So, I will totally abuse my lofty bloggy perch and take you away from class vs. skill debates to point you in the direction of an interview with Mat Weathers, the person behind some of Mythic’s most stunning artwork (whatever you may think of Trials of Atlantis, the jaw-dropping artwork in places like the Halls of Ma’ati? All due to his attention to craft) and a close friend of mine who I with much regret had to leave behind. The interview (while misspelling his first name) does a great job of showcasing how he’s probably one of the most interesting and well spoken people I’ve met in the industry. Plus, he had the good sense to marry another of my close friends, Sanya Weathers, which certainly helped to simplify my social life.
Just to explain to you the gestalt of Mat. My first day at Mythic, I’m still shellshocked from driving to Virginia, being in a new place, being a new job, and being at a game company. So I’m not terribly… all there. And as I’m walking toward the office, there’s this really imposing guy (and mind you, anyone who strikes me as imposing? IS.) who yells at me, “DUDE!”
I look around. Who? Me?
“Dude!” he repeats, pointing at me. “Your CAR!”
I look at my car in a panic. It’s a big red Crown Victoria police refit, and as such has a huge suspension and is pretty high up off the ground.
“My… wha?”
“You’ve got to get your car LOWERED!”, he shouts gleefully. Sadly, this never happened, so he had to content himself with his child, namely a 1967 Chevy Nova (which appears in the photo for the article). He also writes incredibly funny movie reviews (the last one I saw casting most of a horror movie as creatures from the Monster Manual, complete with stats) which if he ever gets a web site up and running you’ll be able to read as well.
At any rate, there are many people behind these MMO beasts. So occasionally you may see random shoutouts like these, because like the players of the games we make, we’re all about the connections that we forge.
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Mat’s the bee’s knees. He’s only imposing until you actually talk to him (and if you don’t talk to him, he’ll talk to you).
At E3 a couple of years ago, I had a few too many… uh… Shirley Temples… at dinner one evening and kept telling Sanya – VERY INTENSELY – that Mat’s one of the nicest people I know. She kept saying “I know, I married him,” but I continued to feel the need to repeat myself.
Mat is definitely one of the nicest people ever. And I love his car!
I got to meet Mat at the dinner at E3 ’03. I still remember his rather hilarious story on why the Half Ogres were not shown at E3.
“whatever you may think of Trials of Atlantis, the jaw-dropping artwork in places like the Halls of Ma\’e2\’80\’99ati? All due to his attention to craft”
There is much irony in this statement. Because I could not even pass the first trial, I never saw much of his “awesome artwork”.
But from what I could see? The two identically skinned stone monsters that spawned on some island, the invisible harpys, and the occasional greek ruins? Yeah, they were alright, if maybe misplaced a bit.
Mat rocks
His work is amazing–and he married Sanya so I assume he has a good sense of humor which is also cool 
Very good interview. I *loved* the artwork in ToA. It was (is) so rich and vibrant, and added a lot to the game. In fact, all of the post-ToA art has been of very high quality. Nicely done Mat.
The artwork of ToA is pretty awsome if you get a chance to really breath it all in. Their’s a lot of stuff that’s rarely been seen by players eyes for one reason or another but for the most part, it’s not that difficult now to see nearly everything but their’s a lot of goodness there to see.
I remember sometime before ToA was released, some artist (Was it Matt?) released a high quality rendering of a lot of the artifacts coming out in ToA. It was really nicely done and very impressive looking at the time. Just a shame that a good portion of that content is still not widely seen even today but still, some damn nice artwork there.
I love the art in DAoC. Once I wrote that it looked better than Warhammer and Sanya sent me an angry email :p
It’s a shame Mythic went the route of ToA, I was one of the people who actually got to complete almost all of the content in ToA … and to say it was badly badly designed is an understatement. But credit is due to this guy for making it look stunningly good in places. Anyway I would credit ToA killing allot of the playerbase rather than WoW did. Coming from a hardcore guild in DAOC (was at one point highest ranked Zerker in all realms
), most of my friends deserted the game after ToA was released saying the content really really did suck, and also new frontiers didn’t help one bit really.