Subs, lay offs and spin

[Aiteal]

Ever get the feeling that Mythic just got lucky with DaoC and that Jacobs has been outta his depth for years now?

I read that press release today about those poor smoo CSR's, CM's and now Devs getting laid off and I thought
Pride comes before some other poor sod having to take the fall for you

I felt that the guy is still running the business like it's just EQ he has to compete against, he doesn't have to worry about the constraints of effective PR and community management/feedback and if you don't like it...

tough shit

 

[Bugz]

got a link please mate?

 

[Aiteal]

The layoffs were announced here
Warhammer News, Trailers, Screenshots, Previews, Reviews, Guides -- Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning -- The Hordes of Chaos Vault

The drop to 300k subs from 750k sold boxes is mentioned here
Warhammer News, Trailers, Screenshots, Previews, Reviews, Guides -- Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning -- The Hordes of Chaos Vault

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Rumor: Mythic layoffs affect QA, customer support - Joystiq

The bit that concerns me is "half of the QA and all the playtest group". So we'll get even buggier, shoddier patches that haven't been balance tested except by the class leads?

Edit: Additional. Mythic's numbers are skewed, so if you include non-retail sales figures that number jumps a lot.

It's actually about 1.2m copies sold, so that means 1/4 people who bought the game are no longer subscribing. Considering subscriber numbers historically in MMO's very rarely go upwards for more than a short time (usually after patches/expansions) after the 1 year mark thats concerning considering Marc Jacobs clearly staked the future of Mythic on this being a success (EA has a history of dissolving unsuccessful purchases and redistributing the staff amongst it's other divisions).

 

[ford prefect]

None of this is really suprising. Mythic has been quite dissapointing so far. Nearly half a year after release we still have a very flawed end game. Eventually people simply get tired of wating for a patch to fix this or that. WAR was blatently released too early to meat unrealistic deadlines and has suffered because of it.

Personally I have every sympathy for their staff. It must be awful to be involved in a project like WAR, only to be let down by poor management decisions and pressure from on high.

The Warhammer franchise has been an obvious choice for conversion to mmorpg and Mythic have so far failed to live up to their own hype. I doubt WAR will ever be the next gen MMO that many wanted it to be.

 

[MesS°]

Try taking a step back and see the bigger picture.
Maybe you can try talking to you're parents. Maybe they can enlighten you about whats going on in the world right now.

Almost everywhere people are being let go due to down sizing. In some cases its either that or loose the company (and all the employees jobs). Over the last 4 months I had to let almost 50% of my staff go, and not because I wanted to, but because the economy is at an all time low. Some of our competitors are hit even harder.

 

[Raven]

Ah ok so its got nothing at all to do with the fact that Mark Jacobs is an utter tool who took one of the best IPs for an MMO and totally screwed it up?

 

[MesS°]

Ah ok so its got nothing at all to do with the fact that Mark Jacobs is an utter tool who took one of the best IPs for an MMO and totally screwed it up?

What does you're statement have to do with fact?
With 300k subs in Q4 I would hardly call it "totally screwed up". Though I had expected it to do better.

Personally I think WAR is getting better and better, I have been enjoying it more or less since beta. But I don't want to get into an argument about the color green. Its a lost battle arguing a game is good on a public forum, you will always be outnumbered.

 

[Poag]

I am so glad that when manpower started buggering me about when I applied for one of he CM jobs at GOA I stopped returning the calls.

/hugs the warm cosey blanket of Financial Markets and the safe salary


But dont get me wrong, I do have friends who work for GOA and I am somewhat worried for them now. I do hope that GOA can redeploy them to other GOA services if WHO goes titsup, even if its a shitty job...its still a job that pays.

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

What does you're statement have to do with fact?
With 300k subs in Q4 I would hardly call it "totally screwed up". Though I had expected it to do better.

Personally I think WAR is getting better and better, I have been enjoying it more or less since beta. But I don't want to get into an argument about the color green. Its a lost battle arguing a game is good on a public forum, you will always be outnumbered.

Setting aside opinions, you can't debate the fact that only 1/4 of the people that bought a copy of warhammer (1.2m/300k) are still playing it. Worldwide. That's a hard, undisputable fact.

Also not under debate here is that things are improving. We all acknowledge that. The question is are they improving fast enough to make that number/ratio improve rather than worsen/decrease.

Also look at the MMO sample lifecycle models (can be looked at online i believe now?), at no point after the first 12 months do subscriber numbers go up by more than 10-20% even with expansion releases.

While i realise the global economy is in a bad place right now (i work in a finance-related area doing headhunting - the running joke now is that we find bankers by picking them up with a sponge off the pavement), you cannot tell me that ditching HALF your QA team and ALL your playtest team will have good consequences for the speed or quality of WAR's development.

 

[Gibbo]

Simple facts are the PvE isn't as good as World Of Warcraft and the RvR isn't as good as Dark Age Of Camelot.

 

[Xandax]

What does you're statement have to do with fact?
With 300k subs in Q4 I would hardly call it "totally screwed up". Though I had expected it to do better.
<snip>

Depends on the budgetted amount, operation and development cost and so on.
300K might very well be "totally screwed up", but we do not know this.
But didn't MJ say something about the game needing 500K subs to float?

So in light of the economical crisis around the globe right now, then perhaps you should take your own suggestion and actually take a look at the situation in that light.
EA is not known for leniency with their sub-corporations and are more then used to closing stuff down they do not consider profitable.
And if EA needs to start trimming the fat - it is entirely plausible that stuff like a MMO not living up to expectations being on a chopping block.

I doubt it'll happen yet if it happens though - but if War continues downwards to 100-200K, it might spell big problems for Warhammer and Mythic.

 

[Aiteal]

Try taking a step back and see the bigger picture.
Maybe you can try talking to you're parents. Maybe they can enlighten you about whats going on in the world right now.

Yeah......
My parents, then I'll ask for the birds and bees talk
I'm 35, married with a mortgage and car loan etc
and have been working as a java monkey for 11 years
I think I'm ok with the whole economy thing

The drop in subs in WaR happened for the same reason it happened in AoC
Overpromised and underdelivered product.

 

[Ctuchik]

Eventually people simply get tired of wating for a patch to fix this or that.

but what they are expecting is a "miracle patch" that will fix each and everyone of their issues, even if they ARENT issues. and obviously those patches will never come.

 

[Spookie]

I doubt it'll happen yet if it happens though - but if War continues downwards to 100-200K, it might spell big problems for Warhammer and Mythic.

I'm wondering if these 'changes' to staff mean they are preparing for a restructuring to bring Mythic in to one of their other offices (maybe Bioware?) like they did with Black Box (hoofed most of the staff, the ones that remained got moved to a location 30 mins away in a EA super studio).

If they do that though I can only imagine it might as well spell DOOM with the delays that would have on patches.

Ugh and here was me hoping to pick it up again after the new classes were put in. :/

 

[Ctuchik]

Rumor: Mythic layoffs affect QA, customer support - Joystiq

The bit that concerns me is "half of the QA and all the playtest group". So we'll get even buggier, shoddier patches that haven't been balance tested except by the class leads?

Edit: Additional. Mythic's numbers are skewed, so if you include non-retail sales figures that number jumps a lot.

It's actually about 1.2m copies sold, so that means 1/4 people who bought the game are no longer subscribing. Considering subscriber numbers historically in MMO's very rarely go upwards for more than a short time (usually after patches/expansions) after the 1 year mark thats concerning considering Marc Jacobs clearly staked the future of Mythic on this being a success (EA has a history of dissolving unsuccessful purchases and redistributing the staff amongst it's other divisions).

lol, guess you missed ther part where they said "heres what we HEARD". so they could (and probably have just to get klicks) made that part up.

 

[Dreamor]

Very rarely do box sales ever turn in to actual subscriber numbers, the problem Mythic and EA will have is that they have very high running costs for the first year or at least until the hardware is paid off. I'm not shocked that they hve 300K given that the PVP sell for the game is not as developed as people would like. Tough to say if they are going to make more cuts but its tough, like someone said, on all sectors of business now. Good thing for MMOs is for entertainment value te £8.99 a month is a good purchase/expenditure that people can mostly afford.
On a tin hat though, I think the cuts could have probably appeared regardless of the finances, EA have a lot of staff all over the world and when they bought Mythic they had a lot of duplicate rolls.

 

[jessgade]

My 3 month subscription ran out January 27 and hasent been renewed. Hence I was still listed as active in Q4.
I suspect quite alot of players chose that option initially - So Im predicting another steep drop in active subscriptions in the next report.

 

[Gahn]

Well situation ain't rose tinted, that's sure disregarding Mark's PR abilities.
I guess the edge of developing into a primal actor of MMOs or be relegated in the Daoc niche is around the corner, they have the last 3 months of time to fix the things and get new content in (1.2-1.3 Patch), then we gonna see the 1st round of 7 days free and from there on the real lifespan of the game.
Cause, let's be honest, EA won't be interested in a 60k subscriber base ala Daoc.

 

[Raven]

Not to mention EA have been having a hard time in general of late, quite a few big budget games falling flat on their arses. I really wouldn't be surprised if they were to be acquired by one of the large media corps... Or even maybe Activision/Blizzard who dwarf EA.

 

[GReaper]

A drop of over 50% of the player base in such a short time doesn't exactly seem positive. I know that the numbers of players tends to drop over time with most games (although WoW and EVE both managed to buck that trend at times), but those numbers seem so disappointing when I think most of us agree that WAR could've done better at launch.

Saying that WAR was the most successful MMORPG launch is just pure spin. I'm sure a lot of people can agree that the game had far too many game bugs, client crashes, poor performance, along with various awful gameplay mechanics. Yes, I'm sure it's being improved now, but it's too late. First impressions are so vital, because people won't bother coming back regardless of how much the game has improved.

It's just a shame that the game felt like it was still in beta for the first few months after launch, it really didn't help.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Saying that WAR was the most successful MMORPG launch is just pure spin.

I thought they just said it was the smoothest launch, not the most successful?

 

[Zede]

Mark Jacobs is a COCK.

Whats the one thing that stood out in DaoC, that sets it apart from all the rest ?

3 factions.

reduce it to 2, and sorry your just a wow clone.

very epic fail, sack the fucker & get me or any of the dozens of people on here to fill the post. Like Rafa Benitez, it dont take a genius to work whats wrong.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Whats the one thing that stood out in DaoC, that sets it apart from all the rest ?

3 factions.

Planetside

 

[Sharkith]

Enter the new era of the buff bot!!!

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Its sad to see people losing their jobs, no matter the reason. That said, if I wanted a stable job for life I wouldn't take one in the computer games industry. I hope the employees being made redundant and their familes weather it and find new work very soon.

Enter the new era of the buff bot!!!

Aye, this crushing feature is merrily ignored by people who pretend rose tinted glasses towards DAoC merely so they can bash WAR. DAoC probably lost a lot more players due to buffbots than it gained from accounts used by those who were willing to use them. I also note I'm not seeing a lot of the more virulant adherents of DAoC mentioning that they have resubscribed. There's nearly always a "If they'd change such and such I'd do it" or "If more people played I'd resubscribe" ... if you want to do something, you do it. Everthing else is just justifying the behaviour for something these people have no intention of doing.

As pointed out above, there is a world recession going on that affects everyone. One of the first thing that people cut down on when they hit troubled times is luxury items, and computer games fall very much into this catagory. Its not really a shocker that game companies are laying off. EA is probably just one of the most high profile.

Something being bandied around is how Mythic are betting everything on WAR. Well...most companies that launch an MMO are betting their survival on it, given the resources required to get one to market. Unless you have the backing of a major corporation a company is not likely to survive it failing.

 

[Aiteal]

Fight fight fight!

Broken Toys Rituals Of The Betrayed

Seems Sanya and Scott Jennings are a bit angry

I did read posters wonder how long it would be before we see a youtube video of Paul Barnett getting treated like a child by an EA exec and being told to apologise to the
viewers for the "decreasing subs" bug.

I'd resub to see that as the new game intro movie

YouTube - Paul Barnett 4th Feb 2009

apparently you have to loose a few banners to win a war

dick

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Isn't the directive to lay staff off coming from EA, and Mythic are just down the food chain?

 

[Zede]

Planetside

stop being a tit, you know exactly what i meant smart arse.

 

[Aiteal]

Isn't the directive to lay staff off coming from EA, and Mythic are just down the food chain?

Reading Sanya and Jennings thoughts
Apparently thats a negative