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• • Failed Launch of Incompletness

  • Originally posted by Greygon
    

    Originally posted by D|CE
    

    Originally posted by Greygon
    

     WAR has been out a couple of months.  WoW has been out years. 

    This an invalid argument. You have to compare things within the same timeline, otherwise you are going backwards and there is no progress/improvement.

    
     

    My point is that instead of comparing to WoW he should be comparing to other recently released games for a fair comparison.  I played both AoC and WAR at release and WAR was so far ahead of AoC in everything except graphics it wasn't even close.  I don't agree with your hypothesis that comparing WAR to WoW is fair at this point.  While that may be very true with single player games, MMOs do require more time to mature and hit their stride before you can make a valid comparison.  AoC is a perfect example.  The first 20 levels in AoC were awesome.  Well developed, well thought out, and well implemented.  Anyone just playing Tortage would be under the impression that the whole game was like that and that it was a strongly developed and polished game.  Anyone who played AoC to the end knows this is not true.  WoW may be the standard that all other MMOs are judged by, but remember that it took WoW a year or so to work out the kinks also.  I think it is perfectly logical to judge games that have been out awhile against WoW, but relatively new releases should not be held to the current state of WoW as a comparison.  If WAR is to stand the test of time, then it will have to evolve into more than it is at the moment.  It has many things that need to be tweaked before it can become a game with staying power.  But in my opinion it is a good game that I am willing to put more time into before I make my final judgement.  Will it be a game like WoW that can last many years?  I don't know yet.  But then again, WoW didn't last but a year for me and I can see no real reason to return to what has become nothing more than an endless rep grind just so I can gain ten more levels again.   

    It is fair to compare WAR to WoW; it matters not how long WoW has been around, what matters is if WAR can be competitive.

    Most MMOs are no where near polished-level at launch, but bugs and performance aside, the newly launched game must have the ability to draw players from existing games first; WAR does not have this past the free month (or past levels 25-35) for most players.

    It's not necessarily the level of polish that's being compared here between WAR and WoW, it's the fun factor that's being compared. There is a difference between bad game design and an unpolished game; you can still have plenty of fun playing a game of excellent design direction, because the fun factor out-weighs bugs and performance issues a lot of the time. It's up to the developers to make sure that the fun-factor at it's very core level exists and is working before launch, bugs and everything else can be patched later in time.

    Mythic failed to effectively prioritize their efforts in WAR and thus are paying the price for it currently.

  • Posted: 11/26/08 3:18 PM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)
• • Be ready to put up, or shut up.

  •  I think the most important thing to consider here as to why MMOs launch the way they do is RETURN ON INVESTMENT. MMOs naturally have a much longer development cycle than any single player title (unless you're Valve). Five years is about the average development time when you consider the pre-production stage; this is the stage no one ever hears about, because usually the title wont be announced until a quarter of the way into production (Pre-alpha - Alpha) and sometimes later.

    At the very least, it costs about 20 million dollars (and usually much more than that) to fund an entire MMO development cycle, unless of course you're an independent company who has very few employees with very few expenses.

    Game development companies are either funded through a publisher, (usually publisher, or both) a 3rd party investor (Venture Capital, Seed, Angel), and in combination with bits of revenue generated from previous games(if previous games exist). When thinking about revenue generated from previous games, we have to take into account for the publisher or investor (or both) cut on profits; this usually leaves the developer with a lot less than you would think.

     

    So, to sum this up -- developers usually don't have a choice of when to release their game; the people who paid upfront to have this game developed want their return on investment as soon as possible.

    So why don't these influence pedallers (investors publishers) allow developers to continue developing until the game is content and feature complete? It's likely that waiting until the game is complete will increase profits gained over time, but they've (the investors, publishers) already spent millions of dollars on the project, and likely don't want to cough up more than they absolutely need to, so they rely on the ability to patch the game; the game launches, people buy it, and some people resubscribe = revenue generated. This eases the pain on the money suppliers, and even if the game releases too early and a portion of consumers decide not to resubscribe due to imperfections, the game in most cases will still sustain a decently sized player base to where eventually, profit is made.

    Examples:

    AoC

    Warhammer

    HellGate London

    EQ2

    WoW

     

    and the list goes on, just try not to jump to conclusions that it's always the developers fault, because in most cases it's not at all.

     

  • Posted: 11/25/08 9:47 PM
    General Discussion
• • Biggest disappointment this year

  •  Looks as if Warhammer is in the lead, go figure.

  • Posted: 11/25/08 9:02 PM
    General Discussion
• • Biggest disappointment this year

  •  Warhammer, for many of the reasons already posted here.

  • Posted: 11/24/08 10:21 PM
    General Discussion
• • WHERE THE HELL IS EVERYONE?

  • Originally posted by Daffid011
    

    The anticipation for the December patch isn't an issue of fairness.  There are a lot of people echoing the same words about it.  Something to the effect of "I will wait until patch 1.1 to see how it changes the game".  Fair or not a lot of people are on the fence about the game and what it MIGHT turn into with the next patch.  The overall effect patch 1.1 has on the game will set the tone for this games health for a very long time.  Mythic had better get it right or at least enough to satiate the people thinking about canceling.

     

    As for people being lazy and not wanting to wait for a game to get good, why on earth should they?  I hope people stop paying subscription dollars for games that release to early to be 100% honest.  As much as the genre needs another game to at least challenge WoW [and I do think Warhammer could have been that game], I would prefer that game developers finally get the ****ing clue that people are sick of rushed games.  

    It is not being spoiled to want a decent game for the money and time you put into it.  Who cares about potential anymore.  There is a long list of games to the left of this post that have awesome potential, but people are sick of paying to sit around and wait for something that MIGHT come to pass. 

    Many people have had their faith and trust stomped on to many times to give developers money and time based on nothing but promises anymore.  It isn't some big secret that players don't want to wait months and years for games to get their act together.  Blame the devs for continually repeating the same mistakes over and over again and expecting different results, not the players.

    QFT

    It's time to wake up.

  • Posted: 11/23/08 3:18 PM
    WAR (Warhammer Online)