Why did daniel erickson and george zoeller leave tor?

To put it simply:

EA-manager: Assuming direct control...
Some Bioware vets: No way...

Atleast thats what the "state of the game" post explained, with a bit of interpretation. I have no idea why the people in the subject left and the post did not specify who left for whatever reason.

Wasn't it said pre-release that EA/Bioware needed 1 million subscribers for the game to profit?
Honestly I feel that is more than achievable, and as we all know that's not taking into account the change in model.
A portion of the revenue now depends on how frequently they update the Cartel Store. In my opinion they really need to be pushing updates to the store at least once a month.

On the subject of Erickson and Zoeller leaving...

There is a lot of speculation concerning the reason's why they left. In my opinion we will never get close to the reason why so many people lost their jobs / resigned.

Many could argue that Bioware has lost their way since joining the ranks of EA. Whilst obviously resources and opportunities under the banner at EA were increased has Bioware's creative freedom been stunted?
At the time the buyout took place, Bioware were criticized for seemingly doing a deal with the devil and that later on down the line they would pay for it. Is that what we are seeing?

Bioware's fall from grace in the gaming industry (DA2, ME3 and SWToR) have all contributed to their downfall. Design flaws concerning DA2, changing the ending for ME3 (which I feel they should of left... I can see why they changed it, but it did nothing for the creative decisions they made whilst in development).

I really do hope that they manage to turn things around with DA3, ME4 and eventually SWToR.

I personally enjoyed DA2, ME3 and SWToR and look forward to the next iterations of the former. Here's hoping that SWToR has a steady revenue which puts it a position to eventually thrive.

They did, yes. But since theyve cut every possible expense (and it shows, oh boy, it shows) its much lower now.

Theyve gone from "1 update/month" to "1/4 upate/6 weeks". Smells like skeleton crew and only a handful of devs actually developing new content.

Those are not bad games. But not good either. Those are MEDICORE games.

When you hear dev say "you push a button...and something happens...push button....happens...its awesome!" well...

EA will have to be very convincing for me to buy next game, and i started with BG1 back in '98.

no it was said 1 million subscribers would be highly profitable.

500k subscribers was needed to maintain a profit. Under that it becomes unprofitiable. THis is stated in many of the earnings calls and according to those earning calls it never went below 500k.

seeing as they never managed 1 update a month and they have managed 1 update every 6 weeks I would say they are doing better and have gotten into the swing of things.

You want a skeleton crew? go look at Warhammer Online. There they did what 3 content updates and since then all the patches have just been minor bug fixes for the past what 3 or 4 years.

Pretty much what is said here.

BioWare built up a fantastic reputation for their games over the years which hit a road block when EA bought them.

This isn't an " EA is the devil" post but they have a history of chewing up developers and spitting out whats left of it's carcass.

This is a "Bullfrog, you will be missed. I still wanted Dungeon Keeper 3" post.

It doesn't matter what "vision" BioWare has for a game. Everything they do now has to be approved by the higher ups at EA who made the word "accessible" dirty.

This is always pretty humorous to read, they dont make a huge amount on box sales because there is a whole ream of middlemen taking a cut. Aside from the monstrous production costs there was some pretty hard core advertising campaigns to pay for over the xmas period when airtime is...well even more expensive than normal. Then you factor in with every high end IP theres a pretty high end license fee cost to use and thats not a small upfront fee, its huge and that carries on for the life of the game regardless of sub numbers.

1. they didnt manage to deliver 1/4 of an upated every 6 weeks L2Count bro

2. all the content updates in SWTOR were made long long ago (HK for instance was in beta)

I'm glad Daniel Erickson left, he was way too focussed on preventing the MMO community from gaining access to features such as character customization, put in way too heavily on the legacy system and in that truthfully made that sound like that were his choices rather than e.g. EA telling him to do so.

As such, his contribution wasn't really beneficial to the product anymore, better yet it could be considered hindrance. And he's not the only vet which showed some sort of idealistic mind of their own which left by now.

I'm not saying their concepts were bad, but for an MMO they simply do not work out. And the effects of that are still noticeable, there's a lot of things in the game which make little sense for a (modern) MMO. Which I believe is still the effect of some of the former BioWare employees being too stuck in making the traditional RPG experience moreso than delivering an MMO.

On a similar note, that is also what I fear may happen to The Elderscrolls Online. As of yet it's a bit vague on who exactly is working on that title, but I definitely don't hope there's a lot of TES vets involved, as you can't effectively combine a singleplayer RPG with an MMO. It's like blending mario into an RTS game.

1. guess again. 1.4, 1.5, and soon to be 1.6 are all about 6 weeks apart. L2count bro

2. They were STARTED during beta. However not finished. There are some exceptions such as group finder had to be made from the ground up.