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Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning: EA / Mythic Layoffs and Some Response
Szark
News ManagerMember Posts: 4,420
MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood has been looking at recent rumors of layoffs at Mythic Entertainment and recent forum responses from Mythic boss Mark Jacobs. Here, he tries to present some of the more interesting responses to this now confirmed story.
On January 19th, joystiq published a rumor that Mythic had layed off “21 customer service employees, half of QA and all of the playtest group”. This seems to be attached to previously announced plans by Mythic owners Electronic Arts to reduce their workforce by 10%. The article also mentioned that “specific questions about the future of Warhammer Online were not answered”, leaving many to speculate whether these layoffs spell doom for the RvR game and the company that created it.
It’s now a few days later, and Mythic boss Mark Jacobs has cleared a number of things up through a dialogue with users at Warhammer Alliance, the site that the developers seem to have taken to using primarily in lieu of Mythic-run official forums:
First, Jacobs answers the question of whether or no the rumor was true by saying that “EA corporate communication has already commented on that, it was in the article”, in reference to the 10% workforce reduction eluded to earlier.
Read more about the EA / Mythic Layoffs
Comments
The game is doing well. Despite the nay-sayers.
At least from my interactions w/ my guild, the WHA forums, and through friends. The game saw a large dip in Dec when people left or quit for one reason or another, but since the first of the year I've seen as many, if not more, people start a new account or come back to the game.
Whatever happened to DAOC Origins? I think they are running DAOC on a skeleton crew now, which is a shame because that game deserves a lot more respect and attention than it seems to be getting currently.
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Respectfully, what does that have to do with Warhammer online layoffs and some responces?
Respectfully, what does that have to do with Warhammer online layoffs and some responces?
The layoffs may be having effects on DAOC. In the interview, Mark Jacobs claims that pretty much everyone at Mythic is trying to hold Warhammer Online together. Some of the repsonses I have from my article have people telling me that Mythic has barely been doing anything over there short of a few grab bag questions every week. 6 Months ago they promised the DAOC players a new ruleset server and there hasn't been any word since. The lack of information and support for Dark Age of Camelot could show that Mythic could be under a lot of pressure right now.
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ahh ok, I think I get you now, they are cutting costs at the expense of DAoC for Warhammer.
gotcha, and if they said this, that would really make DAoC peeps mad
There is very much lack for dark Age... seems they go on to warhammer to make that better and gotget all about the game... no wonder that game has a low population.. sad to. but i still play there
Playing daoc and loving it totally..
have Played
Eq,Eq2,WoW,Coh,Cov,
and other..
which i have forgotten..
Which game do you believe have the most players between WAR and DAoC ?
and in 1 year ?
stupid question ? well not that much I'm afraid.
I never played DAOC (was playing FFXI at release) but read lots about it and its oRvR. It sounded like after a few years, the game was solid.
After reading the VN Boards and watching MJ come in and talk mostly about stock quotes, little about Warhammer, less about DAOC and nothing about Origins, I am of the mind he probably would like to see it go away, but he can't kill it.
He just made a game that directly competes with it (WAR, on the oRvR scale of Pvp) which cost him tons of money and also got an infusion of cash from EA. He really needs for Warhammer to survive at all costs. This means pouring mass resources into WAR especially now after over probably 60% of the original subs have gone (maybe more). DAOC is not gaining lots of new subs so its like throwing good money after bad. I think he realizes if he were actually to try and fix DAOC up, EA would have a fit because that pulls subs away from the main stablehorse. You'd ideally want it like Wow, with one game and one company not splitting loyalties between their first born and the new baby.
The easiest solution is just to neglect DAOC so it slowly dies, then most of the DAOC fans would come to Warhammer, no matter what they say now. They wouldn't go to Wow. The goal was probably to phase in all ex-DAOC people anyways once Warhammer took off, but it has too many bugs for experienced gamers to live with. I think MJ is betting DAOCers will give up eventually and come over once he lets it die out. He'll keep saying the right things to keep money coming in, but its just in maintainance mode. I think the Origins talk was just a pipe dream to keep funds coming in until people realized it. Sadly, theres still plenty that havent, but such is the way of the business world.
MJ is (was?)a trained lawyer, so he's quite fluent in double speak and understanding how to keep cash flows (billable hours) coming in even when the client's case is a foregone conclusion.
"TO MICHAEL!"
...this thread astounds me honestly...seriously......EA is letting go of 1,000 people world wide...Mythic's lay offs dont' even cover a quarter of those numbers and none of them are developers...people are really making this out to be bigger than it is. If Mythic was really hurting EA they'd let go of some of the higher paying people along with the others.
btw maybe Jon needs to read Gamasutra more...it sheds better light then tabloid gaming news sites and forum posters with wild speculations and hater aid.
just for reference I am not a over zealous fan boi etc...i cancelled my account at the beginning of the year.
Game company mergers hurt us the consumer/player. This is another example of just that.
It doesn't matter what portion the layoffs at Mythic represent in comparison to the rest of EA. All that matters is what portion of Mythic does these layoffs represent.
If this was for example 25% of Mythic you can't say it is no big deal because the rest of EA lost 1,000 people. That makes no sense at all.
Obviously Mythic needed those people to get Warhammer to where it is at now and it still has a long ways to go. Losing these people will not somehow help that effort let alone not set it back some.
Devs are important but so is the QA team. They make sure the dev's work, works. I think this will slow down content and fixes due to the devs having to QA their own work. CSRs and QA people can't be making more then 14 bucks an hour. I think I saw the ad from Mythic for those jobs a while back.
I can vouch for this. He no longer drinks deeply of the Mythical magical Koolaid, although back in the day, he was pretty hardcore. (had pretty good posts on the pro side) Although there is nothing wrong with that. Too each his own.
Did you pick a new game or taking a break, banthis?
"TO MICHAEL!"
Looks like EA layoffs are hitting a lot of their other studios...
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Well, it is not good news, but it could of course be worse.
But I wish they actually gave us numbers of subs also, both WAR and AoC was very open with the numbers at first but as soon as the subs started to drop things started to be very quit about any numbers. Keeping their mouths now only leads to speculation that it is actually a lot worse than the current numbers (or so I hope).
But right now, it isn't Mythic that is in trouble, it is EA. The cuts Mythic got was acceptable but it will still makes things more difficult for them. It is no big problem now but it is likely we see another EA cut this summer or so, it seems like 2009 will be a black year for most companies. So if WAR wont start gaining players again this summer it might be time to worry.
shame really . i dont know how this will effect warhammer but it does nt bode very well for the future . personally i think the company should have offered a free trial sooner . theres a lot of fun to be had in war inspite of the same issues you get with most mmo releases
Well, it is not good news, but it could of course be worse.
But I wish they actually gave us numbers of subs also, both WAR and AoC was very open with the numbers at first but as soon as the subs started to drop things started to be very quit about any numbers. Keeping their mouths now only leads to speculation that it is actually a lot worse than the current numbers (or so I hope).
But right now, it isn't Mythic that is in trouble, it is EA. The cuts Mythic got was acceptable but it will still makes things more difficult for them. It is no big problem now but it is likely we see another EA cut this summer or so, it seems like 2009 will be a black year for most companies. So if WAR wont start gaining players again this summer it might be time to worry.
Because the subscriber numbers have dropped below the 250k mark. That's why they suddenly keep it quiet.
And most of it they can thank GOA for. Mythic was just stupid to go with GOA again for the Europe publishing and that has cost them dearly.
GOA litterly ruined DAoC in Europe. So everyone was ofcourse completely baffled that Mythic went with these guys again.
Especially that it was well known that the largest Warhammer Fanbase resides within Europe and thus most money was to be gained here in Europe!
There are litterly only a handful of decent populated servers left here in Europe. So well has GOA been doing.
Simply said.... Mythic pretty much dug their own grave right from the start.
Add to that, that the game is not meeting it's expectations. Tier4 oRvR is a complete mess, not to mention really boring for most.
Scenarios are even worse. You can do Serpent's Passage just that many times before you get completely bored out of your skull.
And the whole PVE side of the game is even worse. That alone put off a lot of people already within the first months.
I continue to keep saying that Mark was just obsessed with World of Warcraft (and appearently still is) and it will eventually be his downfall.
When do people like Mark Jacobs get it in their heads and face it! Why in earth would a WoW player come to WoW 2.0 ..ehhh WAR, while they can happily continue playing WoW itself that is now far more polished?
Instead Mark Jacobs should have focussed more on his own creation DAoC and take the good things from that game and put that in WAR's design and work from there and make it better.
The whole oRvR in WAR right now is just a mere pathetic shadow of what DAoC once was.
And till this day it still baffles me greatly! And so for many others.
That's why we have given up on the game and quit. As it will never be fixed. They just gonna instance and limit the Fortress keeps and you will still be stuck by Keep and BO swapping day in day out for gear, gear and more gear.
Cheers
In these times layoff can mean nothing AND everything. Yesterday Ericsson Mobile here in Sweden announced they made a record profit (15billion or something) and the same day they announce they plan to layoff 5000 people worldwide....DOH?!
So I wondered if said CEO is taking a pay cut? Refusing his bonus? Probably not.. but one could hope.
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees,"
People can speculate all they want. It will take another 6-12 months to determine how well (or poorly) WAR will do in the future.
It's sad to see anyone get laid off, especially in these times. It's rough.
With that said...WAR is doing fine. It's not going anywhere, it's making money. It has some work that needs to be done, but the doomsayers here crack me up. They are so off the mark it's not even funny.
WAR would keep being 'one the best selling PC games of the year' and in the 'top five' if they only had stuck to further development of RvR instead of creating a WoW-clone.
Open field RvR is what made DAoC so popular for a long time, it's THE best end game anyone can hope for and instead of using this unique gameplay that themselves invented and bettering it in WAR they managed to fail with a sub-par RvR system that won't hold peoples interest for long enough.
They listened to all the e.g. CC-whiners and didn't use the lessons learned with DAoC to their full extent and thus they lost the most dedicated players, the RvR people that have followed from DAoC and helped out creating an active and fun atmosphere. Big mistake.
Guess the good staff from DAoC didn't follow over to WAR or they just failed big time in not listening to corporate jackals that want another WoW-success and another clone of that game (a game with a bad PvP system). Sad.
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So ppl are still buying the game?
Wait till they hit t4 and promptly quit.
The game is downright aweful. Pve is bland, everyone looks the same {different colour dyes dont count...} and the RvR...
My eyes literally went blurry the first time I played it. Once I got used to it, was fun and different {for me at least} in t1 & 2. T3 was just more of the same and T4 is where ppl finally realise theres nothing more to the game.
Didnt even make it to 40, lol. Left to go play SP games for a few mths and return to Lotro for Moria. Only now my guild members have come to the same realisation and have left. {some even had 4 lvl 40s, god knows why}
Last year was a complete dissapointment for MMO releases. Lets hope this year is different.
It only had to be a matter of time before the games companies started announcing major layoffs and I'm sure as the world reccession bites harder that there will be plenty more shedding jobs, I've been redundant since Nov so I have plenty of sympathy for those that have been Laid-off.
I would however doubt very much weither the lay-offs will mean the end of WAR or DAoC, if so we would have seen the complete WAR/DAoC teams cut to save money, they haven't and so this must mean the games are still being supported by EA as going concerns, heck if the lack of subs was true Everquest 1 should have died long ago.
Mmmm.. not really.
After all the clues MJ left around the internet about Slayers coming and as much as he has talked up the next patch's fixes and reworks, it won't take long at all.
If they release that patch, and the only worthwhile thing worth doing after that is rerolling a Slayer for another month, people will leave extremely fast. You won't need a year to watch that exodus. This next patch is probably the difference between making the game a nice stable niche model (+250k) or it's the last straw for most (-200k). With the coming competition this year, they need a homerun, not a double. After that, you probably then wouldn't have to speculate on layoffs anymore.
I just know I'll probably wait until I see how the patch works. I wouldn't even think of resubbing personally without some assurances things are handled.
"TO MICHAEL!"