I don't think he is trolling Ra. I think one way or another Turbine has planned for the potentiality of the IP license not being renewed in 2015, having a slow wind down in Q3/Q4 of 2014 would actually be a pretty smart thing to do.

I bet you we will see +6 Tomes though and more Otto's Boxes.

Solution:

Fire Community Manager.

Rehire the good folks.

Drinks all around!

Meat-Head wrote on Feb 13^th, 2014 at 9:56am:


2x salary is a reasonable guess for the burden rate of an employee. 

Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less, but 2x isn't a crazy guess.

The layoffs were sudden. No-one knew they were coming at all until this week, and no-one knew if they'd specifically be laid off until it happened.

One of my former co-workers has given me some amendments to add to my earlier post. DDO didn't just lose Melange, TheRockingDead, and ChainsawGolem.

Also laid off were Piloto and one of DDO's engineers.

About the Engineer:
DDO had three engineers. They're the dedicated and brilliant people who work behind the scenes on DDO's code. Engineers are needed for anything that involves engine code, which is required whenever new functionality is being added with a system.
The engineer we lost was a wonderful person, was passionate about her job, and DDO will be much worse off for the loss. She was also in the middle of working on a huge improvement to Hireling AI as a personal project, so that's unlikely to happen- she was the only engineer who knew how that tangled mess was set up.

About Piloto:
Piloto was, by far, the most senior System Designer DDO had. He'd been working on DDO for something in the neighborhood of 7 years.
Piloto made Greensteel Crafting, Cannith Crafting, and many other systems throughout the game. His hand has touched nearly everything in DDO- he's made items, he's made enhancement trees, you name it, he's worked on it.

With Piloto gone, the remaining System Designers are Vargouille and No-Dice. No-Dice is a specialist: he just works on monsters, monster attacks, behaviors and animations.
That means Vargouille is now The System Designer for DDO.

I really hope DDO can pull through this.

Yikes!

GermanicusMaximus wrote on Feb 13^th, 2014 at 12:01pm:


Is a donkey involved?

geoffhanna wrote on Feb 13^th, 2014 at 12:14pm:


Seems there were devs that loved the xp junky quests. Whadya know.

SolarDawning wrote on Feb 13^th, 2014 at 11:28am:


Nooooooooooooooooo!

And thanks for sharing the inside scoop

I'll never forget my very first time in RitD - First thing I thought was "Now THIS is a D&D dungeon - you actually need a freakin' torch for once!"

One of my top 5 favorite quests in the game. A shame they let the guy responsible for it go

Bigjunk wrote on Feb 13^th, 2014 at 12:09pm:


Everyone blames Donkee.

HelloWorld = FoS on lotro site?

Lotro site looks nice on phone.  Why can't we have nice things again?

harharharhar wrote on Feb 13^th, 2014 at 7:09am:


I used to think Shade was the math idiot until you tried your hand at it.  you should certainly know bad math because your post is rife with it.


harharharhar wrote on Feb 13^th, 2014 at 7:09am:


first you channel Shade, then Chai.  way to scramble for cover but no one here believes for one second you meant the low end of your range.  you are the only one here stupid enough to fall for that fail.

"blerp I think Turbine makes anywhere from $1 to $1 million a month.  and they pay their employees that range too. derp."

even if you took the MIDPOINT of your range, 500K/mo, you are looking at $6 mill a year.  which more than covers your fantasy Turbine salaries (yeah Turbine devs all have $175K packages LOL) and still leaves ooohhhh about $5MILLION left over?  more than enough for all the other bullshit figures on your list and for Turdbin to still make a buck.


seriously were you high when you crafted this rebuttal?  it's OK.  it's a valid excuse to blame weed.  because if it ain't the chronic, you have proved yourself capable of even more stupid in this post than the last. 

what is that mush sloshing around in your skull you call a brain?  oatmeal?  pease porridge cold?  child please!