WAR (Warhammer Online)

So it's official, NCSoft just decided to shut down Tabula Rasa forever. Similar to Hellgate: London (by the way also hosted by EA) whose servers will  be closed in January '09.
Both games were highly anticipated while still in development, had big names in their dev teams, big companies to host 'em.
And both had very unimpressive launches, gameplay issues *very* similar to WAR (although to be sure WAR at its core probably still is a far superior game) and both hardly survived more than a year before shutting down forever.

We all know the issues WAR has. Pure boredom, lack of communication, an empty world VOID of virtually any living soul (simply because 99% of all players are bunched up in warcamps to queue up for instanced minigame-scenarios), tons of bugs/glitches, and severe population issues (first server merges/mass transfers 1 month after release are anything but glorious, and CLEARLY show that WAR has FAR less subscribers than expected by EA Mythic).

Some argue that WAR needs more time to be a great game. Others rather think that the game design is so poor that it can't be fixed (an engine that simply CANNOT handle 100vs100 battles without giving EVERYONE in the zone a 10 second delay on every action, only 2 instead of 3 factions, an endgame map layout that doesn't really encourage open RvR, mechanics that don't encourage keep defending or realm pride in general, too heavy focus on instanced PvP etc.)

But let's just assume that things *could* be fixed, and the game just needs more time. Isn't it still doubtful that a company like EA would just drop WAR all along?
It was supposed to be the WoW-killer, now it's an army of low/low servers that need to be merged. The population-trend is a steep downward-slope, the pace at which Mythic is implementing counter-measures anything but impressive. What will it be like... 1 year from now? I haven't seen any major MMO that unimpressed players at launch, dropped to a low population as a result, but then miraculously recovered to healthy numbers of players (aside from AO with its froob program, probably).

SOE would just cut down the dev team to 1-20 people and add another game to their Graveyard Of Failed MMOs, which will be funded by the Station Access MMO-socialism.
But what will EA do once revenues hardly (or not at all) excceed the costs for feeding developers and keeping servers up anymore?
I kinda fear they are not the type of company to feed a starving child.

(Hah, I just hope they will sell it to SOE as an addition to their Failyard instead of closing down servers.)

Do a little research

Motor City Online
Earth and Beyond
UXO
UO2

All games from EA that were closed down either late in development or while being live and fairly stable.   Earth and Beyond is a great example (and a game I played).  It had a pretty decent launch, was stable at about 75,000 subscribers and had a really enthusiastic development team.  They pulled the plug even though people would have stayed for another year without a development team.

UXO was months away from being launched after 2+ years of development and was yanked at the last minute.

WAR doesn't deserve more time. If the game wasn't ready, they shouldn't have launched.

the game was ready for scenarios

Originally posted by Aethios

WAR doesn't deserve more time. If the game wasn't ready, they shouldn't have launched.

I got sick of waiting for the game to launch.  As it is right now, I am enjoying the game and plan on staying for a long time.   MMOs do need time to develop -- with the right team, patches, content and expansions, the game will evolve and grow.  there comes a point in time, that many of you ignorant people do not realize where a company needs to pay the bills -- it cant stay in development as long as it maybe should for the simple fact, that money dictates all.  Another year of beta does not pay the bills.  Now with the cash from subs rolling in, the dev team can work with a game that is making money and add to the game accordingly.  

Hate to break it to you, the servers are maintaining 20+ med/med and Mythic has a chance to win people back and get new players with the Dec patch.

Originally posted by Tyvolus1

Originally posted by Aethios

WAR doesn't deserve more time. If the game wasn't ready, they shouldn't have launched.

 

I got sick of waiting for the game to launch.  As it is right now, I am enjoying the game and plan on staying for a long time.   MMOs do need time to develop -- with the right team, patches, content and expansions, the game will evolve and grow.  there comes a point in time, that many of you ignorant people do not realize where a company needs to pay the bills -- it cant stay in development as long as it maybe should for the simple fact, that money dictates all.  Another year of beta does not pay the bills.  Now with the cash from subs rolling in, the dev team can work with a game that is making money and add to the game accordingly.  

Hate to break it to you, the servers are maintaining 20+ med/med and Mythic has a chance to win people back and get new players with the Dec patch.

what level are you? 8? 10? 12? maybe 18?

Originally posted by Brone87

Originally posted by Tyvolus1

Originally posted by Aethios

WAR doesn't deserve more time. If the game wasn't ready, they shouldn't have launched.

 

I got sick of waiting for the game to launch.  As it is right now, I am enjoying the game and plan on staying for a long time.   MMOs do need time to develop -- with the right team, patches, content and expansions, the game will evolve and grow.  there comes a point in time, that many of you ignorant people do not realize where a company needs to pay the bills -- it cant stay in development as long as it maybe should for the simple fact, that money dictates all.  Another year of beta does not pay the bills.  Now with the cash from subs rolling in, the dev team can work with a game that is making money and add to the game accordingly.  

Hate to break it to you, the servers are maintaining 20+ med/med and Mythic has a chance to win people back and get new players with the Dec patch.

 

what level are you? 8? 10? 12? maybe 18?

Im level 40 and think the guy you are responding to had a pretty good post. I feel the same. Was there a point to you asking his level?

Originally posted by Brone87

Originally posted by Tyvolus1

Originally posted by Aethios

WAR doesn't deserve more time. If the game wasn't ready, they shouldn't have launched.

 

I got sick of waiting for the game to launch.  As it is right now, I am enjoying the game and plan on staying for a long time.   MMOs do need time to develop -- with the right team, patches, content and expansions, the game will evolve and grow.  there comes a point in time, that many of you ignorant people do not realize where a company needs to pay the bills -- it cant stay in development as long as it maybe should for the simple fact, that money dictates all.  Another year of beta does not pay the bills.  Now with the cash from subs rolling in, the dev team can work with a game that is making money and add to the game accordingly.  

Hate to break it to you, the servers are maintaining 20+ med/med and Mythic has a chance to win people back and get new players with the Dec patch.

 

what level are you? 8? 10? 12? maybe 18?

Tyvolus, Warrior Priest. Rank 26, Renown Rank 21.   Server Praag.  Now you can stop guessing my level.  You threw 4 numbers out there, and really were not even that close.
 

Originally posted by Tyvolus1

Originally posted by Aethios

WAR doesn't deserve more time. If the game wasn't ready, they shouldn't have launched.

 

I got sick of waiting for the game to launch.  As it is right now, I am enjoying the game and plan on staying for a long time.   MMOs do need time to develop -- with the right team, patches, content and expansions, the game will evolve and grow.  there comes a point in time, that many of you ignorant people do not realize where a company needs to pay the bills -- it cant stay in development as long as it maybe should for the simple fact, that money dictates all.  Another year of beta does not pay the bills.  Now with the cash from subs rolling in, the dev team can work with a game that is making money and add to the game accordingly.  

Hate to break it to you, the servers are maintaining 20+ med/med and Mythic has a chance to win people back and get new players with the Dec patch.

I'm sorry companies do not have enough money to put out a complete product.  I'm sorry they cannot keep their deadlines or set unreal expectations.  All those things suck, but it does not make people ignorant.

It is not the customers problem that a company did not manage itself properly or set unreal goals.  It is not the responsibility of customers to stick around and pay for the post release completion of a game just because a company failed to deliver what they set out to make or ran out of money.   If a games only chance at survival is to have enough people put blind faith in its eventual completion and funding through subscriptions then I'm sorry it should fail.

In fact people who continually make excuses, apologize for and place blame on other customers for the failures of a company are the people who empower companies to ge