BioWare and Mythic Form New RPG/MMO Group

Some interesting news today. It seems that EA is taking BioWare and Mythic all under the same umbrella of a "RPG/MMO Group" with BioWare's co-founder Ray Muzyka leading the entire group (and thus placing Mythic under BioWare's leadership).

With this also comes the news that Mark Jacobs, current General Manager of Mythic, will leave EA (or,in fact, has already left). He will be replaced by Rob Denton from Mythic and will report to Ray. On the BioWare side of things everything pretty much stays as it is (just with Ray and Greg, who will become Group Creative Officer for the new group, both getting more responsibility).

Here is the official news from both the BioWare site and the Mythic site:

Today we have important news to share with the community. EA is restructuring its RPG and MMO games development into a new group that includes both Mythic and BioWare. This newly formed team will be led by Ray Muzyka, co-founder and General Manager of BioWare. With this change, Ray becomes Group General Manager of the new RPG/MMO studio group. BioWare’s other co-founder, Greg Zeschuk will become Group Creative Officer for the new RPG/MMO studio group. Rob Denton will step up as General Manager of Mythic and report to Ray. BioWare’s studios remain unchanged and continue to report to Ray.

Mark Jacobs, current General Manager of Mythic will leave EA on June 23, 2009. We thank Mark for his contributions at Mythic and wish him the very best going forward. Mark played a major part in the success of Mythic with his contribution as General Manager and Lead Designer of WAR.

Mythic retains a strong team led by Rob who co-founded Mythic in 1995. Rob played a critical role in the development of Dark Age of Camelot. In his previous role as COO, he was responsible for all day-to-day management of the studio including all development, operations and support.

Please join us in celebrating the union of these two award-winning studios.

Of course we can only speculate what this means for Star Wars: The Old Republic. According to the news business will continue as usual. But with Mythic having experience launching and running several MMOs (Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer: Age of Reckoning in particular) it wouldn't surprise me if the SWTOR team and Mythic would work a bit closer together now to ensure things go smoothly for BioWare's first MMO.

Either way though I wish them all the best of luck with this new group and I wish Mark Jacobs the best in whatever he decides to do next as well.


[EDIT]

Over on the Warhammer forums one of the Mythic devs had the following added clarification:

For clarity:

Mythic is not "merging" with Bioware.

Mythic and Bioware remain independent EA studios within a larger MMO/RPG group.

Thanks!

So to be clear, Mythic and BioWare are not merging. Mythic is now just under BioWare control.


[EDIT2]

Just had to share this little gem from The Escapist user comments to this news:

In other news, EA plans to acquire Blizzard and Bethesda to further their goal of forming RPG Voltron.