Lord of the Rings Online

Not sure how public it is, just have some friends at Turbine that were on LOTRO and they lost their jobs along with most others from what I understand. I guess Turbine is putting it into life-support mode. Not really that surprising, but it's always sad to hear even if it's the norm for game dev, especially on MMOs.

Grave_sl said:

So apparently the majority of the LOTRO team was fired today. Sad.

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Taken from the Lotro message board:

"Up to 100 folks will get pink slips. Somehow, I was able to avoid it so far - will not be sticking for long, I can tell you that much. This is horrible and some of the best folks were let go. In 2012 we had almost 500 people and I think we will have less than 200 after all dust settles. Two MMOs and one MOBA, and this is not including Asheron's Call as there is no dev there... It's all about the bottom line for WB, they will kill Turbine just like they killed numerous companies they acquired"

So far I've only seen four actual "names" from Lotro going, but from WB statement I wouldn't be surprised if they had chosen to focus Turbine on that crappy-looking Infinite Crisis in the hope of making $$$.

*edit* looks like a bunch of QA people went, plus some(?) of the people who did the class redesigns in the last expansion. There's a couple of people at least who worked on the zones as well, who'll be missed IMO as the world design is / was great.

That explains why they aren't putting forth the much needed effort of server mergers.

Running Dog_sl said:

Taken from the Lotro message board:

"Up to 100 folks will get pink slips. Somehow, I was able to avoid it so far - will not be sticking for long, I can tell you that much. This is horrible and some of the best folks were let go. In 2012 we had almost 500 people and I think we will have less than 200 after all dust settles. Two MMOs and one MOBA, and this is not including Asheron's Call as there is no dev there... It's all about the bottom line for WB, they will kill Turbine just like they killed numerous companies they acquired"

So far I've only seen four actual "names" from Lotro going, but from WB statement I wouldn't be surprised if they had chosen to focus Turbine on that crappy-looking Infinite Crisis in the hope of making $$$.

*edit* looks like a bunch of QA people went, plus some(?) of the people who did the class redesigns in the last expansion. There's a couple of people at least who worked on the zones as well, who'll be missed IMO as the world design is / was great.

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I am extremely saddened to read this news. My sympathies to your fiends that will lose their jobs. I can't imagine losing my job for nothing more than money. These guys did nothing wrong and probably put a lot of heart and soul into a game where the IP its tied to is a gold mine. Its a shame it's all about business and the bottom line as most of these situations are and they could not cash in on a franchise that is loved by so many.

I hope they find greener pastures and best of luck to them.

The 2012 layoff make sense if you look at the pretty large decrease in sub numbers for lotro in 2011-2012 according to MMOdata's final report. It's probably a mixture of subscriptions for the game continuing to decline and Infinite Crisis sucking resources from all other projects. While a declining population ~250k subscriptions is still pretty respectable it probably doesn't look very good to the executives at Warner Brothers. I think they'll still continue to produce content lotro it won't be as much. I haven't personally explored any of the expansion content past moria so I don't know if the quality and/or size of the content has decreased over time.


MMOdata's final report, he's stopped producing them as of December 2013.
http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png

sukik_sl said:

The 2012 layoff make sense if you look at the pretty large decrease in sub numbers for lotro in 2011-2012 according to MMOdata's final report. It's probably a mixture of subscriptions for the game continuing to decline and Infinite Crisis sucking resources from all other projects. While a declining population ~250k subscriptions is still pretty respectable it probably doesn't look very good to the executives at Warner Brothers. I think they'll still continue to produce content lotro it won't be as much. I haven't personally explored any of the expansion content past moria so I don't know if the quality and/or size of the content has decreased over time.


MMOdata's final report, he's stopped producing them as of December 2013.
http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png

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I can't believe Second Life is so popular, I get the appeal as a interactive chat room but who knew it would be so popular as a game that isn't really a game.

sukik_sl said:

The 2012 layoff make sense if you look at the pretty large decrease in sub numbers for lotro in 2011-2012 according to MMOdata's final report. It's probably a mixture of subscriptions for the game continuing to decline and Infinite Crisis sucking resources from all other projects. While a declining population ~250k subscriptions is still pretty respectable it probably doesn't look very good to the executives at Warner Brothers. I think they'll still continue to produce content lotro it won't be as much. I haven't personally explored any of the expansion content past moria so I don't know if the quality and/or size of the content has decreased over time.


MMOdata's final report, he's stopped producing them as of December 2013.
http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png

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LoTRO doesn't really make its beans from subs though. It was nearly the first to go F2P and quadrupled its income when it did. I think you are just seeing the effect of people falling away from an older game and no longer spending so much in the item store. LoTRO has also shown a ton of innovation and as a Tolkien-esque world it is a fantastic job, however all good things come to an end.

Lusiphur_sl said:

LoTRO doesn't really make its beans from subs though. It was nearly the first to go F2P and quadrupled its income when it did. I think you are just seeing the effect of people falling away from an older game and no longer spending so much in the item store. LoTRO has also shown a ton of innovation and as a Tolkien-esque world it is a fantastic job, however all good things come to an end.

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What did LOTRO innovate? It was a two bit eq2 knock off with even worse combat.

I'd say LOTRO has done a far better job at story telling than any other MMO. The fact that the epic quest line runs from level 1 through max level is amazing in-and-of itself, but they also made the majority of these quests very cinematic.

There's a new update for the game.

LoTR New Instance Cluster part 1 info. - Page 10

They've also recently announced that they're done adding any new group content to the game, so the conversion to full on single player mmo is complete. I still putter along going through the massive amount of content every once in awhile but I don't see how this game can survive past the next license renewal in 2017. Unless they're making enough money off people who really like super easy casual mode.

I still play LOTRO, and they do kinda sorta have group content still? It's just not, ya know...good.

There's no new dungeons, but this last update does have an area that's nothing but group mobs with quests to kill the group mobs. Also some of the epic story quests ask if you want to proceed solo or in a group (and I bet zero people ever pick group).

Last expansion had Big Battles, which could be played from solo to various group sizes, depending on the battle. And of course there's the tons of scaling instances and skirms.

I suspect as we move on through Gondor we'll get new Big Battles, even though people don't really like them. That'll be the group content, just not your traditional dungeons and raids (which is a shame).

Yep, over on SA, everyone will tell you that's the sole reason to play this game. They've a really good job of creating Middle Earth (within MMO restrictions).

sukik_sl said:

There's a new update for the game.

LoTR New Instance Cluster part 1 info. - Page 10

They've also recently announced that they're done adding any new group content to the game, so the conversion to full on single player mmo is complete. I still putter along going through the massive amount of content every once in awhile but I don't see how this game can survive past the next license renewal in 2017. Unless they're making enough money off people who really like super easy casual mode.

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That's not strictly true; what they said (back in January) was

Take a break from expansions

We've heard a lot of you suggest we take a break from the annual expansion cycle, and we agree! We'd like to take the time to revisit some older systems, add more region content, and just generally have more Middle-earth to explore throughout the year. When the Players Council last visited, we asked them what they thought of a year that focused on more content and more opportunities to refine and improve existing systems. They echoed the sentiment we'd heard from many of you and were unanimous in their support.

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and then back in June

Question about new 3 and 6 man instances.
Sapience - The broader answer is that when they say raids they mean group instances. Group content is not out of the question, but what we consider traditional raids and traditional instance clusters pretty much falls under Rowan's comments. They've been saying for a year that there are no raids or that type of content in the roadmap in the foreseeable future or planned. Rewording the question will not change the answer. He's sorry to be the bearer of bad news. It is not new news.

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So basically no new raids which as others have said isn't a great loss to most people. Last info they posted it was only a small percent of the playerbase who ran them and the economics of developing that content just wouldn't make sense.

*edit* they actually got a little pissed about the questioning

Raiders comprise the smallest, by far, group in our game. Pv[M]P players are far larger and even they are small. in facttogether the two groups wouldn't comprise 10% of the total player base and never have(this is important. it's not a new thing, it's a long standing historical fact).

Forum posters comprise a slightly larger group than the combined group of PvMP and Raiders. However, Raiders and PvMP players make up the overwhelming majority of forum posters (More than half. Though raiders are the smaller group of the two (PvMP/Raiders)). So you have a tiny group, inside a small group that is grossly disproportionately represented on the forums.

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Running Dog_sl said:

So basically no new raids which as others have said isn't a great loss to most people. Last info they posted it was only a small percent of the playerbase who ran them and the economics of developing that content just wouldn't make sense.

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On my kinmates has like...multiple accounts, many toons, has every crafting profession maxed, etc. Guy has played forever. I only say this because I feel he's a source of truth and in general really knows LOTRO history.

The last "normal" dungeon/raid type content was the Erebor cluster. It was generally considered *terrible*. I don't know the specifics, but the fights were not fun, and they did something that completely fucked up the end-game progression. This is what killed raiding and group content. I believe they had a bug that lasted for a month that was dropping first age symbols or something. The dungeons were bleh, they got geared up super quick, and with no real progression, the raiders quit. After this failed attempt at progression, they then say "Raiders and group players make up a tiny slice of players, so we're not doing it anymore".

However, "back in the day" - at launch there's lots of great dungeons. Moria has highly regarded dungeons, and people keep begging for them to scale, and say it's the best in the game. Isengard raids are supposed to be decent too.

TLDR: LOTRO had a good content of raiders. They then killed the raiding scene with a piss poor update, then said "oh noone likes raiding", and instead of going the WoW route of making it more attractive and opening it up to more people, they went the other way and just quit it all together, instead opting for terrible daily solo progression for gear that noone needs for anything and honestly isn't even that great compared to other options.

Bruman_sl said:

TLDR: LOTRO had a good content of raiders. They then killed the raiding scene with a piss poor update, then said "oh noone likes raiding", and instead of going the WoW route of making it more attractive and opening it up to more people, they went the other way and just quit it all together, instead opting for terrible daily solo progression for gear that noone needs for anything and honestly isn't even that great compared to other options.

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Yea, it's easy to say that raiders and dungeon runners are the smallest part of the population when you already drove most of them away. The only people I see posting on the LOTRO subreddit are new players and old solo players which hardly seems sustainable as a business model.

It also seems like the like to ban people on their forums for not being lickspittles.

Has Infinite Crisis flopped? I don't really follow MOBA's, but when that goes Turbine is probably sunk.