UO Losing Its Lead CG Supervisor and a Helluva Person

I could write a few thousand words about this – I’m very angry about this. UO is losing its Lead CG Supervisor and Artist, JP. They decided to move his job to Virginia. He loses his title in a few weeks, and he will be off the UO team by the 15th Anniversary.

This is not how many wanted to remember Ultima Online’s 15th Anniversary, but it’s how it will be remembered.

Words cannot express how I feel right now – at times when there has been little to no communication from BioWare Mythic and from the UO team, JP “GrimmOmen” Harrod stayed with it and kept on talking to the players. He was behind the upcoming high resolution artwork update for the Enhanced Client. He is an all around nice guy, and I regret not talking to him a lot more over the years.

This makes me question the future of UO. Taking somebody that talented, and who talked with the players when nobody else would, and moving their position across the country……

Whatever happened with the supposed “new EA” where this kind of crap didn’t happen?

I had just better stop right now, because I’m disgusted and pissed off that EA and BioWare Mythic would do this. He was the best community relations person we’ve had in many years.

This is from the post at Stratics and from UO Forums.

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I’ve gotten quite a few questions about this so I thought I’d just go ahead and let you know that my time as a UO dev is coming to an end. By the middle of this month, I will no longer be art lead for UO, and by Sept 27th, I will no longer be a part of the UO team. Mythic is moving my position to Virginia.

I wanted to let you all know that I feel very honored to have been a member of the UO development team serving, over the years, as an Environment Artist, Character Artist, Character Lead, Associate Art Director, Technical Artist, and finally, Lead CG Supervisor. More than that, I’ve been very fortunate to have been a part of this community.

I’ll never forget the first day I told the team that I was going to start posting to the community. It was right around the time that we had shipped Samurai Empire, and I had been promoted to Character Lead. Literally everyone was telling me that I really needed to be prepared because there was a LOT of hostility towards the artists. I told them that maybe it was because none of the artists talked to them! LOL. Now, not a day goes by that I don’t check in to see what’s getting posted and to take part in this wonderful community.

I remember the first animated tile I ever made, and a lot of you still have those green soulstones in your houses.

I remember unleashing thunder chickens at Luna Bank on the test shards and laughing along with you guys as the corpses piled higher, and the battle raged for an hour!

I thoroughly enjoyed getting to sit and talk with so many of you at our player meet ups, and I fondly remember sitting at a table with a couple talking about UO – who, until the end of the conversation, didn’t know I was a dev.

I remember working with dev legends such as Tact, Oaks, Hans, Karma, Sunsword, Wilki, Binki, and Troublemaker as well as us new bloods, Cathat, Grumpy, and others who never picked up a moniker. I still think of them as some of the finest devs I’ve ever worked with.

As a game developer, it’s a rare opportunity to work on such an iconic project and with such a dedicated player community, and it is an opportunity that I am very grateful for.

I’ve spent close to a decade working on this game and building friendships, and I hope that those friendships and this wonderful game last for years to come.

Thank you all for years of great memories.

-Grimm

JP “GrimmOmen” Harrod