ProwlerBCO Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 Apparently, its a whole lot of QA people that got the kick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluerodian Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 "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." james ohlen http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134940/the_making_of_star_wars_the_old_.php?print=1 ROFL Isn't he the same one that delved in to Conspiracy Theory with Metacritic? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ProwlerBCO Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 Shrug, if Ohlen gave an interview, that's a quote. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maulfly Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 "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," he said. "We're very much focused on Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars for the foreseeable future."---Hmmm look familiar? 6 Months is not foreseeable future in my mind. 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThiborF Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 "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." james ohlen http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134940/the_making_of_star_wars_the_old_.php?print=1 ROFL Plans change. Ohlen works at BioWare which is owned by EA. EA tells them their budget is being cut so they need to downsize their group. I doubt that was ever Ohlen's plan However, there's not much he can do about it. Happens in the business world all the time. And I can guarantee you that there are plenty of managers in all sorts of companies, big and small, that create a business plan based on an existing or projected budget only to have that change 5 months later and have to adjust accordingly. Sucks for those getting reassigned or laid off. Really don't see anything about it that's laughable though. Perhaps that comes with some life experience beyond the classroom. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torcer Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 Apparently, its a whole lot of QA people that got the kick. BioWare had QA people? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimnoire Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 Sad to see this. I've long thought that SWTOR is a fantastic game thats been executed poorly. I always hoped that they'd be given enough time to iron out the kinks. Almost every MMO made by a major developer has had to endure a period where the game continues to find itself following launch Crew skills being non-competitive, failure to launch ranked pvp, buggy patches and extremely imbalanced servers (and no LFG tools cross server or otherwise) has killed this game for a lot of people even though they enjoy the core game and story itself. I worry about the future of the MMO genre, it seems that in order to produce a game on the kind of scale that could compete with a WoW or even a Rift, you need to sink an absurd quantity of monetary investment and time into it. Since only large public gaming companies can afford the investment we end up with a situation where developers aren't willing to step too far outside the box, be honest about the game they are developing, or have a chance to improve through iteration because they have deliver a winning product or have it labled a failure. Truth be told; neither WoW nor everquest were as polished as swtor at release or had content half as well designed or entertaining. However, both of these games had a long period of time to improve before competition from other games put their playerbase populations at risk. In EQ's case, the game was completely half-baked until mid-way through the second expansion pack and it wasn't really until the 3rd that it fell into own. WoW was similar, it found its footing during its second expansion pack but Blizzard iterated its content much faster. In either case, the year immediately following launch was brutal from a service and quality perspective. In fact, by those standard SWTOR is practically a shining example of how an MMO should launch. That said, I worry that the weight of its initial investment cost (whether financed or simply from the perspective of ROI) and that it might hamstring the game's future development. I mean what if it stabilizes at 600K subs? are they going to stop adding new content? shut the game down? If it were a privately owned company pushing a game that constituted the bulk of their existing capital investment; sure. A public company thats expecting a certain level of ROI and a low tolerance for risk? Not so much. I'd use EVE as a good example, great game published by a great company that makes the occasional GIGANTIC blunder (boot.ini, monacle-gate, etc) yet because of willingness (most of the time) to be honest with their playerbase about problems with the game and listen to feedback in a fashion that actually makes it seems like they are listening to players (something swtor does pretty well, WOW does it horribly) they've always recovered and in many cases grown stronger following a period of major difficulties. In the realm of large publicly traded companies there doesn't seem to be any room for "sticking with it", it seems that the moment the playerbase goes down a bit they fire half of the development team and go into turtle mode producing the minumum amount of content possible to slow subscriber bleed. Even though it seems like SWTOR has great devs that listen to the players (or at least did until these layoffs), they may never get the chance to iterate this game to its full potential. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cerion Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 "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." james ohlen http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134940/the_making_of_star_wars_the_old_.php?print=1 ROFL You laugh...does their pain amuse you? This wasn't a BW decision. This was EA, pure and simple. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adsomelk Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 I am SO SORRY for the people affected :(:(:(:( We speak about regular game, über-them park, lack of lively worlds..... Those are words, concepts....PVP Forum maybe....but for these people the issue is VERY real Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riskybeaver Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 Everyone talks about bugs, LFG tools, cross server blah blah... I haven't come across a single bug, I just think its a poor game on nearly every level, Its not Star Wars (Yes I played KotOR and I'm a massive fan of this era) Its not fun, its flawed its niche its barren its ugly, and its incomplete. Re-box it as an SPRPG, (Dont call it KotOR 3 though, it doesn't deserve that title) take it offline and let someone else have a go at making a Star Wars MMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xyeth Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 Absolutely nothing that you would take as a solid source. I understand your concern, I have nothing to give you that would alleviate that. Regardless of what reservations you have, that's who went. Give it a week, news will leak. I really hope this isn't true. Since they've built the game around the story, that's like cutting the heart out of the game. I am committed to a long term stay in the game BUT with what is happening, I'm starting to wonder if I should. I was there when EA killed Earth & Beyond so I'm not interesting in committing more time to something that's going to be torpedoed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmyjediknight Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 iv sure things will turn around, u dont dump 200 million into a game to let in fail Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarfux Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 I am also pretty fed up with fantasy settings. Cyberpunk aka Shadowrun -that would be something tho you should check out otherland then. REALLY cool. You can clone stuff and create your own worlds. It's based off a book and the author of the book, I believe it's Ted Williams, is calling all the shots. It's a multiverse game look into that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Temad Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 Since the 1.3 was stated in an EA press release to investors, including weekend pass users would have been criminal. The SWTOR forum lawyers are out. Care to quote the law governing subscriber numbers that makes it a criminal offense to include all users of a product? Because as long as they provide valid financials that cover dollars being taken in, they can spin subscribers all they like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bluerodian Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 iv sure things will turn around, u dont dump 200 million into a game to let in fail Unless you've bet against your own product, not unlike what big banks did with the housing market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abruptum Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 iv sure things will turn around, u dont dump 200 million into a game to let in fail There's not much to suggest TOR can go anywhere but further down from here. The subscriber base is at its lowest in history, employees fired and the audience are quickly losing confidence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maulfly Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 I mean what if it stabilizes at 600K subs? are they going to stop adding new content? shut the game down? 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nytak Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 (edited) iv sure things will turn around, u dont dump 200 million into a game to let in fail It's called cutting your losses. Keep in mind that box sales alone grossed good 30% or more of the initial investment in the game, and we have gone through 4 billing cycles now. It's safe to say that this game has grossed somewhere in between $100-200M already. Edited May 22, 2012 by Nytak Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mallorik Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 iv sure things will turn around, u dont dump 200 million into a game to let in fail Letitng a game fail is one thing, refusing to see your mistakes and running the game into the ground so far that it can never recover is another thing. and so far bioware has not shown us that they realize their mistakes yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimnoire Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 Everyone talks about bugs, LFG tools, cross server blah blah... I haven't come across a single bug Haven't killed Soa yet I take it? Besides, the number of times of I've been stuck and /stuck didn't do ANYTHING and/or clipping was occuring so couldn't fast travel constitutes a significant enough series of bugs to complain about. I've been kicked out of WZs moments before a victory due to the AFK timer because my character rez'd dead and couldn't get back up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abruptum Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 I -do- feel sorry for the people who got fired, because getting fired isn't pleasant for anyone. But...it's a business. And sometimes employees have to be treated as expendable. It's not nice, but if you're going to cry for every soul who lost their job, things won't go well. I see this as one of the trumpet calls of the end of this game, in some form. I have always seen it as going free-to-play within the first year. It was bound to happen. I'm glad I enjoyed the first 30 levels of the game, but I haven't played in months. There's not much that gives me a reason to. Poor employees. It's a shame their bosses made bad decisions that resulted in their job loss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alkiii Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 It's called cutting your losses. Keep in mind that box sales alone grossed good 30% or more of the initial investment in the game, and we have gone through 4 billing cycles now. It's safe to say that this game has grossed somewhere in between $100-200M already. Breaking even after a lengthy investment isn't what investors want to see. Sure, the game will make some more money from existing subscriptions and possible expansions, but as an investor, this has not been a good investment. I sold my shares in November and banked around $4000.00. I'm glad I did, because if I had them today, they'd be a -$300.00 loss for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElioOsovasna Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 I had a bad day at work today, and i'm normally a fairly pesimistic person (glass half empty) by nature, however I don't really see this as more doom and gloom. EA/Bioware have had a taste of what could be with 2-2.4mil subs, I find it extremely unlikely they would throw in the towel and settle for 500k only 6 months in, more likely they would look to game up and give it an extra push more than anything, but hell what do I know Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BlackSpin Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 Hopefully it was the PvP team. If they're still around,... why? I just saw a post from someone that wanted to setup a donation for these poor out-of-work BioWare employees... REALLY?! We paid they're salaries, they gave us an incomplete game full of issues, and now are expected to donate money to laid off software folks? How about instead donate your money to charity if you're really that flush with money. I'm sure some starving Africans can use it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urael Posted May 22, 2012 Share Posted May 22, 2012 (edited) Breaking even after a lengthy investment isn't what investors want to see. Sure, the game will make some more money from existing subscriptions and possible expansions, but as an investor, this has not been a good investment. I sold my shares in November and banked around $4000.00. I'm glad I did, because if I had them today, they'd be a -$300.00 loss for me. so this is YOUR fault .... Edited May 22, 2012 by Urael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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