Turbine has been a part of the MMORPG landscape since 1999 with the launch of Asheron’s Call (AC). AC was one of the first major MMORPGs, launching two years after Ultima Online and mere months after EverQuest. Set in a fully 3D environment without loading screen barriers, the game offered player housing, a unique magic system, and skill based progression. Asheron’s Call was a far more ambitious project than many of today’s MMORPGs, and is still live even sixteen years after its initial release. With such a storied past it is with a heavy heart that I feel Turbine’s time may be up. To understand why let’s run through a brief history of the studio.

Groundbreaking, for the time

Turbine’s second title was a sequel titled Asheron’s Call 2: Fallen Kings, which was released in 2002 but was largely a disappointment both financially for Turbine and in the eyes of the community. It was eventually shut down in 2005. Luckily, that wasn’t the end for Turbine. The studio reinvented itself by developing MMORPG's based on famous fantasy IPs starting with Dungeons and Dragons Online in 2006, then Lord of the Rings Online a year later. Both titles originally required monthly subscriptions but reached a wider audience upon adopting a free to play model.

Not as charming the second time

Validation of both Turbine's licensing and free to play business models came in 2010 when Warner Brothers purchased Turbine in a deal estimated to be worth $160 million. Warner Brothers had already been eyeing the privately held Turbine for years, having been a major investor in a $40 million round of financing back in 2008. At the time, Turbine was the largest privately held MMO game development studio in North America with hundreds of full time employees. Perhaps the biggest interest WB had in Turbine was its license to make MMO games using the LOTR IP. Perhaps Warner Brothers, which already owned all other LOTR game rights, wanted to avoid dealing with just how far the definition of "MMO" could be stretched in court by savvy lawyers defending a Turbine mobile game or extorting an in-house title by a WB affiliate.

LotRO, Turbine's biggest game

But has the purchase worked out as Warner Brothers had hoped? To establish the claim, let’s first look at what the media conglomerate hoped to achieve with the deal:

Turbine is recognized globally for its industry-leading technology, groundbreaking graphics and its unique ability to create and operate massive and persistent online worlds which greatly enhance players' social gaming experiences...The Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online have both been an enormous success for Turbine and we look forward to working with their talented development team to continue creating award-winning online games."

- Martin Tremblay, president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (2010)

Clearly Warner Brothers was impressed by Turbine’s ability to create vast worlds based on solid IPs, keep those games alive, and their players engaged. They were also confident that Turbine would continue creating new games that would meet those same standards for some of the many IPs Warner Brothers holds. How has that worked out in the five years since the deal?

It is important to note that the MMORPG landscape has changed enormously since 2010 through no fault of Turbine’s. What looked like a white hot genre with an infinite growth trajectory turned out to be dozens of studios chasing World of Warcraft’s shadow. Building another WoW-sized game didn’t necesarilly mean 10 million new players would materialize after all. Instead, it only meant a few hundred thousand users (at best) would show up temporarily before returning to WoW as soon as Blizzard launched a new expansion.

Looks Familiar...

To Turbine’s credit, they avoided releasing a big budget MMORPG project into the suicidal market of the past decade. Perhaps some resources were burned on internal projects that were never announced, but by and large it seems Turbine saw the writing on the wall. The studio’s only major release since the Warner Brothers deal was the DC Comics themed MOBA Infinite Crisis. The game first entered closed beta testing on May 8, 2013 and must have been in development for at least a year prior. The choice of IP was no accident, Warner Bros is the parent company of DC Comics. The design phase for Infinite Crisis could have started as early as 2010 while the ink was still drying on the purchase agreement.

Bonus points to Turbine for being on trend with the shift to MOBAs, but marks off for execution. Infinite Crisis officially launched on March 26, 2015 and was shut down on August 14, 2015, a mere 5 months later. We here at MMOs.com played Infinite Crisis and even gave it a glowing review. Omer, our First Look expert, enjoyed the game thoroughly. So what went wrong? Despite accurately predicting the saturation in the MMORPG genre, Turbine ended up jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

At least half a dozen MOBAs have come and gone in the past two years with hardly anyone outside the industry having noticed. Even studios with past success in the genre, such as S2 Games with Heroes of Newerth, couldn’t pull off a repeat performance with the likes of Strife. Infinite Crisis functioned perfectly well, but it played far too similarly to genre heavy weights League of Legends and Dota 2. New players were put off by the complexity while veterans had no reason to learn dozens of new hero abilities, item interactions, and so on. The mandatory tutorial that stretched on for almost an hour didn’t help either.

So with their latest project down the drain, how has Turbine’s existing portfolio performed? The studio’s first MMORPG, and the only one that still required a subscription, Asheron’s Call, went into ‘maintenance mode’ in early 2014. The subscription fee was removed, and the studio announced that the game would not receive further updates beyond bug fixes and the like. While a noble move from the community’s perspective, it did dry up any remaining revenue the game was bringing in through its monthly subscription fees.

LoTRO playerbase, surprisingly consistent

On July 27, 2015 Turbine announced its server merger roadmap for The Lord of the Rings Online. The lengthy process is scheduled to take until the end of the year to fully implement, but the end result will be a trimming of the server count from 29 down to 10. This will be the first time since its launch in 2007 that LotRO has undergone server mergers which are generally viewed as an ill omen among the MMORPG community. Personally, I view it as a sign of commitment more than capitulation. No one could be under the illusion that the LotRO playerbase will ever expand again. At least Turbine is willing to trim the hedges and maintain the game with the same long term commitment that is has shown Asheron’s Call. Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) is largely in the same state, with 8 active servers. Detailed traffic reports by DDOracle show that both games have had a small, but surprisingly consistent, playerbase over the past few years. DDO has shown more of a decline, perhaps owing to its older age and the fact that it must compete with the far fresher MMORPG Neverwinter, also based on the D&D franchise.

DDO playerbase, down but not out

Turbine could certainly coast along on its current titles in a reduced state, but the real danger comes from Warner Brothers. Turbine isn’t the only game studio in WB’s stable. The same year Warner Bros purchased Turbine they also took a majority stake in London based Rocksteady Studios. That studio has gone on to release multiple games in the Batman Arkham series, each one proving to be a massive success. Their latest title, Batman: Arkham Knight has become the fastest selling game of 2015 since its June release. Contrast that success with Turbine’s failures and stagnation and it's no wonder that the MMORPG studio has suffered multiple rounds of layoffs just in the last year. Combined with voluntary departures and the likely brain drain to other WB studios, I doubt there’s much of a chance left for Turbine to make a comeback.

If there is to be a comeback it won’t be through the studio’s MMORPG roots. The only current game in development by Turbine with any information available is Batman: Arkham Underworld, a mobile game designed for the iPhone and iPad. The game was announced back in March with a teaser site offering a beta signup option. Months later that same beta offer is still there with no additional updates. Even Turbine’s own homepage makes no mention of the project, though it does still display Infinite Crisis prominently. Another mobile project was announced at the same time as Arkham Underworld, one based on the hit Game of Thrones novels and tv series. A quick Google search brought up plenty of mentions of the original press release and other Game of Thrones mobile games, but nothing on a Turbine produced game. I’m no developer but if such a massive studio with all the resources in the world can’t make progress on a mobile game or two, something has definitely gone wrong. The Glass Door comments by former employees seem to show that Turbine is still a great place to work, but one with an uncertain future.

Perhaps Turbine can pull off a miracle with Arkham Underworld. Based on the short description on the teaser page it could easily be a Clash of Clans style game. While I’m not a fan of the slow paced strategy genre, they certainly found a way of getting players to open up their wallets. But barring a successful mobile launch in the near future I predict the studio will be folded into one or more of Warner Brothers other development houses. Three other mobile games were announced by Warner Brothers on the same day as Arkham Underworld: Mortal Kombat X (NetherRealm Studios), Lego Batman: Beyond Gotham (TT Games), and DC Comics Legends (WB Games SF). All three of those games have already been released.

Turbine's Future?

What are your thoughts on Turbines past, present, and future? I know my prognosis is grim and may rattle players still loyal to the studio. Even if the studio does survive it certainly won’t be the Turbine I’m familiar with. I wish the folks behind the scenes the best, but perhaps the Turbine name has already lost its meaning.

TL;DR:

Turbine was a pioneer of the MMORPG industry with Asheron’s Call in 1999. The sequel flopped, Turbine switched to making MMORPGs based on third party franchises including D&D and LOTR. DDO and LOTRO were both successful especially after they went F2P. Turbine was bought by Warner Brothers in 2010 for $160 million to make new games based on WB owned franchises. Their next game, Infinite Crisis, based on the DC Comics franchise flopped. Turbine has suffered multiple rounds of layoffs and is now assigned mobile game vaporware while other WB studios like Rocksteady are making bank. Barring a miracle, the remaining talent at Turbine may end up being reassigned to other WB studios before the subsidiary is closed.

Sources:

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group Acquires Turbine - Officail Press Release

DDO Traffic Report

LOTRO Traffic Report

Batman: Arkham Knight - Fastest Selling Game of 2015

Turbine Hit with Multiple Layoffs in 2014

Turbine Reviews on Glass Door by Fromer Employees

Batman: Arkham Underworld Teaser Site

Warner Brothers Announces 5 Mobile Games for 2015

What Future for Turbine After Infinit Crisis - Thoughts on Turbine by The Ancient Gaming Noob