#also mmos changing studios is not unheard of and most actually do well afterwards too!

[avame]

personally I’m more interested in what this transfer means for BW as a whole - since anthem (and one could argue, since at least ME3), BW has shown consistent mismanagement in their dev cycles (and iirc a lot of upper management turnover?).

there’s an anthem post-mortem out there that discusses how BW’s main studio ignored BW Austin’s advice and experience regarding running a multiplayer game/creating an engaging endgame, and how it was EA that told BW to include mechanics like flying, one of the few things praised in the game. pair that with the news that DA4 went through, what, two restarts during development, tried to be a live-service game, and now may or may not utilize AI writing in place of human writers, the one thing BW has always been known for. I’ve heard that BW Montreal also didn’t receive the help they’d requested from Edmonton during ME:A’s dev cycle, but I’m not 100% certain of that. the studio’s probably on thin ice, and it’s kind of their own fault.

(whether EA is partially to blame is another topic. personally, I think BW is far more to blame than EA, since its problems all seem internal rather than imposed from the outside. a lot of criticism that should be leveled at BW gets passed over by fans as “EA sucks!” but like, there’s more to it than that, and BW has been coasting off that perception for too long.)

what I mean is: BW is in more danger than SWTOR is, and moving SWTOR to another studio under the EA umbrella might very well be a precautionary measure by EA to keep the game running in case BW (Edmonton especially) gets shut down, which will likely be determined by DA4, a game that looks more and more troubled as time passes.