GotMMOG?

It seems EA’s execs in all their wisdom stupidity decided that consolidating Mythic and BioWare into a single group made more sense cents. This comes with the departure of one of Mythic’s co-founders, Mark Jacobs.

Anyone who’s gone through a merger or acquisition at a company knows the “merging” of companies, especially with different cultures, proceses, and philosophies is never going to be smooth. And, the end product is rarely as ideal as the pencil pushers make it out to be. After all, it’s always done based on the numbers, not the spirit or vision, that make the deal look good to investors.

I don’t doubt they’ll  smooth things out and eventually some sort of norm will come back to the two developers (or rather, one). However, they’re going to probably lose a bunch of people…usually the most talented and best of the bunch that helped drive previous games to the peaks they achieved. Still, they single dev group that remains will figure things out and eventually make it work.

Here’s hoping they’ll finish ME2 before everything goes to hell (e.g. the team mergers start). Time will tell…

g afk

So, Gamasutra reported today that Mythic’s shutting down 63 servers (I didn’t even realize they’d gotten up to that many) given declining subscriber numbers. Nothing new, especially in this economy and with the layoffs EA forced on them a little while back, it’s not unexpected either.

They’re supposedly down to about 300k subscribers. In the days of EQ and UO, those were hefty numbers. In the post-WoW days, it’s considered a drop in the bucket. Still, compared to others (Tabula Rasa, Age of Conan) they’re still going strong. I guess the question is, when (or if??) the first expansion comes out, will they see a resurgence and maybe find themselves maintaining that 300k number for a while or are they just going to fade slowly into niche-dom like SWG and EQ? PQs and RvR are nice and all but with the majority of people through the main content and at the end game, much of that is pointless. They’ve basically painted themselves into a corner where they force people through the long march up until the level cap…there the remaining 300(k) stand along the cliffs high above the churning sea…waiting for the transport that’ll take them to the next expansion’s content!

Something tells me, this economy and EA’s terrible management intelligence will lead to the demise of this game. Ideally, they could go the route of Guild Wars and offer up expansions (granted, not because they’re going for the free-to-play market) to keep the game alive but with staff cuts, you know it’s going to be a buggy slab of tripe that’ll feel worse going down than menudo.

Here’s to hoping that Mythic can pull the plane out of it’s tailspin and keep the game alive…I may get bored with it faster than WoW but it’s still got some good stuff in it…

grieger afk

Kotaku and Gamasutra are reporting that Nexon is shutting down its Humanature Studios dev studio based in Vancouver, BC.

Not that I’m a fan of cartoony free-to-play MMOs from Korea but given how well Nexon’s been doing, it’s a sign of the times. It looks like we’re going to see a lot of MMOs that were on the brink shut down. Could be a good thing but it could also be bad…think the movie industry where they squeeze out shit that sells (cookie-cutter films and sequels) and you have to rely on some hardy souls at the bottom end to churn out something more substantial on the indie scene.

Here’s hoping they don’t shut down anything good this year…

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Here’s another brilliant move from the minds at EA corporate. Gamasutra’s reporting that EA’s planning on including Mythic in it’s layoff plans.This doesn’t bode well for those remaining DAoC fans and puts a big non-quest-giver question mark over WAR’s prospects. As usual, the first to go look to be QA and Customer Service people…the very people you need to ensure customer retention and who are paid the least in the organization. While we’re not fans of layoffs in general, I never get why the first to go are the ones most critical to maintaining your games’ playability and your customers happiness. Which do you think is better? A buggier game with customer service requests that aren’t answered (EA’s already got a terrible track record on customer service with us, and now they’re spreading the love through their studios) but with expansions on track (maybe) to come one ASAP…or would you rather forgo the major expansion for another year if it meant you could get cleaner patches and have someone who’s gonna unstuck you or fix a billing issue in a good amount of time?

Meanwhile, did anyone notice how AoC required you to update your DirectX install to a November 2008 update in order to PLAY the damned thing? Here’s a strategy: you’re hit hard by the economic meltdown, your game isn’t getting as much play as you’d like, and you decide to push an update that blocks anyone from playing unless you update DirectX, which could interfere with other games you’re playing on your machine. WTF? It’d be one thing if they made it a recommendation for certain features or something but to REQUIRE it? Maybe it’s the Euro game dev thing where customer service is the last thing on the list to do after taking a month’s vacation after releasing a buggy game or patch to your loyal but pissed off fans. Gamers always seem to get the short end of the stick when it comes to these publishers. Maybe it’s time to take that stick back?

UPDATE: Mythic’s Mark Jacobs spoke out on the layoffs at his company. Seems the bullshit is flying but an interesting pick-up is the number of current subscribers for WAR: 300k. Something tells me they’re peaking…

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