Electronic Arts To Aquire Mythic Entertainment

Pika writes "According to the Business Wire, Electronic Arts is to acquire Mythic Entertainment, makers of the popular MMORPGs Dark Age of Camelot and the forthcoming Warhammer Online. With EA being well known for killing MMORPGs, even those with loyal and sizable followings, how does this bode for Mythic's titles?"

Re:Oblig.

[PB_TPU_40]

And to that I think I speak for everyone when I say, "Well SH*T."

Re:Oblig.

[whitegold]

Given the success of World of Warcraft EA might see this as more of a cash cow than a sacrificial lamb.

Re:Oblig.

[Nossie]

mine is certainly one of them !

*cries* EA hasnt done almost anything right since acquiring bullfrog .... R.I.P

Poor Mythic Employees

[SydShamino]

... unless they were about to go under, this has to be a bad thing for every Mythic employee that wasn't also the owner. Despite claims that the "175 member development team will remain in Fairfax" or somesuch in the article, I cannot imagine any situation where, five years from now, any of the current employees will still work for "EA Mythic" in Fairfax. Either the corporate slavedriver pressures will push them out, or they'll quit or move when a "corporate realignment" moves the jobs to California.

There's nothing inherently wrong with working for a big company. There's just something inherently wrong with working for EA.

Great.

[Skynet]

Sure they say they will let Mythic retain all creative direction, but we know how that worked out for Richard Garriot and Origin Systems.

Re:Oblig.

[joystickgenie]

That doesn't mean they won't end up destroying it anyway. EA doesn't have the right mentality to keep MMOs alive.

Re:Confusion?

[Bieeanda]

No, because SOE has yet to actually kill one. EA had Earth and Beyond, was testing Motor City Online, and for a brief while had a Battletech: 3025 game in widespread beta. In addition to those being killed or canceled, they also canceled Ultima Online 2, another Ultima Online spinoff and fucked the Sims Online hard enough to make Maxis walk funny for years afterward.

Shades of Multiplayer Battletech:3025...

[Behrooz]

To be honest, for a minute I was in favor of EA acquiring and killing lots of MMOs, simply because I can't stand the current paradigms that most of the MMORPG genre are based on, like level treadmills and timesinks.

Then I remembered that just five short years ago, EA killed my MMO dreams when they shut down Multiplayer Battletech: 3025 [mpogd.com]. I place much of the blame for the tepid and weak pool of current MMO offerings on the axing of MPBT:3025, which was bar none the finest multiplayer 'mech experience I've seen.

Damn you, EA. Damn you to hell for continually working to make MMO games suck forever.

Re:Poor Mythic Employees

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you please provide current evidence that EA still has 'slave-driver' attitude towards it's employees?

I'm an EA employee, at the studio that the infamous blog was about, and I will tell you, that while it had truth to it at the time, 2 years ago, it's not true anymore.

I've interviewed at other places, and I know other studios are far worse - one Activision studio famous for it's skateboarding series has a mandatory 48 hour weeks, and every 4th week is a mandatory 60 hour workweek. Even during the crunch to finish the last project here at EA, I went from 40 hour weeks to 45-50 hour weeks, and it wasn't an eternal crunch; at some independent studios I worked at it was far, FAR worse (and then everyone lost their jobs when the project ended).

So do us EA employees a favor and stop propagating the lie, please.

Posting anonymously because last time I defended EA on here, some jerks harassed me via my email and website.

Re:Great.

[SydShamino]

Looks like EA corporate got a pile of mod points this week. Anyone who speaks ill of them and their past evils gets whacked with a "troll" tag.

Re:DAoC

[Nossie]

true I guess :-| EA does not listen to the programmers period. Its all about the bottom line and most of the better games in history broke the bank before they made the bank...

The next expansion appears to be a half assed attempt at getting more money from their current subscribers and/or tempting those bored with thier wow level 60's to come back for a few weeks..

With EA now taking over Mythic I can now imagine an online LOTR on smack with a model very similar to WoWs...

look forward to losing your rank if you have to go away, buying your abilities even though you had to grind for them and really really crap RvR ?

all my luv out to MrsDuck !

Re:Oblig.

[joystickgenie]

Because with MMOs the game must be added on to and improved upon to keep people interested. People don't want to play a MMO for a month. MMOs are supposed to have more longevity.

EA has more of a, put the game out, get all the initial sales you can, then start over with a new game, mentality.

EA needs to burn in hell

[dave562]

They purchased the publisher of my favorite game series of all time (Bullfrog and the Syndicate franchise) and then let it rot. They are worse than Microsoft and Symantec when it comes to buying up the competition and then craptasticizing the product line.

Re:Doubt of Cancellation..

[KDR_11k]

Warhammer Online has a powerful license and it covers a market that's shown to be highly profitable by a competitor (if WAR was unlike WoW before that'll be rectified in no time). That ranks it pretty highly in EA's priority list. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if EA attempted to turn Warhammer into one of their pet licenses.