Mark Jacobs sacked by EA
This story has been reported in a few places, and of course EA makes it sound like they just parted ways, but the ugly truth is pretty obvious. Warhammer grossly underperformed, and as a result Mark Jacobs has been sacked. While I feel he and EA/Mythic did a horrible job overall with Warhammer (despite it being a decent and playable game), I can’t help but feel bad for the guy. He built that company, starting with MUDs, then DAoC, the failed Imperator, and then Warhammer. And now he is out. I am sure he made a pile of money when Mythic sold to EA, but still… It has to be a little tough to know you no longer have any input or contact with the games you and your company made.
What do you think of the firing? Will this be good for Warhammer? Will it have any effect? My thoughts below the fold.
I think it will have little or no effect. I think Jacobs’ direct control over the design of Warhammer had become minimal at this stage, and I think the institutional fear within Mythic won’t go away just because one guy leaves. There are some glaring flaws in WAR’s design that have been there from release, but after they crapped the bed so badly on subscribers they are too afraid to fix those things.
If they gut crowd control and give Bright Wizards and Warrior Priests the nerf they desperately need, they are worried they’ll lose too many people. Also, they know they screwed up having 2 realms (and 1 of which has horrible looking character models), so they have to be worried that the overpoweredness of BWs and WPs is the only thing giving them some semblance of realm balance.
So basically, I think WAR is pretty much hosed unless someone takes over with the guts and the nerve to really make the changes the game needs.
1) Massively gut crowd control.
2) Restore some semblance of balance between melee and ranged. Range has been king since day 1.
3) Nerf Bright Wizards massively. No more morale 2 AoE disable. Less CC in general. Less damage.
4) Nerf Warrior Priests. The only class with AoE cleanse is a huge problem. The fact that they are nigh invulnerable and can heal forever is an obvious flaw.
5) Add a third realm.
6) Figure out some way to make end game RvR not so boring.
That is a tall order for a released game.
[...] on subscribers they are too afraid to fix those things. Read the rest here if you're interested: Mark Jacobs sacked by EA It is a pretty shocking move, but probably well deserved. What do you all think? Will it change [...]
[...] on subscribers they are too afraid to fix those things. Read the rest here if you're interested: Mark Jacobs sacked by EA It is a pretty shocking move, but probably well deserved. What do you all think? Will it change [...]
Of course he is not the only one to blame, this is never the case in such big projects. But he boasted the infamous “500k subscribers or fail” claim and WAR has indeed a lot of issues, and most importantly it does not offer anything that other contemporary MMOs do not have, despite the PvP focus.
Brad McQuaid of EverQuest fame is talking about a return, and take a look how much people still bash him for the failure of Vanguard. He is not the only one to fail horribly, think of Roper and Garriott, even veteran MMO designers are no guarantee for success anymore. Raph Koster usually gets away without the “failed” stigma interestingly, but he usually was the “creative director/officer” and not the punching bag, sorry, lead designer.
You are right that WAR is not outright bad… it is decent. It just loses to the competition, namely WoW first and foremost. The extreme hardcore players probably wait for other games or tried Darkfall.
Oh, major changes are being made. The executive letter had a very serious tone to it: http://www.examiner.com/x-8040-Salt-Lake-MMORPG-Examiner~y2009m6d26-Warhammer-Online-faces-big-changes-down-the-road
I’m unfortunately partially tongue-tied on the issue of Jacobs; I know things that can’t be disclosed (nothing news breaking I assure you.) Ultimately, I think it was a good thing. He was not a fan favorite, and for good reason.
1) From what I know from people who worked on Vanguard, Brad McQuaid does indeed deserve a HUGE share of the blame for Vanguard’s failure. Massive hiring of friends, family, and cronies absolutely crippled the place, among other problems.
2) I wish you could find a sneaky way to share Jaime. The one person I know who might have had inside info for me usually left Mythic well over a year ago.
3) That letter is interesting. I hope the #1 is truly their #1: “Addressing concerns related to crowd control and area-of-effect abilities.”
At this point though, I think there are too many critical decisions that have doomed the game. The 2 realms instead of 3 was a brutal mistake. And how are they seriously going to tone down broken classes like the Bright Wizard and Warrior Priest without having 50,000 subscribers cancel in the first month of the change?
They are pretty nicely screwed at this point, because they didn’t make the hard decisions early.
I haven’t played Warhammer since the end of December, so alot of my knowledge is pretty out of date. I agree with much of what you said though.
1. Massively gut crowd control. The CC in Warhammer was designed so badly. Remember when I started calling Firecage Skillcage? Yeah. PBAoE CC is RIDICULOUS and doesn’t belong in any game. If you want to CC somebody you should at least have to target them. Warhammer’s PBAoE crowd control is the most skill-less IWIN button I’ve ever seen in a MMO.
2. Restore some balance between melee and ranged. This absolutely needs to be fixed. The good ranged characters seem to do more damage than the good melee characters, which is messed up. Plus they are the ones with the CC(see above).
3. Nerf Bright Wizards massively. This absolutely needs to be done, as they are the main contributers to the above problems. The problems would still exist if Bright Wizards were balanced, but it wouldn’t be NEARLY as bad.
4. Nerf Warrior Priests. I didn’t really notice these guys being a problem back when I played, but I could see the AoE cleanse being an issue.
5. Add a third realm. I’m not sure if this is necessary, but it would probably help.
6. Figure out a way to make the end game RvR not so boring. I never made it to end game RvR, but I know what I would do to make tier 3 rvr less boring. The amount of keeps needs to be cut down MASSIVELY. The problem is, with all of those keeps, there’s not much of anything encouraging you to actually defend one, as you could just as easily go take one of the others. Maybe like 2 or 3 keeps would be the right number to get people to actually fight for them. I also would have found a way to make the scenarios cross server, to speed up queue times.
I agree that they seem to be keeping the Bright Wizards overpowered to keep the realm populations balanced. I didn’t think so at first, but seeing the way they implemented Knight of the Blazing Sun convinced me they were deliberately overpowering Order to keep the population on that side up. I don’t think it’s coincidence that the most wildly overpowered crap always appeared on Order side. Destruction had/has some stuff that is overpowered no doubt, but nothing like Bright Wizards or the pre nerf Knight of the Blazing Sun.
Good observations Outsider, and spot on.
Anyone else hear anything interesting through the grapevine about this firing?
I think my biggest complaint about WAR would be that the massively fun, massively ‘balancing’ Three-Faction system Mythic used in DAoC was not brought to WAR. With the massive number of races, clans, splinters, etc… that exist in the Warhammer universe, three factions was extremely doable and still fit the Lore (which was enforced heavily by their license agreement with Games Workshop).
I am very confused by the difficulty they have balancing classes. I mean, each side has a ‘clone’ class, core-mechanics wise. Gee, I don’t know, maybe if the clone classes had the functionally same abilities with different names/animations, then you’d have perfect balance?
I’m also boggled at the way they failed to see how much more reactive an MMO client can be. I play both WoW and WAR, and there is a massive ‘lag’ in the Warhammer client communication. Why they do not shift what commands/checks/calculations are done client side and server side to eliminate that lag is beyond me.
The lack of three realms really was a critical error that I think they never recovered from.
And the class “mirror” idea was basically a half-ass move from the DAoC style (totally different classes in all realms, and a balance nightmare) towards the WoW style (same classes on both sides). To paraphrase Mr. Miyagi, they got squished like grape by trying to walk the middle.
Yes, there are people who will stomp around insisting that different classes is better, but:
1) A lot of these people want different classes because they want to exploit the balance failures.
2) Very few people ever didn’t play or quit a game because both sides had the same classes.
So catering to these people really gains you nothing, and costs you everything.
PvP/RvR without balance is an absolute failure.
3) Nerf Bright Wizards massively. No more morale 2 AoE disable. Less CC in general. Less damage.
Lol because DoK’s with the same Morale 2 AoE disable isn’t a problem?
Start with no CC and move on from there imo.
Assuming you’re a destro player for the obvious bias in issues with WAR.
> Lol because DoK’s with the same Morale 2 AoE disable isn’t a problem?
Yeah, its not. Because DoKs are a healer.
For bomb teams, having the AoE disable on the same class as the one doing the bombing is TONS easier. You have 1 class that does both rather than needing 2 people to be perfectly coordinated to setup the bomb.
Since they never really solved the whole “melee healer” concept, DoKs and WPs who heal stand back like traditional healers. Thus, having the AoE disable on a DoK is not really a huge help. They are standing back healing. A PBAE disable on that class means they have to run forward, hit it at just he right time, then run back. All the while, they are *NOT HEALING*.
Whereas the BW just runs around spamming instant cast AoEs, and hits the AoE disable at the appropriate time, then continues blasting away.
I played both sides actually. Anyone who is being honest knows BWs have been out of control from the beginning, and WPs joined them once they added the offhands for regen. But Mythic got themselves in that position because of the huge population imbalance at the beginning resulting from Order races/classes looking retarded, and 60%+ people going destroy. Again, that is the problem with having only 2 sides. So they were afraid to balance the classes, because overpowered BWs (and later WPs) was the only thing keeping people playing Order.
I had a DoK, and I say without hesitation, if the price of BWs losing their PBAoE CC is me losing mine, I’d -GLADLY- give it up. I don’t want it in game, period. Even if I’m benefitting from it.
And that right there gets at the heart of it. Every DoK I knew said the same. As a healer, you spend most of your time away from the enemy. So that PBAE stun wasn’t such a hot thing. But the BWs just exploited the heck out of it every time it was up. Add some non mirroed talents like +50% AoE radius to the actual GOOD AOE spells, and a number of dmg proc talents, and there is your problem.
Better morales and better talents does not make for a true “mirror.” Adding AoE cleanse every 5 seconds and its even worse.
It will be interesting to see if new managements deal with this, and if so how fast.
The Land of the Dead expansion felt a heck of a lot like Trials of Atlantis. So much so that I gave up on the few hours a week I had to play, and canceled.
You people aren’t thinking what you are saying through. I’m sure the balance needs some adjustment, but the populations prove that any adjustment would screw the game.
I can’t believe how many times I read conflicting “waahhh! this needs fixing, but fix this too, even if it fucks it up more!!!”
Anyway, too late. The game was teen rated anyway, so that made it automatically suck to me even though Wow is rated teen, you can tell the devs understood the needs of adults”
I haven’t read “fix this even if it fucks things up more.” That doesn’t really make sense.
What exactly are people saying without thinking?
How do populations provide better class balance would “screw the game.” The lack of class balance is WHY the realm population is totally borked, and Order has a gigantic advantage.
The OP and Outsider certainly summed up the problems of Warhammer.
It is extremely unsatisfactory to play a game that comes with unkillable characters in 1 vs 1 battles. And those happens now and then both in the Rvr zones as well at times when in SC’s – when you ever get into one (not often).
Sadly since previous posters commented I can only say that both EA and Goa appear to be giving up. I’m unable to pay for the game on the Eu site, and they closed the account even though its their payment system that’s on the blink. And no solution for that, so just let me add that as a factor….
Item Z: Players who still wanted to play couldn’t pay for their subscription and had their accounts disabled.
Hey guys
Do you guys know the real population of WAR? under 100k? 200k?
On WAR census it appears less then 60k
thx alot!
I would be interested to know the current population as well.
I know they are down from 70+ servers to 6, and there is already talk of another merge. Phoenix Throne, the last remaining RP server, is the least populated. If it gets merged, WAR will probably lose almost all of those people. Folks who play on the RP servers rarely want to play with “NosePicker the Bright Wizard.”
I do not think Warhammer will survive to its 2nd anniversary. That will bring EA’s MMO epic fail total to what.. 3? 4? More?