I think by now the huge decrease in the amount of official communication from the folks responsible for UO has made it very obvious that there's something afoot with regard to UO's future and whatever it is probably isn't good.
On the other hand, the next pub has the first part of the high resolution graphics update. If UO was in trouble, they wouldn't be putting resources into something like that since it's a long-term update. Same with Camelot - long-term things are being done. They would be putting those resources into Star Wars. Still though, they aren't communicating that well officially, and that's bad.
All we know about Jeff at this point is that he has something to do with the Ultima Forever site where you can currently download the Ultima IV game and maybe you'll eventually be able to download additional old Ultima games.
This part needs to be clarified quite a bit. And Jeff tweeted that he hired a designer who had been an intern, but for what who knows. The secrecy is ridiculous, especially since there have been numerous hints dropped about something related to UF.
I don't want to say it's spitting in the face of Ultima fans because that's a harsh statement, but there comes a point at which all of the hint dropping turns into ****ing with people. It crosses a line from building hype or trying to generate interest to just plain ****ing with Ultima fans every time they drop a time about their secret project, and it's incredibly disrespectful. There is no other way I can say it. It was cute for them to drop hints at the beginning of the year, and it looks like their top sekrut Ultima project was being shopped around well before then. But it's almost a year later, and any hint dropping without actual concrete information from this point on is just ****ing with people.
Given that it seemed like Barnett had a hard time selling this secret project, it could very well be that Barnett was pulling this crap so that he could run back to his bosses and say "I MADE THIS TWEET AND 200 DROOLING FANBOYS TALKED ABOUT IT, SEE THERE'S INTEREST IN MY PROJECT".
I will say that I'm incredibly glad that Skalski was giving control of the Ultima franchise and not Barnett.
We don't know if he has anything to do with the Lord of Ultima browser game being run by Phenomic.
He has stated publicly that it's not under his control, and he even went so far as to imply that if he had had a say, Lord of Ultima would not have happened. That won him some points with me - it's not often somebody from one part of EA is willing to publicly criticize decisions made by other parts of EA.
We don't know if he has anything to do with the rumored Facebook Ultima game that is supposedly Paul Barnett's big secret project.
Actually I think we do - from what it sounds like, Skalski is in charge of anything Ultima related, excluding Lords of Ultima, which to be honest isn't really Ultima related.
Barnett's crap which was I just ranting about it is definitely tied to Ultima Forever, but I think his role was just one of selling it and trying to get interest in it and little beyond that. Thanks to a friend who follows certain things/personalities more than I do, I've been made aware that Barnett is basically an EA cheerleader and little more these days. It explains why he was at the Warhammer arena press conferences, why he was traveling around hyping the new Dragon Age DLC with Felicity Day, why he was hyping the Sims Facebook game, etc.
The one time his hands have been dirtied with development/design, it was Warhammer, and we all know how that went. It's very odd though that he was kept on, because he is despised within the Warhammer community and is one of two-three people blamed directly for the Warhammer problems. Partly because of his role on the Warhammer team, and partly because he hyped Warhammer like mad even when we now know that it could not have come close to living up to his hype. The fact that he appeared to trash the original Warhammer Online when he was out selling the Warhammer arenas game didn't help his standing. Go post a thread on the Warhammer forums praising him and watch how many censored posts ripping into him pop up.
We also don't know if he has anything to do with the 3D version of UO that NetDragon Websoft/TQ Digital may or may not still be working on.
Very doubtful. Assuming it was actually being worked on, like somebody else said, if somebody within BioWare is not working on their normal project/game or another EA project/game, they would be working on Star Wars - EA would not be paying salaries of people working for a completely different company when Star Wars is around the corner.
So if the only other thing besides the Ultima Forever site that Jeff has to worry about is this 14-year-old version of UO, then where is he?
He did say they just hired an intern designer full time, so my guess is the other Ultima game is being worked on. If they hired a new full-time designer for UO, they should have announced it on the Herald since it would be a positive thing for players to see.
What is so damn difficult about posting a short letter of introduction telling us he's now in the role of being UO's producer, still getting his feet wet, is excited about stepping in as UO approaches a historic 15-year anniversary, and will have lots of exciting news to share with us "soon"?
This goes back to my rant about the Mythic MMOs and communication. If you remove the anniversary-related stuff from Camelot and Warhammer, their producers have been AWOL in the community. Even with the anniversary-related stuff, well Warhammer had their producer talking about some changes, and Camelot's producer just made a video. Compare and contrast with Star Wars, or other MMOs where you hear from producers on a timely basis.
Here's what gets me. Skalski and other BioWare employees have been flown around the country, and some were even flown to Europe for a conference. Skalski attended GDC Austin, and he went to California for an event and to meet up at EA headquarters. Some of the EA executives and hangers on have been flown around the country for things as simple as DLC launches. Money is not an obvious problem, because travel is one of the first things that gets cut when money is tight in a lot of large companies.
You don't need to fly executives around just because some semi-famous actress is going to be in DLC for a game that you're not even working on, unless you have money to burn.
In other words, why the heck is he avoiding like the plague the simple task of putting out a very brief, one-way form of communication telling us he's on the job now?
This is what confuses me the most about all three Mythic games. Long-term things are being done for all three games, but you wouldn't know it.
My only guess is Star Wars. It launches in two months, it's one of those kinds of projects that if it bombs, executives could lose their jobs. EA dropped $750 million on acquiring a company this summer, and I doubt they'll make that back quickly. EA spent nearly $800 million on acquiring BioWare in large part due to Star Wars. They also picked up Pandemic Studios with BioWare but closed them down completely within a year or two of buying them. People toss around $200 million or more spent on Star Wars, but forget to factor in the money spent acquiring BioWare just a year earlier.
At this point, I have a feeling a lot of people within BioWare Mythic are involved with Star Wars. I don't know about the UO team - obviously there is working being done on the graphics update and the arenas stuff, and we just got a large publish, but I think Star Wars is probably taking up some time.
But I still find it hard to believe they can only afford one community relations person for four different games when they can fly people around for flippin' DLC launches.