I hope it was the lead devs and managers at Bioware, and not the regular programmers and staff who get on with the work but don't make decisions.
SWTOR is dead because of the bad decisions of the people at the top. The bosses at Bioware SWTOR do not deserve a paycheck, and yes, they deserve to be fired and never work in the industry again.
Specifically, I hope the following were fired:
Erickson
Zoeller
Ohlen
Reid
Campbell
All their forum mods
You forgot (Gabe) Amantangelo and (Dallas) Dickinson.
I say good riddance. God, I'd put baby's on spikes if I could be there to see specifically Georg Zoeller, James Ohlen and Gabe Amantangelo frog-marched out of the building by security.
Frog marched, hehe. Got me giggling over that.
Those you named should be the ones to go, not the poor suckers having to code and do what they're told only to get fired because they're just the grunts that work. All of those named were significant factors in helping the game fail. None would listen to testers about the issues, we knew people would have at release.
And some of those names were responsible for WAR failiure, are you surprised that the same is happening to TOR?
I hope it was the lead devs and managers at Bioware, and not the regular programmers and staff who get on with the work but don't make decisions.
SWTOR is dead because of the bad decisions of the people at the top. The bosses at Bioware SWTOR do not deserve a paycheck, and yes, they deserve to be fired and never work in the industry again.
Specifically, I hope the following were fired:
Erickson
Zoeller
Ohlen
Reid
Campbell
All their forum mods
You forgot (Gabe) Amantangelo and (Dallas) Dickinson.
I say good riddance. God, I'd put baby's on spikes if I could be there to see specifically Georg Zoeller, James Ohlen and Gabe Amantangelo frog-marched out of the building by security.
Frog marched, hehe. Got me giggling over that.
Those you named should be the ones to go, not the poor suckers having to code and do what they're told only to get fired because they're just the grunts that work. All of those named were significant factors in helping the game fail. None would listen to testers about the issues, we knew people would have at release.
And some of those names were responsible for WAR failiure, are you surprised that the same is happening to TOR?
Nope not surprised, they're so arrogant, they won't let themselves learn a lesson from previous failures. I don't get it...it's quite puzzling.
I hope it was the lead devs and managers at Bioware, and not the regular programmers and staff who get on with the work but don't make decisions.
SWTOR is dead because of the bad decisions of the people at the top. The bosses at Bioware SWTOR do not deserve a paycheck, and yes, they deserve to be fired and never work in the industry again.
Specifically, I hope the following were fired:
Erickson
Zoeller
Ohlen
Reid
Campbell
All their forum mods
You forgot (Gabe) Amantangelo and (Dallas) Dickinson.
I say good fucking riddance. God, I'd put baby's on spikes if I could be there to see specifically Georg Zoeller, James Ohlen and Gabe Amantangelo frog-marched out of the building by security.
Oh dear god you're right, how could I forget Gabe, he's one of the very worst, amending post immediately.
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.
You guys dont get it, this is not personal but if you do a bad job then you should be reprimanded, fired or whatever. Sorry if some of you are taking it personally but if there is no consequence for a poor effort then the poor effort will keep repeating itself.
Now if the poor job on SW:TOR was done by the people who were fired or not is another question but the principle is still sound.
As for SW:TOR being a bad product or not. Well, if you disregard personal experiences, I read, before the release, that it was projected to have millions of subs but now it is around a million and dropping. So it would be a safe bet to say that it is performing below expectations and that is how it works in any industry. Below expectations = bad. Presumably SW:TOR is performing below expectations so people are getting fired for it, cause and effect. Perfectly reasonable.
There's a difference between not performing to expectations, and having unrealistic expectations. SWTOR is performing just as any MMO player expected. It just shows those in charge had no working knowledge of this genre.
Doesn't matter. If a company is showing profits but it is below the expectations the stock will still go down. I believe the same principle applies here. Unrealistic or not, it was the expectations and it was not met so => bad.
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'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.
Unfortunate. While I don't like to see people lose their jobs (especially since we know it isn't going to be the suits who called the shots), you could see this coming from a mile away.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
Maybe TOR will be the last chapter in this book of generic theme-park carrot on a stick game design approach for mmo's. Or maybe not... But I cant see another company rounding up investors to drop this kind of cash on another mmo any time in the near future though, so itll probably be the last one of those any of us will see for a long long time.
Will all depend. Did BW/EA make money. If they did, then there is more than a good chance that companies will continue to make games that people want. U Shut yo' Mouth... 'What people want!!!!!' Yep. money made equates to what people want. You can logic it to death, find loop holes in the argument, but it always circles back.
Maybe TOR will be the last chapter in this book of generic theme-park carrot on a stick game design approach for mmo's. Or maybe not... But I cant see another company rounding up investors to drop this kind of cash on another mmo any time in the near future though, so itll probably be the last one of those any of us will see for a long long time.
Will all depend. Did BW/EA make money. If they did, then there is more than a good chance that companies will continue to make games that people want. U Shut yo' Mouth... 'What people want!!!!!' Yep. money made equates to what people want. You can logic it to death, find loop holes in the argument, but it always circles back.
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...
Looks like Stephen Reid may be one of those laid off. They're saying on the swtor forums in the bioware laid off post that he no longer has them down on his linkedin page. He's a terrible community manager anyways. Always new information from twitter from him and never on the official forums. Good riddance, if he truly is one of the ones let go. Now they need to get the rest on the list from above.
Looks like Stephen Reid may be one of those laid off. They're saying on the swtor forums in the bioware laid off post that he no longer has them down on his linkedin page. He's a terrible community manager anyways. Always new information from twitter from him and never on the official forums. Good riddance, if he truly is one of the ones let go. Now they need to get the rest on the list from above.
Now there's someone I won't miss. Reid was a complete tool.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.- -And on the 8th day, man created God.-
It's Dennis Erickson. He was the ramrod on this project. He hired the writers. He spec'd the game. And he's the one who has constantly lied about what's going on with the game since release.
Damn. I used to respect that guy, back when I was looking forward to SW:TOR and frequented the forums and stuff.
Originally posted by Vorthanion
I find it disgusting that you are glad people are losing their jobs, especially in this day and age where they can be hard to come by.
Except they're IT, and IT jobs are not hard to come by, especially if you're an effing game developer.
Granted, I agree with other posters here that these guys probably had nothing to do with the low quality of the product.
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?
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?
Yeah, that's what EAware considers a "forum overhaul". lol
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.- -And on the 8th day, man created God.-
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.
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.
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.
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
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."
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.
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
Comments
And some of those names were responsible for WAR failiure, are you surprised that the same is happening to TOR?
Nope not surprised, they're so arrogant, they won't let themselves learn a lesson from previous failures. I don't get it...it's quite puzzling.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
The game isn't dead until I say it is...
So there.
HAHA
They dont have to , they cover eachothers backs, when game fails poor coders get fired and they move to other projects to milk/destroy.
Once in a while they willmake good game then they will milk it like with crappy sequels and DLC and MT.... look at BF3, DA2, ME3
Oh dear god you're right, how could I forget Gabe, he's one of the very worst, amending post immediately.
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.
Agreed. EA is a horrible company.
My gaming blog
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.
Unfortunate. While I don't like to see people lose their jobs (especially since we know it isn't going to be the suits who called the shots), you could see this coming from a mile away.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
Will all depend. Did BW/EA make money. If they did, then there is more than a good chance that companies will continue to make games that people want. U Shut yo' Mouth... 'What people want!!!!!' Yep. money made equates to what people want. You can logic it to death, find loop holes in the argument, but it always circles back.
I self identify as a monkey.
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...
Looks like Stephen Reid may be one of those laid off. They're saying on the swtor forums in the bioware laid off post that he no longer has them down on his linkedin page. He's a terrible community manager anyways. Always new information from twitter from him and never on the official forums. Good riddance, if he truly is one of the ones let go. Now they need to get the rest on the list from above.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Now there's someone I won't miss. Reid was a complete tool.
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
Damn. I used to respect that guy, back when I was looking forward to SW:TOR and frequented the forums and stuff.
Except they're IT, and IT jobs are not hard to come by, especially if you're an effing game developer.
Granted, I agree with other posters here that these guys probably had nothing to do with the low quality of the product.
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
-Letting Derek Smart work on your game is like letting Osama bin Laden work in the White House. Something will burn.-
-And on the 8th day, man created God.-
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.
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?
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.
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