WAR Is Coming! Er…Later…
Specifically Q1 2008.
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From today’s Warhammer Newsletter:
We have made the decision to move our ship date for the US and Europe to the first quarter of 2008. (Release dates for Asia will be announced at a later date.) Since our acquisition by EA, we have been afforded many wonderful development opportunities and we plan to take full advantage of everything that is available. This includes taking several additional months to make the best MMORPG possible.
Speculation on EA mandates will run rampant of course, but given the fiasco that is/was Vanguard, and also the intense competition Warhammer will be facing, it’s not implausible that EA/Mythic want to take that little extra bit of time to ensure a successful launch. Taken at face value, this is probably a good thing for MMO fans. A flawed or even mediocre Warhammer launch means less confidence in MMO’s by EA and other investors.
In other WAR related news, IranHammer still on schedule.
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Maybe, just maybe Dev houses are coming to the realization that rushing MMORPGs out the door based on hype, with the attitude of “publish now, patch later” is the incorrect course of action for the ongoing economic health of a game…
Scott said it best:
I could not agree more, being one of those who was looking for something ‘different’ than World of Warcraft, I bought in to the hype (pre-beta) that was to be what the Vision™ said Vanguard would be. After about 2 months of playing the game, there really is not the drive to play it much these days and have jumped in to Lord of the Rings Online, my third stab at games made by Turbine.
Vanguard has really only one thing it can say it brought to the world of MMO’s – Graphics. But lately that is all the game industry can really say. Gameplay (minus the Wii) is getting more and more dull by the year. We are creating games that each play the same while slapping a new graphical face on it and saying look what we did! But in reality they didn’t really create anything new, they just put a face lift on the same mechanics the last guys/game did.
EverQuest was fun to a lot because DPS / Mitigation was pretty new to the world of computer games. Button mashing was not as rampant as today’s games want to have you paced at. And for a lot of us, it was a welcome change from text based MUD’s that we had been playing. But instead of realizing we’ve got graphics, now time to add in some fun and challenging gameplay and mechanics. We get the same old cookie cutter quests, we get the same button mashing madness (that only EQ Bards had), and we get more and more solo friendly games that really do little to promote or even encourage community building – unless you are or want to be a Raider.
There are a lot of things games after WoW are teaching us, but who are the students? Cause I really don’t see anyone learning.
Perhaps I’m a minority here, but I hated EQ’s mechanics of ‘auto attack’ and prefer the rapid button pushing. Would I like to try something else? Sure I would. But I would rather do stuff when playing than push a button and watch until it is over.
Solo friendly: I agree and disagree- I agree that if you want to solo all the time, don’t play an MMO. However, if I am LFG most of the time and have nothing to do while LFG, I’m not going to be staying in that game for very long.
But I do agree that developers need to get creative. Hopefully the “4th” gen games will involve new mechanics and ideas.
Ahhh EQ…good memories…six-hour seb group wait lists. Fear breaks, FBSS wait lists, SBC wait lists, four-hour corpse retrievals, GEB wait lists…are you noticing a pattern here? Yet, I have to admit, I do miss that game.
If Warhammer fails me, I’m taking up crocheting
I´m really looking forward to 2008