When i said on TOR forums long before launch that TOR is gonna fail rly hard, ppl laughed well look now guess i was right, next time do smth smart with your money and buy GW2 since it is far superior game than TOR.
I think someone needs to buyout EA asap. How many games and companies are they going to ruin? They need to look at little companies like Trion and take notes.
But how can 1.7 err 1.3 million paying subs not be a significant revenue generator to not make it a priority?
This is not an MMO-only problem. This bottom-line based greed and little focus on quality is happening in every industry in the United States and beyond. Corporate greed is all that matters, while employees are treated like garbage, and the customer is never right. Start getting used to it. The only way it's going to change is if this country finally caves in under the weight of its own futility.
^I agree completely.
To some degree or another I blame the stockmarket, investors and I also blame the corporate suits and especially the accountants.
Bean counters can't put a number to teamwork, trust and customer loyalty. And they sure as hell can't assign a value to an experience, although I am sure they attempt to.
I think someone needs to buyout EA asap. How many games and companies are they going to ruin? They need to look at little companies like Trion and take notes.
Sim City and Generals are next games to be destroyed they are also doing good job on destroying BF3.
When i said on TOR forums long before launch that TOR is gonna fail rly hard, ppl laughed well look now guess i was right, next time do smth smart with your money and buy GW2 since it is far superior game than TOR.
They laughed cause there is always some troll making that claim no matter how good the game is.
thats easy, they don't have that many subs anymore, this article proves what the rest of us have been claiming, that EA has been using Political math (which is a fancy way of saying they lied about the numbers) to keep investors interested. They simply don't have the numbers to sustain it as a major project.
Well that explains the relative silence as of recently from BW on the official TOR forums. Anticdotal evidence points to the TOR team already being split up and re-assigned to different projects.
When i said on TOR forums long before launch that TOR is gonna fail rly hard, ppl laughed well look now guess i was right, next time do smth smart with your money and buy GW2 since it is far superior game than TOR.
They laughed cause there is always some troll making that claim no matter how good the game is.
Your not special.
I explained all the reasons, all they were reapeating was its Bioware its Star Wars it can't fail.....
But how can 1.7 err 1.3 million paying subs not be a significant revenue generator to not make it a priority?
This is not an MMO-only problem. This bottom-line based greed and little focus on quality is happening in every industry in the United States and beyond. Corporate greed is all that matters, while employees are treated like garbage, and the customer is never right. Start getting used to it. The only way it's going to change is if this country finally caves in under the weight of its own futility.
^I agree completely.
To some degree or another I blame the stockmarket, investors and I also blame the corporate suits and especially the accountants.
Bean counters can't put a number to teamwork, trust and customer loyalty. And they sure as hell can't assign a value to an experience, although I am sure they attempt to.
They've turned making a profit into a pure science, and making the customer happy only extends as far as making that profit is concerned. Once investing more time and money into their product to make customers happy begins to cut into profits, they are done. As has been pointed out over and over again, the only mission of a corporation is to make a profit for the shareholders. There is no other mission. Certainly nothing idealogical like making a superior product.
Look at CCP. I don't care for EVE, but those guys are forever taking care of their clients, and when they steer off path, they end up coming back. Show me more MMO companies like this one. EVE may not be huge, but it is a stable and profitable game that has slowly grown over the years.
These new games are designed to get the profits back right away, then die to make room for the next one.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
You definitly hit the nail on the head. Through all the crap, the biggest victim, is Star Wars. How many more time's does an IP need to ge shit on from a mmo game developer. SOE had it mostly right, just needed to fix and update and add more content. What do they do, go for WOW's subs and change's the freaking game, sticking a knife in the heart of the players. Bioware, right off the bat makes a game that plays almost exactly like WOW and is just flat out horrible copy of WOW.
SW does deserve better than this. Maybe in the future a new SW mmorpg can be made by a new dev company. Until then, i think it would be best if TOR dies off and some time passes before that would happen. Right now, dev companies are all still about chasing the WOW subs and anything new from SW in this genre would fail because of that.
I guess we really don't know how much its going to cost either to develop new content for swtor, patches, and xpacs. All the writring, voicework, animations, etc. I guess if it requires too many resources, and is too costly, it won't make the "priority" cut.
But how can 1.7 err 1.3 million paying subs not be a significant revenue generator to not make it a priority?
Because these idiots are still trying to get WoW sub numbers by making run of the mill themepark games. They want 10 million players, and they aren't ever going to get them. They should be concentrating on having several MMOs on the market in live development bringing them a total of 5 million+ players, and keeping players interested for 2+ years.
Corporate suits took over this industry a long time ago and the SWG NGE was the first major indication of it. In the eyes of the corp and the investors, SWTOR is a winner. It will make development and publishing money back and will generate income for years. In their minds, the game is basically done and served its purpose.
This is not an MMO-only problem. This bottom-line based greed and little focus on quality is happening in every industry in the United States and beyond. Corporate greed is all that matters, while employees are treated like garbage, and the customer is never right. Start getting used to it. The only way it's going to change is if this country finally caves in under the weight of its own futility.
Woa there...pull the reins back a bit.
I agree with you that their failure was, primarily, that they tried to go after the same audience WOW caters too.....in an effort to become the new king of the hill with 10 million + subscribers. You're also right in that they aren't going to get them. NOT because SWTOR is a poor quality game.....but because the developers & publisher (EA) failed to understand WHY WOW had those numbers....and WHY every subsequent Themepark MMORPG has failed at duplicating that kind of success.
Again, I agree that the corporate suits have influenced the MMORPG market....but not by shelling out poor quality games. Given the shape that many MMORPGs of legend have launched in, SWTOR is hardly a turd. Where the corporate suits got it wrong was that they seeked to exploit proven practices, while avoiding as much risk as possible. There is this whole "break even analysis" too that keeps large budget MMO projects from being made for smaller niche audiences that have the time, patience, and social capacity to play a game that is deep, challenging, and depends on your cooperation with fellow inhabitants of that world. SWTOR wouldn't be economic for Bioware or EA if it were appealing to the old Ultima Online audience (which topped out around 200k in 2000)
Also, I beg to differ on whether or not EA & investors find this project successful....and a process worth repeating. They may have made their money back....but you don't stay in business very long by tieing up 200+ million dollars in a 2-3 year project that isn't earning you one red cent till launch....just to break even or ink out a narrow profit margin. From an investor's standpoint.....think about all the places you could have invested 200+ million dollars and earned a larger return over a shorter amount of time. It's called opportunity cost. You FOREFIT the all other opportunities with that 200 mill by sticking it in a several year project in a HIGHLY competitive market.
As a matter of fact, I think this will be one of the last large budget + several years in development projects using the themepark model. The market has become too competitive, risky, and fickle to put that kind of money into these kinds of projects. More than likely, I think we will see some of the big corporate players divest out of the MMO market and back into smaller budget gaming experiences.
Originally posted by zevni78 Seriously, I bought the game for xmass and havn't got round to installing it yet, at this rate I worry that by the time i do there will be no one to play with, surreal, and a pity.
Do yourself a favor commander, and return it, get your money back.
When i said on TOR forums long before launch that TOR is gonna fail rly hard, ppl laughed well look now guess i was right, next time do smth smart with your money and buy GW2 since it is far superior game than TOR.
They laughed cause there is always some troll making that claim no matter how good the game is.
Your not special.
I explained all the reasons, all they were reapeating was its Bioware its Star Wars it can't fail.....
Some people just gotta see for themselves I guess.
You would think that, seeing how MMO's are long term investments for companies and players (especially compared to singleplayer games), there would be a better way to preview games than pay to play limited betas.
Because I for one, would love to see companies like EA get burned before they make make their money. In other words, companies can put their money where there mouth is. Some sort of demo game play should be standard PRE Release.
You definitly hit the nail on the head. Through all the crap, the biggest victim, is Star Wars. How many more time's does an IP need to ge shit on from a mmo game developer. SOE had it mostly right, just needed to fix and update and add more content. What do they do, go for WOW's subs and change's the freaking game, sticking a knife in the heart of the players. Bioware, right off the bat makes a game that plays almost exactly like WOW and is just flat out horrible copy of WOW.
SW does deserve better than this. Maybe in the future a new SW mmorpg can be made by a new dev company. Until then, i think it would be best if TOR dies off and some time passes before that would happen. Right now, dev companies are all still about chasing the WOW subs and anything new from SW in this genre would fail because of that.
The problem also is that Lucas doesn't give two shits about his own IP. They told him it would make lots of money, and he signed on. Just like the NGE. Then again, I have no idea how much Lucas made on this project, so maybe he's satisfied not knowing how much a really good Star Wars game *could* make.
Cameron was even worse with Avatar. I think Avatar could make a very interesting MMO, but instead they farmed it out to some "movie-to-game" studio, and killed it before it even released.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
EA treats its titles as a business and this suit just drove the point home for us.
I realize all games are a business, but EA's been famous for only ethusiastically supporting those with a high profit potential.
This statement also went far in confirming that the game isn't generating the revenue that 1.3 million subs would bring, or he'd be a lot more enthusiastic about it.
My guess is paying subs is welll under a million right now, perhap even as low as 500K and they see the bottom dropping out with GW2 and TSW about to launch.
One thing is apparent, we MMO's are a fickle lock, we jump from one title to the next and I'm not sure any game will stem that tide.
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
But how can 1.7 err 1.3 million paying subs not be a significant revenue generator to not make it a priority?
Because these idiots are still trying to get WoW sub numbers by making run of the mill themepark games. They want 10 million players, and they aren't ever going to get them. They should be concentrating on having several MMOs on the market in live development bringing them a total of 5 million+ players, and keeping players interested for 2+ years.
Corporate suits took over this industry a long time ago and the SWG NGE was the first major indication of it. In the eyes of the corp and the investors, SWTOR is a winner. It will make development and publishing money back and will generate income for years. In their minds, the game is basically done and served its purpose.
This is not an MMO-only problem. This bottom-line based greed and little focus on quality is happening in every industry in the United States and beyond. Corporate greed is all that matters, while employees are treated like garbage, and the customer is never right. Start getting used to it. The only way it's going to change is if this country finally caves in under the weight of its own futility.
Woa there...pull the reins back a bit.
I agree with you that their failure was, primarily, that they tried to go after the same audience WOW caters too.....in an effort to become the new king of the hill with 10 million + subscribers. You're also right in that they aren't going to get them. NOT because SWTOR is a poor quality game.....but because the developers & publisher (EA) failed to understand WHY WOW had those numbers....and WHY every subsequent Themepark MMORPG has failed at duplicating that kind of success.
Again, I agree that the corporate suits have influenced the MMORPG market....but not by shelling out poor quality games. Given the shape that many MMORPGs of legend have launched in, SWTOR is hardly a turd. Where the corporate suits got it wrong was that they seeked to exploit proven practices, while avoiding as much risk as possible. There is this whole "break even analysis" too that keeps large budget MMO projects from being made for smaller niche audiences that have the time, patience, and social capacity to play a game that is deep, challenging, and depends on your cooperation with fellow inhabitants of that world. SWTOR wouldn't be economic for Bioware or EA if it were appealing to the old Ultima Online audience (which topped out around 200k in 2000)
Also, I beg to differ on whether or not EA & investors find this project successful....and a process worth repeating. They may have made their money back....but you don't stay in business very long by tieing up 200+ million dollars in a 2-3 year project that isn't earning you one red cent till launch....just to break even or ink out a narrow profit margin. From an investor's standpoint.....think about all the places you could have invested 200+ million dollars and earned a larger return over a shorter amount of time. It's called opportunity cost. You FOREFIT the all other opportunities with that 200 mill by sticking it in a several year project in a HIGHLY competitive market.
As a matter of fact, I think this will be one of the last large budget + several years in development projects using the themepark model. The market has become too competitive, risky, and fickle to put that kind of money into these kinds of projects. More than likely, I think we will see some of the big corporate players divest out of the MMO market and back into smaller budget gaming experiences.
My guess is that it did not cost $200 million to make this game. It has to have gone to fund multiple other projects. Highly inflated overhead to minimize investor returns.
But how can 1.7 err 1.3 million paying subs not be a significant revenue generator to not make it a priority?
Because these idiots are still trying to get WoW sub numbers by making run of the mill themepark games. They want 10 million players, and they aren't ever going to get them. They should be concentrating on having several MMOs on the market in live development bringing them a total of 5 million+ players, and keeping players interested for 2+ years.
Corporate suits took over this industry a long time ago and the SWG NGE was the first major indication of it. In the eyes of the corp and the investors, SWTOR is a winner. It will make development and publishing money back and will generate income for years. In their minds, the game is basically done and served its purpose.
This is not an MMO-only problem. This bottom-line based greed and little focus on quality is happening in every industry in the United States and beyond. Corporate greed is all that matters, while employees are treated like garbage, and the customer is never right. Start getting used to it. The only way it's going to change is if this country finally caves in under the weight of its own futility.
Woa there...pull the reins back a bit.
I agree with you that their failure was, primarily, that they tried to go after the same audience WOW caters too.....in an effort to become the new king of the hill with 10 million + subscribers. You're also right in that they aren't going to get them. NOT because SWTOR is a poor quality game.....but because the developers & publisher (EA) failed to understand WHY WOW had those numbers....and WHY every subsequent Themepark MMORPG has failed at duplicating that kind of success.
Again, I agree that the corporate suits have influenced the MMORPG market....but not by shelling out poor quality games. Given the shape that many MMORPGs of legend have launched in, SWTOR is hardly a turd. Where the corporate suits got it wrong was that they seeked to exploit proven practices, while avoiding as much risk as possible. There is this whole "break even analysis" too that keeps large budget MMO projects from being made for smaller niche audiences that have the time, patience, and social capacity to play a game that is deep, challenging, and depends on your cooperation with fellow inhabitants of that world. SWTOR wouldn't be economic for Bioware or EA if it were appealing to the old Ultima Online audience (which topped out around 200k in 2000)
Also, I beg to differ on whether or not EA & investors find this project successful....and a process worth repeating. They may have made their money back....but you don't stay in business very long by tieing up 200+ million dollars in a 2-3 year project that isn't earning you one red cent till launch....just to break even or ink out a narrow profit margin. From an investor's standpoint.....think about all the places you could have invested 200+ million dollars and earned a larger return over a shorter amount of time. It's called opportunity cost. You FOREFIT the all other opportunities with that 200 mill by sticking it in a several year project in a HIGHLY competitive market.
As a matter of fact, I think this will be one of the last large budget + several years in development projects using the themepark model. The market has become too competitive, risky, and fickle to put that kind of money into these kinds of projects. More than likely, I think we will see some of the big corporate players divest out of the MMO market and back into smaller budget gaming experiences.
So then we agree, EA needs to get out of the MMO business
When i said on TOR forums long before launch that TOR is gonna fail rly hard, ppl laughed well look now guess i was right, next time do smth smart with your money and buy GW2 since it is far superior game than TOR.
They laughed cause there is always some troll making that claim no matter how good the game is.
Your not special.
I explained all the reasons, all they were reapeating was its Bioware its Star Wars it can't fail.....
Some people just gotta see for themselves I guess.
You would think that, seeing how MMO's are long term investments for companies and players (especially compared to singleplayer games), there would be a better way to preview games than pay to play limited betas.
Because I for one, would love to see companies like EA get burned before they make make their money. In other words, companies can put their money where there mouth is. Some sort of demo game play should be standard PRE Release.
I think if you look at the data for the MMORPG industry....you're finding that more and more gamers within the MMORPG genere are become more fickle in what gets their attention for entertainment. Aside from some really special games....most MMORPG gamers don't spend 3-4+ years @ 2-4 hours a day anymore. They are playing several games at a time.....and only spending 30-60 minutes in game at a time.
The CEO of Blizzard / Activision said that they are at competition with facebook games....and people laughed at him. Farmville isn't going to overtake WOW in the MMO space.....what the CEO was getting at is that the modern MMO audience is more of a "general run of the mill" gamer than the specific group of gamers that had the time, patience & want to socialize in a virtual world that used to play MMORPGs. The traditional MMO gamer doesn't moonlight with Plants vs. Zombies while playing their MMO of choice. The modern MMO gamer does.
I think we see the kind of trial period system you describe for many MMOs.....it just doesnt' happen until most of the bills from development have been paid. It's a burdon of having spent several millions of dollars on a MMO game where investors want their return ASAP. Maybe some smaller projects can get away with that.
You definitly hit the nail on the head. Through all the crap, the biggest victim, is Star Wars. How many more time's does an IP need to ge shit on from a mmo game developer. SOE had it mostly right, just needed to fix and update and add more content. What do they do, go for WOW's subs and change's the freaking game, sticking a knife in the heart of the players. Bioware, right off the bat makes a game that plays almost exactly like WOW and is just flat out horrible copy of WOW.
SW does deserve better than this. Maybe in the future a new SW mmorpg can be made by a new dev company. Until then, i think it would be best if TOR dies off and some time passes before that would happen. Right now, dev companies are all still about chasing the WOW subs and anything new from SW in this genre would fail because of that.
The problem also is that Lucas doesn't give two shits about his own IP. They told him it would make lots of money, and he signed on. Just like the NGE. Then again, I have no idea how much Lucas made on this project, so maybe he's satisfied not knowing how much a really good Star Wars game *could* make.
Cameron was even worse with Avatar. I think Avatar could make a very interesting MMO, but instead they farmed it out to some "movie-to-game" studio, and killed it before it even released.
I don't think GL really cares or keeps up with this part of his empire, so too speak. I mean, i can't imagine he is the one to say yes or no to what type of video game is being made that uses the SW IP. The man created and made his riches off the IP and i'm pretty sure that it is still his baby, just not in this part of the business.
Let me rephrase what i said a bit. I don't think SW deserves better than this, because the SW IP is not failing. SW fans/mmo fans deserve better than this. Two major mmorpg's that have used the SW IP have failed. One from their own self inflicted wound and the other from not having the foresight and imagination to create a innovative SW mmo that didn't copy WOW.
But how can 1.7 err 1.3 million paying subs not be a significant revenue generator to not make it a priority?
Because these idiots are still trying to get WoW sub numbers by making run of the mill themepark games. They want 10 million players, and they aren't ever going to get them. They should be concentrating on having several MMOs on the market in live development bringing them a total of 5 million+ players, and keeping players interested for 2+ years.
Corporate suits took over this industry a long time ago and the SWG NGE was the first major indication of it. In the eyes of the corp and the investors, SWTOR is a winner. It will make development and publishing money back and will generate income for years. In their minds, the game is basically done and served its purpose.
This is not an MMO-only problem. This bottom-line based greed and little focus on quality is happening in every industry in the United States and beyond. Corporate greed is all that matters, while employees are treated like garbage, and the customer is never right. Start getting used to it. The only way it's going to change is if this country finally caves in under the weight of its own futility.
Woa there...pull the reins back a bit.
I agree with you that their failure was, primarily, that they tried to go after the same audience WOW caters too.....in an effort to become the new king of the hill with 10 million + subscribers. You're also right in that they aren't going to get them. NOT because SWTOR is a poor quality game.....but because the developers & publisher (EA) failed to understand WHY WOW had those numbers....and WHY every subsequent Themepark MMORPG has failed at duplicating that kind of success.
Again, I agree that the corporate suits have influenced the MMORPG market....but not by shelling out poor quality games. Given the shape that many MMORPGs of legend have launched in, SWTOR is hardly a turd. Where the corporate suits got it wrong was that they seeked to exploit proven practices, while avoiding as much risk as possible. There is this whole "break even analysis" too that keeps large budget MMO projects from being made for smaller niche audiences that have the time, patience, and social capacity to play a game that is deep, challenging, and depends on your cooperation with fellow inhabitants of that world. SWTOR wouldn't be economic for Bioware or EA if it were appealing to the old Ultima Online audience (which topped out around 200k in 2000)
Also, I beg to differ on whether or not EA & investors find this project successful....and a process worth repeating. They may have made their money back....but you don't stay in business very long by tieing up 200+ million dollars in a 2-3 year project that isn't earning you one red cent till launch....just to break even or ink out a narrow profit margin. From an investor's standpoint.....think about all the places you could have invested 200+ million dollars and earned a larger return over a shorter amount of time. It's called opportunity cost. You FOREFIT the all other opportunities with that 200 mill by sticking it in a several year project in a HIGHLY competitive market.
As a matter of fact, I think this will be one of the last large budget + several years in development projects using the themepark model. The market has become too competitive, risky, and fickle to put that kind of money into these kinds of projects. More than likely, I think we will see some of the big corporate players divest out of the MMO market and back into smaller budget gaming experiences.
You can't look at year 2000 sub numbers and compare them today. WoW changed the whole face of the market and brough in tens of millions of people who are now at least casually interested in MMO's. There's a good chance we won't see another 10+ million player game again, and if we do, they will be anomalies that are a decade or more apart in frequency. This means that there is a much larger player base out there today, and plenty of room for multiple successful games.
I agree that they are going with "proven" models, but the problem is that those models were never, ever a static target in the first place. Video games live and die on innovation and evolution with very few exceptions. To expect that the larger gaming population was just going to be fine with the same games cranked out year after year was just stupid. In my mind, there are only a few companies out there that really get it, such as CCP and ArenaNet. CCP may not be huge, but they know their niche market and are making good money and keeping that game fresh year after year.
As far as repeating this process, I do believe that the market is finally starting to speak with their money. Though, even if SWTOR has 800k players and has already made its money, back, it's still doing quite well. Not well enough to deserve the investment money they locked down, but still very profitable.
In my opinion, the best thing that could happen to this genre of games would be for major investors to abandon it, and let us get back to MMO games that are built by and for gamers. They may not look as pretty, but they will end up being far more interesting over their lifetime. Right now players have zero say in these games, and no matter what they want, they get whatever the suits think is best.
Frankly, I'm surprised at Ragnar with TSW. He must have know that his followers were looking for more than just another story-driven themepark, yet that is what he is delivering. I wonder if this was his idea, or if his hand was forced by suits.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
When i said on TOR forums long before launch that TOR is gonna fail rly hard, ppl laughed well look now guess i was right, next time do smth smart with your money and buy GW2 since it is far superior game than TOR.
They laughed cause there is always some troll making that claim no matter how good the game is.
Your not special.
I explained all the reasons, all they were reapeating was its Bioware its Star Wars it can't fail.....
Some people just gotta see for themselves I guess.
You would think that, seeing how MMO's are long term investments for companies and players (especially compared to singleplayer games), there would be a better way to preview games than pay to play limited betas.
Because I for one, would love to see companies like EA get burned before they make make their money. In other words, companies can put their money where there mouth is. Some sort of demo game play should be standard PRE Release.
I think if you look at the data for the MMORPG industry....you're finding that more and more gamers within the MMORPG genere are become more fickle in what gets their attention for entertainment. Aside from some really special games....most MMORPG gamers don't spend 3-4+ years @ 2-4 hours a day anymore. They are playing several games at a time.....and only spending 30-60 minutes in game at a time.
...
I think its also because we have esentially played the same game, with different skins, and a little "twist" here and there, for over a decade now. Sure at first we could spend 3-4+ years in a single game, but how could that possibly hold our attention more than a few months now?
And then when you compare a typical non-mmo game to 2-3month modern mmo, what do you get for your value? You might play both for a month or two, but at least with the non-mmo game you can pick it up again without having to resub. Granted this is changing with newer games like CoD/BF3 introducing subs.
Comments
When i said on TOR forums long before launch that TOR is gonna fail rly hard, ppl laughed well look now guess i was right, next time do smth smart with your money and buy GW2 since it is far superior game than TOR.
Star Wars deserves more than this.
Smth like this? SW as we knew it is dead, Gorge Lucas will do anything to squize all money out of it...
I think someone needs to buyout EA asap. How many games and companies are they going to ruin? They need to look at little companies like Trion and take notes.
^I agree completely.
To some degree or another I blame the stockmarket, investors and I also blame the corporate suits and especially the accountants.
Bean counters can't put a number to teamwork, trust and customer loyalty. And they sure as hell can't assign a value to an experience, although I am sure they attempt to.
Sim City and Generals are next games to be destroyed they are also doing good job on destroying BF3.
They laughed cause there is always some troll making that claim no matter how good the game is.
Your not special.
thats easy, they don't have that many subs anymore, this article proves what the rest of us have been claiming, that EA has been using Political math (which is a fancy way of saying they lied about the numbers) to keep investors interested. They simply don't have the numbers to sustain it as a major project.
Well that explains the relative silence as of recently from BW on the official TOR forums. Anticdotal evidence points to the TOR team already being split up and re-assigned to different projects.
I explained all the reasons, all they were reapeating was its Bioware its Star Wars it can't fail.....
i lol'd
They've turned making a profit into a pure science, and making the customer happy only extends as far as making that profit is concerned. Once investing more time and money into their product to make customers happy begins to cut into profits, they are done. As has been pointed out over and over again, the only mission of a corporation is to make a profit for the shareholders. There is no other mission. Certainly nothing idealogical like making a superior product.
Look at CCP. I don't care for EVE, but those guys are forever taking care of their clients, and when they steer off path, they end up coming back. Show me more MMO companies like this one. EVE may not be huge, but it is a stable and profitable game that has slowly grown over the years.
These new games are designed to get the profits back right away, then die to make room for the next one.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
You definitly hit the nail on the head. Through all the crap, the biggest victim, is Star Wars. How many more time's does an IP need to ge shit on from a mmo game developer. SOE had it mostly right, just needed to fix and update and add more content. What do they do, go for WOW's subs and change's the freaking game, sticking a knife in the heart of the players. Bioware, right off the bat makes a game that plays almost exactly like WOW and is just flat out horrible copy of WOW.
SW does deserve better than this. Maybe in the future a new SW mmorpg can be made by a new dev company. Until then, i think it would be best if TOR dies off and some time passes before that would happen. Right now, dev companies are all still about chasing the WOW subs and anything new from SW in this genre would fail because of that.
I guess we really don't know how much its going to cost either to develop new content for swtor, patches, and xpacs. All the writring, voicework, animations, etc. I guess if it requires too many resources, and is too costly, it won't make the "priority" cut.
Woa there...pull the reins back a bit.
I agree with you that their failure was, primarily, that they tried to go after the same audience WOW caters too.....in an effort to become the new king of the hill with 10 million + subscribers. You're also right in that they aren't going to get them. NOT because SWTOR is a poor quality game.....but because the developers & publisher (EA) failed to understand WHY WOW had those numbers....and WHY every subsequent Themepark MMORPG has failed at duplicating that kind of success.
Again, I agree that the corporate suits have influenced the MMORPG market....but not by shelling out poor quality games. Given the shape that many MMORPGs of legend have launched in, SWTOR is hardly a turd. Where the corporate suits got it wrong was that they seeked to exploit proven practices, while avoiding as much risk as possible. There is this whole "break even analysis" too that keeps large budget MMO projects from being made for smaller niche audiences that have the time, patience, and social capacity to play a game that is deep, challenging, and depends on your cooperation with fellow inhabitants of that world. SWTOR wouldn't be economic for Bioware or EA if it were appealing to the old Ultima Online audience (which topped out around 200k in 2000)
Also, I beg to differ on whether or not EA & investors find this project successful....and a process worth repeating. They may have made their money back....but you don't stay in business very long by tieing up 200+ million dollars in a 2-3 year project that isn't earning you one red cent till launch....just to break even or ink out a narrow profit margin. From an investor's standpoint.....think about all the places you could have invested 200+ million dollars and earned a larger return over a shorter amount of time. It's called opportunity cost. You FOREFIT the all other opportunities with that 200 mill by sticking it in a several year project in a HIGHLY competitive market.
As a matter of fact, I think this will be one of the last large budget + several years in development projects using the themepark model. The market has become too competitive, risky, and fickle to put that kind of money into these kinds of projects. More than likely, I think we will see some of the big corporate players divest out of the MMO market and back into smaller budget gaming experiences.
Do yourself a favor commander, and return it, get your money back.
Some people just gotta see for themselves I guess.
You would think that, seeing how MMO's are long term investments for companies and players (especially compared to singleplayer games), there would be a better way to preview games than pay to play limited betas.
Because I for one, would love to see companies like EA get burned before they make make their money. In other words, companies can put their money where there mouth is. Some sort of demo game play should be standard PRE Release.
The problem also is that Lucas doesn't give two shits about his own IP. They told him it would make lots of money, and he signed on. Just like the NGE. Then again, I have no idea how much Lucas made on this project, so maybe he's satisfied not knowing how much a really good Star Wars game *could* make.
Cameron was even worse with Avatar. I think Avatar could make a very interesting MMO, but instead they farmed it out to some "movie-to-game" studio, and killed it before it even released.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
EA treats its titles as a business and this suit just drove the point home for us.
I realize all games are a business, but EA's been famous for only ethusiastically supporting those with a high profit potential.
This statement also went far in confirming that the game isn't generating the revenue that 1.3 million subs would bring, or he'd be a lot more enthusiastic about it.
My guess is paying subs is welll under a million right now, perhap even as low as 500K and they see the bottom dropping out with GW2 and TSW about to launch.
One thing is apparent, we MMO's are a fickle lock, we jump from one title to the next and I'm not sure any game will stem that tide.
"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
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
My guess is that it did not cost $200 million to make this game. It has to have gone to fund multiple other projects. Highly inflated overhead to minimize investor returns.
So then we agree, EA needs to get out of the MMO business
I think if you look at the data for the MMORPG industry....you're finding that more and more gamers within the MMORPG genere are become more fickle in what gets their attention for entertainment. Aside from some really special games....most MMORPG gamers don't spend 3-4+ years @ 2-4 hours a day anymore. They are playing several games at a time.....and only spending 30-60 minutes in game at a time.
The CEO of Blizzard / Activision said that they are at competition with facebook games....and people laughed at him. Farmville isn't going to overtake WOW in the MMO space.....what the CEO was getting at is that the modern MMO audience is more of a "general run of the mill" gamer than the specific group of gamers that had the time, patience & want to socialize in a virtual world that used to play MMORPGs. The traditional MMO gamer doesn't moonlight with Plants vs. Zombies while playing their MMO of choice. The modern MMO gamer does.
I think we see the kind of trial period system you describe for many MMOs.....it just doesnt' happen until most of the bills from development have been paid. It's a burdon of having spent several millions of dollars on a MMO game where investors want their return ASAP. Maybe some smaller projects can get away with that.
I don't think GL really cares or keeps up with this part of his empire, so too speak. I mean, i can't imagine he is the one to say yes or no to what type of video game is being made that uses the SW IP. The man created and made his riches off the IP and i'm pretty sure that it is still his baby, just not in this part of the business.
Let me rephrase what i said a bit. I don't think SW deserves better than this, because the SW IP is not failing. SW fans/mmo fans deserve better than this. Two major mmorpg's that have used the SW IP have failed. One from their own self inflicted wound and the other from not having the foresight and imagination to create a innovative SW mmo that didn't copy WOW.
You can't look at year 2000 sub numbers and compare them today. WoW changed the whole face of the market and brough in tens of millions of people who are now at least casually interested in MMO's. There's a good chance we won't see another 10+ million player game again, and if we do, they will be anomalies that are a decade or more apart in frequency. This means that there is a much larger player base out there today, and plenty of room for multiple successful games.
I agree that they are going with "proven" models, but the problem is that those models were never, ever a static target in the first place. Video games live and die on innovation and evolution with very few exceptions. To expect that the larger gaming population was just going to be fine with the same games cranked out year after year was just stupid. In my mind, there are only a few companies out there that really get it, such as CCP and ArenaNet. CCP may not be huge, but they know their niche market and are making good money and keeping that game fresh year after year.
As far as repeating this process, I do believe that the market is finally starting to speak with their money. Though, even if SWTOR has 800k players and has already made its money, back, it's still doing quite well. Not well enough to deserve the investment money they locked down, but still very profitable.
In my opinion, the best thing that could happen to this genre of games would be for major investors to abandon it, and let us get back to MMO games that are built by and for gamers. They may not look as pretty, but they will end up being far more interesting over their lifetime. Right now players have zero say in these games, and no matter what they want, they get whatever the suits think is best.
Frankly, I'm surprised at Ragnar with TSW. He must have know that his followers were looking for more than just another story-driven themepark, yet that is what he is delivering. I wonder if this was his idea, or if his hand was forced by suits.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I think its also because we have esentially played the same game, with different skins, and a little "twist" here and there, for over a decade now. Sure at first we could spend 3-4+ years in a single game, but how could that possibly hold our attention more than a few months now?
And then when you compare a typical non-mmo game to 2-3month modern mmo, what do you get for your value? You might play both for a month or two, but at least with the non-mmo game you can pick it up again without having to resub. Granted this is changing with newer games like CoD/BF3 introducing subs.