In the monthly Warhammer Online newsletter sent out late yesterday evening, Mark Jacobs, General Manager of EA Mythic, wrote a fairly lengthy letter to fans, informing them of his team’s decision to move the release window for their hotly anticipated Warhammer MMORPG from Fall 2007 into Quarter 1 2008. Aside from just letting players know, Mark also explained the reasoning behind this difficult decision, citing that he and the rest of the team were committed from day one to put together the best game they could possibly make, and felt it necessary to revise previous work on the game in order to achieve that goal.

While the news is quite disheartening to fans eager to dive into the combat torn Warhammer universe for themselves, it is actually refreshing to hear the news directly from the man himself. Far too often game developers seem far out of touch with their fans, and this open letter really show’s how much Mark and his team care about creating the best game possible and how much they really do appreciate and care about their fans. Kudos to he and his team for their continued hard work.
For those of you not signed up for the Warhammer Newsletter, I have transcribed the letter in its entirety below:

“It’s been an interesting year for us at EA Mythic, a year filled with new challenges, new opportunities and of course, a year filled with WAR! We have watched Warhammer Online become one of the most highly anticipated MMORPGs in the world as it garners praise from the press, earns kudos from the community and receives enthusiastic support from our partners and friends at Games Workshop. I’m happy to say that the task of bringing WAR to life is going well here at EA Mythic. However, we have important news to share and as always, we want you, the WAR community, to be the first to know.

We have made the decision to move our ship date for the US and Europe to the first quarter of 2008. (Release dates for Asia will be announced at a later date.) Since our acquisition by EA, we have been afforded many wonderful development opportunities and we plan to take full advantage of everything that is available. This includes taking several additional months to make the best MMORPG possible.

At this time we have completed most of the work on our first racial pairing – Dwarfs and Greenskins – and the team is now building Empire and Chaos. These new zones really kick butt and the team did a fantastic job of incorporating the feel of war and Warhammer into these areas. This racial pairing is the embodiment of all that I hoped for when we made the decision to partner with GW.

However, when we looked back at our work on the Dwarf and Greenskin pairing, we could not say the same thing. While these areas were good, they were not great and glorious. We have always said that WAR was going to be great and we will not settle for anything less. So the team has gone back to our initial pairing and conducted an intense review of their work. They have implemented new ideas and applied all that they have learned over the past nine months. What has already emerged from this dedicated time of focused polish is nothing short of spectacular. In the Dwarf and Greenskin zones there is now more war, more Warhammer, and more of what makes WAR great.

By extending our development time, we’ll be able to do these in-depth reviews several times prior to launch to ensure all areas of WAR benefit from the experience of ongoing development. EA is totally supportive of our decision and are behind us 100%. We all believe WAR will be the next great MMORPG and being part of EA affords us the time we need to make it so. It is EA’s ongoing commitment to quality that will allow us, and other EA studios, to deliver great games, now and in the future.

This change to our ship date is probably not the news you were hoping to hear. In the end, we’ll be able to reward your patience with a truly next-generation MMORPG that will make GW proud, all of us at EA thrilled and most importantly, you, the players, as happy as a Black Orc in battle. We only get one chance at a successful launch, and we plan to catapult this one over the walls of Altdorf.

WAR is coming!

Mark Jacobs
GM, EA Mythic
April 25, 2007″