Well, yes and no. First, a bit of an explanation. Unfortunately my absence from blogging was due to a whole bunch of issues all hitting at the same time. Those who have read all my posts (should be a Tome of Knowledge unlock – “The Masochists”) know that the end of September is a particularly trying time for me. Combine that with just a wee bit of pressure with the pre-launch, launch and post-launch of WAR and you get a rather unhealthy mix for starters. Throw in some personal issues and what do you get? Someone who has not a lot of time/interest in blogging.
As far as what I’m going to do going forward, well, I’m certainly going to try to get back to blogging as I really enjoyed it. Nothing will change in terms of my subject matter (though I want to throw in some other subjects every so often) but I’m not 100% sure that I’ll be back at the pace I was before this blog went dark (that’s the ‘no’ part). I’ll give it a shot though and we’ll just have to see what happens.
So, off we go…
Again. 🙂
Mark
Online Games Are a Niche Market 
Dec 15, 2008 @ 23:26:38
*wakes up with a snort*
Who are you and what are you doing… oh, hey Mark! Welcome back!
Dec 15, 2008 @ 23:42:56
Nice to see you back, Mark.
Dec 16, 2008 @ 08:20:44
Welcome Back Mark!
Good to see your on the “blogging side of life”.
Greetz from Germany – Yitu
Dec 16, 2008 @ 13:49:34
Let the bloggination resume!
When you hit T2 blogging you’ll finally understand that blog > life. 😉
Dec 16, 2008 @ 13:58:51
Weeeeee! I was just cleaning up my feed reader and noticed you hadn’t posted in a long time. Glad I kept ya on! 😉
Dec 16, 2008 @ 14:45:26
Wow, welcome back Mark, have this on my RSS and it is always grey, I was surprised to see it bolded today! Have a Merry Christmas! Happy New Year and all of that.
Dec 17, 2008 @ 19:31:28
Welcome Back Mark, Unfortunatly there has been a nerf to blogging it is no longer blog>life, as blogging has had a 10% reduction over time added to the coefficient.
Have a Happy Holidays.
Dec 17, 2008 @ 20:05:01
Actually, Mark, we gave some love to life, we didn’t nerf anything. 😛
Dec 18, 2008 @ 13:24:11
He’s alive! He’s aliiiiiiiiiiiiiive!
Glad you’re back, chief. Even awesome bros like you get hit by the busy truck, too. I’m having trouble keeping track, myself.
Dec 18, 2008 @ 17:27:02
Welcome back…waits for more goodies.
Dec 18, 2008 @ 21:40:56
w00t!
WB Mark. Was wondering when you would return 😀
Dec 18, 2008 @ 23:02:37
wb mark!
Dec 19, 2008 @ 00:30:35
Syp and Snaf at the 1 and 5 spot, I see. There’s no rest for the weary. =) Mark, nice job on fitting those patches in before Christmas. That must have been some late nights for everyone. I (almost literally) can’t wait to get the Open RvR improvements that you have lined up. One quick question: how long do you think we have to earn the ORvR influence rewards before they get replaced? I need me some Greenskin Elite rewards.
Dec 19, 2008 @ 15:40:36
welcome back 🙂
i look forward to hearing more from you but take your time and relax…enjoy the holidays!
Dec 20, 2008 @ 14:21:47
Can you start a “lessons learned” post?
Dec 21, 2008 @ 02:08:59
So glad to see you’re back dude, even if it’s only for a while, missed you a lot ❤
Nevermind the “omg I think this game should…” types of comments, I’m really looking forward to hear your thoughts and insights about launch, first months of the game and possibly future, the stress, the drama, the lack of sleep, wanna hear it all.
Cheers from Croatia and happy holidays!
Dec 21, 2008 @ 07:14:44
I’ve always wondered what the proper etiquette is for disappearing from whatever social network one belongs to.
I’ve pulled a few vanishing acts myself and always feel vaguely guilty for not having made any posts during the period explaining my lack of posts.
A little on the circular reasoning side, I know…
Dec 22, 2008 @ 16:32:57
Welcome back Mark! I missed reading this blog. Its amazingly refreshing to know theres a game company out there who lets their audience know that execs are real people too.
And please forgive the length of this post, as a gamer I think this might be some interesting insight for future development.
I’d be interested in your take on a situation that came up with my friends recently. I’m what you call polyaMMOrous. I have tons of MMO clients and betas installed on my boxes with 3 subs going with the major players this round; WoW, WAR, LoTRO(EQ2 used to be in there before all my friends migrated). Most of my WAR friends let their subs lag once their 2 or 3rd month was up(poor college students like to wait for subcards for Christmas!). With my WAR buddies gone, I migrated back over to WoW to hang with those friends, yet I kept WAR running and updating and lvling everyonce in a while. When my non WAR playing friends asked why I kept the sub going with sporadic playing and none of my WAR buddies playing, I ended up saying the following sentence in a guild post:
“I didn’t buy WAR for what was in the box. I bought WAR for what was in the head of Mark and his boys(and gals). WAR right now is like the block of marble sitting in Michelangelo’s workshop as he raises the hammer for that first blow. ”
1.1a&b I think are the first hammerfalls from you and your amazing team. I really wonder what the next blow is going to show. Sticking with the art metaphor(which gets me in trouble on forums, that whole game as art debate), from the polyaMMOrous gamer view, heres another quote Im interested in your reaction
“So its no secret that WoW is basically the Mona Lisa of MMOs, but there’s absolutely nothing stopping WAR of being David. They both live in the same museum and both are highly appreciated on their own merits. Does WAR really have to “compete” with WoW? Or can we finally see a the beginning of shift in MMO consumerism to an adaptation of the (shock and awe) art distinction system?! ”
As a lover of games I’d love to get your reaction….oh and WAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHH!! Oi! Welcom becks to the WAR!!
Dec 23, 2008 @ 20:38:09
I was wondering where you went… I mean, it’s not like you have a job or anything.
Welcome back, Mark. 🙂
Dec 23, 2008 @ 21:57:04
Seasonal greetings from the UK. Hope you have a good time & return refreshed ready to make WAR even more uber that it already is.
Dec 24, 2008 @ 11:27:37
Hi and welcome back.
Let me ask you a question around WAR. There is an issue tha have stop me pay for a new period. I dont like to pay if this bug isnt solved – or should this be work as designed?
My friendly NPCs an a camp (nor war camp/keep) are realy stupid. If im in trouble and have a enemy NPC (no player) behind me an run in a camp my friendly NPCs will stay around and doesnt help me. Nothing happens. I run with a troll on my ass in a camp and hope for help….but i die in the middle of dwars with weapons and so on. NPCs doesnt care about me. Thats frustrating.
In the quest i have to help all of the friendly NPCs and they want help me?
If im in trouble (some fast respawns make this happend often) and there are two ode rmore NPCs hanging on my ass, i expect some cover in my camps. But there is nothing.
In my eyes it is a big bug.
Dec 24, 2008 @ 13:06:37
One of my new year resolutions is to start a blog!
Here is my first step, a blog about Warhammer Online 😀
http://thinkingorc.wordpress.com/
Dec 24, 2008 @ 15:49:40
Welcome back, NERF RL!
As for topics for future forum posts:
Correlation of patcher productivity vs. the amount of pizza and red bull consumed??
Keep up the good work and for the love of the Vermin Lord please don’t take so long to post again.
Dec 27, 2008 @ 04:03:11
What’s the plan for fixing population?
I am on a destination server, and scenarios pop less now than they did a month ago.
I enjoy the game, but it is a real downer when scenarios do not pop. I recently made a new alt to play with a friend I referred, and even T1 was slow.
-Michael
Muckbeast – Game Design and Virtual Worlds
http://www.muckbeast.com
Dec 28, 2008 @ 01:14:37
Welcome home! Hope you had a lovely holiday, and I’ll look forward to the next post, whenever it may be!
Dec 30, 2008 @ 19:26:58
Welcome back.
And Thank You.
Dec 30, 2008 @ 19:42:03
Welcome back. I’m looking forward to reading the blog again.
Dec 30, 2008 @ 20:22:08
Mark,
Your CSR are useless as they do not have the ability to make any meaningful changes. They can not move items from one instance member to another even when the item is on the wrong character due to a tooltip bug nor are they able to fix steps of a quest that did not complete even though it’s clear that the step was completed (quest item is in quest inventory but gives no credit). Nor can they reset instance timers to allow for additional time investment to complete quest steps that are bugged.
The CSRs are not able to even provide info on what bugs are known and simple reply to ANY request with please submit feedback rather than giving any indication they are aware of the state of the game, it’s bugs or even pride in their jobs.
As a software developer myself I am well aware that some bugs are very hard to track down and resolve. However ANY reasonable vendor will provide workarounds and do anything in their power help PAYING customers when their software is unpatched and a bug is preventing the user from receiving services payed in advance. This merits or even begs that the user makes a claim against the payment with the users credit card company. Failure to provide adequate service for funds received.
Me and my effected guild mates are not trying to game the system or receive something we did not invest our time in. In fact due to the time we had to invest in submitting our ineffective tickets and waiting for a reply we lost 2 hours of otherwise productive game time.
Even if we were somehow trying to recieve something unfairly any reasonable vendor would rather error on the side of keeping a paying customer happy than to dismiss there issues and create a great deal of word of mouth bad press. Even McDonald’s will happily give you free food if you let them know something isn’t as you expected.
Both a list of known bugs which a CSR has authority to help with and a general list of powers a CSR wields needs to be posted publicly so that paying customers don’t continually waste time on appeals when the CSR are useless to provide any help outside some secretive internal list or god forbid their own whims.
Please allow your CSRs to provide the same level of support as a teenager making minimum wage at any local fast food establishment.
Dec 31, 2008 @ 03:58:42
wb
Jan 01, 2009 @ 22:11:56
Welcome back Mark! Happy new year!
Was really missing the blog, hope you have some time to get working on WAR and DAoC again, DAoC really needs some attention, it’s really having it’s last death spasms.
Jan 06, 2009 @ 01:56:34
Hi Mark, happy new year!
It may not be the best thing to do (for PR or marketing reasons, I suppose) but, if possible, could you speak on WAR’s subscription health? I vaguely recall a post by you before WAR’s launch in which you said that if no new servers were being added a few months after launch, that the game would be in trouble. We players have, in fact, seen ‘server merges’ of a sort (the free transfers from low-population servers to high population ones).
Personally, the subscriber levels affect me little because I play on Dark Crag, which is one of the most populated servers. I truly see no population problem when I’m playing–but I read a lot of complaints on the forums. I love WAR–it’s the best MMO I’ve ever played, and this is coming from a long-time DAoC fanatic–but I cannot help but be worried about its long-term success when I read so many complaints/whines/doom-and-gloom on fan forums.
On a completely different topic, I was wondering where WAR’s customer service representatives work. Are they in Virginia at Mythic or are they elsewhere in the country?
Jan 06, 2009 @ 18:51:44
Welcome back! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and Happy New Year! Well 2009 is upon us and anytime those last 4 months of the year come up all hell seems to break loose. Great work on the 1.1 patch as I have seen a marked improvement in RvR performance and participation. I absolutely love how Mythic has implemented PvP. I do have some “ideas” to liven up taking keeps and battlefield objectives, but will save those for another time as I imagine you have enough to deal with anyway! 🙂
Jan 07, 2009 @ 18:51:54
welcome back. you have been missed
Jan 08, 2009 @ 19:20:07
Happy new years also from germany.
What will be the next entry from your blog? 🙂
take care – yitu
Jan 10, 2009 @ 03:16:44
Excellent content here and a nice writing style too – keep up the great work!
Jan 11, 2009 @ 14:22:26
Mark, and other gamers. You should be aware of a current, negative trend at Wikipedia to purge gaming history related entries from the site. It has been one of the hot issues in the gaming blogosphere. Since Mythic got its start in MUDs, perhaps you might find the story interesting, or you might even want to share your opinions on the subject.
Here is a detailed recounting of the whole tale:
http://www.brighthub.com/computing/windows-platform/articles/22166.aspx
Jan 12, 2009 @ 08:01:18
Great to hear you’re back 🙂
Found out you had a blog right after your last entry, and I’ve been lurking for more posts since then!
For what it’s worth, I’d be really interested in hearing what you’d like to do next (apart from making WAR better).
Jan 18, 2009 @ 16:51:44
Honest Question:
What is being done to save WAR?
I took a month break, hoping things would be better when I returned.
There are even less people playing. Scenarios are terrible. Class balance is worse now with the new classes (KotBS are nuts). CC is even more out of control.
The casting time delay is still a huge killer problem.
So what’s the plan? I’d like to keep my subscription going, but I need a reason to.
Jan 23, 2009 @ 18:48:07
Howdy Mark, hop you start to write again soon.
I was reading another blog by Tobold that made something dawn on me.
At the core all Fantasy MMO’s are the same. Swords, spells, basic combat and interface. I left WoW to play WAR, but my friends didn’t follow. So I went back to WoW, because all things being equal I want to play with my friends.
What as a game developer do you think can be done to counter this? To make people take a leap of faith away from a game they like to try an unknown game.
Jan 26, 2009 @ 20:20:28
Oh, Mark, you tease…
Jan 28, 2009 @ 03:58:57
Yeah. Strangely, the amount of “backness” in this blog is pretty similar to the amount of apparent effort being made to save WAR.
My wife and I are cancelling tonight, and doing so sadly. We loved DAoC, we wanted to love WAR, but how long can you continue to shell out $30 a month to login to nothing going on. Ostermark was one of the main RP servers, and its dead. It is our 3rd server. No RvR going on. Nobody around. And when you finally get some action, its constant CC and severe class balance issues.
I hope they fix WAR. I really do. 😦
Feb 01, 2009 @ 21:03:56
cool site! really love to read here! thanks for the info…
Feb 04, 2009 @ 17:11:11
Mark’s blog is the perfect paradigm of Warhammer I’m afraid, started all hyped and with high hopes only to silently die off.. Very sad to see this happening, I was expecting more from both.. But oh well, guess life goes on 😉
Feb 06, 2009 @ 22:49:20
Good to have you back. Have have not looked into online games as a niche too much. seems like it’s very competitive.
Feb 07, 2009 @ 06:36:54
I’m done..goodbye…good luck..see on the circuit!
Feb 10, 2009 @ 00:33:23
Come back mark!
Feb 11, 2009 @ 23:01:53
Hi Mark,
You should join our guild. Learn about us out at http://www.TheSchism.com. Check out the videos some of members have done, they are a-mazing!
Mar 25, 2009 @ 19:10:12
No, you’re not. Don’t lie! :p
Mar 26, 2009 @ 16:03:34
Did he has not longer a computer?
Or the marketing-department told him not to blog?
😉
Apr 21, 2009 @ 19:59:20
Shame this blog died, it was pretty interesting to read the thoughts of someone like Mark
damned vulpine » If you think I’m an absentee blogger
May 13, 2009 @ 00:16:24
Jun 24, 2009 @ 19:25:01
Mark,
As far as I’m concerned you are Mythic. I wish you the best in whatever you do. I hope you let us know what really happened. I enjoyed what you tried to accomplish in WAR. Take care, and good luck.
A fan, and friend.
MMO: Huge News « A High Latency Life
Jun 24, 2009 @ 19:32:33
Jun 24, 2009 @ 20:02:16
Sorry to hear the latest news, Mark.
Best of luck with whatever you do next – I love WAR and look forward to your next project if there is one.
Jun 24, 2009 @ 20:16:24
I’m going to echo what Rivs said. I wish you well in all future endeavors, and hope you start writing here again!
Jun 24, 2009 @ 20:25:24
EA strikes again. Best of luck to you Mr. Jacobs. Please let us know what legendary thing you’ll do next when you decide.
Jun 24, 2009 @ 21:17:20
Mark,
Good luck on your future endeavors. If they are in the realm of MMO’s expect at least one customer!
Many thanks to you for the years of fine gaming.
Jun 25, 2009 @ 00:16:23
Best of luck for the future MJ. I for one will sorely miss your contribution to WAR and Mythic. Reading the boards, it seems that you aren’t getting much of the credit you deserve and I think it’s a damn shame. At least some of us out there can read between the lines.
I eagerly look forward to hearing about your next project, when you are able to come out and chat again that is.
Jun 25, 2009 @ 01:46:09
I am not sure if you still check this here Mark or if you get a mail about new comments, but I want to wish you the best of Luck after what happened with the company you did everything for. I am extremely sad to hear you go and I know you always did your best for us, the gamer/customers.
Feel free to mail me directly if you want to, as I always had extreme respect for you.
The Daoc days are still filling my memories. Thanks for everything and I hope we will see you around somewhere, soon!
Jun 25, 2009 @ 02:34:48
Just please don’t touch another MMO. Especially crafting.
Jun 25, 2009 @ 03:34:17
Be sure to update us on your future plans Mark. Your contribution to the industry and the games you’ve made has made a difference and you have more fans that you probably realize.
Best of luck.
Jun 25, 2009 @ 06:39:15
Mark,
I’ve proudly played and pushed your games for over 8 years now at the store I manage. I as I’m sure very many other people do value all the long hours and hard work you have put into your creations for us. I will look forward to seeing something from you in the future. Best of luck my friend, take yourself and family on a much needed vacation.
Best Wishes in all that you may do, you will be missed!
Cheers MBJ!
Jun 25, 2009 @ 12:19:15
As someone that created Worlds were I had a lot of fun, I simply want to say thanks to you.
I often thinks that too often the road taken by big IT companies when in hard time is simply shortsighted and too easy, compared to the salary level of the people taking decisions like this one.
Too many assumptions on my side, however. Best of luck.
Jun 25, 2009 @ 15:21:09
Hey Mark,
You’ve always been a class above the rest. You’ve always called it like it was and had open and honest communication with fans. Best of luck to you in your future work!
J
Jun 25, 2009 @ 15:40:41
Good luck to you, Mark; sad to see you leaving Mythic. You were perhaps one of the most public game managers I had ever seen, and the MMO world needs more of that. We wish you the best with whatever you choose to tackle next.