it should be criminal.

Customer support is important, and that's the one forum they need badly. Perhaps they didn't have it because they knew how many technical problems they have and didn't want to deal with it like we've seen with Funcom and Blizzard and their technical problems.

But I felt ignored, so I ignored them back. No more money for you if you aren't going to offer real support to real problems.

Hades said on 10:48AM 12-06-2008

When you don't have official forums, you end up having to say the same thing in 15 different places to get the word out. When mark went to Tentonhammer and blasted official forums, I told him then that I thought that statement was foolish. Games should have official forums, and let the fansites maintain class and server boards.

Jack said on 3:21PM 12-06-2008

its about time....

rjgiskard said on 2:56PM 12-08-2008

Please, let it be so! And, if it is, please let it be that GOA must follow the lead; because if they have the option to skip it, they will.

sadorc said on 8:02PM 1-01-2009

Hi i would like to take this time to get a quick poll on members. I'm not sure if i can post this here so if I'm violating the rules mods feel free to delete this post right away, however this is something that has been bugging me so i decided it was time to create an account here and post. Anyways the question at hand is do people think botting sites should be allowed. For example i did a quick search on the net and pulled up right away sites like
WAR Warhammer Online Bots and Radars, and Warhammer Online Cheats, and finally Warhammer Online Guides Cheats Hacks
and these sites not only have bots but they have radars that can see players in game. This is something that is totally unfair and gives players far to great of an advantage on others. Well anyways personally i think they should not be allowed as it makes the legit players far underpowered to the overly powerful players. Here is even ascreen shot of the radar working that they have on there site it needs to be stopped. The worst part was how easy it was for me to pull up like 10 sites for warhammer online cheating by just typing warhammer online. Its not even under a specific key word.