Fresh off the heels of the latest round of Turbine layoffs, LOTRO community manager Andy Cataldo (Frelorn) took to Twitch today to level his hobbit minstrel and answer community questions. One of the first questions answered got an open and candid response from Frelorn:
I’ll answer this question once, since I knew it was going to be asked. It’s the elephant in the room.
Frelorn then proceeded to say that the layoffs will have no effect on the current plans for LOTRO. He did not elaborate as to whether the “current plans” constituted the roadmap that Turbine has in place, or just the current plans that the community are aware of, which only extend to the end of 2014 (2 1/2 more months). He also said that we would be hearing more information about the roadmap later this year, after the release of update 15.
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That statement suggests to me that Turbine either knew of these layoffs long in advance and planned accordingly, or that the company will now work their remaining employees even harder to accomplish the plans.
Either way, it has no effect on us, but it certainly must have an effect on Turbine’s employees, which is unfortunate.
Good to hear about LOTRO.. Now to get get some answers for DDO 🙂
While I suppose that’s good to hear that Lotro might be unaffected(after all it could just be the usual keep calm speech).
It’s still kinda sad to see that WB is trying their darndest to milk and ruin Lotr at every front.
And of course sad for the people.
Whether the layoffs do or do not have an effect on the current plans for LOTRO, we will never know, because no company will ever publicly disclose such sensitive business information.
I believe that as long as core players continue to finance the game to a level that is acceptable to Turbine’s business model, then content will be forthcoming. Of course the quality and quantity of that content will reflect the resources Turbine have available.
Agreed, it’s always very difficult to ascertain the specific effects of staffing changes on a game. I did think it was notable that at least they attempted to address the issue with players in a timely fashion, unlike Februrary where it was a week before the player community was addressed.
Good news.
My thinking is that we will not know the day or hour Turbine will pull the plug on Lotro until right before it happens as it will keep whatever revenue that is coming in to continue as such right to the very end…But who knows?…We may have content for years yet as long as things prove to be profitable.
I hope at the very least when Lotro is in fact shut down that they will do what they have done with AC and open up some modding to the community. There a lot of smart people playing this game and as long as I am able to log in, hang out with friends and perhaps in the future do some player generated content. I’ll be happy.