I have observed the doctors have been out of the loop for a very long time and have been focusing mainly on business matters such as merging with Mythic and selling themselves. The least thing they seem to have any direct involvement with was Jade Empire. David Gaider seems to have had the day to day/hands on designs of the games.
I see that
Georg Zoeller has been gone since July 6.
In addition I think the move from 2D was to 3D was huge to the company as they tried to keep up with the times. In doing so they hired many people with 3D game development experience.
SW:ToR is a simple concept: repeat the success of SW:KotOR in a MMOG. They ivory tower approach to what is likeable hasn't paid off however - the number one grumbling I've heard is that the game is too easy. Well, SW:KotOR was too easy.
We here complained about that when they announced that parties fully recover if at least one character in the party is alive at the end of the battle. There was no need to drag a cleric along to try to get him to 7th level to get the spell and hope you don't need more than one. Just stand up and fight the next battle. you might as well have been playing Dungeon Siege.
Oversimplification has been a costly trend at the company for over a decade starting with the complaints the level 1 characters died too easily in Icewind Dale effecting BG2's development and getting starry eyed at the $$$ Diablo 2 was generating. This was a big disaster for Neverwinter Night's OC and the result was the economy was wrecked from the start and any game you developed after.
A wealthy society spends much of its resources on leisure because it can. When food, shelter, health and safety are taken care, societies crave challenge.
Developers fear too much negative reactions from the public and worry about the bottom line so they coddle their players and dumb down their stories without recognizing they crave the opposite.
These guys have been out of touch for a long time. Personally, I think they could be much more productive and beneficial if they unplugged their keyboards now and put their stethoscopes back on.
That's what Ed Roberts did.