Blizzard Lays Off 600- Is SWTOR to Blame?

There has been news just recently that ActiVision Blizzardhad to make some layoffs. They have cut 600 employees from their BlizzardEntertainment Unit, the department that runs the popular MMO, World ofWarcraft.
While Blizzard justified that the staff reductions are insync with its current organizational needs, the layoffs have many in the gamingcommunities buzzing about the state of WoW and whether or not other games (suchas SWTOR) are contributing to its decline.
You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone talking about SWTORnot mention WoW. Players, guild leaders and even SWTOR’s own dev team findthemselves slipping up and using WoW terminology when discussing the game. So manyof us played WoW for such a long time (and many still do) that it’s hard not tomake comparisons between the two.
However, do these statistics and layoffs mean that SWTOR iskilling WoW? Not directly, no.
The game has been on a decline since thebeginning of 2011 and this is not attributed to one thing along. Free toplay MMOs are probably part of the reason and of course, competition MMOs likeSWTOR are also a culprit but not the sole reason alone. Many players claim theyare just tired of WoW or have grown bored with what it has to offer.
What do you think? Is BioWare’s SWTOR responsible- in partor in whole- for the layoffs over at Blizzard?

Lisa Clark

Lisa has been an avid gamer since she was old enough to hold her first controller and a game writer for more than a decade. A child of the Nintendo generation, she believes they just don’t make games like they used to but sometimes, they make them even better! While consoles will always be her first love, Lisa spends most of her gaming time on the PC these days- on MMOs and first-person shooters in particular.