Mythic Helping With SW: The Old Republic
BioWare's Greg Zeschuck said Mythic would play a part in the upcoming MMOG, Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Last month, BioWare and Mythic announced a merger of sorts, stemming from a restructuring in EA's RPG and MMO games development department. The new team now follows the lead of Ray Muzyka, co-founder and General Manager of BioWare, serving as the RPG/MMO studio's Group General Manager. Greg Zeschuck, BioWare's other co-founder, is now the Group Creative Officer, and Rob Denton has become General Manager of Mythic and thus reports to Muzyka. Mythic's co-founder and then-current General Manager, Mark Jacobs, chose to leave the company.
According to Zeschuk, the merger didn't effect the day-to-day operations. In fact, both parties were working side by side within EA and sharing technology ideas before the restructuring took place. "I think it will work very much like the Austin studio," he told Eurogamer in an interview. "Austin is one of the BioWare studios, but they're very independent. They manage the internal processes, they run it like a BioWare studio, but in the Austin vision. They've got stuff they're working on, Mythic's got stuff they're working on, and it's going to be a great team there. We've known the people there for quite a while, so in general, they've got their agenda, we've got our goals, they've got their goals, and what Ray and I do at an overall group level is try and make sure that everything's aligned and all the sharing's happening and everyone's supported and getting the resources they need."
However, when asked if he would use Mythic's experience with MMOGs (Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Online) on Star Wars: The Old Republic, he said "oh yeah, without a doubt." Star Wars: The Old Republic is BioWare's initial trek into the realm of MMOGs; using Mythic's experience would undoubtedly be a big plus in the development process and the overall longevity of the game. However, as Eurogamer pointed out, Warhammer Online is experiencing subscriber problems. Would Zeschuk be willing to lend BioWare's storytelling skills, or give the fledging MMOG a popularity boost by association?
"I don't know," he said. "I think we always have lots of opinions to share, Ray and I. We've both played Warhammer, and actually I've still been playing it on and off for a while, so I think for us it's not to much a popularity boost as just the fact that we can probably bring perspectives to the table that will be new and perhaps helpful to the guys from Mythic in the same way from an online perspective they can certainly share with us. To give credit to the Austin team, we have a number of serious MMO veterans on there, so it's certainly not neophytes, but there's absolutely opportunities to share and learn things back and forth."
Zeschuk said that the new merger hasn't combined the two development teams entirely: BioWare and Mythic still exist as separate entities. Currently in development at BioWare Austin, Star Wars: The Old Republic was officially announced in October 2008, however no confirmed release date has been set as of yet.
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Noooo!
Mythic has many nice ideas and decent artists, unfortunately the software engineers sucks ass. I'd be extremely unhappy if any of the performance and stability issues of WAR made it into TOR.
I figure more developers = better product
The more developers you have the less effecient your product becomes and the quality drops. In many cases an mmo development house with 500 people works about as fast as a development house with 50 people.
This does not bode well for SWG if Mythic is doing anything more than offering slight assistance. God help SWG if Mythic is involved with server architecture or client code. Mythic completely crapped the bed with WAR.
I thought WAR was pretty polished at launch for an MMO, but maybe it just felt that way because I was coming from AOC. I just can't really put my finger on what made WAR uninteresting for me, just too WOW-like I guess.
affect != effect
War isn't WOW like.. Hell it's just the opposite in every freaking way. Which is why it sucks.. Because of people like you they tried to hard not to be like WOW. Their balance absolutly sucks, their pve is blan at best. The engine was piss poor, and they tried to much for graphics instead of gameplay. WOW maybe cartoony, but anybody with a computer could run it. Their rvr is great or would be if they would actually have some players on the servers.
I really wish they wouldn't take advice from mythic, because the only thing I got out of them is they were to lazy to fix a game that could've been the "next best thing".
You want the next big thing.. Take the good from WOW: pve, more worried about gameplay then graphics, and take the good from War the orvr objectives, and the sc maps were cooler. Ignore them both on balance because their both jacked to hell when it comes to that except wow actually trys and simply have fotm classes were mythic has foty classes.
Without question the best PVP in any MMO ever made was RVR in DAOC. You're damn right TOR will benefit from the help of Mythic.
Down with MMOG; I want the next Old Republic to be an excellent sequel to KOTOR/KOTOR II and not some non-linear mess of story telling.
This does not bode well for SWG if Mythic is doing anything more than offering slight assistance. God help SWG if Mythic is involved with server architecture or client code. Mythic completely crapped the bed with WAR.
Uh..... SWG has nothing to do with Bioware.
Great, just what I need, another MMORPG to get addicted to...
I have to agree with Deuce271. Mythic Kicked a lot of butt with RVR in DAOC. Although they royally crapped the game with class balancing. I quit after playing consistently for 2 years because they nerfed the Berserker class cause of whiners and this is after they said they wouldn't make any changes to classes this far into the game pfft! They just cant get class balancing right and they rule with an iron fist when it comes to suggesting anything to the devs. Been there done that BS
I wish they would just drop all the mmo crap and just make a proper kotor3
I hope they don't do anything more than listen to Mythic suggestions and nod their heads to make them feel good. Bioware is quite capable on their own.
the ONLY thing I wouldn't mind is a tool or module or whatever you call it the equivalent of the tome of knowledge.
as far as someone saying they tried for graphics - uh what?