Names, Punks and Cuts

Possible CE sell-outage aside, the past 24 hours has witnessed a whirlwind of major Warhammer announcements, which some will be apathetic to, some supportive of, and some will fling up their hands and run around like Chicken Little with a severe case of hotfoot. We haven't seen a day this surprising and chaotic since the delay and CE was announced back in March.

So what's going on, and what's my take? Let's break it down, team:

Mythic changes its name from "EA Mythic" back to "Mythic Entertainment"

Um, good. I like. I've always felt a little dirty writing "EA Mythic" on this blog, like I'm on the company payroll or something, so I've just fudged "Mythic" instead for the most part. It's nice they're reclaiming their brand name, giving their company a distinct identity under the EA umbrella a la Bioware and Pandemic. Plus, it made Mark Jacobs happy, and that means no employees at Mythic will have to brave the Gauntlet of Piano Wire today.

Mythic partners with Punkbuster for anti-cheating/hacking software.

Awesome. Terrific. Perfect. We at WAAAGH! are firm in our stance that hackers, keyloggers and gold farmers only serve to cheapen a product, drag a game down into the mud, and ruin the experience for the rest of us. Punkbuster is a powerful weapon to fight these guys, and hopefully they'll shy away from WAR looking for easier targets. Hey, look at Runescape! Look at them! All defenseless like that!

Four capital cities cut from the launch game, to be patched in later.

Honestly? This is no big surprise. I haven't been alone in the WAR community in saying this -- we're far too along in the dev cycle to have only seen two of the capital cities in any great detail (or, hey, any detail at all). It was a huge worry point that they were falling behind on the other four, and considering just how much detail, features and focus is placed on capital cities in WAR, they have to be done right. It's not just a vendor/quest hub, it's guild taverns, city sieges, the living city system, and numerous public quests and instances.

However, I won't lie and say this isn't disconcerting. There's an upside to this cut (more on that later), but WAR is going to take a public perception hit from this, no doubt. Yes, they're doing it for the right reason, and yes, that is a huge testament to their dedication to quality and polish. But a lot of people aren't going to see that; they're going to see "cut features" -- especially features that are at the HEART of the RvR system -- and cry "liar liar pants on fire" or "robbery". Again, we're in beta, and the game is subject to change(tm) at any point, but for a lot of people (including fans), the game's features have been set in stone in their minds for some time now. To take some of those features away might appear to cheapen the end product (you're not getting as much for your dollar, etc.).

Another expected wave of anger from the fans might stem from the fact that we've swallowed two delays so far, the last cited for "polish and iteration". For those not in the beta, pretty much everyone assumed after hearing Mythic talk was that all of the core features and gameplay was in place, it was just a little spit and polish and testing from then on out. They were willing to go along with the delay for polish and iteration, but now that major features are to be cut, I expect a lot of people to (rightfully) be upset that the delay didn't even serve to give time to include these features. It seems a bit hinky to me -- "polish" isn't "let's get the good stuff great and cut large swaths of content from the game that isn't up to par yet".

I'll be willing to give Mythic the benefit of the doubt, as always. I'm sure they have a good reason, a great reason, many reasons -- as Mark says, they were looking at this issue months ago. But what I immediately think of is that only having the Empire and Chaos cities, most people will be tempted to roll Empire and Chaos at the start, or barring that, move their characters to those zones ASAP. Will RvR still work or be meaningful in the other two major sections? I guess we'll wait and see.

The good news is that Mark is promising "fabulous" polish and content on the two included cities, and the fact that there will be end game city content (sieges, dungeons, etc.) for those who get up to 40 fast.

Four classes cut from launch, to be patched in later.

More than capital cities, this is a big blow to many folks. The Choppa, Hammerer, Black Guard and Knight of the Blazing Sun (two tanks, two melee DPS careers) are being held back from launch for further testing and polish. According to Mark, they weren't exciting or distinct enough, and if included in launch, would require a whole lot of changes and tuning to make work right post-launch (which players tend to hate).

Is this a surprise? Um, yes. Even though we've heard so little about these four classes lately (especially the notorious Black Guard), I don't think it crossed anyone's minds that WAR's much-vaunted 24 classes would be lower at launch. 20 classes is still a heck of a lot, of course, but I know some folks had their heart set on making one of the cut four their mains, and that has got to sting.

As Mark admits, this decision doesn't really have an upside, apart from "we're not including crappy, half-assed content" into WAR. A lot of what I said for the capital cities cuts applies here as well -- players are going to feel cheated or robbed from the full experience, people will start biting their fingers worrying about population balance (especially with two tanks out of the mix), and it is going to be negative publicity for Warhammer. Many antagonists of WAR are just waiting for ammunition to spit at the game, stating as proof that this is a clear sign of failure, of failed promises, of a flawed and faulty launch day like other MMOs in the past.

In rebuttal, understandably hurt WAR fans will nevertheless point to the fact that their devs weren't trying to hide this -- in fact, they went out of their way to let us know as soon as possible so we could go into launch with reasonable expectations. There's a lot of trust between WAR fans and the dev team, and this does strengthen that.

Although they don't need me to tell them this, Mythic needs to make these final four classes their #1 priority post launch, once they get everything smooth and stable. With 20 brand new classes to pick from, players won't be smarting too long, and most everyone will have something to play that they'll like. And who knows? A few months down the road, and the announcement that these classes are to be added back in will be cause for much excitement and celebration (as will the capital cities).

Listen, I hate these cuts just as much as you. I can see the upside and the downside, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't worry me or make me feel a bit uncertain about the game when it comes out. The one best thing I'm taking away with this -- reading between all the lines -- is that these cuts would NOT be happening if Mythic was planning on delaying the game any further. I think this is a solid sign that we're on track for release in the fall, and they're going to make it happen, even if that means some sensible cuts to get there.
Given the choice between an earlier launch with some delayed features or a much later launch with all the features, I'm sure a majority of WAR fans would go with the first.