Friday Links: “Mythic Acquisition Hailed As Best Thing Ever” Edition
Okay, I just made that up. Can you tell?
Bunch 'o EA/Mythic links:
Everyone's got an opinion on the deal, and it runs the gamut from "EA will destroy Mythic" to "EA might not destroy Mythic per se." Only time will tell which of these polar opposites plays out. But everyone's talking about it:
Lots of discussion over at Lum, and Mark even makes pops in (comment 48). He explains that WAR will be a better game with EA than without (which is probably true), and then says "I know that comment will be meant with a ton of skeptical laughter." Ummm…you meant "met with a ton of skeptical laughter," right Mark? Because quite frankly it's not hard for me to imagine you laughing skeptically at your own comment.
Krones thinks Mythic sold out.
Aggro Me is a little less skeptical.
The Corporation is a bit cynical.
As predicted, Abalieno has quite a bit to say about the deal.
Gamespot has some rectal smoke-blowing an interview with Jacobs and an EA bean counter.
Greg echos a common theme : EA will let WAR ship before Borgifying.
Kill Ten Rats is taking bets.
Raph: Hopeful but laments the passing of one of the last independent studios.
Terra Nova covers lots of reactions.
My initial reaction was one of, er, dismay. But who knows. It certainly can't be in EA's long term interests to continue destroying their acquisitions, so maybe they're ready to be serious about the whole MMO thing. Certainly after the debacle that was Imperator, Mythic may learn a thing or two also.
A forgone conclusion, in my mind, is that once Warhammer is released, EA will insist that DAoC be abandoned. If you're EA, then having 2 PvP games running side-by-side just doesn't make sense. They will offer DAoC subscribers a nice incentive (perhaps a month free, an almost-useful in-game item, or some other equally insulting deal) to convert, and within a year of Warhammer's release, DAoC will be turned off.
That will be a sad day, but perhaps inevitable no matter which direction Mythic had gone. After Imperator (and Warhammer thereafter), it was painfully obvious that DAoC had been relegated to the status of a simple cash-cow. Catacombs had nowhere near the creativity and ambition that either Shrouded Isles or Trials of Atlantis had, and all real development has pretty much stopped. (No expansion seems to be on the horizon, for example.) So in a sense, DAoC has already been abandoned. EA will take the blame, but Mythic started the ball rolling months ago.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:32 am
My big problem is that WoW players will say, “Hey, didn’t I play this game already?” when shown Warhammer.
I don’t want to see Mythic die. I have friends who work there. I just can’t see this as a win for anyone in the long run.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:51 am
I agree, Warhammer’s success is anything but a forgone conclusion. Purists will argue that Warhammer pre-dates Warcraft, but most gamers don’t really give a damn about purity. With apologies to Ms. Lauper, Gamers just want to have fun. Warhammer’s going to have to do much more than just be a better WoW, because 6 million gamers are already having fun in that world.
Mythic needs to do one thing in order to ensure any level of independence from the mothership: make Warhammer a damn good game. It doesn’t have to beat WoW (realistically, that’s just not going to happen anyway), but it needs to truly step it up. My friend Sweetmeat said on Lum’s blog the other day that she didn’t want to see any instance dungeons. I agree. Instance dungeons are old-think. Mythic needs future-think. They have one shot at this. Otherwise lots of people in Virginia lose their jobs and Mythic’s properties come over to the west coast. That would be a bad thing.
June 23rd, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Ummm. I didn’t say no instanced dungeons, I said no task dungeons untill the servers are mature. The task dungeons as implemented in Catacombs in DAoC are great at what they were designed to do, which is getting someone to 50 without actually playing the game or exploring the world. If a new game comes out, I WANT to EXPLORE the damned thing. And I don’t want to be forced to do it alone cause no one will do anything but task dungeons if they are available. Pavlov OWNS gamers. Press the bar, get the cookie. Press, Cookie. Press, Press, Cookie. Press, Press, Press, Press, Press, COOKIE!!! Cooookie gooood: Mmmmm. With task dungeons as they are in DAoC currently, you get the most possible cookies per press of the bar if leveling was what you wanted out of a cookie. It was incredibly rare to find people who would even consider looking at some of the rest of the content in the game, and even rarer to find someone who would agree to go adventure with you once they had considered it.
I think there is a place for instanced dungeons, although I think they do really tend to make games less interactive. You never see anyone but the people in your own party most of the time after they were instituted. If you are unguilded like I am, and the game has poor tools for finding groups/keeping up with friends ( like every game I’ve tried so far but CoH, which has asskicking social tools ), then instanced dungeons make it much more difficult to get a group than it was when you could head for the camp you wanted to play at and ask for a team when you got there. Of course camping had it’s own issues involved - I’m not going into that, the horse has been dead for years but it had some advantages to it over the instanced dungeon concept as it currently exists. DDO was ALL instanced dungeons, and there were parts of that game that I LOVED. Of course the shitty social tools and the reliance on having a full party with an exact mix of classes for any measure of success to be possible made actually playing that game a nightmare but I loved their dungeons.
Anyway if you miss-quote me again, I will find some suitable revenge. I have a long memory, and long ears. In any game that has elves anyway