Sanya clarifies exactly what that collaboration is likely to look like, using a fantastic fruit metaphor.

If EA sold fruit, they would have a Vice President of Citrus, and bananas would have their own VP. If the fruit selling version of EA acquired a studio that sold kumquats, that studio would be assigned to the VP of Citrus, even though there is room for debate as to whether or not kumquats are “citrus” or something else entirely.

While my personal view of the industry differs pretty significantly with Mark’s, it’s hard not to appreciate the dedication and enthusiasm the man had for online gaming, Mythic as a company, and Warhammer as a game.

Good luck, sir, in your next endeavor. A big good luck and congratulations on what I hope is great, amazing things for the Mythic Entertainment crew.

– Left to right, top to bottom -

1.) BioShock. A momentous moment in the game, that thankfully I could take a snap of without spoiling anything. I took a snap right after this that was a spoiler, of course.

2.) This is the strange non-crazy illithid in one of the House areas. I think his name is ‘Bob’ or something.

3.) The special ’social’ area behind the scenes in EverQuest II has a piano with its own built-in dancers.They’re wacky haflings named after some of the community folks, lest I’m mistaken.

4.) I dunno why I took this screencap; I just really liked the way this lizard was dressed.

5.) From one of the test houses, this great tent and a pair of animated-pet decorated bed was quite a treat. Along the walls were pretty much every one of the heritage quest weapons. Awesome, amazing example of EQ2’s housing.

6.) I really really have wanted to like the offerings in the EQ2 marketplace, and until this awesome spellcasting outfit dropped in I hadn’t. Want. Want want want. Not want at $10. But want.

7.) Err. Sometimes when I’m watching stuff on iTunes I catch snapshots because my cap button is a weird one. What can I say, I actually like Clone Wars.

8.) One of the early moments in the dwarf starting quest in LotRO. Gandalf kicks a cave troll to the curb, and looks really hawt doing it.

9.) The amazing-fantastico Podcasters of Bree! L to R, Back to front. Brent, Darren, Jonathan, Adam, Michael, Craig.

10.) This is what it looks like to podcast with the guys from the Gamers with Jobs crew. This is another of those accidental screencaps that turned out so nicely I kept it.

11.) This is me as Amak sitting in the Theed square during the SWG Fifth Anniversary celebration.

12.) I think this is from the second hub in the High Elf area in Warhammer Online. I love the ‘destroyed beauty’ look that WAR goes with in a lot of places. Very effective.

13.) And yet, the regalness of the intact bits are pretty awesome too. This is from the Imperial City, near the library.

14.) I love this graphical bug. Huge pets are just so awesome. This Rex is enormous compared to the little peeps.

15.) I love the theme in the Nethers. Amazing, amazing zone. I don’t understand why most folks don’t like this one.

16.) The, um, Dark Lady’s new skin. A lot to like, and not just for the obvious reasons. Check out that bow!

17.) I actually really like the WoW comic. It’s popcorn fun, and awesome to see events from the comic show up in game.

18.) A quick cap from the world event that presaged Wrath of the Lich King’s release.

19.) My favorite place in the whole wide game! Gjalerbron all the way. Howling Fjord or bust.

20.) Speaking of which, this central area is majestically amazing no matter where you’re standing.

21.) I … just like penguins. Especially these penguin models. Squak!

Over at Massively they’re talking about the layoffs of some dozens of people from Mythic Entertainment. To a lot of people this is a sign of the times, yet another economic indicator of terrible downturns. It’s also (to yet others) a result of the impact of a game design that couldn’t overcome the inexorable gravity well of World of Warcraft.

I couldn’t care less. I’m at the point now where I look at games and all I see are people. So Warhammer Online, the Warhammer Online I’ve been playing for the last three months, is now gone. Justin, Angie … both gone.

Update: Carrie pinged me to let me know she hadn’t been let go. And yes, I know this was a petulant and infantile response to this situation. I’m not going to apologize for expressing what I felt here. I have to do a lot of tongue biting most days, and I just felt like getting this out.

Thanks for putting up with my hissy fit.

And Carrie. Carrie Gouskos. Carrie is the woman who provided me with one of the finest pieces of interviewing I’ve ever had, a piece that essentially consisted of me asking a question and then sitting back and listening for thirty minutes. Carrie even thanked me for that piece. Nobody ever thanks me. SHE FUCKING MADE THE TOME! It’s one of the best parts of Warhammer, a clear leap forward in storytelling, questing, and achievements. And in thanks they show her the door?

Mythic, sorry, I quit. I’m done with your game. I don’t need to play it anymore, I’m not going to defend its potential anymore, I’m done. You spent millions of dollars on a game built purely on the passion of the developers. These people poured years of their lives into this game, spent late nights, lost personal credit with friends, spouses, and otherwise … they crossed continents and made themselves into pure pillars of game design to make this game stand upright. And now they’re out.

Hey every other game developer out there! Hire Carrie Gouskos! Hire Justin and Angie! I can personally vouch for their excellence as a third party.

If any of you have ever wondered why games bloggers are so bitter, why games journalists are so vicious, and why developers themselves are so twitchy it’s becuase of crap like this. Down here on the ground, we’re living and breathing these games. At the top of the pyramid, it’s all just numbers with no context or importance. These games matter. These people matter. And I hate the marketplace that’s resulted in this kind of talent and passion going to waste.

“Making a AAA fantasy game is a solved problem” is something I said in my 2008 MMO wrapup on Gamasutra, and it’s something I’ve said frequently in the past. And I mean it. AAA fantasy games are ‘solved’, the formulae is complete, development and iteration on that particular niche of the niche market can stop now.

I never said anything about making one being easy.

In fact, I’d probably be one of the last guys on the face of the planet to tell you anything associated with making an MMO is easy. I’ve never helped make one, I’m not a designer, but I definitely have had a lot of opportunities to see how challenging, strenuous, and sometimes soul-crushing it is to hew one of these beasts from the raw energies of human creativity.

When I said AAA fantasy games are a ‘solved’ problem, I mean purely from the design point of view. World of Warcraft is a niche fantasy title with simply enormous appeal. The mix of PvE, PvP, dungeons, instances, etc. etc is … if not perfect, then good enough for government work. At this particular place and time, I simply don’t see the market need for another huge-budgeted fantasy MMO. That niche is ‘filled’, and any new products trying to break into that niche will have an almost-impossible obstacle to overcome.

The problem with my outlook here, which you’ve probably already spotted, is that timeframes when you’re talking MMOs is always problematic. When the average MMO can take 3+ years to make, you’ve always got to be looking out ahead of where the market is right now. The games in development right now were probably kicked off after about two years of WoW; think about the huge difference in World of Warcraft’s design between 2006 and 2009. That’s a lot of supposition to make. And some suppositions from that timeframe haven’t paid off.

Warhammer and Conan were both made looking “beyond WoW”, with the hope and assumption that World of Warcraft players would want something kind of like what they’d already played, “but different”. Despite what their PR may have been, both of those titles were direct runs at WoW’s niche, and they both failed to achieve their goals as set out by the developers.

That said, I believe WAR is in a good position to grow based on the team’s extraordinary skill, dedication, and the very strong IP the game is rooted into. I worry about Conan. A lot.

All of this is the basis for my statement that AAA Fantasy games are ‘solved’, and simply reinforces my opinion that MMO developers should be seeking out a new niche in the market. Superhero MMOs are already on the move, with three different games vying for the position as pre-eminent title. That level of competition (something fantasy MMOs have had all along) is something I think will be extremely healthy for that genre.

Sci-fi has suffered mightily since the genre blossomed, but we’re now seeing a bunch of titles on the horizon that look like they’ll finally give that respectable storytelling milieu its due. The Old Republic is the obvious one, of course, but everything from Jumpgate Evolution to Star Trek Online has a chance to offer up that ‘perfect fit’. There are quite a few ‘real world’ MMOs in the works as well, and the free-to-play space is carving out niches AAA players didn’t even think about a few years back. A penguin MMO, a cartoon MMO, puzzle MMOs … it’s a cornucopia of goodness.

This, all this stuff above, is healthy. What SOE is doing (Free Realms, Agency, DCUO), what Cryptic is doing (Champions, Star Trek), is healthy. Even NCsoft (bless em’) made Tabula Rasa with the expectation that moving away from AAA fantasy was the right thing to do.

If you’re currently making a AAA fantasy MMO right now, my apologies if I’m offending you. Perhaps your game will be the one that gives that innovative twist on the MMO platform, pulls the rug out from under WoW, and ushers in a new era of multi-mmo supremacy.

Were I a betting man, though, I’d pass on that wager. World of Warcraft isn’t a game anymore. It’s a hobby, it’s a genre unto itself, it’s a culture … it’s an institution. And (at least in the short term) the house always wins.

Wrath of the Lich King won’t come out in 2008.

So. Not a good start here. Fail. But I will point out that I wasn’t alone in thinking this would be the case. Plus, I’m really glad it did come out. Good stuff, and nice job Blizz.

The concept of RMT and microtransactions will continue to gain acceptance with North American gamers. This will be reflected commercially by further successes for MapleStory and Nexon’s other games in the US.

Big pass. Nexon was big business this year, and MT made big inroads with a bunch of different games already out.

Other companies will begin to consider alternatives to the flat subscription fee, even if outright RMT/microtransactions aren’t yet on the table. At least one newly announced game this year will feature a non-subscription schema.

I’m going to say this is like a double-pass. If that’s possible. SOE’s Station Cash service is a big ‘alternative to the fat subscription fee’, as is NCsoft’s adoption of its own cash system and City of Heroes Boosters. SWTOR’s non-subscription schema definitely counts for that last point.

The Agency is going to go over like gangbusters … FreeRealms, on the other hand, is going to have a rough go of it.

I’m going to call this a fail. Obviously Agency didn’t come out this year, and Free Realms looks better and better every time I see it. Just the same, I think SOE still has its work cut out for it making gamers and non-gamers understand what these titles are ‘about’.

Warhammer is also going to be a big hit, though it perhaps won’t be everything that EA is hoping for … Conan will be a much less resounding success. It’s not going to fail, but Funcom is going to end 2008 more than a little bit frustrated.

I’m going to call this a pass. Obviously my hopes for Warhammer haven’t gone quite as far as I would have liked, but I think I was pretty close there. And my sense that Conan wouldn’t do as well as Warhammer has, I think, borne out.

The CCP/White Wolf game is going to be big news this year.

Aherm. Fail. That said, the more I think about the possibilities of CCP’s experience with a one-world/one-server game applied to a non-space game the more excited I get. I’d really like to see what a game with avatars in a one-server space would look like.

One of the newbie studios (Carbine, Red 5) is going to announce a project that will really excite and surprise Massive fans. 38 Studios will announce what they’re doing, and it won’t surprise anyone … but it will be somewhat interesting.

Fail. But, again, we have big and tantalizing hints about what’s coming down the pipe from these companies. Big things on the horizon.

There’s going to be yet another major AAA title whose release date is pushed back to late in the year. One of the big games that we think is going to come out in 2008, won’t.

WAR was slated for early 08 and got pushed back, so ding there. There were a number of games loosely slated for 08 that have slid to 09, so I’m going to call this a total success.

At some point, Vanguard players are going to get tired of waiting around for ‘the good’ to show up in their game. Expect to see some of Vanguard’s best features showing up in EverQuest 2.

I’m going to give myself a half-point for this. I don’t think there’s been a mass exodus from Vanguard or anything, but I’m told by Karen that my point about features migrating to EQ2 was pretty spot on.

We’re going to see another live game close up shop this year, and an in-development title will slip into the unseen depths as well.

Well. Shit. Right on both. TR is closing up, Hellgate slid beneath the waves, and Mythos (among others) went the way of the dodo. Pass.

Another MMO dev or publisher will join Blizzard and SOE in making an official podcast.

Pass. NCsoft has one now too.

Tabula Rasa is going to maintain a steady playerbase throughout the year as folks enjoy the new and exciting flavour. Turbine will continue to not report LOTRO’s subscription numbers, for a reason.

Epic fail Zenke. I especially want to upbraid myself for that LotRO crack, because I’m now officially a Middle-earth fanboy.

BioWare will announce what they’re making in Austin.

Yayyyy! Pass! And finally! Let’s all sing The Old Republic song now!

Right: 6.5

Wrong: 5.5

Wow, I managed to get the exact same ratio this year as last year. Nice job me. That must mean that tomorrow is my day for calling next year’s shots. I think I’m going to do a bit more going out on a limb . Maybe.

I’m working through my Flickr feed updating and cataloguing content from the last few months. I put up my photos from my visit to Mythic Entertainment’s offices; whereas the lengthy Massively Goes to WAR series covered the game content I saw, these are just some random photos from behind the scenes. I particularly found the inspirational/development posters really interesting. Check em out.