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Muzyka thinks new Mythic/BioWare group is a collaboration opportunity
Gamasutra and BioWare co-founder Ray Muzyka sat down to chat about EA's first genre-focused group, aptly named the RPG/MMO Group. The original announcement was kind of vague, which really got people speculating over what it meant. ("RPG" before "MMO" in the group title? That must be a sign! Of what, who knows.)In the interview, Muzyka finally explains just what exactly the new Group entails: "It's a collaboration opportunity. Each of the groups continues to make the same thing in their [own locations]. But it's fuelling and enabling more communication, collaboration, best practice sharing, encouraging each other to play each others' games -- but no formal change per se in what anybody's doing."There do not appear to be any plans for co-development or tech-sharing between Mythic and BioWare just yet, but it is something the group is looking at. "We're all part of the same company at the end of the day. We're studios within the same organization, which is a group now within the EA Games label."Tech-sharing could really be to Mythic's benefit right now as they're still grappling with server stability and client performance issues nearly a year after release. It has gotten to the point where they are even considering stripping fortresses, the primary culprit for such issues, from Warhammer Online.
More reactions to BioWAAAGH!
We've been keeping our eyes on various blogs and forums discussing yesterday's big news that Mythic and BioWare are being restructured under EA's new MMO/RPG gaming division and that Mark Jacobs is no longer working for EA. Here's a summary of what we've found so far.Many people are under the false impression that Mythic and BioWare have merged. One of Mythic's developers made this clarification: "We're still Mythic Entertainment, an Electronic Arts Studio, as we have been. I've posted this elsewhere, but we're not 'merging.' We are still a completely separate entity within EA, just as Bioware is, simply now grouped under the same MMO/RPG grouping and reporting to one person, collectively."
