A nightmare story before Xmas ;)

Naucano

What did I learn from the launch of SWTOR ?

( warning: 4 a4-pages 1913 words bulk-text ! )



1) Pre-ordering wasn’t worth the effort, till now ?

Many companies now use it as a “standard” way of doing business. Which is weird. Why do we let them do this ? Is it not obvious they play us for fools ?

Let’s face it MMO-companies are unable to make a real difference between online players. Pre-ordering will not give you in-game  advantages. Since that would tip the MMO interplayer balance ( PvP ) in an unfair way. At best the only thing you will get are cosmetics and adorable gadgets.



The main crazy thing here is perhaps that all those that pre-ordered the game will likely enough be playing now. Some unaware customers, who want to purchase the game today as a normal order, are running against some walls. One of those walls is called Origin. I went to the site, I could not download the simple standard edition. I downloaded their client. It only wants to sell the “Deluxe” edition. Then all of a sudden, after a few days and without warning, I could get hold of a standard edition on the site. And yet another catch was holding me back: you can only pay with creditcard or clicktobuy. why would I use those ? I live in Europe, we don’t use Creditcards. And I already made a PayPal acount to make my live at Steam/Valve easier. Bur for some reason, only SWTOR is not eligible to be payed by that service. You start thinking “why me” ?

Meanwhile I downloaded MOH without much of a problem , so it IS working.

Has someone screwed up ? Did someone forget to tick a button , or is this policy ? Who will tell ?  If this is policy, I am to shocked for words. If it is just some error, they are making a fool of themselves. I don’t know what is worse ?

Oh, I will get it eventually a copy of the dratted thing, one way or another, I will have to have patience. And if not, well my life will not get worse ( or better ? ) because I can’t play. It is just such a pity.



This said, I found it a bit weird Bioware got away with “up to the 5-days” earlier start. I honestly thought they would not get much response, since I gathered if I could see through the hoax any person could see it.

It proved me wrong. Which is humbling at least, but makes you wonder at the general level of intelligence of the average gamebuyer.

But this is also due to the fact that:



2) Marketing will go lengths to bind possible customers.

I always have found it strange that BW started forums in 2007-2008.  Normally this was/had to be a sign delivery was near, but on the contrary: there was nothing to be found but embryonic conceptual ideas, art and a trailer worthy of being part of the movie-legacy of George Lucas .

So what were they up to? In retrospect, I got the impression that BW was ( also ) anxious not to get negative publicity.  You know ? The kind of publicity CCP with EVE, unexpectedly perhaps, got. Something rather negative ? At the end the Icelanders should be glad with the free publicity. So, bad publicity is better then no publicity ?

Is this why anything about TOR needed clearance as if they were handling top secrets ?

Well, the most secretive ones, were actually the devs of BW. Most of the news was a controlled release channeled through nda-regulation and people guarding the public display of the product.

Is it a surprise they never told the real ongoing struggle in full detail ? What were the limitations they fought with ? What were the restrictions they wanted to uphold ? What is the philosophy and views behind this all ? Would that be such a negative thing if we knew ?

All we got were glimpses, shadows of a beast lurking in the dark, which each Friday has put its head up and roared: “I am excited”.

Biggest question remains did something we, prospected would-be, consumers wrote actually made a difference in their decisions or programming ? Or was this a opportunistic way of catching and binding the focus on the product ? Was this a stunt, a smart move to get our attention and hold it for as long as they could ?

Maybe there was more to it, but that was buried underneath the belly of the roaring beast.



At first these mentioned forums, while not entirely without rubbish and drool, sometimes carried some interesting viewpoints. And one could, at times, be glad something was living and above all thinking in the player community. MMOs are after all alive and kicking. And some of us take gaming serious enough to actually argument a thought or elaborate on an idea.

Did some dev see these things? What would the impact could have been ?

Truth be told though, I never gave those “serious” threads any chance of influence over the guys who actually had to build all the stuff. They were largely kept at bay from our ramblings. if they did see it, could they use it and would they use it ?



On the other hand, those players writing in forums and reacting in blogs are usually always the same minority. Experts like me, who know nothing, but write about that with dedication. The bulk of the interested people will not even bother to give a sign of live, let alone read thousands of threads of reoccurring issues. And if they had a quick eye on the forum wouldn’t they be scared of what they could read ? No way they would charge into that fray ...

How then can a serious team, the likes of a game-company consider to listen to this minority then ?

Even more so because:



3) Forums are deteriorating

Which isn’t new. Internet being the largest cauldron of different ideas and opinions has always been chaotic. But lately new phenomena are rising. More and more people are using threads to spit out frustration. Which should not be a problem as long as it is argumented. But it rarely is. Usually you can only guess as to why someone needed to hit the “new thread” button to get a bag to throw up. Unsurprisingly actually, since Internet is becoming a unfiltered shallow facebook-society.



Meanwhile the monitoring of texts is becoming an impossible job.

Where does opinion stops and becomes something vile ? And how would you uphold rules, which are nothing more but common sense ? It is becoming like examining every molecule of water in an ocean.

Even in the ( beta ) test-forums people would not stop writing the same style text, which at that point was irrelevant, useless or outright stupid.

And this is due mostly because people don’t think, don’t argument or explain. Why indeed did I write this text ? Because it would make a difference ? Hardly, I just got sick and tired of reading all those ridiculous, at times hilarious, not to mention stupid postings and needed to get my own thoughts in one line. And off course I needed to hit the “new thread” button simply because I can.

What would anyone do with this kind of words ? Not to mention what would  a company such as Bioware do with it? What are you doing with a bunch of crap which hardly could be considered feedback ?

Maybe it is only right that:



4) Game-industry will hardly listen to its self-proclaimed(?) costumers.

Getting useful feedback isn’t a straightforward simple process. Only by try and error will games change. If change comes at all. Problem is for one communicating player ten others are silent. Companies, willing to find out, need to survey if a particular problem/idea could be a general issue, rather then the barking of a lone person.



Gaming in general became big business. And with small business you have small issues, with big business you get big issues. If and how you can handle the number of customers is largely a question of logistics and of organisation. And as much as you can organise somewhere, down that line something will go wrong. Remember Murphy ?

Also a good product needs a good marketing and especially these days, a good after-sale service. If or whether this game is worth its money, rest to been seen. And is something each and every customer has to decide for him(her?)self.

In the case of Electronic Arts has a reputation of maximising the revenue and cutting costs as low as possible. Some would write simple that they are greedy. But that is what every selling company does and has to do. It is a consequence not a premise.

It is my idea exactly that most companies underestimate the after-sale of a MMO. To the older gamers ( and younger with wits about them ) it is obvious that after you “launch” a game, works only starts. Do the big companies are prepared to engage this matter I wonder ? To me they don’t give much signs they do.

And now “big” Bioware decided to hit the MMO-market. Considering they could have done so earlier, one can wonder why they waited so long ? It is not because they needed time to make a new engine. They bought it. Or “kind off” if I read the blog of the HeroEngine-builders right. So, even with an new integrated program it took at least 3 years to make it ?

Other question mark is the voice-over. Nobody would have held it against them if they had made a game without it. But they persisted. It is perhaps nice, but is this a feature we really needed ? Is this what we have been waiting for ?

And why are there so many servers ? Obviously they fear the crowd, the numbers and the resulting chaos. Probably because the servers are heavily player-based and less playzone-based. They use “instance”-method to clog out the possible problems between players doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.

They want to deliver a product in the best possible conditions. And as such they take the liberty of limiting players freedom in some very dangerous way. They should be reminded that even if you have a good product, market will not respond positive if costumers get the feeling they are, for one reason or another, not respected. And as CCP learned, this is an ongoing process.



5) Conclusion

Overall I sense a general policy of trying to control every aspect of what this game-business has become. As if you are making bulwarks to catch a tsunami.

It is not the start of an online game that matters most. It is the way you handle things afterwards.

Bioware however already gambled heavily. They gambled on the Heroengine. They gambled with pre-marketing. They gambled on the voice-over. They gambled with the story-philosophy. EA gambled with Origin. EA gambles they can control the customers. EA gambles with setting up new ways of selling a product all together. If it all functions as it should, rest to be seen. I would say they do have some major issue, which they need to sort out, quickly, efficiently.

The game itself has its usual bugs, nagging the new players, which later on become veteran stories. I remember the invisible walls in Lotro, which back then was an issue, now it makes me one of the guys.

Well, I am curious if their gambling will pay off.



Future will tell.

PS: No it isn't a nightmare, it is just some damned foolishness. Merry XMass all !

gandales

EA/Bioware/LA decided to go all guns out. Huge investment would be meaningless if they can catch enough crowd to make this game the "cool" game. It was moreless what happen with Wow at release.

 

Wow was something like:

/Start Friend advice

You know Blizzard is going to make a mmo about warcraft and it is going to be huge and everybody is going to be playing it. You should play it too.

/End Friend advice

 

Therefore, for SWTOR they needed and need to this game to be declared without questioning the cool game to play either overthroning wow or sharing the title with it. They are too dependent on the game to look successful to be successful. That's why negative publicity is kind of dangerous for them.