Turbine (The Devs of LotRO) Suffers through More Layoffs

[Val the Moofia Boss]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/10...h-more-layoffs

My condolences.

[Tackhisis]

No condolences. Their games were simply bad, their F2P model is bad. You cannot just sit there for 5 years straight getting dividends, you need to think, to innovate.

[Tradewind]

No condolences. Their games were simply bad, their F2P model is bad. You cannot just sit there for 5 years straight getting dividends, you need to think, to innovate.

Except those people getting the "dividends" aren't the ones being laid off...

They get to keep on going, while the peons get shit on.

[Beazy]

Damn, they have been around for a LONG time.

LotR fans must love the hell out of that game. Kinda makes me want to play it.

[NordWitcher]

I feel really bad for saying this cause I really really really love the Lord of the Rings universe. I still am hoping a studio can succeed in making a LOTR MMO. Am very excited for Shadow of Modor.

But let me say this that the LOTRO by turbine was just utter crap. Even for its time when it came out, the game was already out dated. The character models, game design, etc looked like shit. The majority of the LOTRO subscribers were role players or fans of middle earth, lord of the rings, and fantasy. I picked up this game a few years back and it was really really bad. I couldn't even stand 5 mins in the world. And the worst part is that the game is pretty badly optimized for old computers. I mean World of Warcraft as recent as MoP can run perfectly fine on my computer.

[stellvia]

I remember it more fondly than NordWitcher, but then again I only stuck with it for maybe 3-4 months as well. The world and atmosphere were fine, but the classes weren't very clearly defined at the beginning, and the whole monster character pvp being tacked on was really odd. Then I never ended up going back -- you blink and suddenly realize its been years since you tried it and *shrug*

[Valeron]

the character models haven't aged well and the animations were always poor. However, it has the best area of any mmo, The Shire.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I took the liberty of digging this up: apparently, raiders make up the smallest group of LotRO players.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07...roup-in-lotro/

And, considering that practically no one PvPs in the game, we can all assume who plays and why.

Roleplaying and friends, ofcourse.

Which means that Turbine doesn't need to keep producing new raids or BGs to survive; they need to buckle down and expand upon what players already love. RPing and playing around with friends.

[Al Gorefiend]

I took the liberty of digging this up: apparently, raiders make up the smallest group of LotRO players.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07...roup-in-lotro/

And, considering that practically no one PvPs in the game, we can all assume who plays and why.

Roleplaying and friends, ofcourse.

Which means that Turbine doesn't need to keep producing new raids or BGs to survive; they need to buckle down and expand upon what players already love. RPing and playing around with friends.

I've always dreamed of an MMO where Roleplaying came first and foremost, and PvP and PvE came as a second thought.

With so many games following the WoW model (which shits on Roleplaying) I'd like to see a game break that norm and do something different.

Massive, interactive worlds, long travel times, limited inventory, logic and physics (I.E. no double jumping and clipping through monsters) is the perfect game for me.

[Kelimbror]

People who think this is because of LotRO or that LotRO is now doomed to fail don't play the game or know anything about the company. These layoffs are likely related to Infinite Crisis which is a crappy excuse of a MOBA that was ill timed, ill marketed, and overall as crappy for Turbine as Defiance was for Trion.

DDO and LotRO are doing just fine with their small teams and the games are still great. They realize who plays their game and caters to them. Pretty excellent strategy.

[Azrile]

- - - Updated - - -

People who think this is because of LotRO or that LotRO is now doomed to fail don't play the game or know anything about the company. These layoffs are likely related to Infinite Crisis which is a crappy excuse of a MOBA that was ill timed, ill marketed, and overall as crappy for Turbine as Defiance was for Trion.

DDO and LotRO are doing just fine with their small teams and the games are still great. They realize who plays their game and caters to them. Pretty excellent strategy.

Agree completely. It is a little ignorant of people to jump on LOTRO and DDO. LOTRO suffered a bit by being too much like WOW and spent a few years trying to become even closer to WOW before they realized that they are better off going the RP route. DDO is to this day the only other MMORPG that I can play besides WOW. But that is mainly because the dungeons(called quests) are soloable. So you can do the majority of the content alone, the dungeons also have a lot of traps, tricks and abilities that you can use outside of combat, so it feels like old-school D&D and not WOW where the only thing in a dungeon is stuff you kill.

These layoffs are caused because their new projects failed, not because LOTRO and DDO suddenly became bad.

[notorious98]

People who think this is because of LotRO or that LotRO is now doomed to fail don't play the game or know anything about the company. These layoffs are likely related to Infinite Crisis which is a crappy excuse of a MOBA that was ill timed, ill marketed, and overall as crappy for Turbine as Defiance was for Trion.

DDO and LotRO are doing just fine with their small teams and the games are still great. They realize who plays their game and caters to them. Pretty excellent strategy.

I've played Infinite Crisis a number of times and the graphics look worse than League of Legends. The gameplay is.....meh. Honestly, it feels like just a generic MOBA with DCU characters in it.

[DiscoGhost]

i wouldnt call it bad. from what i've heard they did very well with dungeon scaling for people levels. the only thing blizz has yet to do.

[Kelimbror]

I've played Infinite Crisis a number of times and the graphics look worse than League of Legends. The gameplay is.....meh. Honestly, it feels like just a generic MOBA with DCU characters in it.

It was a terrible, terrible decision to try and jump in the ring with that IP and that company. I love turbine for DDO and LotRO, but they are a pretty limited company at this point. Unless you have some huge weight like Heroes of the Storm, MOBAs are not an avenue for growth. These layoffs were entirely because of that game failing. Like I said, same deal happened when Trion put all their eggs in with Defiance and it failed miserably.