WAR (Warhammer Online) Forum » General Discussion » Marks Jacobs to leave Mythic, Mythic and Bioware to become a new RPG/MMO group led by Bioware

http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=297291

What do you guys think?

Doesn't anyone look before creating new threads, this is number 3 in the last 10 minutes.

Back on topic, great move, love it..... couldn't be happier.

Where's this "first" you're mentioning if this isn't it? Mine and this one are the only ones made since my post in that other thread this morning

Once again EA the destroyer of game companies rears its ugly head....*sigh*

When will companies learn to stay away from them.

Originally posted by Scalebane

Once again EA the destroyer of game companies rears its ugly head....*sigh*

When will companies learn to stay away from them.

I am shocked really really shocked.

I'll bet anything WAR will be Earth and Beyonded By 1st Q 2010.

Something else to consider is Games Workshop.  I cannot imagine they are happy with this turn of events, given how protective they normally are of their IP.  Maybe they shrug and take their cut every month, I don't know.  If EA approaches them with shutting things down and returning the rights, or developing a V2, I do think GW would say yes.

I'm glad I've been out of the game for a bit, because this turn of events would make me strongly have to consider dropping the subscription, just given EA's past history.  Why invest more in a game that's too close to the executioner's axe?

Originally posted by Rommie10-284

Something else to consider is Games Workshop.  I cannot imagine they are happy with this turn of events, given how protective they normally are of their IP.  Maybe they shrug and take their cut every month, I don't know.  If EA approaches them with shutting things down and returning the rights, or developing a V2, I do think GW would say yes.

I'm glad I've been out of the game for a bit, because this turn of events would make me strongly have to consider dropping the subscription, just given EA's past history.  Why invest more in a game that's too close to the executioner's axe?

 

I just hope and pray neither Turbine nor Activision/Blizzard  is ever purchased by those bastards.  Looks like folks in game are not happy....lot's of quit talk on Region chat.

This more than likely the beginning of the end for Mythic and Warhammer, I won't be surprised if we see a major reduction in WAR's team soon or Bioware poaching some of the better Mythic workers.

Mythic involved in the new Star Wars mmo probably means GOA servers for us Europeans. Well, thats another one off the radar :(

Originally posted by Zinzan

Mythic involved in the new Star Wars mmo probably means GOA servers for us Europeans. Well, thats another one off the radar :(

Maybe not. EA has their own servers usually no? The GoA deal was already done before EA entered the field for WAR, could be that simply wasn't undoable anymore.

 wow just wow

Originally posted by todeswulf

Originally posted by Rommie10-284

Something else to consider is Games Workshop.  I cannot imagine they are happy with this turn of events, given how protective they normally are of their IP.  Maybe they shrug and take their cut every month, I don't know.  If EA approaches them with shutting things down and returning the rights, or developing a V2, I do think GW would say yes.

I'm glad I've been out of the game for a bit, because this turn of events would make me strongly have to consider dropping the subscription, just given EA's past history.  Why invest more in a game that's too close to the executioner's axe?

 

 

I just hope and pray neither Turbine nor Activision/Blizzard  is ever purchased by those bastards.  Looks like folks in game are not happy....lot's of quit talk on Region chat.

Activision/Blizzard is owned by a bigger company than EA called Vivendi. It won't happen, maybe Turbine though.

Originally posted by Scalebane

Once again EA the destroyer of game companies rears its ugly head....*sigh*

When will companies learn to stay away from them.

??? Umm, Mythic and Bioware were already both owned by EA for years.

Originally posted by todeswulf

Originally posted by Rommie10-284

Something else to consider is Games Workshop.  I cannot imagine they are happy with this turn of events, given how protective they normally are of their IP.  Maybe they shrug and take their cut every month, I don't know.  If EA approaches them with shutting things down and returning the rights, or developing a V2, I do think GW would say yes.

I'm glad I've been out of the game for a bit, because this turn of events would make me strongly have to consider dropping the subscription, just given EA's past history.  Why invest more in a game that's too close to the executioner's axe?

 

 

I just hope and pray neither Turbine nor Activision/Blizzard  is ever purchased by those bastards.  Looks like folks in game are not happy....lot's of quit talk on Region chat.

People will say "zomg /quit" over any piece of news though. I highly doubt anyone would be stupid enough to quit over this. With that said, I actually think this will be a good thing. It's clear that the current development team was not doing well enough to bring their subscription numbers back up (not that 300k is a bad number... it's just really small compared to what they had at launch). This way, we have Mythic still working on the game, but we also bring in people from other studios as well, including BioWare. I think this will be a positive change overall.

I wonder what this means for DAoC. Personally, I think Mythic kept it running because they had a soft spot for the game, but with this new developement, I can't see them allowing a game with only ~3k online to continue. Would be a shame.

Then again, maybe they will decide to put some rescources towards its revival. One can only hope...

 No new surprises here. Subs still plummeting, new round of mergers in the next few moths, MJ gonne. This game will be shut down by next year.

Quit warhammer ages ago. Not surprised by it really. But as someone said earlier if GOA are in on SWTOR you'll already loose subs because of that.

No way GOA will have anything to say regarding ToR. GoA had an ages ago contrat with Mythic that could not be dropped, since now Mythic is technically a branch of BioWare - expect a nice /wave from Ray Muzyka to anything GoA have to do with next projects - if any - of Mythic.

Best bet is that " best of " Mythic will now work for what they best at - PvP - for BioWare's SW:ToR... rest, prolly a maitnance crew will stick at WAR's slow death. Time will tell, but in about half a year mythis will be prolly a ghost.  

1. Jacobs should have been gone a long time ago. Inflexible leadership is not a good thing. Especially when you look at what Mythic has done over the years, he really didn't have tha much success if anyone ever looks at it for what it's worth. One hit game does not a genius make.

2. This spells death for Warhammer. The person now in charge of WAR is also in charge of the new MMO at EA, SWTOR. That means in simple language, it's like a father who has two children. One he fathered naturally and one that's the bastard from someone else. Of course the father is going to feel more love towards his own child, in this case... Bioware's head will have way more love for SWTOR than WAR. Look for WAR to start running on skeleton crews in the future.

3. EA signals that SWTOR is the future with this move.WAR is about as good as it going to get; there are no more real markets for this game. EA has lost all confidence in this title and its dead in the water. With AION releasing in VERY good shape, high anticipation and rave reviews from just about everyone who's played it, EA does not want to ride a broken down horse like WAR into the fall as it's main earner. They want to get SWTOR out on time now with no delays, so you will see manpower shifted.

4. Jacobs will get a CRAPLOAD of money for "voluntarily leaving" or whatever they call firings at the corporate level these days. I don't feel sorry for him one bit because he's going to make millions. I DO however, feel sorry for all those people he canned over the last months because of his failure to capitalize on this game's huge early success. Those employees are probably still looking for jobs.

5. LOTD is a failure. EA canned Jacobs the day they opened that area up, date wise it looks like. I'm sure someone at EA looked at LOTD, went "EGADS!", ran upstairs and told the head guy at EA what LOTD spelled for the future: a game where RvR was further reduced in a game where RvR was supposed to be the point. EA probably realized this was tha last straw. What else was WAR going to do after this? All the classes are in the game, there is nothing left to "unveil". They are out of bullets.

If you enjoy the game, keep playing. But know that very soon, you will be playing on 3 servers. If you don't mind that and are still having fun, that's all that matters. But for most people, they won't want to be subject to even more moving around and collasping without results in a gear grind game where you keep fighting more and more PvE mobs, and less and less real people.

It certainly is the end for Warhammer. And perhaps a big boost for Kotor because now all the eggs are in that basket.

As always... the Xfire stats were right on track with showing that WAR is down now to less than 150K players.

The lastest number of Xfire War players was today at ... an historic low 2.2K players.

http://www.xfire.com/games/who/Warhammer_Online_Age_of_Reckoning/

The ratio Wow to War players was once (at launch) at an incredible 6 to 1.

Today it is OVER 40 to 1.

The fall of Xfire War players was 14 K at launch, 5.5 K at Xmas, 3.5 K in March, 2.2 K now ....

So compared to the known number of 300K Eve players and their Xfire players...

The game is now around 140 K players.

Remember that an analist said (at launch) the game needed at least 250K subs to survive ? Well Once again for those tracking the Xfire stats of mmorpg's ---> NO surprise.

---- The firing comes just in time for the financial reports of EA BTW !!!!!; ----

Now they no longer need to lie about the 300K 'dedicated players some time in the past", like they had to do with the last Q report.

Warhammer is on life support now.

AND IF Games Workshop has ANY possibility they should end the franchising asap.

So someone else can make a worthy game around simply the best miniatures game EVER made.

---

Originally posted by Zorndorf

The game is now around 140 K players.
Remember that an analist said (at launch) the game needed at least 250K subs to survive ? Well Once again for those tracking the Xfire stats of mmorpg's ---> NO surprise.

---- The firing comes just in time for the financial reports of EA BTW !!!!!;

Now they no longer need to lie about the 300K 'dedicated players some time in the past", like they had to do with the last Q report.

---

The funny thing about Mythic and the way Jacobs left it, was Warhammer is about to open in Taiwan.

Once again, a few days BEFORE the quarter ends to pad subs, amirite? That Jacobs sure was a trickster. Something about having a CEO that's head of a gaming company who was also a lawyer never sat right with me. :P

Aren't any of you concerned that Mark Jacobs vision is still in tact but that he was limited by what EA wanted? And now, after seeing WAR not being what he wanted, he's leaving the company? This seems much more plausible knowing EA than a great developer suddenly becoming clueless.

Bioware may actually do something to fix all the problems in Warhammer.  Obviously Mark was not paying attention to the player base.

Land of the dead is a joke honestly.  Forcing high leevel players to play lower level content boggles my mind.  The most fun we were having was watching lvl 25 players getting owned by the PQ bosses.

The game was touted as RVR everywhere and RVR is hardly anywhere.  High level players are leaving in droves.  There is nothing to really do and LOTD brings nothing but more PVE and piss poor PVE to the table.  I have to go do the PQ's all over again once the zone flips in my favor so I can access the high level instance that are once again 6 man. 

Our side was the first there and we did the PQ's got glyphs and hit the tomb of the moon.  The first boss encounter was bugged.  We got the glyphs for all t he other tombs hit the second tomb and this boss is ignoring wards.  Hitting players in full superior wards for 7k and the zone requiires greater wards.  We could not get the glyphs for the other two tombs as one PQ was bugged and the other PQ was a roaming PQ and they stopped roaming and spawning.  What a piece of crap.

The zone flips the other side comes in and starts to rid the zone of those players and they die and repop in their city, unless they get ressed.  Ther other side starts to do you guessed it PVE. 

The zone is a gankfest for high level players that set up ambush points and a hapless group of lvl 25 players get close and get owned by rank 55+ players.  Great design. 

To flip the zone players must again collect stupid resources to flip the zone.  None of this has anything to do with RVR.  In fact when one side is LOTD the other side is pushing to their city and no SC's will pop.

I am glad he got canned as none of the high end content has been fixed to date. 

I cancelled in April and my sub expires july 15 and I will not be resubbing to this piece of junk in its current state.

Originally posted by fldash

Aren't any of you concerned that Mark Jacobs vision is still in tact but that he was limited by what EA wanted? And now, after seeing WAR not being what he wanted, he's leaving the company? This seems much more plausible knowing EA than a great developer suddenly becoming clueless.

Considering his vision for WAR before EA came into the picture was a heavily scenario based game that didn't even *have* keeps I'd have to say No.

I do think it's plausible that he was told one day that Mythic would be merged into Bioware and that he couldn't reconcile himself with that, since most likely this would mean the loss of his position as well. So it was probably an "accept this or take a hike" type of thing. Probably the whole idea of Mythic merging would be a horror to him.

Given the way he cared about Mythic from what i've heard I think it's very unlikely he'd leave the way he did if it had been his own choice. I can't imagine him not having taken the time to tell the people, who he used to all take into movie theatres regularly, and instead just leaving and letting them hear about it from a press release like this. Don't see that at all. Not to mention the press release was actually a day *after* he was gone already.

---

Originally posted by fldash
Aren't any of you concerned that Mark Jacobs vision is still in tact but that he was limited by what EA wanted? And now, after seeing WAR not being what he wanted, he's leaving the company? This seems much more plausible knowing EA than a great developer suddenly becoming clueless.

---

Doubt this.

Knowing Jacobs, he would have floated this out long before he "left" on his own accord.

It'll come out later, but I'm sure he was told to leave and they handed the reins to the Bioware people to keep it in maintainance mode until SWTOR gets launched. There is no way a guy who started a company from scratch just "walks off" because someone won't allow him to do something. They usually make a huge stink over that and you hear leakings all through the process until the end. Jacobs was missing in action for weeks before this announcement and no one had seen hide nor hair of him.

Jacobs saw he was financially taken care of and realized it was a good time to go before the game was under 100K subs, in which case EVERYONE would know it was him and not EA as people keeping trying to falsely say now.

EDIT: And what do you mean "a great developer"? LMAO!