Mythic Community Manager no longer needed, will be missed.
Over the past three weeks, Mythic has undergone many changes. Ultima Online’s Lead Designer was laid off. Warhammer Online lost their lead developer. There may or may not have been other layoffs.
Now, Tim “Dropixel” Chappell has informed the Warhammer and Ultima Online communities that his position was no longer needed.
Mythic no longer needs a community manager for Ultima Online, Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, and Dark Age of Camelot. Let that sink in for a moment. Remember, this person was paid for by three different games. Really let that sink in for a moment.
Here is his letter to the communities:
Hello Everyone.
I am very sorry to say that I was informed that my position was no longer needed. Though I had many titles I was handling for Mythic, I grew to love and appreciate all the communities and only wish I could have had more time or resources to get more involved with them. Though I had only been in the position for a little over a year, I will miss a great many of you and hope that you keep in touch.
Mythic MMO’s will always have a strong place in my heart. Over the past 5 years I got to work with everyone of them and couldn’t have been happier with my co-workers, customers or communities. I hope that some of you will stay in contact. I will visit the boards on occasion to remember all the fun I had and all those great personalities that make up Mythic’s community base.
I don’t have any current plans as I am occupied with taking care of family as my father is in the midst of a nightmarish battle with cancer. (If I missed your e-mails over the past couple weeks; this is why and I will get to them soon.) However, I do have a couple mobile projects and art
projects in the works that I am very excited to finish. Until then, you may see me in games or on Twitter. Though I have been busy of late, I usually play SWTOR and L4D, so if you play and see a Dropixel named character in some form, be sure and say hi.Take care and remember; don’t swim against the tide. It will just leave you tired and frustrated.
-Timothy Chappell
I always thought he was a nice guy who worked to help the players where he could, and this is evidenced by player responses in the links below. I hope he finds a company that appreciates community management.
More Coverage:
– Warhammer Online – Official BioWare Forums
– Stratics
– Massively/Joystiq
This is a very devastating blow to the community, one which many may not feel or realize just yet. I had a few people jump on me privately for some of the “doom and gloom” things I said, but when a company decides they officially no longer need bother with managing their MMORPG communities, things are not looking up.
From CNBC: “Despite the cutbacks, resignations and PR problems, investors have been fairly positive on EA since the beginning of the year. The stock is up 23 percent year to date. Analysts still view the stock as a “show me” story, though – as the company has made lofty promises, but failed to live up to them in recent years.
Of analysts covering EA, four list it as a strong buy and 5 have it as a buy. 17, however, have a hold on the stock, waiting for the company to pull out of its slump. Only two list it as a sell.
Analysts have noted for some time that EA’s failure to execute on its financial goals was reason for concern. And as development costs rise for games on next generation systems, the company is apparently looking to take a more defensive position.
“EA faces a number of crucial decision points regarding resource allocation and franchise planning in the hit-driven video game business,” said Baird Equity Research’s Colin Sebastian in a note to investors.
Sebastian is neutral on EA.”
Suits and the investors who pay them… Reminds me of a significant jump in UPS stock a while back immediately after the news they were increasing shipping rates. All hail the mighty dollar! Well, the once mighty dollar. At least the CEO’s gone, though I doubt he’s hurting much over it.
Actually, I’m not sure John Riccitiello’s departure is a good thing.
I’ll take your word for it as I don’t know the details of his influence or personal character. I do have some RL experience with watching dozens of workers get laid off because of poor and shortsighted business decisions by the execs. A lot of them are like wartime kings who stand atop a distant hill safely watching their armies get slaughtered because they suck at military strategy. It just angers me to no end to watch good people suffer because of the poor decisions of their masters, especially when said masters have insane compensation even if they fuck up royally and are outright terminated. How can you have executive accountability when there’s so little pain for being fired? I understand that to get the best execs you now need to offer these “golden parachute” benefits, but it hurts the system in the long run.
Anyway, if John was a good guy then I’m sorry he’s gone. I just like to see people held accountable for their sins, just as I like to see them rewarded for virtue. I have nothing against EA, but my tolerance threshold for bullshit and stupidity (a character flaw to my eternal frustration for certain) is near zero these days.
If you read through some of my articles about EA at Old Aiera, I look at some of the turnarounds EA saw and demonstrated in recent years. Look back still further in the old archives and you’ll see relics of when I too hated EA more or less as a matter of principle.
They changed. Not quickly enough, maybe, nor in every way, but in certain key respects they did change…enough to soften my opinion of them. And Riccitiello was behind a number of those developments in one way or another.
Honestly? I think had he been less hampered by the need to appease shareholders, he could have done a lot more with the company. Alas.
WtF, I’d throw in the two Doctors and BioWare in general – I would feel better with those two looking out for BioWare/Mythic/etc. With all of the shuffling around and changing Mythic’s mission to an emphasis on mobile gaming, it’s very worrisome.
Sanctimonia, everything you brought up hits home, and I’d just like to add that EA is taking UO/DAOC/WAR players for granted. UO has less than half a dozen people who actively code/write/animate the game now. As others and myself have pointed out, we as UO players are still paying the same fees as if we had several times that many adding several times the amount of content that will be added this year. We pay anywhere from $10 – $13 a month depending on whether you do the six month gametime or not.
In some ways, it’s our fault for continuing to pay for less and less. The problem is, nobody wants to see the Mythic MMORPGs be canceled, and EA knows that, and so they’ve won the game of chicken before it ever started. If UO/DAOC/WAR players got together and canceled their subscriptions, EA is not going to ask us or themselves “what can we do to get you all back to playing (and paying)?” They will simply close them down.
I’ve been saying for the better part of a decade that if EA wants to kill off UO, they will simply do so. They won’t look at how people are playing the game, they won’t delve into any changes that can be made within the game (any changes an EA executive suggests would be centered around fees/staffing/DLC). They will simply kill UO off.
The problem is that they have set UO, Dark Age of Camelot, and Warhammer Online up for failure. By cutting the teams down to such small numbers, and by killing off community management (which has been a weakness of Mythic for the last several years as it stands), they are dooming the growth of the MMORPGs, and MMORPGs need growth. Every week, every day, somebody somewhere is making the decision to stop playing, has found a new game, has found themselves unable to play for whatever reason. If MMORPGs don’t replace those customers, they will reach the point of no return.
Continuing the doom and gloom trend, I’ll say this: I’ve spoken with probably 20+ people (and still have a lot of people to talk to) in-game and out-of-game, and none of them feel confident about UO’s future after the recent layoffs and the realization of just how small the team is.
There are a few that try to throw some positives out there, but even they see the writing on the wall, and feel like there is a timer ticking down.
FYI when I hit Reply just now it doesn’t scroll down to the Reply field. Still works but is a bit confusing if not used to it.
That could very well be. I think the main reason successful “small” businesses choose not to become corporations, other than the stupid Sarbanes Oxley charade (experienced its before/after ineffectiveness firsthand) is the loss of control and shift in paradigm. It’s a bit like the difference between being loved and feared. You reap some of the same benefits, but it’s still two different worlds on many levels. I fault the owners for selling their child as much as the investors for being so single-mindedly focused on return. Capitalism is a useful motivator, but it loses much of its appeal when the love of one’s product becomes secondary to the fear of losing capital.
I’m pretty Libertarian, bordering on anarchic even, but I really pine for a time when people place equal value on making a living and creating something amazing and useful. I’m tired of watching the bone fragments fly out from the incessant grinding of gears while the masses just carry on like nothing is happening.
End of rant. 😉
@Deckard Agreed. And I’m quite sure that if anyone at EA has given much thought to it they probably think they’re doing us a favor by not retiring these games. The way I see it is that at some point all “online” games are going to reach a point where it’s not worth the publisher’s while to continue to run and maintain servers. So I say kill the servers, stop patching bugs, and halt the creation of new content. And release the client and server source code on github or sourceforge with whatever documentation’s available.
We can play old NES games without the source code because they didn’t require a server and some very clever people have reverse engineered the platform hardware. With games like UO the difficulty rises substantially. I wish more companies would take a page from id’s book with respect to this idea of freeing dead projects and letting those who actually give a damn nurture them into the future. Until then the only option is to make our own games in their image with a kinder, wiser heart.
Sanctimonia>> The way I see it is that at some point all “online” games are going to reach a point where it’s not worth the publisher’s while to continue to run and maintain servers. So I say kill the servers
Actually they did kill the servers. After upgrading to new hardware at the start of 2011, they decided those servers were outdated at the end of last year, and they moved all of the servers to Amazon’s Cloud service. It’s caused a lot of problems for people, including a lot of lag depending on what shard you play.
Presumably, it was a major cost-cutting measure, as EA only has to pay for CPU and bandwidth and it can vary depending on number of players, unlike having dedicated servers that you pay for no matter what. You also don’t have to deal with physical hardware.
Either UO is in extremely bad shape and the savings of moving to Amazon’s cloud system allowed it to live a while longer, or they are trying to squeeze everything they can out of UO.
@Sanctiomina
Here’s the really ironic thing about all of this: If all of these measures are to cut costs and keep UO going, they are doing the opposite, they are insuring its failure, and many of the players are watching this play out, and they are getting angrier and angrier at EA.
They won’t be going to Ultima Forever – many view it the same way Warhammer Online players viewed the now-canceled Wrath of Heroes – a game that shared part of a name and sucked up resources that could have been spent on improving their respective MMORPG. They loathe Ultima Forever.
They will be going to free shards, or to Shroud of the Avatar or Camelot Unchained (if it succeeds) or to Elder Scrolls Online (lead creative/designer is a UO alumni). Same holds true for many Warhammer and Dark Age of Camelot players. And the dev teams of these games know there are/will be a lot of bitter UO/WAR/DAOC fans floating around, looking for a new game that isn’t EA.
Funny how EA is helping these other companies out by driving players away.
And it’s not helped by the fact that Mythic can’t seem to make up its mind on what it wants to be, especially after the major management shakeup that happened prior to the start of the year (Mythic VP is no longer with EA, producers shuffled around). They push the idea that they are focused on mobile RPG games, yet are not doing a good job of managing the desktop MMORPGs and the respective communities that they already have.
I know they don’t decide their budget, and the real blame is due to management above Mythic, but there are a few areas that Mythic has let down the players, especially when it comes to communication.
Agreed 100% with everything you’ve said, Deckard. EA’s been dangling a few carrots for UO, but they’re pretty skinny and nothing that seems to have much potential for plumping up UO’s subscription numbers. Things are looking pretty dismal.
I wonder if anyone’s even paying attention to the Mythic website ( http://www.mythicentertainment.com/index.php ) at this point. It still has pictures and a full page devoted to Wrath of Heroes, with no mention that it’s been closed down.