ROFLMAO!

Oh, thats a good one....

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This is a positive, I think some of DAoC's excellent GM/CS support will rub off on the UO GM/CS team if they are working within close proximity. They need to swap notes. Hopefully.

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I think we should wait to see, what happens and hear from the devs and staff first before we start yelling the sky is falling. Yes we'll probably lose a few, i truly hope not, but it seems inevitable. But lets be patient shall we.

*slaps head* This is UHall!! Never mind go about the usual!!

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- At least it sounds like this will be happening at the end of the year during holiday vacation time. I wonder if Bioware/Pandemic will be moving to EA VA as well? I wonder about a lot. Hrmm.

Good luck with all the decision-makings, UO Cali. Team.

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This explains alot about the silence from our new producer... however, this raises more questions then it answersfor me. When is the move going to happen, when/how will we find out who is and is not going to make the move? I've only been back about 6 months but have grown very fond of certain devs especially one whose sole purpose seems to be programming new ways to BLOW SH*T UP.


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This is a process that will take a little while, and for most of us it was really just begun today - we won't have all the details settled for several weeks. The timing was also structured to get us through our next major publish with the smallest possible amount of disruption, although of course there will be some.

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic

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Jeremy,

How many Devs currently work in the VA studio on DAOC and WarHammer?

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I don't know the exact numbers, but it's in the vicinity of 200 people.

E. Jeremy Dalberg
UO Community Coordinator
EA Mythic

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They made all those folks relocate to CA and now they have to go and do it again.

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I never understood that. For the staff...they either had to get huge raises to go from TX to CA, or they ended up in a much worse condition as far as cost of living. CA is insanely more expensive in just about everything than TX is, so at least in terms of personnel that move never made sense to me.

VA is back in the realm of sanity when it comes to expense of living, at least. I would personally jump at the chance to get out of CA if I had been stuck out there.

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Having spent more years than I care to count in corporate America, here's what I see in this:

UO isn't going anywhere anytime soon. This may mean a year, this may mean 6 months, or this may mean 10 years from now. My reasonings behind this are-

1. Corporations don't make decisions like this at the drop of a hat. The recent acquisition/merger of EA/Mythic is something that has been going on behind closed doors for a minimum of 3-6 months, if not longer. Negotiations for purchase could take at least 3 months alone (I've been through and participated in several myself including a couple in the largest corporation in the world, General Electric).

2. Moving the tangible assets of UO to VA costs money. Money that wouldn't be spent if they had plans to cancel UO in the near future.

3. Relocation of those personnel that have decided to move is going to involve relocation packages, which isn't cheap, and would not be happening if the source of revenue that pays these people's salaries was going anywhere.

4. The KR Focus Group, which is taking up developer time, and thus costs that hit the bottom line, would not have been approved to begin with. This focus group is what? 2-3 weeks or so old? The corporate VP's would have known prior to it's inception if the money spent would have been justified to the organization as a whole, and would not have been approved if plans were to cancel UO.

5. Recent developer time spent on the 10th Anniversary event, the Halloween Trick or Treating, and the Magincia invasion would not have taken place.

6. The most recent KR patch would either not have occurred, or would have included much less than it did. There were a lot of different departments involved in that patch, thus a lot of different employees spending company time working on the project that would have been spent working on something else.

I'm sure I could probably see quite a few more if it wasn't so dang early in the morning, but these reasons alone are pretty much proof positive that UO will continue on it's present course, with the addition of shared resources once everything gets moved to VA. Shared resources means employees will be wearing multiple hats, and will be working on more than just whatever project they happened to be working on prior to the move itself. The merger of EA/Mythic itself should have told people that layoffs were imminent. They always are when 2 large companies merge, and staff becomes redundant. The savings in fixed costs alone from moving UO to VA will cover the expenditures made now to support the move. If anything, I forsee KR, and eventually SA, being pushed hard on the timetable in order to realize the ROI from the previous expenditures made while the offices and employees have remained in CA, and to realize the profits they will see from the rollout of both.

Just my take on things, from a corporate perspective. Not necessarily true, but not necessarily false either. More of an educated guess, I guess...

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