People can speculate all they want. It will take another 6-12 months to determine how well (or poorly) WAR will do in the future.

It's sad to see anyone get laid off, especially in these times.  It's rough.

With that said...WAR is doing fine.  It's not going anywhere, it's making money.  It has some work that needs to be done, but the doomsayers here crack me up.  They are so off the mark it's not even funny.

WAR would keep being 'one the best selling PC games of the year' and in the 'top five' if they only had stuck to further development of  RvR instead of creating a WoW-clone.

Open field RvR is what made DAoC so popular for a long time, it's THE best end game anyone can hope for and instead of using this unique gameplay that themselves invented and bettering it in WAR they managed to fail with a sub-par RvR system that won't hold peoples interest for long enough.

They listened to all the e.g. CC-whiners and didn't use the lessons learned with DAoC to their full extent and thus they lost the most dedicated players, the RvR people that have followed from DAoC and helped out creating an active and fun atmosphere. Big mistake.

Guess the good staff from DAoC didn't follow over to WAR or they just failed big time in not listening to corporate jackals that want another WoW-success and another clone of that game (a game with a bad PvP system). Sad.

So ppl are still buying the game?

Wait till they hit t4 and promptly quit.

The game is downright aweful. Pve is bland, everyone looks the same {different colour dyes dont count...} and the RvR...

My eyes literally went blurry the first time I played it. Once I got used to it, was fun and different {for me at least} in t1 & 2. T3 was just more of the same and T4 is where ppl finally realise theres nothing more to the game.

Didnt even make it to 40, lol. Left to go play SP games for a few mths and return to Lotro for Moria. Only now my guild members have come to the same realisation and have left. {some even had 4 lvl 40s, god knows why}

Last year was a complete dissapointment for MMO releases. Lets hope this year is different.

It only had to be a matter of time before the games companies started announcing major layoffs and I'm sure as the world reccession bites harder that there will be plenty more shedding jobs, I've been redundant since Nov so I have plenty of sympathy for those that have been Laid-off.

I would however doubt very much weither the lay-offs will mean the end of WAR or DAoC, if so we would have seen the complete WAR/DAoC teams cut to save money, they haven't and so this must mean the games are still being supported by EA as going concerns, heck if the lack of subs was true Everquest 1 should have died long ago.

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Originally posted by Digna
People can speculate all they want. It will take another 6-12 months to determine how well (or poorly) WAR will do in the future.

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Mmmm.. not really.

After all the clues MJ left around the internet about Slayers coming and as much as he has talked up the next patch's fixes and reworks, it won't take long at all.

If they release that patch, and the only worthwhile thing worth doing after that is rerolling a Slayer for another month, people will leave extremely fast. You won't need a year to watch that exodus. This next patch is probably the difference between making the game a nice stable niche model (+250k) or it's the last straw for most (-200k). With the coming competition this year, they need a homerun, not a double. After that, you probably then wouldn't have to speculate on layoffs anymore.

I just know I'll probably wait until I see how the patch works. I wouldn't even think of resubbing personally without some assurances things are handled.

Corporate greed is the primary reason the economy is in the shit hole and it is corporate greed yet again that always results in layoffs of the peons while the overpayed executives keep their jobs and their ridiculous salaries.  Nothing has changed and nothing ever will.  EA has a staunch record of being the asshole company and THAT will never change either.  Expect some of their games to suffer as a result, Mythic is not immune to EA's greed.

I REALLY don't like WAR, but it's not unusual for a company to layoff employee's when the company needs to cut it's variable costs.

Laying off 24 of 400 launch employees and the fact that the world economy has suffered a tremendous blow is hardly a clue to how Mythic is doing. We also don't know how many people Mythic hired after launch.

Given the stability of the game now compared to launch (true of any MMO) it seems only natural that QA would be snipped back. This is especially true for Mythic given how smooth the game was at launch compared to more MMO's. Logic dictates that they had a comparatively large QA team pre-market release.

I'm not saying they're in good or bad shape. Just wait a few weeks for the financial news. Quarterly and Annual reports aren't just a balance sheet and cash flow statement. They're often full of information about various business units within the company.

People even if there only 100k subscribing that still $1,000,000(+/-15%) a month and 12 million a year that still good money in a MMO, there a lot of games out there that have been about for 8+ years as long as people pay you'll have a game. That should still pay for the staff computers and make a good profit for EA.
 

As population go down so will the servers and staff that’s the real world of economics and it will happen to all games.

Originally posted by Itlaw

People even if there only 100k subscribing that still $1,000,000(+/-15%) a month and 12 million a year that still good money in a MMO, there a lot of games out there that have been about for 8+ years as long as people pay you'll have a game. That should still pay for the staff computers and make a good profit for EA.
 

As population go down so will the servers and staff that’s the real world of economics and it will happen to all games.

 

That all depends on how much they invested in making the game.   The only figure I recall was MJacobs saying it was below 100 million, but it seemed to imply not much below that.

@hembot:  I doubt they have 400 current employees at Mythic.  His statement says 400 people have worked on the game in one capacity or another, not 400 at the same time.  If I recall correctly, Mythic fired a bunch of developers prior to the games launch and did not list them in the games credits which would also count in that 400.  That 400 number is just clever word smithing on MJs part. 

Odds are it was more than 24 people.  21 customer service, half of the Q/A team and all of the playtest team.  Unless the playtest and Q/A teams were each only 2 people, then it would be 24.  Somehow I don't think that is the case though.

I don't think this was a devistating blow to the game, but it sure doesn't help.

Doesn't sound like anything "terrible" to me (I mean, beyond it obviously sucking that people have to lose their jobs) what EA's doing.

Hell, a company I worked for did a major layoff right before Thanksgiving and, similar to how EA's approaching it, the order was that each department had to let go of at least 1 person (more depending on the size of the dept), so that it would be as "fair" as possible.

And, just as coldly, later that day, when people were still concerned that the layoffs might not have been over, the owner and his cronies called a company meeting to, ostensibly, explain the layoffs and assure everyone that no more would be cut. A simple "We didn't want to have to let people go, but it became necessary. However, no more layoffs will be happening." would have been sufficient. What it turned into was the 3 of them cheer-leading the company and talking about how great it was doing - you could almost see the $$$$ in their eyes as they talked. To put it mildly, many of us were not impressed.

To add insult to injury, not even a month later at a Christmas party, the owner received an award from some firm for having 500% revenue growth in its first 3 years and being a highly profitable company.

So the economy was stable at the time, employment was up, the company was highly profitable... yet they had to let people go.

That actually killed the mood at that party more than anything.

All that said...

Those cuts didn't hurt the productivity or (obviously) success of the company and we were far smaller than Mythic, not to mention EA. I doubt they're going to hurt WAR at all.

Either way, I hope those who are let go can find another job quickly. I've been through a few lay-offs, and they are not fun.

Originally posted by popinjay

 

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Originally posted by Paragus1
Whatever happened to DAOC Origins?  I think they are running DAOC on a skeleton crew now, which is a shame because that game deserves a lot more respect and attention than it seems to be getting currently.

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I never played DAOC (was playing FFXI at release) but read lots about it and its oRvR. It sounded like after a few years, the game was solid.

After reading the VN Boards and watching MJ come in and talk mostly about stock quotes, little about Warhammer, less about DAOC and nothing about Origins, I am of the mind he probably would like to see it go away, but he can't kill it.

He just made a game that directly competes with it (WAR, on the oRvR scale of Pvp) which cost him tons of money and also got an infusion of cash from EA. He really needs for Warhammer to survive at all costs. This means pouring mass resources into WAR especially now after over probably 60% of the original subs have gone (maybe more). DAOC is not gaining lots of new subs so its like throwing good money after bad. I think he realizes if he were actually to try and fix DAOC up, EA would have a fit because that pulls subs away from the main stablehorse. You'd ideally want it like Wow, with one game and one company not splitting loyalties between their first born and the new baby.

The easiest solution is just to neglect DAOC so it slowly dies, then most of the DAOC fans would come to Warhammer, no matter what they say now. They wouldn't go to Wow. The goal was probably to phase in all ex-DAOC people anyways once Warhammer took off, but it has too many bugs for experienced gamers to live with. I think MJ is betting DAOCers will give up eventually and come over once he lets it die out. He'll keep saying the right things to keep money coming in, but its just in maintainance mode. I think the Origins talk was just a pipe dream to keep funds coming in until people realized it. Sadly, theres still plenty that havent, but such is the way of the business world.

MJ is (was?)a trained lawyer, so he's quite fluent in double speak and understanding how to keep cash flows (billable hours) coming in even when the client's case is a foregone conclusion.

lol do you honestly think that warhammer online has lost 60% or more of its population? or are you just throwing a random number out there? because while the game isnt pass the one million mark its not doing bad

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Originally posted by xbellx777

lol do you honestly think that warhammer online has lost 60% or more of its population? or are you just throwing a random number out there? because while the game isnt pass the one million mark its not doing bad

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"This means pouring mass resources into WAR especially now after over probably 60% of the original subs have gone (maybe more)".

Pulled it out so you could read what I typed better.