The History Of War

[AzgalSoldier]

1. EA buys Mythic
2. EA forces Mythic to move resources from ULTIMA & DAOC onto Warhammer, destroying both games and deliberately stops the creation of the third faction against Mythics pleeding
3. EA forces Mythic to release the game 1 year prematurely
4. WAR has record sales , 1.2 Million in first weak.
5. Game servers are immediately unstable, so they open up another 23 servers to cope with population explosion
6. End first month sub, population drops by 700 000 instantly, leaving 43 empty servers.
7. EA sees this, cuts funding for WAR immediately and fires 80 staff members.
8. 6 months later they launch land of the DEAD - cuts player base in half
9. EA fire more staff and then reallocate all the senior developers to SWTOR, leaving maybe 15 - 20 staff members.
10.EA then decides to pull more funding out of WAR and use it as a cash cow for WRATH OF HEROES.
11. WRATH OF HEROES fails to draw an audience, because everyone wanted to play WAR
12. Mythic develops Vampire expansion with FTP, EA stops mythic from releasing WAR expansion so that SWTOR can become their cash cow and go FTP.
13. Everyone leaves SWTOR - Gold Famers and SPAM Bots take over...somehow a few years later SWTOR does regain ground and becomes very profitable again.
14. Now a new Star Wars MMORPG is rumored to be under development and the leek suggested that EA will completely shut down SWTOR which is currently a cash cow for other titles and has seen very little movement this year.
15. Games Workshop do not allow Mythic to renew licence because of IP miss- use to the company caused by EA and shuts down warhammer
16. EA then HOARDS the Mythic IP - so that no other company can use the words 'RVR' or other...then effectively sues every company that uses any of the reserved words from Mythics Corps


Need I say more?

[thullonse]

also source on the new star wars mmo or the leak? got kinda interested

[AzgalSoldier]

Can't remember source, I think I saw it on Facebook or something...soz man...

[Genisaurus]

1. EA buys Mythic
2. EA forces Mythic to move resources from ULTIMA & DAOC onto Warhammer, destroying both games and deliberately stops the creation of the third faction against Mythics pleeding
3. EA forces Mythic to release the game 1 year prematurely
4. WAR has record sales , 1.2 Million in first weak.
5. Game servers are immediately unstable, so they open up another 23 servers to cope with population explosion
6. End first month sub, population drops by 700 000 instantly, leaving 43 empty servers.
7. EA sees this, cuts funding for WAR immediately and fires 80 staff members.
8. 6 months later they launch land of the DEAD - cuts player base in half
9. EA fire more staff and then reallocate all the senior developers to SWTOR, leaving maybe 15 - 20 staff members.
10.EA then decides to pull more funding out of WAR and use it as a cash cow for WRATH OF HEROES.
11. WRATH OF HEROES fails to draw an audience, because everyone wanted to play WAR
12. Mythic develops expansion, EA stops mythic from releasing WAR expansion so that SWTOR can become their cash cow and go FTP.
13. Everyone leaves SWTOR - Gold Famers and SPAM Bots take over...somehow a few years later SWTOR does regain ground and becomes very profitable again.
14. Now a new Star Wars MMORPG is rumored to be under development and the leek suggested that EA will completely shut down SWTOR which is currently a cash cow for other title and has seen very little movement this year.
15. EA then HOARDS the Mythic IP - so that no other company can use the words 'RVR' or other...then effectively sues every company that uses any of the reserved words from Mythics Corps

Need I say more?

I'm all for Mythic-bashing, but I'm not sure what the purpose of this post is, and some of the information is wrong.

2. Ultima and DAOC were already on the decline when WAR began development. Here's a picture. Remember that Mythic started development on WAR in 2005, but wasn't bought by EA until 2006. Also, it was Games Workshop that prohibited a 3rd realm, not EA. Kai Schober went on record saying that they still had to get minor changes approved by GW even after the game was getting shut down. He specifically said they had a hard time getting approval for the offensive leap the SM/BO were going to get in 1.4.9, but got it approved as a change to a defensive leap.
...
6-7. This is not surprising, most game studios have layoffs after a game release. Lots of contractors are brought on during development that aren't needed to maintain a live product.
...
11. WoH failed to draw an audience because it was ****. You can't make a whole game around arena PVP, even if its F2P.
12. SWTOR was never intended to become F2P, that's a concession that was made because SWTOR, like WAR was **** at launch, and people abandoned it in droves.
13. SWTOR has never regained all the ground it lost, it just hit an ideal price-performance ratio in terms of revenue. It's a dead game with no future, it's just plodding along. SWTOR succeeds where WAR failed because it's a PVE MMO through and through, and there's a much higher tolerance for poor game quality when you're not playing competitively.
...
15. Why shouldn't they? They bought and own Mythic and all the related trademarks. RvR might be a protected term, but saying that hurts anyone is asinine. You can say "3-faction PvP" or "PvPvP" or literally anything else to express the same concept.

[Coryphaus]

WHAT?!? EA wants to shut down swtor? noo i havent played through all the class stories yet or done all the romances

[Londo]

I believe Broadsword Online (what became of Mythic) had an option to continue War, they chose not to and only picked up Ultima Online and Daoc.

I remember reading SWTOR had 15% royalty per subscription to LucasArts (Industry standard is 5%). Surprising EA kept SWTOR this long.

[Klev]

1. EA buys Mythic
2. EA forces Mythic to move resources from ULTIMA & DAOC onto Warhammer, destroying both games and deliberately stops the creation of the third faction against Mythics pleeding
3. EA forces Mythic to release the game 1 year prematurely
4. WAR has record sales , 1.2 Million in first weak.
5. Game servers are immediately unstable, so they open up another 23 servers to cope with population explosion
6. End first month sub, population drops by 700 000 instantly, leaving 43 empty servers.
7. EA sees this, cuts funding for WAR immediately and fires 80 staff members.
8. 6 months later they launch land of the DEAD - cuts player base in half
9. EA fire more staff and then reallocate all the senior developers to SWTOR, leaving maybe 15 - 20 staff members.
10.EA then decides to pull more funding out of WAR and use it as a cash cow for WRATH OF HEROES.
11. WRATH OF HEROES fails to draw an audience, because everyone wanted to play WAR
12. Mythic develops expansion, EA stops mythic from releasing WAR expansion so that SWTOR can become their cash cow and go FTP.
13. Everyone leaves SWTOR - Gold Famers and SPAM Bots take over...somehow a few years later SWTOR does regain ground and becomes very profitable again.
14. Now a new Star Wars MMORPG is rumored to be under development and the leek suggested that EA will completely shut down SWTOR which is currently a cash cow for other title and has seen very little movement this year.
15. EA then HOARDS the Mythic IP - so that no other company can use the words 'RVR' or other...then effectively sues every company that uses any of the reserved words from Mythics Corps

Need I say more?

I'm all for Mythic-bashing, but I'm not sure what the purpose of this post is, and some of the information is wrong.

2. Ultima and DAOC were already on the decline when WAR began development. Here's a picture. Remember that Mythic started development on WAR in 2005, but wasn't bought by EA until 2006. Also, it was Games Workshop that prohibited a 3rd realm, not EA. Kai Schober went on record saying that they still had to get minor changes approved by GW even after the game was getting shut down. He specifically said they had a hard time getting approval for the offensive leap the SM/BO were going to get in 1.4.9, but got it approved as a change to a defensive leap.
...
6-7. This is not surprising, most game studios have layoffs after a game release. Lots of contractors are brought on during development that aren't needed to maintain a live product.
...
11. WoH failed to draw an audience because it was ****. You can't make a whole game around arena PVP, even if its F2P.
12. SWTOR was never intended to become F2P, that's a concession that was made because SWTOR, like WAR was **** at launch, and people abandoned it in droves.
13. SWTOR has never regained all the ground it lost, it just hit an ideal price-performance ratio in terms of revenue. It's a dead game with no future, it's just plodding along. SWTOR succeeds where WAR failed because it's a PVE MMO through and through, and there's a much higher tolerance for poor game quality when you're not playing competitively.
...
15. Why shouldn't they? They bought and own Mythic and all the related trademarks. RvR might be a protected term, but saying that hurts anyone is asinine. You can say "3-faction PvP" or "PvPvP" or literally anything else to express the same concept.

Humbly disagree with the Mythic specific bashing and still attribute it to mostly EA's issues. Mythic acquired the IP from GW mid May of 2005. EA acquired Mythic mid June of 2006. WAR was released mid July of 2008. EA had the reigns much longer than not. I'm not a complete Mythic fanboy as they had plenty of missteps in DAoC but despite that, they brought to light the two best MMORPG games to date (IMHO). EA on the other hand is a large and 'mature' company, one that has to answer to wall street and return on investment. Smaller and young startups aren't beholden to those those same rules. EA saw the amount of profits Blizzard was receiving in the MMO business from WoW and had the same returns to live up to on the business end. This can be seen by the direction that SWToR went. Millions spent on voice overs and story lines (which are good) but horrid returns in the world of PvP. It is a niche market for MMOs and will never match the subscriptions and returns that a PvE MMO will bring.

That doesn't mean we can't have good ones (praying for good things for Camelot Unchained). It's just that the big guys need to keep their hands off it.

P.S. Also hate EA for taking Bioware and my old beloved Balder's Gate games...

[Genisaurus]

Humbly disagree with the Mythic specific bashing and still attribute it to mostly EA's issues. Mythic acquired the IP from GW mid May of 2005. EA acquired Mythic mid June of 2006. WAR was released mid July of 2008. EA had the reigns much longer than not. I'm not a complete Mythic fanboy as they had plenty of missteps in DAoC but despite that, they brought to light the two best MMORPG games to date (IMHO). EA on the other hand is a large and 'mature' company, one that has to answer to wall street and return on investment. Smaller and young startups aren't beholden to those those same rules. EA saw the amount of profits Blizzard was receiving in the MMO business from WoW and had the same returns to live up to on the business end. This can be seen by the direction that SWToR went. Millions spent on voice overs and story lines (which are good) but horrid returns in the world of PvP. It is a niche market for MMOs and will never match the subscriptions and returns that a PvE MMO will bring.

I'm not saying that EA didn't horribly mismanage the game, I'm just saying they were not the deciding factor in all of the things WAR was missing, and needed badly. The decision to launch the game after only 3 years of development for example, was EA's, not GW's. But the decision to only have 2 factions was GW. The decision to cut 4/6 capital cities was EA's, but the decision to make Chaos a Tzeentch-only faction was GW's.

[okraslayer]

No one forced Mythic to sell out to anyone. They saw the $$$ and said **** it.

[lilsabin]

i have hope in this private server thing , we can revive this game and bring it s rightfull glory , lets leave the past behind , and focus on the future