Mark Jacobs' unforeseen exit from Warhammer Online developer Mythic, a departure made known during the revelation of the BioWare/Mythic merger, left many fans and colleagues stunned and confused. In a lengthy post on his personal blog, Jacobs explained the reasoning for his evacuation -- he actually left the company early in May, when EA informed him that "they wanted to make some changes within the Games Label." Since that day, he's been out of contact from the rest of the Mythic team.

However, he's not ready to talk smack about the gaming industry juggernaut that forced the changes upon his studio -- Jacobs explained, "Over my 23 years of making games professionally I have refrained from attacking the competition, former and/or current partners, other game developers," and so on. You're a stronger man than us, Mr. Jacobs.

[Via Massively]

EA is mushing up Mythic and BioWare into one team led by BioWare's General Manager, Ray Muzyka. The new "RPG/MMO studio group" will have BioWare's Greg Zeschuk as the "group creative officer." Mythic's General Manager, Mark Jacobs, who oversaw the less-than-successful Warhammer Online, has apparently been shown the door. Rob Denton, who was the chief operating officer at Mythic, will now become general manager and report to Muzyka.

Upon contacting EA, BioWare and Mythic, we were informed that a formal announcement would be made later in the day. We'll update as we hear more.

[Via Massively]

Joystiq's sister site Massively.com has all the news you'll need about MMOs. Here's the best, brightest, and most interesting stuff from the last week, all in one convenient place for your MMO minute.

	10 things I wish I had known before building an MMO Continuing with our countdown to EverQuest's 10th Anniversary, today marks the first of three special articles containing the retrospective thoughts on MMO development from the team that made it so popular. Today's "10 things I wish I had known before building an MMO" starts off with Steve Klug, Lead Programmer for EverQuest.
	Massively's EVE Online Apocrypha expansion hands-on Massively got word that EVE Online lead game designer Noah Ward, aka CCP Hammerhead, would be in New York City last week. We jumped at the chance to find out more about the Apocrypha expansion, and Ward was kind enough to give us our own hands-on demo while answering our questions about where EVE Online is heading.

Last week, Mythic unleashed info regarding several "live events" for its MMO, Warhammer Online. One of these live events is titled Land of the Dead, a zone that features new public quests, instances, items and a pyramid housing the Tomb King (the dungeon's focal point). With the event set for a June release, we'd thought Mythic told us everything it possibly could about the upcoming expansion. Well, not the case, as Jeff Hickman and creative director Paul Barnett revealed some new details to the folks at Eurogamer.

We now know that the Land of the Dead will include content from level 25 onto endgame raiding and that the "Land" mentioned in the title is a place where the Order and Destruction factions constantly wage war. Once in, players can find themselves under attack by a rival faction at any time, even when in an instance. Jeff explains that the Land of the Dead will include two areas: The Necropolis and the Tomb of the Vulture Lord, and that since it's RVR-gated, each faction must fight for ownership of the dungeon. He fully expects the dungeon "to change hands nightly," so if you're in there raiding and a different faction gains ownership, you could suddenly find yourself under attack. This place isn't for rookies, however, as Jeff emphasizes this really is for levels 25 and up and "designed to supplement our end game content after Lost Vale."

Before the zone is opened to the public in June, Mythic will hold a race allowing one of the factions early access to the zone for a short while before release.

When that bevy of new content goes live for Warhammer Online later this month, there could be more than 300,000 fans around to enjoy it. That's the word from our sister site Massively, which reports that developer Mythic Entertainment could now boast nearly a third of a million accounts for the game.

That said, let's put the numbers in perspective: If all of WAR's subscribers were a classroom of 30 students, and all World of Warcraft's subscribers were represented by the other students at the school, then there wouldn't be a bully without wedgie arthritis or an unsold tube of acne cream for miles. (Thanks, representative math!)

Joystiq has learned from several well-placed sources that a second round -- a much more serious round -- of layoffs has struck Mythic Entertainment. These cuts go further and deeper than the last round, which saw several members of the support staff let go. Current estimates indicate that between 60 and 130 people have been let go. These layoffs most certainly affect the development staff, and we've been told extend even to the ranks of senior designers. These rumored layoffs come less than a week after the announcement of a full-scale live event expansion for Warhammer Online.

We've contacted EA for a statement and are awaiting a response. The publisher stated yesterday that it had increased its number of planned layoffs. If you're one of those who Mythic let go, please feel free to contact us.

Update: We've placed EA's statement after the break.

[Thanks to Massively for the assist.]

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is getting its first major booster shot just six months after its initial launch. Titled A Call to Arms, the changes will come to the game in the form of a number of in-game events held over the course of a few months -- the devs are calling it a "live expansion." Our ninja-looting sister site Massively has all the details about the upcoming events as well as an in-depth interview with WAR executive producer Jeff Hickman, but here's a basic breakdown of the events, and the additions they'll bring:

• Call to Arms: Bitter Rivals (Late Feb.) -- The Bitter Rivals event features quests, tasks and RvR activities which will allow players to unlock the once-canceled Orc Choppa and Dwarf Slayer classes. Players who don't participate in the events will unlock the two classes a week later.

• Call to Arms: Beyond the Sands (April) and Rise of the Tomb Kings (May) -- Hickman didn't share many details about these two events, only explaining that they would eventually lead up to the launch of ...

• The Land of the Dead (June) -- An internal dungeon (with accompanying external zone) which realms will compete to control. It will feature new public quests, instances, items and a pyramid which houses the Tomb King; the dungeon's focal point which Hickman promises will incite "crazy epic adventures."

On Friday, January 16th, we heard through the tubes that layoffs had struck at EA's Mythic Entertainment, currently riding high acceptably with Warhammer Online. Here's what we were told: 21 customer service employees, half of QA and all of the playtest group were let go. We followed up with EA for a statement regarding the matter.

EA's corporate communications informed us that the publisher already announced a "cost-cutting initiative that includes facility closures and a headcount reduction," impacting about 10% of employees. The company doesn't plan to make any further announcements outside of its scheduled earnings report and can't give particular information about facilities.

Specific questions about the status and future of Warhammer Online were not answered. All the best to the EA employees who still have their jobs -- we'll try to get an EA butcher's bill together if we learn more.

EA has accepted the warm embrace of Steam and will begin using the digital distribution service. Following reports that Spore was crawling out of the primordial ooze to Steam, Valve announced today that several of the latest EA titles are available now, with many more coming over the next couple weeks.

Available now:

• Spore
• Spore Creepy & Cute Parts Pack
• Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning
• Mass Effect
• Need for Speed Undercover
• EA Sports' FIFA Manager 2009

Coming Soon:

• Mirror's Edge
• Red Alert 3
• Dead Space

Sister site Big Download contacted EA to find out if older PC games would become available, but the publisher wouldn't comment. Also, in case you're wondering, EA games on Steam apparently don't install or use third-party DRM set-ups. According to Valve "the only DRM it uses is Steam itself."

[Via Big Download]

It may be nothing but a number to you, but to fans of Warhammer Online, patch 1.1a is the sickest, illest patch to come along since Game Update 1.0.6. Just how dope could one patch, which just went live in game, be? How about new careers? How about armor set improvements? Still nothing? Well how about one public quest in each chapter of Tier 1 being easier? How about that business?

Our friends at Massively have all the gruesome details if you're still not convinced of 1.1a's freshness.

As the recently released expansion for World of Warcraft clearly displayed with its mind-boggling sales figures, add-ons for MMOs (particularly ones with a large player base) can be lucrative undertakings. Despite this fact, Mythic developer Mark Jacobs recently issued a surprising statement on a Warhammer Online forum thread in which commenters were discussing features they'd like to see in the title's first expansion. According to Jacobs, Mythic won't be developing a WAR expansion until the kinks have been worked out of the core game.

Jacobs explained Mythic's reasoning, stating that they have no interest in "pushing an XPack out the door at the expense of WAR." While this may have come as a disappointment to the posters on the thread in question, we're sure the game's player base is appreciative of Mythic's continuing siege on gameplay snafus.

Joystiq's sister site Massively.com has all the news you'll need about MMOs. Here's the best, brightest, and most interesting stuff from the last week, all in one convenient place for your MMO minute.

	EA licenses Dungeon Keeper MMO, for China Electronic Arts has licensed out the Dungeon Keeper property as an MMO to Chinese-based developer NetDragon Websoft with the intent to eventually bring it overseas.
	Warhammer Online 1.0.6 patch adds new classes, tidal wave of updates Today, Mythic brings us Black Guards and Knights of the Blazing Sun! For those who didn't finish the full Heavy Metal event, don't worry, the classes will become available to everyone next week.
	DC Universe probably coming early 2010/late 2009, says comics writer Most intriguing was his up-front information on the game's launch window. According to Johns, the developers are aiming to release the game in "early 2010, it could be late 2009." Read on into the brief interview for the goods.
	Richard Bartle responds to "torture quest" issue A few days ago we ran a report on Richard Bartle's take on a torture quest in World of Warcraft, the Art of Persuasion. Since then, the discussion has exploded and some have taken Bartle's quotes out of context. Because of this, Bartle has created a follow-up post to clarify some of the points that may have been misinterpreted.
	NCsoft clarifies its rationale for closing Tabula Rasa Last week we spoke very briefly with NCsoft's Director of Public Relations David Swofford about the company's decision to close Tabula Rasa. He reiterated the basic statement we heard from several sources surrounding the call: this was all about the bottom line.

We know that this is only going to interest a small portion of you, but if you're part of the Warhammer Online fan base, it's captivating stuff. When players in WAR finish a Public Quest, the loot they get is partially dependent on their "Contribution" rating, which supposedly credits them for the amount of damage and healing they did during the quest.

According to the tests of some players though, that number is random, applied when the player enters a zone, and remains stagnant until they leave it or log off. This has been kicking around for a couple of days and Mythic has not, as of yet, leaped to its own defense. We'll let you know when they speak up.

[Via Massively]

Joystiq's sister site Massively.com has all the news you'll need about MMOs. Here's the best, brightest, and most interesting stuff from the last week, all in one convenient place for your MMO minute.

	Free Realms site relaunches with beta registration, videos, and more! Free Realms throws together a AAA-quality teen-aimed fantasy MMO experience together with free-to-play and microtransactional economics. An ambitious and unique undertaking, to be sure, from a fairly traditional company.
	Ask Massively: Wrath vs All Comers Dear Massively, I am SO SICK of all of the coverage of Wrath of the Lich King! I demand that someone at Massively write about something that isn't World of Warcraft related this week. Non-WoW players aren't interested in an expansion for a game that they don't even play. Someone throw me a freakin' bone here!
	Three Rings officially launches Whirled project Whirled, an ambitious web/virtual world hybrid from Three Rings, launched into Beta early this year. We were incredibly impressed with the project even back then, bouncing pieces of tofu or not.
	Lich King begins assault on Azeroth, starting with Orgrimmar World of Warcraft players are experiencing a world event leading up to the launch of Wrath of the Lich King. No, it's not another invasion of flesh-craving zombies -- but it's just as cool.
	Warhammer Online 1.0.5 patch notes live, Public Test server opened Over on the official site for Warhammer Online, patch notes are now available for the latest big update. Patch 1.0.5 is not only be a nice big refresh for the game, but will also be the first which players can extensively test on a Beta realm with copied characters beforehand.