WAR: GOA lose contract

Spear

According the WAR newsletter, Mythic are taking over the contract for WAR in Europe.

http://www.war-europe.com/handoverFaq/index-en.html

I wonder what this means for all the Irish jobs this supported.

WellyJ

Gone I assume, but then there weren't many left there anyway.

Gunmonkey

Saw this alright, and got an e-mail today saying that any current or former subscribers will get 14 free days from 6th of July, obviously to try encourage some people back into the game. You also get 100% bonus to xp and renown to help speed ya along.


Might drop back in, free is free.

Ivan

Based on the subscription numbers of WAR these days, I have to wonder if it's a case of "GOA lose contract" or "GOA begged Mythic to take it off them!".

Still, time will tell if this will improve the experience for European players or not. GOA always had a bad reputation but I'm not sure how much is deserved and how much is just the usual problems that arise when a publisher is so disconnected from a developer.

humanji

Following up from this, I just read the following on Gamespot:

Gamespot wrote:

Mythic Entertainment folded into BioWare

About this time last year, Electronic Arts tweaked its organizational structure to lump BioWare and Mythic Entertainment into a newly formed massively multiplayer online/role-playing game group. The move put BioWare heads Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk atop the pyramid, while longtime Mythic boss and cofounder Mark Jacobs departed the company. Now, EA has taken one more step toward folding the two studios together, confirming for GameSpot today that Mythic Entertainment has been renamed BioWare Mythic.

The move comes as Mythic continues to struggle gaining traction with its big-budget fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Having received solid reviews following its September 2008 launch, Warhammer Online initially appeared to be on a World of Warcraft-challenging trajectory. Three weeks after launch, the game peaked at 750,000 registered users, but that figure had dwindled to just 300,000 by February 2009. EA has not offered an updated subscriber count since then.

In March 2009, Mythic announced that it would be taking 63 of the game's servers offline in an effort to consolidate the evaporating player base. Mythic was also reportedly heavily affected by EA's substantial headcount reduction enacted at the end of 2009. According to unconfirmed reports, more than one-third of the studio was laid off as part of EA's 1,500-job culling.

Mythic's new status as a BioWare studio makes it the second MMORPG-focused outfit within the Edmonton, Canada-based developer's structure. The other studio, BioWare Austin, is currently at work on EA's next big effort to crack the MMORPG market, Star Wars: The Old Republic. That title is currently slated for a 2011 launch on the PC.

EA did not indicate whether Mythic's role within the company would change or whether the rebranding would affect Warhammer Online.

Ivan

I can honestly say I'm not surprised by this. Mythic's handling of WAR has been nothing if not catastrophic, whereas anything Bioware touches turns to gold.

I'm only surprised that it's taken this long. From what I've seen of the recent changes, the game could have been saved if EA fired Jacobs the moment they had bought out Mythic. The truth is we'll never know, we can only hope that Bioware/EA learn some big lessons and apply them well to The Old Republic.

Kiith

Ivan wrote: »

The truth is we'll never know, we can only hope that Bioware/EA learn some big lessons and apply them well to The Old Republic.

We don't have to hope. It will, it will, it will, it will be fantastic. If i say it enough times, it will be fantastic. It will.

It will.

Venom

Ivan wrote: »

I can honestly say I'm not surprised by this. Mythic's handling of WAR has been nothing if not catastrophic, whereas anything Bioware touches turns to gold.

I'm only surprised that it's taken this long. From what I've seen of the recent changes, the game could have been saved if EA fired Jacobs the moment they had bought out Mythic. The truth is we'll never know, we can only hope that Bioware/EA learn some big lessons and apply them well to The Old Republic.

By the time EA bought Mythic, WAR was to far along the path to damnation for it to ever be saved imho.

Ivan

It took Bioware 3 months to fix a large chunk of the issues with WAR after they took over creative control. Imagine what could have happened if they had taken it over while it was still in beta.

We could be heralding The Old Republic as a WAR-killer, after WAR had dispatched WoW to the abyss of deceased MMOs.

hairyheretic

So is WAR actually decent these days?

ttcomet

I logged on to try the 2 weeks free. Its a 9 almost 10 gig download which was a bit painfull.
Also a load of my toons are just gone. I had destruction on one server which are still there but all the Order toons I had are gone (then again so is the server).

Necron99

The only thing I miss from WAR is my Zealot, so far the only game where playing a healer is as much un as being a DPS.

OSiriS

ttcomet wrote: »

all the Order toons I had are gone (then again so is the server).

Log into the account management and check the character transfer section, they're probably listed there ready to be moved to an active server.

Spear

OSiriS wrote: »

Log into the account management and check the character transfer section, they're probably listed there ready to be moved to an active server.

Accounts are managed at accounts.eamythic.com now, with your _EUR login instead.

Dave_The_Sheep

The lag is somewhat better since they transferred the servers to the US, but the game itself hasn't changed a lot. It's still far too easy to get to a City Siege, and the game rewards pure zerging. You can still get a good bit of fun out of scenario's along as you don't get annoying teammates.

As a relatively underpowered level (RR50, just) I find it very very hard to take on some of the guys with the psycho armour. Which is fair enough, but its quite discouraging those people who are trying to get from lower levels to be hockeyed when you jump some guy who is on half health and he wipes the floor with you. (Not due to just being a crappy player, I like to tell myself).

Still, its good craic if you have a few good guildmates you get on with.

Drakar

The servers are in Germany