[EU] - The WAR in Europe

[Garthilk]

The real war in Europe isn't WAR persay, it has been GOAs battle to affirm gamers that they're up to the task of bringing WAR to the Europeon community. Frankly the efforts put forth so far have been nothing short of first class compared to other publishers and developers. However, some people, still unable to cope with their treatment during Dark Ages of Camelot are hard pressed to see the changes made. That said, GOA's community manager took some time to address the issues facing the European community.

Iain: Our relationship with EA Mythic for WAR is designed around the premise that EU customers will get a service that is equal or better than the US operation. Both we and EA Mythic know that this is going to be a huge game and no-one wants to see the European side (which is likely to be the biggest market) get undersold.

• We are looking at extra value that we can add for all of our customers although there will be limits to that due to the fact that we aren't the developers and our rights are necessarily restricted in that regard. Having said that (and to slightly avoid the question as a lot of the plans are still very speculative) we do intend to focus on providing the highest quality community support that we can. I'm not going to say that EA Mythic's will be rubbish by comparison but we intend to be 100% focussed on the European community and that's probably not something that EA Mythic could do if they were running it themselves.
• You'll be able to contact support in a variety of different ways. There will be 24/7 ingame support, there will be a knowledgebase and FAQs so that you can help yourself and there will be webform based support for people who can't access the game for any reason. Again, the design is that EU and US players will have the same options and services available to them.
• Once again, this comes back to the central mantra of 'everything they have, you will have'. It's an important part of our arrangement with EA Mythic that development is done in parallel with localisation so that we can launch simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic. For a lot of reasons, that wasn't possible with DAoC and so both parties wanted to avoid a similar situation arising in WAR. You have to remember that DAoC was not originally designed to be localised, it was written to be an English only game by developers that had little experience with localised projects. WAR on the other hand is specifically designed to make localisation as streamlined as possible.

Ok those of you with ADD can stop reading now, the rest is probably going to end up as a bullet point on WHA or somewhere.

• Basically a lot has changed since DAoC launched. We aren't the same company, EA Mythic aren't the same company, the MMO market has moved along and - as spinks points out - players have different expectations these days. Back in the day we did what most of the other MMO providers did, we relied on word of mouth advertising with targetted marketing pushes for expansions and other major milestones. WoW changed the rules and by the time that lesson had been learnt, DAoC was an older game that was difficult to get journalists and editors excited about. Three or four times a year I'd go across to the UK to demonstrate the game to the press and gush about whatever the selling point du jour was but a lot of editors wouldn't touch MMOs that weren't WoW at that point.
• There were a lot of things that we wanted to do for DAoC that we couldn't do for various reasons - legal reasons, things to do with our contract with Mythic, things to do with French labour laws, things to do with the fact that we were a tiny part of a very large company and so forth. When we talked to EA Mythic about partnering up for WAR, we made sure that all of those restrictions were removed. Six years is a long time and GOA is a very different company now to what we were when we started running DAoC in Europe.

If you want an idea of how seriously we at GOA are taking the success of WAR in Europe consider this:

We started a new company based in Ireland (to get around some of the restrictions I mentioned above) just to run WAR. A lot of us who were in Paris sold our houses and uprooted our lives to go to Dublin and make WAR work properly. We didn't just say "We'll do better", we spent a lot of money and put a lot of people to a lot of trouble to make sure that we can do better - before we have a single subscriber and before we've made a single Euro from the game.

[Stigus]

A lot of us who were in Paris sold our houses and uprooted our lives to go to Dublin and make WAR work properly.

WoW! Kudos to you guys at GOA man. Well at least you get good Guinness in Dublin, lol.

[Nerror]

Good to see they are trying hard for WAR. Time will tell if they succeed.

[Addelbreich]

I never played DAoC so I don't know what the company was like. But this sounds like an improvement to whatever it could have been.

[Fingoniel]

pff, europeons - shocking garth

[Dyst]

This sounds great, good to hear Europe is not forgotten.

[Gorgeras]

Attempts at probing GoA for more clarification on the various waffle have failed.

Mark Jacobs was brazen enough to invoke 'contractual obligation' as a term to get our trust, yet was unwilling or unable to elaborate. If he can't do that, he shouldn't use such powerful langauge. As far as we know if GoA screw up there will be no actual loss to them, there is no contingency set up for another company to take over should they fail horribly and no distinct person or group in charge of deciding what line they have to cross before they are deemed to be fatally in breach of contract.

GoA are a nationalised company which will never go out of business no matter how bad they perform, they have no incentive to do better than what a non-player or non-customer considers adequate.

If they are really serious about giving us what the US will have, then I want to be able to choose an account password that I can actually remember and type thanks. When I first signed up for beta on the EU website, I recieved two WAR newsletters before they ceased and attempts to send my Dxdiag file repeatedly fail and when they do work they get my CPU wrong. So I have no idea if I'm even on the list for access to beta at some point.

[Garthilk]

Originally Posted by Gorgeras

If they are really serious about giving us what the US will have, then I want to be able to choose an account password that I can actually remember and type thanks. When I first signed up for beta on the EU website, I received two WAR newsletters before they ceased and attempts to send my Dxdiag file repeatedly fail and when they do work they get my CPU wrong. So I have no idea if I'm even on the list for access to beta at some point.

So, 24/7 tech support and GM's isn't being serious? Simultaneous releases isn't being serious? Patches on the same day isn't being serious? Localization on launch isn't being serious?

Website issues have plagued both the US and EU sites. Fingering GOA as the only one with problems is bad form IMO. Warhammer Alliance is the largest provider of community for the game and I can't even get the newsletter with any regularity. The reality is, that nothing is going to be flawless. Expecting that is ridiculous.

No making mountains of out molehills. By and large the slips and minor errors are superfluous at best. Websites can be redesigned and relaunched. Release is coming and frankly that's the priority I believe for everyone. Now there will be mistakes, there will be bugs, there will be bumps. But up till now the effort by GOA has been exceptional IMO. Especially over previous years.

[IainC_Goa]

What further clarification do you want?
Will EU players have the same level of service and the same options and opportunities as US players?
Yes.

Will there be a qualitative difference between playing on a US server or an EU one?
No.

Specifics are mostly tied up in operational details that haven't been announced yet by either us or by EA Mythic - number and location of servers, CS policies, subscription options and so forth. You won't get clarification on those until we and EA Mythic are ready to announce them, neither am I going to explain the precise terms of our contract with EA Mythic. Mark Jacobs has said that they will keep oversight of our activities and that is something they have demonstrably been doing so far.

France Télécom is a nationalised company and you're right it won't go bust if we fumble WAR. The people at GOA however want to make WAR a success because it will mean we won't get fired, we won't lose the contract with EA Mythic and we'll be able to continue working on a project that we're all very passionate about. WAR will be our flagship product when it launches and our fortunes are very much bound up with its success. Saying that we have 'no incentive' to succeed is a truly bizarre claim.

The beta ticker on warhammeronline.com shows nearly 750,000 beta signups and at least half of those are European. Clearly the beta signup procedure isn't entirely impossible to negotiate, however, you'll be pleased to know that the final account management system for the website and the game has not yet been implemented. You'll have to wait a little before it's finally unveiled but the system you are using at the moment is not the final design.

[danteire]

Originally Posted by Stigus

Well at least you get good Guinness in Dublin, lol.

Yeah, their offices are about 5 minutes walk from the Guiness brewery by my reckoning. Now to just apply for one of the jobs listed, WAR + the black stuff = win!!

[Kier Rhonwen]

I have absolutely no experience of DaoC, but everything I read from GOA certainly makes it sound like they are pulling out all the stops for WAR ( plus the EU site works fine for me ).
Seem like good folk from where I'm sitting.

[Bûrri]

Originally Posted by Kier Rhonwen

I have absolutely no experience of DaoC, but everything I read from GOA certainly makes it sound like they are pulling out all the stops for WAR ( plus the EU site works fine for me ).
Seem like good folk from where I'm sitting.

Agreed.
The fact that GOA are obviously all-too-aware that getting WAR's distribution and upkeep has to be a make-or-break issue for the company is itself surely good cause to believe they'll be doing everything they can to make this work, quite apart form the fact that as professionals in a risky industry they obviously want to do a job they can be proud of.

An example: the recent confusion/miscommunication over the Play.com CE codes release. While it did take a few days too long, in my opinion, for some clarification, it would appear that as soon as IanC got involved, Play.com sent out an email to clarify things.

Like a lot of folks here, I'm really looking forward to playing WAR, and am pretty much not playing anything else until it comes out, in the confidence that this is what I want to play, so I'm not going to invest any time in playing much else.
Now, the thing is , folks like us get a bit 'twitchy' when things seem to be going a bit slow, or perhaps indicate GOA might not be up to the job of handling our 'dream' for us.
All we can do is sit and wait.
It's not easy to do that, but I'm happy to make that effort if i can see that there's effort being made on GOA's side too.
That's why threads like this, and regular updates from GOA are so welcome, and the more of them we see, the happier we'll be.

(Apologies for the wall of text, I did edit it to half what it was. I did, really.)

[Gorgeras]

24/7 support, simultaneous release, patches on the same day and localisation, all very comendable even if they're supposed to be a basic industry standard by now. It's just that they have absolutely nothing to do with what I said, so why resort to such red herrings?

If there has been any serious problems with the very reliable HTML-based US website, you'll have to excuse me if I just couldn't see them. I can't do those 3D magic eye things either.

Sometimes when I moan about something to do with this yet-to-be-released game I am challenged with the "Not yet" canard where I'm mocked for judging a future that hasn't arrived. Perhaps I could use it myself?

24/7 support, simultaneous release, patches on the same day and localisation, all very comendable, it's just that they haven't happened yet. So why blow that trumpet now?

Will we get the same options, services and oppotunies as US players? Yes. Will there be a qualitive difference in experience? No. Oh except, this doesn't apply yet. So far, the same options, services, oppotunies and qualitive experience have been very different. So if this falls under the 'not yet' umbrella, why form heavenly quoirs to sing praise to GoA now? All they've done is say what they will give us, they haven't actually given it yet. Why weren't they giving it almost two years ago and first promised all this? I think their non-response to demands for a browser-friendly HTML version of the EU site when it first went up was very telling.

Why now if this all falls under 'not yet'? Well, it's because they want us to actually believe they have got better. Actions speak louder than words though and in my opinion GoA have a consistent poor-showing.


IanC, I would LOVE to know how GoA would ever lose the contract. MJ completely refused to even speculate on who would replace the company in such an event and I don't think there has been any planning for it. EA Mythic decided long ago that there were no circumstances under which GoA could lose unless WAR itself bombed and had to be abandoned altogether. I doubt there was any EU-wide free an open bid for the contract either; it would be extraordinary that GoA could win it given past performance.

Thank you also for the re-assuring stastistic. I mean with 750k sign-ups there is absolutely no way I might not actually be one of them despite there being a GoA database somewhere forgetting to send me the newsletter I signed for with the beta and listing my CPU unspecifically as a 'Intel Pentium'.

[Sycopat]

Originally Posted by Gorgeras

Thank you also for the re-assuring stastistic. I mean with 750k sign-ups there is absolutely no way I might not actually be one of them despite there being a GoA database somewhere forgetting to send me the newsletter I signed for with the beta and listing my CPU unspecifically as a 'Intel Pentium'.

Right mate, I don't know about DAOC so I'm not going near the arguments this thread is over(Although considering how polite and helpful the GOA staff have been to me personally during my time here, I will admit to siding with the pro-GOA side of it, despite occasional differences and the fact that I'm still wondering what the story is with the CE pre-order box I bought in gamestop, who are not listed as a pre-order partner, and claimed that the buying the pre-order was neither a guarantee of a CE on release, nor the cost already paid taken into account when purchasing the CE I'm not guaranteed... Although Gamestop did tell me the distributor who made these rules was in fact EA itself...)

Also, the following is intended as trying to get more detail on what exactly your current problems are with the service they are currently providing, and me just trying to be helpful.

I think it should be pointed out that the newsletter has often had problems with being late/never arriving etc. on both sides of the atlantic, and I've heard of people using all the major email providers having this problem (Hotmail, gmail and yahoo, personally I use gmail and I don't have any problems. Not very helpful I know). I've also only had problems with the war-europe site once, on the day the CE was announced, when the site buckled a bit under the pressure, which considering the traffic volume at the time is hardly surprising. Based on this I'm wondering at whether or not it's your browser at fault in this case. Perhaps if you told us which one you use, one of the "locals" could help? I use firefox.

Also, on my profile page, after I loaded up my dxdiag, my processor was listed as just "Intel", it is a pentium, but it's not listed as such, and the option isn't on the drop down list either and the processor speed is in the box below, which again has a drop down list so you should be able to enter it yourself. Perhaps you merely missed it?

[idris]

Originally Posted by Garthilk

The real war in Europe isn't WAR persay, it has been GOAs battle to affirm gamers that they're up to the task of bringing WAR to the Europeon community. Frankly the efforts put forth so far have been nothing short of first class compared to other publishers and developers. However, some people, still unable to cope with their treatment during Dark Ages of Camelot are hard pressed to see the changes made. That said, GOA's community manager took some time to address the issues facing the European community.


[/indent]

We were very happy that IainC stopped by our blog to make those comments, which came after I'd written something about concerns about GOA this time around.

I'm definitely prepared to wait and judge on all these things.