I was directed to this by a friend of mine, who noted that it's getting some serious attention now.It's apparently a Blog by a current EA Games employee commenting on the state of Mythic, now titled Bioware Mythic, and details some of the issues that lead to Warhammer Online eventually failing, despite over a million sales in its opening month. It's an incredibly interesting read and paints a damning image of EA Games management. Apparently EA is in damage control mode after this hit the net, which lends weight to the authenticity of the blog.So... discuss?
It's true.
I mean, it has to be true, otherwise there will be no other proper explanation that why most of AAA titles sucking hard these days. (Half joking half seriousness here)
I am more interested in impending failure of SOR MMORPG. Hmm, 300 million dollars... That's for three times of GTA IV budget. I just began to wonder if EA indeed spent 300 millions on it, how would they cover this if the game fails (which, based on EA's performance alone, not just claim from that blogger, is rather highly possible.)
Warhammer failed because it was a crap game (couple o good ideas sure, but crap game). Everyone seems to be under the impression that WoW was 'accidently' the biggest (real, not some asia grinder crap) MMO ever. As if half its customers are ready to up and leave at the drop of a worgens top hat!
Fools.
WoW was indeed an accident. Not even Blizzard knew it was going to become such a cashcow. Maybe there's only room for one mmo.
There will always be room for more than one MMO, because people find reasons to come away from 'the one mmo' such as: ridiculous auction house inflation, lack of groups, infantile behaviour, and a lack of immersion.
Plus they just get sick of the same old thing.
I think successful fantasy MMO's are like Highlanders: there can be only one. Sorry everybody, but trying to topple WoW with anything similar isn't going to work.
They knew it was going to be bigger than everquest, the game they based pretty much everything on. Practicaly "Everquest 2" really. Just they wanted to get rid of some of the dumbass stuff Verant did back then.
What they did not realise is how many people though everquest was a cool idea but coulnd't/woulnd't play it. WoW plugged that hole - the only MMO to do so. Even the real EQ2 was a terribad game at the start, and the new producer imediatly started copying design from WoW.
It was no accident that WoW is the biggest western MMO - its irrelevant what the developers though. It had the publicity and reputation (Blizzard + Warcraft). It had a virgin market (everquest 1 peaked at like 500k and SOE held an event at one point saying they had 1 MILLION players 'pass through' EQ...).
That made it a million seller, blowing its competitor out of the water.
That gave them the ability to make the game into the best MMO ever made (IMO there). I played EQ2 for like two years while WoW was simmering. There are 3 features I prefer in EQ2 (one of them is housing which WoW dosn't even do).
You can't replicate that, which seems to be the problem. AoC had a huge amount of interest but it sucked, and it remains to suck.
WoW got lucky but it was no accident that it got lucky, it was not 'random chance' like the drops are.
Being that I have an issue with buying a game for $50 and then paying a monthly fee to play it, I probably will never play those games.
I have never used WoW or the others. Being that most gaming companies are more interested in Console systems/games these days due to the more consistant hardware specs, and larger user base it will be interesting as to what happens in the future.
I for one hope it does chages as playing FPS with a joystick blows, one needs to use a mouse and keyboard to fully enjoy killing people.
Seems like they did make a good release of a game, but that they got lucky with the MMO situation at the time. If things repeat themselves, only when WoW starts to go the EQ route, then another MMO can take advantage of that situation to replace WoW.
I saw the opening post and thought this was going to be about a different link. This has actually happened before, an employee going public about EA's practises.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
