ea-mythic posts

Holy crap. Today is the day for major PC gaming news it seems. Electronic Arts has just announced that they are making some changes in their Mythic development studio. EA is putting their MMO and RPG operations under one division. The press release states that BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka will be in charge of the new division.

The press release also announces the departure of Mark Jacobs, one of the founders of the original Mythic Entertainment and one of the main people responsible for the development of Mythic's most recent game Warhammer Online along with its previous MMO Dark Age of Camelot. Mythic's other co-founder Rob Denton will remain will Mythic and will become the studio's new general manger, reporting to Muzyka.

Update: Our sister site Massively has got some more info on today's announcement as anonymous staffers at Mythic expressed surprise at Jacobs' departure even though he apparently had been on sabbatical from the company for over a month. There are no plans for any layoffs at Mythic, according to the article.

EA Mythic has released the minimum system requirements for Warhammer Online, and the bar to entry, while not egregiously high, is certainly going to give folks due for an upgrade ample excuse to do so. To get your WAR on, you're going to need some decent hardware, especially to cope with that rather, shall we say, robust hard drive space they're looking to take up.

Big Download's sister site Massively.com has all the news you'll need about MMOs. Here's the best, brightest, and most interesting stuff from the last week, all in one convenient place for your MMO minute.

	Mark Jacobs announces major features cut from Warhammer Online In the latest of an ongoing series of interviews with MMORPG.com, Mythic Entertainment VP and General Manager Mark Jacobs has dropped big news on the Warhammer Online fanbase: major features are being culled from the game in order to make their Fall launch deadline. In short, the capital cities for the Dark Elf, High Elf, Orc, and Dwarf factions will not be in the game at launch.
	The Digital Continuum: Diet WAR Diet Warhammer Online: same great taste, less content. Is it bad that the recently re-branded Mythic Entertainment just cut out a large portion of our Warhammer Online pie and put it in the deep freeze? Well it's certainly not good when a developer cuts content they've been talking about publicly for so long, especially when launch is only three or four months away.
	Massively visits Stargate Worlds: The interview This exclusive, in-depth, and conversational interview is overflowing with information about everything in the game, including TV series tie-ins and cameos, episodic content, combat, graphics, mini-games, and much, much more.
	Massively's E3 Week Prediction Bingo Every year it's customary to roll out predictions on what will and won't show up at the current year's E3 event. With Massively heading in the direction of the LA Convention Center already, we thought it might be fun to offer up some likely (and highly unlikely) predictions of what might get talked about next week.
	Jack Emmert discusses the Champions IP in fresh new video During a recent media event at Cryptic Studios, Jack Emmert gave a presentation on what the Champions IP was all about, including the history of the Champions universe and its super-powered beings. He also took some time to answer a few questions, and delineated how the Champions Online MMO will distinguish itself from City of Heroes.

MMORPG.com has posted part two of their interview with Mythic Entertainment's Mark Jacobs, VP and General Manager of the development studio. In the interview, Jacobs reveals that Mythic has partnered with Punkbuster to crack down on the cheaters expected to inhabit Warhammer Online's servers.

"We think this is a huge win for the players," Jacobs said in regards to the partnership. "We are an RvR-centric game and anything that gives a player an advantage over another player in an RvR-centric game is a very bad thing. We take this stuff incredibly seriously, our history shows that. We wanted, by doing this deal with Punkbuster, to show the players that we're willing to go an extra step for them."

Jacobs also confessed that Warhammer Online's reported six capital cities has been downsized to two in the interest of fun gameplay. "We decided to focus our energies on two capital cities; one for Order and one for Destruction, and make them fabulous, said Jacobs. "Not good, not great, but fabulous. We wanted to make our Capital Cities the best cities in any MMO. We think we're doing that, but it came at a price and that price is that the other cities aren't going in the game right now."

Visit MMORPG.com to read the full interview.

In 2006, Electronic Arts purchased MMO game developer Mythic Entertainment and changed the name of the developer to EA Mythic. That was then but this is now. With EA under new management they apparently want to give their dev studios a little more freedom and MMORPG.com now reveals that EA Mythic is no more.

According to a chat withthe developer's founder Mark Jacobs, EA Mythic has now gone back to being labeled Mythic Entertainment. Jacobs states that the new management at EA is allowing more of its developers to keep its original names (as an example both Bioware and Pandemic have retained their names since their purchase from EA earlier this year) but that Mythic is still owned by EA. Mythic is finishing up work on Warhammer Online which is due for release this fall.

The excitement is building to next week's E3 Media and Business Summit in Los Angeles (man does that sound like some kind of soulless seminar at some Holiday Inn but we aren't in charge of the naming of the event) where over 5,000 journalists have been invited to attend the largest single gathering of game publishers in North America. Big Download will be covering the event all next week but this week we are counting down our top 25 most anticipated PC games we hope we will get to see and maybe play at the event.

On Monday we went through our 25-21 picks so if its Tuesday it must be time for the 20-16 picks on our list. As we mentioned previously, these are just our predictions on what games will be shown at the event; many of these titles have not been officially confirmed to be at E3 as of this writing. Also, there's no Activision or Vivendi Games/Blizzard titles on this list due to the two publishers bypassing E3 but a press conference by Activision on Tuesday during E3 is highly expected to show some upcoming titles from that publisher (and maybe Vivendi/Blizzard as well). With that out of the way let's look at our picks for the next five games on our list

The Game Developers Conference in San Fransisco continues to be the number one event in North America devoted primarily for game creators (as opposed to events like E3 which is mostly for the press). GDC's owner Think Services have announced that they have now launched the call for submissions for developers to speak at the 2009 event which will be held March 23-27.

One developer who won't attend GDC is Paul Barnett, the creative director for Electronic Arts' Mythic studio (the folks currently trying to finish up Warhammer Online). In a no-holds-barred chat over at Rock Paper Shotgun, Barnett rails against the event, stating, "I'm not going to GDC because it's combative, it's a peacock display and it's full of people who do what I do or want to do what I do or are doing what I do and don't want me to do it anymore. It's not open-minded. It's very narrow-minded. We're all talking about the same thing." Wow. "Combative" is not exactly a term we would use to describe CDC but different strokes for . . you know.

Did you know that EA Mythic's Warhammer Online has "a queue button on your UI that lets you cycle through available scenarios to play"? How about the distribution of loot, which works on an aggro basis: "basically, if you're doing the job of your class well (dps, tanking, healing), you'll be awarded the loot you deserve"?

At the Gamers Day event held in Baltimore this past weekend, those interesting tidbits, in addition to 48 others, were revealed by EA Mythic. The folks over at waaagh, a Warhammer Online blog, have taken the liberty of organizing all Warhammer facts for your reading pleasure. Head over there now, lest you enjoy remaining ignorant of the fact that "Marauders have debuffs they can throw on casters or melee that, when their skills are used, causes them to take damage."

All week long, Massively.com has been offering up feature after feature on EA Mythic's in-development MMO, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. The Massively goes to WAR feature series takes you front to back through almost every moment of our time at Mythic's Virginia headquarters. To wrap it all up, we've got a handy-dandy clickable guide to the series. Whether you're into hardcore PvP, dungeon delving, crafting, or are a total MMO newb, we've got you covered. Click on through, and explore the world of Warhammer.

As you sit their reading this, sipping your caffeinated beverage of choice... an online battle rages. Subscription-based MMOs versus the microtransaction business model. Cage match. Fight to the death. Gamasutra conducted a round table about this battle royal with SOE's John Smedley, Three Ring's Daniel James and EA Mythic's Mark Jacobs. What unfolds makes it clear that the payment scheme for MMOs is evolving. Into what exactly is anyone's guess.

Most of the MMOs in the United States are subscription based. Almost everywhere else they are microtransaction based. The mentality here in the States however is starting to change. So much so that many developer are waiting until the last possible second to decide which route to take. For instance SOE has taken a "wait-and-see attitude" for their spy game, The Agency. They're waiting to see how another of their soon to be released MMOs -- Free Realms -- fairs, which uses something they call "freemiums." You can play for free, but you can also sign up for a club in game that gives you extras (for a fee, which is not unlike some other MMOs). They have built the flexibility into The Agency so they can go in either direction.