To be fair, can he really leave Mythic when Mythic no longer exists?
He didn't do jack for UO, UOForever was a mess, and Dungeon Keeper was a downright embarrassment.
I think he did do some good things for UO behind the scenes. We just didn't hear much about it because I suspect a major part of his role was to help Mesanna step into the role of being UO's producer after Calvin Crowner left. Jeff may have felt that part of that role was to make sure she got the limelight as UO producer, not him. As he was the Ultima Online Franchise producer, I think Jeff probably had a whole lot of Ultima Forever activity going on at the same time that he just couldn't talk about. We were introduced to him in September 2011, but if you look at the dates for when various things were happening in the background with Ultima Forever, you would probably guess he was up to his eyeballs organizing things and pushing stuff along for Ultima Forever. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Forever:_Quest_for_the_Avatar). If you remember, Jeff had a lot of prior experience working with companies in China who were doing third party development work for EA, so I strongly suspect that he and Chris Ondrus were at the time we first heard about Jeff working with Netdragon Websoft on the early foundations of Ultima Forever. But it was something he wouldn't have been able to tell us about and would have been something he had to juggle with helping Mesanna keep UO running, most likely also while EA was going through its regular routine of fall and spring headcount-trimming.
Edited to add this paragraph: I also noticed that on Twitter, the job title Jeff showed changed to Senior Producer some time after Ultima Forever launched, so it no longer said Ultima Franchise producer. I actually think his title change may have happened about the time Dungeon Keeper was announced, about a year ago. Hard to say without inside information whether that means that at that point there really was no more "Ultima Franchise" (i.e., UFE was being abandoned?) or if the "Senior Producer" title just gobbled up the lesser responsibility of being the Ultima Franchise producer. It was about at the same time that Kate Flack, who was also working on UFE and I think participating in helping with some story stuff on UO, had a job change as well.
I saw that not long ago, Carrie Gouskos and Jeff Skalski passed along "boxes and boxes of Origin artifacts" to Joe Garrity, who runs the Origin Museum. (
https://www.flickr.com/photos/14729250@N02 and look him up on Google and the ultimacodex.com site to find out more.) (Carrie Gouskos used to be the producer for Warhammer Online and she later became Ultima Forever's producer, after Chris Ondrus left EA. After WHO closed, so about a year ago, she became Mythic's Director of Studio Operations. I would guess that means she has had a lot of the responsibility for closing up the Fairfax office, as it seems that Paul Barnett who was the GM has relocated to EA's San Francisco office, based on what little can be gleaned from his Twitter info.)
Although we may never see or hear about things like this unless we're really digging around, or we regularly visit sites like ultimacodex.com, these people that we just barely get to know DO care about Ultima Online. I just don't think they're always in a position to do things or say things that let us know. And of course you have to factor in personalities and corporate culture as well. One of the things I liked about Cal was that he was a communicator. But he also didn't have the lengthy background with EA or Mythic that some of the other folks who have been involved with running UO have had. So, naturally, when things change and someone else who has been in that culture a lot longer takes over, they may have a completely different stance on how much and what they are going to communicate to players.
Anyway, enough of my rambling. If you run across holiday or anniversary items with the name of "Gryphon" on them, don't forget that is Jeff Skalski's UO nickname and if I'm not mistaken, I think it was the Stratics community which helped him acquire that nickname.