interesting

Nothing to executively produce on maintenance mode, I reckon.

rest wrote on Feb 26^th, 2014 at 11:29am:


I could be wrong but I'm not reading too much into it. There could be a lot of reasons why this happened. Maybe he wasn't working out. Maybe he got tired of assholes trolling him on the forums all the time....

Arkat wrote on Feb 26^th, 2014 at 12:51pm:


No, but if he had to read the negative suckhole filth that pollutes the DDO forums on a regular basis I can see that wearing on him. There is no way to keep people happy (see the shit directed at Vyvyanne in her official promotion announcement...some of those posts are class-less and antisocial).

But yeah...I think the likelier explanation is that there was a lot of bad shit that happened this year and it made sense for him to move back to LOTR online where presumably he was doing a better job.

Rowan oversaw the second worst period in DDOs history.

I am surprised he is still employed there considering the layoffs.

Shadowfail and the massive mismanagement of systems (see FoS's tenure at Turbine for a good example of what happens with software when you let employees have too much of a free hand on an individual basis) were the highlights of massive fail.  The increased pay2win reliance with even more emphasis taken away from putting out content to sell was also a low point.

Hathorian wrote on Feb 26^th, 2014 at 12:57pm:


During Rowan's period lotro turned from awesome game to crap.
He is recalled to finish what he started- destroying once great game.
Its hard (at least for me) to imagine anyone worse than him, and I'm glad he's gone.

Zandos wrote on Feb 26^th, 2014 at 1:09pm:


well, he must be sucking a lot of upper management cock to still have a job there then....

rest wrote on Feb 26^th, 2014 at 11:29am:


Great white hope for Turbine. He did what he needed here, now he is off to play on the other boat.

Cyr wrote on Feb 26^th, 2014 at 1:04pm:



As much as I've bitched about Shadowfail, I'm pretty sure it was already in the works when he came on board to DDO. Because of that, I can forgive him for releasing that shitty shit-shit because a deadline needed to be met. However, it was not adding or expanding or doing something to Shadowfail in the next update that he completely fucked up.

Even now alot of goodwill could be reaped by Turbine by admitting that Shadowfail was not a good purchase for players and upgrading content. That upgrade could be a raid added to the double-pack. It could be dropping Commendations of Valor in the Shadowfail wilderness chests. It could be making the end reward junk armor upgradable. It could be adding Shadowfail exclusive Augment Gems to the quests. It could be a combination of these things.

When an expansion has such a vitriolic reaction from players who bought it, you would think that there would be an attempt to improve it would be in the cards. Instead, players just got a signal that Shadowfail was such a fucked up release that they won't attempt something like it again this year. So besides a minor XP increase along with a bunch of other packs, it's tough titties to players who bought the double-pack.

Barkabout wrote on Feb 26^th, 2014 at 1:49pm:



This

sadface wrote on Feb 26^th, 2014 at 2:14pm:


I'm pretty sure COV's only got added because epic tokens got duped.

edit. not sure what they'll do when they realise we are duping COV's.

I think if Rowan had more time to actually do anything, he would have been a benefit to the game - at least from how he was talking. Seems like everything was already in the pipeline when he took the gig - and didn't have much of a shot to spearhead much. So, I don't blame him for FoS' shit or the diaper-bomb that is Shadowfail.


I think the new Producer is going to be even less effective, long-term - and her Producer Letter was lackluster and uninspiring at best.