Warhammer Online: Mark Jacobs Answers Some Questions About The WAR Beta Shutdown

Mark Jacobs, General Manager and Vice President of EA Mythic, has given some clarification about the beta shutdown announced yesterday.

It's really simple. We got lots and lots of data (some great, some good, some not so good) and we are going to act on what we got. That's one reason we started beta as early as we did so we could gather that data now, not later, when we have a chance to fix/change/improve things. As an FYI, the tools we are using now I would have killed for with DAoC, if we had then what we have now, a lot of dumb stuff would not have happened. In terms of possible reasons (raised here) for the delay:

1) Making it more like WoW: Nope, if anything the exact opposite is true.

2) That we are yanking out whole systems: Nope, we are adding new systems (as planned) and balancing the existing systems. Here's a shocking bit of news, the game isn't balanced yet. Thanks to the tools we have now, we are able to identify what is messed up and we can now fix it ahead of time, as opposed to the past. Trying to fix these things while we have lots of beta testers running around is not conducive to getting a game out on schedule.

You can read his full post over at the F13 site.

Update: Mark posted further comments again today. You can read those here.