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Marketing is not in charge here!

Yesterday, we posted this story about a concern in the Warhammer Community about lack of information. Apparently the editorial piece has stirred up quite a bit of controversy, and raised some hackles at EA Mythic. While I think that the author made some valid points of concern about information we're still lacking, he jumped to some pretty mind-numbing conclusions (saying EA Marketing is controlling the flow of information) and the tone of his argument was pretty confrontational.

In addition to several other reactions to the piece, Mark Jacobs, head of EA Mythic, is now here to clear up the problem.

First, and I've said this before, do not blame "The Evil Marketing Guys" ever for any perceived issues with the flow of information. Those decisions start and end with me. I'm happy, thrilled and overjoyed to freely admit (as I have before) that we haven't revealed all aspects of our game yet and we don't intend to do so immediately. We have a long summer coming up and we will be releasing a lot more information over the next 2 months. Between E3, Leipzig, etc. we have a lot of ground to cover and we need things to talk about in these various places. if we released all the information now not only would we have nothing new to talk about there ('natch) but then we would hear complaints along the lines of "I came all the way to XXX and there was nothing new there to see!!!" or "Thanks Mythic for wasting my time, I'm not buying your game now!" and journalists would also have nothing new to report over the next few months. That would be a terrible marketing decision. By the end of the month there will be a whole lot more to talk about and by the end of August, even more. Besides, since I'm currently working on the latest "State of the Game" message I kinda know this to be true.

This kind of editorial would have been better left til the end of summer, AFTER convention season. It's a well established fact in the video game industry that no one says anything interesting in summer, unless it's related to an event. Blizzard has has an event this summer so far, EA Mythic hasn't. Therefore, we have a wealth of Wrath of the Lich King information, and almost nothing new on WAR. It's just how it works.