Mythic's Mark Jacobs has revealed that Ultima Online was set to be axed by EA, but that he was able to persuade them to pump more money into relaunching the title. 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]