“The corollary to that is if you’ve seen a game consolidate servers, you know it’s in deep, deep trouble — that’s not a healthy sign for an MMO,” he said, citing Sony’s January-released “Pirates of the Burning Sea” as a recent example. “It will be the same for ‘Warhammer.’ Look at us six months out. Look at us six weeks out. If we’re not adding servers, we’re not doing well.”Fast forward to today:
- Mark Jacobs 8/29/08
On Tuesday, March 10, we will be performing a final transfer of characters from several of the servers that have been, in the past, a source server (ie. we have offered transfers off of). Please read on for all the details, including a list of affected servers.Failures do not become more epic than this. As Obama's presidential run was a lesson for all future presidential candidates, so will Mark Jacob's pre-launch WAR propaganda be for all future MMO developers.
Sadly, Mark is going to find out the hard way how right his original statement was.
Launched with more servers than they should have. Obvious failure there. It is easier (and better) to add more than it is to reduce them. Common sense is not so common over at Mythic.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I think it will be a bonus to the people languishing on under-populated servers. However, I wonder what plan Mythic plans to put in place to try to achieve workable population balances. I left a server (Phoenix Throne) that at the beginning was "balanced" and skewed in one direction (favoring Order) after the first round of "free transfers" and "server closings." Until they figure out a way to keep the order-destro ratio balanced for the most part, it's going to keep hurting the game. I wonder how these merges will affect it.
ReplyDeleteSo instead of too many servers, it would have been better to let everyone sit in 2 hour+ queues for a month or so until the tourists left? Would the actual WAR fans have prefered that, just to satisfy some over-quoted comment?
ReplyDeletePlus now they are DOWN to 17 US servers. How many servers is LotRO UP to in the US? How many is EQ2 UP to in the US? Dropping down to 4 servers like PotBS did is clearly an issue if you expect mass market, but lets keep things in perspective.
Lets do keep this in perspective Syncaine:
ReplyDeletePotBS = 11 servers at launch, 7 closed. 63% closed.
WAR = 57 servers at launch, 40 closed. 70% closed.
WAR Euro = 43 servers at launch, 20 closed. 46% closed.
WAR Combined = 58% closed.
Looks pretty darn close to me. Makes ya wonder when SOE will be swooping in to keep WAR a float on the Station pass?
Snark aside, the epic failure is Jacobs own words. I applaud MJB for being honest about the business and always have. He is usually right. Its just an epic moment to get steamrolled by one's own comments on such a grand stage.
I think I'm the only person who just plays the game for fun while I can and doesnt really care about server this or server that.
ReplyDeleteMark shouldn't have said what he said. Time to get over it. Measure a game by its contribution to your life (unless you are a Mythic accountant).
No, Mark said the truth. A game closing servers is showing signs of trouble. It's unfortunate that his game and his company are at the wrong end of that stick.
ReplyDeleteSo wait, now 17 servers = 4? That makes sense, and I'm sure all the bean counters agree...
ReplyDeleteWhat they really should have done is start with 10 servers and 3 hour queues for months, then opened up 7 more, and said 'hey look, success'. That would have been MUCH better...
Or like MJ said they could be adding servers right now ...that would have been better.
ReplyDeleteI know you know what Hgamer meant about WaR closing 58% of it servers, imo 20% wouldn't be bad. Statistics hurts like that. If WoW closed 1% of it's server or lose revenue by 1% I bet you'll be all over it.
Nobody is wishing WaR to fail(at least not me) but people don't forget ... plus the most people having at this over quoted comment.
EDIT
ReplyDelete... plus most people are having fun at this over quoted comment.
I fail at Engrizh