Thursday, October 04, 2007

Turbine Fires Jeff Anderson?

News from Warcry:
Turbine has undergone a corporate shake-up, according to sources within the company and some quiet edits to their own website. The official company page now lists Jim Crowley as President and CEO, removing all mention of Jeff Anderson.
I guess that is what Mr. Anderson gets for basically lying about Lord of the Rings Online's massive subscription numbers and LotRO's complete and utter dominance over that other MMORPG. I don't know much about Jeff Anderson and I don't care too. Turbine was blessed to work with two of the most important fantasy IPs in history, Dungeons and Dragons and Lord of the Rings. Having played both games, it is my opinion that they failed and someone has to pay.

3 comments:

  1. I'm not going to blame Anderson for either game, he's a CEO not a designer. DDO, while originally designed by someone who thought all we wanted to do was repeat dungeons (WoW doesn't exactly do much to dispute that) Anderson admits in interviews DDO is niche and not for everyone. LOTRO.. LOTR is low-fantasy, so is LOTRO. Low-fantasy has never been done before.

    Having said that, I'll also freely admit that I don't mind watching videos of LOTRO's designers such as Jeffrey Steefel but when I see Anderson (and he's been doing quite a few lately) I just can't help but think he's a bit shady, kinda that 'used car salesman' vibe.

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  2. I always wondered how many subscribers LotR managed to snag but no one has been able to get a reliable leak source. My guess from the amount of servers and players I see on them is it probably sold around 400,000 boxes but a huge amount of subscribers burned through it in 2-3 months. I guess around 180,000-200,000 are still playing.

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  3. I've always said that 200k is where LotRO would wind up.

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