More reactions to BioWAAAGH!

by Brooke Pilley Jun 25th 2009 at 12:30PM

Filed under: MMO industry, Warhammer Online, Opinion

We've been keeping our eyes on various blogs and forums discussing yesterday's big news that Mythic and BioWare are being restructured under EA's new MMO/RPG gaming division and that Mark Jacobs is no longer working for EA. Here's a summary of what we've found so far.

Many people are under the false impression that Mythic and BioWare have merged. One of Mythic's developers made this clarification: "We're still Mythic Entertainment, an Electronic Arts Studio, as we have been. I've posted this elsewhere, but we're not 'merging.' We are still a completely separate entity within EA, just as Bioware is, simply now grouped under the same MMO/RPG grouping and reporting to one person, collectively."

Although this may be the case, Keen is still one of many who are worried about the new group, citing EA's history of absorbing studios, restructuring them, and then letting them and their games fall to pieces. Others are excited about this new group, hoping it breathes new life into Mythic and its games.

The new structure has Rob Denton, newly crowned Mythic General Manager reporting to Ray Muzyka who takes on the new role as group GM, while retaining his old role as BioWare GM.

Quite a few people have been questioning the leadership of this new group (3rd reply down). While few can argue against BioWare releasing an extensive catalogue of high quality RPGs, they haven't really had much experience developing MMOs.

Supporters are citing two things. First, BioWare has been developing Star Wars: The Old Republic for a couple years now, and second, one can look to Blizzard for a bit of encouragement; a company that never released a single MMO before World of Warcraft.

One of the biggest things Warhammer Online fans have been asking for since the release of this news is some sort of official comment from Rob Denton stating his intentions moving forward. We have been told to keep our eyes on the Warhammer Herald today as Jeff Hickman will be releasing part 3 of his Executive Producer's Letter expanding upon the top 5 issues identified in his previous entry.

As for news about Mark Jacobs, folks seem to be running the range of emtions. Some people are expressing outright glee. Many others have paid their respects to the man and thanked him for his contributions to the genre - hoping and betting that this isn't the end.

What Mark Jacobs does next remains a mystery. Some have gone so far as to suggest he form a new team with Brad McQuaid and Richard Garriott and create a "next-gen MMO." That would be... interesting.

Tags: biowaaagh, bioware, blizzard, brad-mcquaid, featured, jeff-hickman, joystiqfeatures, keen, mark-jacobs, mythic-entertainment, richard-garriott, rob-denton, swtor, warhammer-online, world-of-warcraft

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Tyranor said on 12:45PM 6-25-2009

I suspect most of us will never notice the difference.

Although I am slightly worried that it might cause a dilution of the bioware mentality in the old republic. I want a multiplayer Kotor. The less they take from WAR the better imo.

Xanwryn said on 3:22PM 6-25-2009

For the most part, most MMO's are" rip-offs" of World of Warcraft. Don't care what anyone else says, at least some of most MMO's these days are based on WoW.

Warhammer Online's third-person perspective? Used in WoW. Scenarios? Battleground equivalents. Classes? Also in WoW.

All these aren't game breaking though. What my point is, is that SWTOR may have a few elements of popular MMO's (such as WAR, WoW, LotRO, etc), probably the most common and/or popular (such as the third-person perspective, the similar archetype for classes, how PvP works etc) then BioWare will add features not seen in the other games (classes may work differently? PVE and PVP content may be similar but have "twists" etc).

In this regard, almost all modern MMO's are the same, but very different. Not all of them have the same storyline (granted, Warcraft is just a big-ass Warhammer rip-off but it does well at being one, I don't need evidence to show this, the 11,000,000+ players does that for me), not all of them have the same classes (such as Warrior, Mage, Priest, same archetype in the end of it all but just portrayed differently).

PVP is different. WoWs Battlegrounds and WARs Scenarios are similar in how they work. You can queue for them anywhere, it's realm-vs-realm. After the facts, they're pretty different, rewards are different, objectives are different etc.

To conclude: BioWare's SWTOR game WILL be like WoW and WAR in SOME respect. So you WILL get people that will go "this is just a WoW/WAR rip-off but in space! WHAT THE FUCK!?", since people are douchebags and love to complain about EVERYTHING. But overall, you'll notice the differences and you'll either hate 'em or love 'em.

ScytheNoire said on 12:47PM 6-25-2009

I think this has more to do with Jacobs having strong opinions that clashed with suits at EA. There were past signs of this, and they were just waiting for a reason to force him out. Since WAR didn't get that 2 Million + they were bragging about before launch, EA needed a sheep, and right or wrong, Jacobs and the top target.

The Claw said on 12:59AM 6-26-2009

Don't even need any clashing opinions to explain it. Mythic took a pile of EA's money to fund completion of WAR's development. In return, they promised a certain level of success. Obviously WAR didn't even come close to the success they promised EA. Hence, heads roll, Mythic gets rolled up into Bioware.

Keen said on 12:49PM 6-25-2009

We have to truly ask ourselves whether or not the postings by Mythic employees stating "we're still our own studio" have any merit. Mark Jacobs made a post about Mythic being sold to EA and it contained much of the same anecdotes about being autonomous and the love felt between the studios and what not.

While these postings may be made, at the moment of their creation, in honesty with pure intentions, you would have to be very shortsighted to believe that this is in any way the reality of the situation. Does anyone really believe that Mythic, after having its head removed and being asked to report to a new "group", whose leadership is the founder and creator of the other member of the group constitutes individuality anymore?

No one really knows how this will impact either SWTOR or WAR, but I certainly know how this will affect Mythic and so too does anyone else who has an inkling of common sense. All that we can hope for now is that, somehow, the best interests of gaming are placed above the best interests of business after this obviously business oriented move.

Here's to Mark Jacobs and DAOC - may there be more of both in the future.

THAC0 said on 12:49PM 6-25-2009

I don't care one way or another. In reality it has no impact on my life nor do i find it entertaining like a lot of MMO news. I hope that wherever these personalities we always talk about when they fail and move on find a good place and succeed in the end. MMOs seem to have a high turn over rate and i high "failure" rate i'm more worried about the stale genre as a whole and not just EA/Mythic/BioWare, it seems like every game to come out in the last year or so have pretty much flopped and had their lead guy move on.

ScytheNoire said on 12:50PM 6-25-2009

GU Comics take on it:

http://www.gucomics.com/comic/?cdate=20090625

So true.

Ada said on 1:05PM 6-25-2009

Replace "interesting" with "fail" in the last sentence plx. And thx.

Dethgar said on 7:01PM 6-25-2009

I don't see this going anywhere positive for Mythic. Their RvR baby has turned into an RvE grind fest thanks to the LotD patch. Even at its worst WAR was a game built on PvP, but as it stands now with this new zone having the best rewards for all levels, it's quickly becoming a PvE game. Talk about flipping.

There isn't a whole lot Bioware could really offer WAR in terms of boosting appeal at this point, it would take an entire restructure of the game and its zoning system to do that. EA is slyly preparing Mythic for the cutting block, either to be gobbled up internally or sent out to pasture like so many other studios before it.