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Lord of the Rings Online: Turbine Layoffs Confirmed
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Warner Bros. Entertainment Group has confirmed that Turbine employees have been laid off as part of a 'restructuring move. The company cited fluctuating market conditions as the causative factor in the layoffs.
“As part of the continual review of our business operations and fluctuating market conditions, we have had to make reductions in our Turbine workforce,” said Remi Sklar, spokeswoman for Warner Bros. Entertainment Group, in an e-mail. “The group continues to remain an integral part of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.”
Source: Boston.com
Comments
My Guild Wars 2 Vids
"Mr. Rothstein, your people never will understand... the way it works out here. You're all just our guests. But you act like you're at home. Let me tell you something, partner. You ain't home. But that's where we're gonna send you if it harelips the governor." - Pat Webb
I've got a Lifetime sub and quit the game when it went F2P glad to see the Lay-offs.
MAGA
As a human being, it's a shame to see such thing and hope these folks find work elsewhere in a hurry. On a gaming perspective, it's a bit dissappointing, being a lifetime subscriber whom has already mostly given up on the game. I thought for sure with having to go FTP that they would up the speed on getting to mordor, maybe get some attention of past players back. They certainly are finding a way to inch their way to Mordor and in my opinion this can only hurt that progress. A pity, I was really looking forward to Mordor and the game just feels dated. Rohan is the first expansion I haven't bothered with.
We should have been at the gates of Mordor long ago.....keep trying to pinch every penny you can out of this Turbine/Warner..just sad
Because people losing their jobs is cool right?
My Guild Wars 2 Vids
Bad Management Decisons lead to folks getting laid off blame them.
MAGA
AC still has a community? Huh.
/sigh It is always very sad to see people losing their jobs! But they had it coming.
This is what you get when you keep delivering less and less and ask more and more from your customers.
LOTRO:
Rise of Isengard expansion was a farce, nothing but a questpack but charging full expansion price for it. Instance cluster was terrible and not released until december, more than 2 months after the expac release.
Riders of Rohan expansion even more a farce. Just a questpack but charging even more than last year with RoI ! No news yet about Instance Cluster nor what it will bring nor when it will be released.
The biggest joke, was that they first tried to charge EXTRA for the upcoming instance cluster! It took a whole outrage on both LOTRO forums and public forums, before Turbine decided to include the Instance cluster within the expac again and adding TP to the bundles like they did last year with RoI ! /Facepalm
They lost a lot of fans with that stunt alone already! And directly affected the poor sales of this expansion and hence the lay offs!
Mounted combat is hit or miss with most people! Not to mention the whole lootbox crap with keys from Warbands!
People say a lot about Cryptic and their lootbox lottery in STO! LOTRO is now full of it as well!
Then lets move on to the LOTRO Store, which was suppose to be convenience items that has slowly via stealth additions turned into a FULL Pay 2 Win Store!
First came the stackable health/mana pots! Then came all the crap with Monster Play stuff! Then came the relics and scrolls!
And now the most disgusting addition is that people can buy scrolls to insta max out ENTIRE crafting tiers! Yes you read it right, you can now just throw money at Turbine and insta max out your crafting profession!
So what is next? Insta leveling scrolls? I wouldn't be suprised.
LOTRO used to be a very good game, but the more and longer Turbine has been under Warner Bros reign, the more nickle and diming the game has become.
I was part of a huge guild with serious die hard Tolkien fans that have been around since launch, but ever since the F2P and the move to more and more Pay 2 Win with the Store.... more and more people in my kinship got fed up with Turbine and quit. Only a tiny fraction of the people remain.
Turbine has become a terrible and greedy company, making both EA and Cryptic look like Saints.
Funcom and CCP will not be far behind.
MAGA
This may be more of a restructuring and taking Turbine in a new direction , as they made some key hires just days previous to lead there development.
http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/109839-turbine-expands-leadership-team-ken-rolston-joins-as-director-of-design.html
They stopped bragging about their F2P numbers a long time ago.
It's sad that people are losing their jobs, but LOTRO has been going down this path for a long time. I think Turbine, and now WB, totally mismanage this product. But WB isn't one for taking risks so it's to be expected.
I still see them releasing quest packs every year and most liklely abandoning instance clusters altogether. They might even put out some more skirmishes.
The problem is that they've been focused on milking the property rather than giving the players what they want. This means we likely will never catch a glimpse of Mordor.
This would have been a better release plan:
1) Vanilla - ignore Angmar/Forochel. Include Moria and Lothlorien and parts of mirkwood. Also let people start in Lothlorien, Edoras or Minas tirith and then get sent to the west of the Misty Mountains
2) Expansion #1 - released 2 years after vanilla - Rohan/Isengard
3) Expansion #2 - Released 4 years after vanilla - Gondor and Gates of mordor
4) Expansion #3 - Released 6 years after vanilla - Mordor expansion
Turbine has some horrible lead designers and art directors (everything indoors is a muddy brown/black/gray). I bet they kept their jobs though.
I'm just extremely sad WB owns the right for the LOTR title mmo, unless they sell it. Now we will never see a well rounded LOTR mmo,shame.
What goes around comes around....turbine, peace and cha cha.
People lose their jobs because they make poor descisions.
You make me like charity
You make me like charity
Can't agree with this more. He's really not a people person at all. He uses the Derek Smart interpersonal skill system
yeah like accusing my friend of buying 3000$ worth of gold lol. Im really glad about this 5 years to late but maybe something good will happen now doubt it but least the toilet will be flushed for once
Mismanagement is a severe understatement!
They have been pissing on their loyal fanbase / VIP subscribers for too long now. To the point why I even wonder why they still bother with the whole VIP sub system.
Especially if you have been around since launch and bought every expac, there is now ZERO reason to stay VIP and pay 13 bucks a month!
500 TP a month? You can get 6300 TP for 60 bucks lol. That's a fraction of what you would pay to stay VIP a whole year!
All Epic book content and (new) features are available to free players! So you basically only pay for questpacks!
That's why the last two expansions have been such a farce and ridiculously overpriced!
50 bucks for the standard bundle to unlock Rohan quests lol! Just lol! And the instance cluster we still know nothing about! Not to mention that they first even tried to have us pay for that ON TOP of the expansion this time! /Facepalm
Just like the EA take over was the end of Bioware, so has been the take over by WB the end for Turbine. /sigh
These lay offs are just the beginning and they make no mention yet as to how many people have been laid off.
It's obvious that both the DDO and LOTRO teams have been axed heavily! Which is gonna effect both these game's future! As both DDO's first and last expansion as LOTRO last expansion didn't meet sales expectations.
WB is just gonna put these games into maintenance mode, milk it a little longer and reshift their entire focus to the Console market! As it's a more lucrative market at the moment.
The recent hirings pretty much confirm this new direction.
I really like LotRO, so it's a sad news, and I wish good luck to the people involved in the layoff.
I'm also sad because as much as I love LotRO, I have to admit this line of starwarsnut
is true... :I They simply overlook exploits, without any reaction, which never is a good sign. (What can you expect from a company which does nothing against exploiters?)
Yeah, seems that's the case.
GOD DAMNIT!
Clover got fired, but i sapiance stays? Then again, turbine likes to dig its grave again and again. Playerbase says one thing but turbine does another, good job.
p.s - who knows maybe sapiance was one of those who got fired, pray for this peeps.
His last post was yesterday. So who knows.
It shows how bad a community manager is when everyone is talking about how he should be the one fired.