In light of the resent news of the WAR Closed Beta Servers shutting down for 2 months Mark Jacobs made a post on the F13.net forums. In his post Mark gets real with the community and gives it to us straight up. He makes it clear that they are taking the feedback and information collected during the beta so far and they are acting upon it.
“It’s really simple. We got lots and lots of data (some great, some good, some not so good) and we are going to act on what we got. That’s one reason we started beta as early as we did so we could gather that data now, not later, when we have a chance to fix/change/improve things. As an FYI, the tools we are using now I would have killed for with DAoC, if we had then what we have now, a lot of dumb stuff would not have happened.”
In terms of delays, Mark Jacobs squashes the rumors that this is at all related to: making the game more like WoW, due to a delay by EA, the signs of the ‘March of Death’, or that it is related in any way to the recent departure of many employees from EA Mythic. He makes a good point that in the beginning many people were not at all worried about the time it would take Mythic to develop WAR and that they should take all the time they need to get it right. Now that there might be a delay it’s become obvious that the aforementioned ability to wait has somewhat diminished. Mark makes another great point that back when they did not have the funding or resources to do with DAOC what they are doing now with WAR it was the cause for much of DAOC’s problems. Having played DAOC I agree that if they had tested or developed some aspects of the game it could have been an even better experience.
So whether or not WAR makes the Q1 2008 release doesn’t really matter too much to me. While I often lack the patience to wait for a great game to release I still can’t deny the need for them to take all the time necessary to get the game ready. If not for EA I would definitely be more concerned that Mythic, being previously independent, might struggle. But with the cash cow behind them there is no cause for concern. I’m going to guess though that they will now be making an early Q2 2008 release – May sounds good.
Yep, May or June sounds likely. Also worth noting that EA doesn’t want to have another failed MMO. They want this thing to be their name-maker in the MMO space. I’m sure they’ll give Mythic all the time they require.
I think it’s a good thing – they know what needs to be fixed/retooled/etc., so if they need two months to focus and do that, then more power to them. It will be interesting to see if this does in fact create a release delay to Q2 2008. Probably not far fetched to think so, considering that there will be a lot of changes to test (and a lot more testers) come December. Not likely that they could get good testing done and everything else to get the game to retail even by late March. Your guess of May or June is probably more accurate.
Please let it go to Q2, I don’t want to have to play POTBS and WAR at the same time.
I agree! 😛
This is killing me- my second child is due in early May, and those first couple of months aren’t exactly prime gaming time (if I don’t want my wife to maim me). I’m actually hoping it slips to late June at this point.
[…] For some this will only heighten “doom and gloom” talk, despite what the quote above says. For others they will say “I knew this was going to happen!”. In fact, if I recall correctly, Keen called this one and said he thought it very likely that WAR would get pushed to Q2 2008. I’m going to guess though that they will now be making an early Q2 2008 release – May sounds good. […]