The main problem was balancing the massive nubmer of classes and abilities they had for each of the 3 realms I think. The fact that they continued to add more classes didn't help at all. The other problem was some key design decisions made intially that gave us problems like Emain Macha. The original design was brilliant but they got rid of those designers and brought us the ones that built SI and TOA.





In other words they kind of lucked into a great design, but lacked the foresight to see where to take it - if anywhere.





Thats exactly where all of those suggestions went. I am sure when they got the contract to do Warhammer, they scoured all of the feedback they got on this game and then sat down to do the design work. The problem is that they didn't really get what made this game so good, and they subsequently overengineered Warhammer. My problem with Warhammer was the emphasis it put on PvP (which wasn't that good) and the lack of emphasis on PvE (which was just a linear series of boring quests in a narrow set of zones). I have no problem with a balance of the two but to achieve that they would need far bigger PvE zones and content (to satisfy the massive number of MMO players who don't want to PvP all the time) and a simpler design for the PvP zones than they had. Everything in WAR felt grindy with little or no fun to me and my friends - all of whom signed up for beta, then played the live game and then quit when we realized it just wasn't doing it for us.

 

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Golden Age of Camelot

Now that has a good ring to it.

I don't think Mythic just got lucky and blundered into a good game design. I think if they got lucky it was with their early development team and that luck was lost with the continual change in staff over the years.

 

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I think that evidence indicates Mythic was lucky with the initial design. If Mythic knew what was important with the design, and what was not so important about the design, they could have easily built on the initial design and saved the game but they did not.


We can see, through the graph, that the game began dieing about 12 months after launch when those players that were leaving the game equaled the numbers that were coming to try out the game. The actual dieing could have started much sooner than the 12 month mark but we can see by the graph that the writing was clearly on the wall by the 13 month.


In a game where it took over a year just to level one toon to 50 and where there are many dozens of toons spread over three realms for players to explore (20 to 40 days /played to level just one toon means playing 14 hrs a week it takes about a year to level just one toon), plus crafting and salvaging to spend time on, 12 months is a very short time frame for the bleeding to be so massive it totally countered the new blood flooding into the game.


About 6 months after launch Mythic introduced DF to the game and 13 months after launch came SI.


Nothing that Mythic did could stop the bleeding which indicates Mythic had no clue why there was so much bleeding from the game. Everything they did seems to have taken two steps backward for every attempt to take one step forward.


Mythic had brilliant people working for them, but people who are brilliant in one thing often think they are brilliant in everything when the opposite is usually true.


Sorry but everything indicates that the brilliance of the initial design was accidental and that Mythic never really had a clue.

 

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You say MJ ordered to stop advertisement for DAoC? Man EA have no interest in MMO games, Ea want to sell his own games, Adventure-games, Action games and so on...
MMO Player do not buy every month a new game. EA make more money with selling all the sportgames, actiongames. You have to pay 40 euros for a new game but only 12 euros for subscribing an MMO^^. This is a huge different of money. EA bought Mythic not to improve his MMO business but to improve his own segments
EA squeezed out daoc players, EA squeezed out Warhammer players, Ea will squeeze out the next published MMO game too :=) And every customer will only blame Mythic/Bioware for that and not EA. And EA will going on to be succesfull in destroying young and bright MMO markets, for his own advantage :=)
And you going on to blame Mythic for that :>

my 2 cents...

 

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My comments in blue

 

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To be fair, pushing out WAR with so many classes missing and balance the way it was at the time (no idea how it is now, or if it's even any better) was a really stupid decision. Releases are huge for MMOs, if someone tries out your game and the release is bad then it's very likely they won't give it a second chance.

Semi4 posted:

<<All of the problems with DAoC can be directly tracked back to MJ, not back to EA or Bioware.

About the only thing that EA is guilty of is being gullible enough to believe MJ and in being clueless enough so as to not realize the stupidity of MJ. EA is guilty of believing the drivel spewed from MJ and then dumping huge funds into Mythic.>>

I would substitute Mythic senior management for MJ - I assume that RD was involved for example.

Mistake 1 was not, imo, understanding why Mythic was a success.
Mistake 2 was not understanding DAoC's design; it was a hotchpotch and no one seemed to really understand why it had been designed as it had. Hence huge nerfs were introduced which upset other areas which begat huge nerfs which upset ....
Mistake 3 - imo - deciding to go down the path of EQ1 in the belief that pushing out expansions was the way to grow subs (as posted by MJ way back). As a result they neglected the core game to a degree, made DAoC more complex and failed to get maximum revenue from their investment in DAoC. Maintenance mode + a bit of content development from day 1 may have proved better long term.
Mistake 4 - being slow to react, make decisions, bad communication with customers.
Mistake 5 - moved on to a new game when the cash flow was starting to dry up. Tough call. And as for Romans in Space.
Mistake 6 - failed to grasp why WoW was a success; and the changes that WoW brought. Quality was now a big thing. Patches that broke more than they fixed = bad = lost customers.

Success 1 - and a biggie - recognising that DAoC was not bringing in the money to allow WAR to be finished and managing to sell Mythic/ Good for the workforce and - I assume - shareholders.

Sadly just more of the same afterwards. And no appreciation that you have to release a quality product.

A technically polished game can still fail - DDO for example - but if at least it has a chance: LotR, Aion, Rift etc. WAR in particular wasn't finished. Bad QA; bad project managment; etc.

None of this was EA's doing however - except for not stepping in earlier; but given what they had paid why should they have?

mythic was a failure long before EA entered the scene.

Ahhhhh Simplicity at itz finest LOL

 

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