EA Mythic general manager Mark Jacobs on Warhammer Online delay
In case you missed it, Warhammer Online's October State of the Game, released the other day, dropped the fact that the game had been pushed back to a Q2 2008 launch. Since that announcement, Gamespot had an opportunity to talk with developer EA Mythic's VP and general manager, Mark Jacobs, to allow him to elaborate on the decision to delay the highly anticipated title.
Jacobs goes into a lot of detail with his responses to Gamespot's questions, but the main message he would like to get across is that his studio would not have been satisfied with the game's state, at release, if confined to their previous schedule. They have received a lot of helpful feedback, both positive and negative, from people in their beta testing program, and now wish to take the time to better the game based on that -- although, Jacobs emphasizes that the beta was not brought down solely to address issues in the negative feedback, but that the shutdown had been in their plans all along.
It is evident throughout the Q & A that EA Mythic's primary focus, at least at the current development stage, is to hone the Realm-versus-Realm experience, which they consider to be one of the key features to differentiate their product from competitors. As for the overall quality of the game, Jacobs names Blizzard's World of Warcraft as their mighty benchmark, hoping to match or better them. The extra time taken will be used to achieve this, and we sincerely hope that the final product will live up to the hype -- it is definitely leaning that way at the moment.
There's a lot more detail in the article, so if you'd like to read the full conversation, a link is provided below.
