THQ might have thrown in the towel against Blizzard's five million World of Warcraft subscribers, but clearly not every publisher feels the same. The massive piles of gold racked up every month by the online epic has caught the eye of Electronic Arts, with the news that the world's largest third-party publisher has acquired Mythic Entertainment.

As you may be aware, Mythic is evolving into an MMO specialist, currently working on Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning and it would appear that this game has very much captured the imagination (wallets) of EA.

No financial details on the deal were disclosed and, interestingly, the acquisition will not complete until around this time next year.

Publishers have been openly backing away from challenging WoW's online stranglehold, with THQ CEO and president Brian Farrell saying yesterday, "We're looking at it very closely, but I want to find the right opportunity. I think what you will not see THQ do is come out with another fantasy-type game. The other thing we're thinking is these things tend to have a window. Right now that product is World of Warcraft, so the idea would be to time something for when that product is going to be on its downward slope. To come out with something competitive now I think would be misguided for anyone, including THQ."