Mythic delaying work on Warhammer expansion to improve live game

by Griffin McElroy { Dec 7th 2008 at 5:30PM }

As the recently released expansion for World of Warcraft clearly displayed with its mind-boggling sales figures, add-ons for MMOs (particularly ones with a large player base) can be lucrative undertakings. Despite this fact, Mythic developer Mark Jacobs recently issued a surprising statement on a Warhammer Online forum thread in which commenters were discussing features they'd like to see in the title's first expansion. According to Jacobs, Mythic won't be developing a WAR expansion until the kinks have been worked out of the core game.

Jacobs explained Mythic's reasoning, stating that they have no interest in "pushing an XPack out the door at the expense of WAR." While this may have come as a disappointment to the posters on the thread in question, we're sure the game's player base is appreciative of Mythic's continuing siege on gameplay snafus.

Tags: expansion, mark-jacobs, mmo, mythic, warhammer-online

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

JerJer @ Dec 7th 2008 5:33PM

this makes sense. WoW's first expansion came after EXTENSIVE retooling of the core game.

Steve @ Dec 7th 2008 6:12PM

Blizzard could learn a lot from this approach. But then it'd probably take years to fix the huge amount of things that are wrong with WoW.

-slycooper_rocker- (lorddshadow the amazing) psn: shahanasalam @ Dec 7th 2008 11:17PM

Note: Read above comment.

juju187 @ Dec 7th 2008 6:12PM

seriously thinking of playing this...
any advice?

dok @ Dec 7th 2008 6:21PM

Pick a well populated server from the start. It's a fantastic game, but it's really dependent on other players for the most fun bits.

Between now and immediately after the next patch (1.1) is a great time to start because many people will be rolling the new tank classes and there will be plenty of people to group with in the lowbie areas.

Finally, if you like to be on the on the underdog side, currently Order has slightly lower numbers on most servers. (and greatly outnumbered on a few)

juju187 @ Dec 7th 2008 6:54PM

thanks for the info

JM @ Dec 7th 2008 7:58PM

If you pick a good server it can be intense. ORvR wars break out.

Played on a couple already.
Enjoying Skull Throne due to that fact that it is the highest populated server. Also one of the first servers who just recently took over Capital City

h2c @ Dec 7th 2008 7:51PM

Do not play if you have to buy at full retail price. The game is continually bleeding players for good reason (not just WotLK, although WotLK does further expose how many problems WAR has).

I quit at level 30, enjoying the game up to about level 20. I had both a healer and a dps class, on two different servers - one Destruction, one Order. On Order, I was in the biggest guild (200+ members) on a launch server. When I quit a couple weeks ago, there were only 5 people from my guild on during prime time.

During level 20-25 on both characters, I hit a huge xp wall grind. Before release, Mythic decided to increase the amount of xp needed to level but did not increase the quest xp given out. This xp grind was created to slow down player advancement and subsequently contributed to people leaving the game. Mythic tried to address this problem, but like so many other attempted solutions to issues with this game, the minor xp boost did not solve xp wall grind.

The other contribution to players leaving this game is how buggy large scale sieges are. Despite being what this game is supposed to be about, sieges infrequently occur due in part to nobody playing and in part to nobody wanting to try to siege/defend since the sieges are buggy - everything from rewards to the game engine itself falls apart.

Further, I had to install a bunch of addons just to get the game playable, like one addon just to manage buff refresh rates which would lag my beast of a computer due to poor design decisions.

If you can find a copy for ~$10-20, I recommend a purchase because there are some nice ideas here.

But if you pay more than that, you are paying too much for what little enjoyment there is that will not extend past one month.

h2c @ Dec 7th 2008 7:54PM

Whoops, meant this as a reply to juju187.

Vincent Avatar @ Dec 7th 2008 9:14PM

Picked it up for 20 bucks on Black Friday. I wasn't about to pay full price, but the beta intrigued me slightly.

duramas @ Dec 7th 2008 8:58PM

Game severely needs an expansion pack, the game is just plain boring after you hit max level and have done ORvR and Scenarios.

Its just a grind for mediocre rewards at that point. Killing players rewards RPs which reward minimal stat bonuses/ability to wear better gear that isn't substantially better. And taking keeps is just to farm more RP/kill keep lords to get gear. The thing I hated most about WoW PvP is in this game which DAoC never had... PvP being a grind for better gear.

PvE content is basically nonexistant, there are a few dungeons, but the lockout timers are ridiculous for the rewards they give(crappy set pieces).

Played their past game DAoC a long time and was satisfied with the PvE content and PvP system. 8v8 is funner than 6v6 because it exists, RvR was better because of 3 realms, keep takes were funner because it was about killing people and getting relics, not a PvE type grind for gear/RPs. RPs got you abilities in DAoC that impacted the game a tremendous amount, thus making it rewarding.

duramas @ Dec 7th 2008 9:00PM

Oh and crafting sucks horribly, big mistake because that is one of the best parts of most MMOs.

jynxycat @ Dec 7th 2008 9:27PM

Wasting time and money making crap you just sell afterwards so you can skill-up and be elite at the top?

Crafting is generally the most boring part of any MMO.

SWG had an interesting idea where the entire game's economy is player run, so crafting could actually be something you do for your SWG career, but SWG itself is a whole different topic.

Hey Apples @ Dec 8th 2008 3:08AM

Great idea delaying their expansion. Lord knows in the history of the company they haven't put out one that wasn't buggy, broken, or full of unbalanced classes.

abigsmurf @ Dec 8th 2008 9:28AM

Another former player here going 'meh' @ WAR.

The crafting is awful: imagine WoW's crafting, make it so that you have to manually drag and drop ingredients for every single piece you make. Now make the crafting result in pathetic enhancements that cost way too much. The poor Auction house doesn't help either.

There isn't enough PvE content. You run out of quests 2/3 through T2 and so your only solution is mob grinding or scenario grinding.

Scenarios are the worst game breaking feature. You get loot, xp, RP and gold. Lots of it too. There's no reason to do anything but scenarios. As a result, no one does Orvr or public quests and the cities are desserted.

Itemisation is appauling. Weapon skill on caster sets? If there's no carrot of uber gear for your grinding, it robs you of a lot of motivation.

SinHarvest @ Dec 8th 2008 9:39AM

WAR is still better than WOW at least. The game is getting better all the time. Its more balanced and the bugs are quickly getting fixed. They're fixing itemization next patch. Theres no way i could go back to the endless grind fest that is WOW.

Lord Negatron @ Dec 8th 2008 10:01AM

Nice opinion* :P

Do me a favor, please return to WoW only to convince other "people" like "BuddaSmkr" on RP servers to go to WAR....

Pleaaase!

Why go on an RP server to not RP?

Urza @ Dec 8th 2008 1:07PM

More balanced. Not really. WAR suffers the same problems that WoW suffers with it's classes.

Let's not mention how one sided so many of the servers are for horde, making most quests impossible to compete.

SinHarvest @ Dec 8th 2008 2:27PM

@Lord Negatron: Sounds like typical WoW players to me.

@Urza: Theres could be a bit of tweeking to the classes in WAR. But cmon WoWs classes are balanced for PVE, your joking right?

Urza @ Dec 8th 2008 1:05PM

Hey it makes sense... look at Star Wars Galaxies.. there are still launch bugs in that game.. still Jump to Light bugs in the game.. and they don't seem like they'll ever be fixed.

Solid game first, expansions later. How many YEARS went by for WoW before BC came out.

Geoff Gibson @ Dec 8th 2008 1:25PM

I'm a bit torn on the issue.

One one hand I desperately want there to be an xpac to supply more PvE content. However, on the other hand, I don't want the development of an xpac to get in the way of dealing with QA bugs or just player suggestions.

I guess what I really want is for Mythic to have two teams; one team will work on fixing bugs and adding small updates to the game and the other team will work on the xpac. :)

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Dan @ Jan 3rd 2009 4:26AM

I play and love it. Guys dont let the whining get you down, every MMO has incessant whining from prepubescent teens and snobby assholes. Look at the forums of any MMO and thisll tell you that, play it and come to your own conclusion.

personally i love it, it gears whole heartedly in a PvP direction and seeks to retain that, tho i hope they give PvE some more love. As far as an X-pac in concerned, i understand the concept of being slow about it. You guys need to realize what "fix the core game: means for mythic. Not just a bug fix here and there. We just got two new classes and two more are on the way, not to mention all the other unadded content theyre putting in without fee, before xpac.