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Update: GM Mark Jacobs confirmed that Mythic has seen a rash of lay-offs. However, he didn't dig into the who's and why's of this sad state of affairs.
Looks like the Fat Lady and Porky Pig are eying Warhammer Online as a possible next gig, though no contracts have been inked just yet. EA surreptitiously tossed Warhammer’s subscriber numbers into its recent investor call, probably hoping no one would notice the compact number’s squeaks and squeals. Unfortunately, the little tyke mumbled its way into an avalanche.
After announcing that Warhammer Online’s subscriber base has dropped from its rapid rise to 750,000, all the way down to 300,000, developer Mythic apparently axed 60-130 of its employees. Even worse, senior designers have reportedly been told to take a hike as well. Granted, this is only a rumor for now, but we’re seeking confirmation from Electronic Arts.
Regardless, though, things are looking grim for Mythic’s incredibly promising MMO. Here’s hoping the game’s upcoming series of live expansions can save this raid from completely wiping, but to be honest, we’re not hopeful.
See, economy? This is why we can’t have nice things.
Comments are closed on this article
jcollins
February 18, 2009 at 3:49pm
I've played multiple MMO's over there years. Lately I've played WAR and had a lot of fun. However, I got sucked off by the zombie apocalypse (Left4Dead) and haven't been able to fight my way back through the zombies, smokers, hunters, boomers, and tanks...
There's only so much time in the day. After a long day's work, I can dive in and start blasting zombies, or I can get out the checklist of things to do for each character I have to go through on WAR. In the end, WAR/WoW/etc. just seems like more work to grind more levels, whereas Left4Dead is drop in and go mindless fun. After DDO, I can't really stand any games without an ingame party chat now either.
Candymancan
February 15, 2009 at 3:11pm
I bought this game on release after watching the concept video's on the pvp and pve would be like in the game and i thought this would finally be the game to get me off WOW. It was fun at first but after the first couple days i started noticing the terrible performance the game had.
Many other people had this problem and still have this problem to this day. The issue im talking about is how poor your FPS is, and how the game stutters everywhere you go. Its so bad it makes the game 100% unlpayable. There is a huge thread on the Unoffical forums for warhammer pertaining to this issue. Its about 119 pages long now from the day i post this comment.
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=99123&page=119
People with old computers and new have this issue.
My specs are E8400 @ 4.4ghz, 4GB DDR2-800, 4850 512mb. I get terrible lag and stutter even with the graphics on low. What i noticed was with them on high or low my fps didnt change. Something is very wrong with this game. I quit 3 weeks into my 30days and never went back to the game. I check the forums everynow and then to see if the issue was fixed but it hasnt. The worst thing is Mythic refuses to Acknowledge this issue and hense it will never be fixed.
This is another reason why i belive the sub's have gone down so much. The game doesnt look any better then WOW yet its perorming like Crysis on DX10 mode.
Another problem i had in game was how no one was around. I would log on what i thought to be peak times for MMO's which is about 12PM-4PM eastern time and no one was around. PQ's were pretty much empty, no one did RVR. I was on a High pop server so i felt like i was alone leveling in a single player game most of the time.
If they had some kind of trial so i could go back on the game and try it out 5 months after i quit that would help me decide if i want to come back or not. Im not spending more money just to check it out again.
jcollins
February 18, 2009 at 3:51pm
I'm trying to remember back now. When I played WAR, there were some performance issues that they fixed in a patch. I didn't really have any issues with performance with a Q6600 and an Nvidia 9800GX2 after that. Haven't been in there recently though, so I don't know how it is.
Muerte
February 18, 2009 at 2:57pm
The problem is its a bandwidth hog. You have to have a pretty good sized pipe with a half way decent computer.
The only lag I get is when I go into RvR and there are 4 warbands runnin around. As long as they allaren'tfighting each other in one spot its okay but getting 96 players all together makes for a laggy encoounter.
They must have taken out some of the collision detection to help the bandwidth. You can pass through your own guys but enemy players stll have to go around you. It'd be nice if they could go back to the original. but I untill we all have terabyte connection speeds I doubt that's going to happen.
hogkill
February 09, 2009 at 1:59pm
Guild Wars 2 is what I'm really looking forward to. It's true that WOW will always be leading in subscribers and $ raked in, but Guild Wars is king of the no subscription market. Guild Wars doesn't have to compete with WOW as much because of that, and furthermore as a game it's just as good but in a different way (metacritic scores are virtually identical for the two).
I think the only subscription game that has a hope in hell of taking away WOW users is The Old Republic.
xs0u1x
February 06, 2009 at 11:16pm
you know, im happy for wow. and i hope it continues getting 11 million players.....you know why? my game experience on other mmo's has vastly improved because of wow. most, if not ALL, of the sniveling little trolls/ninja looters/immature ass hats are on wow.
jihnn
February 06, 2009 at 6:25am
last night i was trying to get into an intence pvp match in warhammer, didn't happen. ea has a track record of dumping their games without a fight. a few years back i was playing earth and beyond which ea took over. the game was pretty buggy, but actually lots of fun to play. i'm still waiting on the space game to replace it. when ea pulled the plug, it hurt. i lost friends, all those hours spent ingame lvling was just a waste.
i like warhammer, see post below.
i almost didn't get into war because it was an ea game, i haven't purchased anything from ea sense earth and beyond. i still hold have a grudge against them for cancelling e&b.
@ this point in time i'm not willing to spend another minute in warhammer just waiting for the plug to be pulled. i said my goodbys last night. ea can't be trusted so i'm off to see the wizard
Avery
February 05, 2009 at 7:40pm
Most WAR players seem to be finding a new home in the improved Age of Conan. A better PVP experience with proper meaning.
EA will probably cut WAR if it slips below 200k users as they will making a loss. Won't be the first time EA shut shop on an mmorpg.
The figures dont take into account January either where most say another 50k players left.
Certainly doesn't look good. Blame the boring buggy endgame.
Avery
February 05, 2009 at 10:53pm
I read it on many forums, from friends alike too.
Simple fact is EA cut 11% of it's work force - between 30 - 40% got layed off at Mythic. Things are pretty desperate in game too, quite a few of those were senior devs.
First they say there won't be cuts + no official forums, now look what happens. They rush out info on expansion to soften the blow of the drastic sub drop.
The problem isn't the 300,000 they have left, it is how quickly they lost 450,000 players. Do even a simple graph and put 750,000 at september, and then 300,000 on December 31st. That is just a huge downward slope and there is no reason to expect the slope has changed. It's also very very unlikely that they have 300,00 subscribers as of February 1st.
no matter how you the paint the picture in the brightest colors possible. ANYONE and I mean ANYONE will say that a loss of more then HALF you customers in a 2-3 month period is a bad sign. Yes there is some turnover after the first free month. But to lose more then half your customers is a bad sign simple as that.
Now on top of all that they cut staff numbers (doesn't matter what the reason is) when the game needs all the staff it can get. There are LOADS of bugs and issues throughout the game and even more so endgame. Will a reduction in staff keep the bug fixs coming at a steady rate like it has been? No, when you lose people things do not remain the same or even speed up 90% of the time. If a team of 400+ couldn't fix the issues how will a team of 200 fix the issues?
There is no evidence to show that the population of Warhammer has stabilized as of Dec 31st.... so there is no reason to think there are still 300,000 people playing today.... or that there will be more people playing tomorrow that are playing today. At best, the game may level off someday, but it isn't in the near future.
It is leaking faster than any other mmorpg to date. Many are finding a return to AoC refreshing because of how much more polished it is because of the development time since launch that WAR lacks.
EA needs to attain around 500k for 18 months to break even. Do some research it has dropped poorly performing mmo's before.
Sorry if the truth hurts.
johnny3144
February 06, 2009 at 10:09pm
[quote]The problem isn't the 300,000 they have left, it is how quickly they
lost 450,000 players. Do even a simple graph and put 750,000 at
september, and then 300,000 on December 31st. That is just a huge
downward slope and there is no reason to expect the slope has changed.
It's also very very unlikely that they have 300,00 subscribers as of
February 1st.[/quote]Wrath of the lich king ring a bell?
Avery
February 07, 2009 at 1:51pm
Sure does ring a bell, EA rushed WAR out the door to beat Litch King, in doing so they forgot polish, extra classes and game content. They suffered for it and it looks like the game will be just another niche 50k'er.
johnny3144
February 05, 2009 at 2:52pm
I just start playing this game this month... and it's so much better than WoW.... i was actually having fun right off level 1... instead of bashing wolfs repeatively for few hundreds time.
i just wish people start to play and support such promising MMO.
i would suggest EA or mythic start giving out 14 day trials... instead of the pathetic 7 day friend invite. they can prob grab lots of potential players that way.
D.E.
February 05, 2009 at 5:45pm
In 1.3 they will bring in new trail accounts available to the public.
Also, i talked to a CSR about the current friend program and invitations. He said that they have been swarmed with new trail accounts and new subscriptions from it that they are having trouble keeping up. :)
Muerte
February 05, 2009 at 1:54pm
WoW is for dreary unimaginative people who like to repeat the same things over and over and over again. Unfortunately if you put enough time into something like that it tends to bind you to it or you have to wake up and realize how horribly you've waste years of your life. And for the vast majority of the people playing WoW, if the quit they have to admit to themselves how pathetic that really is.
jihnn
February 05, 2009 at 7:48am
sighhhhh....... i was a wow player from closed beta, it called to me every night and most days.
when blizz finally got around to pvp i found a true home, absolutly nothing better than frustrating somed alli by killing him all over the bg..... hahah campem till they cry foul
thru all the changes in class abilities and specs blizz made their pvp a place i really didn't want to be anymore. i used to live in those bg's i wasn't the king of them, but i did make a difference, life was good.
along came the patch before wotlk, with all the buffs to certain class builds, players were being 1 hit, i actually found a blue sticky some dev or gm wrote that stated that they knew there would be a class imbalance, but should lvl out by lvl 80
i don't know i left wow and didn't look back
i have been playing warhammer for awhile now and love it, skill actually makes a diff and the bg's are fun and interesting.
the players that are at the top of the boards didn't get there because they spent uber hours camped in some instance getting gear, they are players that actually understand how combat works. they are players that have a fair degree of skill and cunning.
sure there are things that need polishing, this is a new game, already it is years ahead of wow for pvp.
my low lvl toon, crap gear, my skill can actually kill you and your uber toon all i need is a litlle luck
for me pvp rules...... thats why i play warhammer
D.E.
February 05, 2009 at 12:29am
By chance perhaps don't you think that Warhammer has had a bit of a hard time? Releasing a new MMO is one thing, but releasing it when everyone is a doom sayer or is never impressed or thinks that WAR is just a scam and a rip off of WoW. If you find the game is not for you, fine, go away. Don't come in here and spread filth and rumors. That's what Skaven are for.
Stry8993
February 05, 2009 at 12:25am
blowing hard. I'd rather play Hello Kitty Online (yes it exists) than WAR. So stop tacking on your comments. I've got nothing more to say man. Really, if the game were all that great, it'd be 3 million if not more.
Stry8993
February 05, 2009 at 12:14am
There weren't BG's, no. I played WAR from Closed BETA, and I gave it my fair 65 Canadian thank you very much. But you can say what you will, and you can think what you might, 11 Million People, is better than 300,000 alright. :D
EDIT: Good to know, when WAR goes the way of Richard "GTFO" Garriat's Tabula Rasa, maybe I'll join you. Let me guess... Chaos?
D.E.
February 05, 2009 at 12:22am
BLOWHARD COMPARES GAME WITH 2 EXPANSION PACKS AND YEARS OF PATCHES TO NEWLY LAUNCHED 6MONTH MMO. IS CONVINCED ONE IS BETTER THAN THE OTHER. MOAR AT 11.
Seriously, just stop posting dude. This topic should be abour WAR and how well it is doing. Which is doing well. Not great. but well. It's still one of the smoothest mmo launches. Tell me, Mr. I am from the beta, when was the last time the game crashed on you, when was the last time a fortress siege crashed the server? mmmhm, back off of mythic and cut them some slack.
EDIT: Kyder of Red Eye Mountain. R40-RR42 Chosen. (Also in the closed beta since about June.)
D.E.
February 05, 2009 at 12:10am
Which game was it that didn't even have a PvP system when it was released?
It was world of something. World of war-something or other.
Please guys, go troll/bash games you don't actually play on the ign forums and away from a reputable blog.
EDIT: Oh and the populations are fine. I haven't noticed any actual change on my server and yes we still have epic 200v200 man fortress raids pretty often given the amount of work it goes to getting that far. I play on Red Eye Mountain, FYI.
Stry8993
February 05, 2009 at 12:07am
I mean really... the game shipped incomplete, it was way heavy on the CPU, and far too lax on the graphics, which really reared its ugly head. The PQ's (Public Quests) were a very interesting idea, but not something so definitive that it couldn't be replicated. Nice to see them start something, but, to be honest, it was a bit of a joke over time. The RVR, yeah, was... interesting, but, still, IT. WAS. NOT. COMPLETE. Only 1 City faced off against 1 City... and the humans, as though every other race was just a support cast.
Frankly, when you rip-off The Lord of the Rings Online and everything that set THAT apart from WoW, and rip-off WoW, and pull instant quests out of the instance and just have them placed somewhere on the map, dumb down the graphics, focus the game on PvP... what do you have left? Nothing. I was very excited, and completely let down. I played for a week, of the month I had, and when i got the e-mail saying my account couldn't be renewed, I just went back to WoW. Why? Why not? You think if I liked any other MMO I'd still be playing WoW?
Now, get a graphics engine as beautiful as LOTRO, and a system like WoW's, and you've got me.
PS. Anarche Online is being retrofitted with Conan Hyborian Adventures' LAWDED DX10 Engine, so that should be great. The depth and breadth of that game still amazes, to the point where its dificult to play it. :P
OH AND AT THAT GUY WHO SAID WAR IS ABOUT PVP! YEAH, SO IS CONAN HYBORIAN ADVENTURES, CAN'T PLLAYER VS. PLAYER IF THERES NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE NOW CAN YA? EPIC RAIDS, INSTANCES, STORY DRIVEN QUESTS, CRAFTING, ECONOMY, THE GOALS YOU CAN SET FOR YOURSELF, THE NEW ACHIEVEMENTS THE PVP ITEMS, THE THRILL OF THE KILL... COME BACK TO WOW AND SEE WHAT YOUR MISSING, OR FLUSH YOURSELF DOWN THE TOILET WITH THE REST OF EA MYTHIC'S GAMBLE OF FAILURE.
I don't want these people to lose their jobs... but this was a monumental undertaking, and it needed to get it right the first time, or it would fail, and a lot of promises went very unfufilled for far too long a time.
D.E.
February 05, 2009 at 12:03am
Fail. First off, I have no idea what kind of names you are having issues with and never heard of CSRs following through on the naming policy been an actual issue for anyone... Second off, the world is not going to play WoW forever and it certainly isn't going to play it's stupid ass PvP forever either.
As far as WAR goes, the game has average PvE, but the true draw to the game is killing enemy players. If you get the game to sit and craft, you fail. Simple as that. Could Mythic be doing more? Sure... but at the same time they aren't twiddling their thumbs and sitting on their rears.
Not like it matters though. People will be doom sayers and have been doom sayers about WAR since forever. "What? They are cutting the dev team because they are no longer making an entire game and instead applying more patches before retail expansions; doomed..." "What? WAR is cutting 4 classes so it will only have 20; doomed." "What? WAR is actually European? Doomed..."
BoxyBrown
February 05, 2009 at 6:19am
If active subscriptions went from 750k to around 300k, I would say the game is going down the toilet. Mythic better do everything it can to keep their active subscribers. Mythic had one chance to gain a significant market share against WoW and failed. They did have a good run but it's not about comparing how WoW launched to how WAR launched. It is about how games are comparing to WoW in its finished and refined state. I think all other MMOs are setting themselves up for failure if they are trying to take over WoW. WoW will hand that title over to the next Blizz MMO. If a company really wants to survive they should go the way of LOTRO. That game is fun and stable and has given me very little problems. It doesn't have 11 millions subscribers but it fills its niche market. Only time will tell if WAR will become like LOTRO or if it will go the way of Tabula Rasa.
Fixedu
February 05, 2009 at 12:29am
I was on just two days when someone asked if my screen name was reported yet. My wife had to change two character names as well. They "put a warning" on your account. But what was the worst was her Guild leader having his character name changed, which screwed up the entire guild for days. Gold was locked, and she had to reinvite him into the guild. Just because you haven't heard of it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I do agree with you on its PvP.
D.E.
February 05, 2009 at 12:37am
That's really messed up. I remember in Camelot there was a dude on our server named "Hitsfrom Thebong" and his name was not changed or anything. And yeah, it was reported.
Makes me wonder what kind of names you had for your characters...
Did you have an iron breaker named "Bang Bus" or something?
Fixedu
February 05, 2009 at 9:42am
Nothing to do with drugs, nothing rude or obscene. How is Fixedu or punkflamingo? They want very bland. The email with their naming policy is two pages long!
Fixedu
February 04, 2009 at 11:57pm
I have been dabbling in the game, and other than the grind to complete quests to level up being somewhat tedious, the RVR was interesting. The reason I asked them to cancel my account was the game's name police. They can start by laying them off. I have never seen a game so hung up on character names. One they did not like was this screen name I am posting on. None of the names were obscene, vulgar or insulting to others, so they will not be getting my dollars any longer. Guild Wars 2, please hurry!
I've upped my standards, now up yours!
