If the basic design of the modern MMO is analogous to an amusement park, the most nightmarish portion of the development team's job doesn't even begin until after the game launches. Prior to that, the development team can still make major changes and tweaks without worrying about affecting people who are currently paying the bills. Post-launch, however, that all goes out the window by the incessant demands of the player-base that screams for changes without service interruptions. Extending the analogy, it's like asking the designers of Disneyland to completely re-do the Pirates of the Caribbean while people are still riding it. EA Mythic's Warhammer Online MMO launched this year to considerable critical acclaim but even the game's most ardent supporters won't claim the game itself was perfect. We sat down with several members of the development team to discuss the launch and the frenzied road to Warhammer Online version 1.1.
"1.1 represents our very first iteration patch," said Warhammer Online's Associate Producer Josh Drescher. "It's the first major addition of new content and a significant overhaul of our core systems." According to Drescher, one of the most difficult things for a development team to do during the first days after the launch of an MMO is nothing. Apparently as the first players rush onto the system and spread out across the servers, a ton of information and feedback will come flooding in via game forums, initial reviews as well as raw internal data. The temptation then is for the team to rush in and immediately start fixing things based on extremely small data sets and subjective interpretations. What the Warhammer Online team did instead was what might be referred to as "game triage." They needed to decide which problems were truly game-threatening and focus on those and which could wait.
"When we look at game balance, we look at it in terms of realm vs. realm balance," said Jeff Skalski, Warhammer Online's Producer. "As long as we're hitting that realm balance, we're happy. Factional, racial or career population imbalances aren't as critical." In fact, the team asserts that one of the biggest criticisms and fears around launch time -- the potential for population or class imbalance -- hasn't really materialized. While there is a perception among Destruction players that there are too many Bright Wizard players and amongst Order players that there are too many Destruction players, that perception simply isn't borne out by Mythic's own numbers. While they wouldn't discuss specifics, Drescher said that population imbalances on servers are usually within single-digit percentages.
Drescher is quick to add that even such low percentages are a cause for concern for the team, but rather than taking a reactionary stance, they believe in getting ahead of the problem as quickly as possible. "We're very proud of the incentive structure we've built to encourage players to spread out. Every time you log in, you'll be greeted with a message that, say the High Elves on a particular server could use some help and we're offering incentives such as extra experience points to join." The team also takes message board and player feedback very seriously and will address issues when they reach certain critical thresholds. A recent shift to healers, for example, occurred because the complaint by healers that their big healing spells were essentially useless in combat was backed up by internal data that showed how often such spells were used. As a result, many big healing spells were jazzed up to become more attractive for players.
The focus on moving with deliberate haste extends even to the business environment that Warhammer Online operates in. When the launch of Wrath of the Lich King, World of Warcraft's latest greatest expansion pack, hit the MMO world the way only a game with 11 million subscribers can, the reaction with Mythic was muted. "Wrath of the Lich King is a big marquee product," said Drescher. "Clearly we were aware of it but you can't let a competitor goad you into a rash move that ends up being bad for the game." As a result, the development team took on a policy of pseudo-blindness where Lich King was concerned. "Our general take is that we need to continue to move on with our own plans. We've got the 'Keg's End' event (a drinking-themed in-game holiday event) coming up and if we continue to make our game as good as it can possibly be, the players will be there."
