Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

by Cody “Micajah” Bye

Editor's Note: The following interview is the conclusion to the Warhammer Online interview that ran a week ago. Before you read through this article, make sure you check out the first part of the conversation to make sure you didn't miss anything. After you've finished that come back here to read Mark Jacob's final thoughts.

In the MMOG industry, few names are bigger than Mark Jacobs. If you're not familiar with the man, he was once the leader of an incredibly successful independent MMOG studio that went by the name Mythic. Eventually, the small MMOG development house caught the eye of one of the world's biggest video game companies, EA, and the small studio was integrated into the larger corporation. Mark became a VP of EA and remains the general manager of the newly dubbed EA Mythic.

Cody "Micajah" Bye and John "Boomjack" Hoskin playing through WAR at the Leipzig GC.

Now Mark has his sights set on getting his latest upcoming MMOG, Warhammer Online, polished as thoroughly as possible before he ships it out the door in March 2008. At the recent Leipzig Games Convention, Warhammer Online was the recipient of Ten Ton Hammer's Best in Show award, which was certainly earned and not just given away. I asked Mark how his team had felt about receiving the award.

“Fantastic!” Mark said while he laughed. “Terrific! Seriously, it was great. Awards are always nice, and even though everyone says that they don’t pay attention to awards, they’re lying. Realistically, if you have a pulse and care for your games, you’re going to appreciate an award. Usually it’s the people that don’t win any awards that say it doesn’t matter.”

“One thing I said before Camelot launched,” he continued, “was that when we went to E3 in 2001, we didn’t win a single major award. We were totally skunked. The two games that won all the awards: Anarchy Online and Star Wars Galaxies. Six months later, at the end of the year awards we won almost every one. When I look at these awards, I take one of two stances. If I win, it feels good. If I don’t win, if the company or journalist shows why we didn’t win it and presents us good reasons, that makes me happy and sad. Happy because they spent the time to give us a fair evaluation and make my game better. I’m only sad if the crew giving the awards just didn’t like the game and didn’t tell us why.”

“However, I do hope we win more awards going forward,” Mark added. “It’s really a good way to judge what you’re doing because you can tell that they’re paying attention to what you’re doing.”

As a journalist and an advocate for the MMO gamer, it's often my duty to ask developers questions that they know are coming but would rather not have to answer. Sometimes these are questions that they've heard before with other games, and Mark knew my next question before the whole thing even spilled from my mouth. In the Warhammer Online forums, there were a few individuals that were concerned about the lack of females for the Greenskins and the lack of male Witch Elves.

"This is the gender question isn't it? My simple answer is ‘anhhhh,’" Mark said, making a frowny face. After a bit he smiled and laughed. “Y’know what? The lore is the lore. There are certain things about Warhammer that make it uniquely Warhammer. It’s the same thing with Greenskins. Gamesworkshop has always said that there are no female Greenskins. They are fungi. They’re grown. Am I doing justice to the IP if I go and make female Greenskins? No. We’re allowed to add and change things, but I think there are certain core things that are so uniquely tied to the IP that I say, ‘Why should we change it?’ This is the IP. It’s like going into Lord of the Rings and saying, ‘Instead of that sword, can I have a lightsaber?’ You just don’t do it.”

In Warhammer Online, Greenskins can only be males because they're actually a fungi.

”For those who get upset with it,” he continued. “Sorry, that’s the IP. We don’t have a slavish devotion to every aspect of the IP, but there are some core values of the IP that so define it that I am totally supportive of them [Games Workshop] when they tell me I can’t do something.”

It sounds like Games Workshop and EA Mythic have a very tight relationship with one another, but I figured there had to be some sort of sequence that the EA Mythic team had to go through to present the idea to the GW individuals. It couldn't be as simple as simply calling the guys on the phone and presenting the topic, could it?

“We just ask,” Mark said. “It’s really simple. I was friends with the folks at GW prior to all of this. We’ve always been very open with each other. If we are going after something that’s a bit farther askew, we’re a bit more cautious about how to approach them. We want to make sure we really understand how things are and why we’ve decided to do this before we even talk to them about it. However, if we’re looking at something that’s a little more open to interpretation, then we simply ask up front.”