Elder Scrolls Online Hit With Layoffs

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While we know it is normal for layoffs after a launch, it still seems odd that you can be "investing heavily to develop new content" while you are laying off staff. I mean, someone has to make the content you are so heavily investing in, right? :confused:

"We remain strongly committed to The Elder Scrolls Online, and continue to invest heavily to develop new content for PC players, prepare the game for its console launch, and handle our planned expansion into important international territories.
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It was dead the moment it was announced. This game was a horrible idea.
 
Whew, you know its bad when I am a hardcore TES fan and I forgot all about this game existing!
 
I beta tested this for an extended period. If they had actually listened to tester feedback they would have gone back and given in a year more in development because this game just didn't offer anything even on par with other current MMOs. It was doomed from the start.

With this license it would have had to be amazing... And they delivered less than existing FTP games like Neverwinter. Anything but amazing is not going to be enough for elder scrolls fans and they farmed it out to another developer that didn't manage to capture the Bethesda magic like Skyrim did.
 
The game had some fun content and great ideas that needed another year to stew in development. Par for the course for MMOs these days it seems.
 
Tried it, went back to SWTOR. I like the Star Wars world, I can kill anywhere between 30 minutes to hours in that game and have fun. Too bad SWTOR is now mostly single player content with the occasional grouping stuff.
 
Didn't play to their base. Elder scrolls has always been more about the lone adventure other people just screw with that atmosphere, also kills one of their bigger segments of their player base which is the mod community who loved to add content not just fluff changes.
 
Can the game and start working on TES VI, although they are running out of land areas and probably ideas.
 
They need to go back to their old TES model of solo player adventuring. Elder Scrolls Online is just a bad idea waiting to die.
 
Quix said:
I beta tested this for an extended period. If they had actually listened to tester feedback they would have gone back and given in a year more in development because this game just didn't offer anything even on par with other current MMOs. It was doomed from the start.
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Exactly. I was in the beta and didn't like it. So, I let my son take over (another Skyrim addict). He didn't like it, either. It didn't feel like an Elder Scrolls. It felt like a generic MMO with Elder Scrolls stuff on top. Like many other games - the same thing with different assets - just doesn't work.

I wanted to love it. Sounded like a good idea. Skyrim/Oblivion, but multiplayer. Nothing like what you'd expect, though.

I didn't buy the final product. It just didn't appeal to me. I'm not an MMO type of person, but if anything would have done it, it would have been Elder Scrolls.
 
#1 Nobody likes subscriptions.
#2 Imperial race exclusive to special edition.
#3 MMOs are dead.
 
Been playing since July last year in beta and october last year full-time in beta, march headstart to now live. 775k subscriptions per analysts as of a few weeks ago means this is one of the top couple of successful western mmo's of the past decade other than WOW. Yes, it has its flaws, but no, laying off some artists when you have most of the content already produced and no longer need to be producing more assets full-steam ahead isn't any real sign of anything but business as usual for a game company.
 
Isn't this another one of those MMOs nobody asked for?

Nevertheless, developers need to haul their heads out of their asses and realise that the sweet, sweet days of suckering people into paying $15 a month to play a game they already bought are over.
 
All that these brain surgeons had to do was enhance Skyrim with drop-in co-op. Done.

Instead they tried to reinvent the wheel and the whole thing felt like a bad knockoff where it didn't do any one thing particularly well.
 
Ashbringer said:
Why yes, yes it is.
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Holy shit, that;s GOLD!


GoldenTiger said:
Been playing since July last year in beta and october last year full-time in beta, march headstart to now live. 775k subscriptions per analysts as of a few weeks ago means this is one of the top couple of successful western mmo's of the past decade other than WOW. Yes, it has its flaws, but no, laying off some artists when you have most of the content already produced and no longer need to be producing more assets full-steam ahead isn't any real sign of anything but business as usual for a game company.
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...Said every fan boy of every collapsing MMO ever...
 
This game is slightly more complex than wack-a-mole, only the latter offers more diversity in game play mechanics.
 
This came out of Beta? Might want to let people know...

That being said the best part about Skyrim for me was being able to pause the game or save and turn it off. Some of us have kids, man :D That's what killed MMOs for me, and I was a WoW and Eve player. Just too much of a time sink, and too much coordination required for any of the big stuff.
 
I hate to see an TES game fail, but this MMO crap is just not what most people want.
Multilayer would be nice, but that's all they need imo.
I hope they learn, but for some reason i see them pushing this forward trying to cash in on the subscriptions despite the layoffs.
Just connect all the realms in one huge single player game, thrown in multilayer up to say 12 players and let us create our own lineage starting with a simple background from the start and build your characters over time, have kids and create a legacy from scratch. hell, just call it TES: Legacy!
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Holy shit, that;s GOLD!




...Said every fan boy of every collapsing MMO ever...
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:rolleyes:

It's actually been growing since launch and is now the #2 non-FTP western MMO by subscribers, sitting behind WOW. Cute troll, though, please do keep the comedy routine going.
 
Due to the shitty co-op implementation, I probably wouldn't even play this if it went F2P.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Been playing since July last year in beta and october last year full-time in beta, march headstart to now live. 775k subscriptions per analysts as of a few weeks ago means this is one of the top couple of successful western mmo's of the past decade other than WOW. Yes, it has its flaws, but no, laying off some artists when you have most of the content already produced and no longer need to be producing more assets full-steam ahead isn't any real sign of anything but business as usual for a game company.
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07-minister.jpg
 
You know, I wanted this to be awesome. But a large part of the shtick that made every other TES/Fallout style game awesome was the world's response to YOU. Throw in a million players expecting to be the single most important person in the game-world's history, and you have a pretty untenable model to start.

The fact that they are laying off people already just validates the thought that immediately occurred after thinking this game was going to be rad, that this game was going to be a bad investment.
 
pcjunkie said:
If you actually read that they wrote the number reported (775K subscribers) is from June not a few weeks ago. Things can tank pretty quickly in the MMO world not named WOW.
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3 months might as well be 2 years in MMO subscriptions.
 
I wanted this to be awesome too... I never wanted an Elder Scrolls MMO. Just a pop-in suped up TES3/4/5 co-op with all the openness with characters/world as an OPTION.

I played open beta, right before it launched. It's crap.
 
DPI said:
07-minister.jpg
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HAHAHAHA thank you for this. This is what I see in my head every time GoldenTiger adds another nugget of valuable insight.

GoldenTiger said:
Been playing since July last year in beta and october last year full-time in beta, march headstart to now live. 775k subscriptions per analysts as of a few weeks ago means this is one of the top couple of successful western mmo's of the past decade other than WOW. Yes, it has its flaws, but no, laying off some artists when you have most of the content already produced and no longer need to be producing more assets full-steam ahead isn't any real sign of anything but business as usual for a game company.
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Your bias is showing again.


On-topic: who didn't see this coming three miles away?
 
Problem I found with TES is that it did nothing to separate itself from the 100's of other generic MMOs out there. I don't know, nothing really stood out.
 
Semantics said:
Didn't play to their base. Elder scrolls has always been more about the lone adventure other people just screw with that atmosphere, also kills one of their bigger segments of their player base which is the mod community who loved to add content not just fluff changes.
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DPI said:
All that these brain surgeons had to do was enhance Skyrim with drop-in co-op. Done.

Instead they tried to reinvent the wheel and the whole thing felt like a bad knockoff where it didn't do any one thing particularly well.
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Yeap, I've been thinking this from the start. SO many people wanted co-op in Skryim. Almost everyone I know who played it, anyway. Had they just taken the money that they used on this game and released a DLC to add that capability, not only would it have been better received but they could have made a nice chunk of change.

With 775k subscribers at 15 bucks a month, though, they're probably making more this way even though the game is reportedly lackluster. What sucks is that while this game lives they'll probably never create co-op capabilities for a TES game because they'll want people to play ESO instead :(
 
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