Mythic: EA "know nothing about launching MMOs in Europe"
"...Unless it's spending lots of money to close them down," says creative director Paul Barnett on week of WAR release
In the week of the release of the highly anticipated Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning MMO, the game's creative director has spoken frankly of the decision to partner with GOA in Europe, rather than developer Mythic's parent company Electronic Arts.
GOA has over nine year's experience working with massively multiplayer online games in Europe, experience that Electronic Arts could not hope to replicate, said Mythic's Paul Barnett in an interview with our sister site Eurogamer.net.
"GOA did it with Dark Age of Camelot and they've done it really well. They've done it in a very European way, but they've done it very well, and it's more of the same," Barnett said of the company's ability to handle the roll-out across multiple regions.
"EA couldn't have done it, what the hell would EA know about it? They know nothing about launching MMOs in Europe, unless it's spending lots of money closing them down I suppose."
The game's open beta began earlier this month, but GOA was forced to publicly apologise as account registration and authentication issues stopped new players from joining the game.
Barnett said that the initial struggles were obviously a problem, but now the game is finally up and running – consumers who pre-ordered the game have been able to download and begin playing it since Sunday – the developer is happy it's being well-received in Europe.
"You might as well give it to a company that you've got a history with, that you respect and understand," detailed Barnett.
"Sometimes, like any good relationship, it goes really well and sometimes it has ups and downs. It was unfortunate with the validation of the open beta, we could have done without that nonsense. But on the other hand, you know, the servers are up, they work, the whole of Europe knows the game's coming, it's for sale and it feels great.
Mythic announced today that 1.5 million copies of the game have been pre-ordered ahead of the release on Thursday, setting a PC record for Electronic Arts.
Elsewhere in the interview, Barnett said that he would personally like to see one million subscribers to the game in its first twelve months.