It's been ages since we heard a thing from Mark Jacobs (EA Mythic General Manager). A bit strange for Mark to have vanished from the community for this amount of time, when before he was always so publically involved. The last time I saw his name mentioned was in a press release about the upcoming Ultima Online expansion.
And recently instead of a letter from the General Manager, we got one from the Developer, written by Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer...
Anyone know why Mark's gone silent?
Abducted by aliens?
Pulled into the Ultima Underworld?
Being tortured by an angry Edam cheese?
Or did all those forum nerd raging twats with their incessant barrage of personal attacks drive him to say enough already?
I think I saw somewhere that he's in Asia promoting either the beta release of WAR in Taiwan or Korea. I haven't seen him since he was on G4 promoting Land of the Dead.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've gathered he's a top guy at Mythic and must be moved from game to game to get out there and promote.
Sure you're not thinking of Paul Barnett? He's been over in Asia on the promotion campaign and I saw his vids on G4 and other stuff.
ReplyDeleteI like to blame the raging tantrum children on the forums. But that's just me.
ReplyDeleteI have him chained up in the basement. He's starting to smell however, so I'll be bringing him out to hose him down and interrogate.
ReplyDeleteShould be good times.
I have seen Jeff and Paul, and Matt Shaw(accordin to information he's the CTO of Mythic) promoting WAR in Asia so far, but no Mark Jacobs.
ReplyDeleteI'd imagine he reckon it is time for him to step back a bit and let other people be the voice of Warhammer. There are people at the start who thinks Mark being on the boards did more harm than good, reducing community interaction with other devs, arguing with players and so on. So now Mythic got other MMOs to take care, he let other people - people who as one of the trolls claimed "actually work on the game" to continue his work in communicating with the WAR community.
Think of all the things he said leading up to launch. Think of all the public backlash he's seen as a result. Methinks he's more focused on doing his job (managing staff and the game) rather than making wild statements about it in the media and on forums that never seem to materialize... :S
ReplyDeleteFrom what I hear, he doesn't take criticism well. Considering WAR got almost as much heat as AoC for failing to meet expectations, I think he got his fill of negativity.
Geez so where did he go after ToA, sharing a cave with Bin Laden?
ReplyDeleteYeah probably right Snafzg. I've yet to see a developer get the balance right between being available for the community and falling into over hype.
ReplyDelete