Massive EA layoff, Mythic reduced by almost half. Effect on UO?

While I would not consider myself a Draconi fan only a fool(ie executive) could miss the enthusiasm and conviction he had for this game. His departure could very well be the kiss of death after Wilki & Leurocian's leaving ...

Agreed.

I had a bad feeling about him for a bit now.

He hasn't replied much lately to posts.

He seems to be one of the best devs EA ever had working on Ultima.

Because of this business model that EA seems to subscribe to, I will not support them anymore.

Jeez....you guys are somethin else. rolleyes:

Its easy to see how mob mentality gets its start. Rumors and half truths being taken as the gospel. I`m amazed at how fast peaple jump to their own conclusions without a shred of concrete fact.



It doesn`t matter who got canned...UO will remain. In all honesty....I don`t care who got laid off. Lifes a bitch,get used to it. LOTS of peaple get laid off every day,what is happening here is no different from any other company during these times. Yes it sux for our devs who may or may not have gotten canned but theres nothing we can do about it,right!?

BREATH PEAPLE.....jeeez,amazing.

Each individual on the planet is always just as powerless as they believe themselves to be.

Sometimes, nothing is impossible.

First learn to spell. People has a "o".

Secondly it isn't business as usual you heartless %^^*.

Your attitude is what is wrong with this game and community.

Hey U know how it goes people come and people go life goes on. Its life gota love it or hate it either way we are all here so lets make the best of it.

Wish I could say I worked for EA and got layed off, but I cant. I did play beta for them and I was a failure! Not the client. So dont point fingures if you do point it at your self.

Hey I hope we get that SOLID thing they posted on the herald. And maybe kick some scripters right before the holidays. BTW thats what I want for Christmas

Its sad that I read all the post on this. I dont read the bible enuf. remember jesus loves u

god bless UO

The only thing faster than the speed of light.....are rumors...

And the product always suffers

Thanks Teach!
That`ll help me sleep at night knowing I can get another word right!

Yes it IS buisness as usual. Happens all the time,no difference here. I do sympathize with anyone gettin laid off but hey man,thats life.....no sense crying about it. Matter of fact,I just got done signing up for unemployment today,luckily I have a return date of March but still.

Nothing wrong with my attitude besides it being one thats grounded in reality.Not like anyone getting the axe from Mythic or EA or the likes will have far to fall,sheesh. Try gettin the axe when your closer to the bottom. At least I`m not flyin off the handles (not directed toward you Heartseeker,lots of others that fit that description) slinging accusations and empty threats because of the injustice I feel over someone else gettin laid off.

This is the real world. Bad things happen to good people. That is life. Tomorrow I`ll still log in,just like next week and next month and I`m am quite sure next year. All this nonsense about UO being gutted because someone got laid off is rediculous. UO will remain and guess what..... there`ll still be people working on it and it`ll still be a great game.

How do we know Draconi has been laid off? Other than just pure
speculation. Or did I miss a farewell post?

from http://www.linkedin.com/in/timcotten

* Provided design and engineering training for EA Japan and EA Shanghai
* Provided numerous consultations for our international teams and their projects

So what has EA Shanghai been doing?

server merging is rather painless. you wouldnt have to completely do away with any housing zones. it would be nice to see some minor clustering, such as having some shared market places and pvp zones between servers to spark competition and economic development on some of the smaller servers. for example, say the US eastern and central servers could be on one cluster and they could share something simple like the lost lands and reside on more modular or combined physical servers. delucia trammel would become a great center of commerce and trading and the fel t2a spawns would become epic battlegrounds. it seems to have worked for daoc

I guess I'm one of those mushrooms... sitting in the dark with no actual knowledge of the internal workings of EA, trying not to speculate too much, and hopeful that those who do know will choose to enlighten us at some point. In the meantime, I'm grateful UO is still here and wish only the best for those who may no longer be with us.

Or maybe it's because he's frickin gone! I'm all for putting down the usual UHall mob when they fly off the handle but a simple search will show you the information people are talking about. http://www.linkedin.com/in/timcotten

Just because it's posted on UHall doesn't mean it can be immediately dismissed.

Or maybe Draconi quit or got fired

Lead Designer
Electronic Arts
" January 2008 — November 2009 (1 year 11 months)"

Most folks say some "date - Present" if still working at that position

Sorry to say, it really does look like he is gone...

Maybe promoted to something higher in EA? Just a thought...

Promoted or a lateral move is still gone from UO....

Getting rid of a lead designer is a bit disturbing really, for a game. Why would they do that?

I think they shouldn't get rid of anyone. Just the games. Get rid of Warhammer and that other one, put all the staff into UO. I think that would, slowly, make UO numbers rise significantly enough to be able to justify having UO back as a disc release again. Imagine all of the event staff, GMs and developers there would be. More time can be invested making 2d art!

The way I see it, is if Warhammer was a "failure" in many ways, that time could have been spent on UO; a guaranteed earner. UO isn't dying at all, it just isn't growing. That means that numbers will decline slowly but people won't be leaving in huge numbers all at once.

My tip for the day to the people high up at EA; axe every other project that is new and stupid and give all the staff to EAMythic, who will just be renamed to EAUltima. Include a UO offer to subscribers of a/the EA newsletter, because everyone today knows what an MMO is but may not know that the company of the newsletter email that they read also make one too. The best.

And, as much as he is awesome, Draconi isn't a one-man dev team. Other staff are also important. It would suck for whoever does all the EM stuff to be axed, along with the EM program :/

Two things:

* UO isn't the reason for this happening, imo. The blame lays on EA's investment into WARHAMMER (and other ventures) and bombing horrifically. Sadly, though, they are going to trim the fat wherever they can to recoup losses across the board. My own company did not provide raises to our company this year because just one part of the company alone put us in the red.

* UO _is_ dying, and anyone who believes so is deluded. It isn't growing, and it slowly is losing its existing playerbase. It isn't a fast death, but like anything... yes, it is dying. Cal's statement about 'more players' is ALWAYS going to happen when an expansion is released. Some players will reopen existing accounts to give it a whirl for perhaps a month or so. Plus, its unfair for him to state all these people came to UO lately, because... uhm... Return to Britannia, anyone? ANYONE who played EVER (minus banned accounts) could log in. I'd be more interested to see the numbers in a month or two from now, though as we know UO would never be so forthcoming.

I've been thinking about this too. Draconi really is a gem. If he was let go I'm sure he would land on his feet easily.

But way back during the mag event, I thought he really was on his way to greater things. I mean UO is wonderful and all but such a tiny piece of EA. Drac has been shooting up the ladder so fast it would be odd that they would just kick him off it.

This and the fact that he hasn't even poked his head in the forums for months makes me think either he was being groomed for something else or was making plans to move on much like Leurocian (who was also quiet for months before he left). We had the layoffs dropped on us like a bomb but I'm sure EA knew it was coming a long time ago.

All speculation at this point but I can't see it turning out for the better for UO unless drac is crowned grand poobah of online games.

Still... Final Fantasy rolls out a new MMO next year. Starcraft II will be out around then and Diablo III a year or two after. So I'll be entertained well enough. But if EA wants to salvage WAR they are going to have some stiff(er) competition.

Amber gazes deeply into her crystal ball (after filling her head with everything she can find about the industry state of affairs)....

I believe Mythic entertainment is not long for this world. With EA's announced restructuring, it makes little sense to me that they would leave a studio with one loser, two aging games, and no current projects open. EA has a history of closing down studios that rank towards the bottom of their portfolio.

What does it mean for the future of UO? The End?!? .. no, not necessarily.

The move that would make the most sense is some kind of merge with Bioware, who is has a lot of RPG experiance and is about to venture into online with SWTOR.

So to use Cal's analogy; fasten your seat belts because there may be rough air ahead. And crew members should keep their resumes fresh, which is always good advice to anyone working in the game industry.

This is my opinion only. If you don't agree fine. No reason to go all Mongo.

First impressions are important. That's why WAR failed and will not regain its footing (unless it goes f2p like DDO, perhaps) and the EC will likely never be taken in by the majority of hardcore 2d players. EAMythic has been horrible regarding first impressions... you think they'd learn from their mistakes sometime. Although, now that I think about it, in a roundabout way they are learning that now.

True, but better (for him) than the unemployment line.

I agree 100%. People don't realize that WoW's success started with the warcrat/starcraft (which is almost a national sport in china)/Diablo series. Each of these games and their sequels/expansions were announced and delayed for years. We were told we'd get them when they were ready. That strategy paid of extremely well in a market dominated by deadline cursed half baked bug ridden games. That line blew our socks off. Well worth the wait.

And from that spawned a worldwide cult of hardcore zealots. I play two mmo's: FFXI and UO. They are different games that scratch my itch just fine. So I never got into WoW. But any title in the single player series is a guarunteed sale for me. And if they ever took Diablo III online (with housing), god help any other MMO.

In addition, Draconi just had his Stratics forums nickname changed back from "Draconi_EA" to the plain old "draconi". I suppose he'll be using it to post a farewell pretty soon then

If I were him, that'd be a hard decision.

For every 2 or 3 players who appreciated his efforts, there were those who scorned him and scorned the idea of in-game content. Those players were, unfortunately, rather loud, and over-represented on the boards relative to in-game.

-Galen's player

EA seems to be as a corporate entity obsessed with moving things around, restructuring, changing organizational charts, etc.

Why they have not learned after repeated failures that moving things around doesn't fix fundamental problems I cannot guess.

So you're rather likely to be right, if not in the immediate future than soon.

-Galen's player

Mythic is a terrible programming group anyhow..
I said a million times all of em should be fired i'm just glad to see half of em go !!!!!

It's great news so don't be bummed for people who got fired this is a good thing cause they were useless to the game.

Ah, thank you for proving a point!

*chuckles*

-Galen's player

You're such a hard ass dude. I'm gonna name my first born after you. I've always like the name Richard.

Arrr, Warhammer has done gone to free-to-play! Methinks they be callin' it "endless trial" or some such.

Too bad you feel that way, while I disagree with much of how UO does things I also have to say the current team has also been one of the better teams in my 10 years in the game.

This

If they were really that terrible I don't think the game wouldn't still be here, lol.

This is only a slight Enhancement over Ultima 4 in my opinion:






I do have to say I really liked the Halloween quest. That was fun.

Wow.....seriously now?? I do hope you were being sarcastic......

The bottom line here is UO Subscriptions were reported is as growing for a long time now...

We just got a fantastic expansion, tons of new content and WELL RUN events.

Lay offs happen and were inevitable with the results of Warhammer, but as far as our neck of the woods..as a playerbase, as developers, and as a product UO has greatly improved just within these last twelve months.

Doom and gloom is where you look for it to be. Will we probably feel some shock of this? Yea, sure. Maybe some reduced content for the time being, or a bit longer between patches, but look at our Dev Team and see how much these 6-10 people (+supporting cast) have done even while WAR was getting all of the attention and primary support of Mythic/EA.

Point is, for those of us around from the 2005-2007 era, UO had more gaping flaws, and lack of content then I'd like to remember. Now we have a revival of an amazing game system and community base.

Sit tight and relax, UO's not going anywhere while we have the dedicated team and community we do as of now.

Don’t want to be.. I always try and see the positive side of things.

This new client is an enhancement over Ultima IV.
But I do see some things that haven't been improved over Ulitma IV.
The character isn't floating in UlitmaIV. The character doesn't have that ghost like appearance in UltimaIV.
The evil charcters look better in my opinion in ultimaIV.

Walls look better in the new Enhanced version but the ground looks better in UlitmaIV.

Yes over all the game mechanics have improved in the last 5 years. But I see no point in building two clients (three times.) It is a waste of resources.

But it is here now and there is no point building another one. It can not be that much maintenance to keep it updated at this point.

There are 2 ways to look at this.

On the one hand, the direction that the game headed in over the last 12-18 months, under Draconi's direction. This was was definately a big improvement and the Dev team did a great job with content and the like. Bravo.

On the other hand there is the KR client. It was a debacle from start to finish and everything about it was sub par from a programming point of view. The Devs should be ashamed of themselves for that effort and i'd bet you a months wages that none of them have that little gem on their résumé. Heads really should have rolled for that fiasco.

So .. a real mixed bunch as far as how good a job the 'current' Dev have done.