Rumor - Bioware Layoffs

[surfsatwerk]

And Dragon Age.

OMG! Never forgive, never forget.

 

[coloumb]

Let's hope it was the level designers and artists on the SWTOR project who did an extremely crappy job at not fixing most of the issues from beta which still exist today.

 

[Wreckem]

SWO is going the way of all non F2P games that are not named WoW*.. the great $15 a month golden goose is long gone.. and the people that still think SW has the rabid fanbase it once had are also .. deluded.. The Hardcore SW fanbase is getting old.. it was orginaly released in 77! And whiel the "new" movies hold a fanbase too.. its nothing like the originals.. most of those people have grown up and are not sitting in front of the PC.. Banked on SW IP a bit to much. The are currenlty carfull to quote 1.2 million active accounts.. but if you log into most any server (yes my account is still active) they are ghost towns. Rember the last 5-6 premium Pay 2 Play all started around 1.1 to 1 million accounts too.. none .. and I mean NONE have half of that now.. Willing to bet by the first snow SWo is very close to that half million too.

as for the layoffs.. I would suspect they expected some.. 200? i doubt it.

*in no way am i saying WoW is good or bad

The $15.99 started out as $9.99. Somewhere along the way, people lost the vision of MMOs and tried to be WoW but at the same time beat WoW. That and they are greedy and want insane profits like WoW.

Ultima Online was profitable off less than a quarter million subscribers. Everquest was profitable with well less than a million subscribers. Asheron's Call was profitable with less than UO's largest subscriber base.

Now TOR cost over $100million(some claim over $200million) to make. 38Studios burned through $50million with only a partial game world to show for it. The MMO forefathers cost a tiny fraction of TOR or the now stillborn Copernicus.

There will never be another WoW. Titan won't be another WoW. Outside WoWMMO's will only continue to survive as niches. If they continue to try to emulate WoW's success they will fail and waste hundreds of millions of dollars and end up folding within 1-2 years of launch.

 

[orbster556]

The industry is broken and the reason it doesn't get fixed is there is a constant, steady stream of young people coming out of school wanting to live their dream.

Not to hijack the thread, but:

1) Couldn't this be said for most professions
2) This phenomenon suggests supply far outstrips demand; as such, why should the wages be higher?

Regards,

 

[Craig234]

Some of the seemingly made for MMO games have crashed, from The Sims Online to Myst Online (aka Uru), to Auto Assault to Earth and Beyond for a few.

It's a tricky market.

What might really be challenged though are the expensive to develop single player games that sell for one fee, capped at $60 and getting increasingly discounted.

The Kingdoms of Amular game seems an example.

 

[KMFJD]

Their last few games have been remarkably meh, no loss

 

[frozentundra123456]

Some of the seemingly made for MMO games have crashed, from The Sims Online to Myst Online (aka Uru), to Auto Assault to Earth and Beyond for a few.

It's a tricky market.

What might really be challenged though are the expensive to develop single player games that sell for one fee, capped at $60 and getting increasingly discounted.

The Kingdoms of Amular game seems an example.

You may be right about single player games, but I hope not. Single player is all that I am really interested in.