Really hard to tell what this bodes... I'd say one thing we can be sure of GU3 additional phases will be delayed Overall this seems like sucky timing. That in itself doesn't bode well at all. The timing of this change says they don't care about development and subs and are not concerned about delaying this critical update.
From a business point it makes sense to combine the organizations and consolidate and long term this would be a good thing. It would really be an absorbtion of the remaining parts of VG into SoE.
It also looks like this has been maybe brewing inside for awhile. Auspex the dev for Dip being reassigned, Hassum being more quiet on the forums. Now Hassum resignation following another dev cylus resigning. One possibility is that the impending moves has sapped the will of many key devs who are perhaps more focused on getting a new job then moving the game forward and perhaps this move following the loss of a couple key people and the desire to bring the remaining key team closer and start bolstering it with Soe people.
I think this makes it abundantly clear that anyone not on board with the "new direction" SOE plans to go with VG is officially uninvited back to the office.
I have admiration for anyone who stands by their principles and takes the corporate backhand for the game they wanted to deliver.
Diplomacy = perma-hold
Graphics = rollback
I'm taking bets on how many days until crafting gets a nerf and instancing is introduced, and VG is merely another hack-n-slash.
I think it's more then obvious the major of people who post her do NOT play this game, lol. Vanguard is awesome and in the best shape it's been in since launch.. the are finishing up with the planned reorganization from when they took over sigil.
Vanguard is fine, nothing to see here except people who don't know the game and wanna coment on it..
I find it hard to believe that SOE could slow the development of Vanguard even more. But this news seems to be saying that. Since SOE has taken over they have released 2 updates in 5 months. Thats one update every 2.5 months. Whats even woirse is that almost all the content in those 2 updates was content already being worked on by Sigil and likely would have been patched into the game in May if Sigil had been able to make their balloon payment to MS in April. -Only the fixed a majority of the unstability, a HUGE amount of bugged quests and NPC's, and have all but finished our first real end game raid dungon..
What is the size of the staff working on Vanguard now? It went from over a 100 people to 50 when SOE took over. Since then they have moved many people to other games and other people have quit or moved on. Now they are firing even more people. Are there even 20 people left working on VG?
-100 people? that's rediculous, very little mmo's beside wow run on that many people, takes too much to pay them.
-- this is purley made up, they have said that the team trimmed to half of their 18 when they bought it from sigil.. 100 people is a lie SOE seems to care little to nothing about VG. VG is not their baby and its only role seems to be used as a marketing tool for EQ2. Such a shame as VG is such a better game than EQ2 at its core of combat and crafting.
-Funny, the vanguard players see how hard soe is working on vg, and how they have taken great strides in fixing our game.
I'm taking bets on how many days until crafting gets a nerf and instancing is introduced, and VG is merely another hack-n-slash.
You will loose Crafting doesnt need a nerf. They just have to leave it as is. Its not exactly clear how loot works in raid, but it might happen that crafters cant compete with raid loot. Instancing is to much work. There are plenty of dungeons. With an established raid endgame you just need something to level up. A classic progression through the main dungeons with armor rewards will be the future. Once you are able to raid anything of the game is trash... much like it is in EQ2. Decon of raid loot might be a valuable filler for some armor pieces though.
With the knowledge of APW they are able to create a lot of raid dungeons. Some peoples dream is to have a full raid continent in the 1st expansion. The chances are high that this might happen Once the flying mounts work as intended there will be airborn raids. The mobs are somehow allready there. This is the future i see...
The rumor from the FOH board is that VG only has 14 people left working on it. In other words, it is indeed the walking dead. It is a zombie. It is not dead but certainly not alive.
I'm not talking about crafting rewards, I'm talking about the intricate system that is currently in the game. The system that SOE will dumb down (probably removing complications 1st) to make it a more viable sphere for those with a low affinity for skill and the time required.
I only assume this because they have done this in every game in their stable, as well as adding instanced dungeons.
I welcome your opinion, but I doubt SOE will prove me wrong, since I only base my opinions off their past actions.
I am a little scared to put anytime into this game when they are downsizing and laying off devs. I hate writing this but I am steering clear of all SOE games due to past XP. I love how the UT II engine looks for a MMORPG and the depth in VG is fantastic. Sadly I just fear SOE's dumbing down approach will turn the game into a RPG mess if it is ever applied.
Does anyone else feel this way? I do love the game.
I find it hard to believe that SOE could slow the development of Vanguard even more. But this news seems to be saying that. Since SOE has taken over they have released 2 updates in 5 months. Thats one update every 2.5 months. Whats even woirse is that almost all the content in those 2 updates was content already being worked on by Sigil and likely would have been patched into the game in May if Sigil had been able to make their balloon payment to MS in April. -Only the fixed a majority of the unstability, a HUGE amount of bugged quests and NPC's, and have all but finished our first real end game raid dungon..
What is the size of the staff working on Vanguard now? It went from over a 100 people to 50 when SOE took over. Since then they have moved many people to other games and other people have quit or moved on. Now they are firing even more people. Are there even 20 people left working on VG?
-100 people? that's rediculous, very little mmo's beside wow run on that many people, takes too much to pay them.
-- this is purley made up, they have said that the team trimmed to half of their 18 when they bought it from sigil.. 100 people is a lie SOE seems to care little to nothing about VG. VG is not their baby and its only role seems to be used as a marketing tool for EQ2. Such a shame as VG is such a better game than EQ2 at its core of combat and crafting.
-Funny, the vanguard players see how hard soe is working on vg, and how they have taken great strides in fixing our game.
Vaedur, I hope you realize the before SOE took over SIGIL listed all of their employees on their website. Just before the buyout it was 104 people. SOE announced they kept about 45 people, moved 6 to new projects and did not rehire the rest.
I realize you are optimisitic about Vangaurd rocking and SOE working on it, but lets look at some realities. Look at your place of work or school room. Now, remove every other person (100 - 45) and think how much work would get done. Now look at the original group and remove 4 out of ever 5 people you see (100-18) and consider how much you think will get done.
Shared resources for the game being in Sand Diego? SOE has MXO, SWG, EQ, EQ2, Planetside, EQoA, VG, DC online, the agency, Free realms, The game base on Indian mythology. Other than EQ2, none of their titles has benefited from this shared resource strategy to rebound. Also if you were running SOE where would you put extra sets of programming hands if they free up? On a game that has been beaten down in the press and losing subscriptions or on one of your 3-4 yet unreleased titles that could be block busters?
I had exhausted most of my design schedule (new items require new content) and was spending more time learning the ins-and-outs of our programming here than anything else (had been a while since I had played with C++ and I had gotten really rusty);
It looks like there is no new content being worked on that wasn't already done. I know it is just speculation, but the does clearly say nothing was being developed.
Recap.
Dev team cut again from the original 104 to rumors of somewhere around 14-18
Lead designers gone
Looks like nothing new being developed currently
SOE "might" have extra resources in the SD office, but it might not also.
I applaud your optimism, but you should at least acknowledge what is being said.
Speculate about what? When Sony purchased them they stated this would happen and that not all employees would be keeping there jobs. So now it happened.
Just follow the postings and you'll see what I ment.
In SWG new contant is hardly added- they keep using what is already in their library and state they cant add new items because they do not have enought artists- so now VGSOH is going to have the same issues? No new content- rehashed assets. That is a shame.
Speculate about what? When Sony purchased them they stated this would happen and that not all employees would be keeping there jobs. So now it happened.
Just follow the postings and you'll see what I ment.
OK, so if the fact that Sony is doing exactly what they said they would do when this deal went through just check out today's patch notes. This is just phase I of game update 3 and the crash fixes, hundreds of bug fixes and performance optimization is massive. And, I might add, VERY effective on increasing fps and decreasing crashing.
So, if the the conspiracy theorists want to continue on that is fine. But the investment being made in this game is huge and doesn't jive with those stating it's going into maintenance mode. The amount of improvement that's been pulled off since the buy out is outstanding.
So, if the the conspiracy theorists want to continue on that is fine. But the investment being made in this game is huge and doesn't jive with those stating it's going into maintenance mode. The amount of improvement that's been pulled off since the buy out is outstanding.
It's worth noting that all of the changes and improvements in GU3 that you're talking about happened BEFORE they canned however many people they just let go.
What people are talking about in this thread is the potential for FUTURE development of this game now that they've gone and fired the guy who created Diplomacy in the first place, along with the lead developer, and cut the staff down even further.
Vanguard started with 100 people. 45 of those people survived the initial mass firing in the parking lot. Of those 45, a few were taken and reassigned to other projects, like The Agency. A few more left on their own to pursue other opportunities. And of whatever number of devs remained, something like 14-18 of them just got fired, including the guy in charge. That leaves a very small number of folks still working on the game, no matter how you want to look at it.
The VG devs promised updates and patches every 6-8 weeks, correct? Well, that was with a team of 45. How much longer do you think things will take now with a much smaller team in place?
And what about new content that hasn't already been done? The Ancient Port Warehouse doesn't count, BTW, since they were working on that before all this happened. Now, in the aftermath of this, how long do you think it will take them to create more high end content, and more raids with that smaller team in place? What about further new content? Where do you see this game realistically going with less people working on it?
Speculate about what? When Sony purchased them they stated this would happen and that not all employees would be keeping there jobs. So now it happened.
Just follow the postings and you'll see what I ment.
OK, so if the fact that Sony is doing exactly what they said they would do when this deal went through just check out today's patch notes. This is just phase I of game update 3 and the crash fixes, hundreds of bug fixes and performance optimization is massive. And, I might add, VERY effective on increasing fps and decreasing crashing.
So, if the the conspiracy theorists want to continue on that is fine. But the investment being made in this game is huge and doesn't jive with those stating it's going into maintenance mode. The amount of improvement that's been pulled off since the buy out is outstanding.
The initial layoffs that Sony mentioned were done when Sigil was purchased. They were not referring to the new round of layoffs.
Plus a staff of 14 people is not an investment. It is a skeleton staff. If you thought the so called maintenance updates were long before, they will be longer. Plus you will not see anything like a "re-launch" or expansion.
Hell, I bet The Matrix Online and Planetside have a bigger staff supporting it.
Vanguard started with 100 people. 45 of those people survived the initial mass firing in the parking lot. Of those 45, a few were taken and reassigned to other projects, like The Agency. A few more left on their own to pursue other opportunities. And of whatever number of devs remained, something like 14-18 of them just got fired, including the guy in charge. That leaves a very small number of folks still working on the game, no matter how you want to look at it.
That number, whatever it turns out to be, will be of those that rejected an offer to come and of hose that didn't get an offer. I'm quite shure some people choosed for various reasons not to move. There is nothing stated that there wont be people replacing some of those people, nor is it mentioned anything what resources they are to be sharing. Are there resources that would redundant after the move and are there resources/functions that actually are not needed to have one for each team.
Reminders of the Vanguard team sounds to me like they are refering to the teammembers that actually moves along to San Diego. It is not saying that there will be a small number of people working on the game.
And to question your change of the 18people. From the source you got that from, haven't read it, I assume the figure given was 18, why would you now change that into a selfinterpretated number of 14 to 18 people.
Speculate about what? When Sony purchased them they stated this would happen and that not all employees would be keeping there jobs. So now it happened.
Just follow the postings and you'll see what I ment.
So, if the the conspiracy theorists want to continue on that is fine.
The initial layoffs that Sony mentioned were done when Sigil was purchased. They were not referring to the new round of layoffs.
Plus a staff of 14 people is not an investment. It is a skeleton staff. If you thought the so called maintenance updates were long before, they will be longer. Plus you will not see anything like a "re-launch" or expansion.
Hell, I bet The Matrix Online and Planetside have a bigger staff supporting it.
The initial layoffs you (tnice) is referring to was not done by SOE, so SOE can't refer to them as done by them. But you obviously can. What boojiboy is refering to would be layoffs done by SOE after the purchase and a bit into the future (read current day).
On the up side SoE canning people means they can go on to work on other things, like whatever Blizzard is up to behind the scenes.
Vanguard might, or very well might not, survive. But the way things are headed I expect the same of SoE - they need to make some real money, or Sony is going to bin them too. SoE took over some big name IP and by all appearances effectively ran them into the ground; for all their time in the market they may well be at peril of vanishing to nothing next to EA/Mythic, Funcom (assuming AoC hits as hard as it looks to), Blizzard, and all the free-to-play games.
I can imagine the "To sell" column - "For sale, one games design, production and distribution company, terrible reputation with gamers, some unfinished games with great ideas (note 'as is where is', original staff have all left), has a couple of marginally profitable legacy games made by someone else - all enquiries welcome."
People sometimes talk about "WoW killers"; but while I do not expect anything to come remotely close to killing WoW any time soon, the crush of new and shiny games coming into the market may well kill off all further development on games such as Vanguard (SWG already seems to be "as is where is") and potentially even EQ2. Ah well, maybe if SoE gets sold off Blizz will buy Vanguard and actually finish it to the original release intent at least. Make a Vanguard subscription free when you finish the WoW level 80 quests and host the Vanguard servers on the back of some of the quieter WoW PvP servers
Speculate about what? When Sony purchased them they stated this would happen and that not all employees would be keeping there jobs. So now it happened.
Just follow the postings and you'll see what I ment.
OK, so if the fact that Sony is doing exactly what they said they would do when this deal went through just check out today's patch notes. This is just phase I of game update 3 and the crash fixes, hundreds of bug fixes and performance optimization is massive. And, I might add, VERY effective on increasing fps and decreasing crashing.
So, if the the conspiracy theorists want to continue on that is fine. But the investment being made in this game is huge and doesn't jive with those stating it's going into maintenance mode. The amount of improvement that's been pulled off since the buy out is outstanding.
I agree that the fixes have been amazing. What I am concerned about is how SOE can limit a games staff to a skeleton crew and new content never occurs. It becomes rehased existing content with a twist. Now Sony borrowed 80 billion yen a few years ago because they were in the hole. They are losing money and have been per word of blog mouth. Where does this leave SOE with VGSOH? Where does this leave the game we play and enjoy with a small staff.
And to question your change of the 18people. From the source you got that from, haven't read it, I assume the figure given was 18, why would you now change that into a selfinterpretated number of 14 to 18 people.
I changed it because according to the guy from Uberguilds Radio, only 14 people got fired, not 18:
Orphes, there are a few sites claiming insider info that VG has 14-18 team members left. True or not, who knows. I suspect someone will step forward.
I have also read articles about Sony getting edged out in the marketplace due to fierce undercutting and slacking sales. Not SOE, but Sony parent. I don't think SOE has as deep of pockets as everyone thinks with a growing title list, invesment in sever titles yet to launch and shrinking subscription market share. There is a fine line between being optomistic and being blindly faithful. Especially to a company with such a bad track record.
Comments
Maybe after integrated with the main body of soe, they will have more resources and new ideas to the game... just maybe....
RIP Orc Choppa
only time will tell....
Really hard to tell what this bodes... I'd say one thing we can be sure of GU3 additional phases will be delayed
Overall this seems like sucky timing. That in itself doesn't bode well at all. The timing of this change says they don't care about development and subs and are not concerned about delaying this critical update.
From a business point it makes sense to combine the organizations and consolidate and long term this would be a good thing. It would really be an absorbtion of the remaining parts of VG into SoE.
It also looks like this has been maybe brewing inside for awhile. Auspex the dev for Dip being reassigned, Hassum being more quiet on the forums. Now Hassum resignation following another dev cylus resigning. One possibility is that the impending moves has sapped the will of many key devs who are perhaps more focused on getting a new job then moving the game forward and perhaps this move following the loss of a couple key people and the desire to bring the remaining key team closer and start bolstering it with Soe people.
---
Ethion
I think this makes it abundantly clear that anyone not on board with the "new direction" SOE plans to go with VG is officially uninvited back to the office.
I have admiration for anyone who stands by their principles and takes the corporate backhand for the game they wanted to deliver.
Diplomacy = perma-hold
Graphics = rollback
I'm taking bets on how many days until crafting gets a nerf and instancing is introduced, and VG is merely another hack-n-slash.
Oops
-----
WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
I think it's more then obvious the major of people who post her do NOT play this game, lol. Vanguard is awesome and in the best shape it's been in since launch.. the are finishing up with the planned reorganization from when they took over sigil.
Vanguard is fine, nothing to see here except people who don't know the game and wanna coment on it..
Play the game.. it rocks
With the knowledge of APW they are able to create a lot of raid dungeons. Some peoples dream is to have a full raid continent in the 1st expansion. The chances are high that this might happen
Once the flying mounts work as intended there will be airborn raids. The mobs are somehow allready there. This is the future i see...
(I dont like it, but it doesnt matter)
The rumor from the FOH board is that VG only has 14 people left working on it. In other words, it is indeed the walking dead. It is a zombie. It is not dead but certainly not alive.
I'm not talking about crafting rewards, I'm talking about the intricate system that is currently in the game. The system that SOE will dumb down (probably removing complications 1st) to make it a more viable sphere for those with a low affinity for skill and the time required.
I only assume this because they have done this in every game in their stable, as well as adding instanced dungeons.
I welcome your opinion, but I doubt SOE will prove me wrong, since I only base my opinions off their past actions.
Does anyone else feel this way? I do love the game.
Vaedur, I hope you realize the before SOE took over SIGIL listed all of their employees on their website. Just before the buyout it was 104 people. SOE announced they kept about 45 people, moved 6 to new projects and did not rehire the rest.
I realize you are optimisitic about Vangaurd rocking and SOE working on it, but lets look at some realities. Look at your place of work or school room. Now, remove every other person (100 - 45) and think how much work would get done. Now look at the original group and remove 4 out of ever 5 people you see (100-18) and consider how much you think will get done.
Shared resources for the game being in Sand Diego? SOE has MXO, SWG, EQ, EQ2, Planetside, EQoA, VG, DC online, the agency, Free realms, The game base on Indian mythology. Other than EQ2, none of their titles has benefited from this shared resource strategy to rebound. Also if you were running SOE where would you put extra sets of programming hands if they free up? On a game that has been beaten down in the press and losing subscriptions or on one of your 3-4 yet unreleased titles that could be block busters?
Cylus/Silas wrote a goodbye letter and I think let something slip about the future of VG. forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m
I had exhausted most of my design schedule (new items require new content) and was spending more time learning the ins-and-outs of our programming here than anything else (had been a while since I had played with C++ and I had gotten really rusty);
It looks like there is no new content being worked on that wasn't already done. I know it is just speculation, but the does clearly say nothing was being developed.
Recap.
Dev team cut again from the original 104 to rumors of somewhere around 14-18
Lead designers gone
Looks like nothing new being developed currently
SOE "might" have extra resources in the SD office, but it might not also.
I applaud your optimism, but you should at least acknowledge what is being said.
Speculate about what? When Sony purchased them they stated this would happen and that not all employees would be keeping there jobs. So now it happened.
Just follow the postings and you'll see what I ment.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
In SWG new contant is hardly added- they keep using what is already in their library and state they cant add new items because they do not have enought artists- so now VGSOH is going to have the same issues? No new content- rehashed assets. That is a shame.
Speculate about what? When Sony purchased them they stated this would happen and that not all employees would be keeping there jobs. So now it happened.
Just follow the postings and you'll see what I ment.
OK, so if the fact that Sony is doing exactly what they said they would do when this deal went through just check out today's patch notes. This is just phase I of game update 3 and the crash fixes, hundreds of bug fixes and performance optimization is massive. And, I might add, VERY effective on increasing fps and decreasing crashing.
So, if the the conspiracy theorists want to continue on that is fine. But the investment being made in this game is huge and doesn't jive with those stating it's going into maintenance mode. The amount of improvement that's been pulled off since the buy out is outstanding.
It's worth noting that all of the changes and improvements in GU3 that you're talking about happened BEFORE they canned however many people they just let go.
What people are talking about in this thread is the potential for FUTURE development of this game now that they've gone and fired the guy who created Diplomacy in the first place, along with the lead developer, and cut the staff down even further.
Vanguard started with 100 people. 45 of those people survived the initial mass firing in the parking lot. Of those 45, a few were taken and reassigned to other projects, like The Agency. A few more left on their own to pursue other opportunities. And of whatever number of devs remained, something like 14-18 of them just got fired, including the guy in charge. That leaves a very small number of folks still working on the game, no matter how you want to look at it.
The VG devs promised updates and patches every 6-8 weeks, correct? Well, that was with a team of 45. How much longer do you think things will take now with a much smaller team in place?
And what about new content that hasn't already been done? The Ancient Port Warehouse doesn't count, BTW, since they were working on that before all this happened. Now, in the aftermath of this, how long do you think it will take them to create more high end content, and more raids with that smaller team in place? What about further new content? Where do you see this game realistically going with less people working on it?
Speculate about what? When Sony purchased them they stated this would happen and that not all employees would be keeping there jobs. So now it happened.
Just follow the postings and you'll see what I ment.
OK, so if the fact that Sony is doing exactly what they said they would do when this deal went through just check out today's patch notes. This is just phase I of game update 3 and the crash fixes, hundreds of bug fixes and performance optimization is massive. And, I might add, VERY effective on increasing fps and decreasing crashing.
So, if the the conspiracy theorists want to continue on that is fine. But the investment being made in this game is huge and doesn't jive with those stating it's going into maintenance mode. The amount of improvement that's been pulled off since the buy out is outstanding.
The initial layoffs that Sony mentioned were done when Sigil was purchased. They were not referring to the new round of layoffs.
Plus a staff of 14 people is not an investment. It is a skeleton staff. If you thought the so called maintenance updates were long before, they will be longer. Plus you will not see anything like a "re-launch" or expansion.
Hell, I bet The Matrix Online and Planetside have a bigger staff supporting it.
That number, whatever it turns out to be, will be of those that rejected an offer to come and of hose that didn't get an offer. I'm quite shure some people choosed for various reasons not to move. There is nothing stated that there wont be people replacing some of those people, nor is it mentioned anything what resources they are to be sharing. Are there resources that would redundant after the move and are there resources/functions that actually are not needed to have one for each team.
Reminders of the Vanguard team sounds to me like they are refering to the teammembers that actually moves along to San Diego. It is not saying that there will be a small number of people working on the game.
And to question your change of the 18people. From the source you got that from, haven't read it, I assume the figure given was 18, why would you now change that into a selfinterpretated number of 14 to 18 people.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
Speculate about what? When Sony purchased them they stated this would happen and that not all employees would be keeping there jobs. So now it happened.
Just follow the postings and you'll see what I ment.
So, if the the conspiracy theorists want to continue on that is fine.
The initial layoffs that Sony mentioned were done when Sigil was purchased. They were not referring to the new round of layoffs.
Plus a staff of 14 people is not an investment. It is a skeleton staff. If you thought the so called maintenance updates were long before, they will be longer. Plus you will not see anything like a "re-launch" or expansion.
Hell, I bet The Matrix Online and Planetside have a bigger staff supporting it.
The initial layoffs you (tnice) is referring to was not done by SOE, so SOE can't refer to them as done by them. But you obviously can. What boojiboy is refering to would be layoffs done by SOE after the purchase and a bit into the future (read current day).
Anyway, speculate on...
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
On the up side SoE canning people means they can go on to work on other things, like whatever Blizzard is up to behind the scenes.
Vanguard might, or very well might not, survive. But the way things are headed I expect the same of SoE - they need to make some real money, or Sony is going to bin them too. SoE took over some big name IP and by all appearances effectively ran them into the ground; for all their time in the market they may well be at peril of vanishing to nothing next to EA/Mythic, Funcom (assuming AoC hits as hard as it looks to), Blizzard, and all the free-to-play games.
I can imagine the "To sell" column - "For sale, one games design, production and distribution company, terrible reputation with gamers, some unfinished games with great ideas (note 'as is where is', original staff have all left), has a couple of marginally profitable legacy games made by someone else - all enquiries welcome."
People sometimes talk about "WoW killers"; but while I do not expect anything to come remotely close to killing WoW any time soon, the crush of new and shiny games coming into the market may well kill off all further development on games such as Vanguard (SWG already seems to be "as is where is") and potentially even EQ2. Ah well, maybe if SoE gets sold off Blizz will buy Vanguard and actually finish it to the original release intent at least. Make a Vanguard subscription free when you finish the WoW level 80 quests and host the Vanguard servers on the back of some of the quieter WoW PvP servers
Speculate about what? When Sony purchased them they stated this would happen and that not all employees would be keeping there jobs. So now it happened.
Just follow the postings and you'll see what I ment.
OK, so if the fact that Sony is doing exactly what they said they would do when this deal went through just check out today's patch notes. This is just phase I of game update 3 and the crash fixes, hundreds of bug fixes and performance optimization is massive. And, I might add, VERY effective on increasing fps and decreasing crashing.
So, if the the conspiracy theorists want to continue on that is fine. But the investment being made in this game is huge and doesn't jive with those stating it's going into maintenance mode. The amount of improvement that's been pulled off since the buy out is outstanding.
I agree that the fixes have been amazing. What I am concerned about is how SOE can limit a games staff to a skeleton crew and new content never occurs. It becomes rehased existing content with a twist. Now Sony borrowed 80 billion yen a few years ago because they were in the hole. They are losing money and have been per word of blog mouth. Where does this leave SOE with VGSOH? Where does this leave the game we play and enjoy with a small staff.
I changed it because according to the guy from Uberguilds Radio, only 14 people got fired, not 18:
www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showpost.php
Whether it's 14 or 18, that's still a sizeable cut in staffing. But I'm allowing for both numbers to be floated out there, so I wrote 14-18.
Orphes, there are a few sites claiming insider info that VG has 14-18 team members left. True or not, who knows. I suspect someone will step forward.
I have also read articles about Sony getting edged out in the marketplace due to fierce undercutting and slacking sales. Not SOE, but Sony parent. I don't think SOE has as deep of pockets as everyone thinks with a growing title list, invesment in sever titles yet to launch and shrinking subscription market share. There is a fine line between being optomistic and being blindly faithful. Especially to a company with such a bad track record.
it's always good fun reading how some people (forum poster included) can put a positive spin on bad news.