Reflecting on WAR

The time has finally come -- Warhammer Online Age of Reckoning is shutting down in December.  Sometimes I forget the infamously botched MMO is still around, and other times I…

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DAOC’s 10th Birthday

I have to chime in on this one.  Scott Jennings has posted Matt Firor’s recollections from DAOC’s launch day.  It was ten years ago.  Crazy how time flies while at the same time making no sense… it’s crazy to think at 2001 was ten years ago when it feels like yesterday.  Read Matt’s story.  It’s fascinating.  Mythic has a truly remarkable history that so many of you do not know well enough.

I remember walking into the office one morning towards the end of October. By that time it was obvious we had a smash hit on our hands. Our marketing/sales consultant, Eugene Evans (now the GM of the studio) had a whiteboard near his desk (right by the front door) where he jotted down sales numbers. By October 27 or so, it showed that we were not only the #1 selling PC game for October, but also the #1 selling PC product for that month. Since this was the first boxed retail product Mythic had, I asked him if this success was normal. Eugene, and old industry veteran, looked at me like I was insane and replied, “No, this isn’t typical.”

DAOC was and most likely will be forever one of the greatest accomplishments in MMORPG PvP.   While DAOC invented and captured lightning in a bottle when it came to PvP, it was also one of the few games to masterfully blend PvE and PvP together with incentive and reward (until ToA).  Furthermore, DAOC had one of the greatest communities of any game where you could be playing in a realm of a thousand people and feel like you knew them all — it was magic in every sense of the word.

There aren’t words to adequately describe my desire for another game like it.  I would give my time freely to see it done.   It’s sad that games are releasing today with problems that DAOC solved.  That says a lot about the DAOC team and about those teams making games today.

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