Mythic closing 63 warhammer servers

[Modelworks]

Looks like Mythic is finally facing the facts that they should have listened more to the players.



http://www.gamasutra.com/php-b..._index.php?story=22654

Warhammer Online developer Mythic is to close a total of 63 servers for the massively multiplayer online game, with 43 to go in North America and Oceania and another 20 in Europe.

The closures are part of an ongoing effort to consolidate the game?s online population, which started some months ago with a free transfer offer to more popular servers. The now-compulsory moves have been completed this week and the empty servers are set to close.

Mythic was recently forced to confirm layoffs in its customer support and QA teams, although the developer insisted this was not unusual for a post-launch massively multiplayer online game.

Although Warhammer Online attracted 500,000 registrations in its launch week, current subscriber levels are now at 300,000. Both Mythic and publisher Electronic Arts have indicated they remain committed to the game.

Although the main Warhammer Online Herald news site is offline at time of writing, specific details of server closures and character migration routes should be available later.

 

[Newbian]

Well that certainly didn't take long.

Time for another GU comics bug zapper I guess.

 

[Genx87]

This will be good for the remaining population. One of the things I think they failed at was consolidating daoc servers. Instead they clustered them. Which was fine for rvr where a cluster will have a combined population of 2000. But if you have 10 severs in the cluster each server looks like a dead zone on the pve side.

 

[Skott]

300K subscribers? thats about where DAoC peaked at in its heyday before it went into decline. This doesnt speak well for WAR's future IMO or Mythic's. I hope they can turn themselves around before EA decides they arent worth having.

 

[rivan]

Assuming it's $10/month, 300k subs is still 3 million in revenue a month. That's not chump change.

 

[ElFenix]

good move. no real reason to have that many servers to start out with.

 

[ZetaEpyon]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
good move. no real reason to have that many servers to start out with.

This is what I was thinking. How many freaking servers were there originally?

 

[TechBoyJK]

Originally posted by: ZetaEpyon

Originally posted by: ElFenix
good move. no real reason to have that many servers to start out with.

This is what I was thinking. How many freaking servers were there originally?

Probably more than enough to ensure playability and uptime in wake of the launch.

 

[racolvin]

given the PVP focus I'm surprised its not a larger drop in subscribers and server consolidations. But good luck to them. I tried to play and for about a week I had a good time, but I'm not a PVPer and the PVE content just wasn't there...

 

[Arglebargle]

Three hundred thousand subs is a great success....if you have realistic expectations.

 

[lupi]

Originally posted by: ZetaEpyon

Originally posted by: ElFenix
good move. no real reason to have that many servers to start out with.

This is what I was thinking. How many freaking servers were there originally?

they screwed themselves on games release. they put extremely low server caps to force people to spread to different servers, which resulted in queues quickly getting to several hours in lenght. they responded to this by opening additional servers instead of removing these self imposed lower than normal caps to continue spreading the population over the first couple of days as if within the following weeks the population of WoW would be moving over. they created for themselves a crappy launch and have been suffering for it since.

 

[drebo]

The reason they had to spread the population out over a larger number of servers, and indeed the reason any MMO will have to do that, is because the areas are tiered and level progression is linear. Any time you have designated areas for low, middle, and high level characters, of course the low level areas are going to be overcrowded during the beginning of the game.

This is why I prefer adventure-based games that are skill-based, rather than level based. Games like UO, where when you started, you could litterally go anywhere and find stuff you could kill...you just had to be careful. I think we need a new game like UO. I'm sick of level-based games and forced grinding.

 

[KMFJD]

Warhammer- PvP'ing for 40 levels so that i can PvE grind for loot so i can grind another 40 levels of PvP.....

 

[jRaskell]

Originally posted by: KMFJD
Warhammer- PvP'ing for 40 levels so that i can PvE grind for loot so i can grind another 40 levels of PvP.....

Did you have a point?

 

[ggnl]

Originally posted by: jRaskell

Originally posted by: KMFJD
Warhammer- PvP'ing for 40 levels so that i can PvE grind for loot so i can grind another 40 levels of PvP.....

Did you have a point?

progression is bass ackwards?

 

[jRaskell]

Originally posted by: ggnl

Originally posted by: jRaskell

Originally posted by: KMFJD
Warhammer- PvP'ing for 40 levels so that i can PvE grind for loot so i can grind another 40 levels of PvP.....

Did you have a point?

progression is bass ackwards?

By who's definition?

 

[ggnl]

Originally posted by: jRaskell

Originally posted by: ggnl

Originally posted by: jRaskell

Originally posted by: KMFJD
Warhammer- PvP'ing for 40 levels so that i can PvE grind for loot so i can grind another 40 levels of PvP.....

Did you have a point?

progression is bass ackwards?

By who's definition?

How about Mythic, who told me I'd never have to touch PVE content if I didn't want to.

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: drebo
The reason they had to spread the population out over a larger number of servers, and indeed the reason any MMO will have to do that, is because the areas are tiered and level progression is linear. Any time you have designated areas for low, middle, and high level characters, of course the low level areas are going to be overcrowded during the beginning of the game.

This is why I prefer adventure-based games that are skill-based, rather than level based. Games like UO, where when you started, you could litterally go anywhere and find stuff you could kill...you just had to be careful. I think we need a new game like UO. I'm sick of level-based games and forced grinding.

amen.

 

[WraithETC]

Reminds me of Age of Conan.

They took a long time to decide to merge servers though.

 

[Modelworks]

Well I just got an email from Mythic. Inviting me to return to warhammer for 10 days free.
I'm going to see what has changed.

<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="https://accounts.eamythic.com/war/reactivate">https://accounts.eamythic.com/war/reactivate</a>

Now you can check out for yourself why Warhammer is better than ever! You'll get to see the major improvements to overall performance and server stability, tons of bug fixes, new classes, and new Live Events.

This wizard will walk you through the steps to re-activate your account and receive the 10 Free Days. Note that you will be asked for billing information to set up your recurring subscription, but you will not be charged until your 10 Free Days are over, and you can cancel at any time.

 

[DirthNader]

Originally posted by: drebo
The reason they had to spread the population out over a larger number of servers, and indeed the reason any MMO will have to do that, is because the areas are tiered and level progression is linear. Any time you have designated areas for low, middle, and high level characters, of course the low level areas are going to be overcrowded during the beginning of the game.

I'm thinking about SWG... it had around 300K shortly after launch, and I think 24 servers. With a serious lack of content we all clustered in a few hotspots, so while it wasn't tiered progression we definately weren't spread out on the server.

Even with that relatively small number, some of the lower pop servers could become ghost towns during off-peak hours. I can't imagine how bad it would have been if there had been three or four times the amount of servers for 300K people.

Originally posted by: drebo
This is why I prefer adventure-based games that are skill-based, rather than level based. Games like UO, where when you started, you could litterally go anywhere and find stuff you could kill...you just had to be careful. I think we need a new game like UO. I'm sick of level-based games and forced grinding.

Amen to that.

 

[Beev]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Well I just got an email from Mythic. Inviting me to return to warhammer for 10 days free.
I'm going to see what has changed.

<a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="https://accounts.eamythic.com/war/reactivate"><a target=_blank class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="https://accounts.eamythic.com/war/reactivate">https://accounts.eamythic.com/war/reactivate</a></a>

Now you can check out for yourself why Warhammer is better than ever! You'll get to see the major improvements to overall performance and server stability, tons of bug fixes, new classes, and new Live Events.

This wizard will walk you through the steps to re-activate your account and receive the 10 Free Days. Note that you will be asked for billing information to set up your recurring subscription, but you will not be charged until your 10 Free Days are over, and you can cancel at any time.

Got that as well, though I have no desire to return.

 

[TheVrolok]

WoW is just unbeatable.

 

[Malladine]

Eh, I restarted WoW along with EVE a few months ago and have zero desire to play WoW. I think I played maybe 30 mins in the last 40 days. Going to cancel again soon.

 

[Lumathix]

Just cancelled WAR.