I normally start out every Warhammer Online article with a now famous quote by Vice President of Mythic Mark Jacobs, but at this point perhaps we can manage with just a bite,
“If you’ve seen a game consolidate servers, you know it’s in deep, deep trouble.”
-Mark Jacobs
Following the huge layoffs at Mythic, and the hints of desperation summoned by the endless trial system, it comes as a surprise to absolutely nobody that Mythic has announced that more servers will be shutting down in the near future.
On the American side, Dark Crag and Phoenix Throne are shutting down, where Europe has at least one server shutting down in the near future. Transfers are set to begin soon, if they haven’t already, and players will be given 20% experience bonuses on their new servers to ease the pain. After this shutdown, Warhammer Online will have five servers in North America, and Europe with eleven servers.
More on Warhammer Online after the break…
I don’t find the server closings any more disturbing than I do the recent address by Executive Producer Jeff Hickman, who assured players that the game is going to continue being improved upon, turning around what was indisputably a disappointing first year. Being an avid MMO player, I’m not stupid (seriously), and I’ve heard this before:
And going from there, I think it’s fair to say that every product all the time is being looked at for how it’s performing and things like that, and we see improvement happening in Tabula Rasa. We’re encouraged by it.
-David Reid, NCWest President of Publishing.
David Reid said this in an interview with Massively in September 2008, voicing his assurance that Tabula Rasa was improving and had the full support of NCSoft. To those of you keeping score, NCSoft would announce the closure of Tabula Rasa two months later. Oh and that NCsoft hardly mentions Tabula Rasa to this day, and when they do it is with nothing but contempt and disappointment.
I don’t take glee at the financial failures of others, but I had to give a hearty chuckle at the thought of Warhammer Online having only slightly more servers than Star Wars Galaxies. The main difference in the two titles is that at least the Sony team has a sense of humor, if unintentionally, when it comes to shutting down servers (“We’re doing so well, that we’re consolidating!”) where all Warhammer Online has is a quote that not only makes their situation seem worse, but provides plenty of fodder for fanboys/trolls of questionable motives.
MMO Fallout 