Tag Archives: warhammer online

During his keynote at GDC Austin, Warhammer Online executive producer Jeff Hickman spoke to attendees about three of the major mistakes Mythic made with the MMO.

These mistakes being challenging play, the lack of economy, and the fact that the game was so easy that social tools were made irrelevant.

“There’s a big difference between easy play and ease of use,” he said. “One of the lessons that we thought we learned from ourselves and other games, was that it’s important to have ease of use, and it’s also important to hit the right balance between easy gameplay, challenging gameplay, and too difficult. We thought we hit that, but Warhammer, in PVE, in the beginning, is too easy. It doesn’t make you thrilled to do it.

[As for] our economy… we just missed the mark. If you look at the reasoning behind the economy, you’ll see things like, ‘Hey, we’re not going to let gold farmers in our game.’ ‘We’re going to try to make sure we have controlled inflation.’ We had all the best reasons in our game, but what it caused us to do was build a game where economy is not important enough.

“Economy brings people together.”

There’s loads more from his talk over on Gamasutra.

The news this week in MMOs was a bit scarce, unless it was huge news that hit the front page – which a lot of it did.

However, there were other things going on: a new faction for EVE Online, bonus goodies for EverQuest II, content changes for Guild Wars, and a few other things you can read about on past the break.

TGS is coming up, so who knows what lies in store for us by way of new announcements.

More »

Loads of World of Warcraft stuff is coming out of BlizzCon 09, but you knew that already.

We also told you about the new CCP game Dust 514 this week thanks to GamesCom, but there is other stuff that went on in the world of MMOs as well.

The Avaline service is now available in Second Life, Warhammer Online is having it’s Wild Hunt Event, an Aion has revealed the Cleric class.

More is through the break.

More »

Mythic and Electronic Arts announced that there will be celebration activities for the one year  of Warhammer Online.

Kicking off on August 31 and going through the month of September, there will be weekend-only scenarios, a month long 20 percent experience and renown bonus, special in-game items for all players, veteran rewards, and The Wild Hunt live-event.

“This anniversary marks a major milestone for WAR, the Mythic development team, and our fantastic community of players,” said Mythic’s Jeff Hickman.

“We could think of no better way of marking this occasion than by celebrating our success with our fans for the entire month of September. We’ve got new content to share with the Wild Hunt live event, special versions of popular scenarios, fireworks, Halfling pies, and exploding stout!

“Now that is a party Warhammer style!”

Loads more information is included in the press release past the break.

More »

Loads of stuff as usual going on this week with MMOs.

CCP has files a trademark fro Dust 514, which strangely enough resembles the EvE Logo, Warhammer’s latest patch is up on the test server, Guild Wars had some more class tweaks, and the summer festivities have been extended for Lord of the Rings Online.

Load of stuff, really. Read on past the break for more.

More »

Mythic has announced that Mac users will soon be able to play Warhammer Online with the PC users this fall.

The Beta of the Mac version of Warhammer Online will allow current players to download a client to their Mac computers and play with their live game accounts.

Players who do not have an existing live account, can download a 10-day beta trial account and receive an exclusive title and trophy reward for their characters within the game.

To get in on the Beta and get the 10-day free trial hit this link.

Press release is through the break.
More »

Warhammer Online producer Jeff Skalski has revealed that the next in-game Live Event will be called The Wild Hunt.

It is slated for release around the time of the game’s first birthday in September and will be part of patch 1.3.1 which contains updates and streamlining to the Realm vs Realm play.

War’s latest patch is expected this month, and included crowd control and AoE ability changes, and tweaks to the Archmage and Shaman classes. RvR rewards will be increased, and a 150 percent bonus to experience when players buff themselves with Field of Glory.

Open RvR rewards will be increased for players that fight enemy players outside keeps and battlefield objectives. Players will receive a 150% bonus to experience with the Field of Glory buff, up from 100%, and a 150% bonus to renown.

More through IncGamers and the official Warhammer site.

Greg Zeschuk has revealed to Eurogamer that Mythic will help out with Star Wars: The Old Republic.

This does not mean that BioWare will help with Warhammer Online, though.

“Ray (Muzyka) and I (have) both played Warhammer, and actually I’ve still been playing it on and off for a while,” he told the site. “So I think for us it’s not to much a popularity boost as just the fact that we can probably bring perspectives to the table that will be new and perhaps helpful to the guys from Mythic in the same way from an online perspective they can certainly share with us.

“To give credit to the Austin team [making Star Wars: The Old Republic], we have a number of serious MMO veterans on there, so it’s certainly not neophytes, but there’s absolutely opportunities to share and learn things back and forth.”

It’s BioWare Day around the globe, apparently. Expect more throughout the day we guess.

Thanks, Massively.

Loads this week in MMO news, and some is more interesting than what we have been offered in previous weeks.

FussionFall is getting an expansion for its 5 million users, the EQI&II trademark rumors turned out to be new expansions, Star Wars will be on hand at Comic-Con, and Conan got a new update.

Also, Warhammer and LotRO are celebrating the summer with festivities to make things a bit more zany and fun.

Find out all about these and others after the break.

More »

Warhammer Online developer Mythic’s confirmed that well-known studio head Mark Jacobs has left his role.

EA has formed a new MMO and RPG division, to be headed by BioWare boss Ray Muzyka.

BioWare’s other co-founder, Greg Zeschuk, will become Group Creative Officer of the new division.

“We thank Mark for his contributions at Mythic and wish him the very best going forward,” said Mythic in a statement.

“Mark played a major part in the success of Mythic with his contribution as General Manager and Lead Designer of WAR.”

His the link for the full thing.

This week there is a bit more going on in MMOs than last week.

Seems quite a few got game updates, WoW’s Midsummer Fire Festival is in full swing, and City of Heroes is getting power customization.

Loads of stuff really. Read on past the break for the lot of it.

• More »

Warhammer Online players eager to get a quick start on the upcoming Land of the Dead update can pre-download patch 1.3.

If you do, come June 16 you won’t have to wait as long for the update to finish.

Right now it’s US and Oceanic only, but GOA (France Telecom) will release one for Europe early next week.

The file is 867Mb, will contain the majority of the content included, and can be downloaded here.

Thanks, Massively.

Warhammer Online’s final live event in the Call to Arms expansion, Rise of the Tomb Kings, will go live June 17 and end June 24.

At least it has a date now.

The winning Realm will have exclusive first access to the new Tomb Kings themed dungeon zone, and the the swag inside of it immediately following the conclusion of the live event.

Exclusive titles “Sky Captain” for Order, and “Master of the Air” for Destruction will be bestowed upon a lucky few and some may even get the ultra-rare Ravening Cloak.

You know about all the details already though.

Hit the jump for the full press release.

More »

Planned career changes for Warhammer Online will not be included in patch 1.3, producer Adam Gershowitz has confirmed.

Some of the proposed balancing changes have proven a little controversial, so Mythic will instead focus on the Land of the Dead zone.

Apparently, there was an outcry in the community over changes specifically aimed at stat factors and healing effectiveness for the Warrior Priest and Disciple careers.

Plans to re-open character balance testing after the patch’s release will be implemented so the developers can work with the community on the changes.

More over at IncGamers.

E3 was a very busy week for all involved whether they were at the show or not. Loads of games were unveiled, peripherals, and tons more stuff happened.

MMOs were there too though, and while the majority didn’t make the front page, loads of stuff pertaining to the genre happened or is going to happen.

Find out exactly what after the jump.
More »

New shots of the upcoming Land of the Dead expansion for Warhammer Online popped up on Eurogamer this morning.

There are 30 posted, and each depict a very Egyptian-like setting. Actually it would be considered Egypt if you could ride scary looking boar mounts and you were an orc.

Somehow we don’t think Semerkhet or any of the other Pharaohs rode one of those, which is a shame really.

At any rate, for those who play the MMO, stage one of public test 1.3 is live with the first segment focusing on combat and career changes, along with the mechanic for gathering resources and unlocking the Tomb of Kings zones. To get in on the test, the devs posted a “how to” page here.

Land of the Dead will not be made available until later in the year,  and while you can unlock it and take a gander at it, you can’t traverse through it yet. Sorry

Screens are through the link.

Leading up to E3, there is not a megaton of news with anything, let alone MMOs. The week was basically all about screens, delving into crafting systems and character sheets, and general stuff that you can view on any online game’s website. It’s called pre-E3 malaise, and today it’s pretty thick.

However, we have dug through the mire once more to bring you something in the way of MMO news that didn’t hit the front page.

You can catch up on it all after the break.

More »

EA execs just confirmed in an investor conference call that Warhammer Online has 300,000 subscribers at the end of March 2009.

The company reported an FY2009 loss of $1.08 billion earlier today.

The MMO launched in September 2008.

Welcome once again to your weekly MMO news round-up.

Loads going as usual what with PlayXpert releasing a new Widget for online games, Conan players getting to go to level 50, and Shadowbane getting a small reprieve from the death ax.

Wanna know the rest? Of course you do, and it’s all after the break.
More »

Loads of goings on in the world of MMOs, as usual. Let us make sense of it for you.

This week was filled with birthday celebrations for four different MMOs: Lineage II, LOTRO, City of Heroes, and Guild Wars. Good job guys.

Other stuff happened too ya know, and it’s all broken down for you after the break.
More »