The lights on Warhammer Online‘s servers went dark earlier this week, signalling the end to EA and Mythic’s great WoW killer (which, at the time of release, every MMO branded itself to be). As with other games that require a permanent online connection, it’s yet another title future generations will be unable to enjoy, unless they like broken login screens. However, a former developer believes it’s possible to keep the game alive, albeit in a suspended, single-player form.
In a post on his blog “Shiny Toys”, ex-Mythic software engineer Andrew Meggs mentions that internal builds of Warhammer Online, created for testing purposes, could be started up in a special solo mode by using the command line argument “-singleplayer”. Far from transforming Warhammer into a working single-player game, it did allow one to explore the world without interference from active elements:
There were no login or character selection screens. There were no NPCs or other players. There was no gameplay of any kind. It was just you and the entire world spread out before you. You could fly around like Superman, or teleport anywhere at will. You could watch the sun rise and set over Altdorf, and see the smoke rise from fires forever burning. And you could see the thousands upon thousands of hours of work and craftsmanship that went into creating a world that has now been unplugged.
Unsurprisingly, the public version of the game doesn’t have this functionality, but Meggs says that enabling it wouldn’t take a lot of work on the part of EA — it just has to make the decision to do it. While it’s hard to see what benefit it has for EA from a business perspective, it would be a massive gesture and allow the game to be accessible in some form to gamers decades from now.
WAR in a bottle [Shiny Toys, via Eurogamer]
Comments
9 responses to “Warhammer Online Could Work Offline With A Command Line Argument”
Would be great if they turned it into a sp game never seen it done before, would be really interesting to see if they could pull it off
I’d give a former MMO turned single player game a go…..
Doing this would be the kind of PR that EA sorely needs. Thats why it wont ever happen. Management looks to the dollar and have their head too far up corporate ass.
Ea has done quite a few things right since the new CEO has taken over. Main one that i can think of is the Humble Origin Bundle which had some cracker games with everything going to charities.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/08/ea-has-a-humble-bundle-and-its-far-from-humble/
With the bad taste left by EA after Sim City, I couldn’t agree more with @series6’s comment. EA can pretend all they like saying they are about the gamers. But sadly they are all about churn and burn and looking after their shareholders $.
They should just release the dedicated server tools. That would resolve problems for so many defunct MMOs that fans want to keep running.
You’ll find the problems are normally 3rd party licenses. Many companies rent things like the sound engine, shaders, basic netcode, etc. They don’t have release permission for that stuff.
I just want to repeat my call for a kind of ‘MMO Museum’.
A civic-funded/independently-run institution which operates a few basic maintenance servers after MMOs shut down, so that their digital worlds can be visited by tourists and other types of folks who might visit a real art gallery for art appreciation.
Every MMO has a few hundred thousand times the number of artworks in it than the average art gallery, after all, most of which is more aesthetically-pleasing or inspiring. (Seriously. Have you seen Guernica up close, or Starry Night? Nowhere near as inspiring or evocative as some of the environments I’ve seen in WoW.)
Yeah I am disappointed something like this doesn’t exist. I remember seeing Tabula Rasa for $4 at HN, I was like ooh Richard Garriott.. did a quick google, oh it’s shut down and won’t work..
Could they make these games work offline with events and NPCs? Or do they rely too much on other people doing things? (Items etc I guess.. IDK I’ve never really played an MMO)