A statement like this coming from you I am not at all suprised. Such a coward statement to say the least.
You have rolling out the shit carpet trying rub peoples nose in it, even before the game was released and you even bought the game. Man it stinks in here.
Between you and Teala, thank you for showing us a better way of how we can be so insensitive.
A company took a risk to ENTERTAIN many people, it didn't entertain you. I'm glad they took your money. Next game, I'm sure it will be more of the same.
company saw wow's sub's and wanted to make the big $$$ the end result is SWTOR a game made to leech money from people capitalizing off two big names and offering very little in innovation other than VO and really waisting such a huge IP with such incredible potential imho.. guess you enjoy it but to me this game really represents everything that has gone wrong in this industry since wows release but I'm glad the next two games I'm going to play are not like you say "more of the same" but to each their own i suppose
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
not sadly that was more logic since release but its funny how they fired so many so Bioware can keep the few buck that they are stealing by this game wish mean 4-6 month no more this game will be f2p .
and then again its just mi opinion no troll or anything just the reality
A statement like this coming from you I am not at all suprised. Such a coward statement to say the least.
You have rolling out the shit carpet trying rub peoples nose in it, even before the game was released and you even bought the game. Man it stinks in here.
Between you and Teala, thank you for showing us a better way of how we can be so insensitive.
A company took a risk to ENTERTAIN many people, it didn't entertain you. I'm glad they took your money. Next game, I'm sure it will be more of the same.
company saw wow's sub's and wanted to make the big $$$ the end result is SWTOR a game made to leech money from people capitalizing off to big names and offering very little in innovation other than VO and really waisting such a huge IP with such incredible potential imho.. guess you enjoy it but to me this game really represents everything that has gone wrong in this industry since wows release but I'm glad the next two games I'm going to play are not like you say "more of the same" but to each their own i suppose
I must have been misinformed this whole time!
Thank you for taking the time to educating me on what the companies agenda was! It's not like it wasn't fucking obvious. Just about most companies who have or tries to rival WoW.
i wouldn't jump the gun too much. This is to be expected the game had a huge development staff.
sells a ton of copies 2 mil, half of those 2 mil are supposedly left. 100,000 subs is still alot and more than likely alot of the qa staff and probably some artists are gone. I wouldn't look to hard into it, its expected when your game declines after launch rather than grows.
SWTOR despite being a pile of cr@p will still hold enough altaholics for a while since that's all the game is good for.
This is sad, always sad when people lose their jobs.
But I have to say...I really saw this coming from before SWTOR was even released in December. Back then I said that the game would sell well initially, but really start to fall apart within 6 months. And well...it's been about six months and look where we are.
IMO, this game died on the design table. It just is not designed for long-term appeal. It hung all its hope on "story" and hoped that people would want to play the same stories over and over again for years.
And I'm sorry, that's just a bad idea. Watching what is essentially a "rerun" is not what draws people back to playing video games over and over. Scripted storylines have like 0 replayability. I just found it baffling that they would base their MMORPG heavily around them.
If anything, I think SWTOR teaches us a lesson that we have learned with WAR, Rift, and Aion already...
Copying WoW and over-themeparkizing your game is a BAD idea.
In short, I can't agree more. I can't understand how these companies can't work out the essence of an MMO. If I want an in-depth storyline to immerse myself in, then I will buy a single title and enjoy all the addons that can give me as a solo player.
I play MMO's because I want to play in a massive online world with thousands of other players and although I do enjoy a storyline, I am looking for an environment driven by players. e.g. EVE. After 1 month in SWTOR I realised I was playing a very sub par single player game with kill 10 rat missions.
EVE had me subbed for 6 years. Look at the development cost of both titles and the profit they made from me.
same people. people on the dev teams of the project or something else?
The two people they needed to get rid of from what people have told me is the lead developer and the pvp developer for their complete disregard concerning the balance issues and the problems with classes, and for generally not listening to their public.
not sadly that was more logic since release but its funny how they fired so many so Bioware can keep the few buck that they are stealing by this game wish mean 4-6 month no more this game will be f2p .
and then again its just mi opinion no troll or anything just the reality
It's pretty much the only way i would ever play, to me they really didn't put enough into it to make it necessary or right to pay a monthly fee to play this title. If they put more content into the game instead of the age old raid and party dungeons then i and many like me would be more interested. I'm not interested in playing Space WoW sorry, WoW became stagnant for the same reasons, it was a lobby game at the end and that's just plain boring and not worth the money at this point imo.
Guess they wont have those 500k subs to break even. This is scenario that was most likely for SWTOR. Start layoffs/reducing costs until game becomes profitable. Though where will it stop it remains to be seen (*cough* Vanguard*cough*WH*cough*)
Ah well. Sad to see SWTOR turned up like it did, BW+SW had potential, but since they took easy and lazy "clone WoW" route, serves them right.
I wonder if Diablo 3 was a deciding factor in the layoffs? It's been noted that D3 has caused a slight noticable decline in WoW amongst other games at launch, from personal observations.
D3, at least for the time being, has sucked dry a huge playerbase from tonnes of games and it is not just here, in Korea its crazy, everyone is playing D3.
However I do not think D3 is long lasting, people will start to play it less and less once theyve beaten it, especially without PvP.
I wonder if Diablo 3 was a deciding factor in the layoffs? It's been noted that D3 has caused a slight noticable decline in WoW amongst other games at launch, from personal observations.
D3, at least for the time being, has sucked dry a huge playerbase from tonnes of games and it is not just here, in Korea its crazy, everyone is playing D3.
However I do not think D3 is long lasting, people will start to play it less and less once theyve beaten it, especially without PvP.
You are absolutely right. D3 does not have enough to hold people more than a month or two, I am almost bored already. However with the weather heating up who is to say once that time has passed plus a few beers in the garden and bbqs that gamers will return to their old games.
In my view I don't think swtor is worth a return when by that time has elapsed, TSW will be launched, GW2 will (almost) be here, MOP is ever closer and then the pvp patch for diablo 3.
If diablo 3 provides a basic lobby to chat to friends, you can come and go as you please and it provides you with a couple of hours entertainment every now and then. My question is Why pay a subscription for that service?
Im barking up the wrong tree anyway as of late Im more and more diving away from raiding games and more and more looking for a good rvr feel.
I dont want to grind loot or gear in hamster mazes I want to melt faces with my friends with freakin lazer beam sharks.
I wonder if Diablo 3 was a deciding factor in the layoffs? It's been noted that D3 has caused a slight noticable decline in WoW amongst other games at launch, from personal observations.
D3, at least for the time being, has sucked dry a huge playerbase from tonnes of games and it is not just here, in Korea its crazy, everyone is playing D3.
However I do not think D3 is long lasting, people will start to play it less and less once theyve beaten it, especially without PvP.
You are absolutely right. D3 does not have enough to hold people more than a month or two, I am almost bored already. However with the weather heating up who is to say once that time has passed plus a few beers in the garden and bbqs that gamers will return to their old games.
In my view I don't think swtor is worth a return when by that time has elapsed, TSW will be launched, GW2 will (almost) be here, MOP is ever closer and then the pvp patch for diablo 3.
If diablo 3 provides a basic lobby to chat to friends, you can come and go as you please and it provides you with a couple of hours entertainment every now and then. My question is Why pay a subscription for that service?
Im barking up the wrong tree anyway as of late Im more and more diving away from raiding games and more and more looking for a good rvr feel.
I dont want to grind loot or gear in hamster mazes I want to melt faces with my friends with freakin lazer beam sharks.
GW2 may take another chunk from SWTOR, in fact, I would almost bet on it. I quite SWTOR knowing TSW and GW2 was coming out and I figure there was no point wasting 2 months of subbing, so I am cruising with single player games until I can sus out the above two. If they don't work I will probably dive into another single player, not return to SWTOR because they can't change it enough.
If SWTOR had been launched as KotR3 with co-op elements I don't believe that staff being redeployed or let go would have surprised anyone. Single player game is finished, team is redeployed.
This is not simply a post-launch reduction. SWTOR had an OK - not stellar but OK - launch as far as bugs etc. go. There was no huge influx of people to fix things up - there were things an mmo really should have had that were missing but it wasn't a disaster. People who were no longer needed will have been let go at this point or even earlier.
Going forward it was all about new content, new features - hence Olsen's earlier statements, the talk of moving the DO folks onto SWTOR. New stuff to hold the subscribers who - and maybe one should quote Activision Blizzard here - are burning through content faster than ever.
Subscribers were supposed to play every class to 50. Fine maybe if all those quests had been different. But collect 10 red gems for the bod who likes red is no different from collect 10 green gems for the bod that likes green. That is not 2 quests. EA Bioware needed new content.
So what is being cut is ly going to be future development. Not this years - because that started way back - but the Christmas 2013 stuff. Instead of 4 big content patches a year there may now be 2 or 1 (still presented in 4 chunks naturally).
As an mmo SWTOR doesn't cut it. And EA Bioware held onto the design team in the expectation that as an mmo SWTOR would makes lots and lots of money. fff
Maintenance mod comes soon, exact same things are happening as with WAR. I am glad my prediciton was true, guess many TOR fanboys who flamed me all the time will now realise that TOR is going downhill fast.
This will actually be good for MMORPG genre, devs will realise they cant make lame WoW clones anymore and begin to innovate.
I just hope ppl learened their lesson and wont give money anymore to EA after all its we / you (since i m not buying their games) who keep EA and its crappy games alive.
Success or failure your arguement still does't explain how there are still folks who still find the enjoyment playing the game. It's our invesment, time and money, this goes for the next MMO many of choose to pick up.
That is, of course, not the point of the argument. The point of the argument is not whether you personally find the game enjoyable. But whether the game made good on it's investment from an economic standpoint as well as a market penetration and longevity standpoint.
It's not making good on it's investment. I tire of hitting people over the accounting, but sales at retail doesn't tell you anything since the vast majority of the games are sold at wholesales. And even that doesn't tell you about profit because you still have to factor in costs which include LucasArts 30% publisher royalty, the $35+ million advertising campaign, etc. So, if your going to assert it's paid it's $250 million cost back, you're gonna have to do the full-accounting thing and not just spew out the typical "it sold 2 million copies, $120 million for EA take that haters" garbage.
Initial market penetration was great. However, it's clearly shrinking and is barely holding of Aion in active user base. It is up to you to explain, rationally, why it's lost 5/6th of the XFire gamers. It's up to you to explain why the server population is now in 'light' stauts (utilization) 95% of the time. That's way up since March's 50% light utilzation time...
Yeah, you like it. Good for you. SWG still had 50K subs as late as 2010.
Success or failure your arguement still does't explain how there are still folks who still find the enjoyment playing the game. It's our invesment, time and money, this goes for the next MMO many of choose to pick up.
What does some people enjoying the game have to do with ANYTHING?
Horizons, arguably the single worst MMO ever made which had a very very SMALL lifespan still have a few people playing it the day it shut down...every MMO ever made that has been shutdown still had SOME people playing it and enjoying it.
Their having fun, had nothing to do with the failure of the game....the company, how they made the game, how they updated the game, their plans for the game all had to do with its failures.
If anything, those enjoying the game the most are defending the game BLINDLY and are contributing to the failure of the game because they are lowering the chances the game maker actually takes notices of what is either keeping people from buying the game or making players leave.
Stop fighting with people trying to make the [mod edit] game better just because YOU like whats already in the thing...you make no damn sense....people are trying to get MORE ADDED TO THE GAME YOU LIKE!
lol...jebus
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
It's amazing how the fanboys still defend this game. They will still defend this game when it becomes free 2 play soon. Fanboys will still defend it when it gets shut down like other EA MMO's.
Hopefully this is just the beginning. I hope the majority of employees at Bioware- Austin are out of work and eating out of a garbage dumpster by year's end.
I have no sympathy since these jerks along with their masters at EA deliberately misled and ripped off the public to the tune of tens of millions.
Hopefully this is just the beginning. I hope the majority of employees at Bioware- Austin are out of work and eating out of a garbage dumpster by year's end.
I have no sympathy since these jerks along with their masters at EA deliberately misled and ripped off the public to the tune of tens of millions.
Sorry, but if your boss tells you to do something this way and not that way, then you do it this way or you're gone. The people getting laid off do probably not deserve to be eating out of dumpsters. The only ones that would deserve that are the overpaid leads that are clueless or incompetent or both. They of course have raked in so many dollars that they won't have to eat out of a dumpster ever.
I don not think that the people getting laid off are jerks. You make it sound like you haven't worked for a boss even a single day in your life and have no idea what you're talking about.
Hopefully this is just the beginning. I hope the majority of employees at Bioware- Austin are out of work and eating out of a garbage dumpster by year's end.
I have no sympathy since these jerks along with their masters at EA deliberately misled and ripped off the public to the tune of tens of millions.
Sorry, but if your boss tells you to do something this way and not that way, then you do it this way or you're gone. The people getting laid off do probably not deserve to be eating out of dumpsters. The only ones that would deserve that are the overpaid leads that are clueless or incompetent or both. They of course have raked in so many dollars that they won't have to eat out of a dumpster ever.
I don not think that the people getting laid off are jerks. You make it sound like you haven't worked for a boss even a single day in your life and have no idea what you're talking about.
Exactly. I don't like McDonalds, but I don't hope that every person that works there long hours for crappy pay deserves to be fired. Geez, some people here really need to step out of their little fantasy lands and wake up to reality.
This will actually be good for MMORPG genre, devs will realise they cant make lame WoW clones anymore and begin to innovate.
huh? because gw2 innovate the mmo genre?
gw2 is a warhammer-rift clone
its awesome bashing games we dont like but to do that u need to bash the flaws of ur own game.
gw2 brings nothing new to the table everything is deja vu except the trinity wich seriously the hardcore wont like it.
You really wanted to smash GW2. He didn't mention anything about GW2.
lol
1 check signature
2 check history post
3 check how he embrace gw2
4 do some research before trying to act cool captain obvious kkthxbb
I just hope you're not one of the boisterous hypocrites who continually rages about GW2 invading other games' threads, when you're more than eager to introduce it yourself. No worries though. You certainly wouldn't be the only one throwing lit matches at pools of gasoline, then crying foul when the thread starts to burn.
Hopefully this is just the beginning. I hope the majority of employees at Bioware- Austin are out of work and eating out of a garbage dumpster by year's end.
I have no sympathy since these jerks along with their masters at EA deliberately misled and ripped off the public to the tune of tens of millions.
Sorry, but if your boss tells you to do something this way and not that way, then you do it this way or you're gone. The people getting laid off do probably not deserve to be eating out of dumpsters. The only ones that would deserve that are the overpaid leads that are clueless or incompetent or both. They of course have raked in so many dollars that they won't have to eat out of a dumpster ever.
I don not think that the people getting laid off are jerks. You make it sound like you haven't worked for a boss even a single day in your life and have no idea what you're talking about.
Exactly. I don't like McDonalds, but I don't hope that every person that works there long hours for crappy pay deserves to be fired. Geez, some people here really need to step out of their little fantasy lands and wake up to reality.
Its horrible to see the little guys lose their jobs because the suits over at EA havent come to terms with the fact they cant handle MMOs...how many failures until they accept that fact ? stick to EA sports and stop making MMOs and stop buying great studios and running them in the ground. In short EA -- GO TO HELL AND STAY THERE.
The real problem is companies like EA are shooting for massive success and are unwilling to truly support anything less. TOR's major issue lies in longevity, you don't fix that problem by reducing staff, you fix it by throwing all available hands at it.
The problem is clear here, it's not the game that is the problem it's EA and the Suits in charge. When they're saying things like TOR isn't a developmental priority, it shows they weren't in this for the long haul to begin with.
TOR could be a good MMO, if they wanted to take the time to make it so, they don't. Last word they still had close to a million or so subs. That's not enough for EA, which means I personally will never touch an MMO they put out again. It will be the same song and dance every time no matter the design. If it doesn't put them in the TOP spot, they don't give a rats ass about it.
I disagree that the problem here lies with EA. Believe me, I'm not one of their fans. To me, they are the antichrist of gaming. But THEY didn't design a game that uses concepts that could only work in a one-off, single player game. The massive reliance on story as an engine driving this game as an MMO was a fundamental flaw. Story can't sustain long-term interest because it is, in itself, a short-term hook. Once you've gone through the story, that's it. Time to put it on the shelf and move on to a new one.
So they put most of their emphasis on delivering a great story, which apparently they succeeded at, but didn't bother putting the same amount of effort and resources into the one thing that *is* able to sustain an MMO over the long-term, and that's the gameplay. Instead, they lifted much of it from a convenient and already successful source, that being WoW, expecting that the bulk of the design work had already been done for them. Kind of like a company purchasing the license for a graphics engine rather than spend the money and time to do it in-house.
EA at least threw the money at the game to ensure that the it's name was on everyone's lips and succeeded in making it the biggest launch in MMO history. It was the game itself, which was Bioware's responsibility, that didn't deliver.
I have a laundry list of crimes against games that I think EA should be held accountable for, but SWTOR ain't one of them. Bioware erred. They didn't understand MMOs and they didn't understand MMO gamers. They brought a product to market that was ill-suited for the target audience and it's decline was inevitable. It doesn't matter how much more money gets poured into this project, it won't fix the core problems because they are so deeply ingrained into the design. It would require an NGE level overhaul, and that's just never going to happen.
Despite it all, the game isn't going to fail. The IP is strong enough and it's polished enough that it should be able to keep itself going indefinitely, albeit with much more moderate success indicators than what was expected. However, if they'd done it right, yeah, it absolutely could have been a WoW-killer. It had everything going for it but one small thing: developers with enough balls to leave their single-player roots behind and go for broke in a new universe. Unless they took their marching orders from EA when it involved concept and design, responsibility for the game's decline is all Bioware's.
I disagree that the problem here lies with EA. Believe me, I'm not one of their fans. To me, they are the antichrist of gaming. But THEY didn't design a game that uses concepts that could only work in a one-off, single player game. The massive reliance on story as an engine driving this game as an MMO was a fundamental flaw. Story can't sustain long-term interest because it is, in itself, a short-term hook. Once you've gone through the story, that's it. Time to put it on the shelf and move on to a new one.
It is a combination of the two. Bioware is not a standalone company, they are owned by EA as well as funded by them and has been mentioned time and time again by developers that worked on various MMOs ong after they left...the suits do have a hand in directing where a game can go.
And I have said it before and I will say it again. The very core of SWTOR screams that it was started as KOTOR 3 and was later pushed into being an MMORPG.
There is not a single core aspect of that game that is not single player game in design.
So, part Bioware's fault...and part EAs fault.
The only thing any of us are SURE of is that some of the design team...are CLUELESS about RPGs let alone MMORPGs...the entire legacy system smacks of WTFstupid not to mention rewarding social RPing gear for massive group farming of social points.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
Comments
company saw wow's sub's and wanted to make the big $$$ the end result is SWTOR a game made to leech money from people capitalizing off two big names and offering very little in innovation other than VO and really waisting such a huge IP with such incredible potential imho.. guess you enjoy it but to me this game really represents everything that has gone wrong in this industry since wows release but I'm glad the next two games I'm going to play are not like you say "more of the same" but to each their own i suppose
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
not sadly that was more logic since release but its funny how they fired so many so Bioware can keep the few buck that they are stealing by this game wish mean 4-6 month no more this game will be f2p .
and then again its just mi opinion no troll or anything just the reality
I must have been misinformed this whole time!
Thank you for taking the time to educating me on what the companies agenda was! It's not like it wasn't fucking obvious. Just about most companies who have or tries to rival WoW.
i wouldn't jump the gun too much. This is to be expected the game had a huge development staff.
sells a ton of copies 2 mil, half of those 2 mil are supposedly left. 100,000 subs is still alot and more than likely alot of the qa staff and probably some artists are gone. I wouldn't look to hard into it, its expected when your game declines after launch rather than grows.
SWTOR despite being a pile of cr@p will still hold enough altaholics for a while since that's all the game is good for.
In short, I can't agree more. I can't understand how these companies can't work out the essence of an MMO. If I want an in-depth storyline to immerse myself in, then I will buy a single title and enjoy all the addons that can give me as a solo player.
I play MMO's because I want to play in a massive online world with thousands of other players and although I do enjoy a storyline, I am looking for an environment driven by players. e.g. EVE. After 1 month in SWTOR I realised I was playing a very sub par single player game with kill 10 rat missions.
EVE had me subbed for 6 years. Look at the development cost of both titles and the profit they made from me.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05/22/star-wars-the-old-republic-hit-with-layoffs/
same people. people on the dev teams of the project or something else?
The two people they needed to get rid of from what people have told me is the lead developer and the pvp developer for their complete disregard concerning the balance issues and the problems with classes, and for generally not listening to their public.
It's pretty much the only way i would ever play, to me they really didn't put enough into it to make it necessary or right to pay a monthly fee to play this title. If they put more content into the game instead of the age old raid and party dungeons then i and many like me would be more interested. I'm not interested in playing Space WoW sorry, WoW became stagnant for the same reasons, it was a lobby game at the end and that's just plain boring and not worth the money at this point imo.
Guess they wont have those 500k subs to break even. This is scenario that was most likely for SWTOR. Start layoffs/reducing costs until game becomes profitable. Though where will it stop it remains to be seen (*cough* Vanguard*cough*WH*cough*)
Ah well. Sad to see SWTOR turned up like it did, BW+SW had potential, but since they took easy and lazy "clone WoW" route, serves them right.
D3, at least for the time being, has sucked dry a huge playerbase from tonnes of games and it is not just here, in Korea its crazy, everyone is playing D3.
However I do not think D3 is long lasting, people will start to play it less and less once theyve beaten it, especially without PvP.
You are absolutely right. D3 does not have enough to hold people more than a month or two, I am almost bored already. However with the weather heating up who is to say once that time has passed plus a few beers in the garden and bbqs that gamers will return to their old games.
In my view I don't think swtor is worth a return when by that time has elapsed, TSW will be launched, GW2 will (almost) be here, MOP is ever closer and then the pvp patch for diablo 3.
If diablo 3 provides a basic lobby to chat to friends, you can come and go as you please and it provides you with a couple of hours entertainment every now and then. My question is Why pay a subscription for that service?
Im barking up the wrong tree anyway as of late Im more and more diving away from raiding games and more and more looking for a good rvr feel.
I dont want to grind loot or gear in hamster mazes I want to melt faces with my friends with freakin lazer beam sharks.
GW2 may take another chunk from SWTOR, in fact, I would almost bet on it. I quite SWTOR knowing TSW and GW2 was coming out and I figure there was no point wasting 2 months of subbing, so I am cruising with single player games until I can sus out the above two. If they don't work I will probably dive into another single player, not return to SWTOR because they can't change it enough.
There is a pretty active discussion about the layoffs at the official forums http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=462291 (grabs popcorn)
Feels like EnB all over again. At least this is how it started.
"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." - Winston Churchill
If SWTOR had been launched as KotR3 with co-op elements I don't believe that staff being redeployed or let go would have surprised anyone. Single player game is finished, team is redeployed.
This is not simply a post-launch reduction. SWTOR had an OK - not stellar but OK - launch as far as bugs etc. go. There was no huge influx of people to fix things up - there were things an mmo really should have had that were missing but it wasn't a disaster. People who were no longer needed will have been let go at this point or even earlier.
Going forward it was all about new content, new features - hence Olsen's earlier statements, the talk of moving the DO folks onto SWTOR. New stuff to hold the subscribers who - and maybe one should quote Activision Blizzard here - are burning through content faster than ever.
Subscribers were supposed to play every class to 50. Fine maybe if all those quests had been different. But collect 10 red gems for the bod who likes red is no different from collect 10 green gems for the bod that likes green. That is not 2 quests. EA Bioware needed new content.
So what is being cut is ly going to be future development. Not this years - because that started way back - but the Christmas 2013 stuff. Instead of 4 big content patches a year there may now be 2 or 1 (still presented in 4 chunks naturally).
As an mmo SWTOR doesn't cut it. And EA Bioware held onto the design team in the expectation that as an mmo SWTOR would makes lots and lots of money. fff
That is, of course, not the point of the argument. The point of the argument is not whether you personally find the game enjoyable. But whether the game made good on it's investment from an economic standpoint as well as a market penetration and longevity standpoint.
It's not making good on it's investment. I tire of hitting people over the accounting, but sales at retail doesn't tell you anything since the vast majority of the games are sold at wholesales. And even that doesn't tell you about profit because you still have to factor in costs which include LucasArts 30% publisher royalty, the $35+ million advertising campaign, etc. So, if your going to assert it's paid it's $250 million cost back, you're gonna have to do the full-accounting thing and not just spew out the typical "it sold 2 million copies, $120 million for EA take that haters" garbage.
Initial market penetration was great. However, it's clearly shrinking and is barely holding of Aion in active user base. It is up to you to explain, rationally, why it's lost 5/6th of the XFire gamers. It's up to you to explain why the server population is now in 'light' stauts (utilization) 95% of the time. That's way up since March's 50% light utilzation time...
Yeah, you like it. Good for you. SWG still had 50K subs as late as 2010.
What does some people enjoying the game have to do with ANYTHING?
Horizons, arguably the single worst MMO ever made which had a very very SMALL lifespan still have a few people playing it the day it shut down...every MMO ever made that has been shutdown still had SOME people playing it and enjoying it.
Their having fun, had nothing to do with the failure of the game....the company, how they made the game, how they updated the game, their plans for the game all had to do with its failures.
If anything, those enjoying the game the most are defending the game BLINDLY and are contributing to the failure of the game because they are lowering the chances the game maker actually takes notices of what is either keeping people from buying the game or making players leave.
Stop fighting with people trying to make the [mod edit] game better just because YOU like whats already in the thing...you make no damn sense....people are trying to get MORE ADDED TO THE GAME YOU LIKE!
lol...jebus
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
It's amazing how the fanboys still defend this game. They will still defend this game when it becomes free 2 play soon. Fanboys will still defend it when it gets shut down like other EA MMO's.
Hopefully this is just the beginning. I hope the majority of employees at Bioware- Austin are out of work and eating out of a garbage dumpster by year's end.
I have no sympathy since these jerks along with their masters at EA deliberately misled and ripped off the public to the tune of tens of millions.
Sorry, but if your boss tells you to do something this way and not that way, then you do it this way or you're gone. The people getting laid off do probably not deserve to be eating out of dumpsters. The only ones that would deserve that are the overpaid leads that are clueless or incompetent or both. They of course have raked in so many dollars that they won't have to eat out of a dumpster ever.
I don not think that the people getting laid off are jerks. You make it sound like you haven't worked for a boss even a single day in your life and have no idea what you're talking about.
"We executed one of the largest, most successful and stable launches of any MMO yet in industry history."
It's true... doesn't change the fact that it's engame is a total fail.
Exactly. I don't like McDonalds, but I don't hope that every person that works there long hours for crappy pay deserves to be fired. Geez, some people here really need to step out of their little fantasy lands and wake up to reality.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
I just hope you're not one of the boisterous hypocrites who continually rages about GW2 invading other games' threads, when you're more than eager to introduce it yourself. No worries though. You certainly wouldn't be the only one throwing lit matches at pools of gasoline, then crying foul when the thread starts to burn.
kkthxbb, firebug.
Its horrible to see the little guys lose their jobs because the suits over at EA havent come to terms with the fact they cant handle MMOs...how many failures until they accept that fact ? stick to EA sports and stop making MMOs and stop buying great studios and running them in the ground. In short EA -- GO TO HELL AND STAY THERE.
I disagree that the problem here lies with EA. Believe me, I'm not one of their fans. To me, they are the antichrist of gaming. But THEY didn't design a game that uses concepts that could only work in a one-off, single player game. The massive reliance on story as an engine driving this game as an MMO was a fundamental flaw. Story can't sustain long-term interest because it is, in itself, a short-term hook. Once you've gone through the story, that's it. Time to put it on the shelf and move on to a new one.
So they put most of their emphasis on delivering a great story, which apparently they succeeded at, but didn't bother putting the same amount of effort and resources into the one thing that *is* able to sustain an MMO over the long-term, and that's the gameplay. Instead, they lifted much of it from a convenient and already successful source, that being WoW, expecting that the bulk of the design work had already been done for them. Kind of like a company purchasing the license for a graphics engine rather than spend the money and time to do it in-house.
EA at least threw the money at the game to ensure that the it's name was on everyone's lips and succeeded in making it the biggest launch in MMO history. It was the game itself, which was Bioware's responsibility, that didn't deliver.
I have a laundry list of crimes against games that I think EA should be held accountable for, but SWTOR ain't one of them. Bioware erred. They didn't understand MMOs and they didn't understand MMO gamers. They brought a product to market that was ill-suited for the target audience and it's decline was inevitable. It doesn't matter how much more money gets poured into this project, it won't fix the core problems because they are so deeply ingrained into the design. It would require an NGE level overhaul, and that's just never going to happen.
Despite it all, the game isn't going to fail. The IP is strong enough and it's polished enough that it should be able to keep itself going indefinitely, albeit with much more moderate success indicators than what was expected. However, if they'd done it right, yeah, it absolutely could have been a WoW-killer. It had everything going for it but one small thing: developers with enough balls to leave their single-player roots behind and go for broke in a new universe. Unless they took their marching orders from EA when it involved concept and design, responsibility for the game's decline is all Bioware's.
It is a combination of the two. Bioware is not a standalone company, they are owned by EA as well as funded by them and has been mentioned time and time again by developers that worked on various MMOs ong after they left...the suits do have a hand in directing where a game can go.
And I have said it before and I will say it again. The very core of SWTOR screams that it was started as KOTOR 3 and was later pushed into being an MMORPG.
There is not a single core aspect of that game that is not single player game in design.
So, part Bioware's fault...and part EAs fault.
The only thing any of us are SURE of is that some of the design team...are CLUELESS about RPGs let alone MMORPGs...the entire legacy system smacks of WTFstupid not to mention rewarding social RPing gear for massive group farming of social points.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson