Well that's that then (Mark Jacobs leaves EA)

[IainC]

Source

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.

Edit by Trippy: fixed title

[Malakili]

I have to admit, I didn't see that coming just yet.

[Triforcer]

Huh.  Well, good luck to all involved.  I'm not the kick-in-ass-as-they-leave type, so I'll leave it at that.  

P.S. Fire Barnett.  

[Nebu]

Damn.  June 23rd was yesterday.  Yes... stating the obvious.

I don't like to see anyone lose their job.  This is going to be an interesting next few months in the life of WAR and DAoC.   

[Triforcer]

DAoC will outlive WAR.  Cruel, but true.

I actually kind of feel bad for Mark Jacobs.  Missteps?  Sure.  But underneath he always seemed like a passionate, well-meaning guy (as much as I can judge such things from viewing his Internet posts) who maybe got too emotionally invested.  That doesn't make him a monster.  He did bring us DAoC, which brought a lot of people a lot of enjoyment and showed PvP wasn't dead after UO.  For that alone, I wish him good luck. 

[Brogarn]

Paradigm shift. Mythic w/o Jacobs. Weird.

[schild]

Obvious EA action is obvious.

Also, don't fire Barnett. He's so fitting for a Star Wars title it's not even funny.

[IainC]

DAoC will outlive WAR.  Cruel, but true.

I actually kind of feel bad for Mark Jacobs.  Missteps?  Sure.  But underneath he always seemed like a passionate, well-meaning guy (as much as I can judge such things from viewing his Internet posts) who maybe got too emotionally invested.  That doesn't make him a monster.  He did bring us DAoC, which brought a lot of people a lot of enjoyment and showed PvP wasn't dead after UO.  For that alone, I wish him good luck. 

I know many people who will refuse to work with him or a company he is involved with for reasons that have nothing to do with the way he  posts on forums.

[Brogarn]

Also, don't fire Barnett. He's so fitting for a Star Wars title it's not even funny.

Jar Jar Binks?

[Aez]

DAoC will outlive WAR.  Cruel, but true.

I actually kind of feel bad for Mark Jacobs.  Missteps?  Sure.  But underneath he always seemed like a passionate, well-meaning guy (as much as I can judge such things from viewing his Internet posts) who maybe got too emotionally invested.  That doesn't make him a monster.  He did bring us DAoC, which brought a lot of people a lot of enjoyment and showed PvP wasn't dead after UO.  For that alone, I wish him good luck. 

I know many people who will refuse to work with him or a company he is involved with for reasons that have nothing to do with the way he  posts on forums.

Insider tease 

[WindupAtheist]

I hopped over to Stratics hoping for some comedy and was not disappointed. They sat there trying to figure out what Bioware was, and didn't know anything besides "They made some Sonic game!" until one of the moderators apparently googled an answer.

[NiX]

You must be kidding. They have to know of, well, any of the BioWare titles. Even if you don't like them.

I don't feel sorry for Jacobs, especially after this...

[BitWarrior]

Fairly befitting. The most damning actions perhaps were his numerous comments in interviews stating how to measure success in WAR. His superiors need only reference his own benchmarks to reveal his baby had been what he himself would have considered a failure. As it stands, WAR is holding at 300k subscribers, and thats after a massive "Recruit a Friend" campaign plus launching in Russia. In other words, the game is still shedding subscribers. Jokes aside, unless something changes, the subscription slope eventually ends up at 0 (or, at least, an impractical number to validate keeping the game open).

Making a change like this is definitely a good thing. My concern is honestly for his replacements time - being as he will now be responsible for two studios, that's a lot of product to manage. I wish him well and hope he surrounds himself with highly talented individuals to share the load.

[Koyasha]

Hopefully they don't expect a miracle that will somehow salvage WAR.  It feels to me like they basically just handed Ray Muzyka a giant anchor.

[sam, an eggplant]

Somewhere eldin is toasting this news with a wine cooler purchased with my server donation.

[Rendakor]

Didn't we all see this coming? Why would EA maintain two seperate MMO teams, especially when Mythic is clearly doing poorly.

[Numtini]

Hopefully they don't expect a miracle that will somehow salvage WAR.  It feels to me like they basically just handed Ray Muzyka a giant anchor.

Didn't we all see this coming? Why would EA maintain two seperate MMO teams, especially when Mythic is clearly doing poorly.

I didn't see it coming for the above reason. I thought that with two elder games and a flop, they wouldn't want to burden a team making what is really a likely super-hit provided it doesn't suck. I figured they'd just kill all of Mythic. This reduces costs, but I don't see that it does anything for the Mythic stable and it's a negative on SWTOR.

[WayAbvPar]

Obvious EA action is obvious.

I am far too lazy and sleepy to search, but I am almost positive that more than one of us predicted this exact outcome when the EA/Mythic deal was first announced.

[schild]

Obvious EA action is obvious.

I am far too lazy and sleepy to search, but I am almost positive that more than one of us predicted this exact outcome when the EA/Mythic deal was first announced.

Everyone in the known universe saw this happening before WAR was even released.

[Hayduke]

Shame this action wasn't taken months ago when it would've mattered.

[Ashamanchill]

I know it's not quite right to laugh at someone for getting fired, but here goes.  Bahahaha.  At this point, WAR has gotten to the level of naked pointing and chuckling that I keep expecting Ashton Kutcher to jump out, telling all the fans that they've been punk'd.

[Megrim]

Shame this action wasn't taken months ago when it would've mattered.

Eeeh, you never know. They might throw some decent people onto it, and start doing a slow-but-quiet lotro styled rework. Could turn into be a solid game in a year or two.

[IainC]

The comments on Brokentoys are depressing - evil EA strike again apparently.

[schild]

The comments on Brokentoys are depressing - evil EA strike again apparently.

You need to stop grinding that axe.

Look, Mythic screwed up. Everyone knows it.

But the style in which this thing is going down is CLASSIC EA tactics. Claaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssssssssic.

[Modern Angel]

I've been laid off in the biz. Recently. I know the hurt, confusion and angst it causes, especially for the huge bulk of people caught in the crosshairs who clock in day after day busting their asses.. That said, Mark Jacobs is one of precisely four people (Gaute, McQuaid and that tubby fuck Barnett being the other three) I'm not going to shed a goddamned tear for. Fuck those guys. They ran games into the ground, acted like fucking rock stars while doing it and didn't show the slightest empathy for those nine to fivers they fucked over.

The less people who made MMOs in 2001, ESPECIALLY the rock star breed, that are left in the industry in 09 the fucking better. Good riddance.

[Morfiend]

Maybe Rob Denton should post a youtube video of himself getting drunk at work and making fun of Jacobs? Or am I getting my Mythic people mixed up, was that Barnett?

[schild]

God, it would be awesome if Barnett covered his ass by making a youtube video where he threw Mark under the bus. I mean, Mark doesn't deserve that, but I'm pretty sure Barnett is just high enough on the shit-weasel quotient to do it.

[sam, an eggplant]

You're associating Jacobs with McQuaid? C'mon, man. No comparison. Jacobs overpromised and underdelivered with WAR, but he's not a total clown shoes.

[fuser]

So what happens?

 I'm going to bet they keep a skeleton crew to keep WAR on life support for ~1-2years, once SWTOR hits closed/open beta offer any remaining subs free month of SWOTR + swag (beta invite, items, etc) then shutter WAR.

It's broken on too many technical levels, give up the IP license and be done with it.

[Nebu]

So what happens?

All of DAoC is being consolidated to a single server.  I imagine that WAR will eventually suffer a similar fate.

By eventually, I mean in a few months. 

[schild]

You're associating Jacobs with McQuaid? C'mon, man. No comparison. Jacobs overpromised and underdelivered with WAR, but he's not a total clown shoes.

Don't sweat IainC and Modern Angel, while understandable, they have an axe to grind.

Even they know Mark, while a bit of an egoheaded prick, is nothing like McQuaid. But yea, internet, rage, drama, forums, etc.

[Modern Angel]

You're associating Jacobs with McQuaid? C'mon, man. No comparison. Jacobs overpromised and underdelivered with WAR, but he's not a total clown shoes.

1) Saying that I feel no remorse over either of them being shitcanned does not mean that they are equal.
2) There's goddamned poetic justice after what he said about their earlier layoffs
3) There's goddamned poetic justice for not kicking the shit out of Barnett when he shit on that coder on youtube
4) If Barnett goes I'll resub for a month just to show my support for them doing the first thing right in nearly a year

[IainC]

The comments on Brokentoys are depressing - evil EA strike again apparently.

You need to stop grinding that axe.

Look, Mythic screwed up. Everyone knows it.

But the style in which this thing is going down is CLASSIC EA tactics. Claaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssssssssssic.

Do you seriously think that EA would pull a stunt like this if WAR was on course with the original projections?

Do you really believe that NCSoft or anyone else (with the possible exception of Sony) would not have done something like this?

All I'm saying is that there's a tendency to paint EA as the villains of the piece through some bizarre assumptions and the more rational reasons are hand-waved away in lieu of 'EA strikes again'.

As for axe grinding, I'm not Hrose but I'm definitely not an impartial observer either, however I don't see how EA are the bad people in this case.

[Modern Angel]

EA are bad people. Terrible people. If they're the good guys something has gone terrible off the rails.

Seriously, though... come on, Barnett!

[schild]

I didn't call EA bad. I just called it classic EA. You think any part of Bioware wanted a piece of Mythic? You think Mythic wanted to make the UO shit? None of the involved parties wanted any of that. Like I said, it's classic EA. But I'm not painting them a villain at all in this scenario. Mythic are the ones that screwed the pooch.