Jul
11

WAR – Lesson of Scope Control

9 Comments

Question: What happens to software projects that promise too many features and suddenly realize they can’t fit them in before they release. Couple things, a) they delay or b) they cut features. Mythic has done (a) too many times and if they tried that again…well…I don’t know what would happen, but it would be a painful PR move to eat. So…they’re stuck with (b) and that’s where this comes in:

In short, the capital cities for the Dark Elf, High Elf, Orc, and Dwarf factions will not be in the game at launch. The Human city of Altdorf and the Chaos Inevitable City will be the only Capital cities in the game. This is an enormous change, seemingly invalidating much of what we know about the game’s core of RvR gameplay.

Additionally, four classes are being removed, deemed to be in a condition unsuitable for launch. They are:

The Choppa (Greenskin)
The Hammerer (Dwarf)
The Blackguard (Dark Elf)
The Knight of the Blazing Sun (Empire)

I’m not worried about WAR because of this announcement…far from it. We will see these features in either an expansion or a future update. Really, all you can take from this is that Mythic bit off more than if could chew. I think WAR will still be a very solid product at launch…just make sure you nod and smile when you see big feature lists from these guys. Lesson for Mythic: Control the scope of your feature set a bit better. Very hard to do though.

D out.

Posted in Warhammer
9 Comments Posted by Darren

9 Responses to "WAR – Lesson of Scope Control"

  • Bildo says:
    July 11, 2008 at 12:39 pm

    They’re certainly not delaying. This cutting tells us that. In fact, I’m glad they had the balls to do so. I’d rather see less POLISHED content, than more unpolished crap. They have the financial backing, let’s just hope they make good use of the time this affords them and come September when it releases we can all rejoice.

  • pixiestyx says:
    July 11, 2008 at 2:20 pm

    maybe they are running out of time to get what they have to a level ofpolished that they think is needed for a successful launch. Maybe a release schedule has been set and they are falling behind what they want to do and what they can do ….. seems like every other mmo development story to be honest …. we will ship the game and will add the stuff we really wanted to be in the game but couldnt do it in time …. hmmm feature compleate lol NO

  • p@tsh@t says:
    July 11, 2008 at 3:03 pm

    Release a 1/2 finished game or release 1/2 a finished game? Discuss.

    I honestly don’t have enough insight to really weigh the impact of the class cuts, but I worry about balance and whether we’ll ever see those classes. To release, the classes in game at release will need to be balanced to work. So how do you add them later without upsetting that balance?

    Scope creep = death (or broke or mediocrity)…

  • Guy says:
    July 12, 2008 at 7:53 am

    Sorry to say this but if they are cutting these things now this probably means that these “features” were really awful and they really couldn’t release them…we will still see a lot of unfinished features in the game even with these cuts.

    Its a lesson for game developers – don’t over hype your game….and certainly don’t do it too early.

    I would love to see an official Warhammer Video for this…

    Voice Behind the camera: Pre-Release Vdieo take 1
    …..
    Paul Barnett : Warhammer is GREAT , its WAR its DEATH. We have 6 Captial Cities where you can plunder and kill and destroy and….
    Voice behind the camera : Er Paul stop there please…. No we don’t have 6 any more we only have 2 cities now..didn’t you get the memo ?
    Paul Barnett : What do mean we don’t have 6 we ALWAYS were having 6 ?? okay lets move on. We have 24 classes – YES 24 Classes all with the ability to cause death, mayhem….
    Voice benind the camera : Er Paul…sorry you’ll have to stop again – we don’t have 24 anymore we have 20 classes now
    Paul Barnett : 20 ? – so which ones were dropped then ??….oh you know what – just do some flashy animations for the video showing all the dropped classes and cities and then a big Monty Python foot comes down and squashes them all…and be done with it all !! – I’m off down the pub to meet my Blizzard mates that are no doubt celebrating as we speak.

  • Guy says:
    July 12, 2008 at 8:05 am

    Oh sorry also saw this on the WarHammer Alliance Forums –

    James_EAMythic
    Hey guys,

    It’s important to remember a few key facts:

    A) The game is still in development, it’s important that we make the right decisions to have a successful launch.
    B) We want to make a great game, not a good game. I think we can all agree that playing a career that wasn’t up to par with our standards doesn’t accomplish that.
    C) Capital cities require you to capture 2 of the 3 campaigns. We’ll have a much more informative explanation of how city capture works but it’s now even more challenging and requires the cooperation of the entire realm to march to the gates of your enemies city and conquer their king, which in the end was always our goal.

    WAR, while now different, is more exciting and engaging then ever before and the cities and careers provide an experience to look forward too
    ——————————
    A) Agree – just not sure you are making the right ones though.
    B) Yes but personally I think its best to have something and improve it than never to have it at all…it certainly didn’t help Vanguard and they only dropped 2 classes.
    C) So now the whole realm has to get involved….personally this doesn’t sound too good to me.

    but the last line makes me laugh-
    WAR, while now different, is more exciting and engaging then ever before and the cities and careers provide an experience to look forward too

    Its now MORE exciting and engaging than ever before ?
    Why don’t they remove 1/2 of the entire content of the game – I’ll be so exciting I think I would burst !! – what a silly thing for the developer to say. I bet his colleagues are still throwing screwed-up bits of paper at the back of his head !!

  • Guy says:
    July 12, 2008 at 8:10 am

    …last one from me – promise
    If you do look at the rest of the forum thread and read Mark Jacobs explanations its actually a lot easier to swallow than James_EAMythic’s comments.

  • Exeter says:
    July 14, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    I play Dwarfs in the table top version of the game and I gotta say that dropping Hammerers from the list makes me a sad panda.

  • SmakenDahed says:
    July 15, 2008 at 6:23 am

    Interesting. I’m with Guy, that video sounds about right. :)

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