The layoffs have me confused more then anything else. Help?

I'm with you.

And either way, I was drinking my Vodka.. win - win.

Dont be mistaken............



THIS IS A GREAT THING.....It shows Bio is committed to the game and will show no mercy to those who are NOT doing their jobs. Period.


Kudos Bio, Im back on board. I have a bit of faith now.......Keep it going

Ladies & Gentlemen, I present to you the OTHER end of the spectrum!

J/k. It's most likely due to restructuring rather than trying to offload bad employees. Well, maybe that one job they're looking to immediately replace was due to that, but still, I don't think it's likely that 200 people all managed to get canned for noncompliance/incompetence/etc at the same time.

Remy 1738 here. Those folks need to drink more. Or drink less coffee. Or do fewer pharmecuticals. Or take yoga. Something besides camp a forum & machinegun everything that moves when they can't get their way.

EA themself have stated this game is no longer a priority hence they are downsizing the teams and it was most likely more than 200 people. EA attitude is like see what you can get out of the ignorant customers left then let the game die we will move on to other titles, there entire marketing stragety is release get sales let games die, they focus on the initial profit from sales then just let games die, why do you think it known as the worst company it not because of their profit/income it because of how they treat consumers.

layoffs are bad and I feel sorry for the people who lost their jobs.

That being said, SWTOR is far from being dead.

Yes, been there, done that (Warhammer Online). After the layoffs there they added some sort of DLC content you had to separately pay for. There are not many real free content update beyond that and the player base droped and droped until the state where it is at now. I do not know how many developers are still working on the game, but a few still are and the game is still running. Warhammers failure imo was making PvE mandatory to stay competetive in PvP (by creating insanely powerful items that were only attainable in raid/PvE-content which flipped the balance in PvP too much, "Land of the Dead" as reference).

Looking at Dark Age of Camelot which happened to celebrate its 10th anniversary (which I played for 7 years), its still running and sometimes I really feel the urge to download it, try to recover my toons (from Pellinor/Caerlon to whatever the active server is currently) and play it again a bit. In terms of complexity, depth, features and size of content this game beats SWTOR, WAR and probably even WoW. However the class-design and the user interface shows its age (melee classes with basically only 20 melee attacks, casters with maybe 5 baseline abilities and so on). Classes in newer games are more fun in their multitude of abilities.
I wish they took DAoC, gave it a modern interface and redesigned all classes. It would still or once again be the best PvP/RvR experience on the market.
Bottomline is however, the game is still active, running, supported and developed. Of course the amount of resources invested by EA/Bioware-Mythic are in relation to the amount of subscribers (and DAoC is still a full featured subscription based MMO, not f2p)

Age of Conan anyone? Yes it is f2p, however it is also still running and, in difference to WAR, had a major expansion pack. Also offers interesting PvP, although the more raid-centric focus is not my niche.

DDO / LoTRO? F2P yes, but growing and expanding (DDO will bring a new expansion out soon).

So, will the size of SWTOR development/budget decrease? Yep. Will we see all the cool stuff they announced before this year or even afterall? Maybe, maybe not. Will the game still evolve and shape up? Yes, it will. Will the class balance ever be perfect? No way!
May the game still turn around and keep groing beyond 1 million subscribers? Maybe, maybe not.

The bottomline is, as long as people pay and play the game, it will be supported. Even a small profit margin is a profit margin. And with fewer servers, but better population per server the maintenance cost for the game will decrease alot, making the game more profitable than it currently is. However you wont have 100+ developers working on the game at the same time. But even a dozen can still deliver alot of new content and you can argue that smaller teams are more creative and innovative than larger teams.

I want better space combat, some help for the Operative Concealment Tree and in the long run some DAoC-like open area realm/objective based combat (keep-takes in SWTOR if you want).

It shouldn't be too difficult if so few people are letting their subs lapse as you suggest. I would love a refund for the two months I've paid for since I uninstalled the client.

Yeah, like any of it is believable when EA flat out DENIED that layoffs we coming only a couple of months ago.

Also, the 1000 layoffs are between now and Sept. 30, 2012. Want to bet that they are not done with BW Austin yet.

I think that Consumer affairs needs to investigate the refund issue on subscriptions, why should a company get months of income when the consumer was not happy and quit, In my view it should be illegal and im not sure why this hasnt been adressed first time subscriptions came into picture, a consumer should be aloud to cancel a subscription and get a refund.

However, and this is a big however, EA stated that included bonus time awarded on paying subs which effectively carried out those three month subs that paid and have since canceled over through the end of April (which is the effective reporting date). Incidentally, this does the same thing for the six month subs. Real subs (those that are still playing and planning too) are a LOT less than 1.3M - otherwise EA wouldn't have given away $18.2M (by their sub admissions) in revenue. That much revenue was sacrificed to deflect the actual sub losses in the game.

When it isn't even in their top ten development investments, and worse, WAR made that list. The writing is on the wall.

You're referring to the games themselves. EA and Blizzard are two different companies. When Blizzard launched WoW, they were betting the farm on it and put everything they had into it. To EA, on the other hand, SWTOR is just another title in their portfolio. Whether it succeeds or fails, EA will go on.

The $80M was the original expected estimate on development. Current industry sources are saying it exceeded $300M to develop. This, of course, is rumor, but what isn't is that 800 people were on the team. With development starting in 2006 and assuming an average of 500 employees over that time (since 800 was the final tally and most likely the team was smaller in the beginning), you have $175M in average salary costs alone. Add to that the voice overs, equipment, outside vendors, licensing fees and acquisitions, employee benefits, rent, lights, etc. and you can see how this game probably did exceed $300M in costs.

But here is the big one everyone keeps missing that I haven't seen anywhere. No one knows what the on-going licensing fees (i.e., take of the profit) is going to LucasArts. This could have a dramatic effect on profitability if these are in the 15%-25% range (which is fairly standard for on-going share).