Does anyone want to start a pool to bet on how long it will take for EA to cancel Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online and then kill the studio?
For our younger readers out there, EA has a history of this sort of thing so it would come as no surprise to many people if this did occur.
My guess (and it is just a guess) is that at some point, both games will get less and less attention and support from EA, and the core teams that have been working on both will be shifted to a new mmorpg project that EA wants to make. DaoC should be running out of steam by now, and Warhammer Online doesn’t look that impressive to me, although the thing that EA will be thinking about, is that Warhammer is a licensed property that they don’t own…that means that someone else is getting a cut of the profits.
From a self-serving corporate standpoint, it would be in EA’s best interests to have the team work on a property that is already owned by EA, so they can take a greater share of the potential profits.
The other thing I am worried about, is EA’s ability to handle a MMORPG as a service and not a product, and whether or not they have the cojones to do it right for a change. I don’t think so. I expect them to manhandle it.
You can bookmark this post as the first on the internet to complain about EA’s MMORPG customer service hah (at least since this announcement. I realize people have complained before. Try looking around for info on EA’s history with other MMORPG’s it has had control over if you want to see some horror stories).
Watch for the changes that will occur in both games as a result of this acquisition. It might take a while, and I am sure that this post is going to get a lot of commentary that disagrees with me, but I don’t think that the zebra will change its stripes.
Lets see, shall we?
Nicodemus
I already bookmarked this one: http://www.costik.com/weblog/2006_06_01_blogchive.html#115084064333691269
Smart money is on Warhammer to be thought of as a failure by EA for it’s numbers, no matter how much those numbers might impress you or me. Then they stop supporting all MMOs they own, start funding a new idea, cancel the new idea and pull the plug on the MMOs dispite them making a slight monthly return. Unfortunately for a betting pool we need some people who think this might take a while , otherwise it’s just who gets the date closest. But put me down for Feb 16th, 2007, for EA to have no active online games.