Oh they did... In Beta. I actually really liked my test character with her headtails poking out of her hood. But oh well...

Ok, not sure about the programmers, but the people who do the visuals...the cut scenes, fix the conversations, make the material they use to get players hyped up for the game as part of media presentations, who tie together and interpret what the writers created with the movements and game mechanics that the programmers came up with and try to direct it like a movie...a number of those people were let go as well. From leads on down. Considering BioWare's love of telling stories in interactive cinematics and the need to repair existing bugs, if they dropped these people willy-nilly, not a good thing. As for QA, yeah, kinda sad how a patch will go onto the public test for a week or so, seem stable, goes live, and then they would apply a "stability" patch which was never tested on the public test server and that would be the thing to break content. Happened more than once.

So initial impression by wide spread cuts and what they're hiring for: focus on selling what they have and trying to perhaps get in some QA people that actually know how to do the job at least as well as any volunteer BETA tester, but not on expanding the content from what they currently have in the can?

Well, if this is in any way accurate, it wouldn't seem to bode well for content development and bug fixes...though chances are they made sure to squeeze out all the content for the rest of the year before dropping everyone. Take it for what it's worth. Just from what I saw around the net and such, I know the layoffs were widespread and hitting several departments (not just QA, but writers, video directors, people who had worked on the stuff for this coming up E3, and so on), so that's not new info. That EA may have lost faith in the game due to their bottom line and that people question BW's ability to create and manage a MMO is nothing that hasn't come up in this thread already. Only time (and some investigative reporting) will tell if the scope of the downsizing prove to be true or if they were just blowing off steam. As much as Austin prides itself on luring tech businesses to the city, I'm sure this will be followed closely locally...especially if the layoff numbers do turn out to be huge. As pointed out earlier in this thread, EA/BioWare only just months ago had a big huge press thing at the Austin studio to talk about how they were going to bring hundreds of jobs TO Austin. To turn around and lay off so many so soon after having Gov Perry touring the studio for photo ops, someone's going to be curious about why there was such an about face.

If the "right" people were fired, that would be one thing. If they only fired a quota across the board, no matter the quality of work...that would be an entirely different matter. Looking around various sites, it wasn't just QA members who were canned. Facebook alone was a trove of information as former BW employees updated their status fairly quickly. Often on their social pages you can see what they used to do. But yeah, if the dev teams were getting the information on bugs and never acted on it...then they would deserve to be canned as that has an effect on player experience and content quality. If QA never caught the issue or CS never actually reported the problems players have been complaining about since launch, and therefore never informed the devs (who think everything is working on their end), then the issue with content fixes falling between the cracks would be with those involved with QA and CS. If they tracked down these issues and dropped people as appropriate, then we should see content issues dealt with more efficiently and the gamer experience with content improved. If it was a mere hack and slash for saving money...then the old issues will continue and with fewer people to work on the workloads, players might see slower content releases or fixes. Yep. Very much so.

That's one of the kickers and why many suspect EA is the one that dropped the ax. I remember Bioware saying the game would be a success and able to support itself with 500K subs. They broke their own expectations for launch by a large margin. But those funding the company or stockholders may not see that. All they see is that subs are down from launch instead of increasing. Instead of working on fixing the issues with the current content and making sure the developers actually learn of any problems presented with the content, the panic button seems to have been hit. And yes, this isn't uncommon at all in the gaming industry. Quite common, in fact. But that still has to sting for those who came in to work today only to get turned around upon arrival.

Heh, I remember them saying that. Well, if they've gotten rid of the non-temp team members who were working on content, what by implication does that say about their commitment to a focus on building content for the foreseeable future? Even if they still have that commitment, past statements measured up to current actions tend to make the customer question the continued viability of the game.

Well, at least they let you know they removed your post. Mine was far more general and nothing that hadn't been already mentioned in this thread, but oh well... What layoffs mean for content? Depends. Are they going to replace the employees they downsized today? If they do, will it be in all the departments or just certain ones? Depends on what their future focus for content and fixing issues will be. If the staff they reduced were the people creating and fixing the content (and EA just wanted them to cut a quota of people, not necessarily went with quality of work...just speculation here, no one can say but Bioware and EA what really happened), then that puts a strain on all those remaining. Especially if EA sees TOR as not being as successful as they would like and likely won't be in a rush to throw money at getting replacement employees. In most situations, this sort of thing adds to workloads, which usually doesn't bode so well for the content produced. Now you have fewer people potentially working on PvP content, fixes, GTN upgrades, server transfers, and so forth. IF they plan to replace the workers...then it may not be such a big impact...but that's assuming you can get as good or better quality workers and there isn't much training downtime to get them up to speed. IF this is the case or IF they got rid of the "fat" and only left the "good" workers, then, yes, you might see an improvement in content quality...depending on what the employee moral is at this point. But will they have time to prove to EA that this are getting better, what with all the competition hitting this summer? If new (and impressive) content doesn't come out soon, people will hold off re-sub to try something else, which will only cause the sub numbers to look even worse. It would be sad if this became a nasty cycle and in the process cause deterioration of any planned future content. So that's a basic view of what I think the layoffs could mean for content.