EA confirms Warhammer Online studio given new "BioWare
Mythic" name; no development changes indicated.




About this time last year, Electronic Arts tweaked its
organizational structure to lump BioWare and Mythic Entertainment
into a newly formed massively multiplayer online/role-playing game
group. The move put BioWare heads Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk atop the
pyramid, while longtime Mythic boss and cofounder Mark Jacobs departed
the company. Now, EA has taken one more step toward folding the two
studios together, confirming for GameSpot today that Mythic
Entertainment has been renamed BioWare Mythic.



Mythic
just got some new group mates.

The move comes as Mythic continues to struggle gaining traction with its
big-budget fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Having received solid reviews
following its September 2008 launch, Warhammer Online initially appeared
to be on a World of Warcraft-challenging trajectory. Three weeks after
launch, the game peaked at 750,000
registered users, but that figure had dwindled to just
300,000 by February 2009. EA has not offered an updated subscriber
count since then.
In March 2009, Mythic announced that it would be taking 63 of the game's
servers offline in an effort to consolidate the evaporating player
base. Mythic was also reportedly heavily affected by EA's substantial
headcount reduction enacted at the end of 2009. According to unconfirmed
reports, more than one-third of
the studio was laid off as part of EA's 1,500-job culling.
Mythic's new status as a BioWare studio makes it the second
MMORPG-focused outfit within the Edmonton, Canada-based developer's
structure. The other studio, BioWare Austin, is currently at work on
EA's next big effort to crack the MMORPG market, Star Wars: The Old
Republic. That title is currently slated for a 2011 launch on the PC.
EA did not indicate whether Mythic's role within the company would
change or whether the rebranding would affect Warhammer Online.