Warhammer Online delayed

By Robert Purchese Published 2 November, 2007

Slips to middle of 2008.

Warhammer Online will not appear in the shops until sometime between April and June next year, a few months later than its previous Q1 2008 date.

EA Mythic declared in an open letter to its fans that it had extended its development simply because it will not rush the game to release.

"When we looked at our options, two paths lay before us: 1) Ship the game on time with fewer features and less polish, or 2) Extend the development cycle and spend the needed time and money to make WAR great," said Mark Jacobs, EA Mythic boss, in a statement.

"We chose the latter path - to invest additional time and effort in implementation and polish to make WAR great."

Jacobs also wanted to reassure us that the fuss made over recent lay-offs within the company was nothing to be alarmed about. It was all perfectly normal developer behaviour, and the small number culled will have no impact on the release schedule at all.

Early last month EA Mythic closed its beta servers so that it could take all of your feedback, make lots of changes, and then give you lots of new bits and pieces to test.

These will be new careers to progress through, fresh cities to siege and explore, as well as more community options to manage your guilds and keep in contact with your friends.

Jacobs and team will also be polishing up its star attraction, Realm versus Realm combat - like Player versus Player combat only on a much bigger scale. Show off.

Changes here will be made to the Server Rule Set, hopefully pushing everything closer to the open field and enormous battles promised since conception - something you will be able to choose to take part in or not.

Pop over to our Warhammer Online gamepage to keep up to date with how it is shaping up.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • rhinoxious #1 4 years ago

    Positive spin put on delay - what a surprise.

  • Kropotkin #2 4 years ago

    Oh now that's clever. Delay the game so if flies head long into not only Conan: Hyborian Adventures but also WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. I'm telling you this game will be pushed back until 'fall' 08 as no publisher will entertain the idea of releasing an MMO during the summer, least of all EA.

    Too many MMO's in my opinion...

  • Trane #3 4 years ago

    Bugger.

  • Gaol #4 4 years ago

    Too many MMOs? The vast majority are horredndous patched together abominations. Its about time something went up against WoW, specially something pvp focussed, I can't believe the audience that game still has, after three months it bored me senseless - huge amounts of people still play because its the only real option unless you want to suffer through all kinds of technical problems and underachieving development teams - SOE I'm looking at you.

  • bushwod #5 4 years ago

    vaporware

  • Birchna #6 4 years ago

    Yeah, its a sensible move. They have one chance to get it right. If they nail it, they will steal a sizeable chunk of Blizzard's playerbase. If those first impressions are any less than stellar though, it will pretty much sink without trace (see Tabula Rasa).

  • kestral #7 4 years ago

    shame it's not too different from the MMORPGs we've already seen. Graphically yes, gameplay wise I've not been convinced. After playing wow for 1.5 years myself, I can't be bothered anymore with another 'kill 40 orcs to complete the misison', grinding, farming, raid idiots. I start yawning. Now before you say that's what MMORPGs are about, it's not. Imagine democracy in a online game world, economics like eve online, features where society can really matter (player evolved cities??), not just an auctionhouse, but policing organisations and bounties.. So you can actually be roleplaying instead of mindnumbing slashing with xp numbers.

    There's so much more possible in depth than relying on the fighting side of things. It's an online world, please think out of the box.

    It's hard to see something like that happening though. MMORPGs are expensive ventures so doing something high risk would be hard to pull through.

    signed, a jaded gamer
    Edited by 1 at 02/11/07 @ 14:05

  • Lemming81 #8 4 years ago

    Looks like I'm sticking with WoW for a bit longer then. :(

  • orakio #9 4 years ago

    All the more proof that EA isn't putting too much pressure on the Mythic team. They need extra time? they're getting it.

  • Azazel #10 4 years ago

    I do hope it's for the best. I remember the very first WH:o screens I saw left me in a state of \o/
    But every time I see it I'm less and less impressed...

    Be GOOD damnit! I does lieks teh warhammez

  • Bumhug360 #11 4 years ago

    "All the more proof that EA isn't putting too much pressure on the Mythic team. They need extra time? they're getting it."

    Major change in attitude from EA. When Harry Potter Online was delayed EA canned it, when UO2 was delayed EA canned it, when Ultima Worlds Online was delayed EA said "we dont feel there is a market for MMOG's at this moment" and canned it. Couple months later WoW came out.....

  • magicpanda #12 4 years ago

    Can only be a good thing, look how Vanguard sank coming out too early. Tabula Rasa is going the same way and to a certain extent LOTRO.

    The more spit and polish etc the better.

  • ZeroAX #13 4 years ago

    /cry. more wow for me then

  • Bloodloss #14 4 years ago

    God dammit. I was already having my doubts about this game - negative things being said (whilst still not breaching the NDA), and I was trying to ignore that to be honest the videos of its gameplay look awful. With this I'll probably forget about it and just get into other MMOs like Pirates of the Burning Sea.