A particularly scathing attack on EA has been launched via a blog, apparently posted by a soon to be laid-off EA employee, presumed to be working as an artist for Warhammer Online. It should be noted that since this person is posting anonymously (under the nom de plume of EA Louse) none of the following allegations are verifiable, but they are rather entertaining. Internet users seem to agree, with over 860 response comments logged in just over a day.
The bulk of EA Louse’s post revolves around Warhammer Online, but they also take a swipe at Star Wars: The Old Republic and BioWare Mythic. Qualifying their rant, EA Louse states: “I found out recently that I will be dismissed from Bioware Mythic during the next round of layoffs EA has coming this November. I’m sick of seeing EA outsource their art and find every excuse to get rid of us and still not achieve anything. Mythic is dying, and it’s not us who killed him but we’re taking the fall.”
Mythic has had a tumultuous history of late. The company rose to fame with their successful Dark Age of Camelot MMO, and were then snapped up by EA. After a failed start with Imperator Online, Mythic developed Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, which was released in 2008. Despite receiving reasonable review scores, the title has failed to attract significant numbers of players.
“We shouldn’t have released when we did, everyone knows it. The game wasn’t done, but EA gave us a deadline and threatened the leaders of Mythic with pink slips. We slipped so many times, it had to go out,” said EA Louse.
“We sold more than a million boxes, and only had 300k subs a month later. Going down ever since. It’s “stable” now, but guess what? Even Dark Age and Ultima have more subs than we have. How great is that? Games almost a decade [old] make more money than our biggest project.”
EA Louse lambastes Warhammer project leaders, saying “Jeff Hickman was the saddest excuse for a producer I’ve seen,” going on to call him a suck up and the perfect yes-man. There was apparently a lack of clear communication structure between Mythic co-founder Rob Denton and the employees, with Denton resorting to dictator-style management. Denton was also rarely present in the office.
EA Louse also reveals that Mythic co-founder Mark Jacobs was fired, rather than leaving voluntarily. Louse attributes this to a corporate coup on the part of Rob Denton: “Rob was responsible for the entire project, then blamed Mark when things went wrong.”
EA Louse goes on to list more factors leading to Warhammer Online’s shortcomings. The project producer, Jeff Hickman, was promoted from the customer service department: “The man running customer service, on the theory that the management of a large team of CSRs qualified him to run a game development project, was put in charge of a $50 million project with no previous experience.”
Marketing expectations were also never met, with Louse labelling it as “almost non-existent.” Eugene Evans was the man in charge of marketing the game. Paul Bernett, senior creative director for Warhammer Online, was also blamed for not delivering on the game’s vision and design.
“So what do they all have in common? All of them failed, badly, in Warhammer, and each of them is in a position of authority in the new company, while the rest of us are facing pink slips,” says EA Louse.
EA Louse then takes a swipe at BioWare and their upcoming MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic. “They’ve spent more money making the Old Republic than James Cameron spent on Avatar. More than $300 million! Can you believe that? They are most proud of the sound. Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work. That’s the best they have. The rest of the game is a joke. EA knows it and so does George Lucas, they’re panicking, and so most of Mythic has already been cannibalized to work in Austin on it because they can’t keep pushing back launch.”
“Old Republic will be one of the greatest failures in the history of MMOs from EA. Probably at the level of the Sims Online. We all know it too,” prophesises the Louse.
Check out the original EA Louse blog post, which has attracted some interesting comments, some of which are supposedly made by industry insiders (all posting anonymously). Just take it all with a pinch of salt.
Discuss EA Louse’s tirade in the forums
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Star Wars: The Old Republic – what we know so far
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