Added by Jeff on Oct. 16, 2008
32 comments
While we're on the subject, I heard 50 Cent was going to claim that his next record and video game would outsell Kanye, Warcraft, and Warhammer COMBINED. Either that or he'd threaten to retire... again.
I thought you might be interested in checking out a pair of stories from MTV Multiplayer with comments from
World of Warcraft's game director,
Jeff Kaplan, and
Warhammer Online's head guy,
Mark Jacobs, on their respective games. Actually, I guess most of the talk is specifically about Warhammer. But it's interesting to watch them sort of poke and jab back and forth.
The
original interview with Jeff Kaplan took place during Blizzard's annual BlizzCon and seems to be focused on who was in who's beta. Apparently Blizzard reached out to the great uniter,
Paul Barnett, to allow Mythic's posse into the
Wrath of the Lich King beta. But Mythic's policies prevented any sort of official reciprocation with the Warhammer beta.
This brings us to rap beef in video game interview form, where Kaplan is quoted by MTV as saying "I’m always fascinated by betas in general and [non-disclosure agreements] and how tight-lipped they tend to be. It’s Blizzard philosophy that if you’re really confident in your game, then you have nothing to worry about. So I guess that would be my big take away from that."
OH SNAP SON NO HE DIDN'T IT AIN'T BEEN ON LIKE THIS SINCE 'KISS WAS ON THE PHONE WITH GREEN LANTERN, REAL TALK FAMILY... ahem... sorry.
Kaplan then goes on to talk about his experience with Warhammer, which sort of mirrors mine, though I haven't been able to play very much (or at all, really) over the past two weeks. He claims he's on a server with 30-45-minute wait times to get into the game's PVP scenarios and that a lot of the public quests are empty. Sure sounds like Mordheim to me.
MTV got a post-publish response to the article from Mark Jacobs, leading to a
second story. His responses are what led me to write this in the first place, because it sounds weirdly defensive for a game that, by most accounts, seems to be doing just fine. Heck, I like it, anyway. Take this bit from the MTV story, for example...
Referring to Kaplan’s mention of the 30-45 minute wait times for battlegrounds (called “Scenarios” in “Warhammer Online”), Jacobs said that “World of Warcraft” also had long queues just to get into the servers to play the game when it first launched in 2004.
So... your defense against wait times is that a game released four years ago also had the same problem? Shouldn't your game be, like, evolving and fixing the problems that have plagued previous games in the genre?
Then there's this one...
I think you’ll find that if you’re actually going to compare the two products, I would say ‘WoW’ is certainly a more polished game now than ‘Warhammer is — of course they’ve had four years and billions of dollars — but if you look at the innovations in ‘Warhammer,’ you’d be hard-pressed to find as many in ‘WoW.’
You've been working on Warhammer for three years, haven't you? And you've had the benefit of seeing what Blizzard is up to for that entire time period. And you're owned by EA. They... aren't exactly broke. The aside of "of course they've had four years and billions of dollars" is totally Crazy Town from where I'm sitting. Butterfly. Sugar, baby. All of that.
I don't know, maybe it's the jet lag talking, but reading these stories reminds me of the Presidential debate with all the somewhat-petty bickering, except we don't get incredibly creepy footage of a guy constantly blinking and sort of looking like his head might explode.
Salute: 1UP Acquired By UGO, Downsized; EGM Shuttered
Sony Issues Handy Chart, Giant Bomb Issues Handier Chart
Pre-Release Killzone 2 Demo Only For Pre-Orders in US
LittleBigRoll
Metal Gears of War?
Warning! Caution! Overload! Planned Downtime Tonight!
Ninja Blade Demo: We Cut Some Guys, Watch
1.5M Xbox Live Users Online, Bogging Us Down
Guides
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
Yawn.
on Oct. 16, 2008
I don't mind if you include some politics, but one post featuring Obama and the other dissing McCain in such a short time seems kind of unnecessary. At least keep it looking unbiased. I really don't like either candidate, but just try and keep it fair if not professional...
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
In Jacobs' defense, Blizzard's solution to login queues was to wait for people to leave the high population servers so that there were no more queues. It took a while. They also split servers when BC came out, which sometimes involved involuntarily migrating (or splitting up) entire guilds. It's not like they came up with some sort of genius engineering solution to the problem. I believe that's what Jacobs was inferring in the quote: it'll work itself out over time, just like WoW.
Warhammer's solution to early launch queues was equally acceptable. They aren't forcing players to move, but giving them the option to move their uber level 7 characters without losing progress. Some people made a choice they weren't happy with and lost a couple of hours of progress. What more do you expect them to do?
Luckily, my guild was smart enough to start the entire guild over on a low-population server a couple of days into launch. We have no login queues and can do 2-4 Scenarios an hour if desired. Public Quests are still empty, but you can't force people to do them all at the same time. It's an issue out of Mythic's control.
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 16, 2008
on Oct. 17, 2008
Hey Blizzard, at least we can loot in warhammer at launch. So they have that on your game.
Login or Signup to comment.