BioWare is a Canadian video game developer based in Edmonton, Alberta. It was founded in 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip. Since 2007, the company has been owned by American publisher Electronic Arts.
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by former Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the designers and programmers responsible for its games as "software artists". EA published numerous games and some productivity software for personal computers, all of which were developed by external individuals or groups until 1987's Skate or Die! The company shifted toward internal game studios, often through acquisitions, such as Distinctive Software becoming EA Canada in 1991.
Dark Age of Camelot is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in October 2001 in North America, and in January 2002 in Europe. The game combines Arthurian lore, Norse mythology, and Celtic mythology with high fantasy. It is set in the period after King Arthur's death, when his kingdom has split into three realms, which are in a constant state of war with each other. Dark Age of Camelot includes both player versus environment (PvE) and realm versus realm (RvR) combat.
Mythica was a never-released massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on Norse mythology. It was under development by Microsoft Game Studios (MGS) for Windows-running PCs until it was cancelled in early 2004. The game had been under development for over two years and had a development staff of forty at the time of cancellation.
Player versus player (PvP) is a type of multiplayer interactive conflict within a game between human players. This is often compared to player versus environment (PvE), in which the game itself controls its players' opponents. The terms are most often used in games where both activities exist, particularly MMORPGs, MUDs, and other role-playing video games, to distinguish between gamemodes. PvP can be broadly used to describe any game, or aspect of a game, where players compete against each other. PvP is often controversial when used in role-playing games. In most cases, there are vast differences in abilities between players. PvP can even encourage experienced players to immediately attack and kill inexperienced players. PvP is often referred to as player killing in the cases of games which contain, but do not focus on, such interaction.
Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy setting, developed by Mythic Entertainment and published by Electronic Arts in 2008. The game revolved around the continual worldwide conflict that the Warhammer Fantasy setting is known for, and the game is geared toward ongoing, constant war laced with dark humour. Age of Reckoning ended up selling over a million copies and peaking at 800,000 subscribers, but dropped to 300,000 subscribers several months later. The game received generally positive reviews from critics but shut down in 2013. Since at least 2014, an active private server called Return of Reckoning has been run by fans, and it remains active as of November 2024.
Scott Jennings, also known as Lum the Mad, is an American commentator on MMORPG games. He is best known for creating a website, The Rantings of Lum The Mad, a pioneer blog, which existed from 1998 to 2001, when Jennings was hired by MMO developer Mythic Entertainment, where he remained until 2006.
Pandemic Studios, LLC was an American video game developer based in Westwood, Los Angeles. Andrew Goldman and Josh Resnick founded the studio in 1998 after leaving Activision. Pandemic Studios, alongside BioWare, was acquired in 2005 by Elevation Partners and placed under VG Holding Corp., which in 2007 was sold to Electronic Arts (EA). EA closed Pandemic Studios in 2009. Pandemic Studios is known for a variety of titles, including Full Spectrum Warrior, Star Wars: Battlefront, Dark Reign 2, Destroy All Humans!, Mercenaries, and The Saboteur.
Mark Jacobs is an American game designer, programmer, author and businessman, and the former GM/VP/CEO of Mythic Entertainment, Inc and after Mythic Entertainment was sold to Electronic Arts in 2006 he served as its GM/VP/CEO at EA. Best known as a lead designer of Dark Age of Camelot (2001) and Camelot Unchained (unreleased), he also created two early MUDs, Aradath and Dragon's Gate, serving as both the designer and programmer in addition to his duties as President/CEO. He founded A.U.S.I. in 1983 and worked on a number of computer games for systems such as the Apple II. Jacobs left EA in 2009 after the company decided to merge BioWare with Mythic Entertainment.
GameStorm was an online gaming service founded by Kesmai corporation in November 1997. It offered several online video games at a flat monthly fee of $10 per month, a relatively radical payment system in the age of pay-by-hour online gaming. Both Kesmai and GameStorm were sold to Electronic Arts in 1999, and shut down by Electronic Arts in 2001.
Dragon's Gate was an interactive, real time, text-based multi user online fantasy role-playing game, sometimes referred to as a MUD. It was one of the longest running pay-for-play online games in the world, it opened to the public in the spring of 1990 on GEnie. In 1996 the game was moved to AOL. Later the game was moved to Mythic Realms, and finally to independent server, where it ran until the summer of 2007.
Paul Barnett is an English game designer who is a Global Product Director at Wargaming, working on their game World of Tanks. Before that he worked at Electronic Arts' Office of the Chief Creative Officer and was the General Manager of Mythic Entertainment, a subsidiary of EA. Barnett had a lead role in developing EA's Warhammer Online MMO in Europe.
The history of massively multiplayer online games spans over thirty years and hundreds of massively multiplayer online games (MMOG) titles. The origin and influence on MMO games stems from MUDs, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and earlier social games.
Jeff Hickman is a video game designer, producer and customer support specialist.
Star Wars: The Old Republic is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) based in the Star Wars universe. Developed by BioWare Austin and a supplemental team at BioWare Edmonton, the game was announced on October 21, 2008. The video game was released for the Microsoft Windows platform on December 20, 2011 in North America and part of Europe. It was released in Oceania and Asia on March 1, 2012.
Realm versus Realm (RvR) is a type of player versus player (PvP) gameplay in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) where the player base is divided over multiple preset realms that fight each other over game assets. This differs from normal Player versus Player combat in that Realm versus Realm usually involves a combat-based game, as opposed to one where sporadic Player versus Player combat occurs. In this context, "realm" generally means a geographic territory or political affiliation.
Warhammer Online: Wrath of Heroes was a multiplayer online battle arena being developed by BioWare Mythic and supposed to be published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows until it was cancelled. The game was a spin-off based on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and was a Play4Free title, Electronic Arts' free-to-play model.
Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar was a free-to-play, cross-platform, online, action role-playing game developed by Mythic Entertainment and Escalation Studios and published by Electronic Arts. It was formally a part of the Ultima series. Information was previously released by BioWare in mid-2011 and more information was released on July 11, 2011. It was officially announced at San Diego Comic-Con on July 12, 2012 and it was fully released for iOS on August 7, 2013. The game was shut down on August 29, 2014.
Camelot Unchained is an in-development fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game from City State Entertainment which was partially funded through Kickstarter. Leading its production is Mark Jacobs, the former designer of Dark Age of Camelot. Its crowd funding campaign has raised US$4.5 million with Jacobs contributing an additional $5 million from his own assets, and raising an additional $7.5 million from investors, for a total of $17 million. The game is based on its own proprietary game engine engineered for server-side physics and large-scale battles, and as such will focus primarily on open world PVP rather than "theme park" instanced encounters or battlegrounds. Camelot Unchained entered Beta 1 phase on July 31, 2018.
