I would say it is a failure. As far as the "profits" go I am glad that many people pointed out the difference between revenue and profit. I did analysis on this a few weeks back and here is my 2 cents as an investor (Not in EA though just in general)
Since just before the launch of SWTOR till the end of March EA's stock has lost 29.4% of its value. In that exact same time frame the average company in its sector has increased its stock value by 17.7%. That means that EA has underperformed the market by a staggering 47.1%.
I think this is more telling than any of our guesses at when EA will turn a profit on this game (Ive noticed that appearantly turning a profit only means recovering development cost, at least on this forum). I know that there are many more factors affecting EA's stock price but I believe you would be hard pressed to find any intelligent investor who would say anything had a greater affect than SWTOR.
swtor is what you call a diamond in a rough. If bioware can polish the game, fix bugs,add good content and so forth, its going to be successful.
it's not like wow was extermeely polished when its game was released and it didn't have 5+ million subs in the beginning.
Isn't a diamond in a rough a lump of coal
What game do you like? lol
I am currently Beta testing an iOS version of Traveller, the PnP space game, I play another Sci Fi MMO that I don't talk about here, I will also be beta testing a rebooted version of Outer Empires another iOS MMO in a couple of weeks, I have played Perpetuum, glitch, EvE, Uncharted Waters and even ran the Mortal Online trial for a couple of weeks over the last year. I have gained enjoyment from them all in different ways, even tried SWTOR but that was the weakest if them all. Feel free to tell me how crap any and all of the games I have played are as I try things out and make my own mind up.
I agree SW:TOR was a bad game, but a flop is yet to be determined, that will be decided once they close the doors, EvE is good, but have you tried PotBS? sounds like something you might get a kick out of, player driven economy like EvE, tons of ships, pretty good F2P game. It just seems like in all the forums you dislike every AAA title out there, which i don't entirely blame you, but you just seem dissapointed with the genre.
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
Whether it's a flop for Bioware or EA can only be known by them, someone with access to their internal docs, or "fly on the wall" access to their internal meetings and "off the record" discussions.
As far as player perception, well, I can offer three words that were thrown around awfully aggressively and asserted as undeniable fact to describe it prior to its release: "THE WoW Killer". Of course, that didn't pan out. Not even close. And don't bother with "well, anyone who thought that would be the case..." responses, because the fact of the matter is A LOT of people did. You couldn't go 5 virtual feet without seeing someone declaring TOR the Second Coming for online gaming, the one to dethrone WoW, the MMO that would have Blizzard shitting bricks the size of mac trucks in their pants, for fear of having their population leave WoW in one massive flood of new TOR players. People got pretty carried away with it. So by those lofty standards, it certainly failed.
How about all the hyperbole and unfettered adulation over the title expressed by the media. Can you say "Public Love Affair"? Even this site's staff was in on it. Seemed I couldn't come to this site without seeing someone else slobbering all over their keyboards to heap more praise on the game. I wonder if some of these people look back at those articles and feel a pang of embarassment. I probably would.
It was touted as the "End All" for big budget MMOs, as though if it didn't do well, that no one else would ever dare invest the money to do another big budget project again. Of course that was ridiculous too.
I've seen some highly, highly hyped MMOs in my time playing. None of them, not one, has come even close to what I witnessed for TOR.
So, while I wouldn't go so far as calling it a literal failure - it is still running and does have a healthy playerbase afterall - I would say it has fallen far short of the expectations and hype piled upon it. For some people, that's a failure in its own right.
There is no way the game will even return the money invested in it, and far cry from bringing any profit.
So if that is not called flop, i dont know what is.
And I am not even talking about being flop in eyes of gamers
An awesome example of internet chat word-vomit. Notice the confidence behind this post, almost shining in it's arrogance. As if, he's simply stating a well investigated and hard-proven undeniable fact. When in fact, he pulled this opinion directly out of his butt, wiped it off, and threw it on the page for everyone to marvel at.
Well done sir! well done!
Now that was bad timing with the post right above yours backing up the claim lol.
I don't think it's a failure personally, from a buisness stand point, even if they only have 1 mill subs, that 15 mill a month give or take a couple million dollars, have they broke even yet? nah probably not, but it's well on its way IMHO.
swtor is what you call a diamond in a rough. If bioware can polish the game, fix bugs,add good content and so forth, its going to be successful. it's not like wow was extermeely polished when its game was released and it didn't have 5+ million subs in the beginning.
Isn't a diamond in a rough a lump of coal
What game do you like? lol
I am currently Beta testing an iOS version of Traveller, the PnP space game, I play another Sci Fi MMO that I don't talk about here, I will also be beta testing a rebooted version of Outer Empires another iOS MMO in a couple of weeks, I have played Perpetuum, glitch, EvE, Uncharted Waters and even ran the Mortal Online trial for a couple of weeks over the last year. I have gained enjoyment from them all in different ways, even tried SWTOR but that was the weakest if them all. Feel free to tell me how crap any and all of the games I have played are as I try things out and make my own mind up.
I agree SW:TOR was a bad game, but a flop is yet to be determined, that will be decided once they close the doors, EvE is good, but have you tried PotBS? sounds like something you might get a kick out of, player driven economy like EvE, tons of ships, pretty good F2P game. It just seems like in all the forums you dislike every AAA title out there, which i don't entirely blame you, but you just seem dissapointed with the genre.
The only game I am really negative about is SWTOR, and the GW2 hivemind can be annoying when it gets on a roll. Apart from that I can't think of any AAA games I have dissed, apart from about a week of mocking Kung fu pandaren for kicks, but who didn't. I tend to support sandbox and VWRPGs vs themeparks in debates but that's more a genre issue than a specific game issue.
Not tried PotBS, I have heard about it, I will add it to the list when I get a quiet moment.
Whether it's a flop for Bioware or EA can only be known by them, someone with access to their internal docs, or "fly on the wall" access to their internal meetings and "off the record" discussions.
As far as player perception, well, I can offer three words that were thrown around awfully aggressively and asserted as undeniable fact to describe it prior to its release: "THE WoW Killer". Of course, that didn't pan out. Not even close. And don't bother with "well, anyone who thought that would be the case..." responses, because the fact of the matter is A LOT of people did. You couldn't go 5 virtual feet without seeing someone declaring TOR the Second Coming for online gaming, the one to dethrone WoW, the MMO that would have Blizzard shitting bricks the size of mac trucks in their pants, for fear of having their population leave WoW in one massive flood of new TOR players. People got pretty carried away with it. So by those lofty standards, it certainly failed.
How about all the hyperbole and unfettered adulation over the title expressed by the media. Can you say "Public Love Affair"? Even this site's staff was in on it. Seemed I couldn't come to this site without seeing someone else slobbering all over their keyboards to heap more praise on the game. I wonder if some of these people look back at those articles and feel a pang of embarassment. I probably would.
It was touted as the "End All" for big budget MMOs, as though if it didn't do well, that no one else would ever dare invest the money to do another big budget project again. Of course that was ridiculous too.
I've seen some highly, highly hyped MMOs in my time playing. None of them, not one, has come even close to what I witnessed for TOR.
So, while I wouldn't go so far as calling it a literal failure - it is still running and does have a healthy playerbase afterall - I would say it has fallen far short of the expectations and hype piled upon it. For some people, that's a failure in its own right.
Hear, hear!
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
Whether it's a flop for Bioware or EA can only be known by them, someone with access to their internal docs, or "fly on the wall" access to their internal meetings and "off the record" discussions.
As far as player perception, well, I can offer three words that were thrown around awfully aggressively and asserted as undeniable fact to describe it prior to its release: "THE WoW Killer". Of course, that didn't pan out. Not even close. And don't bother with "well, anyone who thought that would be the case..." responses, because the fact of the matter is A LOT of people did. You couldn't go 5 virtual feet without seeing someone declaring TOR the Second Coming for online gaming, the one to dethrone WoW, the MMO that would have Blizzard shitting bricks the size of mac trucks in their pants, for fear of having their population leave WoW in one massive flood of new TOR players. People got pretty carried away with it. So by those lofty standards, it certainly failed.
How about all the hyperbole and unfettered adulation over the title expressed by the media. Can you say "Public Love Affair"? Even this site's staff was in on it. Seemed I couldn't come to this site without seeing someone else slobbering all over their keyboards to heap more praise on the game. I wonder if some of these people look back at those articles and feel a pang of embarassment. I probably would.
It was touted as the "End All" for big budget MMOs, as though if it didn't do well, that no one else would ever dare invest the money to do another big budget project again. Of course that was ridiculous too.
I've seen some highly, highly hyped MMOs in my time playing. None of them, not one, has come even close to what I witnessed for TOR.
So, while I wouldn't go so far as calling it a literal failure - it is still running and does have a healthy playerbase afterall - I would say it has fallen far short of the expectations and hype piled upon it. For some people, that's a failure in its own right.
Whether it's a flop for Bioware or EA can only be known by them, someone with access to their internal docs, or "fly on the wall" access to their internal meetings and "off the record" discussions.
As far as player perception, well, I can offer three words that were thrown around awfully aggressively and asserted as undeniable fact to describe it prior to its release: "THE WoW Killer". Of course, that didn't pan out. Not even close. And don't bother with "well, anyone who thought that would be the case..." responses, because the fact of the matter is A LOT of people did. You couldn't go 5 virtual feet without seeing someone declaring TOR the Second Coming for online gaming, the one to dethrone WoW, the MMO that would have Blizzard shitting bricks the size of mac trucks in their pants, for fear of having their population leave WoW in one massive flood of new TOR players. People got pretty carried away with it. So by those lofty standards, it certainly failed.
How about all the hyperbole and unfettered adulation over the title expressed by the media. Can you say "Public Love Affair"? Even this site's staff was in on it. Seemed I couldn't come to this site without seeing someone else slobbering all over their keyboards to heap more praise on the game. I wonder if some of these people look back at those articles and feel a pang of embarassment. I probably would.
It was touted as the "End All" for big budget MMOs, as though if it didn't do well, that no one else would ever dare invest the money to do another big budget project again. Of course that was ridiculous too.
I've seen some highly, highly hyped MMOs in my time playing. None of them, not one, has come even close.
So, while I wouldn't go so far as calling it a literal failure - it is still running and does have a healthy playerbase afterall - I would say it has fallen far short of the expectations and hype piled upon it. For some people, that's a failure in its own right.
Bioware have gone from Hero to Zero in the space of a couple of months, even to many of their staunchest supporters.
I really don't know if they'll ever regain their credibility after recent events.
They will not. If I EVER hear of Georg Zoeller being involved in any other game, I'm NOT playing it. The man has gone full rtard and you NEVER go full rtard.
swtor is what you call a diamond in a rough. If bioware can polish the game, fix bugs,add good content and so forth, its going to be successful.
it's not like wow was extermeely polished when its game was released and it didn't have 5+ million subs in the beginning.
Isn't a diamond in a rough a lump of coal
What game do you like? lol
I am currently Beta testing an iOS version of Traveller, the PnP space game, I play another Sci Fi MMO that I don't talk about here, I will also be beta testing a rebooted version of Outer Empires another iOS MMO in a couple of weeks, I have played Perpetuum, glitch, EvE, Uncharted Waters and even ran the Mortal Online trial for a couple of weeks over the last year. I have gained enjoyment from them all in different ways, even tried SWTOR but that was the weakest if them all. Feel free to tell me how crap any and all of the games I have played are as I try things out and make my own mind up.
I agree SW:TOR was a bad game, but a flop is yet to be determined, that will be decided once they close the doors, EvE is good, but have you tried PotBS? sounds like something you might get a kick out of, player driven economy like EvE, tons of ships, pretty good F2P game. It just seems like in all the forums you dislike every AAA title out there, which i don't entirely blame you, but you just seem dissapointed with the genre.
The only game I am really negative about is SWTOR, and the GW2 hivemind can be annoying when it gets on a roll. Apart from that I can't think of any AAA games I have dissed, apart from about of week of mocking Kung fu pandaren for kicks, but who didn't. I tend to support sandbox and VWRPGs vs themeparks in debates but that's more a genre issue than a specific game issue.
Not tried PotBS, I have head about it, I will add it to the list when I get a quiet moment.
HA! kung fu Pandaren for kicks! thats awesome, I don't blame you for dissing TOR, it's blah, GW2 fanbois can be a bit over the top, i know i praise the game but it's not my bible haha. seriously though, PotBS, good time passer.
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
Whether it's a flop for Bioware or EA can only be known by them, someone with access to their internal docs, or "fly on the wall" access to their internal meetings and "off the record" discussions.
As far as player perception, well, I can offer three words that were thrown around awfully aggressively and asserted as undeniable fact to describe it prior to its release: "THE WoW Killer". Of course, that didn't pan out. Not even close. And don't bother with "well, anyone who thought that would be the case..." responses, because the fact of the matter is A LOT of people did. You couldn't go 5 virtual feet without seeing someone declaring TOR the Second Coming for online gaming, the one to dethrone WoW, the MMO that would have Blizzard shitting bricks the size of mac trucks in their pants, for fear of having their population leave WoW in one massive flood of new TOR players. People got pretty carried away with it. So by those lofty standards, it certainly failed.
How about all the hyperbole and unfettered adulation over the title expressed by the media. Can you say "Public Love Affair"? Even this site's staff was in on it. Seemed I couldn't come to this site without seeing someone else slobbering all over their keyboards to heap more praise on the game. I wonder if some of these people look back at those articles and feel a pang of embarassment. I probably would.
It was touted as the "End All" for big budget MMOs, as though if it didn't do well, that no one else would ever dare invest the money to do another big budget project again. Of course that was ridiculous too.
I've seen some highly, highly hyped MMOs in my time playing. None of them, not one, has come even close to what I witnessed for TOR.
So, while I wouldn't go so far as calling it a literal failure - it is still running and does have a healthy playerbase afterall - I would say it has fallen far short of the expectations and hype piled upon it. For some people, that's a failure in its own right.
Whether it's a flop for Bioware or EA can only be known by them, someone with access to their internal docs, or "fly on the wall" access to their internal meetings and "off the record" discussions. As far as player perception, well, I can offer three words that were thrown around awfully aggressively and asserted as undeniable fact to describe it prior to its release: "THE WoW Killer". Of course, that didn't pan out. Not even close. And don't bother with "well, anyone who thought that would be the case..." responses, because the fact of the matter is A LOT of people did. You couldn't go 5 virtual feet without seeing someone declaring TOR the Second Coming for online gaming, the one to dethrone WoW, the MMO that would have Blizzard shitting bricks the size of mac trucks in their pants, for fear of having their population leave WoW in one massive flood of new TOR players. People got pretty carried away with it. So by those lofty standards, it certainly failed. How about all the hyperbole and unfettered adulation over the title expressed by the media. Can you say "Public Love Affair"? Even this site's staff was in on it. Seemed I couldn't come to this site without seeing someone else slobbering all over their keyboards to heap more praise on the game. I wonder if some of these people look back at those articles and feel a pang of embarassment. I probably would. It was touted as the "End All" for big budget MMOs, as though if it didn't do well, that no one else would ever dare invest the money to do another big budget project again. Of course that was ridiculous too. I've seen some highly, highly hyped MMOs in my time playing. None of them, not one, has come even close. So, while I wouldn't go so far as calling it a literal failure - it is still running and does have a healthy playerbase afterall - I would say it has fallen far short of the expectations and hype piled upon it. For some people, that's a failure in its own right.
Bioware have gone from Hero to Zero in the space of a couple of months, even to many of their staunchest supporters.
I really don't know if they'll ever regain their credibility after recent events.
They will not. If I EVER hear of Georg Zoeller being involved in any other game, I'm NOT playing it. The man has gone full rtard and you NEVER go full rtard.
Don't forget Gabe "can you tie my shoelaces please" Amantangelo who it appears has been employed as a galactic peace envoy.
Whether it's a flop for Bioware or EA can only be known by them, someone with access to their internal docs, or "fly on the wall" access to their internal meetings and "off the record" discussions.
As far as player perception, well, I can offer three words that were thrown around awfully aggressively and asserted as undeniable fact to describe it prior to its release: "THE WoW Killer". Of course, that didn't pan out. Not even close. And don't bother with "well, anyone who thought that would be the case..." responses, because the fact of the matter is A LOT of people did. You couldn't go 5 virtual feet without seeing someone declaring TOR the Second Coming for online gaming, the one to dethrone WoW, the MMO that would have Blizzard shitting bricks the size of mac trucks in their pants, for fear of having their population leave WoW in one massive flood of new TOR players. People got pretty carried away with it. So by those lofty standards, it certainly failed.
How about all the hyperbole and unfettered adulation over the title expressed by the media. Can you say "Public Love Affair"? Even this site's staff was in on it. Seemed I couldn't come to this site without seeing someone else slobbering all over their keyboards to heap more praise on the game. I wonder if some of these people look back at those articles and feel a pang of embarassment. I probably would.
It was touted as the "End All" for big budget MMOs, as though if it didn't do well, that no one else would ever dare invest the money to do another big budget project again. Of course that was ridiculous too.
I've seen some highly, highly hyped MMOs in my time playing. None of them, not one, has come even close.
So, while I wouldn't go so far as calling it a literal failure - it is still running and does have a healthy playerbase afterall - I would say it has fallen far short of the expectations and hype piled upon it. For some people, that's a failure in its own right.
Bioware have gone from Hero to Zero in the space of a couple of months, even to many of their staunchest supporters.
I really don't know if they'll ever regain their credibility after recent events.
They will not. If I EVER hear of Georg Zoeller being involved in any other game, I'm NOT playing it. The man has gone full rtard and you NEVER go full rtard.
"Everyone knows you never go full rtard"
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
Im not gonna say its a WoW killer im not gonna say it will kill wow but its really early still it took wow a good 2-3 years to become huge like it did starwars still has time and plenty of resources still available to them to grow and build and become just as huge as WoW try and remember bioware is new on the MMO stage what do you people expect. WoW been around 7 years thats 7 freaking years to gather followers and damn enar close to cult folloing at that.
Im not gonna say its a WoW killer im not gonna say it will kill wow but its really early still it took wow a good 2-3 years to become huge like it did starwars still has time and plenty of resources still available to them to grow and build and become just as huge as WoW try and remember bioware is new on the MMO stage what do you people expect. WoW been around 7 years thats 7 freaking years to gather followers and damn enar close to cult folloing at that.
I expect it it to wither and die or bumble along with a few subs and EA writing off a chunk of the investment from their balance sheet.
Im not gonna say its a WoW killer im not gonna say it will kill wow but its really early still it took wow a good 2-3 years to become huge like it did starwars still has time and plenty of resources still available to them to grow and build and become just as huge as WoW try and remember bioware is new on the MMO stage what do you people expect. WoW been around 7 years thats 7 freaking years to gather followers and damn enar close to cult folloing at that.
Yeah sorry, that ain't gonna happen here though. The only kind of cult following we're going to see here will be similar to the Manson girls after shaving their heads on their way to prison.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Im not gonna say its a WoW killer im not gonna say it will kill wow but its really early still it took wow a good 2-3 years to become huge like it did starwars still has time and plenty of resources still available to them to grow and build and become just as huge as WoW try and remember bioware is new on the MMO stage what do you people expect. WoW been around 7 years thats 7 freaking years to gather followers and damn enar close to cult folloing at that.
Can't see it myself. Look at WoW's growth after launch. Once the trend starts to go down it's pretty much impossible to reverse.
SWTOR's graph looks similar if you ignore the numbers, turn it back to front and condense the years down to a few months lol.
It's a failure by the developers standards, the investors standards and the gamers standards. The devs knew the game was going to tank, if you just looked at them during the demos, if you read their behavior, you could see they didn't believe in the game they'd developed. The investors know enough already by now, and so do most gamers.
The gamers that still play it might consider it a bit of a success, but to anybody else TOR is just a gold painted turd of an MMO. Single player game with online features like a subscription fee.
Tor does not even have 500k players left. Maybe less than 300k. There certainly might be more who have stopped playing but have sub time remaining but they certainly are not lplaying. Despite changing their definition of server load twice now to make it look there are more players logged on,ToR, according to Tor Status , is down to having 11 moderately populated US servers (above 1.5) and 2 Euro ones. The rest of the servers are dead or almost dead. Watch ToR status each day and all you see are huge red numbers for each server every day. The amount of subs they are hemoraging is quite amazing. Unless server merges happen soon they will soon be down to 4 or 5 viable servers.
It is a flop but I don't think it should be regarded as a huge flop. There have been much worse games made. Maybe none that cost this much to make. Well no game has been even close to ToR's development costs. But there are some positives. Selling 2 million boxes is quite a feat. But normally a developer only gets 25% of the sale from retailers but because a large portion was direct online sales they would net a larger portion. But still nowhere near to cover their investment. Financially ToR is an epic disaster. But for MMO gamers what was really lost here was potential. With this much money being invested we really should have gotten a game for the ages. In regards to ToRs reputation It seems to be on the road now to being regarded by most as a failure and its servers will likely be deserted quite quickly. Although with SW name it can redeem itself and get a second chance like EQ2 and AO both did after poor releases. But it will be very hard for it to ever gain a positive rep in the MMO community.
I guess this is my question. There is a lot of chatter about The Old Republic being an epic failure. I'm just curious by what standards are we judging this by?
As it stands right now (to my knowledge at least), the game is touting 1.7 million subscribers. So, I can only assume that it's "failure" cannot be judged on subscribers alone. If you told me that Rift had 1.7 million subscribers, I guarantee you that Trion would be abdolutely overjoyed. They probably have 400,000 to 500,000 subscribers and they're still overjoyed.
Is it their 250 million dollar budget? Is it because the game didn't live up to the high expectations? I'm really just curious. I play SW:TOR but I certainly have issues with the game. I'm just trying to figure out where people are coming from when they call the game a failure.
"Any game we don't like."
That's basically it in a nutshell. Mostly from MMO players who haven't like an MMO since World of Warcraft.
Oh and by the way, I'd LOVE to be failing at the tune of millions of dollars in profit every month.
Not if you had spent over 200m usd before you could start to earn the income and your revenue stream was dropping before you were in a position to have paid the investment back.
And since no one here can see the future you can't tell when, if, or how much earnings above costs the game will make. Every indication is the game will be a modest success and not a flop at all. No matter how much people blather about it.
You can tell by the amount of free time Bioware keep dishing out. They keep trying to hook more subs, but not enough people are biting, and then offer more free time
The free 30 days to people with level 50 characters is a slap in the face to those taking their time and not hitting 50 on purpose so the game does not end. People who are 50 will come back with 1.2 or not, there was no need to give them a free 30 days for it, as if they do not like the game more time added to the account will not help that, but now those without a 50 will probably quit after this as Bioware have divided the community. Those who have created alts and not reached 50 and been subbing since the start are more loyal than those who who shoot to 50 with one character and then quit, return by Apr 12th and get free 30 days. Bioware are only giving free time to people with level 50s, as they are the ones mainly quitting.
They had the budget, the financial backing, the IP, and well seasoned Development house. All of those factors should have resulted in a game that rivaled WOW if not in total subs, certainly in the terms of features and functionality and they certainly failed to deliver based on those standards.
And you can bet that even if they have retained a million subs a month, there's some folks over at EA/LA that are gnashing their teeth because these folks think BIG, and won't be satisfied with the current numbers.
As a side note, you know a title is sucking air when they give a free 30 days playtime to current subscribers because the game is so sadly lacking in end game content for level 50's to do. See FFXIV for similar situation. Even Rift didn't have to do anything like this in the first 6 months.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Im not gonna say its a WoW killer im not gonna say it will kill wow but its really early still it took wow a good 2-3 years to become huge like it did starwars still has time and plenty of resources still available to them to grow and build and become just as huge as WoW try and remember bioware is new on the MMO stage what do you people expect. WoW been around 7 years thats 7 freaking years to gather followers and damn enar close to cult folloing at that.
I've never been a fan of WoW, but i can't remember WoW Launching end of 2004 with design errors and fundamental missing concepts for the year 2004. WoW had bugs, had crashes but they only need to expand.
WoW didn't have a missing minimap "because people don't need it".
SWTOR? 5 Month's after release they are still catching up, and still lack basic which should have been in at release. Not to mention the bugs and errors and overall Design failures. At best and at the current speed they need at least another 18 Months to get cross server PVP / Balanced Queues, Working illum concept, basic character customization and proper - not perfect - class balance. But then again, SWTOR has fundamental design flaws like giving out heals to every advance class no matter his spec without accounting for that in their balance sheet.
So i expect after the sub drop an half-desperate "overhaul" (nge) and then an utterly faded game (flop) which diwndels till EA shuts it down for the "SWNEW REPUBLIC ADVENTURES" in 2016.
Im not gonna say its a WoW killer im not gonna say it will kill wow but its really early still it took wow a good 2-3 years to become huge like it did starwars still has time and plenty of resources still available to them to grow and build and become just as huge as WoW try and remember bioware is new on the MMO stage what do you people expect. WoW been around 7 years thats 7 freaking years to gather followers and damn enar close to cult folloing at that.
There's an awful lot of apologist logic in your post.
First, it took WoW 2-3 years to get to ~10 million players.
However, if we're going to talk about TOR in its first several months, then you have to compare it to WoW in its first several months. So let's do that.
Blizzard were approaching ~3 million players inside their first months and were still steadily climbing. Can TOR say the same? No.
Blizzard had to stop shipping boxes to stores and have sales stopped because they couldn't keep up with the demand. Can TOR say the same? No.
Blizzard passed their 1 year projections within the first few months, and blew them out of the water. Can TOR say that? No.
TOR hit its peak (the often cited 1.7 mil) and has been, at best, holding steady. It's more likely seeing a decline given the population curve of pretty much every MMO out there. Even WoW follows that same curve, only its growth period lasted years instead of months.
You say BioWare is new to MMOs. So was Blizzard when they developed WoW. Still it became a huge hit, beyond even Blizzard's expectations or preparations, and has truly and undeniably been a genre changer. How do you resolve that?
Further, while I don't recall any such bravado coming out of the Blizzard camp prior to WoW's launch, BioWare had been bragging about how they were going to change the way people played MMOs forever, how they knew what MMO gamers really wanted, etc.
There simply is no comparison between Blizzard's success with WoW and BioWare's success with TOR. On any level.
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I would say it is a failure. As far as the "profits" go I am glad that many people pointed out the difference between revenue and profit. I did analysis on this a few weeks back and here is my 2 cents as an investor (Not in EA though just in general)
Since just before the launch of SWTOR till the end of March EA's stock has lost 29.4% of its value. In that exact same time frame the average company in its sector has increased its stock value by 17.7%. That means that EA has underperformed the market by a staggering 47.1%.
I think this is more telling than any of our guesses at when EA will turn a profit on this game (Ive noticed that appearantly turning a profit only means recovering development cost, at least on this forum). I know that there are many more factors affecting EA's stock price but I believe you would be hard pressed to find any intelligent investor who would say anything had a greater affect than SWTOR.
I agree SW:TOR was a bad game, but a flop is yet to be determined, that will be decided once they close the doors, EvE is good, but have you tried PotBS? sounds like something you might get a kick out of, player driven economy like EvE, tons of ships, pretty good F2P game. It just seems like in all the forums you dislike every AAA title out there, which i don't entirely blame you, but you just seem dissapointed with the genre.
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
Whether it's a flop for Bioware or EA can only be known by them, someone with access to their internal docs, or "fly on the wall" access to their internal meetings and "off the record" discussions.
As far as player perception, well, I can offer three words that were thrown around awfully aggressively and asserted as undeniable fact to describe it prior to its release: "THE WoW Killer". Of course, that didn't pan out. Not even close. And don't bother with "well, anyone who thought that would be the case..." responses, because the fact of the matter is A LOT of people did. You couldn't go 5 virtual feet without seeing someone declaring TOR the Second Coming for online gaming, the one to dethrone WoW, the MMO that would have Blizzard shitting bricks the size of mac trucks in their pants, for fear of having their population leave WoW in one massive flood of new TOR players. People got pretty carried away with it. So by those lofty standards, it certainly failed.
How about all the hyperbole and unfettered adulation over the title expressed by the media. Can you say "Public Love Affair"? Even this site's staff was in on it. Seemed I couldn't come to this site without seeing someone else slobbering all over their keyboards to heap more praise on the game. I wonder if some of these people look back at those articles and feel a pang of embarassment. I probably would.
It was touted as the "End All" for big budget MMOs, as though if it didn't do well, that no one else would ever dare invest the money to do another big budget project again. Of course that was ridiculous too.
I've seen some highly, highly hyped MMOs in my time playing. None of them, not one, has come even close to what I witnessed for TOR.
So, while I wouldn't go so far as calling it a literal failure - it is still running and does have a healthy playerbase afterall - I would say it has fallen far short of the expectations and hype piled upon it. For some people, that's a failure in its own right.
Now that was bad timing with the post right above yours backing up the claim lol.
Too bad, was eloquently put.
Not even close....
Isn't a diamond in a rough a lump of coalWhat game do you like? lol
I am currently Beta testing an iOS version of Traveller, the PnP space game, I play another Sci Fi MMO that I don't talk about here, I will also be beta testing a rebooted version of Outer Empires another iOS MMO in a couple of weeks, I have played Perpetuum, glitch, EvE, Uncharted Waters and even ran the Mortal Online trial for a couple of weeks over the last year. I have gained enjoyment from them all in different ways, even tried SWTOR but that was the weakest if them all. Feel free to tell me how crap any and all of the games I have played are as I try things out and make my own mind up.I agree SW:TOR was a bad game, but a flop is yet to be determined, that will be decided once they close the doors, EvE is good, but have you tried PotBS? sounds like something you might get a kick out of, player driven economy like EvE, tons of ships, pretty good F2P game. It just seems like in all the forums you dislike every AAA title out there, which i don't entirely blame you, but you just seem dissapointed with the genre.
The only game I am really negative about is SWTOR, and the GW2 hivemind can be annoying when it gets on a roll. Apart from that I can't think of any AAA games I have dissed, apart from about a week of mocking Kung fu pandaren for kicks, but who didn't. I tend to support sandbox and VWRPGs vs themeparks in debates but that's more a genre issue than a specific game issue. Not tried PotBS, I have heard about it, I will add it to the list when I get a quiet moment.Hear, hear!
"This is life! We suffer and slave and expire. That's it!" -Bernard Black (Dylan Moran)
Bioware have gone from Hero to Zero in the space of a couple of months, even to many of their staunchest supporters.
I really don't know if they'll ever regain their credibility after recent events.
Well said
They will not. If I EVER hear of Georg Zoeller being involved in any other game, I'm NOT playing it. The man has gone full rtard and you NEVER go full rtard.
HA! kung fu Pandaren for kicks! thats awesome, I don't blame you for dissing TOR, it's blah, GW2 fanbois can be a bit over the top, i know i praise the game but it's not my bible haha. seriously though, PotBS, good time passer.
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
I agree.
Bioware have gone from Hero to Zero in the space of a couple of months, even to many of their staunchest supporters.
I really don't know if they'll ever regain their credibility after recent events.
They will not. If I EVER hear of Georg Zoeller being involved in any other game, I'm NOT playing it. The man has gone full rtard and you NEVER go full rtard.
Don't forget Gabe "can you tie my shoelaces please" Amantangelo who it appears has been employed as a galactic peace envoy."Everyone knows you never go full rtard"
The "Youtube Pro": Someone who watches video's on said subject, and obviously has a full understanding of what is being said about such subject.
Im not gonna say its a WoW killer im not gonna say it will kill wow but its really early still it took wow a good 2-3 years to become huge like it did starwars still has time and plenty of resources still available to them to grow and build and become just as huge as WoW try and remember bioware is new on the MMO stage what do you people expect. WoW been around 7 years thats 7 freaking years to gather followers and damn enar close to cult folloing at that.
I expect it it to wither and die or bumble along with a few subs and EA writing off a chunk of the investment from their balance sheet.Yeah sorry, that ain't gonna happen here though. The only kind of cult following we're going to see here will be similar to the Manson girls after shaving their heads on their way to prison.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Can't see it myself. Look at WoW's growth after launch. Once the trend starts to go down it's pretty much impossible to reverse.
SWTOR's graph looks similar if you ignore the numbers, turn it back to front and condense the years down to a few months lol.
It's a failure by the developers standards, the investors standards and the gamers standards. The devs knew the game was going to tank, if you just looked at them during the demos, if you read their behavior, you could see they didn't believe in the game they'd developed. The investors know enough already by now, and so do most gamers.
The gamers that still play it might consider it a bit of a success, but to anybody else TOR is just a gold painted turd of an MMO. Single player game with online features like a subscription fee.
Tor does not even have 500k players left. Maybe less than 300k. There certainly might be more who have stopped playing but have sub time remaining but they certainly are not lplaying. Despite changing their definition of server load twice now to make it look there are more players logged on,ToR, according to Tor Status , is down to having 11 moderately populated US servers (above 1.5) and 2 Euro ones. The rest of the servers are dead or almost dead. Watch ToR status each day and all you see are huge red numbers for each server every day. The amount of subs they are hemoraging is quite amazing. Unless server merges happen soon they will soon be down to 4 or 5 viable servers.
It is a flop but I don't think it should be regarded as a huge flop. There have been much worse games made. Maybe none that cost this much to make. Well no game has been even close to ToR's development costs. But there are some positives. Selling 2 million boxes is quite a feat. But normally a developer only gets 25% of the sale from retailers but because a large portion was direct online sales they would net a larger portion. But still nowhere near to cover their investment. Financially ToR is an epic disaster. But for MMO gamers what was really lost here was potential. With this much money being invested we really should have gotten a game for the ages. In regards to ToRs reputation It seems to be on the road now to being regarded by most as a failure and its servers will likely be deserted quite quickly. Although with SW name it can redeem itself and get a second chance like EQ2 and AO both did after poor releases. But it will be very hard for it to ever gain a positive rep in the MMO community.
You can tell by the amount of free time Bioware keep dishing out. They keep trying to hook more subs, but not enough people are biting, and then offer more free time
The free 30 days to people with level 50 characters is a slap in the face to those taking their time and not hitting 50 on purpose so the game does not end. People who are 50 will come back with 1.2 or not, there was no need to give them a free 30 days for it, as if they do not like the game more time added to the account will not help that, but now those without a 50 will probably quit after this as Bioware have divided the community. Those who have created alts and not reached 50 and been subbing since the start are more loyal than those who who shoot to 50 with one character and then quit, return by Apr 12th and get free 30 days. Bioware are only giving free time to people with level 50s, as they are the ones mainly quitting.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
and a 300M debt on your neck?
Pushing you to release an unfinished product which you wouldn't want to touch personally?
They had the budget, the financial backing, the IP, and well seasoned Development house. All of those factors should have resulted in a game that rivaled WOW if not in total subs, certainly in the terms of features and functionality and they certainly failed to deliver based on those standards.
And you can bet that even if they have retained a million subs a month, there's some folks over at EA/LA that are gnashing their teeth because these folks think BIG, and won't be satisfied with the current numbers.
As a side note, you know a title is sucking air when they give a free 30 days playtime to current subscribers because the game is so sadly lacking in end game content for level 50's to do. See FFXIV for similar situation. Even Rift didn't have to do anything like this in the first 6 months.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I've never been a fan of WoW, but i can't remember WoW Launching end of 2004 with design errors and fundamental missing concepts for the year 2004. WoW had bugs, had crashes but they only need to expand.
WoW didn't have a missing minimap "because people don't need it".
SWTOR? 5 Month's after release they are still catching up, and still lack basic which should have been in at release. Not to mention the bugs and errors and overall Design failures. At best and at the current speed they need at least another 18 Months to get cross server PVP / Balanced Queues, Working illum concept, basic character customization and proper - not perfect - class balance. But then again, SWTOR has fundamental design flaws like giving out heals to every advance class no matter his spec without accounting for that in their balance sheet.
So i expect after the sub drop an half-desperate "overhaul" (nge) and then an utterly faded game (flop) which diwndels till EA shuts it down for the "SWNEW REPUBLIC ADVENTURES" in 2016.
There's an awful lot of apologist logic in your post.
First, it took WoW 2-3 years to get to ~10 million players.
However, if we're going to talk about TOR in its first several months, then you have to compare it to WoW in its first several months. So let's do that.
Blizzard were approaching ~3 million players inside their first months and were still steadily climbing. Can TOR say the same? No.
Blizzard had to stop shipping boxes to stores and have sales stopped because they couldn't keep up with the demand. Can TOR say the same? No.
Blizzard passed their 1 year projections within the first few months, and blew them out of the water. Can TOR say that? No.
TOR hit its peak (the often cited 1.7 mil) and has been, at best, holding steady. It's more likely seeing a decline given the population curve of pretty much every MMO out there. Even WoW follows that same curve, only its growth period lasted years instead of months.
You say BioWare is new to MMOs. So was Blizzard when they developed WoW. Still it became a huge hit, beyond even Blizzard's expectations or preparations, and has truly and undeniably been a genre changer. How do you resolve that?
Further, while I don't recall any such bravado coming out of the Blizzard camp prior to WoW's launch, BioWare had been bragging about how they were going to change the way people played MMOs forever, how they knew what MMO gamers really wanted, etc.
There simply is no comparison between Blizzard's success with WoW and BioWare's success with TOR. On any level.