BioWare Lays Off Staff At The SWTOR Studio

Written by: Larry Everett (Twitter @Shaddoe - Google+) | May 22, 2012 2:29 pm

83 Comments

**Update: Community Manager Stephen Reid updated his LinkedIn page to read that his tenure with BioWare ended on May 2012, indicating that he was possibly one of the lay offs.**

In the world of MMOs, it’s not uncommon to see layoffs after the first few months after launch.

Star Wars: The Old Republic unfortunately is no exception.

Doctors Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka stepped onto the official forum, announcing that the BioWare Austin studio, which created SWTOR, is undergoing some restructuring. Unfortunately, at this time, the details are extremely sparse. We do not know the number nor the specific staff affected.

Even when layoffs are expected, they are never easy to hear about. Despite some of its shortcomings, the employees at BioWare have always been passionate about the work they did. Dr. Zeschuk said on the official site, “Impacting people’s lives this way is always very hard, but we’re ensuring the affected people are treated with dignity, fairness and respect.”

Our hearts go out to those people affected, but the question remains: What does this mean for the for the future of the game? Zeschuk responded to that question as well:

Looking forward, the studio remains vibrant and passionate about our many upcoming initiatives for Star Wars: The Old Republic. We still have a very substantial development team working on supporting and growing the game, and we feel we are in a strong position, with your continued involvement and feedback, to continue to build Star Wars: The Old Republic as one of the most compelling and successful online experiences in the world today.

Keep your monitor tuned here, we will keep you abreast of further developments on this story as soon as they come in.

BioWare Lays Off Staff At The SWTOR Studio

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David Alcon

What’s funny is that coincidentally on the Republic last night they mentioned that no one has lost their job yet and they are still running with a full staff.
kyle robinson

Lmao Larry sounds sad that fanboy cried after the show. lol Swtor is the biggest fail since FF14 8D What do you expect when you spend 300M on a game and the best you can produce is a 2004 mmo with voice overs lmfao………….
- http://www.facebook.com/toph1980 Christopher Fischer
  
  Agreed. Biggest MMO fail since FFXIV.
DarthNoir

I wonder if they will hire Smedley from SOE .. It’ll be Galaxies all over again lol.
kyle robinson

This game had so much potential now its just a pile of hot garbage from the terrible EG raids to the stupid legacy system….epic fail.
http://www.facebook.com/clint.casey1 Charles Clint Casey

A little bit of information can be gained from Bioware’s Job Listings.

They are currently hiring at Bioware Austin. Most of the positions are in QA Testing, which is a low level jobs, but there is one position that is telling.

“Game Analysts”

The only time in Business when you bring in an outside Analyst is when you have a major problem with your company and your own internal people aren’t capable of figuring out what’s wrong.

Keep in mind, this Bioware team has been around and has been growing now for 8 years. A lot of times when your working on an collaborative creative property problems come up. People experience it a lot in colleges and high schools where you form a group project, usually you’ll end up with a group of 3 to 5 people and someone in the group slacks off. Now imagine a project with hundreds of people and a constantly growing team over the course of 8 years.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz

I wonder how many times they have to blatantly lie to our faces before it becomes obvious to the team that Bioware is full of it. I’ve always loved Bioware, but after SWTOR and ME3 I’ve completely lost faith. As a matter of fact, I dislike them MORE than any other company BECAUSE they let me down after they had already established themselves so well in our hearts and minds. If things were truly going well, they wouldn’t have to get rid of people at all. According to them, they are making twice as much as what they need to in order to turn a profit yet they still lay people off. So either they have realized that they botched something or they’re lying about their profits.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Doyle-Hargrave/1182733324 Doyle Hargrave

How does james ohlen still have a job? he doesnt even know the difference between content and game features. How he thinks that a lfg tool is considered new content is beyond me? Seriously hey look we have a lfg tool were catchin up here!

Please tell me that gabe ametegelo got fired hes the most incompetent dev ive ever seen. If hes still on thats about as much lol as ohlen bieng there still
- Sharuko
  
  James Ohlen was the man behind Baldur’s Gate and KOTOR he is a good talent. Gabe on the other hand…
  - MosesZD
    
    This is true. But more often than not talent burns out and cruises on reputation. Authors. Musicians. Entertainers. They become formulaic, egotistical cliche’s of themselves and it shows.BioWare games, if you look at them, are the same formula for plot and henchmen and have been since NWN. They still have some brilliant work in their games, but mostly they’ve just become cliche’s of themselves and tedious…
http://twitter.com/SRevision Alex Rose

I dont know if it is the end of subscription based mmos but I definitely hope that it will start a trend to make better games and lower the budget for hype and marketing (and voiceover lol).
Good games sell themselves alone.press.
- http://twitter.com/Grulnork Grulnork
  
  Voice over is good. You just can’t sell a game that is a clone of another game and just add some voice acting.
  
  Voice acting is nice while you play it, but it’s not fun to have this separated cut scene where everything is spoken in, it’s better build into the game all over the place.
Revanhavoc

Wait, did he just compare 38 studios to Bioware?

(Haha, no. You’re just hearing things, no one would say something that daft.)

You can bet these layoffs would never have occurred had SWTOR reached anything near what the analysts and investors were led to believe. A million players was always on the low end.

(Mike sounded like he was reading an obituary at the end, it’s only a couple of job layoffs…)

Don’t be crass, havoc – I thought he was being respectful.
- http://twitter.com/Critzkreig Cody Moody
  
  500k was the low end set for profitability by BW
  - MosesZD
    
    And the churn rate plus massive drop in sales says they’re not going to be there by the end of the year. YOu can’t lose 20% of your customer-base (exponential decay model) each month and be successful.
    
    At the current rate of sales and churn, they’re not going to make 300K. So they desperately need to fix the game…
    
    Oh wait they can’t. They kept the clowns and laid-off the good guys… Oh well…
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Bob-Dobalina/100002971552895 Bob Dobalina
    
    Actually 500k subs is the break even point. Here’s the info from EA’s earnings call Q&A in Feb. 2012.
    
    Q: You’ve previously said you need about a half million subscribers to be profitable, is that still the case?A: At 500,000 subscribers, we’d break even. At a million, we’d be making a profit but nothing worth writing home about. As it scales up from there, we’re talking about a nice profit. At this point with the successful launch, we can take the worst case scenarios off the table.http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19915-electronic-arts-q3-fy12-earnings-call
  - H S
    
    I don’t know why this meme keeps getting thrown around, when it was from a quote in 2011, but at the Feb 2012 financial meeting, the CEO said 500K was the break even point and it would take 1 million subs to show a profit. But even then he went on to say at one million, it would be nothing to write home about.
scottsummer

Oh…Poor Larry, i can hear the sadness from his voice.
I guess it is over, the Tortanic has arrived.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Johnson/1353890372 Michael Johnson

10 bucks says Daniel Erikson is out.

He was the one who said they still had 1.7 million when they had 1.3
EA wants him to looks like the incompetent one (Which he is; he was one of the leading voices in pushing the NGE update on SWG)
- http://twitter.com/Luke_Malcolm Luke Malcolm
  
  Apparently so is Stephen Reid, if so the game is now dead to me
- http://twitter.com/ItsatrapLOL KB
  
  If Daniel’s out, that would anger me to no end.
- Sharuko
  
  Daniel Erikson never worked on SWG. He worked on Dragon Age Origins and SWTOR. Regardless he was the lead writer when this game was made and the story of the game was generally good.
  - DoctorOverlord
    
    Thank you. Where the heck would anyone get the idea that Daniel Erickson was a developer on SWG? He’s a writer.
    
    I know it’s the Internet but a little fact checking isn’t that hard before making absurd statements. Try LinkedIN and you’ll can easily see he never even worked for Sony.
    
    Although I will admit, I wouldn’t put money on the security of the position of him or anyone who is working on SWTOR.
    - http://profile.yahoo.com/ADEN6X6TYCORSSGEHKWMBIHDHY Eclipse
      
      I think maybe he meant Dallas Dickinson?
      - DoctorOverlord
        
        Okay, that makes sense.
zydh

I have a gut feeling that Gabe was affected by this…
http://twitter.com/SSindog Sindog

My current job is a business analyst and I can tell you from my perspective, if you don’t have accurate data, your business decisions will be bad, and it all trickles down.
http://twitter.com/crocodilius ryan phillips

but what does this mean for the Mass Effect MMO….must..have..KROGAN!
Eaker82

I knew it and I told people while it was in beta. This game sucks and its gonna either disappear or go F2P.
- http://twitter.com/Critzkreig Cody Moody
  
  It has one million subscribers. GO F2P QUICK
  - H S
    
    correction, it has one million suckers who bought extended time cards but stopped playing back in January, like many I know and play with online. Myself, I quit right after I was banned from the beta forums for telling them what I knew was true. So at least I am not upset about being scammed like so many of my friends feel.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Bill-Lia/57201115 Bill Lia
      
      FIGHT THE POWER!!! DAMN THE MAN!!!
      
      Glad to see you rise above the oppression.
    - Eaker82
      
      Exactly. All my gamer friends had swtor woody’s and it took about a month for those to go away now none of em play it and some play Rift but I think we all might play Secret World.
http://www.facebook.com/jason.jenkins.73 Jason Jenkins

while watching this funny thought came to mind, history of the world part 1 where they are escaping the legion, brooks keeps saying nobody panic nobody panic then a soldier shouts there they are and brooks starts shouting panic!! ahhh wish i could find that clip would fit here nicely lol
7BitBrian

My thoughts on this can be found on the Gamebreaker forums here: http://forum.gamebreaker.tv/viewtopic.php?pid=45577#p45577
http://www.facebook.com/people/Doyle-Hargrave/1182733324 Doyle Hargrave

Please tell me Gabe is axed sadly we still have james clueless ohlen
MosesZD

I am happy to point out that they said they weren’t going to lay anyone off back in December:

James Ohlen in Gamasutra, December 20th, 2011:

Current projections, he says, show enough success that BioWare is investing in the future and keeping the entire team of hundreds of people together.

“Unlike a lot of other game companies that, once they launch a game, downsize their teams radically, our plan is to keep the team together and continue to focus on building content.”

So much for Plan A.
- DoctorOverlord
  
  Thanks you for that pointed reminder. It’s never a good thing when devs are caught going back on what they said 6 months ago.
  
  Condolences to those who were let go.
  - http://twitter.com/Critzkreig Cody Moody
    
    “Devs” don’t lay people off. They “dev” stuff.
    - DoctorOverlord
      
      If they’re in any kind of management position, you can be sure that laying people off is part of their job or they have some involvement in it. If he doesn’t then he shouldn’t be giving interviews saying anything about the company on that subject.
http://www.facebook.com/andrew.sekersky Andrew Sekersky

It’s never great when someone loses their job, and I really feel sorry for the people effected. That said, whoever made the decision to launch with all the bugs, problems and issues the game had at launch, with Ilum’s issues, unfinished raids and half a Legacy System, should be in the layoffs. The game needed more polish, and gamers are fickle, most of us only remember Aion, Warhammer and AoC for failing, not for what those respective games did ‘right.’ That said, the Tortanic is here, and let’s just /popcorn and watch the Hindenburg explode. Remember to stay 100m away at all times, and don’t look directly AT the explosion….
http://profile.yahoo.com/3JO75BNS43WDETCNCO7F7XS6Q4 jo

F2P soon.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Doyle-Hargrave/1182733324 Doyle Hargrave

How does james get to keep his job? seriously ive run and managed over 100 people. Ive made sure they can speak proper english know the company inside/out and all products. James does not know shit about swtor. To anounce content and then display a lfg tool and server transfers is not content lol

I would feel bad normally but those devs and james and a lot of them deserve it. They do thier job piss poor lie thier asses off. Well good riddens

I hope they fired the person who made those god aweful armor sets and the person who greenlighted them
- MMO_Doubter
  
  ALL the PR weasels whose main job is to go online and lie to the customers deserve to be fired on principle.
  
  The sad thing is that the people who make the IMPORTANT decisions (like releasing before the game is ready) probably are safe in their ivory towers.
  
  MMOFringe
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SQ2EGSVHDHBL37KCHD4SLUTNZU Dream Big

fuck that these people thought they could just chill and keep there jobs im glad there fired hopefully some new people will come in and show them hows its done.
Ryan Fisher

People are really surprised by this? Wait, you guys took BioWare’s word at face value?

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n40/rfisher3/SWToR/population-5-22-12.jpg
http://www.facebook.com/johnstreets John Streets

DCUO canned Chris Cao then bam, F2P.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ellie-Burns/1033357193 Ellie Burns

Please tell me they laid off everyone associated with the PvP development
Time_warp

Nice coverage. Hopefully the people that lost their jobs will find something again soon.

The following line (both written above and spoken in the clip), caught my attention:
“In the world of MMOs, it’s not uncommon to see layoffs after the first few months after launch”

How true is this? I’ve only heard of layoffs after launches when games do not do as well as planned. I don’t think it is “the norm” as the phrasing implies it is. Blizzard laid off people recently, but it seemed most of them were in support areas that have since been automated.
- http://profile.yahoo.com/ITHF7XKYGVXFAPCDMDJTKHLBBU Lian Wan
  
  Can’t say for certain but that is not the first time I have seen it mentioned. It all depends on the positions. It seems many of the positions are just for the life of the project.
  
  It isn’t that unusual if you think about it. Once the product is launched you won’t need as much people to for maintenance since the majority of the media assets and programming are already done. You would just need some people around for things like bug fixes.
  
  It could probably be interpreted to mean that we shouldn’t be expecting an expansion anytime soon.
http://profile.yahoo.com/A25YQ3HO7U4LIHIHWSLG63WCYI Nisarg Shah

Its just restructuring… though the timing of it does raise some eyebrows.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Michael-Johnson/1353890372 Michael Johnson
  
  “Restructuring” is PR code for “You’re fired”
  
  If a CEO ever tell you that you’re “Not part of our restructuring” than you better pack your shit and start filling out applications.
  - http://profile.yahoo.com/A25YQ3HO7U4LIHIHWSLG63WCYI Nisarg Shah
    
    It is happening everywhere. And I mean every public company is in some shape of restructuring right now.
    - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz
      
      Restructuring, once again, means firing. A company making as much as Bioware shouldn’t need to restructure. To further prove my point, there’s a quote from one of the Bioware reps that they were not going to be like other companies that fired employees after the first few months because they needed and wanted them for the continued development of the game. Also, not every company is restructuring. That’s a grand assumption without any merit or grounding to reality.
http://profile.yahoo.com/Z36GPOU3Q2QIQYBIDVNQAVGNGE Raul

In the music business, the best and most long-lived artists (generally) are those that create for the love of creation, not for the expectations of the A&R/Moneylenders.

Trying to make what You think “the market” will buy, instead of what moves You, will never result in creating anything that will stand the test of time.

My heart truly goes out to those Folx that worked on swtor and really tried to create something magical.
- only to be told that Having Tusken Raiders actually ambush You (like in the 1st movie) was ”not in the budget”

“no, just have them stand around, waiting to be harvested from 10 meters away, those Star Wars Nerds won’t care”

-Looks like they do care to Me.

The saddest thing of all is that the moneylenders will not likely back another Star Wars game for a long, long, time.
(probably in a galaxy far, far, away)

Bean Counters/Money Lenders/Shareholders are not capable of creating (or Hearing)
anything but Hype & profit.

I wish they could Leave the making of worlds (and Galaxies) to the Artisans and imagineers.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  VERY well said, Sir.
- http://profile.yahoo.com/A25YQ3HO7U4LIHIHWSLG63WCYI Nisarg Shah
  
  Resources are not free. They have an cost and that cost has to come from somewhere. While yes, successful games are only successful due to its developer’s heart in it. But you need money to overcome cost. And sadly lot of investors are not interested in how much heart you’ve put into the game, they are only interested in the return.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1260066056 Steven Diaz
    
    When you put heart into a game, you’ll turn a better profit. That’s actually taught in business intro class. Not specifically games, but anything you do.
    - MMO_Doubter
      
      Video games are HUGE business now. Bigger than music or movies, I believe. This has prompted a ‘gold rush’ of entrepreneurs and speculators into the market. People who have NO love for games at all. This explains the current state of the industry’s products. It happened before – in the early ’80s, and it resulted in a backlash that crippled the industry until the NES showed up. It can happen again.
      
      MMOFringe
pc11

“SWTOR did not loose any subscriptions… apart from going from 1,7M to 1,3M”

“SWTOR is doing better then ever… we just need to fire alot of people to reduce costs”

A picture is worth a thousand words just pull up a chart of EAs stock to understand what the real world thinks of the SWTOR venture. Gamers and fanboys opinions dont count for shit in the money game.

The game will eventually run out of fanboys and people drawn to try it because of the IP. At that point it will have to stand on his “mmo legs” and that will not be a pretty sight.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1529781463 Niki Nuke

i know some people were put out when the game was released, and were glad they freed up general chat when they left, i dont think these forums are acurate, the only people on here are the haters,. the people we need to defend the game are too busy playing it to notice the moans, i know people getting layed of is better news than all the good they did, a game with a budget indeed, is it a shock that they had a budget? that they had pressure to release the game from both the customers and the money men? i wasnt a huge star wars fan before this, but i love the game, its buggy yes, but its still in its first few months, and after years on other mmos people still complained, this isnt a sinking ship, if people dont like the game go play something else, alot of people did, but i dont see how this is an indication of game quality, i dont like horror films, dosnt make them all bad, enjoy your forums, ive got some sand people that need my attention,
- MMO_Doubter
  
  By your own definition – YOU are a hater, since you are posting here.
  
  The game IS dying. Face facts.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1529781463 Niki Nuke
    
    indeed,. i love the game and dislike haters, by definition im a hater, well spotted, your like so clever, wish i was you,, realy do, i could sit there and feel clever like you do,
    - MMO_Doubter
      
      Quite so. Your grammar would be a lot better, for one thing.
      - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1529781463 Niki Nuke
        
        brummie old boy, we dont have grammar police here, or caps police, “quite so”,lol, you crack me up, somehow i knew id find an intelectual on here who could( bring me over to the light side) and sure enough there you are, im going back to my game before they turn the lights out on us, as im sure your right, but if your not,, and you may just be,, im sure youl be busy being smart on another forum somewhere else,
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7UCDEUKEHKZZCEGBRAQAKTOFOY The Undeniable Truth

This may be wrong, but I am not sad to see Stephen go. He was a sadistic prick to us during the beta test.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  You are not alone.
Sharuko

SWTOR is a good game at the end of the day from its PvP to its PvE. The biggest mistake they made was picking the hero engine because SWTOR with a Unreal engine would be an amazing game. What they need to do quickly is increase the capacity on servers and merge servers. There is no reason to have 125 servers in North America.

Merge servers and make them massive servers like WoW has and keep them limited to 30-40 servers. One of the most important things in an MMO is a vibrant community. A game can be amazing and a 10/10 but still feel dull and stale if there is no one around.

When I played WoW I played on a dead server and the game was felt bad and boring. I moved to a high population servers and loved it.

Even at launch games like Rift and SWTOR didn’t have servers that could support a lot of people. I played on high population servers and never saw people around. This was at its peak because the servers were small.
Revanhavoc

Honestly, I never liked that pompus, annoying, bald headed Brit. His stupid wry humor and terrible jokes, combined with jokes about things that we very serious to me at the time, made me have early concerns about the SWTOR development team.

I think for those who felt arrogance and hubris may have been part of the problem, I assure you this man is partially responsible (Steven Reid) for those feelings.
http://www.facebook.com/toph1980 Christopher Fischer

Gabe next please. Dubstep cat would do a better job than him.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1529781463 Niki Nuke

and the clever way you used capitals,, to highlight me,, awsome
http://www.facebook.com/toph1980 Christopher Fischer

How does Larry find it ‘surprising’ that this is happening? Larry, come back from lala land xD
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IL7J7A3V2ZNIXCQ7LSOJGTH5RY Rizen

sad, but they did step on their own feet with the “red error text”.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Elliott-Romero/100000191854370 Elliott Romero

I honestly don’t know why anyone would be upset about this guy being let go. There are few people who deserve it more. The guy spent literally all day fiddling with his phone on twitter while the game imploded.

This game is literally the biggest failure in gaming history yet everyone wants to act like these people are victims. They aren’t. EA has every right to let each and every developer go. It’s unfortunate for their families and I wish them the best as human beings but the fact remains that they have completely and utterly failed in just about every way imaginable.

Stephen Reid’s job was to manage the community. Go look at the community and tell me he did a good job. His method of community management was to scrub every bit of criticism from the forums and fiddle with his phone all day while hiding behind a group of Bioware zealots. Good riddance.
- http://twitter.com/Canisrah Shane
  
  Agree 110%.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1529781463 Niki Nuke

ill play every day untill the lighs go out, for me,, the story and the work thats gone into the scenery makes the game, for alot of you hardcore fans it wont be enough, i get that, but i still play and get blown away every time i find something new, im surprised i didnt see more advertising though, few posters, one thing on telly, will this be a game that slowly fades away, or one that slowly climbs to a respectable level, i certainly have no idea, but by then i think there will be new mmo games to try so i wont care. i got 3 years out of wow, 1 year out of rift, if i can get 3 years out of swtor before the end of days hits ill be happy, pandas suck by the way,:)
http://www.facebook.com/people/Filip-Buhov/1379207683 Filip Buhov

To the lifeboats , they are trying to save the ship!

p.s I feel sad about hardcore star wars fans , I rly like that universe , but …. DING DONG BANNU
p.s2 allso feel sad about star trek , lotr and comic fans in general
DoctorOverlord

I have to agree with the podcasts opinion that this is a serious, if not fatal blow, to the subscription model.

While it’s always sad to hear people getting laid off and while it would be better for the genre if more MMOs could be successful, I will not miss the subscription model. I think it was the core of many of the flawed and horrible mechanics that have plagued MMOs for years.

When your business model is based on making sure players keep logging in every single month to keep your subs going, the result will be timesink mechanics taking precedence over good gameplay. We’ve seen this repeated in the past and it is good to see the model finally breaking down. The MMO genre needs to evolve and this is a necessary step, it will just be painful in some instances, but then worthwhile change often is.
- MMO_Doubter
  
  While I agree that the sub fee model is flawed, I ask you what other model is LESS flawed,
  
  If you think a cash shop is better for the players, then I call SHENANIGANS.
  - DoctorOverlord
    
    F2P with a cash shop in a MMO is not better because the only way the game can make money is by forcing players to use the cash shop. That’s just as bad as subs.
    
    How about the model used by every other video game genre from FPS to RPGs? Buy the box, play the game for free. Offer DLC for those who want it.
    
    ArenaNet is offering something like this. GW2 may have a cash shop but it’s only cosmetic or time saving items, nothing that is required to play the game. And if an MMO doesn’t have any subs, time-saving items are not the unbalancing mechanic they would be in a sub based game.
    
    There are already FPS games that offer cash shop items like skins or cosmetic stuff and it works fine for them.
    
    For some reason, everyone has always thought that MMOs should be treated differently from all other video games just because they were online. From the beginning, Richard Garriott and other old school MMO devs were able to charge subs and rake in profits by giving the excuse that the cost was needed to run servers. I think history will prove that was never the case.
    
    It took the other genres going online to pull back the curtain and shine the light of reality on the flawed tradition of the subscription model. Just like the flawed mechanics from MMOs that were accepted traditions like the trinity and loot rolls, the sub model needs to get tossed aside.
    
    It should have happened years ago and frankly I find it rather appalling that model became such an established tradition at all.
    - MMO_Doubter
      
      Paid DLC is just a different form of cash shop. It divides the population – which is death for an MMO.
      
      A sub fee (without cash shop) treats everyone as equals.
      
      Sure they don’t NEED $15/month for the servers, but GW2 doesn’t NEED to charge for storage and character slots, either.
      - DoctorOverlord
        
        LotRO and DDO were saved by going FP2 with a cash shop. Evidence would seem to contradict your claim that cash shops are death to MMOs.
        
        The genre is evolving, nowadaya clinging to past mistakes whether they are business models or game mechanics is what will kill an MMO.
        
        That does not mean I want to see only FP2 with cash shops in the genre. A cash shop can divide the population if it is a requirement to play or advance in the game. DLC when it is done right without offering overpowered gear or benefits does not hurt a game and there plenty of examples in other genres.
        
        Also if dividing the population was death for an MMO, WoW would have died long ago. WoW divides its population with gameplay. separating them into raiders and non-raiders, or hardcores and casuals. The hardcores get their money’s worth in terms of dollars spent vs time played,. the casuals not so much.
        
        WoW’s sub-based businnes model deliberately divides players into clique guilds where you only associate with the same people week after week rather than the online community as whole. This division has not damaged or hurt WoW in any way.
        
        That does not mean that MMOs cannot improve themselves and offer ways to bring their communities together rather than dividing them apart. And they can do so without the using the sub-based model of the past.
http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Dodge/1295274038 David Dodge

I wanted to like the game but too much stuff was missing at launch (true 3d space combat (not rail shooter), server transfers, non-linear leveling choices and more terrain and cities to explore. Once i hit 50 i realized that there wasnt really that much content. For the money they spent it was a disaster.

BioWare Lays Off Staff At The SWTOR Studio

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SWTOR Expansion Rise of the Hutt Cartel Date Announced

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