The developers comedians of Mythic Entertainment's  "Warhammer Online," creative director Paul Barnett and executive producer Jeff Hickman, spoke to us at New York Comic Con to tell us about their new live expansion "A Call To Arms," what they're doing to fix the game, and why you should play "WAR" if you haven't already.

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After several staffers were let go two weeks ago, Mythic VP Mark Jacobs revealed on the "Warhammer Online" website today that the company is once again reducing its staff. Read more...

During EA's earnings call yesterday afternoon, it was said that "Warhammer Online" has over 300,000 paying subscribers in North America and Europe. This is in contrast to the 500,000 who signed up in its first week of release last September. Read more...

In a span of two days, layoffs have been confirmed at Sony, Microsoft, Electronic Arts and Sega, with some companies cutting thousands of jobs. Read more...

In a "State of the Game" message from EA Mythic head honcho Mark Jacobs today, the MMO developer announced two new classes for the game: the Knight of the Blazing Sun for Order and the Black Guard for Destruction.

Those additions will be arriving later this year, some time after the release of the next "World of Warcraft" expansion, which ships November 13.

When I spoke with Jacobs yesterday about the announcement, he promised a major event surrounding the introduction of the new classes, but declined to specify what the event would be or what specific attributes the new classes would have. "Almost everything we're doing with the classes involves buffing up abilities, like adding more things as opposed to taking them away," he said.

And as promised, the classes, which were cut from the game before launch due to quality issues, will be part of Patch 1.1. Jacobs told me that the patch will fix issues players have been having with the mail system and will include improvements on the chat, itemization and targeting systems as well as client performance. There will be new content as well, such as 14 new quest chains, two new Lairs and more unlockables for the Tome of Knowledge.

I also wondered if there were any major design changes when it came to Public Quests and Scenarios. Jacobs said that the development team was looking into scaling Public Quests. In other words, when players can't find enough others to do a Public Quest, he suggested that the quest might automatically adjust to the number of players available. "So if there's only five people in the area versus how it was designed for 10, then the objectives will be easier and the rewards will change," he explained. "Let's say you had to kill 20 skeletons; now you only have to kill 10." He added that the scaling of Public Quests might be added before the 1.1 patch, but he couldn't guarantee it.

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Earlier today we published an interview with "World of Warcraft" game director Jeff Kaplan where he shared his thoughts on competing MMORPG "Warhammer Online."

We reached out to EA Mythic head and lead "Warhammer Online" designer Mark Jacobs to clarify about his company's beta policies. He responded after the story was published.

In doing so, Jacobs also wanted to respond to some of the comments about "Warhammer Online" that Kaplan had made. Here's his defense via a phone call to MTV Multiplayer this morning: Read more...

After years of development, today is the official worldwide release of "Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning."

At a demo last month, I had an extensive interview with EA Mythic head and lead "Warhammer Online" designer Mark Jacobs. He spoke about the alarming failure rate of MMOs and what's needed to be successful against the unprecedented success of "World of Warcraft."

But as a regular "WoW" player who's never played any form of "Warhammer," I also wanted to know straight-up: Why should I play "WAR" instead of "WoW"?

Here's what Jacobs told me during that interview: Read more...

"We obviously had a major bump when 'Burning Crusade' came out. When [Blizzard] released that expansion, they raised the expectations of the player; they put in some of what we call 'water cooler quests,' the things that you talk about around the watercooler. We looked at the amount of content they put in that and said we need more time if we want to add some of those things, if we want our own water cooler quests or more water cooler quests. So our choice was to delay the game and spend more time on it. It was a major bump."

-- EA Mythic head and lead "Warhammer Online" designer Mark Jacobs, answering my question during a recent interview about what "bumps" the developers faced while making the game

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Mythic VP and lead "Warhammer Online" designer Mark Jacobs told me some of the things needed to make a successful MMO. But he also said if you're looking to make an online game nowadays, the odds are against you.

"If you look at the numbers, MMOs have the highest failure rates of any entertainment product," Jacobs said. Going all the way back 11 years to the release of "Ultima Online," the first MMO to reach 100,000 subscribers, he said that there have only a been handful of successful MMOs compared to the number of them being developed.

I mentioned how the measure of success nowadays might be if your game still exists in a year. "It does seem that way," he said, "and it is just tremendously sad when you look at the amount of money and effort that goes into MMOs."

In our recent conversation about the state of online games, we also touched on why last year's "Hellgate: London" went under, and what the troubled "Age of Conan" can do to prevent the same fate.

Read more...

Mythic VP and lead "Warhammer Online" designer Mark Jacobs said it wouldn't take a billion dollars for a competing MMO to take on "World of Warcraft" -- maybe only $100 million.

"When certain people throw out ridiculous numbers, you know they're throwing out ridiculous numbers because they want to scare off competition or they want to make themselves seem invincible and that sort of nonsense," he said, referring to a statement Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick made at an investor meeting earlier this year.

"Realistically, if you're going into this space for the first time, and you want to compete with 'WoW' and you want to compete with us -- because we're going into that same space -- you've got to make sure that you have at least 100 million dollars," he said.

When I sat down with Jacobs last week during a demo of the game, we talked about what makes an MMO successful. Having worked in the industry creating MUDs in the '80s, online games in the '90s, and Mythic's biggest hit "Dark Age of Camelot" in 2001, he had some advice for those wanting to make it in the MMO business.

So why is $100 million the magic number? Read more...