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Daniel Erickson leaving BW Austin?


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The higher ups always just 'Time to part ways with company X to look new opportunities' even when they are escorted by the security out of the office with a thousand dollar shoe mark in their behind.

 

But yeah, seems the house cleaning is continuing. Anyone know what happened to James Ohlen? Haven't heard anything from him since the summer.

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I think the whole team that invisioned this game is gone to be quite honest. I don't really think that many of them are there anymore. So ...we'll see what comes of it.

 

There are still a few there, Jesse Sky is one of them, so is Amantangelo (or whatever his name is), and a few others.

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I hear his abs are staying though. Not sure that is possible, but that is what I hear. On a serious note. People need to realize a development team is staffed with people who are skilled at DEVELOPMENT. Once the game is out, you don't need as many of those types of people. Most of them move on to go develop other games. Edited by Pcolapat
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At this point, Daniel Erickson leaves, I might just join him and wait to see which direction they will end up taking this game when I peep back in after a few months, not a good idea to remove the man behind basically ALL of the story in this game, I can really easily see them having story in the very back of priorities where the 'pillars' are concerned along with things like crafting, and they just focus on endgame and PVP, which will lose all of my interest completely, KotOR 3,4,5,6,7 and so on hm?
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I was fearing this news would come, but I figured it would considering his sudden silence since July.

 

Makes me sad....I believe he's been a lead writer from the beginning and I always enjoyed his interviews.

 

It also makes me really concerned about the direction of story content, and whether all the things he had talked about in the past will ever come to fruition now.

 

I know even in TV shows, writers change all the time, but this is just a sign that perhaps the company that many people had come to love is no longer what it was, or will be.

 

Last interview with him was what, July 30? Had he already been planning on leaving or did something happen in the last month?

Edited by chuixupu
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At this point, Daniel Erickson leaves, I might just join him and wait to see which direction they will end up taking this game when I peep back in after a few months, not a good idea to remove the man behind basically ALL of the story in this game, I can really easily see them having story in the very back of priorities where the 'pillars' are concerned along with things like crafting, and they just focus on endgame and PVP, which will lose all of my interest completely, KotOR 3,4,5,6,7 and so on hm?

 

correction...this game WAS epic actually in early beta when it wasn't wowified. Yes, there was a time when your decisions DID matter and it was more than just light/dark and for armor. But...the whiners complained and they got their way, as with everything these days :(

 

It was James Ohlen, Dallas Dickinson, Daniel Erickson and a few others that really had that epic vision for this game but then..you know...EA bought BioWare..and....*sigh*.....yeeahhhhhh :(

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correction...this game WAS epic actually in early beta when it wasn't wowified. Yes, there was a time when your decisions DID matter and it was more than just light/dark and for armor. But...the whiners complained and they got their way, as with everything these days :(

 

It was James Ohlen, Dallas Dickinson, Daniel Erickson and a few others that really had that epic vision for this game but then..you know...EA bought BioWare..and....*sigh*.....yeeahhhhhh :(

Which beta are you referring to? I played in CBT back in May '11 and that game was exactly the same with regards to the features you're talking about. And EA acquired BW back in late 2007 so...

Edited by Kadin
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KotOR 3,4,5,6,7 and so on hm?

 

There was never KOTOR 3,4,5 +

 

The Old Republic stories were like Bioware stories lite. I never felt any of them had the heft of one of the single player titles. That's understandable: you can't do in an MMO what you can do in a single player RPG, but still...I was never that impressed with any of the stories. The IA story caught my interest but I'd already leveled a smuggler and a JK, so my interest level and tolerance for trash side missions were gone.

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Which beta are you referring to? I played in CBT back in May '11 and that game was exactly the same with regards to the features you're talking about. And EA acquired BW back in late 2007 so...

 

You used to be able to kill off your companions once upon a time, gutting Scourge was fun, simply put.

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This is depressing news. I just lost the motivation to log in and play SWTOR for the afternoon, maybe I'll go play some madden instead today. Sacking the original DEV team is not the answer to fixing SWTOR's woe's, quite the contrary. EA should let them stick with their original vision of the game, complete with game changing consequences (such as perma companion death). This game had and still has more potential then any MMO on the market currently, but they will never reach a fraction of that potential without keeping the dev team and adding to the game, and I don't mean just garbage we can buy with cartel coins. Add mini games, add REAL consequences like companion deaths, add open flight space combat with pvp. Add to the game, don't just strip it down to the bare bones. This game has so much potential, but will never reach it if they keep laying people off. I am subbed to 6 months currently, if this game doesn't have some major positive change by the time my 6 month sub runs out I will probably leave and never return. It's a damn shame because I waited years and years for this game and hyped it up to no end, but it is failing to live up to it's vast potential. Add mini games such as pazaak and pod racing, and add space flight and pvp or else this game is in a lot of hurt long term.
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Cost cutting.

 

All the cutbacks/lay-offs etc are obviously in order to reduce costs. Things will be run on the cheap from now on.

 

After spending more money on this one game than any other developer in history only for it to go F2P within months I can't blame them for now wanting to do things on the cheap.

 

I personally liked all of DE's interviews. I wish him well.

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Hmm....... this cannot be good.

 

If you remove "story" from SWTOR there's not that much left. :(

 

I don't know if it's good or bad really. And this does not directly indicate that they are "removing story". It is change however, which often distresses players, especially in forums.

 

If you follow the breadcrumbs through linkedin, it's clear that they are reducing the size of the writing staff. If you already have plenty of story constructed and on the shelf (as has been shared by more then one posters in these forums as rumors), it's not a surprise really. You would need more assets to convert story into produced content, which means you juggle your staffing some accordingly. You don't need to retain a lot of writing staff and staff managment to do incremental writing or editiing of content in a game that is well into release. You need some good people for continuity and to form the basis of a major effort for an expansion or something like that.

 

My guess is that this was decided some time ago, and that the reason we have not heard from Daniel actively for a while even though he is still on staff is that they gave some staff time to look for internal opportunities in other EA activities. Daniel has set his looking for other opportunities flag in linkedin, which does not definitively mean he is leaving (and he does not show has having left yet, so more likely in transition). It't not that uncommon for people to do that on linkedin while still on the payroll, but in the context of the playerbase, yeah... looks to be moving on. James O. wrote him a glowing recommendation on linkedin on 8/14... so this is several weeks old now.

Edited by Andryah
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