Mythic and BioWare Form New RPG/MMO Group

[News Herald]

Today we have important news to share with the community. EA is restructuring its RPG and MMO games development into a new group that includes both Mythic and BioWare. This newly formed team will be led by Ray Muzyka, co-founder and General Manager of BioWare. With this change, Ray becomes Group General Manager of the new RPG/MMO studio group. BioWare’s other co-founder, Greg Zeschuk will become Group Creative Officer for the new RPG/MMO studio group. Rob Denton will step up as General Manager of Mythic and report to Ray. BioWare’s studios remain unchanged and continue to report to Ray.

Mark Jacobs, current General Manager of Mythic will leave EA on June 23, 2009. We thank Mark for his contributions at Mythic and wish him the very best going forward. Mark played a major part in the success of Mythic with his contribution as General Manager and Lead Designer of WAR.

Mythic retains a strong team led by Rob who co-founded Mythic in 1995. Rob played a critical role in the development of Dark Age of Camelot. In his previous role as COO, he was responsible for all day-to-day management of the studio including all development, operations and support.

Please join us in celebrating the union of these two award-winning studios.

Full Herald Post (http://herald.warhammeronline.com/warherald/NewsArticle.war?id=841)

[Isak]

Yay?

[Vydor]

Very interesting. Bioware has some truely exceptional games, and Jacobs getting the boot is probably a good thing.

[Isak]

I'm hopeful that Bioware can make Warhammer better, but I'm afraid that all the good Bioware games coming could end up worse. All I know is they better not screw up Dragon Age.

[Gisli]

I don't see how it could hurt WAR. Maybe it will help. I don't know the story behind who did what for DAOC. But it seems unbelievable to me that Mark Jacobs would have been the creative genius that made DAOC RvR work. (By which I am not saying that all the PvP details of DAOC were good. I mean that the overall RvR concept with 3 sides, keeps, relics, and subtle mechanics that tended to build community rather than destroy it worked pretty well. On top of that, it made a viable space for both large-scale RvR and group-vs-group PvP, and even some 1v1 PvP. That seems like a real accomplishment to me.) In contrast, WAR takes several huge steps backwards in its overall RvR structure and community-building support, in my opinon. So I'm not sorry to see MJ go. Perhaps his replacements will "get it" and make some positive changes.

[Vydor]

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20020213/firor_01.htm

This is a good read about how DAoC got off the ground.

[Fhuul]

And yea, verily, did they dance in the halls of the VN. They feasted upon the lambs and sloths, and carp and anchovies, and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit-bats and...

I think the thing to worry about is Bioware and its upcoming hit release potentially getting the taint of Mythic on it.. Consolidating the studios is probably a measure to keep WAR on life support while they focus on their next big project. For KOTOR's sake, hopefully Mythic will just contribute raw manpower versus any kind of creative input.

[Cillbo]

I have never liked Jocobs's attitude. I think this is a good thing for WAR.

[Kordine]

Now we just need to get rid of Paul Barnett the PvE care bear and we will be making the right moves.

[Twistdsoul]

Sounds good to me, Bioware is a pretty solid name in the MMO world.

[Vasan]

I have never liked Jocobs's attitude. I think this is a good thing for WAR.

Sounds like they are cleaning house, and this is one time I don't mind it. Mythic hasn't done the best with this online game, even if resources were an issue. They were less about let's make the game better and more about let's be really distant from the fan base and what people want.

Still Bioware working on this game = win. Unless of course they ignore the game to just hit the new star war game.

[Kordine]

One of the big problems has been the decision making. New content has taken precedence over bug fixes and balance issues time after time. Maybe new management will change that. I can hope at least.

[Vasan]

I don't know of another game that spend so much time on balance issues that didn't go live due to them being very very stupid.

Radically different stats, more cc, vastly increased damage to already overpowered classes. Wastes of time by an out of touch balance team. If they had actually spend that time in game, listening to people, we would have a much more balanced game atm with less cc, less damage by op classes such as bws, ibs and engineers and more damage/healing by the underpowered healing.

Hell shaman dps was boosted ages ago, no similar boost for zealots. Marads and white lions get lied to patch after patch.

[Drakhon]

Sounds good to me, Bioware is a pretty solid name in the MMO world.

They're a huge name in the RPG world, but SWTOR is their first MMO and it hasn't been released yet.

[Cambios]

Maybe the new boss will finally deal with CC, Bright Wizards, and the ho-hum nature of end game RvR.

[colnar]

One of the big problems has been the decision making. New content has taken precedence over bug fixes and balance issues time after time. Maybe new management will change that. I can hope at least.

I hope so, this was the same process they were using for the last couple years of DAoC. Come out with new content to get new subs, and not worry about fixing balance and bugs. When subs go down, new content to get new subs. New content to freshen up an aging game is great, but this game is far from aged.

[Vasan]

I've been thinking about it for awhile and I believe at this point the announcement really just indicates warhammer is indeed winding down and further staff is being assigned to that other bioware project you might have heard of.

Let's hope the devs there don't repeat the same mistake as here by latching on to one side and, thus biased, removing any chance at faction based balance.

I'd also be open to the argument that class balance issues were caused by a mixture of stupidity and navity.

[Kordine]

I don't know the exact timing but my fiends tell me that one of the lead developers from DaoC quit WAR before it went live/beta. It seems that a lot of them were not involved in that game. That lends weight to the naivety / stupidity argument. Lessons were not learned from DaoC because the developers were not involved with it.

[Vasan]

Yeah there are some horror stories of problem involved with warhammers launch. I mean the game came pretty close to not launching at all.

Still as they say changes for this game took too much time, with too little change and too little communication. Sure it might be explained with staffing issues but at a certain point you need to support your game with more than a patch or two every three month cycle, some of them stupid changes that later get removed, and all of them ignoring player feedback.

[Azgrum]

I have never liked Jocobs's attitude. I think this is a good thing for WAR.
I am in agreement with this. While I am sure he is probably an alright guy and knows what he is doing, I really do not like how he treated beta testers for WAR back in the day. It was like everything was our fault, and we were the problem. The removal of the 4-6 classes was supposedly due to "beta player feedback", which is BS. We said they needed work, not 100% removed from the game.

And then of course all the changes to the city stuff, as in removing 66% of the other city content ... I am sure that knee jerk change to get the game out the door is hurting the design decisions made for end game content. And I think we can all agree, the end game, city content is not really that great, right now ...

I hope this will help in some way, but from what I have read they are going to still be operating independently. But BioWare is awesome, so I hope they get some guys interested in WAR :)

[ellyiana]

So it sounds like Mark Jacobs bites the dust:P But probably got his money:(

[Tavore]

did any of you PLAY mass effect?


FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL.

fails all over the board for "rpg" play. =/

have to go back to KOTOR1 and Jade Empire to talk about good bioware games.

Neverwinter Nights was when bioware started to suck. (did they get bought by EA before or after NWN? thats the culprit prolly)