As Electronic Arts reveals a new round of redundancies amounting to no less than 11 percent of its total workforce (on top of shuttering a further 12 internal studios), Warhammer Online developer Mythic concedes it will be impacted by the previously rumored job cuts as a result of its parent company's cost-saving moves. Mythic's Mark Jacobs stresses that the downsizing won't negatively affect development of WAR itself, given that the team ended up being larger than normal at launch in order to ensure smooth operation out of the gate:
Since the launch last year, the demand for customer service has gone down as players become more familiar with the game. Obviously, demand for a large QA and play-testing staff also falls after launch. As a result, we saw a staff reduction which is in line with the company-wide initiative. In no way does this conflict with our commitment to customer service. Staffing numbers will always map to consumer needs – it goes up when we launch new products and expand popular ones, and comes back down as players become familiar with the game.Although we now have fewer developers on the game than we did leading up to the launch, WAR still has a larger dev team today than we ever had for Dark Age of Camelot. At Mythic, we’re committed to maintaining the trust of WAR players – we’re going to deliver the content and service that keeps you playing.
Momentum is always key with MMOs; WAR boasted a subscriber base of over 750,000 players a few weeks after launch (500,000 during launch week alone), but EA has confirmed that number has since dropped to around 300,000 paying supporters in recent days. Mythic's promise to maintain developer support in light of a smaller development/support staff provides some reassurance for those looking forward to the upcoming expansion.
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