Tag Archive

Rush To The Tanks: New Warhammer Online Patch

Written by John Walker on October 17, 2008.

Mythic have announcified two new careers for Warhammer Online, due to appear this Winter. And they’re beefcake. The Empire’s Knight of the Blazing Sun, and the Dark Elf Black Guard will be available to the game’s current 750,000 players, as part of the first major patch, 1.1. Discussed by Mark Jacobs in his first State Of The Game address, we’ve cobbled together the highlights of the rest of the included updates below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Jacobs On Starting A WAR

Written by John Walker on September 23, 2008.

Gamasutra have a giganto-interview with Mythic boss, Mark Jacobs, about the launch of Warhammer Online. He discusses how a UPS truck nearly destroyed Dark Age of Camelot’s launch, and then how WAR already has 50% more players than Camelot ever had, server queues, and how Roseanne Barr would make a bad romantic lead in a comedy. It’s some great reading, with impressively candid thoughts about Blizzard and Funcom.

Here’s an excerpt:

“We’re not looking to get more subscribers than WoW. We’ve been very clear from the day we announced that WoW is a great game with great numbers. It was an industry-shaping game. Those don’t come around very often. I’m amused when I hear other developers talk about WoW or even games in the standalone space, saying, ‘We can top these guys, that’s easy.’ Yeah, that hasn’t worked out for just about any of them. So I’m not going to sit here and say, ‘Well, with EA behind us, we’re going to beat WoW.’ I don’t say that, never said it, won’t say that today. On the other hand, we’re not afraid of WoW.”

Warhammer Online Offline

Written by Kieron Gillen on October 9, 2007.

You may be aware that Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning has been undergoing a closed Beta. Your awareness is a day out of date. Mythic have confirmed that they’re closing their Beta for a couple of months so they can - I paraphrase loosely - “Have A Little Think”.

Closed betas closing aren’t exactly commonplace, so this has lead to a mass of speculation. Mythic’s Big Chief Mark Jacobs takes time from not running a closed beta anymore to elaborate over at f13.net. In the thread on the topic he posts extensively, basically saying everything’s fine. If you’re interested in Warhammer Online - hell, or just the difficulties of MMO makers generally, I suggest you read it all, but here’s a fun quote to get a taste…

“The reactions have been kinda funny. When we said we could do the game in about 2 years (we didn’t even have a contract for WAR till the summer of ‘05), people said we should take more time, spend more money and do it right. When other companies take extra time to do it right, lots of people jump up and down and say that shows that they really care about making a great game. When we announced our delay last year so we could make the game even better than we originally planned (thanks to the level of competition from Blizzard and elsewhere), people said the game was doomed.”

The final point Jacobs makes in his full post is, I think, the strongest for those who are worried about Warhammer Online. It’s not a general Back To The Drawing Board delay. It’s specifically two months, which implies a plan. That said, by being so specific, they’ve set themselves an actual task. If in two months time nothing happens, eyebrows will be raised.