Mythic Entertainment - Shutdown By EA

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Well it was just a matter of time, but it's now official it seems EA has shutdown Mythic Entertainment. Kotaku has the news with more information on the topic.

EA has shut down Mythic Entertainment, the longtime video game studio most recently responsible for Warhammer Online and the Dungeon Keeper reboot for mobile platforms.

When reached by Kotaku, EA sent over the following statement:

"We are closing the EA Mythic location in Fairfax, Virginia, as we concentrate mobile development in our other studio locations. We are working with all impacted employees to provide assistance in finding new opportunities, either within EA or with other companies via an upcoming job fair".

Founded in 1995, Mythic also developed Dark Age of Camelot and a number of other online games including the popular MUD Dragon's Gate. Their most recent release, a microtransaction-heavy remake of the classic strategy game Dungeon Keeper, was received poorly by many gamers.
More information.
 
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EA ruins everything it touches. See also the post above about Wasteland sequels. See also Bioware (though it was already sliding down the slippery slope of the corporate hivemind.) See also everything else.
 
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And EA hauls another carcass of a once great game studio to it's ravine.
 
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When I was last in Redwood City, I wanted to pee on their sign, but figured there would be a long line. I seem to remember saying this before....I'm getting old.
 
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Another proof that throwing money at developers does not equal better products.
EA maybe should rethink what makes certain developers succesful and try to
support those qualities.
 
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Another proof that throwing money at developers does not equal better products.
EA maybe should rethink what makes certain developers succesful and try to
support those qualities.

That would mean EA is interested in better products. They only buy the names to milk the IPs/Studios till they're empty.
I'm sure financial it works out for EA at least in the short term.

I wonder how many years Bioware has left.
 
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EA should change the name into DLC.
 
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Mythic has been dead for a while, it was just a "brand" that wasn't managing anything anymore and working on "mobile games" because one of the higher up at EA think it was the future.

I'm more curious with the fact that it's something like their third "mobile game" studio that they closed in like 2 years.
 
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That would mean EA is interested in better products. They only buy the names to milk the IPs/Studios till they're empty.
I'm sure financial it works out for EA at least in the short term.

I wonder how many years Bioware has left.

I'll play the devil's advocate here and say its like SONY giving multimillion dollar contracts to aging rock stars who are at the hight of their popularity but on the downward slope of their creativity. SONY throwing lots of money at these groups does not make them better. In fact it often leads to a downward spiral and maybe SONY gets one or two successful albums. Such a strategy must be succesful enough, but I wonder if EA wouldn't do better by trying out a more long term strategy, for better sales in the long run and giving them a better reputation. Of course that would assume its possible and EA would have people who understand what makes a good quality, succesful game and what doesn't. I'm not sure if they have those people or if they are just a bunch of marketers and number crunchers.
 
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I'll play the devil's advocate here and say its like SONY giving multimillion dollar contracts to aging rock stars who are at the hight of their popularity but on the downward slope of their creativity. SONY throwing lots of money at these groups does not make them better. In fact it often leads to a downward spiral and maybe SONY gets one or two successful albums. Such a strategy must be succesful enough, but I wonder if EA wouldn't do better by trying out a more long term strategy, for better sales in the long run and giving them a better reputation. Of course that would assume its possible and EA would have people who understand what makes a good quality, succesful game and what doesn't. I'm not sure if they have those people or if they are just a bunch of marketers and number crunchers.

Well after the DA2 failure (at least fan reception wise) Bioware has gotten alot more time to do DA3.
While I'm still not convinced DA3 will be a good game i guess this is a good thing from EA.
Babysteps and all.

Other than that i assune milking till death is alot less risky than trying to build up something lasting.
 
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Well after the DA2 failure (at least fan reception wise) Bioware has gotten alot more time to do DA3.
While I'm still not convinced DA3 will be a good game i guess this is a good thing from EA.
Babysteps and all.

Other than that i assune milking till death is alot less risky than trying to build up something lasting.

Make no mistake, only DICE and the sports games are more or less safe with EA.
Modern military shooters and sports games are the least niche of all, and EA's brands in these areas (Battlefield and the sports franchises) are well-established. All other studios and IP's, however, are far more vulnerable, ALL of them.
Having said that, it usually takes some time for an EA studio to get euthanized. For the time being, Bio is probably safer than some others, they are probably still, despite the controversies, fairly profitable.
 
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Karma for raping Ultima's corpse.

(Well, likely they were forced to rape it, but still...rape is rape, or so I hear)
 
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No surprise Mythic was shut down. They were living on borrowed time after WAR.
 
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The main crew has already shifted to Broadsword Online Games in February, taking the contracts for Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot with them. So it was a matter of time. Mythic failed everytime since Dark Age of Camelot. More than 10 years of failure is quite a lot.
 
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After Dung Keeper Mobile all i can say is good riddance! May your corpse forever be reborn only to rot again, Mythic!
 
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In the official SWTOR forums, people blame Mythic to be responsible for that "failure" - as they call it - that is PvP there. They just don't like it as it is now - but I guess that this alsyo depends on who is saying that.

"They" claim that Mythic also ruined the PvP part of that Warhammer game ... And that some Mythic employees went to Bioware to work for SWTOR PvP - I can't say whether this is rumor or for real - they fear that these Mythic employees might ruin SWTOR's PvP furthermore.

My biggest gaming-related wish is to buy and then shut down EA one day. That just as a Revenge for all those companies EA had bought & shut down before.
 
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"They" claim that Mythic also ruined the PvP part of that Warhammer game … And that some Mythic employees went to Bioware to work for SWTOR PvP - I can't say whether this is rumor or for real -

It's not a rumor, Warhammer Senior designer was SWTOR Lead PvP designer (Gabe Amatangelo). Although, that dude have been fired since, but not before he was promoted to SWTOR endgame designer...
 
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While I understand the hate for DK mobile from fans who probably expected it to be more like the originals, I actually like it. And I was so big a fan of the original I paid a friend to let me use his computer (didn't own one at the time) for three days just to play it during which time I spent every waking hour playing, missing classes and foregoing food and hygiene requirements.

It's different and far more strategic than any TD or Clash of Clans-type game I've ever tried and as for the microtransactions complaint, I've actually never felt compelled to buy anything at all as I don't mind the long wait times.
 
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DAOC was probably the best mmorpg of it's time and WAR was flawed but still definitely was incredible in some areas. Those are the 2 Mythic games I will remember.
 
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It's not a rumor, Warhammer Senior designer was SWTOR Lead PvP designer (Gabe Amatangelo). Although, that dude have been fired since, but not before he was promoted to SWTOR endgame designer…

That might explain some inconsiustenciews with some classes - with the Sage class being the worst designed one.

In the recent Class Representative Questions session the devs claim that they were never looking at Yoda or at Palpatine for designing the animations and the look of that class - but in fact the Sorceror - which is the mirror class to the Sage - has animations directly ta<ken from ROTJ : The Emperor hurting Luke Skywalker with his lightning ... with both hands outstretched. The Sage instead got an animation of throwing "pebbles", as some put it (me, too), with the lightsabre in one hand - doing NOTHING with it ! - and the other arm outstreched - thus reducing the lightsabre to an "stat stick", cynically put. Because neither as a Sorc nor as a sage you do ANYTHING with the weapon, but the Sorc's animations are far, far better and are a clear display of power, meanwhile the Sage looks weak in every position he has - that's my personal opinion, but it is shared with some other Sage class players.

Another problem comes up when looking at the Sage throwing rocks (which look as small as pebbles in the animation, thus making the Sage look even more weak), where some saying that throwing rocks, debris, trash is exclusively done by Sith in the movies, and thus should not happen for the Sage, as an animation.

The Sage and the Sorceror classes feel incredibly broken. Not mechanic-wise, but from their inner build-up and their animations. And because of the devs' faction favouritism, the Sorc even has the better animations, meanwhgile the Sorc's miror class looks like an really, really bad kit-bash-class, tacked together with elements that do not fit with each other too well.

And earlier in SWTOR, the Sage class was indeed called "Wizard".
That's why the imperial mirror class still is called "Sorceror".

Some have even begun changing the lightsabre stat stick into another in-game weapon that looks even more like a wizard's staff ...

But the recent answers showed something even mucxh more disturbing : That the devs appear to play a game that the WHOLE player base does NOT play - both are increadibly out of touch with one another ... They even answered that a self-protecting thing that EVERY Sage player does during raids was NOT indended by the devs to be used as an self-protective thing ... ( I mean a "bubble" called "Force Armor").

And this is not the first time that the class designing devs displayed such an loss of touch with the player base : Their answers to other classes "then you have a perception problem" and "heal to full", coined as the H2F meme, plus "make them pay" towards the Sorc class rep questions became classics in the SWTOR forums.
 
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