Mythic's Hickman Talks About Warhammer Online's Biggest Mistakes

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At GDC Austin, Mythic Entertainment executive producer Jeff Hickman delivered a talk in which he spoke frankly about mistakes the company has made, particularly in the last "interesting year" since the launch of Warhammer Online.

Speaking passionately about the future of the MMO space, Hickman began by saying "a variation on this has been heard by EA people and Mythic people quite a bit." He began by acknowledging the difficulties Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, for which he was executive producer, has faced: "It's been an interesting year for Warhammer."

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However, he says, "We had great ideas for all of these really cool social tools, and we built them into the game. But the game doesn't require friends. Part of it is that it's too easy." You can design in the need for players to have to work together, but Hickman warns that "you shouldn't force friendship, but it's important, and there's a balance there. You can do so many things solo, that friendship, at least in the beginning levels, is not necessary, and it's super dangerous for your games."

Economic models are its third biggest problem, which Hickman acknowledged are going steady overhauls to make them more relevant. "Our economy... we just missed the mark. If you look at the reasoning behind the economy, you'll see things like, 'Hey, we're not going to let gold farmers in our game.' 'We're going to try to make sure we have controlled inflation.' We had all the best reasons in our game, but what it caused us to do was build a game where economy is not important enough. Economy brings people together."

Hickman later acknowledged that fixing the game economy is essential to the game's upcoming South Korean launch and that these fixes will propagate globally. When entering that market, "We want to identify the big things that are important and change them. Economy specifically -- it's one of our weaknesses, and it has to be a big strength when we hit Korea. And it's a focus that pours over into North America."

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