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

[Soln]

if they had the libraries and infrastructure to instance easily they would have done it by now. 

no, they are grasping.  But maybe they will license something to help.  Who knows?  Meanwhile Aion for PvP and LotRO for PvE

[Riggswolfe]

DON'T DO IT BIOWARE! DON'T BE FOOLED! 

BioWare appears to be making the non-MMO MMO. Mythic doesn't need to go anywhere near it.

This times 10. Right now I'm quite interested in Old Republic (in a cautious way) but if Mythic gets involved I'm writing it off!

[sam, an eggplant]

"Mythic" won't work on SWTOR. They'd be EA employees working for the bioware-led MMO dept in austin. And I would be flabbergasted if that did not happen at some point. Either right around christmas 2009 (just because EA is evil) or summer 2010 when SWTOR shows signs of slipping its release date.

Besides, lots of talented guys working at Mythic. WAR wasn't a raging success, but that doesn't mean all those artists, UI coders, quest designers, etc, should be condemned.

[Brogarn]

Besides, lots of talented guys working at Mythic. WAR wasn't a raging success, but that doesn't mean all those artists, UI coders, quest designers, etc, should be condemned.

Completely agree.

[shiznitz]

Whether or not MJ was let go due to accountability for WAR's disappointment, the appearance of accountability is good to see.  The gaming industry is too competitive for the old school MMOG designers who won't be swayed from their vision. More Hartsman and less Jacobs, please.

[Numtini]

Whether or not MJ was let go due to accountability for WAR's disappointment, the appearance of accountability is good to see.  The gaming industry is too competitive for the old school MMOG designers who won't be swayed from their vision. More Hartsman and less Jacobs, please.

It's not just changes, it's also a second generation thing. If you are doing a sequel or second game or whatever, you absolutely have to avoid the mistakes you made the first time. You might be able to get away with new mistakes, but you can't repeat the same things. A funcom game can't be buggy. A SOE game can't have grind. When I saw a recent thread that someone in Mythic was gathering metrics on class imbalances, I just lol'd. How many times did I read that on DAOC boards? Yeah. Right. That's Mythic-speak for "sorry, you're at the bottom of the deck, we'll fix it 18 months from now when you get back to the top." I might not have been thrilled to hear something about metrics if I was hearing it about WoW or EQ2, but from Mythic it was just a non starter, more of the same.

[Goreschach]

Besides, lots of talented guys working at Mythic.

Well... no. 

[Arthur_Parker]

http://joshdrescher.com/

A lot of people have noticed the announcement we made earlier today regarding Mark leaving Mythic and EA creating a new MMO/RPG division that’s made up of Mythic an BioWare.  Regarding the former, the official statement is pretty straightforward.  I encourage anyone who hasn’t read it to do so, as it offers some useful details related to what’s ahead.

As for Mythic itself, I’ll just clarify a few points that have been repeatedly tweeted, IMed, emailed, called and to me over the past few hours (sorry for not responding, we were watching “Transformers 2″):

1) No one else is leaving the studio.  Apparently, someone was spreading nonsense rumors earlier about Paul or Adam or Carrie or myself being sent to Austin.  Lies, lies and damn lies.  I haven’t been able to find any such rumors myself, so who the hell knows - maybe the rumor ABOUT the rumor was a lie.  Always remember - there are a limitless number of people online with comparably limitless free time and a weird love of just making things up.

2) We’re all really excited about working alongside BioWare as part of the MMO/RPG division.  While we’ve got a lot of experience ourselves and have learned a lot of lessons (some harder than others), it’s exciting to know we’ll have the folks at BioWare right there with us as we move forward as a company.  I’ve been lucky enough to meet Ray and Greg a few times in the past and they are clearly passionate about MMOs and games in general.  Their affection for us was very clear today and I think they really made the team feel comfortable and supported.  And, for the record, that attitude is nothing new.  When we launched, BioWare was the only other studio that sent us something as personal and cool as this.

3) While we are working alongside BioWare and with Ray as our group GM, we are still Mythic.  Our core operational leadership remains the same, our production and development staff remains the same.  Our plans for WAR remain the same (and you’ll hear more about them shortly).  Speaking of which…

4) Regarding the future of WAR, Jeff’s next Executive Producer’s letter will come out tomorrow and has a lot of new details explaining what we’re doing to tackle the “Top 5″ list he mentioned previously.

So that’s that for the moment.  I know there’s a lot of “Chicken Little” silliness afoot at the moment, but take all of that with a grain of salt (and then throw away the salt).  Mythic is fine.  WAR is fine (as are UO and DAoC) .  We’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us and we look forward to tackling it as part of the new RPG/MMO wing of EA.

He's probably a great guy, but I'm quoting that whole thing, just so I can find it again in 6 months.

His quote about War patch 1.1 last December still tickles me.

Drescher echoed the statements, stressing that the Warhammer that launched in September was a "complete product, not deficient in any way." He compared it to a film, where for whatever reason, shots and scenes that sounded good on paper didn't work out for whatever reason and get left on the cutting room floor, but the film that releases is still a finished product anyway. "This is like a Director's Cut," he said, noting that Adam and their team had worked on the Black Guard and Knight for months to get them to a point where Mythic was satisfied with the quality.

[shiznitz]

Mr Drescher should be reviewing Austin real estate right now because by Christmas he will wish he had.

[01101010]

Besides, lots of talented guys working at Mythic. WAR wasn't a raging success, but that doesn't mean all those artists, UI coders, quest designers, etc, should be condemned.

Were they all already laid off and all that remained was the 3-star talent? And I am not knocking the personnel, but when you have your poster boy throwing you under the bus, its only fair to run along side. The bus ran great for the parts it was given, too bad someone steered it off the cliff while text messaging.

 

[Hayduke]

Seems a prickish attitude to insist there's not talented and creative people at Mythic.  Especially considering Bioware AUSTIN already grabbed a lot of talent from companies far less illustrious.

[EWSpider]

Our core operational leadership remains the same

Most damning thing I've yet to read about this whole kerfuffle...

[Modern Angel]

Our core operational leadership remains the same

Most damning thing I've yet to read about this whole kerfuffle...

Exactly. I guess they don't want my one month sub.

[NiX]

By operational do they mean execs? Somehow I find it hard that operation = design.

[Tannhauser]

Our core operational leadership remains the same

Most damning thing I've yet to read about this whole kerfuffle...

Exactly. I guess they don't want my one month sub.

Yeah...if this is meant to reassure folks I think you have done the opposite of that.

[ajax34i]

Maybe the directives they operate under are now completely different?  Shrug.  "Same leadership" != same vision.

[NiX]

Maybe the directives they operate under are now completely different?  Shrug.  "Same leadership" != same vision.

Get your filthy logic out of here!

[UnSub]

http://joshdrescher.com/

As for Mythic itself, I’ll just clarify a few points that have been repeatedly tweeted, IMed, emailed, called and to me over the past few hours (sorry for not responding, we were watching “Transformers 2″):

Haven't the poor folks at Mythic suffered enough?

[Redgiant]

We're looking at some fairly radical approaches on how to best bring the population together.

Oh my god, what a brilliant idea. They are going to merge some servers.

I am sure they will cluster servers like they did in DAoC. To let certain zones/instances be shared across servers.

[tmp]

Maybe the directives they operate under are now completely different?  Shrug.  "Same leadership" != same vision.

Doubtful when literally next sentence they spell out "Our plans for WAR remain the same"... it reads overall like a claim that despite the main guy leaving nothing is going to change (so the "Chicken Littles" calm down) which is, welp  

[Arthur_Parker]

Re: Executive Producer's Letter - Part 3

For many players Fortresses do not equate to fun. Whether it's due to the overall mechanics of the encounters or the client performance issues encountered when population levels have reached critical mass, it's just not fun for them. Therein lies the challenge for us. How do we make it a fun encounter while not diminishing the epic feel of it? At what point do we say, enough is enough, and cut off the offending appendage? This, along with the entire T4 ORvR/Campaign experience, is something that we are working and obsessing over on a daily basis.

Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One- two -why then 'tis time to do't.

You are being heard

Many, if not all of you, will say that this message has been a long time coming...
 
I'm going to cross post this in both the WL and the MRD Career forums.
 
White Lions and Marauders, at the current time, are not slated to get specific focus in the upcoming update.  We are very aware of the issues and complaints that the WL/MRD communities have been bringing to our attention and will address them as soon as the development schedule allows us to do so. I will not give a timeline or a ETA on a Career review nor will I set expectations for the scope of any eventual Career review.
 
Jeff has stated very clearly what our impending goals are for the coming months. This does not mean that we will leave the WL/MRD Careers completely untouched, but they will not receive a large sweeping focus as the AM/SHA are slated to in the immediate future.
 
The Community Team will continue to reitterate to the devs the need for focus and improvements within the WL/MRD Careers, as we have been doing, and will make sure that the issue is not being "backburnered" for the long run, however, please note, large amounts changes and fixes will not happen now or even possibly in the next month. We are in weekly meetings with the C&C team and one of our primary areas of concern that we voice has been and will continue to be the WL/MRD Careers.
 
I've apologized once before for statements made by other members of the Mythic development team and I will do so again. Moving forward we will not set timelines or expectations unless we are 100% certain we can and will deliver upon them in a timely manner.
 
I thank you for your patience and continued support of Mythic Entertainment in these changing times.

Doesn't quite fit with "Our core operational leadership remains the same, our production and development staff remains the same.  Our plans for WAR remain the same".

[Nebu]

Reads more like "Please don't leave.  We need your money."

I don't think much, if anything, will change.  Just the heads on the block.   WAR is beyond fixing and we all know it.

[Delmania]

No drama to be found here, but this is a link to Jacobs's blog: http://onlinegamesareanichemarket.wordpress.com/

[Andy_Mythic]

My post to the WL/MRD communities was flat out something they deserved. Promises had been made and not kept. They deserve an answer as to where their Career review stands at the moment and I did the best I could to give them one.

[kildorn]

There's been a loooooooong history of upcoming changes that don't happen for years. It would be a nice change to get things only stated when they're actually coming soon.

Every mythic fan still occasionally references the infamous style review. <3

[Nebu]

My post to the WL/MRD communities was flat out something they deserved. Promises had been made and not kept. They deserve an answer as to where their Career review stands at the moment and I did the best I could to give them one.

You don't owe anyone anything and no fansite "deserves" anything.  They all should be grateful for any crumb tossed to them.  

Any fan of PvP MMO's hopes that WAR will improve. If the new crew can make that happen, then the result will speak louder than any post you could make.  

[Andy_Mythic]

You don't owe anyone anything and no fansite "deserves" anything.  They all should be grateful for any crumb tossed to them.  

Any fan of PvP MMO's hopes that WAR will improve. If the new crew can make that happen, then the result will speak louder than any post you could make.  

I have a personal belief that people should get what they're told they'll get. If they don't, within reasonable expectations, they deserve information.

You're 100% correct in that our actions will speak a magnitude of decibels louder than our words...I, however, am paid to be a warrior with my words not just my actions. In many ways, the words of a community team = our actions.

[Feverdream]

My post to the WL/MRD communities was flat out something they deserved. Promises had been made and not kept. They deserve an answer as to where their Career review stands at the moment and I did the best I could to give them one.

You don't owe anyone anything and no fansite "deserves" anything.  They all should be grateful for any crumb tossed to them.  

Any fan of PvP MMO's hopes that WAR will improve. If the new crew can make that happen, then the result will speak louder than any post you could make.  

I really, really wanted to like WAR, and for a long time after I canceled I continued to hope that the game would turn around.  But I pretty much gave up on that after a few months, and I'm not seeing anything to make me believe that the crew working on Warhammer understands and appreciates RvR implementation any better than they did before MJ was dumped.  Why would they suddenly develop a collective ability to create a viable RvR-centered game just because of these changes?  

It's not like Jacobs' departure is some miracle exorcism of the Evil that Possessed them and cruelly kept them from success.  These are all the same folks who have seemed clueless about RvR so far, plus Bioware which may bring some needed programming finesse but which has zero MMO PvP experience.  And Paul Barnett is still on board.  It's like asking me to buy another dose of snake oil from pretty much the same carnival.

[Nebu]

I have a personal belief that people should get what they're told they'll get. If they don't, within reasonable expectations, they deserve information.

I appreciate your sentiment and understand that your job is community building. 

I see your point.  I just have my issues with the sense of entitlement you get at most fansites.  They need to be more appreciative of the efforts made on their behalf.

[schild]

In many ways, the words of a community team = our actions

If only.

That's not really targeted at you in any way. I've kept up with the WAR community team exactly this much: "not at all."

Edit: That's not quite true, I kept up with the WAR team while playing to know that none of the changes that were plaguing the game were going to get fixed any time soon. 

[Andy_Mythic]

I have a personal belief that people should get what they're told they'll get. If they don't, within reasonable expectations, they deserve information.

I appreciate your sentiment and understand that your job is community building. 

I see your point.  I just have my issues with the sense of entitlement you get at most fansites.  They need to be more appreciative of the efforts made on their behalf.

In all fairness, those posts were made on our OF. While still a "fansite" in some translation of the word, it is our primary mode of communication.

[Andy_Mythic]

In many ways, the words of a community team = our actions

If only.

That's not really targeted at you in any way. I've kept up with the WAR community team exactly this much: "not at all."

Edit: That's not quite true, I kept up with the WAR team while playing to know that none of the changes that were plaguing the game were going to get fixed any time soon. 

No offense taken, I've been reading here long enough, prior to my Mythic life, to know better than to be offended or think that anything said here is a personal attack on a huge level...for the most part  .

All I can say is, I look forward to the opportunity of working towards winning players back, yourself and others here included. There's no denying that many have negative feelings towards our game and we have a lot to do to correct those feelings. 16 tons and all that.

[DLRiley]

Hmm what about step 1. Treat your scenarios like an alternative ( and valid) play style and not an excuse to grind xp/renown.

[Arthur_Parker]

You might be able to fix stability, but you'd still have a terrible, pointless PVE grind.

[DLRiley]

This is going to turn into the vault if we don't stop now while we still can