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Warhammer Online Shutting Down

BibiMaghoo

Member
Credit to Jr Jersey Shore Native

Reflections on my experiences with Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
Carrie Gouskos, Producer

I was first introduced to Warhammer Online, when it was added last minute to GameSpot.com’s E3 2006 stage show. As one of the hosts of the show, my responsibility was to research the game and the franchise, gather questions from the audience, and give a thoughtful informative interview with whomever had been sent over from the development team.

I never could have anticipated what happened next. Jeff Hickman (Executive Producer) and Paul Barnett (Creative Director) gave one of the most memorable interviews in my career – and suddenly I was thrown into their universe. The online chat channel soliciting questions from the viewing public was spammed with directives like “No more questions, just let them keep talking” – which is not surprising if you’re at all familiar with Jeff Hickman’s indefatigable charisma and Paul Barnett’s passionate humor. The tone, candor, and refreshing quality of how they spoke about this game that they so clearly cared about made you just want to be a part of it. What was more surprising, however, was what followed – a large group of developers, perhaps delirious after three days of non-stop game demos, partly exhilarated by the positive response to the game, showed up at the GameSpot booth and invited me to their studio E3 party. I declined, because they scared me a little bit, but in retrospect it’s not hard to imagine how I ended up – three months later as a designer working at Mythic on Warhammer.

I made an offhanded comment the other day to someone on the Warhammer team that I spent six of the last seven years of my life working on Warhammer. There were breaks in there, but most of them still related to Warhammer in some way. Some aspects of these efforts never saw the light of day. For example, we completed, passed review, and ultimately opted not to release an iPhone companion application that would allow players to monitor the realm war and their guild status – three whole years before the studio decided to take mobile by its horns. We also spent over a year on a version aimed at the Asian markets that would convert the entire game free-to-play. The Vampire themed Blood Hunt expansion would have been a marvel. And in under a year we produced a spin-off product Wrath of Heroes, a MOBA-style game that used mostly Warhammer assets – which despite being a tremendous learning experience, never made it out of Beta. There are many memories like this, ones that I feel comfortable sharing now – including the fact that we do have two of the four remaining fully built cities (Karaz-A-Karak and Karak Eight Peaks which are truly truly beautiful but would take months and months of optimization before they could match the changes we made to the game along the way). And one of the greatest lessons I ever learned as the young unpolished Tome of Knowledge designer “Never put anything in the game that isn’t done yet and hint that it’s coming soon – see: The Cards system”. There were some beautiful ideas that were left on the cutting room floor. And they represent only a fraction of how much heart went into the game.

Most everything else made it, and Warhammer despite its flaws was a valiant effort into the MMO space. I don’t think any of its critics would ever call it boring. It struck out boldly, and some of the game’s novel features are now considered industry standard for MMOs. The credit goes to far too many to list it out here, and it’s almost irrelevant. The point is that some of the most talented people in gaming made Warhammer possible. They worked insanely long hours, and they put their heart and soul into trying to make this beautiful IP a living and breathing universe. World class artists. Genius engineers. Designers and content implementers who would put in 100 hours a week and not complain. Hard-ass producers who you would follow into battle anywhere. Writers that truly transported you. QA that wouldn’t let us get away with a thing. And so many others. For those that are still with Mythic and those that have since moved on, we couldn’t have asked for a more driven team dedicated to bringing this amazing franchise to life.

And finally, the players. If I were to list out all of the great experiences I’ve had with you, this would be a novel, so I want to say thank you from all of us to all of you for sticking with us so long. Even when you didn’t like the changes, even if you thought we made mistakes. The community made this game possible. And a special shout out to Tink for Pink – which was truly the measure of a community coming together to do something right.
Games Workshop has cultivated a world class IP. We were lucky enough to play in their universe for nearly a decade, with five great long years live. However, like all things – our contract has come to an end. Both Games Workshop and Mythic agreed to part ways, despite how hard it is emotionally on us to let the game go. It has been a tremendous honor to work with Games Workshop and even though we may be parting ways, our relationship with them remains strong. And now, hopefully, because this may be the last thing I ever write about Warhammer, I’ll be allowed to acknowledge the existence of Chaos Dwarves. Or maybe not.

We look forward to seeing you on the battlefield… at least until the war is over… and once again, we thank you humbly for five amazing years.

Link
 

FStop7

Banned
215543608_oPsC3-L-2.jpg
 

Wray

Member
Could have been a fantastic game, but instead they focused on PVP End Game instead of Raiding, which is a shame due to all the established lore and the deep pool of villains/locations that could have really been used to flesh out a special end game raiding scene.
 

Tamanon

Banned
I enjoyed the little I played of it. But it's a REALLY tough market to succeed in. "You come at the King, you best not miss" and whatnot.

FFXIV should be shutting down in the next year, I'm guessing also.
 
I didn't play it much but I absolutely loved the beginning area of the Orcs. That place looked amazing. It's what I wanted cities to look like in WoW. Most of my friends are on Macs but had we been able to play together we probably would have put a lot more time into it because it had some really cool ideas.
 
The Goblin starting area was awesome.

Being catapulted up onto those ramparts was awesome.

Sadly, that was the pinnacle of the WAR gaming experience.
 

Bizazedo

Member
Had a lot of fun with this game. Was tempted over the last year to go back, but for some reason I had thought it shutdown already.

I do find it fascinating they're saying the contract ended rather than due to $$.

I still think the game crashed and burned because the end game simply wasn't ready, PvE OR PvP.
 

Burt

Member
Such a shame. It really was a good game for the initial rush and year or so, but they never figured out cities or the overarching RVR system. I don't think there's ever been an MMO that had as much potential completely hamstrung by innate design flaws. Still, I probably would've stayed if they managed to fix my Shadow Warrior at some point in the first 18+ months I was there.
 

Garryk

Member
This RvR stuff was a lot of fun. Being able to conquer a capital city is something I wish they brought into WoW.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
Game was so bad at launch. I heard they pulled it together eventually, but nobody cared.

Another in a long list of EA MMO failures.

also: Guild Wars 2 is basically Warhammer Online done right.
 

ViciousDS

Banned
I still have my collectors edition, remember picking it up and looking at the art book while bowling Lol. great memories from WAR!
 

Not Spaceghost

Spaceghost
Well that's a shame, one of the few games to really do dwarves properly.

I am sure the game would have found it's niche quickly had the gone full F2P, once the game went endless level 1-10 it got a decent spike in activity but obviously momentum died because you ran out of things to do and low level scenarios weren't the most interesting ones.
 

Zios

Banned
Didn't have the time to really play the game at release, but from what I remember it was a decent experience. Always enjoyed listening to Paul Barnett back then and hopefully he finds another project to work on.
 
I don't think they've had an update for years except for that Dwarf thing they put out a couple months back.

Kinda surprised it took that long.
 

-tetsuo-

Unlimited Capacity
Bad at launch? What? The initial launch rush, RvRing through lvls 1-20 and finding all the public quests was some of the best fun I've had in an MMO.
 
There is some really awesome stuff in this game, shame it had some pretty big issues. I loved my time with it though.

This should be good news though!! It will mean Mythic will get to make a new MMO! Time to make DAoC2 now please.
 

Xiaoki

Member

This comic based on a logical fallacy can finally be put to rest.


Speaking of being put to rest: Warhammer Online has been on life support for years now because EA did not want to commit any effort or resources at all to the game.

Hopefully something new and better can be done with the license now.
 

Robbler

Banned
Based on the recent push Bioware has given SWTOR to lure back past subs, I don't think that game has much time left either.
 

Jetman

Member
Whaat? It's not just going F2P? I'd like to think even free it would have made enough to re-up a contract with GW.

I enjoyed my time with it, dug the world, character design, and the classes. Was hoping that at some point it would go Free (the whole world and game not just a few sections). So, shutdown- completely? :(
 

forrest

formerly nacire
Had a great time with the game, tank raids on my Black Orc and shooting people off the ramparts in pvp with my squig herder. I really did love many of the ideas and the artwork present in the game. I probably would have stuck with it a bit longer if it wasn't so instanced and other things hadn't pulled me away.
 

Tamanon

Banned
Whaat? It's not just going F2P? I'd like to think even free it would have made enough to re-up a contract with GW.

I enjoyed my time with it, dug the world, character design, and the classes. Was hoping that at some point it would go Free (the whole world and game not just a few sections). So, shutdown- completely? :(

F2P might've been too expensive to implement considering how long they've labored as a traditional model. Probably have been in the red the whole time.
 
"Bad at launch? What? The initial launch rush, RvRing through lvls 1-20 and finding all the public quests was some of the best fun I've had in an MMO."

I wouldn't say best, personally, but it was definitely a really fun time. Launch did have some severe technical issues, but I still had a blast early on.
 
Honestly, one of my biggest gaming disappointments of the decade. Coming from DAoC, I was expecting the rekindling of RvR. Instead, we got half-assed game mechanics, terribly designed zones, poor balancing, etc.
 
Weird, I admit I have a really shitty memory most of the time, but I remember the combat to be fucking awesome.

Really? At least when I played at launch the hp bars didn't update accurately, cast animations weren't always sync'd to the cast bar (moving after you see your doom bolt fly but cast bar was still up would interrupt it), spamming a melee attack would cause your character to spaz out (really frustrating on combo classes since you'd hear the crunch of your builder attack multiple times, but only a couple of those actually counted). Charging and pet pathing was all kinds of broken the first few months.
 

Won

Member
They had a lot of good ideas, but so little was executed well.

I personally look down on this game, because I was more interested in the game Mythic developed before they got the Warhammer ip.
 

ElRenoRaven

Gold Member
You know it wasn't my bag but it's always sad to see an MMO go because you know that there were people who loved that game like I do the couple MMO's I play.
 

CTLance

Member
Aw... how sad. I played this for a while and had a good amount of fun, but I'm just not that interested in the Warhammer (as in, the one sans 40k) universe.

Goodnight, Sweet Prince.
 
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