Make Delays, Not WAR
By 
Hib in
Warhammer Online, features on
March 26th, 2008
Warhammer Online will remain, for the time being, Warhammer Offline…at least until this fall, according to Eurogamer.net.
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.
It’s not the first time the game’s release date has been pushed back. Warhammer Online was originally due out in Q1 of this year, but that was shifted to Q2. At the time, EA Mythic boss Mark Jacobs said the delay would allow the studio to “invest additional time and effort in implementation and polish to make WAR great”.
Long-time readers know that I’m firmly in the corner of “don’t release your game until it’s ready”, but I have to wonder how many times the release date can be pushed back before it starts to become a problem.
This, of course, is why announcing a release date can be a bad thing. If EA Mythic had simply said “we’re not ready yet” to begin with last year, then gamers would continue to feel anticipation, instead of the anticipation/frustration mix they’re dealing with.
Of course, I’ve talked before about the gamesmanship between EA Mythic and Funcom (publishers of Age of Conan) regarding the advantages and disadvantages of being the first to go gold with their new game, but so far, every time one company has pushed back their release date, the other has followed suit soon after.
As I write this, Age of Conan is still slated for a May release. Will Funcom continue to hold to this, or will they take advantage of the opportunity to spend a few more months polishing AoC without losing ground to Warhammer? Only time will tell.
My money, however, is on an announcement within the next week or two that AoC will be pushed back to late summer 2008.
UPDATE: The latest edition of the Warhammer Online newsletter was sent out this afternoon, with a statement from Mark Jacobs…here’s the text of that message. Go go Gadget Cut’N'Paste!
On the day we signed the agreement to license Warhammer from Games Workshop, I promised them that we would create a great and glorious game, a truly next-generation MMORPG. Today, I have news to report; we are going to delay the release of WAR until Fall 2008. While we do not expect this announcement to be met with fanfare and cheering crowds; the additional time will be spent hammering WAR into an even better game that it is today.
During the most recent phase of beta testing, two things have become clear. One was that our key innovations - Public Quests, Tome of Knowledge and Realm vs. Realm combat - were all coming along extremely well, as was the first stage of our innovative crafting system. The second, that the game would benefit from additional iteration time as well as adding a layer of polish or two. Fortunately, as part of Electronic Arts, we are able to do just that.
While I have no doubt that the community will experience a wide range of emotions over this decision, I urge you to remember one thing (and to keep the tar cold and the feathers on the birds), that our goal has never been to release a game by a certain date but to release a great Warhammer MMORPG. We have not wavered from this goal and with the full support of Games Workshop, GOA and Electronic Arts we intend to release a glorious next-generation MMORPG.
As always, I thank the community for its support, patronage and its patience.
Mark Jacobs
VP, GM EA Mythic
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