14 DAY TRIAL // Recently, Electronic Arts announced that it was consolidating BioWare and Mythic into basically one studio set to handle all of its role playing games and some of the most important MMO projects. Mark Jacobs, one of the founders and the leader of Mythic, has left his outfit and the two men who lead BioWare will now be taking the reins of the newly formed entity.
The big question now is, of course, how much Mythic and BioWare will be collaborating on Star Wars: The Old Republic, the MMO that BioWare is working on and which is providing a lot of firsts, like fully voiced characters and complex branching dialogue trees.
Talking to Eurogamer, Greg Zeschuk, one of the co-founders of BioWare, stated that “We've both played Warhammer, and actually I've still been playing it on and off for a while, so I think for us it's not too much a popularity boost as just the fact that we can probably bring perspectives to the table that will be new and perhaps helpful to the guys from Mythic in the same way from an online perspective they can certainly share with us.”
Zeschuk has also clarified the situation of the two developers saying that they are not merged but have been building a closer relationship, aimed at sharing experiences, design concepts and ideas in order to make sure that both Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic manage to offer players the best experience while giving World of Warcraft from Blizzard a run for its money.
BioWare is quite busy at the moment working on Dragon Age: Origins, which is set to be launched during fall, and Mass Effect 2, which is set to arrive at the same time, while also building The Old Republic, the most ambitious MMO project announced lately.