GOA hands over WAR EU to Mythic

Earlier this year, Mythic Entertainment moved to take over the management of Dark Age of Camelot in Europe from publisher GOA, and this week we've learned that they're doing the same for Warhammer Online. In a brief announcement on WAR's EU site, GOA states that the full operation of the game is being handed over to Mythic. This includes a migration of all character data from GOA's servers to Mythic's. GOA has had the publishing rights to WAR since 2006.

The history of GOA and Warhammer Online is a rocky one, especially around the launch of the game in 2008. However, they retained the right to publish and run the game in Europe, and proceeded without any other severe bumps since then (OK, maybe a few bumps). GOA's parting note with the players is quietly upbeat: "We have enjoyed a lot of great times with you. Over the past couple of years we have fostered a fantastically vibrant and active community; we saw the world's first Tchar'Zanek and Karl Franz kills pre 1.3.5 and hosted undeniably some of the most professional guilds to ever play WAR."

While this undoubtedly comes as a shock to many EU players, the bottom line is that WAR will continue to run in the region. The WAR EU site promises more information and a transition FAQ in upcoming days, so stay tuned as we keep abreast of this developing situation.

Reader Comments (19)

"While this undoubtedly comes as a shock to many EU players..."

Funniest thing I've read in ages!

Let me get this out of the way for the usual commenters:

"Isn't this game dead yet?"

"The final nail in the coffin"

"OMG the sky is falling"

"This game is pure fail"

"I hate every MMO but the one I play"

"I have never played this game/I haven't played since launch but this game must suck because other people on the internetz say it does."

and so on and so forth..........

Seiously though, the EU players I've heard from say this is a good thing. Apparently GOA was not doing a good job.

LOL nice.

GOA were absolutely FailMax back in my DAOC days. Contacting them for any reason was an almost impossible task, and gods forbid you had billing problems -uuff!

Thank effing $DEITY!! Finally!
Wohoooo!

This is excellent news - I originally bought the box and played my free 30 days while watching GOA slaughtering their website with that flash horror - and when the time came and my credit card details were needed for the sub - the damn page/account management system just didn't work...at all. And their support is probably situated just behind event horizon because it seems our technology is not advanced enough to contact them yet.

So I gave up and went happily back to EVE.

Have tried coupld of times after that with results that always leave me tearing off my hair in rage (and hey, I don't have much hair!).
I'm very much looking forward to playing WAR again!

This is the start of the move to free-to-play.

"This is the start of the move to free-to-play"

Ah yes, Gauge missed that one.

Thanks, I did miss that one lol.

I would quit the game if they went F2P with a micro-transaction store. I am not a fan of the F2P model.

WAR is in a pretty good place right now and I think it's getting better. Merging with EU players would be a great move for everyone. It would bring large scale PVP almost around the clock. It still happens some off peak hours but this would put a lot of good PVP'ers on during the US non-peak times. This would be great for EU and US non-peak players.

I'm just wondering how a P2P game can be "rocky"

You charge a standard subscription fee and when Mythic sends you a patch .... you patch the servers ....... that's it... there might have been a bit of non English localization but that isn't rocket science.

If it was F2P I could understand some bad blood with exirbinant Item mall pricing but this is "Push button, make game Go".

This is very good news. With Mythic handling things directly and not needing to give GOA a percentage would could see a good increase in Europe subs coming WARs way. Also add to the fact that a Large number of gamers hate GOA with a passion.

Hopefully this produces enough extra money to get EA's eyes off of Mythic long enough for them to finish their expansion.

During this lull in the SC2 beta process I ended up going back to Warhammer Online after nearly 12 months off to play with some friends. I was actually really surprised at how much the game has improved. Sure it's not perfect, but it is probably one of the most polished MMOs out now. The early builds of WAR burned far to many consumers to really rebound from such a fall from grace but the game is fun/good now.

If WAR did go F2P with a micro transaction store I would probably never pick it back up. Right now I plan on giving Mythic money over the next 6 months even if I don't play everyday when SC2 comes out.

Yeah!

Bringing millions of players into a large scale PvP game would be terrible! I'd reactivate my account, and cancel it just to show how much I hate F2P price models.

Every time I've I've gone back to WAR (three times now, I think) I've definitely noticed improvements -- some of which surprised me in a good way.

Unfortunately, for me, the game's still not quite "there yet". I play for about a month -- have fun -- and then drift away to something else. It still feels shallow to me somehow; I have a hard time feeling invested in the game world, if that makes any sense at all?

So... EU players will now be billed 20 times for the sub like the US ?

Nice...

Note to Europe - Do NOT use credit card for subing this product. NEVER !

Is it wrong to hope that they merge the EU servers with the US ones?

We yanks could use more roleplayers...

I'm so so happy to hear this news! GoA really delivered sub-par service, poor web site implementation, poor communication with customers, etc, etc.

This is one of the biggest reasons why I don't re-sub, but now I am really considering checking the game out again!

Wish they had done this from the very beginning. GOA was utter crap and the launch was the worst I can remember experiencing. Communications to players was and has been pretty much non-existent.

I still remember comparing Mythic's and GOA's downtime posts - Mythic would say things like, 'servers will be down for about 5 hours' and would post an update about 5 hours later if they weren't. GOA would post, 'servers will be up lunchtime' and not post an update until 4pm when the servers were still down. God, how I hated their lack of respect towards their customers.

So long, GOA, and thanks for all the fish.

GOA out of the way a "shock"?
Woah, you're very far from the truth. GOA has the worst support/communication in MMO history that is only shadowed by NCsoft europe... and I'm not even talking about their servers... laggy to say the least.
Good riddance, by all means! Hopefully, Mythic will do a much better job.

That is wonderful news! I hate GOA with all the intensity of a thousand suns. As mentioned above, they offered nonexistent customer service, that broken joke of a website, and constant account problems...it will be so nice to not have to deal with them. I may even re-sub, as even with all of the flaws and the irritation of having to deal with GOA, the game was damned fun. If they ever do go truly F2P, it will be wonderful.

GOA hands over WAR EU to Mythic

Reader Comments (19)

Posted: Jun 25th 2010 3:57PM Renko said

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Posted: Jun 25th 2010 5:54PM breezer said

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