Warhammer Online - Mark Jacobs Interview Part 2 @ MMORPG

[woges]

Punkbuster (http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/239/feature/2041) to be used in WAR.
First, Mark Jacobs, the VP and General Manager of Mythic Entertainment, announced to MMORPG.com that the studio has partnered with well-known anti-cheat company Punkbuster in an effort to make sure that their upcoming RvR game (Warhammer Online) is as free from cheaters, hacks and the like as possible.

“As you know,” said Jacobs in an interview, “we have fought a long battle against hackers, cheaters and other assorted slimeballs who think that it’s both fun and fair for them to have an advantage over other players.”

“We obviously did a lot of things in Dark Age of Camelot that worked,” he continued. “ We banned cheaters whenever we found them. We made a tremendous effort to sort out and deal with hackers and companies or individuals who promote this sort of stuff. Did we do a perfect job? Absolutely not, nobody does, but we did a pretty good job.”

In 2008 though, he said, Warhammer is seeing a much wider distribution than its earlier counterpart and the landscape of MMOs has changed, leading to more and more people who look to cheat. Rather than facing down these cheaters and hackers on their own, Mythic is taking on a partner in Punkbuster, a company with a strong reputation in the online gaming world.
More information. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=9576)

[Ionstormsucks]

The interesting stuff really comes on page 2 or 3 where Marc Jacobs drops the bomb. Instead of 6 starter cities there will now be only 2 at the beginning of the game (rest will be finished later... I'm sure since they are so awsome at copying Blizzard it will only take them three years or so until we'll see one of the other four cities) and they completely cut out 4 classes they "couldn't get great". What a crap. Fact is, there is so much to do and fix that they would never get everything finished until release. I had to good laugh when they told people a few months ago that they will push back WAR because it wasn't polished enough. There wasn't a game to release that's all. They had zones in which basically every bit of content was broken.
I canceled my perorder. This is big bullshit. And this is exactely why people nowadays give a shit about developers and their games. First you let them preorder your shit and then you tell them you'll cut out half the content.
I mean, I was sceptical when I saw the beta, but I didn't expect them to actually cut out so much stuff. This will be just another failure just like all the other MMOs ou there - in terms subscribers anyway.

[zakhal]

This will be just another failure just like all the other MMOs ou there - in terms subscribers anyway.

One wow to rule them all and into subscription bind them: http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html

[danutz_plusplus]

One wow to rule them all and into subscription bind them: http://www.mmogchart.com/Chart1.html

Holy crap. That's unbelievable. WoW really monopolized the market.

[bjon045]

I'm sure since they are so awsome at copying Blizzard it will only take them three years or so until we'll see one of the other four cities) and they completely cut out 4 classes they "couldn't get great".

DAOC was out before WOW does that mean WOW copied DAOC?

Regarding your other comments I am guessing you haven't tried many other MMORPGs at launch. AoC, AO, Vanguard, SW, LoTR etc etc etc, pretty all did exactly the same thing.

[Maylander]

All MMOs are unfinished at start, but this sounded like cutting a bit much. However, I don't think that will be the biggest problem - according to rumors, the launch shouldn't be too far from Wrath of the Lich King, which is basically the same as a death penalty for a starting MMO. The only way anyone can get into the market at this point, is to get a solid community at a time where WoW activity is at its lowest. Trying to enter the market when WoW is at an all time high is nearly impossible in my opinion.

[Ionstormsucks]

DAOC was out before WOW does that mean WOW copied DAOC?

Regarding your other comments I am guessing you haven't tried many other MMORPGs at launch.

I played like every big commercial MMORPG since Everquest (including all you named... at least briefly). And yes, in many ways WoW "borrowed" from DAoC, just like DAoC did from EQ, but that's not what I am talking about. Fact is that the similarities between WoW and WAR are absolutely striking in terms of game mechanics. If you play WAR for about five minutes it becomes pretty obvious that Mythic took essentially every element of game mechanic from WoW and simply gave it another name. Yes, they also added some pretty negligible stuff like the tome of knowledge or public quests, but that's about it.

What I was aiming at with my first post was really that it is quite disappointing with how few content MMOs start out nowadays. Everquest 1 for example had a huge base of content when it startet out, even WoW, although far from perfect had quite some content ready for its players. Now look at AoC - heck they don't even have mid-level content, and I won't even talk about all the other shit that's broken. Now if I hear that in WAR of six (!!!) major cities that were planned for release only two will be implemented and that they simply cut out four classes it tells me a lot of the state of the game.


AoC, AO, Vanguard, SW, LoTR etc etc etc, pretty all did exactly the same thing


Yes, and that's fucking sad, but by no means a justification. It's a trend that developers let people pay for shit that should have been in the game in the first place anyway.
Take for example Vanguard. I love the game. For me it's one of the better MMOs out there, most people who claim otherwise haven't even played it. Nontheless it simply cannot be, that since launch people are paying for fixing the million bugs and the broken content that should have been in there anyway. Same goes for Age of Conan, although in this case I believe the game is crap, but anyway...
I'm well aware that no MMO is perfect at launch, they will all have bugs, and probably developers will always have to cut out some stuff but it's simply a fact that recent MMOs have way less content at launch then their early predecessors.