Jacobs'"All Things Must Come To An End" post mainly looks back on his time with Mythic, from the early days of Dark Age of Camelot's pre-release through to his final days as GM of EA Mythic. He does briefly touch on his departure at the very beginning, however, explaining why he had suddenly gone on sabbatical, as mentioned in a previous post on the formation of EA's new joint BioWare/Mythic RPG/MMO group.

Early in May, Electronic Arts let me know that they wanted to make some changes within the Games Label and as a result of those changes I have been out of the office (and out of touch with the team, game, etc.) since that day.

Whether this means that EA asked him to step down or the proposed changes weren't to his liking and he simply took off is anyone's guess. Mark Jacobs certainly isn't telling.

...if you are looking or expecting me to damn EA or anyone there, you will be sorely disappointed. Over my 23 years of making games professionally I have refrained from attacking the competition, former and/or current partners, other game developers, etc. except on a few very rare instances. I have no intention of breaking with tradition at the present time and I hope my track record in this regard remains unchanged for the rest of my career.

All Things Must Come to an End [Online Games Are A Niche Market via MMORPG.com]

Creating what is effectively a massively multiplayer RPG development juggernaut, EA has tapped Muzkya to become Group General Manager of their new RPG/MMO Group, with fellow BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk acting as Group Creative Officer. With the departure of Mythic's Mark Jacobs, Mythic co-founder Rob Denton will step up as the General Manager of Mythic, reporting directly to Muzkya. BioWare's operations will remain unchanged.

So in effect, EA has handed the reins of Mythic over to BioWare, blurring the lines between the two entities by organizing them under one group. It's sad to see Mark Jacobs go, as he was a major contributor to the success of Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, but it should be very interesting to see what direction WAR travels in now that Dr. Ray is at the helm.

Mythic and BioWare Form New RPG/MMO Group [Warhammer Herald]

Mark Jacobs isn't known for being quiet, so when his forums explode with panicked players worrying about the state of Mythic's Warhammer Online, he did what he could to clarify the situation.

As part of EA, all studios are expected to do their fair share to meet the expectations of our CEO.

It isn't any more complicated than that other than to say that we have a very large studio and pretty much every person there has been and will continue to work on WAR for quite a while (meaning we haven't started work on another game yet). When we launched, we had over 400+ people working on the game in one capacity or another so it's not like we had a small team at launch or even a small team now.

Yes, when EA says they are laying off 1,000 employees, they weren't just talking EA proper. They've got a rather big company, in case you hadn't noticed, so of course the satellite development studios are likely to get hit.

That, and an MMO development team is generally going to trim down a bit as the player base begins to settle down and they switch from full-on development to maintenance and updating, so really this shouldn't be much of surprise, and it definitely isn't anything Warhammer fans should panic over.

Mark Jacobs Posts In "Mythic layoffs affect QA, customer support" [Warhammer Alliance Forums]

In a lengthy rant on the f13.net forums, Jacobs tackled recent criticism of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning before going on to detail the many professional and personal attacks he feels he has suffered over his 20+ year career in the games industry.

"I've been called more obscene things, accused of being responsible for every thing that went wrong in DAoC (even when I wasn't involved in the game at all after a few years because of Imperator or WAR), blamed for the state UO is in (except that EA wanted to shut down UO when they gave it to us but I convinced them to spend more money on the game), gotten death threats (and had to call in the FBI), told that I should "shut up and die" more times than I can remember,"

Death threats? People, c'mon. It's only a flippin' game.

[f13.net - thanks, JC]

I’m happy to announce that in December, the Black Guard and the Knight of the Blazing Sun will officially be part of WAR. We have very special plans around their appearance and in our next newsletter we will provide full details about that exciting and rather novel event.

Having played a Dark Elf for a good 10 levels, I can say that yes, we noticed we had no tanks, and it hurt, badly. Soon those damn High Elf Swordmasters will get what's coming to them! (*hides his Swordmaster alt*)

State of The Game - Mark Jacobs [Warhammer Online - Thanks Demonknightinuyasha!]

I hate gold sellers/spammers. No, that’s not strong enough, let me try again. I HATE GOLD SELLERS WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING. Ah, that’s better. Now, why do I hate them you may ask? I hate them for a number of reasons, most of which have been detailed in various interviews I’ve done over the years. And now that they have taken their obnoxiousness to new levels with gold service spamming, I HATE GOLD SPAMMERS EVEN MORE NOW THAN EVER BEFORE.

Remember: Mark Jacobs does not like gold farmers. So what are he and his crew doing about them?

Since WAR launched we have been banning these jerks like crazy. As of Saturday Night, we had banned about 400 of them. My CSRs have a zero tolerance policy. We don’t wait and let them stay in the game and ban them en-masse, my guys ban their useless, time-consuming butts right away. We have a strike team whose sole job it is to get these guys off our servers as quickly as possible.

Zero tolerance, strike teams...these guys aren't banning because it's their job, they're banning because they love it.

A banning we will go, a banning we will go. Heave ho off the servers yo, a banning we will go! [OGAANM, via Gamasutra]

Jacobs hopped into a forum thread about the merger over on Grimwell Online to put in his two cents worth.

Folks,

It's going to be a very, very interesting next couple of months here (let alone years).

I will say that so far I'm very impressed with the guys/gals I've been met/been working with at EA. These are not stupid people by any stretch of the imagination. And what has made me quite happy is the fact that, believe it or not, these people actually care about making great games and not just getting it in a box by Q4. Another thing that has almost brought a smile to my face is that they are willing to embrace new IP that is not just "WoW 2007" but IP that can stand on its own two (or three) feet without having to rely on the WoW userbase for its success. The conventional opinion of EA is pretty much that it is just in it to make iterative games but if you listen to what people all the way up to Larry Probst are staying, is that we have to create our own original IP, it is more than just words.

As always, I expect people to believe it when they see it.

Mark

Brian Crecente

Mark Jacobs Talks About the Mythic/EA Merger [Slashdot Games]