Turbine, the folks behind MMOs such as Asheron’s Call, Lord of the Rings Online, and Dungeons and Dragons Online are apparently feeling the hurt of this economy too as they are reported to have laid off most of the Customer Support and QA teams. There are also rumors of additional layoffs in the works.

The impact that this has on gamers is that players of the any Turbine run MMO are going to have to do without any type of support from the company for the time being.

No official word has come out of Turbine, but stories from ex-employees are sure to hit message boards over the coming hours.

We have been unable to reach Turbine for comments.

UPDATE: Adam from Turbine’s Communications Team has contacted us and confirmed that there was a small percentage of layoffs from the company today. He also was clear in stating that they didn’t eliminate either of the QA or Support teams in their entirety. As a private company they aren’t disclosing exact figures, but we were assured that there would be no impact to current customers playing any of the 3 games that Turbine is responsible for. The layoffs were organization wide and didn’t impact any one team or department more than another.

Adam did stress that some of the factors for these layoffs were the preemptive measures related to the economy as well as strategic moves as they refocus the business after wrapping up the Mines of Moria expansion for Lord of the Rings Online.

Gamers currently playing any of the Turbine titles shouldn’t worry, but we feel for the departing members of the Turbine family as the economy is definitely leaving lots of casualties in its wake.