An early celebration of DAoC's 8th birthday came to players today as Mythic Entertainment made the Darkness Rising and Labyrinth of the Minotaur Expansions free to all players:

Mythic Entertainment Announces Dark Age of Camelot: Darkness Rising and Labyrinth of the Minotaur Expansions Now Free

New 14-Day Trial Entices New and Returning Players With Access to All Five Dark Age of Camelot Expansion Packs

FAIRFAX, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mythic Entertainment, an Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) studio, today announced that Dark Age of Camelot™: Darkness Rising™ and Labyrinth of the Minotaur™, the fourth and fifth retail expansions to the epic fantasy MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot, are now available at no charge to all subscribers. Originally launched in 2001, Dark Age of Camelot remains one of the more popular MMORPGs in the genre’s history and is heralded for introducing the renowned "Realm vs. Realm™" gameplay experience.

The biggest news in MMO gaming last week might have been Mark Jacobs' departure from Mythic, as we reported earlier. At the height of the story's frenzy, we also featured a story on Jacobs' explanation of his departure. The Jacobs story pretty much overshadowed everything coming out of Mythic around that time, including this substantial announcement about Warhammer Online from Jeff Hickman (Mythic's new exec), titled "Executive Producer's Letter - Part 3."

"We're looking at some fairly radical approaches on how to best bring the population together," Hickman said. "We want to ensure everyone is having fun, but we need to do so in such a way that further imbalances aren't created overnight as we have seen in the past. There are a lot of ideas on the table, but your satisfaction is our top concern."

It seems like Mythic is finally rethinking a few of its previous strategies and paradigms, specifically the issues of population (im)balance, stability and sieges. But that's not all. Hickman lists off quite a few other issues that Mythic recognizes as problems or player concerns, structured in a series of concise bullet points. The icing on the cake for some fans, however, was Hickman's acknowledgment that Mythic is still committed to Dark Age of Camelot, among its other games.

As we reported, it was announced this week that EA is restructuring its RPG and MMO games development into a new group that includes both Mythic and BioWare. In addition, former Mythic General Manager Mark Jacobs left the company on Tuesday. An ex-Mythic staffer told Massively "people are shocked and in disbelief about Mark leaving" following the announcement, and now Jacobs is telling his side of the story on his blog.

In an entry titled "All Good Things Must Come to an End," Jacobs sums up how his departure came to fruition after 15 years of leading Mythic: "Early in May, Electronic Arts let me know that they wanted to make some changes within the Games Label and as a result of those changes I have been out of the office (and out of touch with the team, game, etc.) since that day."

Jacobs says the past two months have been extremely difficult and he will miss working with the people at Mythic the most. He says he will be using his blog to thank certain people and companies, which he has started doing in his most recent entry by thanking Games Workshop. "However, if you are looking or expecting me to damn EA or anyone there, you will be sorely disappointed," he said. "As always EA has my thanks for their interest in acquiring Mythic and in supporting the development of Warhammer."

You can read Jacobs' full entry after the jump.

As we reported, EA is restructuring its RPG and MMO games development into a new group that includes both Mythic and BioWare. Mythic General Manager Mark Jacobs left EA on Tuesday, and Massively spoke to a former Mythic employee  about Jacobs' departure, who said, "People are shocked and in disbelief about Mark leaving. But they're also excited to be working with BioWare. I can't even fathom Mark leaving a company he loved so much, it was his life. Personally, I can't see that this is voluntary in any shape or form."

The ex-staffer, who asked to remain anonymous, said Jacobs had been on sabbatical for more than a month. "No one had seen him in a long time, so people already had it in their minds that he was probably going away," the former employee said.

The source emphasized he or she left Mythic on amicable terms. "I can't imagine anyone saying anything bad about Mark. He mostly stayed up on the eighth floor and did his own thing in his office, but he had a vision for the way [Warhammer Online] could be and he definitely follows his vision," the source said.

Wow, just wow! Big changes going on over at Mythic:

Today we have important news to share with the community. EA is restructuring its RPG and MMO games development into a new group that includes both Mythic and BioWare. This newly formed team will be led by Ray Muzyka, co-founder and General Manager of BioWare. With this change, Ray becomes Group General Manager of the new  RPG/MMO studio group. BioWare’s other co-founder, Greg Zeschuk will become Group Creative Officer for the new RPG/MMO studio group. Rob Denton will step up as General Manager of Mythic and report to Ray. BioWare’s studios remain unchanged and continue to report to Ray.

Mark Jacobs, current General Manager of Mythic will leave EA on June 23, 2009. We thank Mark for his contributions at Mythic and wish him the very best going forward. Mark played a major part in the success of Mythic with his contribution as General Manager and Lead Designer of WAR.

Here's our regular recap of the past week's ZAM features and noteworthy news stories. You can find more links after the jump. There's even more news where this came from, so head over to our news archive where you can search by tag if you'd like to see everything that happened this week on ZAM.

ZAM Features

SWG: Being a Jedi has Never Been Easier: Christopher "Pwyff" Tom takes a look at the current state of Star Wars Galaxies following its turbulent history of massive changes.

Chinese MMOs: Ripping off WoW?: With the newly announced World of Fight looking like a copy of World of Warcraft, Sam "azerian" Maxted asks if Chinese MMO developers are just copying the West.

The Birth of Millennium City: Jack Emmert, chief creative officer at Cryptic, gives us an exclusive look at the story behind Champion Online's Millennium City.

Exclusive Champions Online Media: In addition to Emmert's story, Cryptic also sent us some exclusive screenshots of Millennium City.

Talking with Terry 'Ming' White of WorldOfMing.com: Pwyff speaks with one of the biggest names in competitive World of Warcraft.

Patch 1.98 is now up and running on the live servers. This patch introduces some major changes for the Warlock class, and some tweaks for Druids, the game UI, maps and Market Explorer's. Read on to see all the changes introduced in today's patch:

Welcome to Version 1.98!  In this version we gave detailed attention to Warlocks and made some improvements to our Nature-Specialized Druids.  Additionally, we have fixed an issue with augmented strength, increased our sever population cap, and delivered a new set of in-game maps.  There are many more items included with this version that we hope you will enjoy.
 
NEW THINGS AND BUG FIXES

 - Implemented high resolution maps for all zones.

 - Maps now show horse, boat, and flight routes.

 - Added improved textures on various world objects in the game, including signs, road markers, tapestries, and certain trees.

Surprise! Server down time today to bring us patch 1.98:

Update: 8:10 AM EDT - All servers are now offline.

Wednesday, May 6th, all servers will be coming down at 8:00 a.m. EDT so that we can bring you Version 1.98. We are estimating that the servers will be back up at approximately 3:00pm EDT. As always keep an eye on the Herald for updates and news concerning the server downtime!

Here are the population bonus changes that went live today:

These changes are currently live:
Bossiney: Albion (2 days), Hibernia (2 days), Midgard (2 days)
Devon: Albion (6 days), Hibernia (6 days), Midgard (6 days)
Killibury: Albion (2 days), Hibernia (2 days), Midgard (2 days)

Please review our Population Bonuses page for more details.

Please Note: When a Population Bonus is changed, it alters every Free Level Timer on the Cluster. In Game Support can not verify your old timer, or alter your current timer. We're sorry for the inconvenience! 

Patch 1.98c is now up on the Pendragon test server, this round brings more changes for the Warlock class and an improved search for the Market Explorer's. Read on to learn the finer details of today's test server changes:

NEW THINGS AND BUG FIXES

 - With version 1.98c, we've introduced a redesigned Market Explorer search window. The new fields ("Merchant," "Armor class," "Damage Type," and "Miscellaneous") are not yet functional, but will be working soon.

 - Fixed an issue which was causing items on listed Consignment Merchants to not show up in the Market Explorer search.