Apr 27, 2011

Posted by in News | 11 Comments

Jeff Hickman Joins BioWare Austin As Executive Producer, Live Services

When Gordon Walton departed BioWare Austin earlier this year to pursue other opportunities, the studio was left with some big shoes to fill. The game wasn’t done yet, let alone launched, and some of Gordon’s key responsibilities were critical in the development phases yet to come.

Well, we now know the man who is taking over at least some of the tasks Gordon left behind. This week at the Fan Site Summit hosted by BioWare, we were introduced to Jeff Hickman, who will be taking on the role of Executive Producer, Live Services for Star Wars™: The Old Republic™.

Some of you may be familiar with Jeff from his years with Mythic Entertainment where he worked on Dark Age of Camelot as well Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning.

In his new role at BioWare, Jeff will be in charge of the teams that make sure the game is firing on all cylinders and that the service is reliable so that all of the eager gamers like you and I have a smooth experience in TOR.

Jeff is a true MMO veteran whose experience will be a valuable asset as BioWare motors toward launch of The Old Republic™.

Welcome to the fray, Jeff!

Jeff Hickman

Jeff Hickman, Executive Producer, Live Services

  1. Just as long as he doesn’t touch any thing. Maybe the new job just lets him sit in a dark room watching flashing lights.

    • Lethality says:

      Don’t underestimate the experience he brings. Remember it’s not just one person making decisions on projects like this! This is a win for BioWare and a ultimately a win for the players in my opinion.

      • Hope you’re right. I don’t know exactly what he does in a daily basis and i know he have lots of experience but people only remember warhammer.

    • How do you convert Mythic-seconds to Bioware-seconds? Jeff will definitely be needed to answer this question.

  2. I’m kind of worried, i remember this guy and paul barnett from warhammer online. I just hope he knows what hes doing this time!

  3. I just hope he is more DAOC then Warhammer. I still say DAOC is pure viable win. I twitter with the old community manager Sonja she still plays say the pop is steady and viable still. I might have to reactivate singe RIFT PVP is such a disappointment.

  4. Experience is one thing but execution is another.

    Like it was posted above, I think most people now will only remember his work from Warhammer Online. This is the fact that has most of us worried.

    Now, what we all have to understand is that while he might be part of the duo, whose face we associate Warhammer Online to, and its ultimate failure on doing what they said the game was going to do, there are many facets and departments of running/developing a MMO.

    I am pretty sure that the game is in good hands and the players will be rewarded with a great game once we all get to play it. I say we give Jeff a big welcome and force choke him for beta invites…just saying

  5. EALouse didn’t seem to like the guy, but he didn’t seem to like much.

  6. There are boat-loads of positives to take from WARhammer: Interesting character mechanics, inventive pvp fun progression lines. Thing that game lacked imo was a willingness to invest in the game post-launch, and you can’t really blame Jeff for that part. Thumbs up on my end

  7. Wow, all we need now is Paul Barnett and we’ll pretty much have the old Warhammer Online team back together.

    Makes sense really. Jeff will have the experience from WAR’s release, which overall went fairly smooth all things considered. I know that Gabe Amatangelo has been the PVP developer for some time so SWTOR’s PVP should pretty much rock with Gabe at the helm.

  8. Slavakov says:

    If you want to point fingers. Start looking at Mark Jacobs. It was many of his policies on how RvR and crafting would work that brought us the Warhammer we received

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