Leshrac hit the nail on the head. After sinking 25 million into Imperator and owing close to 40 million to investors, Mythic simply couldn't afford to make a triple-A MMO out of Warhammer. Along comes EA, one in a long line of companies that was looking at Mythic, and Jacobs made a fortune. He was giddy-rich and rolling the cash after the sale -- all the original Mythic dudes were. Now Warhammer has a huge budget. The problem was, Jacobs was still in charge of the thing, and here's the secret: He doesn't know how to make games.
It's like this -- all Mythic had to do to make Warhammer successful was to make DAoC2 skinned as Warhammer. Instead, Jacobs chose to ignore the things that made DAoC successful and try to create something new. What he forgot (and the thing EA didn't realize when they bought Mythic) is that he had gotten lucky with DAoC and he didn't really know how to repeat his success. Combine that with his unyielding lack of trust in his development staff, and you have a genuine clusterf**k. There were many times when WAR almost went the way of Imperator (read: dying on the vine). The only thing that saved that project was Paul Barnett (yes, I know he is a media whore, but he kept Jacobs from totally screwing up the game).
Don't feel bad for Jacobs. He uses one hundred dollar bills as toilet paper. Don't feel bad for Mythic -- they finally have a chance to make cool games. Who knows, maybe EA will greenlight DAoC2.