Swtor is made for a single player game with multiplayer.
But it seems BW / EA got greedy and stamp an MMO on it.
They will be very sucessfull if they make it B2P, they can hit 6 - 7 million players if they do that.
Instead they went out for P2P.
A lot of game companies wanted to push singel players genre to be online al the time now cos it is easier to DRM, DLC and CS.
they will try out everything to hit the sweet pot just like Blizz /Activ with D3
If SW:TOR had launched as B2P, it might possibly have sold 4-6M boxes. But selling 6M boxes does not automatically translate into 6M devoted fans. It could just as easily translate into 4M players that hate your game (and your studio) with a passion.
And if they had sold 4-6M boxes (2 to 3 times the amount that was sold), it would have meant 400 to 600 servers on launch day ! Also at least double (if not triple) the amount of Customer Service staff. It's an online game, so players demand support if they have issues with installing and/or running and/or playing the game on a daily basis. Players will also demand that any bugs in the game be fixed immediately. Not tomorrow or next week, NOW !
So a company that opts for a B2P model in their MMO, gets a chunk of cash around launch, thereafter they have only expenses every month until they can sell the playerbase an expansion or DLC. The longer it takes for them to convince players to spend more money, the more of their initial profit is eaten away by ongoing monthly costs (CS, admin staff, developers, technical support, etc.)
You can view that pressure to sell new content in two ways. The company will be motivated to produce a constant stream of good content, so that players WILL be happy to buy expansions. But the flipside is that the developer is also under huge pressure to produce content before they've burnt through too much of their initial box sale profit. So "it's ready when it's ready" becomes "it's ready when our budget runs out"...
It is really sad to see this happen to Bioware cause I actually like their singleplayer games. SWTOR had a huge impact on their financials and that is definitely going to affect their other games overall.
This makes me even more annoyed with MMOs. MMOs are a flawed genre and it is sad to see so many good developers invest so heavily in an MMO then fail. Can't they realise that making an MMO is not worth it. Make an online action RPG without sub and be on the safe side rather than make MMOs all the time.
People just don't like subs and companies make MMOs because of the subs. Then in 1-2 months they have very few subs left.
That ain´t really MMOs faults, if you want to blame something you can blame EA instead.
When you take one studio and opens 3 more new while still keeping the name chanses are that the 3 new studios can't make as good games as the original one even if the same guy is the boss of them all.
Games like Dragon age and TOR have mostly new employees and can´t keep up against Biowares classics or the new game the original studio makes (like ME).
TORs issue in my book is that it really ain´t have enough focus on multiplaying and social stuff which means that i don´t feel to pay a monthly fee for it. The point of a MMO is to play together with your friends and meet new friends, TOR just don´t have enough of that currently since someone decided to focus on the singleplayer game.
And the soloparts of the game are well made but there is a lot more to a MMO. If the game would have been B2P instead like Guildwars I think it would be rather large today, and I think it would have also done a lot better if it put more work into group playing and PvP.
You can't blame EA for this. Bioware Austin was built and started work on SWTOR long before EA got involved. So if you're trying to say EA forced Bioware to open a new studio and that's why SWTOR was bad as the reason, you're wrong. This failure is purely in Bioware's court.
SWTOR suffers from serious design flaws and seemingly incompetent designers. Sooo many of SWTOR's design flaws were discussed, at length I might add, back in 2008 when we started getting information. Things like story being too singleplayer, taking up too many resources, and becoming useless once max level is reached. Those were gigantic GLARING issues and Bioware continued right down that path.
B2P might have helped SWTOR but it's too late for that now. Even as B2P they would have had to merge servers because the game has no retention mechanics and low replay value. GW2 won't be immune to a drop off but they have WvW, a ton of replay value in dynamic events so I forsee a longer more gradual decline. Of course that could change depending on how fast ANet can put in content.
It is really sad to see this happen to Bioware cause I actually like their singleplayer games. SWTOR had a huge impact on their financials and that is definitely going to affect their other games overall.
This makes me even more annoyed with MMOs. MMOs are a flawed genre and it is sad to see so many good developers invest so heavily in an MMO then fail. Can't they realise that making an MMO is not worth it. Make an online action RPG without sub and be on the safe side rather than make MMOs all the time.
People just don't like subs and companies make MMOs because of the subs. Then in 1-2 months they have very few subs left.
That ain´t really MMOs faults, if you want to blame something you can blame EA instead.
When you take one studio and opens 3 more new while still keeping the name chanses are that the 3 new studios can't make as good games as the original one even if the same guy is the boss of them all.
Games like Dragon age and TOR have mostly new employees and can´t keep up against Biowares classics or the new game the original studio makes (like ME).
TORs issue in my book is that it really ain´t have enough focus on multiplaying and social stuff which means that i don´t feel to pay a monthly fee for it. The point of a MMO is to play together with your friends and meet new friends, TOR just don´t have enough of that currently since someone decided to focus on the singleplayer game.
And the soloparts of the game are well made but there is a lot more to a MMO. If the game would have been B2P instead like Guildwars I think it would be rather large today, and I think it would have also done a lot better if it put more work into group playing and PvP.
You can't blame EA for this. Bioware Austin was built and started work on SWTOR long before EA got involved. So if you're trying to say EA forced Bioware to open a new studio and that's why SWTOR was bad as the reason, you're wrong. This failure is purely in Bioware's court.
SWTOR suffers from serious design flaws and seemingly incompetent designers. Sooo many of SWTOR's design flaws were discussed, at length I might add, back in 2008 when we started getting information. Things like story being too singleplayer, taking up too many resources, and becoming useless once max level is reached. Those were gigantic GLARING issues and Bioware continued right down that path.
B2P might have helped SWTOR but it's too late for that now. Even as B2P they would have had to merge servers because the game has no retention mechanics and low replay value. GW2 won't be immune to a drop off but they have WvW, a ton of replay value in dynamic events so I forsee a longer more gradual decline. Of course that could change depending on how fast ANet can put in content.
GW1 peaked three years after it was released. Their retention mechanics are XPAC campaigns. We're getting, in GW2, what was GW1 Prophecies. They've already got GW2 Nightfall and GW2 Factions in the works. Plus they've got only 100 of the 300 planned DEs (for each area) in game at present. They have more slated for release and more slated for routine updates.
GW2 game, like GW1, was planned to retain players and to (reasonably) monetize some of the retetion.
This game has a lot of problems but the biggest problem this game faced was the early release. BW weren't prepared to release the game but with Diablo 3 announced for when BW planned on releasing it, EA got cold feet and forced them to. At least I hope this explains at least as to why BW were so slow in so many things like server transfers.
In a way I'm both happy and sad this game failed. The worst part of the failure is that this could very well be the last Star Wars MMO. Nobody knows exactly what the deal was to get the Star Wars IP but I doubt many big development teams will want to work with LA on a new SW MMO considering it's fairly obvious LA are obsessed with WoW.
However, this aside, the fact this game is failing is a big big big victory for gamers. First off it proves that creating a poor WoW clone and throwing money at it doesn't get you anywhere. Most importantly though, it shows that developer arrogance doesn't pay off. From the start, BW arrogantly said they are making the game the way they want to. Now you can understand that to an extent but look how that turned out for them. Worse still, they completely ignored beta feedback some of which could have possibly saved the game. The biggest complaint I saw leading up to release was just how lifeless the world felt.. this was reported a good while before release yet went completely unnoticed. This was and is the biggest problem I have with SWTOR.. the world just has no soul, it feels empty and lifeless.
You can't blame EA for this. Bioware Austin was built and started work on SWTOR long before EA got involved. So if you're trying to say EA forced Bioware to open a new studio and that's why SWTOR was bad as the reason, you're wrong. This failure is purely in Bioware's court.
SWTOR suffers from serious design flaws and seemingly incompetent designers. Sooo many of SWTOR's design flaws were discussed, at length I might add, back in 2008 when we started getting information. Things like story being too singleplayer, taking up too many resources, and becoming useless once max level is reached. Those were gigantic GLARING issues and Bioware continued right down that path.
B2P might have helped SWTOR but it's too late for that now. Even as B2P they would have had to merge servers because the game has no retention mechanics and low replay value. GW2 won't be immune to a drop off but they have WvW, a ton of replay value in dynamic events so I forsee a longer more gradual decline. Of course that could change depending on how fast ANet can put in content.
Yeah, not that they made it better by adding mythic to Bioware but that was a bit unfair of me. But some suit guy decided that you could add more divisions to maximize earning without caring how it would affect the quality of the games.
And I agree, the B2P train have left. What is left is a revamp, F2P or cancelling the game.
One feature GW2 have that actually would help TOR is that you can freely transfer between PvE servers there, it makes finding players easier and players will find the most populated servers easily and move between them as they want. That together with it´s overflow servers that allows you to overfill your servers a bit on launchday without actually adding hours of waitingtime would have helped TOR a lot as well.
I don´t think the singleplayer part of TOR is a misstake though, it is the multiplayer part that needs to be as extensive and well thought as the singleplayer game. My recommendation would be a revamp of that part and the PvP. My bet is that they instead will make it F2P though.
Every person still clinging to the original design needs to go. They can save SWTOR is they remove those personalities from the building. Erickson and Ohlen should be next.
A game utilizing the grand Star Wars title should be of the grandest show,the best of the best,a multi million dollar game taking a LOT of effort.They were simply looking to cash in.
I truly feel sorry for anyone working at EA or via EA,they are a classless act.I truly beleive Bioware on their own were a good company.
Look what Sqaure Enix has done,ZERO profit while shoring up the game,this is dedication to the player base.EA will tell Bioware to make a game,then sell it and be done with it.Imagine if what happened to FFXIV happen to a EA game,they would pull the plug,the way NCSOFT did with lord British game.
I guess the positive side is many of the workers are probably skilled and will move to other divisions or get new employment soon.
Funny thing is i was once a HUGE EA fan/supporter ,i remember the original Sega hockey and their realsitic basketball game.After i got older i realized what a corrupt operation they were and were even sued by the workers for ripping them off and of course EA lost.
There is always a catch 22,we don't like the way EA does business,but if we don't support them people lose jobs and the workers deserve much better than EA.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I honestly don't think any of these companies care about the long term appeal of these games any more. The mmo genre, as we understood it with UO and EQ (and one or two others) as a game played with friends lasting at least a year, maybe several, is long gone. I think they all develop games to be played for only a couple of months by most at best. That way they get the box price, plus at least one sub out of everyone. So for them it's a better deal to market it as an mmorpg rather than a single player game but not actually deliver a true mmo content-wise. The model now is realease, a few months of subs, then straight to F2P with a shop. How else can we explain the lack of long term content and replayability of these games?
It took me far less time to do all the content in ToR than it did with Skyrim. That can't be right surely?
The whole genre has gone down the tubes and it's a real shame because at one time mmos were fantastic places to spend your life in. I don't believe the f2p trend is killing mmos. I'd gladly pay a monthly fee for an mmo I could live in with my friends in the way I lived in UO and EQ.
A game utilizing the grand Star Wars title should be of the grandest show,the best of the best,a multi million dollar game taking a LOT of effort.They were simply looking to cash in.
Agreed.
A lot of effort, but not enough to develop an mmo.
I just feel that in 2012 and beyond you just can't release a themepark game whose focus is consumable one-off content without being able to do monthly (if not more often) content updates.
We've all known for years that devs are incapable of releasing content at a pace fast enough to keep up with player consumption.
RIFT has done the "best" of any content based themepark MMO, but still not fast enough for many.
If you are expecting players to keep paying a subscription fee each month, you need enough content and enough new content regularly to justify your asking price.
WoW "got away with it" for 8 years due to the heavy repeat/grind nature of their content (dungeons, raids, PvP, acheivements) but even Blizzard with their massive staff and insanely large coffers releases content every... 6-7 months? Longer?
The model just doesn't resonate with gamers like it used to.
However, this aside, the fact this game is failing is a big big big victory for gamers. First off it proves that creating a poor WoW clone and throwing money at it doesn't get you anywhere. Most importantly though, it shows that developer arrogance doesn't pay off. From the start, BW arrogantly said they are making the game the way they want to. Now you can understand that to an extent but look how that turned out for them. Worse still, they completely ignored beta feedback some of which could have possibly saved the game. The biggest complaint I saw leading up to release was just how lifeless the world felt.. this was reported a good while before release yet went completely unnoticed. This was and is the biggest problem I have with SWTOR.. the world just has no soul, it feels empty and lifeless.
In beta, I remember at least 9 months before release seeing the complaints about the lifeless worlds, the lack of endgame, the lack of anything else to do besides pve/pvp, the lack of customizable ui's, the abysmal loading screen times, even on the best of rigs...the list goes on and on and on of things that were brought up in beta. We were bashed by Bioware fans, and our concerns were ignored.
They simply thought they knew better and people would wait 6 months to a year after release for them to play catch up, while giving no real content updates. A quote from the ending of Wow's The Burning Crusade trailer came to mind as I played SWTOR beta, "You Are Not Prepared".
This was and is the biggest problem I have with SWTOR.. the world just has no soul, it feels empty and lifeless.
In beta, I remember at least 9 months before release seeing the complaints about the lifeless worlds...
Yeah, I have to say I am getting that feeling about TSW too. I'm not going to start hating on it and I don't want to see this thread turning into yet another TSW argument thread - especially as I am still playing and enjoying it - but I have to say the first 3 zones that I have been in just seem so damn lifeless. I get it, there's zombies everywhere, people have fled... I get that - but just occasionally seeing a last straggler trying to drive out of town, car careening off the road, zombies giving chase would make a world of difference to me. The only non zombies you see are other players and static quest givers with less life in them than the undead a stones throw away.
What is even more mind blowing is that it cost 200 million plus dollars to make. I submit a link that shows you what 200 million dollars looks like in real life.
For this amount of money they could have the made the greatest MMORPG in human history and provide lap dances for every subscriber for 3 months.
Thats why EA is freakin out. they gave them the money to make something beyond amazing and all fans got was the mythical 4th pillar and Wowish type MMO
Now i'm not sure but EA does not know diddly squat about MMORPG development so i'm assuming they took BW's word for it.
I just feel that in 2012 and beyond you just can't release a themepark game whose focus is consumable one-off content without being able to do monthly (if not more often) content updates.
We've all known for years that devs are incapable of releasing content at a pace fast enough to keep up with player consumption.
RIFT has done the "best" of any content based themepark MMO, but still not fast enough for many.
If you are expecting players to keep paying a subscription fee each month, you need enough content and enough new content regularly to justify your asking price.
WoW "got away with it" for 8 years due to the heavy repeat/grind nature of their content (dungeons, raids, PvP, acheivements) but even Blizzard with their massive staff and insanely large coffers releases content every... 6-7 months? Longer?
The model just doesn't resonate with gamers like it used to.
TOR was doomed from the start.
I agree.
Or you need to dump the themepark model altogether and go back to sandbox mmos and leave it up to players to create and maintain the content. Is that possible in the age of play-on-rails games? Did gamers become less imaginative in the last ten years? Maybe because this is the age of the casual gamer and not the hardcore guilds that spent 10 hours a day in games creating worlds. I used to spend hours stood at a checkpoint near Yew in UO with the Guardsmans Militia just simply roleplaying. Could I afford to use that time in that way now? Probably not, but i'd like to try.
I agree about Rift as well. I keep going back because it offers more and can hold me longer.
Anyone who so much as worked as a janitor for this game should be canned.And then barred from ever working on a video game again for life.
C'mon dude, be serious, this is people's livelihood's you're talking about and what issues SWTOR has clearly comes from the decisions made at the top level.
I rarely agree with you but on this issue you are spot-on.
Anyone who so much as worked as a janitor for this game should be canned.And then barred from ever working on a video game again for life.
C'mon dude, be serious, this is people's livelihood's you're talking about and what issues SWTOR has clearly comes from the decisions made at the top level.
In these ugly times It'd be commendable to talk about other people's jobs with much more respect and human empathy.
EA and BW keep firing second and third lines to lay a smoke screen in cover of their top brass' massive mismanagement. Nothing new around since most of the bankers and financial "advisors" that plunged the world in this economic depression are still in charge and keep scoring disasters.
Greed and incompetence are a nasty cocktail....
Ummmm joke + sarcasim - how to people miss this, guess we are not all wired the same
Anyone who so much as worked as a janitor for this game should be canned.And then barred from ever working on a video game again for life.
C'mon dude, be serious, this is people's livelihood's you're talking about and what issues SWTOR has clearly comes from the decisions made at the top level.
In these ugly times It'd be commendable to talk about other people's jobs with much more respect and human empathy.
EA and BW keep firing second and third lines to lay a smoke screen in cover of their top brass' massive mismanagement. Nothing new around since most of the bankers and financial "advisors" that plunged the world in this economic depression are still in charge and keep scoring disasters.
Greed and incompetence are a nasty cocktail....
I agree...
I think it's clear that SWTOR failed at the design level, not at the implementation level. The game was basically doomed from the start when they hung their hat on "story" to keep people playing an MMORPG for years.
Honestly the Story was the only good part about it. Atleast the professions story was great addon to the game and they should have done more with both those and made companion story lines more open so you had to progress through them instead of making it so they only did them if you made them like you. The real killer is the fact that they tried to make the story for ever little pityful quest some over produced VO production. If you want me to go kill 20 big freaking slugs just spit it out don't need a story and some guy telling me why he wants them to die. Im working for the empire they want something dead then shut your pie hole and let me go kill it already.
The actual gameplay is decent but alot of it in the videos made it look alot more grand then it turned out to be. Remember seeing a consular blast a guy like 150-200 feet then you get ingame and you knock them back maybe 20 or 30 feet. Over hyping your game is a good way to kill it before you get it off the ground and it got SWTOR good.
Nerfing for pvp to bring balance is one big issue I have with alot of games. Seems they never consider what it will do to the pve side while their are killing off moves and making them dang near useless. Nothing kills a game for me faster then starting out slaying 8 different mobs easily before i even have to consider resting or regaining life to being nerfed to the point I'm barely able to get a gold elite without killing off most my uber special moves and drinking the crap out of potions. If your gonna nerf do it only to PVP if it only is needed for pvp and for the love of god don't start me out by making me feel heroic where I can take on 20 man armies and then when i hit max level I feel like a nub cause I'm barely able to take on 4 or 5 guys (not even elites) without my companion being dead and me drinking potions like I've left the desert and found a cooler full of water.
Have they made a profit on this game? I would think they have. They sold oodles of boxes and implemented the greatest DRM ever devised... a monthy sub fee.
No. Source: EA who said that they needed 1M (long term) subscribers to "make a profit but nothing to write home about". When they announced their highest number of accounts - 1.7M - just over 1 month after the game had launched (Feb') they subsequently said that 'just over half' were subscribers: so 850k. Since then they have announced a lower number of accounts and "reduced" the number of servers by 90%. So pretty clear they haven't made a profit - and as they have also said they need 500k to break even (suspect it is less now) then they are unlikely to do so imo.
Remember that EA do not get $60 per box sold; Amazon, Wal-mart etc. get a huge percentage, the boxes cost money to produce and distribute. Then there are royalties to LA, "interest" to pay on the development costs (EA actually issue bonds but you get the idea), advertising and marketing costs e.g. the free 30 days etc..
Comments
If SW:TOR had launched as B2P, it might possibly have sold 4-6M boxes. But selling 6M boxes does not automatically translate into 6M devoted fans. It could just as easily translate into 4M players that hate your game (and your studio) with a passion.
And if they had sold 4-6M boxes (2 to 3 times the amount that was sold), it would have meant 400 to 600 servers on launch day ! Also at least double (if not triple) the amount of Customer Service staff. It's an online game, so players demand support if they have issues with installing and/or running and/or playing the game on a daily basis. Players will also demand that any bugs in the game be fixed immediately. Not tomorrow or next week, NOW !
So a company that opts for a B2P model in their MMO, gets a chunk of cash around launch, thereafter they have only expenses every month until they can sell the playerbase an expansion or DLC. The longer it takes for them to convince players to spend more money, the more of their initial profit is eaten away by ongoing monthly costs (CS, admin staff, developers, technical support, etc.)
You can view that pressure to sell new content in two ways. The company will be motivated to produce a constant stream of good content, so that players WILL be happy to buy expansions. But the flipside is that the developer is also under huge pressure to produce content before they've burnt through too much of their initial box sale profit. So "it's ready when it's ready" becomes "it's ready when our budget runs out"...
You can't blame EA for this. Bioware Austin was built and started work on SWTOR long before EA got involved. So if you're trying to say EA forced Bioware to open a new studio and that's why SWTOR was bad as the reason, you're wrong. This failure is purely in Bioware's court.
SWTOR suffers from serious design flaws and seemingly incompetent designers. Sooo many of SWTOR's design flaws were discussed, at length I might add, back in 2008 when we started getting information. Things like story being too singleplayer, taking up too many resources, and becoming useless once max level is reached. Those were gigantic GLARING issues and Bioware continued right down that path.
B2P might have helped SWTOR but it's too late for that now. Even as B2P they would have had to merge servers because the game has no retention mechanics and low replay value. GW2 won't be immune to a drop off but they have WvW, a ton of replay value in dynamic events so I forsee a longer more gradual decline. Of course that could change depending on how fast ANet can put in content.
Agree with both. Actually, twice for Ohlen. Fired, then fired again for good measure...
GW1 peaked three years after it was released. Their retention mechanics are XPAC campaigns. We're getting, in GW2, what was GW1 Prophecies. They've already got GW2 Nightfall and GW2 Factions in the works. Plus they've got only 100 of the 300 planned DEs (for each area) in game at present. They have more slated for release and more slated for routine updates.
GW2 game, like GW1, was planned to retain players and to (reasonably) monetize some of the retetion.
Finally the responisbles for this disaster leave the "not yet sinking" Ship !!
I wanted them to move on since month and now finally it happens !
maybe now this game gets a young and creative lead designer with enough farsight and vision to save this game !
This game has a lot of problems but the biggest problem this game faced was the early release. BW weren't prepared to release the game but with Diablo 3 announced for when BW planned on releasing it, EA got cold feet and forced them to. At least I hope this explains at least as to why BW were so slow in so many things like server transfers.
In a way I'm both happy and sad this game failed. The worst part of the failure is that this could very well be the last Star Wars MMO. Nobody knows exactly what the deal was to get the Star Wars IP but I doubt many big development teams will want to work with LA on a new SW MMO considering it's fairly obvious LA are obsessed with WoW.
However, this aside, the fact this game is failing is a big big big victory for gamers. First off it proves that creating a poor WoW clone and throwing money at it doesn't get you anywhere. Most importantly though, it shows that developer arrogance doesn't pay off. From the start, BW arrogantly said they are making the game the way they want to. Now you can understand that to an extent but look how that turned out for them. Worse still, they completely ignored beta feedback some of which could have possibly saved the game. The biggest complaint I saw leading up to release was just how lifeless the world felt.. this was reported a good while before release yet went completely unnoticed. This was and is the biggest problem I have with SWTOR.. the world just has no soul, it feels empty and lifeless.
Yeah, not that they made it better by adding mythic to Bioware but that was a bit unfair of me. But some suit guy decided that you could add more divisions to maximize earning without caring how it would affect the quality of the games.
And I agree, the B2P train have left. What is left is a revamp, F2P or cancelling the game.
One feature GW2 have that actually would help TOR is that you can freely transfer between PvE servers there, it makes finding players easier and players will find the most populated servers easily and move between them as they want. That together with it´s overflow servers that allows you to overfill your servers a bit on launchday without actually adding hours of waitingtime would have helped TOR a lot as well.
I don´t think the singleplayer part of TOR is a misstake though, it is the multiplayer part that needs to be as extensive and well thought as the singleplayer game. My recommendation would be a revamp of that part and the PvP. My bet is that they instead will make it F2P though.
Every person still clinging to the original design needs to go. They can save SWTOR is they remove those personalities from the building. Erickson and Ohlen should be next.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
A game utilizing the grand Star Wars title should be of the grandest show,the best of the best,a multi million dollar game taking a LOT of effort.They were simply looking to cash in.
I truly feel sorry for anyone working at EA or via EA,they are a classless act.I truly beleive Bioware on their own were a good company.
Look what Sqaure Enix has done,ZERO profit while shoring up the game,this is dedication to the player base.EA will tell Bioware to make a game,then sell it and be done with it.Imagine if what happened to FFXIV happen to a EA game,they would pull the plug,the way NCSOFT did with lord British game.
I guess the positive side is many of the workers are probably skilled and will move to other divisions or get new employment soon.
Funny thing is i was once a HUGE EA fan/supporter ,i remember the original Sega hockey and their realsitic basketball game.After i got older i realized what a corrupt operation they were and were even sued by the workers for ripping them off and of course EA lost.
There is always a catch 22,we don't like the way EA does business,but if we don't support them people lose jobs and the workers deserve much better than EA.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Listen! Listen! Can you hear that?
Its the sound of heads rolling over at Bioware/EA.
This game is going down the tubes. Rightfully so.
I honestly don't think any of these companies care about the long term appeal of these games any more. The mmo genre, as we understood it with UO and EQ (and one or two others) as a game played with friends lasting at least a year, maybe several, is long gone. I think they all develop games to be played for only a couple of months by most at best. That way they get the box price, plus at least one sub out of everyone. So for them it's a better deal to market it as an mmorpg rather than a single player game but not actually deliver a true mmo content-wise. The model now is realease, a few months of subs, then straight to F2P with a shop. How else can we explain the lack of long term content and replayability of these games?
It took me far less time to do all the content in ToR than it did with Skyrim. That can't be right surely?
The whole genre has gone down the tubes and it's a real shame because at one time mmos were fantastic places to spend your life in. I don't believe the f2p trend is killing mmos. I'd gladly pay a monthly fee for an mmo I could live in with my friends in the way I lived in UO and EQ.
What the hell went wrong?
Agreed.
A lot of effort, but not enough to develop an mmo.
I just feel that in 2012 and beyond you just can't release a themepark game whose focus is consumable one-off content without being able to do monthly (if not more often) content updates.
We've all known for years that devs are incapable of releasing content at a pace fast enough to keep up with player consumption.
RIFT has done the "best" of any content based themepark MMO, but still not fast enough for many.
If you are expecting players to keep paying a subscription fee each month, you need enough content and enough new content regularly to justify your asking price.
WoW "got away with it" for 8 years due to the heavy repeat/grind nature of their content (dungeons, raids, PvP, acheivements) but even Blizzard with their massive staff and insanely large coffers releases content every... 6-7 months? Longer?
The model just doesn't resonate with gamers like it used to.
TOR was doomed from the start.
They simply thought they knew better and people would wait 6 months to a year after release for them to play catch up, while giving no real content updates. A quote from the ending of Wow's The Burning Crusade trailer came to mind as I played SWTOR beta, "You Are Not Prepared".
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Yeah, I have to say I am getting that feeling about TSW too. I'm not going to start hating on it and I don't want to see this thread turning into yet another TSW argument thread - especially as I am still playing and enjoying it - but I have to say the first 3 zones that I have been in just seem so damn lifeless. I get it, there's zombies everywhere, people have fled... I get that - but just occasionally seeing a last straggler trying to drive out of town, car careening off the road, zombies giving chase would make a world of difference to me. The only non zombies you see are other players and static quest givers with less life in them than the undead a stones throw away.
What is even more mind blowing is that it cost 200 million plus dollars to make. I submit a link that shows you what 200 million dollars looks like in real life.
http://swgveterans.org/200-million-in-cash.jpg
For this amount of money they could have the made the greatest MMORPG in human history and provide lap dances for every subscriber for 3 months.
Thats why EA is freakin out. they gave them the money to make something beyond amazing and all fans got was the mythical 4th pillar and Wowish type MMO
Now i'm not sure but EA does not know diddly squat about MMORPG development so i'm assuming they took BW's word for it.
I agree.
Or you need to dump the themepark model altogether and go back to sandbox mmos and leave it up to players to create and maintain the content. Is that possible in the age of play-on-rails games? Did gamers become less imaginative in the last ten years? Maybe because this is the age of the casual gamer and not the hardcore guilds that spent 10 hours a day in games creating worlds. I used to spend hours stood at a checkpoint near Yew in UO with the Guardsmans Militia just simply roleplaying. Could I afford to use that time in that way now? Probably not, but i'd like to try.
I agree about Rift as well. I keep going back because it offers more and can hold me longer.
I rarely agree with you but on this issue you are spot-on.
Ultima Online was EA. Just shows the publisher rarely has a clue what the developers are doing.
Ummmm joke + sarcasim - how to people miss this, guess we are not all wired the same
Good riddance.
Honestly the Story was the only good part about it. Atleast the professions story was great addon to the game and they should have done more with both those and made companion story lines more open so you had to progress through them instead of making it so they only did them if you made them like you. The real killer is the fact that they tried to make the story for ever little pityful quest some over produced VO production. If you want me to go kill 20 big freaking slugs just spit it out don't need a story and some guy telling me why he wants them to die. Im working for the empire they want something dead then shut your pie hole and let me go kill it already.
The actual gameplay is decent but alot of it in the videos made it look alot more grand then it turned out to be. Remember seeing a consular blast a guy like 150-200 feet then you get ingame and you knock them back maybe 20 or 30 feet. Over hyping your game is a good way to kill it before you get it off the ground and it got SWTOR good.
Nerfing for pvp to bring balance is one big issue I have with alot of games. Seems they never consider what it will do to the pve side while their are killing off moves and making them dang near useless. Nothing kills a game for me faster then starting out slaying 8 different mobs easily before i even have to consider resting or regaining life to being nerfed to the point I'm barely able to get a gold elite without killing off most my uber special moves and drinking the crap out of potions. If your gonna nerf do it only to PVP if it only is needed for pvp and for the love of god don't start me out by making me feel heroic where I can take on 20 man armies and then when i hit max level I feel like a nub cause I'm barely able to take on 4 or 5 guys (not even elites) without my companion being dead and me drinking potions like I've left the desert and found a cooler full of water.
No. Source: EA who said that they needed 1M (long term) subscribers to "make a profit but nothing to write home about". When they announced their highest number of accounts - 1.7M - just over 1 month after the game had launched (Feb') they subsequently said that 'just over half' were subscribers: so 850k. Since then they have announced a lower number of accounts and "reduced" the number of servers by 90%. So pretty clear they haven't made a profit - and as they have also said they need 500k to break even (suspect it is less now) then they are unlikely to do so imo.
Remember that EA do not get $60 per box sold; Amazon, Wal-mart etc. get a huge percentage, the boxes cost money to produce and distribute. Then there are royalties to LA, "interest" to pay on the development costs (EA actually issue bonds but you get the idea), advertising and marketing costs e.g. the free 30 days etc..