BioWAAAGH!
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.
I am not dead.
It’s been a busy couple of months and I promise to post something like a proper update - just not right now. A short version of the past month and a half:
- Prepping/pimping Tomb Kings. Lots of press, working with folks doing interviews I couldn’t make it out for (see two bullet points down).
- Games Day Baltimore/Getting a badass squig cake out of Duff and the Charm City Cakes crew. If we make it into an episode, it’ll probably be aired in late summer/early fall.
- Got married!
- Honeymoon!
- Back to work tomorrow, then sprinting to get ready for E3 next week.
I HAVE been good about posting nonsense on Twitter, though. So… yeah… follow me or something.
Mmm… caaaake.
Who are these two handsome devils?
Protip: You should come to Games Day Baltimore.
Rock-n-roll!
Somehow, I managed to forget to draw your attention to the fact that I am now - officially - a rock deity:
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| From WAR-Misc |
That’s a picture of our office “garage band” - The Hamtouchers - hanging out with members of Blue Öyster Cult (they of “More Cowbell” fame) in our local recording studio.
Why, you ask?
Because we were recording a track together. An EPIC track. A track dedicated to Warhammer’s Slayers (newly added to Warhammer Online).
You can download it here, but be warned - it may melt your face off with ALL THE AWESOME.
ROCK.
Somebody at Avon needs to be promoted.
This amuses me (play them simultaneously - the sound isn’t really important):
My thoughts on the end of BSG…
…can be found here.
Hello, Nation.
FYI
I’m not going to comment too much about today’s events at Mythic, other than to say that I was not affected, but that a lot of very good, extremely talented people were.
I’m sad that I can’t be there at the moment to say goodbye to friends, to offer support, just to be a presence in the building.
To anyone affected, if there’s ANYTHING I can do, let me know. Letters of recommendation, an ear to bend, a beer or three - just say the word.
To any developers who may be looking for good people, contact me via email or ping me on LinkedIn and I’ll be glad to direct qualified folks your way.
That’s all.
Back… and gone again.
We got back from Korea in one piece. It was fun. A few pics here.
And now I’m in the UK for two days, then it’s off to Spain, then France, Italy and Germany before heading home.
I basically live off of Red Bull and Ambien at this point.
Anywho, the point of this trip is basically to reintroduce WAR to the European press. Obviously, we’ll be touching on the new stuff we’ve added and upcoming content, but I intend to focus most of my time talking about the changes we’ve been making (and will make) to the Live game since launch. New, sexy stuff is fun to talk about, but at the end of the day we need to make sure folks know we hear their comments and are, in fact, working hard to improve them game continuously.
Hopefully, some folks in the press will take that part of my presentations to heart, but ya never know.
Off to Korea!
In short order, Barnett and I take to the skies for the 15 hour flight out to Seoul. Adventures may very well ensue. Or we may get soju poisoning. Regardless, WAR waits for no man’s jet-lag.