Sad to see anyone get fired, unless they deserved it.  There is no doubt that some people at Bioware needed to be let go, unfortuantely the big wigs will probably keep their job, or get transferred to some other lame management position that is overpaid.  The competent people will most likely get jobs elsewhere and I wish them luck.

Completely unrelated side note...Is the forum layout for the SWTOR just plain awful or what?  I haven't seen their forums in few months, checked them today, I can't even read them. 

Is this how they look to everyone, or is just my browser/addons?

http://i.imgur.com/9bHUj.jpg

Originally posted by Worstluck

Sad to see anyone get fired, unless they deserved it.  There is no doubt that some people at Bioware needed to be let go, unfortuantely the big wigs will probably keep their job, or get transferred to some other lame management position that is overpaid.  The competent people will most likely get jobs elsewhere and I wish them luck.

 

Completely unrelated side note...Is the forum layout for the SWTOR just plain awful or what?  I haven't seen their forums in few months, checked them today, I can't even read them. 

 

Is this how they look to everyone, or is just my browser/addons?

http://i.imgur.com/9bHUj.jpg

Yeah, that's what EAware considers a "forum overhaul". lol

Originally posted by Valentina

Originally posted by MosesZD

Originally posted by grimfall

Originally posted by Distopia

Originally posted by grimfall

I'm not saying you're wrong, as you're right if you're speaking in terms of the mentality at a corporation.  All I am really saying is it just shows we can't trust EA to do what is required to build and maintain a decent MMO.

I think you and others may be reading a little much into that post.  You are inferring a whole lot, making it sound like they're reducing the staff to 7 guys and a temp.  Maybe that's the case, but at this point stating it as fact is wrongheaded.

I'm looking at EA's track record in terms of giving proper support to MMO's. They allowed UO to completely stagnate, they cut all support to Earth and Beyond, then for the most part WAR, now it looks like they're doing it to TOR.

That's possible, but the bioware company has probably got a lot more influence at EA than any of those other single title developers.

 

You remember Maxis?  TheSims?   The Sims2 is one of the all-time greatest selling franchises in gaming history with well over 100 million units of the base-game plus expansions sold.   The original Sims sold over 50 million copies.   Even the Sims3 franchise, crappy as it is, has sold tens of millions including expansions.   So were looking at maybe 200 million in sales for the entire franchise.   Plus we have all the Sims properties -- Sim City, Sims Stories, Sims Medieval.... 

 

BioWare would be a drop in the Maxis sales bucket.    How do you think they  (BioWare) are going to keep EA from wrecking their MMO when Maxis, ten-times the company of BioWare, and far more independent within EA than BioWare, couldn't keep EA from wrecking The Sims Online?   

 

BioWare is only a big name in the CRPG industry and it's not even the biggest.   They drop a game every three years and they sell 3 or 4 million of them. on a good property and about a million on a poor one...     The entire ME series sold less than just Skyrim and Skyrim hasn't even had an expansion yet...

 

And was it bad?   Not really.   It won the 2002: Best Massively Multiplayer award from the AIAA.   It's just EA milked it then killed it.

 

 

 

Actually the Mass Effect series has sold over 8 million copies, that doesn't include DLC or anything else. The ES series has giant gaps in releases between games in the franchise so it's hardly comparable.

ME1 sold just under 4 million copies 

ME2 sold just over 4 million copies. 

ME3 has, to date, sold  about 3.3 million copies.

Skyrim is over 12 million.

So, I'm not sure what you thought you correcting.   But it's more than 8 million units for the ME series (about 11) and Skyrim, without a single expansion pack, is larger.  As for your new 'time frame' argument I don't really see the point.   TES aren't the only games Bethesda has released since 2002.

Morrowind - 2002, Tribunal 2002. Bloodmoon 2003 (4 million sales base)

Oblivion - 2006, Knights of the Nine, 2006, Shivering Isle 2007 (7.5 million sales base)

Skyrim - 2011 (12 million sales base)

They also published or released, during this time:  Call of Cuthulu, Star Trek Legacy, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow , Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Rogue Warrior, Wet, Brink,  Rage and some other games as ZeniMax, the parent company has bought quite a few development studios including id Software and they had to integrate all that as well.

Originally posted by SpottyGekko

 

Did the "failure" of Vanguard change the MMO industry ?

Or the Age of Conan debacle ?

Or the Warhammer disaster ? 

Or the less-than-spectacular STO ?

Will the "failure" of SWTOR change anything ? Most probably not, because each new development team seems to believe that THEY are the ones who will strike it rich, and that all their predecessors were simply "doing it wrong".

 

Possibly the one lesson that will stick after SWTOR is not to spend huge slabs of cash on risky "innovations" like fully voiced-over stories or questlines. Other than that, the themepark train will most likely keep on rolling...

Change it?   To a greater or lesser extent.   The thing we should always remember is the lesson of 2012 won't do much for an MMO started in 2007, like TES Online.   The lesson of 2012 didn't exist then.  

What it will change, for those who can learn the lesson, is the development of MMOs that aren't spec'd or aren't so far into the process that they can't be modified. 

WAR launched in September with the announcement about lay-offs being April if I recall correctly - over 6 months.

SWTOR launched in Dec and the announcement is May: 5 months.

it's all under control. no subs lost. they will continue to dominate the mmorpg market with their millions of subs. move along people.

Just a thought and question. If the rumors are that EA will be bought by Nexus and a potential sell of equity which in MMO gaming is the titles not slotted for priority (SWTOR) and the relationship Lucasarts has with SOE for the F2P clone wars. Who thinks SOE might be in the hunt to purchase SWTOR from EA? once again all rumors

bb-b-but they're just hiring more...better people

yeah that's right

they're hiring better people, so they gotta fire the other ones

right guys?

guys?

Oh wow this was totally unexpected!

No wait...
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/4137546#4137546

I fucking called it half a year ago.

Originally posted by MosesZD

Originally posted by SpottyGekko

Hmmm....

 

Whatever happened to "we'll be keeping the full team together after launch to continue improving the game" ?

 

Maybe I just have a bad memory, but I could have sworn that BW stated the above on more than one occasion...

 

Oh, it wasn't just that.  It was this:

 

 

"While I can't give away exact numbers, I can say that we have plans for super success in the millions of subscribers... and then we have plans for if we have a much smaller subscriber base. While it would be great to get the kind of numbers that World of Warcraft gets, we don't have to come close to those in order to be wildly successful. We could be well below WoW and still be incredibly profitable."

[EA noted in February that the game will bring in a profit with 500,000 subscribers, and analysts expect the title to sell roughly 3 million copies within its first year of sale.]

Ohlen insists his goal isn't to beat WoW which, he says, is very much "a once-in-a-lifetime kind of game. While I'd love to compete with them, I'm fine with us just being successful and having our own niche. I don't think it's healthy for our team to be constantly comparing ourselves against another game. Especially since there's room in the market to have two big MMOs."

Current projections, he says, show enough success that BioWare is investing in the future and keeping the entire team of hundreds of people together.

"Unlike a lot of other game companies that, once they launch a game, downsize their teams radically, our plan is to keep the team together and continue to focus on building content."

 

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134940/the_making_of_star_wars_the_old_.php?page=3

 

You'll note that EA noted.  That was added after the interview.  BioWare thought they had a hit on their hands...

Love how they tried to design a game around a old and tired MMO formula  (WoW) and think it would pull in millions of players they was wrong once again just like every other Lead Producer that has boasted their game will attract millions of players just like (WoW) sorry it doesn't work that way and it never will stop copying WoW and start making unique experiences again, I think the MMO community has seen enough of interviews for new MMOs coupled with WoW as their inspiration you might as well sign your death warrant right then and there, stillborn before it even releases.

Originally posted by SonicTHI

Oh wow this was totally unexpected!

No wait...
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/4137546#4137546

I fucking called it half a year ago.

Most games do not retain their original developers. Go back and look at that. This was one of the big announcements of Bioware that they were going to keep all the original people. Guess that didnt last long :P

Originally posted by StoneRoses

 

A statement like this coming from you I am not at all suprised. Such a coward statement to say the least.

 

You have rolling out the shit carpet trying rub peoples nose in it, even before the game was released and you even bought the game. Man it stinks in here.

 

Between you and Teala, thank you for showing us a better way of how we can be so insensitive.

 

A company took a risk to ENTERTAIN many people, it didn't entertain you. I'm glad they took your money. Next game, I'm sure it will be more of the same.

 

 

company saw wow's sub's and wanted to make the big $$$ the end result is SWTOR a game made to leech money from people capitalizing off two big names and offering very little in innovation other than VO and really waisting such a huge IP with such incredible potential imho.. guess you enjoy it but to me this game really represents everything that has gone wrong in this industry since wows release but I'm glad the next two games I'm going to play are not like you say "more of the same" but to each their own i suppose

Originally posted by Grand_Nagus

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=462269

not sadly that was more logic since release but its funny how they fired so many so Bioware can keep the few buck that they are stealing by this game wish mean 4-6 month no more this game will be f2p .

and then again its just mi opinion no troll or anything just the reality

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by StoneRoses

 

A statement like this coming from you I am not at all suprised. Such a coward statement to say the least.

 

You have rolling out the shit carpet trying rub peoples nose in it, even before the game was released and you even bought the game. Man it stinks in here.

 

Between you and Teala, thank you for showing us a better way of how we can be so insensitive.

 

A company took a risk to ENTERTAIN many people, it didn't entertain you. I'm glad they took your money. Next game, I'm sure it will be more of the same.

 

 

company saw wow's sub's and wanted to make the big $$$ the end result is SWTOR a game made to leech money from people capitalizing off to big names and offering very little in innovation other than VO and really waisting such a huge IP with such incredible potential imho.. guess you enjoy it but to me this game really represents everything that has gone wrong in this industry since wows release but I'm glad the next two games I'm going to play are not like you say "more of the same" but to each their own i suppose

I must have been misinformed this whole time!

Thank you for taking the time to educating me on what the companies agenda was! It's not like it wasn't fucking obvious. Just about most companies who have or tries to rival WoW.

i wouldn't jump the gun too much. This is to be expected the game had a huge development staff.

sells a ton of copies 2 mil, half of those 2 mil are supposedly left. 100,000 subs is still alot and more than likely alot of the qa staff and probably some artists are gone. I wouldn't look to hard into it, its expected when your game declines after launch rather than grows.

SWTOR despite being a pile of cr@p will still hold enough altaholics for a while since that's all the game is good for.

Originally posted by Creslin321

This is sad, always sad when people lose their jobs.

But I have to say...I really saw this coming from before SWTOR was even released in December.  Back then I said that the game would sell well initially, but really start to fall apart within 6 months.  And well...it's been about six months and look where we are.

IMO, this game died on the design table.  It just is not designed for long-term appeal.  It hung all its hope on "story" and hoped that people would want to play the same stories over and over again for years.

And I'm sorry, that's just a bad idea.  Watching what is essentially a "rerun" is not what draws people back to playing video games over and over.  Scripted storylines have like 0 replayability.  I just found it baffling that they would base their MMORPG heavily around them.

If anything, I think SWTOR teaches us a lesson that we have learned with WAR, Rift, and Aion already...

Copying WoW and over-themeparkizing your game is a BAD idea. 

In short, I can't agree more.  I can't understand how these companies can't work out the essence of an MMO.  If I want an in-depth storyline to immerse myself in, then I will buy a single title and enjoy all the addons that can give me as a solo player.

I play MMO's because I want to play in a massive online world with thousands of other players and although I do enjoy a storyline, I am looking for an environment driven by players. e.g. EVE.  After 1 month in SWTOR I realised I was playing a very sub par single player game with kill 10 rat missions. 

EVE had me subbed for 6 years.  Look at the development cost of both titles and the profit they made from me.

Originally posted by Grand_Nagus

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=462269

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05/22/star-wars-the-old-republic-hit-with-layoffs/

same people. people on the dev teams of the project or something else?

The two people they needed to get rid of from what people have told me is the lead developer and the pvp developer for their complete disregard concerning the balance issues and the problems with classes, and for generally not listening to their public.

Originally posted by dadante666

Originally posted by Grand_Nagus

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=462269

not sadly that was more logic since release but its funny how they fired so many so Bioware can keep the few buck that they are stealing by this game wish mean 4-6 month no more this game will be f2p .

and then again its just mi opinion no troll or anything just the reality

It's pretty much the only way i would ever play, to me they really didn't put enough into it to make it necessary or right to pay a monthly fee to play this title. If they put more content into the game instead of the age old raid and party dungeons then i and many like me would be more interested. I'm not interested in playing Space WoW sorry, WoW became stagnant for the same reasons, it was a lobby game at the end and that's just plain boring and not worth the money at this point imo.

Guess they wont have those 500k subs to break even. This is scenario that was most likely for SWTOR. Start layoffs/reducing costs until game becomes profitable. Though where will it stop it remains to be seen (*cough* Vanguard*cough*WH*cough*)

Ah well. Sad to see SWTOR turned up like it did, BW+SW had potential, but since they took easy and lazy "clone WoW" route, serves them right.

Originally posted by nyxium

I wonder if Diablo 3 was a deciding factor in the layoffs? It's been noted that D3 has caused a slight noticable decline in WoW amongst other games at launch, from personal observations.

D3, at least for the time being, has sucked dry a huge playerbase from tonnes of games and it is not just here, in Korea its crazy, everyone is playing D3.

However I do not think D3 is long lasting, people will start to play it less and less once theyve beaten it, especially without PvP.