EA buying Mythic

[Ghetto]

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060620/20060620006061.html?.v=1

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 20, 2006--Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS - News) today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Virginia-based Mythic Entertainment®. Upon completion of the acquisition, Mythic Entertainment will become EA Mythic, a wholly-owned studio dedicated to developing Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs). Mythic is recognized worldwide for revolutionizing the online gaming space with the award-winning Dark Age of Camelot® and is currently developing Warhammer® Online: Age of Reckoning(TM) under license agreement with Games Workshop.
bad news for warhammer >.<

[Stickx]

Grats on Warhammer:D

[Soruss]

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuck.

[Blu]

The EA site says the same.

Could have been a great game, thanks EA.

[Sneezer]

http://www.mythicentertainment.com/press/06202006EAMythic.html

the mythic site aswell.
Ohwell =/

[arch]

Bye bye dreams of a good PvP-game. :(

[Scorpicore]

Don't miss the opportunity to preorder Warhammer2007, Warhammer2008 and Warhammer2009 now!

[Traumatize]

That sucks so insane amounts of negrocock it's not even funny.

[Ferlucii]

gg...

Ah well, this brings down the expectations :/
Hope they manage not to get manipulated by ea

[Nastrand]

It should not effect anything with Warhammer. They are keeping all 150 mythic employees and everyone is keeping their titles.. Mark is still the head dog at Mythic. EA bought Mythic to have a cash cow that brings in monthly revenues.. they see Warhammer as a great opportunity to make lots of money. Maybe Business is not some of your strongpoints and you automatically think of EA and oh noes there goes the world.. It is not always like that and remember.. It all depends on how the contract was written up.

[Dunce]

warhammer = DOOMED

[Isaac]

Money has an even bigger influence now that EA is on board, so you can rest assured that the game will suffer on release due to that fact in some ways, and perhaps benefit in others.

I'm still waiting for the other announcement though...

GAMESPY TO HOST WARHAMMER ONLINE.

(thanks ea). HEH.

[socratic]

EA came to them, Mythic hasn't lost anyone, GW still has creative control over the game, etc etc.

I still don't see what the big deal is, EA isn't inherently evil, the game is still going along as planned.

Post by Mark jacobs, the guy in charge of mythic, on a PUBLIC FORUM, in response to all the EA hoopla. Imagine that, a developer actually talking to the communtiy!
http://www.warhammeralliance.com/forums/showthread.php?p=89204#89204

[syndt]

the big deal is just as isaac put it:


Money has an even bigger influence now that EA is on board, so you can rest assured that the game will suffer on release due to that fact in some ways, and perhaps benefit in others.

one of the main reasons why i had a bit more respect for mythic compared to most developers is that they were small and were almost like a family. making money actually took a backseat to creating and maintaining something good, to an extent. but with a big faggy parent like EA hovering about you can bet that producing a product that makes money and gets subs (pve = subs = money, look at wow), will be the biggest priority, at the expense of good pvp.

[Sneezer]

Imagine that, a developer actually talking to the communtiy!
He's been doing that for atleast 6 months now, nothing new there =P



GAMESPY TO HOST WARHAMMER ONLINE.

Well, Mythic can't be bothered to handle european players by themselves, so even if gamespy would host it, you'd still be better off than us secondgrade players on the other side of the pond =/

[Tivoli]

It should not effect anything with Warhammer. They are keeping all 150 mythic employees and everyone is keeping their titles.. Mark is still the head dog at Mythic. EA bought Mythic to have a cash cow that brings in monthly revenues.. they see Warhammer as a great opportunity to make lots of money. Maybe Business is not some of your strongpoints and you automatically think of EA and oh noes there goes the world.. It is not always like that and remember.. It all depends on how the contract was written up.
Same with Origin, Westwood Studios, and the guys that made The Sims...

[socratic]

If Mythic hadn't excepted EA's offer, they'd have a much harder time marketing and maintaining their game. They still have to go up against WoW, whether or not its a PvE game. If mythic had fucked up at all, and the game flopped, they'd have a much harder time getting out of the hole without a large company to help bail them out. You can't expect to go up against a powerhouse game like that with a small company.

If EA is intent on keeping the game the way it is, and they probably are since Mythic wouldn't have agreed to the contract otherwise, I don't see any reason why the game would change in any drastic way.

[syndt]

If Mythic hadn't excepted EA's offer, they'd have a much harder time marketing and maintaining their game. They still have to go up against WoW, whether or not its a PvE game. If mythic had fucked up at all, and the game flopped, they'd have a much harder time getting out of the hole without a large company to help bail them out. You can't expect to go up against a powerhouse game like that with a small company.

If EA is intent on keeping the game the way it is, and they probably are since Mythic wouldn't have agreed to the contract otherwise, I don't see any reason why the game would change in any drastic way.

that's the issue: i don't believe mythic had any illusions about "going up against wow" and in fact, the people that want WAR to succeed don't want it to "go up against wow", they want a pvp/rvr based game without treadmills and grinds, and as little pve as possible. daoc did this well until the expansions (greed) started rolling in, and the big fear now is that with EA on their backs, mythic won't have a choice but to make the game more appealing to the lowest common denominator.

[Kaeto]

I'm not so much worried about the release of the game as the maintenance of it. EA has refused to support on most of their games. I suspect that they will want to gut the live team once the game is released, and get most of the people working on an expansion or another game as soon as they can.

[Pennyman]

They signed a contract with the devil when they signed with EA. Same shit was said when EA bought Origin, the original team was supposed to all stay on development and maintenence of UO, and look what happened to UO, its pretty fucked up now.

[keboman]

OH NO

IS MY "HOBBY EXPERIENCE"

IN JEOPARDY?

:cry:

[Soruss]

It's impossible to believe what anyone from either mythic or EA is saying. Obviously they will say whatever to try and assure their potential customers that shit will not be hitting any sort of fan.

The only thing we can believe now is history, and historically EA fucks up everything they touch.

[uro]

EA isnt actually getting the rights to WAR untill mid 2007. Hopefully thatll give Mythic enough time to make a spectacular RvR/PvP game. Unfortunately, EA is like a disease infested cock, tainting anything it ever touched. Like Tiv said, Origin, Westwood, and many many more all had the same guarantees from EA; that they'd keep creative control of their games.... And now look at where those games are at. *sigh* I'm still hoping that WAR wont suck, but it probably will.

[Kaeto]

a disease infested cock

You know all about that, don't you?

[Shotai]

There is one thing you have to remember, unless my memory doesn't serve me(which past 12am it normally doesn't). Origin was fucking up UO before EA bought it as did Mythic fuck up DAoC before EA even looked at it. Its easy to blame EA for fucking up alot of games, as UO got exponentially worse afterward, but the original fucking was done by Origin. The problem I see with any MMO is that its alot easier, and alot more profitable, to expand on PvE aspects rather than PvP aspects.

Take WoW for example, their PvP was good before MC, at least I enjoyed it. After that it was a slow spiral down and its gotten worse ever since and shows no signs of getting better. DAoC expanded slightly on PvP(Savage and BD lawl) and more on PvE which didn't have a big affect on RvR as it gave people some very slightly better gear from the new area. ToA gave more PvE... alot more, and started making classes overpowered, much like 40 man instances in WoW. Then NF 'expanded' aka fucked PvP. They tried to expand on PvP with NF, but of course they moved more towards their original vision of RvR, which is that, Realm vs Realm aka 100 people vs 100 people sieging castles and such(note: the most boring thing in life, I'd rather PvE), instead of what the players visioned which is 8v8.

The main thing I'm saying here is that in the past there have been attempts at expanding PvP, some good(factions in UO was fun) and some bad(NF). Truth be told, its alot easier to make a PvE game profitable than a PvP game. Mythic was different from most other companies in that they focused more on game quality than how much money they could make off it, at least at first. We all know that EA cares more about how much money they can make off a game than how much fun a person will have playing it.

That being said, like most every other MMO I expect Warhammer to be a great and very appealing game to start, but it will most likely end up like every other MMO. We will see though, nothing is set in stone yet. I just expect history to repeat itself.

[Soruss]

I'm pretty sure EA owned origin before UO was even released. They just didn't have full control yet because Richard Garriot hadn't left yet.

[Kaeto]

www.uo.com

Game Fucking Over

[Emilenda]

All hope isn't lost yet. They should be keeping most of the brain power on board, so the game should be pretty similar. Also the game is already in beta I think, so at it's core it'll probably still be the same game.

I was kinda bummed out at this when I first heard about it, but not so much anymore. I used to work for Games Workshop, and they can be stubborn dicks. Since the franchise still belongs to them I'm holding out hope that it won't suck....

But I'm betting the main difference between what is and what may have been will be once the game is launched and they start rolling out expansions. EA sucks at that shit - they'll just pump out the generic vanilla shit that they're known for.

Well that's what I think at least :P

EDIT: then again I was blindly optimistic at DDO - maybe I've learned since then, but probably not!

[Soruss]

Call me a skeptic, but I doubt GW knows the difference between a good and bad MMO.

[Emilenda]

No you're right... but they've been making such a noise about it being such a pvp based game that they probably won't let it slide.

Hopefully :P

[wargh]

I like the concept of WAR, the PvP Missions, the final capture of the enemy city etc. It smells pvp... i cant imagine they would totally change that. If they would i wouldnt bother buying it, as many others that are excited now. So maybe there is hope, also because the game developement isnt in early stages anymore.

[SandDemon]

Just like any other MMORPG, beta test will be the final say on the game. The rest is just mental masturbation

[Traumatize]

Just like any other MMORPG, beta test will be the final say on the game. The rest is just mental masturbation

Needless to say most of us enjoy mental masturbation though.

[wargh]

mmm... true.

[Carnie]

More money = better servers and a happier dev team

[WindiaN]

i'll reserve my judgment because I really want warhammer to do well because if it doesn't what other options do we have? :/

[Soruss]

i'll reserve my judgment because I really want warhammer to do well because if it doesn't what other options do we have? :/

/wrists or /rl

[Engel]

Everything you need to know about the acquisition: http://www.aeria-gloris.com/