Warhammer Online Closing Down

[Andy Chalk]

Warhammer Online Closing Down

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning will shut down for good at the end of the year.

Today is the fifth anniversary of the launch of Mythic's Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMO, but there's no celebrating being done. Instead, the team announced that the game will be closed down in three months, when Mythic's Warhammer license expires.

"We here at Mythic have built an amazing relationship working with Games Workshop creating and running Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning over the last 8 years," Mythic announced today. "Unfortunately, as with all licensing deals they do eventually come to end and on December 18th, 2013 we will no longer be operating Warhammer Online."

"Games Workshop has cultivated a world class IP. We were lucky enough to play in their universe for nearly a decade, with five great long years live," Producer Carrie Gouskos wrote in a separate "notice of shutdown [http://www.warhammeronline.com/article/Warhammer-Notice-Shutdown]" farewell message. "However, like all things - our contract has come to an end. Both Games Workshop and Mythic agreed to part ways, despite how hard it is emotionally on us to let the game go. It has been a tremendous honor to work with Games Workshop and even though we may be parting ways, our relationship with them remains strong."

I have no idea how popular Warhammer Online is (or isn't) but the announcement of the coming closure is the first news to be posted on the Warhammer website since the June 17 announcement that six-month time codes and automatic renewals were being eliminated. The timing of that news now seems rather suspect, coming as it did exactly six months before the shutdown date, but Mythic said at the time that the change was due to "very low" levels of interest.

Source: Warhammer Online [http://www.warhammeronline.com/article/Warhammer-Update]


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[Andy Shandy]

Note to game developers. Don't have Reckoning in your title. It seems like it doesn't work out well.

 

[magter3001]

Well it's about time. Sad as it is, after spending about 3 years worth of subscription time, i'm happy it's closing down finally. Always felt weird to pay $15 subscription for a game that was dead.

 

[rofltehcat]

So sad how that game turned out
But I'm surprised that they kept it running this long anyways.
It had a lot of interesting ideas but was released about a year too early.

Still, a relic from a time when everyone tried to get a piece of the WoW cake by making the exact same cake, except with different glazing, not fully cooked and for the same price.

 

[fix-the-spade]

There goes another World of Warcraft killer, just like all the rest, quietly, whimpering with it's tail between it's legs.

It's a shame for Mythic, but quietly impressive that it's lasted five years when so many subscription MMOs have caved in on themselves within a year or two (or a month or two in some cases). Hope they get something else to work on.

 

[Pandalisk]

My first MMO every played, bought it on its release date. Not the best first taste into the world of MMOs but i'm still upset to see it go but also a little relieved, put the poor thing down.

 

[Frankster]

My first proper mmo. i retain fond memories of this game when it had a teeming population and actual awesome battles...

Then it all went down the drain RIP Warhammer online, we had some good times.

 

[lancar]

Another one bites the dust.

I never tried it, tbh. But I heard that it was basically a poor man's WoW with heavier PvP emphasis. I wonder which mmo will close down next?

 

[jackpipsam]

A real shame.

When you take your time in the game, it's clear that the people over at Mythic did spend a lot of time and thought with the creation of the game.

It was solid, not many bugs, servers stayed up longer without crashes and the launch itself was good.
The fundamental works and it innovated in areas such as public questing and the "tome of knowledge".


But when I heard SEGA had got the rights to Warhammer from Games Workshop and when Wrath of Heroes out of nowhere shutdown.
I knew the time was ticking on this rough gem.


People will remember this game as a failure.
I will remember it as a solid title with unlimited potential.

But I heard that it was basically a poor man's WoW

Set aside expansions, it costs the exact same as WoW.

 

[Uratoh]

This game had so much potential...but they kept ruining it. I don't even know where to begin with the problems the game had...the longest running was people 'camping' in the world pvp areas but in the protection of super guards, causing the enemy team to be considered to be facing 'more' people than they were, thus giving them more and more reward for overcoming greater odds, even though they technically outnumbered the people actually playing...it led to an unending escalation in power for the side that had fewer afkers and more actual players that made the other side pretty much FUBAR.

 

[Worgen]

It had a lot of potential but they fucked up its release, it needed at least 3 more months of dev time but they just had to beat a wow expansion to market.

 

[ron1n]

If they had of incorporated all the public quests and dungeons into the PvP world as a side note and instead focused all their budget on making the best sieges/open world pvp possible, this game could have been something amazing.

Instead, they seemed to make little, if any good changes after release, and just kept releasing more shitty PvE dungeons for people who had reached cap to grind on. Meanwhile sieges and faction keep battles (what the game was supposed to be about) were boring as sin. And don't even get me started on the terrible class balancing.

For all its faults though, was still the most fun MMO I've ever played and the only MMO to have ever had REAL Oceanic servers. Ever since this, I simply cannot play MMO's on US servers anymore. Having 29 ping in an mmo was just too amazing to go back to 200 -_-

(Of course they stuffed up that awesome gesture too by releasing with 8 odd Aussie servers when we only needed like 3 which watered down the population on release)

Still, the game will live on in the numerous other games that have since emulated its public quest system so least it achieved something of note.

Look forward to another Warhammer MMO some day.

 

[jackpipsam]

Mythic didn't stand a chance in the mmo-game after EA basically crippled them from the get-go.

Rip in peaces.

Mythic itself was losing money fast.
They wanted to be brought by someone.

If someone hadn't brought them, Mythic wouldn't be around and Dark Age of Camelot would have shut down and Warhammer Online wouldn't have come out in the first place.


EA was the only one who showed interested.
Naturally EA did fire people and Mythic is now a shell of its former self, but at first EA did let them do things with Warhammer Mythic's way for like the 1.5 years of its life.

And Dark Age of Camelot is still around and still getting updated.

So EA isn't fully to blame for all this.
Even this shutdown is a result of Gamesworkshop, not EA pulling the plug.

 

[seule]

All I know is that I remember getting into the early stages of beta for this, and testing it hard, figuring "ok there are issues but this is a beta, thats the point." Those issues never got fixed, ever, you would report major bugs and literally months later, they would still be there, some were still there when the game went live. The game was rushed, never really tested properly, the pvp was fun-ish but nothing ever felt like it had that full layer of polish on it. Like many other MMO's, so much potential, so much failure, surprised it lasted this long really.

Will give the game props for two things : 1)The chicken mechanic, if you were an overlevelled toon who went back to a newbie zone to do some ganking... you turned into a chicken. and 2)Lady Godiva, love a game that gives you an achievement for riding through town naked.

 

[Draconalis]

Granted the game wasn't in a fit state, so contract renewing wasn't worth the effort... but something that catches my attention here... could this happen to any licensed MMO?

Could I be playing a sprawling healthy licensed MMO, then one day it all ends because the two companies come at odds with each other?

It's a disturbing thought... in the same vein as gaming becoming a license rather than a property.

 

[Draconalis]

Will give the game props for two things : 1)The chicken mechanic, if you were an overlevelled toon who went back to a newbie zone to do some ganking... you turned into a chicken.

I thought that was going to be awesome... turned out to suck.

You turned into a chicken for being in a low level enemy zone. It had nothing to do with if you were ganking.

It made it impossible to fully explore the game on any single character, since you'd just die when any random mob even looked at you.

 

[Draconalis]

Double post, please remove.

 

[Ickorus]

I only played the game for a short while and it had plenty of issues but I'll always think players being unable to run through one another was a brilliant touch, it added another layer of strategy to gameplay that I have never seen replicated since; Black Orc Shield Walls rocked.