Broken Toys

From warhammer forums, this isn’t a merger. Looks more like a simple termination of employment: http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?t=297291&page=4

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I just want to mention this since the other article gave the wrong impression:

“Mythic is not “merging” with Bioware.

Mythic and Bioware remain independent EA studios within a larger MMO/RPG group.

Thanks!

Andy Belford
Community Coordinator
Warhammer: Age of Reckoning”

“Remain Independent Studios”. BWHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA. Its makes me laugh everytime that ive read it. At least the layoffs were done before-hand (Exept for Mark). The only thing left in those studios its the guys disposed to whore themselves, i mean, working 60 or more hours a week.

MMORPGs aren’t enough of a unique draw anymore. You either have a finished and enjoyable game on day 1, or most of your potential players will have either moved back to their old haunts or moved on to being obsessed about the Next Big Thing.

Overall, WAR was a pretty solid product, it wasn’t even that buggy at release (relatively speaking). The two foremost problems in my mind:

1. It was relatively unremarkable. They did some new things (e.g. Public Quests), but they didn’t do enough new things. The core of the game was still pretty much WoW and, that being the case, they set themselves up for a fall. The people who are looking to quit playing WoW are bored of WoW, why would they want more of it?

2. The long term game was open PvP… which is generally doomed in the long run on the grounds that balance has less to do with the players’ ability to play and more to do with the overall population balance. This was extremely poignant with WAR, a 2-side system, where complaints about Order and (predominantly) Destruction overpopulation plaguing the game from day 1.

What I’m working on is small-scale stuff. Crazy inventor trying to create nuclear fusion in his closet stuff. However, as far as gaming is concerned, perhaps that’s where it’s always been the strongest. You can mass produce a lot of things, but when you attempt to mass produce novelty, you defeat yourself.

The industry has been running on clones for awhile. It worked because gaming went from niche to mainstream and brought with it a bunch of players for whom a clone was not a clone. However, this being a relatively young industry, what we were perceiving was very likely less something you could bank on forever and more a temporary trend. The viability of producing a clone is coming to an end.

But, you know, I do like to doomcast baselessly. Like anyone else, I can’t see the future, merely come up with my own interpretation of the signs.

Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green :
Mark Jacobs is a good guy. What he lacks in social graces he makes up for in passion, and passion is what you need to surivive in game development.
I was around for the little event that Poppinfresh references above; Mark had his heart in the right place, he was upset that someone so notable would claim (or at least sit silently while someone else made the claim for them) that they were the originator of online games. Mythic was an old school developer and launched a number of games before UO was seriously worked on, and Mark knew that even him taking the title would be impolite to a lot of the pioneers who worked hard to get us to where we could bitch about the games of today.

—

I echo what Brian said. I’ve known Mark as long as anyone in the industry; since 1988, to be exact, when I was slaving as a game producer at the company that would become AOL and Mark was a local developer trying to interest us in his games. When I moved to back to GEnie to run their games in 1989, practically the first thing Bill Louden and I agreed on was giving Mark a contract for a game. Which then worked into a second contract for Dragons Gate.

In these days of multi-million dollar budgets, it is easy to forget that the true pioneers built games for little or no money upfront. You had to have passion, because there wasn’t much money to support you in the development stage. Mark and his ‘team’ (1 other guy at the time – Darren Hyrup, I think), got a small advance for the first game ($3,000) and no advance from GEnie to build Dragons Gate, a project that took many months. Without the passion and a willingness to run on fumes for months at a time, he’d have just quit and taken a job somewhere. More than one developer did exactly that in the early days.

Mark brings that same passion to everything he does, so yeah, sometimes people get offended. Note that in the incident being discussed, Mark wasn’t offended for himself; he was offended for the pioneers who were building MMOs – hell, creating the MMO industry from scratch – for a decade and more before UO went into development and he wanted Richard to acknowledge that, that his PR agency was taking unwarranted license. Sure, Mark was one of those pioneers, but I know him; I doubt it even crossed his mind when he was making the argument.

As for what happened at EA: Having worked at EA, this doesn’t surprise me a bit. An EA VP once described the company to me this way: “We’re the perfect meritocracy. As long as you are a success, you get every resource you need. When you aren’t being a success, we start taking resources away from you to make you focus.” This, of course, is a just another version of the circular firing squad; when you are succeeding by EA’s standards, you get the Cadillac, when you falter, we strip you down to a VW bug AND expect you to deliver Cadillac results.

So, when WAR delivered results that didn’t meet expectations at the senior executive level, it was inevitable that changes would be made. Knowing Mark, however, I suspect leaving was his decision, not EA’s; there are some changes his passion and experience just wouldn’t accept, especially if it meant that some of the family were going to get screwed.

I expect we’ll see him again, . It may not be in games; Mark has other passions that he has always wanted to explore and this may be the opportunity for him to do so.

Cool.

I’ve waited for this day. It has been predicted by many when EA bought Mythic and once Warhammer came out it was pretty much clear that this would happen. Warhammer didn’t deliver anything. It was a fiasco. These are the consequences.

@Raethys
The only thing that is relevant in your post is that you have a somehow odd taste (Warhammer being good), that is your right, no one can’t take it from you, but many people think/thought otherwise or they would still be playing the game.

It’s not only about the quality of the game, it’s also about bad management decisions like giving GOA the contract for Europe again, the DAoC Origins vaporware etc.

Seems that globalization means one fusion after another to produce an even bigger and shittier pile of MMOs as result?

@Jeff
Many of the replies are equal to this one, but Jeff at least gives clear reasons as to why he thinks WAR “failed”. Addressing those by turn:

1) 1.4 million boxes sold and only 200-350k subscribers remining.

Again, what exactly does this mean? I don’t think there’s a single subscription MMO out there, besides WoW, that has exceeded its initial subscribers within its first year. Again, I have to say, using the numbers excuse is the least thoughtful and most personally damning one, and the fact that you quickly bring it up as your first reason is telling.

I suppose selling more burgers and fries makes McD’s the best food in the world. I suppose selling more albums makes Britney Spears the best musician. What exactly do those numbers mean? That most people don’t know what a good thing is? That most people don’t care?

2) Many of the hyped promises were never delivered.

Initially? Is that what you’re hammering on? Do you remember how many hyped promises Blizzard has made with WoW that haven’t been delivered on initially?

If you’re talking since release to present (and likely future), then you are completely incorrect. Several expansion sized patches later, and we’ve got a lot of those promises fulfilled (balanced combat, more scenarios, live events, more in-game content, UI-design that makes all the modding bullshit you have to do with WoW obselete or clunky at best, game play that appeals to many more styles, new classes….). At the rate they’re going, they’re fulfilling them Faster and Better than Blizzard ever has. If that isn’t success, I don’t know what is.

3) The vaunted end game RvR was broken.
“Was broken” – are we going off initial release again? I’ve been to the endgame. Looks fine to me. Granted, moving server populations and RVR and PVP present issues that WoW has never even had to address, either at all, or on the scale of what Mythic has/is trying to accomplish with their balancing act, the mechanics of their game, and the functionality of making their concept of end-game work.

4) Terrible class balance in RvR.

If this isn’t one of the most common complaints in any game that has PVP or RVR, I don’t know what is, and all games have heard it, “successful” or otherwise, so that kind of makes it irrelevant as a criteria or factor of assessment.

On another note, the only reason I even brought up WAR is because so many people here are equating Mark Jacobs losing his position as evidence of WAR’s failure, when at best, I see that as an irrelevant logical fallacy that’s quite easy and tempting for people who dislike the game anyway to make.

Raethys :
if all EA cares about is subscriber numbers, then that’s their problem, and it will soon become clear.

Well, it would appear to me that it’s not just their problem, it’s Mark Jacobs’ as well now.

J. :
Bioware has yet to make a failed game. They’ve got life in them yet.

Jeff :
I disagree. Granted, this is Bioware’s first attempt at an MMO, but that aside they have ALWAYS delivered the goods. I can’t say that about any other company.

Well, I hope they’ve got life in them yet, though I fear the effect of EA ownership. They’ve pretty handily trashed every game studio they’ve gotten their hands on. And I would also say that another game studio that has always delivered the goods was the one that helped give Bioware its start – Black Isle. Assuming you stick to the games they developed, and not the ones that Interplay slapped the Black Isle logo on, that is.

More relevantly, and in reply to both of you, I’d dispute Bioware’s record being flawless. In my estimation, Jade Empire was a pretty average game: the RPG elements were solid, but the action core left much to be desired, which made the overall product feel rather uninspired. Similarly, the module creation engine that was Neverwinter Nights was great, but the game that Bioware made to show it off was certainly sub-par. Given the death of Black Isle and the inability of their various successors (Obsidian, Troika) to completely pull it together, I’d say that Bioware is probably the premier producer of western RPGs today, which is my favorite genre. They’re great, but neither their track record nor their titles are perfect.

WAR is a game about epic PvP where the epic PvP didn’t work right. Of course it hasn’t succeeded.

Mark Jacobs is a guy who tells people to believe his outsized claims, and invites them to hold him accountable later on. Ultimately his bosses held him accountable.

I’m sorry to see any one lose their job, ever, but in MJ’s case it was predictable. Good luck to him though.

Cymbaline :

Raethys :if all EA cares about is subscriber numbers, then that’s their problem, and it will soon become clear.

Well, it would appear to me that it’s not just their problem, it’s Mark Jacobs’ as well now.

J. :Bioware has yet to make a failed game. They’ve got life in them yet.

Jeff :I disagree. Granted, this is Bioware’s first attempt at an MMO, but that aside they have ALWAYS delivered the goods. I can’t say that about any other company.

Well, I hope they’ve got life in them yet, though I fear the effect of EA ownership. They’ve pretty handily trashed every game studio they’ve gotten their hands on. And I would also say that another game studio that has always delivered the goods was the one that helped give Bioware its start – Black Isle. Assuming you stick to the games they developed, and not the ones that Interplay slapped the Black Isle logo on, that is.
More relevantly, and in reply to both of you, I’d dispute Bioware’s record being flawless. In my estimation, Jade Empire was a pretty average game: the RPG elements were solid, but the action core left much to be desired, which made the overall product feel rather uninspired. Similarly, the module creation engine that was Neverwinter Nights was great, but the game that Bioware made to show it off was certainly sub-par. Given the death of Black Isle and the inability of their various successors (Obsidian, Troika) to completely pull it together, I’d say that Bioware is probably the premier producer of western RPGs today, which is my favorite genre. They’re great, but neither their track record nor their titles are perfect.

Hmm.

Let me put it this way. I enjoyed both those games that you mentioned, but I still enjoyed them immensely. I think NWN was the one game where they have diverted from their “formula”, why I couldn’t tell you.

Still, in baseball terms I would say most of Bioware’s games are home runs. Especially these days, they have their formula perfected and are most working on their own IPs.

Jade Empire was a duoble, NWN was a single. Still better than most of the schlock on the shelves these days, which are strikeouts.

BG2 and expansion was epic Bioware. They strayed a bit after that but with KOTOR, ME they perfected their formula, and I have no doubts that ME 2, Dragon Age will rock.

SWTOR? I am hopeful. The doubt comes from Lucas Arts. Was hard to tell who REALLY botched SWG. Was it SOE or Lucas Arts? If it was LA, did they learn? Time will tell.

“Mythic is a decent team, just like Bioware.” – Now I am taking severe brain damage on here too.