Mythic tries damage control following Barnett's "sarcastic" EA comments
Developer was exaggerating when he declared "EA know nothing about launching MMOs in Europe", says Mythic boss
Mythic Entertainment co-founder Mark Jacobs has doused "sarcastic" accusations made by Paul Barnett yesterday that EA "know nothing about launching MMOs in Europe".
Barnett had said that this was the reason behind the GOA partnership in Europe, as the company had years of experience with MMOs that EA could not hope to replicate.
"Well first you've got to understand that Paul is Paul. He's very sarcastic. He tries to be very funny - he usually is. He can be a bit irreverent," Jacobs told our sister site Eurogamer.net.
"What Paul said about EA not knowing anything about launching MMOs: you know, Paul likes to exaggerate - of course EA knows things about launching MMOs. EA is responsible, certainly, for one of the most important MMOs of all time, and that was Ultima [Online].
"We had done a deal with GOA before EA bought us. So the idea that we went with GOA because supposedly EA doesn't know anything about doing online games is just not true. There was no EA in the picture," said Jacobs.
Owned by EA, Mythic is one of the publisher's key studios, and Barnett looks to have gone off message only days before the company's biggest MMO title is due to go live.
Warhammer Online launches tomorrow in Europe, and pre-orders have already meant shipping 1.5 million copies of the MMO. This, insisted Jacobs, was a carefully chosen number that could sell out but never overwhelm the game servers.
The full interview with Mark Jacobs can be found on Eurogamer.net now.