Warhammer Online - Delayed (again)

EuroGamers new MMO page is stating that Jeff Hickman has announced another release date delay for WAR.

Electronic Arts has announced that PC MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning won't be released until the autumn.
News of the delay was revealed this morning by producer Jeff Hickman. He was speaking at a press conference in Paris attended by the editor of Eurogamer's brand new MMO channel.

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More information.

There will be no 'whine' before it's time. :lol:
Well, I'm sure this is actually a good sign for those waiting on this.
The MMORPG world can certainly use some fresh new choices.

I agree, I'm kinda glad.

Thing is that developers watched the downfall / disaster of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and that instilled a huge fear and dread in MMO developers: they now know that its FAR, FAR BETTER to DELAY a game, than to release a half-assed MMO too early. Players nowadays do not tolerate unfinished MMORPGs. Players dont give very many second-chances to a failed release.

Ammon777 said:

Players dont give very many second-chances to a failed release.

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I think that is the essential lesson - there is so much stuff coming out that you really don't get the freedom to post-patch like you can in single-player games.

Did anyone really still think this would come out in spring or summer? There was hardly any advertising going on so far... Nowadays even the beta stages have become a business which is a bit sad. I mean you see how it goes. First you announce a preorder box which grants you access to the "open" beta (must be incredibly open if you need to preorder to get access). Unfortunately right now only the collector's is available for preorder which costs 80 bucks. Then you wait at least a month... now that all the fanboys have preordered (yes I am one of those), you announce the normal preorder version which contains all the good stuff (beta access, etc.) minus the crap that will later on collect dust on the shelves of all the idiots that preordered the ce. In late august you start the open beta which originally should start in may... hey who cares if the jerks that preordered whine and moan - they all received their preorder boxes by now and of course hardly anyone will cancel his/her preorder.
After these guys have enjoyed the "open" beta for like 24 hours max, you announce an exclusive open beta for fileplanet subscribers which you won't call open beta, but "stress test". After all the people that preorderd should not get the feeling that they also could have gotten into the "open" beta by simply subscribing for fileplanet. So, after having enjoyed their "open" beta access for one hour (downloading the client took 23 hours) the preorder people see themselves confronted with the fileplanet subscribers and see their latency skyrocket. It's pretty much that time when Mythic realizes that 10k people from the closed beta + 55k people from the ce preorder + 100k people from the normal preorder + 50k people from fileplanet beta... sorry stress test... might be too much for their two test servers.
After having preached for a month or so that once the game goes live EVERYTHING will be better, that the latency will be fine and the bugs fixed (the fanboys will believe this), you close the open beta. By now it's october. After two weeks of preparing the live servers, the game finally goes live! Yay! First the guys that preordered will get their 2 days extra playtime... and it will be awsome... less awsome will be the days after that in which the preorder players will again see their latency skyrocket once the servers fill up with normal players. Within the next two weeks the weather will get more and more shitty (rain, snow, cold, etc.) and all the gaming magazines will praise WO as the "best game ever", an absolute must have... by then we're in november and x-mas is almost at hand. This time not only latency will skyrocket, but also retail sales of the game... much better than releasing in spring or summer when people might be outside actually doing something else than playing games.

Quite cynical ... but if they actually manage to have interesting content in the game, then that plan could play out very well and be an extreme success and have fans everywhere rejoicing and not feeling ripped off at all!