Warhammer Online Shutting Down

http://www.warhammeronline.com/artic...

f*ck them. I am so pissed. Really, really angrier than I though I would be. I can't believe they didn't know this was coming and could have put together a f2p conversion that would have netted them some parting cash as well as brought an influx of players back if only for a few months.

God I am so pissed! They had such potential that they continually squandered... for 5 f*cking years!

Gaahhh!

I stopped caring awhile ago and it's not that they didnt know. Even F2P it would be a joke.

"Games Workshop has cultivated a world class IP. We were lucky enough to play in their universe for nearly a decade, with five great long years live. However, like all things – our contract has come to an end. Both Games Workshop and Mythic agreed to part ways, despite how hard it is emotionally on us to let the game go. "

I look at that, and can't help but wish I had been a fly-on-the-wall during those discussions.

This game was one of the biggest disappointments. I love the Warhammer setting so had really high hopes

whispa wrote:

This game was one of the biggest disappointments. I love the Warhammer setting so had really high hopes :(

Same and even after that they saw people jumping ship they did next to nothing or half assed the things they did do to try and get people back.

I was in the beta and had fun with the game. Not enough to actually pay $15 a month for it, but I had fun nonetheless. The biggest problem is that it was a mistake to try with the fantasy Warhammer IP. It was just too close to WOW and would always be seen as a clone. I could never escape the comparision and would always be seen in a negative light. They should have started with the 40K license to be different and, if they saw success, they could have leveraged that success to do the fantasy setting.

Nevin73 wrote:

I was in the beta and had fun with the game. Not enough to actually pay $15 a month for it, but I had fun nonetheless. The biggest problem is that it was a mistake to try with the fantasy Warhammer IP. It was just too close to WOW and would always be seen as a clone. I could never escape the comparision and would always be seen in a negative light. They should have started with the 40K license to be different and, if they saw success, they could have leveraged that success to do the fantasy setting.

Disagree here. While i'd love to see a 40k mmo come to light at the time this was launched the tech wasnt there to make a good attempt at that either. It's failing isnt that it was fantasy just a improper use of it. There's a lot of depth in the fantasy WH universe much more than WoW and still a lot of potential there if done right.

I'm sad for this but at the same time I'm not surprised at all. I knew that they were going to close this game after their license agreement expired. I played this game a lot in a semi-hardcore manner. I had my Warrior Priest all decked out in Sovereign gear and our guild was really tight and well known on our sever. We had a blast while it lasted but after playing the same game for months and no sign of any content update and slow at fixing major issues (issues that exist up to this day!), we all pretty much gave up on it.

The first "expansion" was a sad excuse to keep players around. They bumped the Renown Levels from 80 to 100, added 2 new armor sets for people to grind and that was pretty much it. They tried to add Skaven characters and a RvR Dungeon, but that was so horrible and uninspired. That's when I quit and never looked back.

Too bad; the game had potential. It had a lot of issues at launch but it looks like EA gave up on it way too early. I feel like they could have turned that ship around if they invested a bit more time and money on it, but I guess all that effort went into SWTOR.

Same and even after that they saw people jumping ship they did next to nothing or half assed the things they did do to try and get people back.

You forgot the part about duration. They did this for years! They introduced the blackguard and knight of the blazing sun. They implemented the choppa and slayer. Then... nothing but bandaids. Nothing!

Too bad; the game had potential. It had a lot of issues at launch but it looks like EA gave up on it way too early. I feel like they could have turned that ship around if they invested a bit more time and money on it, but I guess all that effort went into SWTOR.

This. Or they should have gone f2p with a cosmetic cash shop. How they felt they could justify a sub while in bare bones maintenance mode for years is way beyond me.

I don't know why but I guess those scenario and keep capturing feats/memories are so dear to me that when I see pictures of my characters I get so sad. And then that sadness turns to rage. I seriously want to scream FU in Gouskos's face. I am singling her out because she had several years to turn the ship around and laughed/spit in the face of anyone with constructive suggestions. There is no reason WAR could not have followed in the footsteps of LOTRO.

My best memory of Warhammer actually happened a few months before it launched at PAX. Got to sit in on a developer's talk with Hickman and Paul Barnett and then play one of the battle scenarios (the early dwarf one) before anyone else. He was completely full of it, but Barnett was just a magnetic speaker - he had me ready to set my hear on fire by the end of the talk.

And then the game actually launched and reality quickly set in. I guess the good news is GW 2 has given me most of what I was looking for in Warhammer, and Elder Scrolls may be yet another big improvement on large scale PVP. But as a longtime Warhammer tabletop fan I'm sad the IP is so badly treated.

As badly as the game was received post launch, and as fast as it seemed to have gone down hill from the outside perspective, I'm just surprised it took this long.

I too love the WHFB IP, I think the game's fantastic(I still have probably 2500pts of Dark Elves half painted from college), but there's something about Games Workshop and the way they handle how IP licenses are treated that really, really restricts what companies can do with IP that limits their potential for success. I don't think that they've got a shot at being regularly successful with licensed products until they learn to dial back this control freak impulse they have.

So I think this is special circumstances because I believe we don't condone this kind of talk on the boards, but with the game shutting down in a few months could someone PM if they know of an offline version of WAR or a private server?

I am currently enjoying the endless trial and tempted to throw $15 or $30 bucks at them when I get tired of leveling alts up to 10. I can't find the info for my original account and I don't think it survived 4 years and the merger with Origin. If I could I would almost definitely sub for a month or so. I had nothing to scream about. Most of my characters were 14-21. But I was definitely proud of them because of the reknown rank "scars" they earned and stories they could tell that distinguished them from low level characters in most mmos.

But once this game closes, I really hope they do release some version to the community so that we can keep playing. I am guessing that is a real long shot because of the license and it isn't their own engine. Well, and it is EA too!

GW is incredibly aggressive about protecting their IP. That said, something like that is definitely easily googled.

Ya just type game name you're interested in and 'private servers' and you'll find a list for just about everything.

Wow so I've played a little more and kinda want to say forget it. They effed up getting renown gear with yet even more currencies.

If I am remembering correctly, it used to be that lower tier pvp gear just required a certain renown rank and you could buy it with gold from you local renown gear vendor. It also required reaching a pve level to quip it but you could buy it with gold at the renown rank. It was a simple and effective way to gear up in between PQ/influence/quested gear rewards and quite often filled in the upgrade gap for slots overlooked by PQ/influence/quested rewards. It was really fun to jump into a couple of scenarios or cap a control point in rvr to gear up for more questing.

Now even tier 1 gear required both renown rank and some special currency like some random insignia or mark that I guess drops from killing other players. And from looking at the renown vendor, I saw no less than 4 different currencies of which I have had not a single 1 drop after capping a point, clearing out the npcs guarding said point and assisting with at least 3 rvr pc kills.

All these overlapping rewards systems and currencies is what killed the game at the start and it looks like they never stopped... *sigh*

fangblackbone wrote:

Wow so I've played a little more and kinda want to say forget it. They effed up getting renown gear with yet even more currencies.

If I am remembering correctly, it used to be that lower tier pvp gear just required a certain renown rank and you could buy it with gold from you local renown gear vendor. It also required reaching a pve level to quip it but you could buy it with gold at the renown rank. It was a simple and effective way to gear up in between PQ/influence/quested gear rewards and quite often filled in the upgrade gap for slots overlooked by PQ/influence/quested rewards. It was really fun to jump into a couple of scenarios or cap a control point in rvr to gear up for more questing.

Now even tier 1 gear required both renown rank and some special currency like some random insignia or mark that I guess drops from killing other players. And from looking at the renown vendor, I saw no less than 4 different currencies of which I have had not a single 1 drop after capping a point, clearing out the npcs guarding said point and assisting with at least 3 rvr pc kills.

All these overlapping rewards systems and currencies is what killed the game at the start and it looks like they never stopped... *sigh*

in their defense on that last bit. That was in response to user out cry. You had people trying to game the system and who were riding on the coat tails of others and not really helping.

AnimeJ wrote:

there's something about Games Workshop and the way they handle how IP licenses are treated that really, really restricts what companies can do with IP that limits their potential for success.

When I interviewed at Mythic, it was mentioned how just about anything needed clearance from GW, which meant a conference call to England.

I can only guess how fraught (and ultimately pointless) the negotiations Lt Warhound imagined would have been.

As for whether a 40k MMO would've been a better choice, I think the people there were really smarting over the cancellation of Imperator. It would've been a "too soon" kind of thing.

Apparently there's a 40k F2P mmo in the works, but honestly, I don't see it going so well. Sadly, that feeling is just getting reinforced any time I read news about it, and this definitely is not reinforcing the warm fuzzies.