Why Warhammer Failed (and why The The Old Republic will too)

Sliver

Sliver

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A soon-to-be laid off Bioware-Mythic employee recently posted a blog on why The Warhamer MMO failed, and how the same thing is happening to the Old Republic.

Hi everyone,

I found out recently that I will be dismissed from Bioware Mythic during the next round of layoffs EA coming this November. I’m sick of seeing EA outsource their art and find every excuse to get rid of us and still not achieve anything. Mythic is dying, and its not us who killed him but we’re taking the fall.

But if you want to know what really went down with Warhammer, I’ll tell you right now.

First, the project leaders did not know what they were doing. Jeff Hickman was the saddest excuse for a producer I’ve seen. All he did was drink the Koolaid and suck up to the right people. He was the perfect yes-man, and this reached down to almost all managers.

Rob said jump, our leaders said, “How high?! And on who?”

So we shut up and did what we were told, by people too afraid to tackle real problems. It is a culture of fear, especially since Mark Jacobs was fired.

Oh, he left voluntarily you say? No, he was fired, and everything placed on his shoulders by those closest to him so they could divide his salary and annual bonus. I bet Rob is enjoying that sweet new Maserati he bought after leaving the knife in his partner of 15 years.

Want to know more? Keep reading. I can keep ranting.

Rob was never there during the development of Warhammer. We always joked about when his next weekly holiday was coming. (Answer? Next week!) Mark was not available, was way too head down trying to design his own contributions or whatever. Rob always handled things. We were told NOT to speak with Mark in person, never, or else we would be explaining to Rob.

The coup began long before Warhammer, and Jacobs did not even realize it.

Ah, but could not do it alone. No, he needed Jeff Hickman, promoted from customer service to produce the Warhammer project. Wait, let me let you have that sink in. The man running customer service, on the theory that the management of a large team of CSRs qualified him to run a game development project, was put in charge of a $50 million project with no previous experience.

And he needed Eugene Evans, the man who brought you the almost non-existent marketing campaign behind Warhammer. We could not even believe how bad they ****ed up the marketing campaign. There was almost none. We slaved for years, and this is how we were rewarded for it by Eugene and the people of EA? Being told that Warhammer was not “worth” a lot of money spent on it? LOL. Now he’s in charge of Bioware Mythic.

Oh yeah, and he needed Paul Barnett. You know him as the crazy British dude that appears in random videos at EA to promote his latest bullshittery. We know him as the crazy British dude who we have no idea of how he still has a job. This man was supposed to be the savior of Warhammer’s vision and design. Now all he can do is promote his strange ideas about his little secret project web Ultima game that’s been almost universally criticized by all of us and focus groups. What’s that? You didn”t know Paul loves one of those old Ultima games sooooo much he’s making a literal copy of it for Facebook? Well, the cats outta the bag. Too bad it sucks ass.

So what do they all have in common? All of them failed, badly, in Warhammer, and each of them is in a position of authority in the new company, while the rest of us are facing pink slips. How do they sleep at night? They spin aruond, blame everything on Mark, divide his old salary between them, and never speak about it again. Oh, and they **** us little guys as well.

Almost makes me congratulate them for having the balls, but after watching them work, it’s obvious they don’t have any. They’re cowards running scared trying to hide under the wing of Bioware, now that Rob has become a general manager of EA.

And Bioware? Don’t make me laugh. They’ve spent more money making the Old Republic than James Cameron spent on Avatar. Shit you not. More than $300 million! Can you believe that?

And you know what they’re most proud of? This is the kicker. They are most proud of the sound. No seriously. Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work. That’s the best they have. The rest of the game is a joke. EA knows it and so does George Lucas,they’re panicking , and so most of Mythic has already been cannibalized to work in Austin on it because they can’t keep pushing back launch.

Old Republic will be one of the greatest failures in the history of MMOs from EA. Probably at the level of the Sims Online. We all know it too ……

Anyway, back to Warhammer. We shouldn’t have released when we did, everyone knows it. The game wasn’t done, but EA gave us a deadline and threatened the leaders of Mythic with pink slips. We slipped so many times, it had to go out.

We sold more than a million boxes, and only had 300k subs a month later. Going down every since. It’s “stable” now, but guess what? Even Dark Age and Ultima have more subs than we have. How great is that? Games almost a decade make more money than our biggest project.
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I cut out a bit of it but it's a really interesting read.
 
I can't believe they have put 300 million into the Old Republic. The game already looks dated (graphically) and it's not even out yet. I don't see them getting their money back.
 
Read the whole thing and then "I cut out a bit of it but it's a really interesting read."

Now I have to and read the whole thing again! Damn you silver!
 
The comments and his responses are even more interesting, especially from a person claiming to have worked for Mythic also,

Ex-Mythic Working Retail said:
I hear through the grapevine that the shit is hitting the fan over this, hope things turn out well enough for you. I know many people who want to shake your hand, after dealing with this.

While I do not know about the more recent events described, sounds like what was going on when I was there.

You didn’t even get into the Tool Support for devs, or the lack there of!
The items team had to manually make the items before the release (spread sheet, cell by cell) until it was clear they were not going to be done by the 3rd (or was it the 4th?) attempt at release. The guy they had to make a tool to help had 1 month to make it, and after that month, it was crashing, and making broken items.
I, on my own time off the clock, wrote a replacement tool in less than 12 hours (over 3 days after work) The day I finished the tool, I was fired for ‘not being early’ because of the same management BS you described.

They were still using MY tool a year later.
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edit: He only responds to a few postings and then stops, but maybe it wouldn't hurt to take some of this with a grain of salt.
 
Original blog poster in the comments about art direction:
Oh. My. Gawd.

I’m not going to rag on my old boss, but let’s just say that Mythic screwed the pooch on this one. Wait, why dance around it?

OK. So some devs tried to blame Games Workshop for all their “restrictions” but that was just bs. Utter bs. Paul Barnett wanted this game to be DARK. The management demanded dark, chaotic settings and ugly ass character models.

Paul, fist in palm, told us how “WAR will never have dancing! There is no dancing, these people are in a WAR!” So brilliant. BRILLIANT. Copy WOW and abandon everything that made DAoC great, but leave out dancing the one place where artists really get to express ourselves.

FU Paul and your arrbitrary stupidity.

So many other bad examples. Irony? When we did the international releases we were told we needed to make the models prettier because they were too ugly. Gee. Ya think?

What I’m saying is that it wasn’t the art management, but the “direction” was ****ed from day one.
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Also this
Wow, Sanya. That was a long time ago.

Yeah, that was actually not Rob Denton. That was her having a fierce, loud fight with Mark Jacobs about forum postings. Sanya had a very hard line stance on developers posting on the boards.

They shouldn’t. That’s community’s job. <- Is what I'm sure she would say.

But Mark Jacobs, who loved posting, especially about things he couldn't guarantee and made our lives hell because he would essentially promise them, did not like having to play by her rules. She totally called him out on it in an embarrasing way and too many people at the company knew about it, so she was out the door.

They replaced her with a really nice guy but he was a puppet who couldn't make Mark abide by the rules. Arguably though, he did a great job, but Eugene wanted community to be under marketings control, so when the big anti-Mark coup occurred they also fired all the community representatives left, and put one of the marketing lackeys in charge of all three Mythic products.

Lets see. Other crazy things… Mark wanted to do what Blizzard announced with Real ID like, years ago, and Sanya fought him on it. Mark also hates when devs post with fake names, and forced everyone who posted on boards to use real names (which created drama and stalking opportunities, which discouraged devs from posting).

So, all in all, Sanya stood up to him in a public space, and the next thing we knew there was a "mutual parting of ways." Also, her husband worked with us too, veteran, and he left later.
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The painterly art style of SW looked interesting, but everything since has looked horrible, including the voice acting.
 
As someone who followed the game pre-release and was there for the first few months, this rings pretty true. Pity to hear about Jeff and Paul, I always enjoyed watching their podcasts.

Man, what is it with MMOs and horrible management? I mean, at least they didn't have it as bad as the Vanguard team, I guess.
 
So the moral of the story is still that large publishers are evil and hinder otherwise quality developers? Cool beans.
 
OmegaX said:
I can't believe they have put 300 million into the Old Republic. The game already looks dated (graphically) and it's not even out yet. I don't see them getting their money back.
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That much voice acting is expensive
 
Matorbogl said:
He only responds to a few postings and then stops, but maybe it wouldn't hurt to take some of this with a grain of salt.
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ya that might be wise

I can’t comment on the Louse’s actual post. But in the comment section, someone asked what happened to me, and the Louse responded:

frustrated EA guy said:
Wow, Sanya. That was a long time ago.

Yeah, that was actually not Rob Denton. That was her having a fierce, loud fight with Mark Jacobs about forum postings. Sanya had a very hard line stance on developers posting on the boards.
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That’s… not what happened. At all.
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http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org/2010/10/13/yes-i-saw-the-louse-blog/
 
Seems a lot of places are like this. Pretty much what happens when you let business people take charge in a creative field. They put stupid people in charge because they're suck ups, and all the skilled and creative people are forced to make a shitty product. Sadly, I've seen this first hand.
 
Damn it, Old Republic was supposed to be good! I didn't know they were getting help from Mythic, though. Did Bioware not realize Mythic's last game was a massive failure? It's not as bad as asking Cryptic for help, but it's close!
 
everyone wants a piece of the world of warcraft cake....
 
Interesting read, although considering the man is about to be laid off, I'd take it with a grain of salt.
 
God I love internet drama.

Also, from the blog Stern posted:

P.S. Also in the comment section: “I am Rayn from Percival and I would like to know if you know why they banned me back in the day on DAOC.”

DUDE. FFS. I’ve got nothing in my contract saying I can’t talk about what happened to you, so I can tell you why: IT WAS EXACTLY WHAT I TOLD YOU BACK WHEN WE BANNED YOU. Really! Honestly trulio really-o! You got caught in a CS radar trap, and yet I was so willing to believe you were innocent that I demanded and saw the screenshots and logs with my own eyes! I told you then, I told you at the Toronto fan gathering, I told you AGAIN at the afterparty, and I’m telling you now! Build a bridge and get over it already!

But, hey, I’ll give you some new information – the marketing girl and I both thought you were hot. Holding that opinion was especially disconcerting for me because after all the back and forth over your banning, I’d totally pictured you as a basement dwelling trog. But hot where hot is due. So there you go.
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^Now I for some reason want to see images of this "Rayn" character.
 
I don't know what any of that means (is this Rayn guy well-known?), but she also added this.

Edit to add: And the truth comes out! Rayn did not post, and he moved on further than his friends did. But I’m still leaving this up, because hell, it’s funny and true. But please read the existing comments before adding your two cents about the Saga of Rayn.
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OH GOD NOBODY IS WHO THEY SEEM. TELL ME WHO TO TRUST.
 
David Jaffe responds

EALouse- no one gives a shit if you or the animators get to express yourselves IF in expressing yourself it breaks the fiction of/immersion into the world of the game. It's not a ****ing art class where everyone gets a chance to 'show what's inside them!'...it's work. I don't know much about the Warhammer world but **** man, seems a pretty spot on comment that if the whole fiction is about some horrid, down and dirty war then mechanics and animations that allow characters to ****ing DANCE are probably not going to fit into that universe. And the fact that you feel removing the dancing- which was a good creative call in my mind- served to take away some of the team's ability to express themselves does nothing but paint you as someone with out of touch, unrealistic expectations of what your job is supposed to do for you. Games SHOULD allow for self expression by members of the team- that is FANTASTIC when that happens and something management should always try to offer up- but it's gotta be within context of and in service to the product.
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I agree. the dancing point was stupid
 
The dancing point in particular was indeed stupid, but I doubt that was the only restraint put on the artists.
 
Well, the animations kind of sucked, so. I actually didn't have a huge problem with the art direction, personally. If there was one problem it was that the terrain was too bland, and many areas were extremely drab instead of the dark fantasy look they were probably going for.

Edit: Actually, the animations were decent, but they were glitchy as hell which made them annoying. Might have been something on the programmers' end, not really sure how these things work.
 
My tutor has told me a thousand times, "Don't let marketing control design."
 
Wonder if this what the situation at EA is like or if it's just the view of a disgruntled employee. Remember when a Rockstar employee said that RDR was a total mess and would never make any profit? Now it's a contender for GOTY. It's just hard to see a company like Bioware (even if it's employed to EA) would screw up that badly on a game.
 
Tony said:
Wonder if this what the situation at EA is like or if it's just the view of a disgruntled employee. Remember when a Rockstar employee said that RDR was a total mess and would never make any profit? Now it's a contender for GOTY. It's just hard to see a company like Bioware (even if it's employed to EA) would screw up that badly on a game.
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You haven't seen the Dragon Age 2 stuff yet, have you?
 
These things go the same way every time. The fanboys who've commited to preordering before they've even played it denounce the guy as bitter. Nobody else cares.

Boring.
 
The game does look like shit though, seriously. It's going to be a terrible MMO
 
Cool, except all he really said was "this guy's a pussy, those people are my friends".
 
Yes, they turned Dragon Age into a button mashing hack and slash game ala God of War instead of the tactical RPG(ala Baldur's Gate) it was before.
 
You also get to play a new fantasy Commander Shepard.
 
Lucid said:
Yes, they turned Dragon Age into a button mashing hack and slash game ala God of War instead of the tactical RPG(ala Baldur's Gate) it was before.
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Wait, what? Have there been some recent gameplay videos or something? All I remember seeing is some trailers showing off the new art style and the main character. The concept of the game spanning like 10 years' time sounded pretty cool to me!
 
Here you go. That's the last one I bothered watching. It looks like a horrible first-gen Dynasty Warriors clone with the enemies being played by Putties from the old Power Rangers show.
 
Warhammer is not for everyone. not everyone will get it. If you aren’t familiar with warhammer, and what it’s about, it looks like a dark, dirty fantasy setting. It is way WAY more than that, and people trying it out from WOW-land will not get it. Folks who pick up WAR on a whim…won’t get it. There is a very hard-core base of Warhammer fans who understand the IP and they won’t be happy with the compromises made to make this playable as an MMO, but given time, most will understand and get on board.
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Is he talking about the game? Cause uhh, no. I played it for a few months after release, and again when they had a free resub week recently - not much had changed. It was and is a bog average MMORPG. It had some nice ideas and ambitions, but most of them were poorly executed or didn't contribute anything worthwhile. It's not a horribly designed game, it obviously had a lot of love and attention poured into it, but that doesn't add up to much when it's simply not fun to play in the long run.

As for being a Warhammer fan, I'm not into the IP, but most of my guild were and I'm pretty sure none of them are still playing.

Lucid said:
Yes, they turned Dragon Age into a button mashing hack and slash game ala God of War instead of the tactical RPG(ala Baldur's Gate) it was before.
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Not exactly. They turned the console version into a hack and slash game because the tactical thing from DA1 didn't work well with that control scheme. The PC version will, reportedly, still be a regular RPG.
 
Wow, I hadn't followed DA2 at all since I didn't really like DA1 all that much after finishing it(Haven't played the expansion or whatever, Awakening I think?), but that looks truly hilarious given that it's supposed to be a sequel to DA1.
 
Bad^Hat said:
Not exactly. They turned the console version into a hack and slash game because the tactical thing from DA1 didn't work well with that control scheme. The PC version will, reportedly, still be a regular RPG.
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I sincerely hope you're right.
 
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