The Daily Grind: Is Warhammer Online doomed?

by Shawn Schuster Nov 10th 2009 at 8:00AM

Filed under: MMO industry, Opinion, The Daily Grind

With yesterday's news of layoffs at Mythic, the MMO blogosphere is on fire with speculation and opinions. According to many, everything is to blame for these staff cuts, from World of Warcraft to software piracy. In the worst job market in almost 30 years, we can't help but think the recession plays a large part. Despite the reasons for these layoffs and "restructuring" by EA, there's always that underlying fear that Warhammer Online may be the next victim.

But we want to know what you think, faithful readers. Do you think WAR is doomed, or is this "restructuring" (along with the recent news of an unlimited free trial) part of a plan to ultimately save the game?

Tags: layoffs, mythic, opinion, the-daily-grind, war, warhammer-online

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)

Venekor said on 8:08AM 11-10-2009

No because it's still the same game and if a games good then people will play it and the subscription service never stopped WoW from being a hit. The problem with WAR is it's just not a good game and WoW is better so what one would you play? It wouldn't even matter if they made it free because TIME is the main currency and people have little of it so most people only put their time to the BEST and War isn't.

Argothaur said on 8:09AM 11-10-2009

Though I have never played it, I would like to give it a try. I would hate to see it fail, even if I am a supporter of WoW, I think it would be a terrible waste of a solid IP.

x(wai)x said on 12:17PM 11-10-2009

Agreed. I'm a WoW player and I wanted to like Warhammer, but it just didn't really grab my interest. The PvE leveling content kind of petered out aside from some repetitive quests, and I didn't really want to rely on PvP exclusively to level up.

Mark said on 8:10AM 11-10-2009

2010 is going to be a tough year for the gaming market as a whole. The MMO market is saturated. We're at the end of the "gaming gold rush". This cycle repeats itself over and over again regardless of medium. A company has a hit in a medium, all the other companies rush in to get their slice of the pie, effectively choking each other to death. This model has played out starting in the 70s with tactical "war/board" games, traditional RPGs in the 80s, collectable card games and computer games in the 90s, MMOs in the new millennium. The strong will survive. But WAR has already demonstrated that it's not strong. However, EVE is an example of the exception.

Brian! said on 1:52PM 11-10-2009

The "gaming market" is alive and well. As an industry, it is the #1 grossing in the entertainment sector - far more than movies.

But PC games always have their tough times. Right now the money is still in console, which is why MMO guys keep trying to figure out how to move their MMOs to the console. Blizzard might be an exception - a game with the right style at the right time. Even if WoW came out today, I don't think it would do as well as it has.

Hardy said on 8:12AM 11-10-2009

LOL No, it's not doomed.

If it gets really bad, they can always do what they did with DDO Online and make the majority of gameplay free for everyone and have an in-game shop, as well as as premium content for subscribers.

Bam! said on 8:14AM 11-10-2009

My personal take on Warhammer: The second I found out you needed to put siege weapons on pads, I felt RVR was trivialized and dumb.

I personally loved DAOC, but then I remembered,

DAOC sucked until a couple of expansions really opened up RVR and made it awesome with destructable keeps and multiple upgrade levels and purchasable guard NPCs that will heal your guild mates etc.

So, I hope WAR drops the siege pads, and does something cool with expansions

Neurotic said on 8:14AM 11-10-2009

Past experience tells us that such restructuring is usually* made in an effort to *save* things, as opposed to kill them. You want to close a game, close down a dev team or something, you do it outright and re-distribute the funds, selected staff etc.

*but not always.

rgoff31 said on 8:21AM 11-10-2009

I doubt it. The game never had that spark to it for me. It was going through the motions, but it never felt quite right to me.

JP said on 9:11AM 11-10-2009

Honestly...

is the game thriving and adding subs? No.
Has the game ever had a bounce back where there was a large influx of players that they retained for any longevity? No.
Did the game meet (or even come close to) the expectations set forth (in interviews by their OWN developers) to being a close 2nd to WoW? No.

The game has been in trouble for a long long time. The fact that it continues to bleed subs isn't good. Aion may have been the nail in the proverbial coffin for WAR.

And blaming WotLK is total horsehit. TOTAL horseshit. EA and Mythic knew damn well what they were releasing against. They chose to move forward w/ their project in the state and quality it was in. The only thing you can blame Blizzard for is knowing how to release something complete. I hate WoW and have never played past a couple of trials, but EA & Mythic are the only ones to blame for this game floundering.

The economy is a piss poor excuse too. There are plenty of games that are thriving in this economy. The number one reason? They're GOOD.

It's a hard lesson that developers need to learn: Rush a product, it's going to hurt you more in the long run. We are not a forgiving genre. Come with the A game, or don't come at all. (I'm looking at you Cryptic)

breezer said on 9:35AM 11-10-2009

I dunno. I think the economy is a pretty good excuse. People don't want to pay for multiple subscriptions and a new, unfortunately flawed MMO can't steal subs from WoW.

In my opinion, WAR was second to WoW when in came out. I thought it was a pretty good game with a whole lot of potential. But bad decision (bad coding) after bad decision (about 10x too many servers at at launch) by Mythic made it a fairly unenjoyable experience.

With DDOs success, you'd think Mythic would be jumping on a F2P model ASAP. A massive influx of players (past tier 1... tier 1 was always very full and popular) is exactly what the players have been dying for since the game was launched.

breezer said on 9:38AM 11-10-2009

Also, how can you say WOLK played no part in limiting WAR's chances?

It's fairly common knowledge that both BC and WOLK both had that trade mark "black hole" effect on the MMO market. Both were launched against major MMO launches, and both devastated those launches.

JP said on 9:56AM 11-10-2009

RE: Economy
LOTRO is doing fine and never missed a beat. Even in "this economy". Darkfall never tried to be the next WoW and is doing fine in "this economy". Multiple subs aside, a good game will garner attention and word of mouth. "This economy" or not - good is good, bad is bad.

RE: WotLK
I don't blame it in anyway shape or form. Mythic and EA launched WAR against it. With the full intentions to show how incredible WAR was and how the attrition from WotLK was going to be minimal. It wasn't like they set their launch schedule against WotLK in ignorance. The wanted to go to 'war' w/ them, and lost. Miserably. They launched a rushed product, in hopes that shortcomings would be forgotten, b/c the overall experience was that good. They were wrong. And now they're paying the price. They essentially said “Try our game first. You’ll love it” w/ smug attitudes, and thumbs under their armpits. People tried it. Few loved it. Then they said “oh shit”. That’s their fault. Not WotLK or Blizz’s

And other studios are now making the same stupid ass mistakes that Mythic, Funcom, Cryptic and other so-called "triple A title" developers are. Getting it out on time, is more important then getting it out finished. Had they taken the time & effort to really test the game on a large scale and polished the game, would we be having this debate at all? Or would it be about how Mythic made a game that's second only to WoW and how WotLK wasn't nearly as successful b/c WAR was released so close to it?

CCon99 said on 10:58AM 11-10-2009

I don't buy the economy excuse either. NC Soft just released it's third quarter numbers (which only the first 5 days of Aion's September release was in the report) and they sold over 900k copies of Aion in this same economy.

Even WAR itself sold 700k copies in this economy, but lost over half of those subs in just 2 months time. That tells me people had not problem buying the game, they had a problem wanting to play it.

Brian! said on 1:59PM 11-10-2009

Economy is not an excuse at all! Actually, entertainment actually goes UP in a poor economy. Depressed people are looking for entertainment more than when they are not. Although sad, during the great depression it was a great time to be an entertainer with lots of audiences.

Box office sales have been a bit rocky, but that is more due to the huge increase in DVD rentals - and video games. Gaming has become the nations #1 entertainment past-time. But, WAR has to compete not only to other MMOs, but good games on consoles. Things like Rock Band are going to pull people away from WAR.

Adam Teece said on 8:23AM 11-10-2009

Not at all as long as they are smart about how they run the game. They need to run it as a smaller game though, not as a WoW competitor. It easily has the best PvP out there. If they can get their server merges figured out and actually stop closing them, it will be much better. I would love to go back to it and bring my friends again. Tier 1 being free is probably the best move they could have done.

Amana said on 8:32AM 11-10-2009

Adam Teece said on 8:23AM 11-10-2009
Not at all as long as they are smart about how they run the game.

Erm, I think the horse has bolted already on that one...?

Harry said on 9:29AM 11-10-2009

It is only doomed if the EA folks in charge think they need WoW numbers to succeed. I am pretty sure it can make boatloads of money with 200-300k subscriptions.

Then again, I don't know how much EA invested in the title. It's a numbers game: profit=live, loss=death.

ArrA said on 8:54AM 11-10-2009

MMOs as they have been for the last couple of years are (using the word lightly) doomed. Enormous budgets to try and reproduce the WOW phenomenon, which, I don't think will ever happen again. They need to start scaling back and producing more small scale multiplayer games. I think the massive in MMO is getting too big for its own boots.

Hub said on 8:43AM 11-10-2009

Depends what you mean by doomed really I suppose. I'd doubt they'd just mothball the whole thing and write it off the costs as such, at worst it will probably go DDO or true f2p (Or at best, lets agree to differ on that one) but I'll bet the game title itself will be around for a long time yet, even with a lack of new development.

I think the free tier one stuff is an amazingly healthy way to go though. Always thought it would be a great idea for a game struggling with empty zones to get a flush of new players in. Not ideal, but a sensible move to get people looking.

They need to stem the bad press. I have to admit I'm put off by giving it another go by the aura of doom around: No one wants to jump on a sinking ship, even if it isn't really sinking as such, it just feels bad. Having seen the amazing progress that brought AoC back to life (Even if the PvP was still a bit... crap, the PvE was superb) maybe the same magic can be done here. Hope so anyway.