Well Mythic gets to see the true colors of the dragon that swallowed them. 

Originally posted by mutantmagnet

I'm not much of a follower of this game but when I saw this news I expected people here to overreact and weep unneccessarily.

Just look at any merger in human history, lay offs have to happen because there are too many employees doing the same thing. If you could find more than 3 cases where mergers occured in the past five years and layoffs didn't occur in eight months I would personally give you ten bucks if you have a paypal account.

Would you like another glass of koolaid sir?

Originally posted by Shangala

http://www.destructoid.com/restructuring-layoffs-forthcoming-at-ea-mythic-studios-50896.phtml

Owing to sagging profits and and a less-than-firm grip on their once invulnerable spot at top of the third party heap, Electronic Arts is looking to make some changes in their corporate structure, starting with Mythic and their Redwood Shores studio. An internal email from a trustworthy source who wishes to remain anonymous reveals that John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts, has tasked every studio and company within the monolithic publisher with getting their rising costs in line with revenue, which in plain English means layoffs.

 EA showing its true face..

This post reminds me of the just recent post on how EVE Online was going to rollback servers two weeks.  Turned out to be a total lie that some noob picked up off a griefer site and reposted here.

Word to the wise.

 Why are all the people moaning? Did you invest your life savings into ea/mythic stocks in hopes their price will rise with release of war, and now that war might have some problems you are scared you'll lose all your money?

 If they lay off half of mythic's team, the war is in trouble, untill then, who cares?  Also, didn't ea say they wanted a mmog divission with mythic/mark jacobs leading it? Only makes sense to somewhat combine studios. I am sure there will be still different teams on different projects.

 Ither way, untill a large number of people workign on war get laid off, it doesn't mean anything. (unless ea wants them to relocated half a country like they did with uox's dev team lol)

Originally posted by Shangala

http://www.destructoid.com/restructuring-layoffs-forthcoming-at-ea-mythic-studios-50896.phtml

Owing to sagging profits and and a less-than-firm grip on their once invulnerable spot at top of the third party heap, Electronic Arts is looking to make some changes in their corporate structure, starting with Mythic and their Redwood Shores studio. An internal email from a trustworthy source who wishes to remain anonymous reveals that John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts, has tasked every studio and company within the monolithic publisher with getting their rising costs in line with revenue, which in plain English means layoffs.

 EA showing its true face..

OMG DRAMA......

EA = company
company = profit
if company IS NOT (enough) profitable = poeple get fired.

Also happens to the local grosery store/computer retailer/schools/goverment even non-profitable organisations do have to fire poeple.

Layoff's are never good news, but it doesn't always spell the end of a company. (or game).  Large corporations restructure constantly, my own let go of 2300 people a few years back here in my home town...yet still maintains a strong presence in the Line of Business I'm in and we're doing great.

So I'm hoping WAR won't be affected too much, but it does throw up a warning flag..... if you start to see developers let go at this point.... start being worried.....

http://mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/152815

For those ayathola of doom such as Pyrostatis, just relax and take a chill pill. You are very annoying with your false assumptions and probably miss leading a few noobs as well.

It is pretty obvious that War Hammer won't get hit by this move. Dark Age of Camelot and UO will, because they are on their death bed. Doesn't need a degree in marketing to call the shot on that.

So cut the crap already and get a clue before wasting people precious time who wants to read about "relevant" information. Not your view about the end of the world and how it started and you saw it come...

LOL, oh sweet irony. But they had enough coin to spent 860 MILLION USD on buying Bioware, 620 MILLIONS of that in CASH!

Maybe this CEO should have been more careful with spending EA millions BEFORE that! But isnt it always like that? SOme big CEO spents the millions and the small working people get fired. Great. ><

Looks like a BIG red flag on EA and Mythic, if its true.

Oh well... there goes another flamewar.

Originally posted by Elikal

LOL, oh sweet irony. But they had enough coin to spent 860 MILLION USD on buying Bioware, 620 MILLIONS of that in CASH!

Maybe this CEO should have been more careful with spending EA millions BEFORE that! But isnt it always like that? SOme big CEO spents the millions and the small working people get fired. Great. ><

Looks like a BIG red flag on EA and Mythic, if its true.

Oh well... there goes another flamewar.

You are joking here right?

The two have nothing to do with one another.  The purchase of Bioware was an acquisition of assets that will increase the net worth of the company and expand their capabilities.  It is much like purchasing capital equipment in a manufacturing plant.

What JR is deal with is not a lack of cash for the company (that is obvious given the amount of cash they laid out).  It is about the profits the company is seeing on a daily basis.  He is saying, 'Guys, profits are not where they were.  We need to be a little more frugal and cut some fat'.

There are no red flags here.  This is just pure good business. 

Ah the lovely rumor mill again shows it's colours.

You'd think people would learn that you don't believe anything on the interwebs until it comes from the official sites. Some bozo posting in some forum is not official.

And to the guy saying DAoC will die when Warhammer comes out... it's already dead, they just refuse to shut it down.

I dont mind the layoff as long as they get rid of those DEV wannabe.

Originally posted by Celestian

Ah the lovely rumor mill again shows it's colours.

You'd think people would learn that you don't believe anything on the interwebs until it comes from the official sites. Some bozo posting in some forum is not official.

And to the guy saying DAoC will die when Warhammer comes out... it's already dead, they just refuse to shut it down.

http://www.uoherald.com/news/

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Originally posted by Pyrostasis

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Originally posted by mutantmagnet

I'm not much of a follower of this game but when I saw this news I expected people here to overreact and weep unneccessarily.
Just look at any merger in human history, lay offs have to happen because there are too many employees doing the same thing. If you could find more than 3 cases where mergers occured in the past five years and layoffs didn't occur in eight months I would personally give you ten bucks if you have a paypal account.

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Would you like another glass of koolaid sir?

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Originally posted by Thecrow12345

 

Originally posted by MaeEye

I don't want to put all my money on it, but I think EA is maybe realizing WAR isn't going to be as big as they thought.  Or maybe their not happy with what they see, which means we will see a copy paste game like EA thinks is right to do instead of being original.  I don't know, I would be a bit worried if I were you guys.  I'm sure there are more reasons than "we are running out of money."  Cause we know EA has enough of it.

 

I think that War is past the point of EA being able to copy paste things from other MMO's into the game.  The RvR PvP is already very advanced because the team has used the great parts of DaOC.  I do think that Zorvan is correct, once new mmos are out what is the point of putting money into games that have low chance of new subscribers.  At its current state Warhammer is passed the point of significantly changing the gameplay and PvP functionality.

Agreed TheCrow..

If they are clearing house, they'll be clearing house on DAOC and UO before they touch WAR.

This entire thread and the OP's "quality annonymous source" are a bunch of BS from yet AGAIN another -

"OMG EA IS THE DEVIL AND EVIL AND MYTHIC/BIOWARE/YOUR MOM! ARE ALL GOING TO BE KILLED AND BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH"

people just love to hate the big guys... it's like iMac users buying an iMac to "stick it to the man." Get over yourself, no one cares what you think, especially not multi-billion dollar companies.

sorry, I just think this whole bash EA/SOE/Microsoft/etc. crud is so pathetic

Oh my god this is so awful they want to fire the QA team & the UO devs that screwed the game with expansions! The world has gone to hell! I hate this I hate everything I hate EA I hope it burns!   Those dirty rotten...they're scanning my brain oh my god give me some tinfoil!  I need the holy water Ma! Hose me down to keep out the devil!

Honestly...its normal practice when companies move offices or acquire more business's they trim out the people its unnecessary to move, keep, or that have given less than steller productive results over the years.    Every Corporation game or not does this its the only way to keep themselves from sinking.  You wouldn't honestly keep around a bunch of people that stood and picked their nose and pay them for that would you?

EA does suck they have horrible methods for how they treat their In House Employees (case in EA Employee Wife who let the world see how shit they are) but they aren't the damn devil.   Atleast they're not actually killing UO and DaoC just trimming the fat thats absorbing more money than its worth.

sorry for double post, had some problems w/ txt editor

Originally posted by heerobya

 

Originally posted by Thecrow12345

 

Originally posted by MaeEye

I don't want to put all my money on it, but I think EA is maybe realizing WAR isn't going to be as big as they thought.  Or maybe their not happy with what they see, which means we will see a copy paste game like EA thinks is right to do instead of being original.  I don't know, I would be a bit worried if I were you guys.  I'm sure there are more reasons than "we are running out of money."  Cause we know EA has enough of it.

 

I think that War is past the point of EA being able to copy paste things from other MMO's into the game.  The RvR PvP is already very advanced because the team has used the great parts of DaOC.  I do think that Zorvan is correct, once new mmos are out what is the point of putting money into games that have low chance of new subscribers.  At its current state Warhammer is passed the point of significantly changing the gameplay and PvP functionality.

 

Agreed TheCrow..

If they are clearing house, they'll be clearing house on DAOC and UO before they touch WAR.

This entire thread and the OP's "quality annonymous source" are a bunch of BS from yet AGAIN another -

"OMG EA IS THE DEVIL AND EVIL AND MYTHIC/BIOWARE/YOUR MOM! ARE ALL GOING TO BE KILLED AND BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH"

people just love to hate the big guys... it's like iMac users buying an iMac to "stick it to the man." Get over yourself, no one cares what you think, especially not multi-billion dollar companies.

sorry, I just think this whole bash EA/SOE/Microsoft/etc. crud is so pathetic

I agree that many people just love to hate on the big-guys like Microsoft and EA. But in the case of people being worried about EA's ownership of Mythic and now Bioware the fear and hate is justified I think.

EA has a VERY poor track record in regards to MMO's. I can think of two games off the top of my head that I was very interested in that EA just cancelled a good ways into developement. Those games being UOX and Mythica, both high-profile AAA MMO titles that were canned 2+ years into their respective development cycles. Not to mention their shutting down Earth & Beyond and canceling development on two other iterations of UO2. These reasons, more then anything is what worries me the most about EA's involvement w/ Mythic and now Bioware.

I mean, I can over-look EA's constant repackaging of their sports titles year after year while adding minimal new features to the games and charging full retail for products that vary very little from the previous years incarnation. Or their milking fans of The Sims constantly by charging $30+ for small "expansions" that add a few new items to the game such as the The Sims2-Pets, or Holiday Packs and such.

In this instance I think fans of MMO's have quite a bit to be worried about. IMO there is good reason for us to concerned about the future of Mythic's and Bioware's MMO's.

edit: It seems I made a mistake, Mythica was  developed and cancelled by Microsoft not EA

It just shows again that EA is all aboput profit. EA will definitely not shutdown WAR before release, but they willconstantly monitor costs. As long as WAR makes good profits after release they will keep a big dev team for live too. But when it doesn't sell as good as expected EA will be the first to lay off devs or move them to another project.

I gotta say, even though EA has a very poor track record with MMO's who cares? Even the guy with big names that produce new MMO's suck. Look at Vangaurd and Tabula Rasa. OMG you guys worked on previous MMO's it should be awesome....and people were wrong. Look at SOE, killer of SWG and what they did with EQII. That game is now much better than it was and they should be given props for that.

At this point in time I think it is time to just try every companies/studios MMO and hope that 1 out of 50 is a winner regaurdless of who puts it out.