Warhammer developers explain their expansion/new content philosophy

by Michael Zenke Dec 11th 2008 at 9:00AM

Filed under: Fantasy, Expansions, Patches, Warhammer Online, Massively Interviews

A few days ago Mark Jacobs offered up the heartening news that the Mythic Entertainment developers are focused solely on supporting the Warhammer Online live game. While the devs have had some discussions about expansion content, for the foreseeable future the company is going whole-hog on supporting and advancing the existing game. We spoke with Adam Gershowitz and Associate Producer Josh Drescher about Mark's statement, and got some deep insights into their philosophy on new content.

Offered Josh Drescher, "We want to reward player loyalty, we want to show we're dedicated to the ongoing quality of the product we already have on the market, and we want to leverage all the resources we've got. We have an entire team here that's already worked their fingers to the bone on this game. Adam has no fingers left, he just has two stumps he uses to beat on the keyboard."

Read on below the cut for full details on everything from patching philosophies to the Warhammer team's plans for future live events.

Talking about the possibility of new careers leads naturally into Mark Jacobs' recent comments on your focus on the live game. While you have had discussions about what will be in the expansion, that's not something you're focusing on right now. What you just discussed as far as not feeling the need to put in additional classes, does that tie into this same 'focus on what you already have' mentality?

"We will never expand the live game simply for the sake of expansion. We will never develop another expansion just so we can put another box on the shelf."

Josh: Yeah, we will never expand the live game simply for the sake of expansion. We will never develop another expansion just so we can put another box on the shelf. For us, expansions represent a strategic element of the ongoing lifecycle of this product. If you're familiar with what we did on Dark Age of Camelot, it was always a mix of free live content updates and occasional retail expansions.

We generally feel that for a game like this, that's only been out for a couple of months, it's far more appropriate for us to be focusing on adding new content in a way that doesn't cost the players additional money. In these rough economic times the last thing we want to do is force our players to shell out another fifty bucks to continue playing the game.

We want to reward their loyalty, we want to show we're dedicated to the ongoing quality of the product we already have on the market, and we want to leverage all the resources we've got. We have an entire team here that's already worked their fingers to the bone on this game. Adam has no fingers left, he just has two stumps he uses to beat on the keyboard. These people have worked so hard for the last few years, we want to make sure that content is given enough attention.

A game like ours, because it has so many different features in it, we were aware it was going to require constant adjustment and changes as the game matures. You'll start to see that in patches like 1.1. This patch is, in many ways, focused on improving the mature game. It's focused on making sure the experience is not just a weird retro-fitted version of what we launched with. These are living breathing systems that change over time. A responsible developer will recognize it's not on the player to shell out money to keep the game running. It's the developer's responsibility to make sure the game is fun and exciting.

Expansions should be different from this baseline; they should represent a unique and special addition to the existing content. That will come well into the future.

Adam: We like free stuff.

"Expansions should be different from this baseline; they should represent a unique and special addition to the existing content. That will come well into the future."

How do you view all these changes coming to the game so soon after launch?

Josh: I think they're part of the natural maturation process of the game. They're also a part of the ongoing dialogue we have with our users. The very legitimate and important feedback we've gotten from the players is really being seen in this update. It's sort of the 'greatest hits' patch when it comes to what players have been asking for. Things the players felt needed improving, things players felt needed to be added to the game ...

On that note of free stuff, despite the focus on patching there has already been several content updates. Heavy metal in particular sounded like it was getting some positive feedback. Are you going to be focusing on providing more of these unique events vs. 'holidays'?

Adam: Absolutely. We're all about it. We were really excited to do the Witching Night and Heavy Metal events. They were our first foray into live events, and the player response has been so good that we're currently deep into planning a bunch more. Some of those might be more like annual events, but one of the themes we'll be following is that we don't want to just shove a patch out. We don't want to just shove out major new changes to the game and go "here's 27 pages of patch notes, go have fun." You'll see more and more of these, and they'll directly connect with new content and updates as they come into the game.

Josh: In the next year or so, you'll see everything ranging from 'holidays' to new content updates to things I think can only reasonably be described as 'free expansion packs'. We're not talking about any details yet, but our commitment to free content is not just lip service. It's a philosophical position we have for the kind of product we're trying to provide. We always want the player to be looking forward to something big and new a month down the road.

"We're not talking about any details yet, but our commitment to free content is not just lip service. It's a philosophical position we have for the kind of product we're trying to provide. We always want the player to be looking forward to something big and new a month down the road."

Can you give us a sense of when we might see the event?

Josh: You will get a press release on Friday about what the next will be. I'll even tell you what it's called. It's called "Keg's End" and it involves a lot of drinking.

The way you folks acknowledged the contribution issue was very unique. Do you feel very strongly about making sure players know that you know when there are problems like this?

Josh: That's always a tough situation. We can't address everything anyone ever complains about. That said, we want to make sure that there is transparency. That their legitimate concerns are being actively worked on, that we're not oblivious to them. It is a challenging thing to figure out how to convey that to the community. Do you want to do it in sort of an official way ...

Adam: Or do you want to do it with cream pies?

Josh: We tried a little bit of each. We admit, we thought the humor in the first video was more obvious than it turned out to be. Which is why we rapidly set up the second video to make sure everyone knew what was going on. "Wow, swing and a miss on that there." We were trying to be open and honest on it. We screwed up, the players noticed, and we were fixing it as fast as we could. It turned into a whole political thing.

We're committed to openness and transparency, but we'll probably continue to try different delivery methods until we find something that is a little less dangerous than patch notes on YouTube.

There was some talk recently about an official forum coming down the pipe for Warhammer. Is that something you guys can comment on?

Josh: Any of that kind of stuff comes directly from the desk of Mark Jacobs. Any sort of announcements of that sort you'll get directly from Mark.

WAR has gone 1.1! Check out our full coverage of the 1.1a patch, along with our interviews exploring upcoming content and the open RvR changes. Plus, don't miss any of our ongoing coverage as Massively goes to WAR!

Tags: expansion, featured, interview, live-events, mythic-entertainment, war, war-patch-1.1, warhammer-online

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Adam Teece said on 9:42AM 12-11-2008

Yeah, I think I will be a player of Warhammer for a long time to come if the keep on doing stuff like this. I really appreciate the transparency and I just get the feeling that they care a lot more about their players than Blizzard ever did.

Jess said on 10:11AM 12-11-2008

Funcom, I hope you're taking notes.

Turbine, pat yourselves on the back because most of the industry is still trying to catch up with your standard of free content and polish. Never rest on your laurels though.

lethality said on 10:20AM 12-11-2008

Uh, all they are doing is finishing their beta on the susbcriber's dime. Nothing more, nothing less.

This is all the same stuff they would have been doing if they had not launched and held back... but they HAD to launch to get money in the door. However, now the players are paying for incomplete software.

Valdur said on 11:38AM 12-11-2008

All I see is they are completing their game to bring it to the state it was supposed to be at launch.

Like AoC this game will need at least six months to be completed.

Abriael said on 1:16PM 12-11-2008

With a laugh at the usual bashing that of course comes always from the usual, biased direction, an hint: the Keg's End event has been available for a week already on the test server, so if you're curious, you know where to look :D

Peacenrespect said on 2:19PM 12-11-2008

I find it funny how all of those fanboi's from WoW have the nerve to ever comment on WAR's launch. If I remember correctly WoW's launch was much worse with terrible game instability. I hear "oh, you are just paying for an incomplete game still in Beta"....um...what do you think we all paid for when WoW launched!! But because the choices of mmo's on the market today surpass the options players had back in 2004, the biased, fanboi complaints and hatred for WAR continue. There will never be a game launched that is completely ready....I repeat....NEVER!!!!...Hell, windows Vista launched incomplete and unstable until SP1...So, for all the ignorant people out there who continue to bash any game that isnt WoW, I will dumb down my final piece of advise....uuummmmm...don play WAR and go play WoW cuz u gotz mad skillz and plays a betta game:)

Osmosis said on 7:00PM 12-11-2008

They are truly trying to create a WoW competitor. Kudos to them! Unfortunately, their game is a little too much like WoW for many of the non-WoW playing crowd, and it will forever be branded as such due to the visual style of the game, which is unfortunate.

Myself, I'm playing WAR sure, but once Darkfall lands I'll surely be jumping ship for that Titanic. I'm pretty sure I'll have a place to return to, thanks to attitudes like the one expressed in this interview.

Jeremy T said on 3:29PM 12-11-2008

What is it about MMO players that we've come to accept - even expect - that these games will be incomplete at launch? Of course compromises have to be made over the lifetime of a project, but in the case of WAR they slashed key features that had already been heavily promoted.

So Mythic is now finishing the core game before working on the expansion. Honestly, though, could they have gotten away with doing anything else? Would consumers really have been willing to pay more to see these cut features in a future expansion?

Given the heavy competition in the MMO market right now, I really doubt it.

Peacenrespect said on 3:46PM 12-11-2008

But to expect anything less than an incomplete game at launch is unrealistic. No game has ever launched 100% complete. If this is the case than dont play PC games...period!!!...case in point: The witcher, Neverwinter nights 2, the recently released Fallout 3 has bugs, and I can go on and on when it comes to PC titles that have been release before being perfected. Hence, the reason we have the word patch. If we never needed to patch software then the concept wouldnt exist. If you can name an mmo that has ever been released 100% ready, I will admit my error in judgement, but you wont be able to and never will be. So, every mmo that comes out from now until the end of the genre will be plagued with pessimism and foulness by the player base because they cant accept reality.

Tasogare said on 4:31PM 12-11-2008

Bugs are bugs, missing content is another story entirely. You're also forgetting a key difference between WoW's launch and WAR's: Blizzard didn't expect it to be huge. Mythic expected more subs than they got at launch and are now feeling the consequences.

I'll give credit where it's due, WAR had a very very smooth launch, but the point is that they cut LARGE amounts of content right before release. They of course need to make sure that all of that stuff gets in before they even wory about an expansion. It'd be like Blizzard releasing a new expansion before even rolling out a confrontation with the Lich King.

Jeremy T said on 4:46PM 12-11-2008

Well, here's the thing with that. If you can't meet or exceed consumer expectations, they're not going to buy your product.

Furthermore, if you release a game that's incomplete, the people who do buy your product are going to be frustrated, and a good chunk of them will simply quit and never look back. The old adage is very much true: you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

These content updates are still good to have, don't get me wrong; I just don't think there's anything remarkable about the fact that they're included as part of the base subscription fee. In fact, I would consider it remarkable if they weren't.

ymrar said on 4:59AM 12-12-2008

In the original plan for launch, the capitals were designed to be like the fortresses are now. More like keeps and less like the massive cities the Chaos and Empire capital are now. So yes, they were cut out cause they represented the original plan and didn't match with the living cities the other two became.

The only missing content we have atm are the 2 DPS classes. Anything else is added content.

If we are talking about design flaws, then we have something to talk about. Crying about "cut content" is about half a year Olde stuff. Don't you know it's "The fortress battles R broken!" now?

Also I'm being constantly told that I don't have fun in the game, and that nobody plays it anymore. Daemn! And there I was thinking I was playing a game having fun.. :o

Crode said on 5:07PM 12-11-2008

So what parts of WAR do you consider incomplete from release to now? Features are just that, features. All features are not needed to release a game. The game was overall working and fun from release so I don't see what the complaining is about.

Merckx said on 6:52PM 12-11-2008

You haven't done any large scale T4 ORVR have you?

Sinaht said on 6:03AM 1-09-2009

My initial impression of this game was "it's WoW with better character models" well.. because of that I played till around 30 then jumped for WotLK because "If I'm playing a WoW look alike why not play the real thing?" I thought "11 million players can't be wrong" and "It's been a long time"

well... let me say this. It's not the same... I tried to like WoW.. tried to see what was so great about it. Leveled to 55 and got a look at the death knight.. I was wrong.. it still eludes me why people like WoW and I've played almost every mmo out there at one time or another. I just "forgot" how plain the game was for me. I honestly think people just learned to like the style and have a hard time leaving it like an old friend for something new and different.

War IS fun so is WoW I'm sure... if you can get past the colors and uninspired vanilla wow and rather eww burning crusade. Never got to Northrend I hear good things but... I don't think the price of pain is worth the reward. Perhaps one day I'll look it up again but in the meantime I have the honor to play the best pvp(rvr) fantasy mmo ever created.

The game is different than any before. The focus is different. Think about it, mmo's started almost entirely in pve and even now that rule holds strong. War's focus is on the conflict(which is truly never ending in this universe) and does that aspect better than any before it. Each class is truly iconic. Even if you can find functionally similar classes on the opposing faction the aura is completely different for each. This isn't easy.. but lends a lot of weight to the game for me. The updates are frequent and timely. The events well thought out. Just from what I've experienced so far with added content is impressive. This game has come far from the closed beta to open and even from initial live. I can only imagine what the future holds. I think we're in for a treat.

Maybe it's not for everyone but it is undeniably very good at what it does. As is WoW for those it's aimed at(which it seems isn't me) This game deserves any laurel it receives. Especially considering it just came out(yes I've never seen a complete MMO at release either and the argument that you have to match polish just baffles me since I honestly don't beleave it's possible at launch)