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A successful SWTOR is bad for the industry
Strayfe
Member UncommonPosts: 199
With the quarterly report released, and indicating 1.7 million active subscribers, I just have to sit here and shake my head. Whether or not the numbers are true, obviously the perception of investors is that they are. This is a terrible sign for the MMORPG industry, because it means that those with the money are going to look at the market and see that the three most profitable games right now are WoW, SWTOR and RIFT.
In any industry, no matter what it is or whom it caters to, as consumers, we should be encouraging CHOICES AND VARIETY. The problem with the 'hater' vs 'fanboy' debacle is that fanboys tend to look at it from a selfish perspective. THEY are having fun, so consequently the game is great, and they wonder why everyone can't, or does not want to see how great the game is. Meanwhile, the haters are looking at it from a broader perspective of what a successful SWTOR means.
This means essentially that the next five years will be the same as the previous five years. The only thing we are going to see is more homogenized, linear themepark games. SWTOR needed to fail to send a message to the industry, and apparently it hasn't. When we needed to speak with our wallets, we did, but we sent the wrong message.
We told the games industry to keep making big budget, linear themepark games. We told the people with money loud and clear that what we all want is another clone of World of Warcraft. We don't want complexity, depth, worldbuilding, social tools, meaningful interactions, group content or any of the staples that SHOULD define the genre, but no longer do. We have told the industry to continue mass producing the exact same thing, over and over again, ad nauseam. We have told them that our words mean nothing, and that, for all the complaining we may do, we really do enjoy being handheld through the entire game.
A failure of a massive title such as SWTOR could only have been good for the industry. WoW is still there as a shining example of what an MMORPG can aspire to be, however, investors would have finally seen that the way to riches as it were, is not through continuing to copy WoW, but by finding a formula that works BETTER than WoW. We have discouraged innovation and choice.
I want all fanboys and lovers of SWTOR to explain something to me in this thread. If you are enjoying SWTOR, and you can understand the concepts I'm expressing, please look at this analogy.
Let's say you have a rather big city. Once upon a time this city had no fast food industry at all. One day someone opened a hot dog stand, and it caught on. Many people began eating hot dogs and enjoying them. One day, someone opened a hamburger stand named McDonalds. People liked the hamburgers from McDonalds even better than the hot dogs. They quit buying hot dogs from the hot dog vendors and gradually all the major hot dog places closed down, or ceased to be nearly as profitable as the hamburger places. The McDonalds became so huge and so profitable that other restauranteers decided to go into the fast food industry to make their own fast food. They look at the market trends and see that everyone LOVES McDonalds, so they keep trying to create hamburgers. They all open their own hamburger place. None of them does as good as McDonalds, but they do far better than the hot dog stands were doing. This repeats for several years.
Meanwhile, you have a sizable group of people who miss eating hot dogs. Their only options for hot dogs are poor, run down places with cockroaches in the kitchen. There is maybe one good hot dog place in the entire city. They tried hamburgers, but they just don't care for them as much as they do hot dogs. They continue to wait for another new place with tasty new hot dogs to open, but it never does, because investors can make so much more money opening hamburger stands.
Now, let me ask you this. As a lover of hamburgers. As a lover of WoW/SWTOR and linear, by the book theme park games, do you believe it is fair that you have dozens of games that suit your playstyle, while the hot dog lovers, the sandbox/social/group content players have only one (that isn't a buggy awful mess)? Do you truly believe that the industry is better served by saturation of one product over another, or do you believe as all consumers SHOULD that choice and variety can only be good for the gaming industry, and we don't have those anymore?
Let me clue you in a little bit. The average 'hater' doesn't hate theme park games. The average hater is SICK AND TIRED of them. We want choice. We want to play something else once in awhile, something different yet still AAA and high quality. That is why we remain vocal on message boards such as these, it's why we insinuate ourselves in the game forums and, as all fanboys say: "complain about a game we don't even play". It's because we have no other options. Our choices have been taken away from us.
A successful SWTOR again destroys any hope on the horizon of seeing something new, because once again, investors will see that the way to money is by continuing to open hamburger stands. Us hot dog fans will continue to be disappointed for years to come.
But you know the worst part?
Investors will continue to fail to realize that they could be making more money with something new. Just like somebody once had the temerity to create a hamburger stand when everyone loved hot dogs, they became successful. Nobody will take that plunge anymore.
Nobody will create tacos, or seafood, or chinese takeout. Only hamburgers. And it is SOLELY because of the selfishness of the fanboys, who cannot concede even for a moment that they DO have options for their playstyle, and that it is high time other people in the city of Progress had a turn at something shiny, tasty and new.
So yes, haters are gonna hate. Because the MMORPG industry has proven to be the only industry where consumers seem to defy logic by choosing to reject the opportuntiy for variety and choices, and instead imbracing the factory-assembled 'checklist of fun' that is being conveyed out the door again and again.
Unacceptable.
Comments
OP, you can't teach people to have higher standards.
Ehh as I said last summer SWTOR bad for MMOs no matter what.
If it is a sucess we will get crappy SWTOR clones... which is will be terrible on so many levels.
If it fails the majority of devs and investors leave the P2P market and make more P2W crap... if they stay in the MMO market at all.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
I don't like rap or hip-hop.
Just relax, TOR is not a bad game but I kinda doubt that it will keep those players for more than a few months the way it is made.
Other MMOs that use different mechanics are on the way and I think a few of them will seel very well.
I just don´t see TOR being able to go head on head Vs GW2 and Class 4. TOR is just too much like a single player game and those are very fun for a while but usually lose it's magic when you max out 2 characters.Adding Wow style raiding to the concept just ain´t enough.
It is far more important that a different game succeds than a game like TOR fails, the publishers needs proof that other types of games can sell well, not that current style MMOs womt.
The only thing TORs failure would tell investors would be that the genre isn´t worth the risk, and that would be bad, M'OKAY?
But use your common sense: one doesn't exclude the other. Look at this year: the majority of MMO's that come out this year are no traditional themepark MMO's at all, and they're pretty solid looking titles as well. Like any market, there's room for competition if the products are compelling enough, no particular need for a whole market to fail and burn for varied products to emerge, as clearly shown for MMO's this year and next.
... unless you want to tell me that MMO's like GW2, TSW, ArcheAge, Firefall, TERA, Blade&Soul, Planetside 2 and later on Copernicus, World of Darkness, Undead Labs' zombie MMO, Continent of the Ninth, Salem, EQ Next and so on is not the variety of choices you're looking for?
This should be a bumper sticker for the internet.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
My blog:
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Strayfe/
SWTOR doesn't have 1.7 million active subscribers.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ea-beats-targets-on-sales-gain-forecast-off-2012-02-01?link=MW_story_featstor
"now has about 1.7 million active subscribers playing the online multiplayer title, which Brown said represents a mix of users who already have signed up for a paid subscription and users who have given their credit cards over, but have not yet had their paid plans kick in."
The game has maybe 1 million. Most likely more in the Rift range of 800k and dropping.
EA's stock is down almost 20 percent since SWTOR has been released. And EA is now warning their current quarter is going miss revenue and profit targets.
That's not a success, that's a disaster.
To summarize:
1 - Successful things are copied
2 - People like different things than me
3 - People who like different things than me should like the things I like
I enjoyed the read and i feel this way myself. Although you have some delightfully intelligent posts above me not agreeing with you or complaining about having to read, i applaud your effort. Asking those fans to reply may not have been the best idea, but it will be an entertaining thread at least.
Am I doing it right?
Your argument has already been disproven by WoW. Wow existed right alongside other games that were very innovative and different.
If anything, wow was more of a threat to it's "clones" than it was to sandboxes.
Shadow's Hand Guild
Open recruitment for
The Secret World - Dragons
Planetside 2 - Terran Republic
Tera - Dragonfall Server
http://www.shadowshand.com
Just wait and see how Swtor will be in 6months, i have faith in Bioware, i like the game very much , and i'm sure that the bugs will be solved, in march we will have new Warzone, Operations , interface customization and Legacy system, things will keep on improving with time. Rome wanst built in a day, but crap can be done in a sec.
Those are not facts, that's just personal conjecture and wishful thinking >.<No. Try actually reading and comprehending the thread and then reply.
OP, I commend and agree with the sentiment of your thread, but I'm thinking your points will be swooshing over the heads of most people that come to it. Reading isn't a strong suit, in the US at least.
I didn't say quit playing it. I am not so naive that I believe anyone will magically wake up and change their opinion. Instead, I made this post to get fans of SWTOR to explain to me one thing, and one thing only.
"As a fan of SWTOR, do you feel that your playstyle and games that suit you should be the only games being made?"
That's the attitude of SWTOR fanboys, who don't realize that their fun comes (indirectly) at the expense of others, and then wonder why those others are flaming their game on the forums.
My blog:
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Strayfe/
Ah yes, the "I'm smarter than everyone else and therefore have better taste" argument. A classic, certainly.
This makes no sense. How do we control what games are made except by not playing the ones you don't think deserve to be played?
Wait...didn't 95% of the MMORPGs out there suck before TOR came along? I don't think that will change regardless of TORs success or failure.
I didn't say quit playing it. I am not so naive that I believe anyone will magically wake up and change their opinion. Instead, I made this post to get fans of SWTOR to explain to me one thing, and one thing only.
"As a fan of SWTOR, do you feel that your playstyle and games that suit you should be the only games being made?"
That's the attitude of SWTOR fanboys, who don't realize that their fun comes (indirectly) at the expense of others, and then wonder why those others are flaming their game on the forums.
That's a simple one. Most people enjoying TOR or other themepark MMO's like LotrO, Aion, Rift, WoW etc will say 'no'.
Seems to me you're the one with the problem bc you feel that everyone enjoying themepark MMO's should feel guilty about it. So, here's a question back: as an anti TOR/themepark person (which I assume is the case based on your OP? correct me if I'm wrong), do you feel that your playstyle and games that suit you should be the only games being made?Nice post, and I agree completely that having the same one item on the menu since 2004 is incredibly frustrating in a genre that could have grown in so many interesting ways. It's been a sad seven plus years of watching the entire industry wallow in mediocrity as they scrambled to pump out clunky clones that not only failed to advance the genre but also failed to offer any new experience.
The only possible tiny exception has been watching WARs public quests evolve into Rifts invasions/rifts which evolved further into what we're seeing with GW2s event system. But that is one small aspect in games that by and large play the same and offer the same experiences (not counting GW2 as I have no experience with it and so far all the evidence seems to suggest it won't be the exact same old thing).
Not to mention that if these bland and shallow little theme parks actually had some well funded competition their quality would most likely improve as a result. Which one would assume these themepark fans would probably like.
I could be wrong of course, they do seem to eat up any slick new clone as long as it's WoW with one new bullet point gimmick tacked on.
So many peple are quick to insert 'If it's not broken, don't fix it' into any debate casting a negative light on their game of choice when it becomes accused of offering the same old stale assortment of basic systems. How about if it's not broken, don't try and produce a cheap knock off of it and expect different results than the others in a long line of mediocre clones?
Anyway, there at least seem to be ripples on the pond as developers seem to be realising offering the same old thing that was offered 7 years ago isn't going to break any records, or as one of the Pathfinder devs put it, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results
It's a glimmer of hope at least for an industry that's been on creative 'pause' since WoWs success.
Show me ONE forum member that think the only types of mmos being made should be SWTOR. I'll give you a hint: there aren't any. I think a lot of this stuff exists only in your mind.
I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means - except by getting off his back.
well then go and support a sandbox mmo so they will have the money to make an aaa game instead of just being a forum version of this:
the hot dog guy is never going to succed if people don't buy his hot dogs