SWTOR was imo THE worst mmo failure to date, no doubt about it. Other games have crashed and burned in the same time frame but none had the amount of hype, publicity, funding, or recognizable IP. Taking all things into consideration one doesnt have to analyze long to see SWTOR is a big embarassement and a road map of 'what not to do'.
Originally posted by eddieg50 I think SWG has to be right in there when talking about biggest failures, The Hype was HUGE, Time Magazine, News Week, it was everywhere, then when people started playing it they were stunned by how bad it was. You could actually be killed by a butterfly, AI was totally over powered, Lag was just as bad as Vanguard, it took years to become a full fledged Jedi, because you could not actually play the game it became a Giant chat room although it was a very good chat room. People left quickly and it was down to a small core of fanatic dedicated Star Wars players, then Sony took over and put the final nail in the Coffin. Yes Epic Failure!
Took years to become a 'full fledged jedi' ? I can see where your anger comes from. I unlocked jedi in 4 months.
What exactly is it about SW:TOR that makes people take it so personally that it wasn't the exact game they wanted it to be?
I'm just blown away about all the complaining and moaning some have to do about this game, instead of saying "Not my cup o' tea" and move on.
Seriously, I can't figure it out.
I think it has to do more with people's expectations rather than just not liking certain particular aspects of the game. I think that's why so many people are so "hurt" about it. I can see the level of dissapointment and agree with it to a certain degree myself. Considering the fact that Bio/EA were behind the game, with the amount of money spent, and with the IP of Star Wars, the game "SHOULD" have been much more than what actually came out. I think that's the crux of the issue. Severe dissapointment = moaning and complaining.
Just because you don't agree with the moaners and complainers, it doesn't deligitimize their distress; I guess you could say its just not your cup o' tea and move on :-)
Just because you don't agree with the moaners and complainers, it doesn't deligitimize their distress; I guess you could say its just not your cup o' tea and move on :-)
Never said I didn't agree with them, funny that's how it's taken though. If I ask a question about why everyone takes the "failures" of this game personally, does that make me an automatic fanboi? Again, honest question
I honestly want to know why there so much hate for this game. Is it because features were promised that were not implemented? Did Bioware ruin Star Wars?
Maybe it's because there was so much hype around it before release, that people expected more. If that's the case, can we expect the same after a few months of GW2? (hypothetical... the last thing I want to do is start a GW2 thread in a 30+ page "TOR Sucks" thread)
Just because you don't agree with the moaners and complainers, it doesn't deligitimize their distress; I guess you could say its just not your cup o' tea and move on :-)
Never said I didn't agree with them, funny that's how it's taken though. If I ask a question about why everyone takes the "failures" of this game personally, does that make me an automatic fanboi? Again, honest question
I honestly want to know why there so much hate for this game. Is it because features were promised that were not implemented? Did Bioware ruin Star Wars?
Maybe it's because there was so much hype around it before release, that people expected more. If that's the case, can we expect the same after a few months of GW2? (hypothetical... the last thing I want to do is start a GW2 thread in a 30+ page "TOR Sucks" thread)
Just curious is all. Never played the game.
I think that a large amount of people actually wanted SWTOR to fail because of all the design principles behind it. It has a large focus on single player gameplay and highly directed content. It also basically forced Star Wars into the WoW model, which probably wasn't the best idea.
If SWTOR would have been a big success, then we could expect more games like it down the road. Seeing it fail means that we're not likely to see any SWTOR clones...and IMO, that's a good point.
And about GW2...
Not every game is the same. Just because one game that folks were excited about turned out to be a massive disappointment, does not mean you can apply this "rule" to every game that has "hype."
Not every game is the same. Just because one game that folks were excited about turned out to be a massive disappointment, does not mean you can apply this "rule" to every game that has "hype."
You almost can... people love to hate the popular things.
In all seriousness though, people wanting TOR to fail makes a lot of sense. Never thought of that.
What exactly is it about SW:TOR that makes people take it so personally that it wasn't the exact game they wanted it to be?
I'm just blown away about all the complaining and moaning some have to do about this game, instead of saying "Not my cup o' tea" and move on.
Seriously, I can't figure it out.
I think it has to do more with people's expectations rather than just not liking certain particular aspects of the game. I think that's why so many people are so "hurt" about it. I can see the level of dissapointment and agree with it to a certain degree myself. Considering the fact that Bio/EA were behind the game, with the amount of money spent, and with the IP of Star Wars, the game "SHOULD" have been much more than what actually came out. I think that's the crux of the issue. Severe dissapointment = moaning and complaining.
Just because you don't agree with the moaners and complainers, it doesn't deligitimize their distress; I guess you could say its just not your cup o' tea and move on :-)
Exactly. It is not the game's quality relative to nothing but rather relative to what people expected it to be. Star Wars + Bioware + all the hype such as being rival to WoW, lead to some huge expectations which the game did not deliver on, at all.
And no, when you have such failed expectations you cannot just move on. It's like the enormous critique Lucas got on the SW prequels. It is nothing people will just shrug of, as this is Star Wars we are talking about. The single largest sci-fi IP ever. You cannot expect people not to complain about such a dissapointment.
What exactly is it about SW:TOR that makes people take it so personally that it wasn't the exact game they wanted it to be?
I'm just blown away about all the complaining and moaning some have to do about this game, instead of saying "Not my cup o' tea" and move on.
Seriously, I can't figure it out.
This is all speculation, but I believe that the fact is that this is Bioware we are talking about, the people who brought us the AAA space opera RPG trilogy Mass Effect, and more importantly, the gem that was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The fact that these games pretty much put Bioware on the map and more or less crowned Bioware as the king of western RPGs, made us set our standards high for Star Wars The Old Republic. SW:KotoR and ME 1 and 2 (maybe 3 depends on what people think of the ending) raised the bar for both western RPG and space opera standards, and people view SWTOR as well under said bar. People feel insulted that Bioware did what they did for their previous games so well and apparenttly not for SWTOR. To them, Bioware did not live up to the legacy it made for itself.
Its like how Blizzard fans feel insulted about Diablo 3 after playing Diablo 2. Its not that SWTOR "isn't their cup of tea", its that Bioware's signiature quality that it puts into its games is sorely lacking (I haven't played too much of SWTOR yet, but so far it looks like standard MMO fare with a Mass Effect cutscene/conversation choices paint job, so I understand their position).
The "Biggest MMO Failure to date" is the MMO Player.
What once was a united group, looking to revel in the majesty of sweet online gaming in a live and let live environment, is now a debauched assortment of self-important, opinionated know-it-alls, crapping on one another's dreams.
The "Biggest MMO Failure to date" is the MMO Player.
What once was a united group, looking to revel in the majesty of sweet online gaming in a live and let live environment, is now a debauched assortment of self-important, opinionated know-it-alls, crapping on one another's dreams.
Just like anywhere in real life? That's the nature of people plain n simple. It is the company's responsibility to sort out through all the bickering to find solutions which they did not even when players provided sound solutions.
There were so many other things they could have done with that budget differently.
Number one would be the game engine, they could have gotten a WAYYYYYYYYYY better engine, and that could have made everythign right, instead of using hero and rebuilding it from ground up.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Originally posted by eddieg50 I think SWG has to be right in there when talking about biggest failures, The Hype was HUGE, Time Magazine, News Week, it was everywhere, then when people started playing it they were stunned by how bad it was. You could actually be killed by a butterfly, AI was totally over powered, Lag was just as bad as Vanguard, it took years to become a full fledged Jedi, because you could not actually play the game it became a Giant chat room although it was a very good chat room. People left quickly and it was down to a small core of fanatic dedicated Star Wars players, then Sony took over and put the final nail in the Coffin. Yes Epic Failure!
The hype for SWG may have been huge but was no where near as huge as SWTOR. The internet was not common place then, and most people were still on dial up, and I did not realise about it until it was released in the US. I heard vague things about it, and then went to check on its status and was already released.
I actually didn't know about the game untill a guild friend out of my Medal of Honor guild invited me into a beta event, so not sure even though I already was fairly active on the internet I didn't notice much hype, it became even more terrible when the game released and could hardly find a vendor to buy the game, eventually had to order it which took another 3 weeks. Oh you (superniceguy) where right about the box sales and Tubala Rase you corrected in my former reply
When I played it I felt like I was in the Star Wars universe, and even coming across Banthas was the most awesome thing ever. It just felt like a game like no other, it was more than a game, you were actually in the Star Wars universe.
Mannnn, same here, this is what I thought was what this genre would be more evolving into, true virtual worlds, this went beyond what we knew from single/multiplayer games even though my first MMORPG was Meridian59 and somewhat UO, SWG is what made me fall in "gamers" love with the genre as it showed so much potential to what this genre could grow into. Unfortunaly too much freedom in a game in the MMORPG genre isn't what the masses of today want as they believe it's boring and I truly believe that, nothing wrong if they feel that way. But on the same hand they are the loudest and bring in the most cash (even if short term)
Despite everything even the NGE, it still took over 3 years to do server "mergers" from the NGE, yet SWTOR had it done within 6 months.
Despite the bad coding of the overall game, I do feel the game was far more complex to simply do a character transefer. Today's MMORPG are so incredible limited that it's so much easier these day's to do character transfers.
SWG was the best design for a MMO, but those who did not like SWG then MMOs are not for you, and stick to playing the action games like Battlefront, Republic Commando etc
So agree with this, unfortunaly for us they didn't stick to the playing those others games as proof where this genre is today.
SWG was slated as too dull, and not Star Warsy enough, and then SWTOR was all action and Star Warsy but ends up being short lived, and treated like a single player game.
To be honost there isn't a Star Wars game for me that felt more Star Wars then SWG made me feel. As you said it placed me in the Star Wars Universe, the rest of the story of Star Wars is known, my time to create my own story within that universe.
Perhaps because I use to play with Lego/Playmobile/Star Wars when growing up, I was used to making up my own story's or with friends that it transelated really well with the MMORPG genre. But also play most other genre of gaming, that's why I want so much more from my MMORPG then today's MMORPG are able to deliver.
Originally posted by eddieg50 A failure at half a million players LOL, Vanguard would die to have a quarter that many players
The idea of what defines failure is a valid question.
Number of players? Well if you ignore WoW, Guild Wars, Linegage, FF, League of Legions and a host of others then SWTOR didn't do very well.
Ah number of players for a western subscription game you may cry. OK - but on that definition it isn't much better than WAR or AoC. WAR still had 300k+ subs in month 7 and AoC held onto a lot of subs pretty much until WAR launched; AoC still had about 100-150k 11 months after it launched. (Source: EA and Funcom's financial reports - at the end Funcom gave a revenue range for AoC hence the range for the subs). Even EQ1 managed 650k subs at its peak and 450k for quite a while. UO as well. And we know that SWTOR wil have 0 subscribers in November so at that point it is a failure by this measure.
Sales? Dwarfed by WoW, GW, EQ1, FF, Lineage.
Longevity - no. SWTOR will probably see out 2 or 3 years because of the IP agreement but it doesn't look good.
Profit made. Not a good measure at all. SWTOR cost a lot. And factor in part of the purchase price for Bioware - EA expected 1.2M subscribers at the time they bought Bioware (source JR after the May results) .... dwarfs the reported $120 for VSoH, AoC was less still and even factoring in $84M or so for buying Mythic WAR will have looked cheap. Ditto TR when allowing for the stock options / damages that RG won in the court case against NCSoft. Against this measure - profit/return on investment - SWTOR is a solid candidate for greatest failure.
Content: not great for an mmo. People will debate the point but most agree this is a problem.
Single player experience: probably scores highly here.
There is no doubt SWTOR has lost numbers but there is still a lot of people playing. Going free to play makes sense since games like GW2 are being released in the format anyway.
A game that sold so many boxes and digital downloads could not be considered a total failure by any means.
The "Biggest MMO Failure to date" is the MMO Player.
What once was a united group, looking to revel in the majesty of sweet online gaming in a live and let live environment, is now a debauched assortment of self-important, opinionated know-it-alls, crapping on one another's dreams.
Haha couldnt agree more. I miss the old school crowd and games.
Most people would agree that SWTOR is a candidate for biggest MMO failure to date. Some are pointing out that other failed games may have had a bigger splash when crashing, I would contend that SWTOR's failure has had a much greater ripple effect.
If my tally is right, 6 executives from Bioware have been burnt by this game. Lucas Arts CEO has left LA. EA's CEO's job is hanging by a thread. 300 layoffs of staff at Bioware Austin, no one knows the number of contractors terminated or not renewed. Most would agree that Bioware's reputation has been greatly sullied.
This title's failure is widely believed to have caused EA's stock to plummit, which has caused EA to spend $500 million in a stock buyback to raise the value of its stock. This isn't just to appease investors, it also reduces the risk of a buyout by a competitor, which was a large rumor just a couple of months ago.
The Secret World, essentially a coproduction of EA, is rumored to be being preasured by EA to convert to Freemium. A possible buyuot od Funcom by EA is less likely.
Many are speculating that TES online is undergoing drastic design changes and may not be released at all.
Many market analysts are pronouncing a subscription based pay model as dead due to this game's failure.
Whereas other games failures where blamed on a bad design, this is the first failure where the developer blames its playerbase.
As I said, a lot of ripples. You could argue that everything I mentioned is circumstantial. OK. That's a lot of circumstantial ripples.
Originally posted by eddieg50 I think SWG has to be right in there when talking about biggest failures, The Hype was HUGE, Time Magazine, News Week, it was everywhere, then when people started playing it they were stunned by how bad it was. You could actually be killed by a butterfly, AI was totally over powered, Lag was just as bad as Vanguard, it took years to become a full fledged Jedi, because you could not actually play the game it became a Giant chat room although it was a very good chat room. People left quickly and it was down to a small core of fanatic dedicated Star Wars players, then Sony took over and put the final nail in the Coffin. Yes Epic Failure!
The hype for SWG may have been huge but was no where near as huge as SWTOR. The internet was not common place then, and most people were still on dial up, and I did not realise about it until it was released in the US. I heard vague things about it, and then went to check on its status and was already released.
When I played it I felt like I was in the Star Wars universe, and even coming across Banthas was the most awesome thing ever. It just felt like a game like no other, it was more than a game, you were actually in the Star Wars universe.
Despite everything even the NGE, it still took over 3 years to do server "mergers" from the NGE, yet SWTOR had it done within 6 months
SWG was the best design for a MMO, but those who did not like SWG then MMOs are not for you, and stick to playing the action games like Battlefront, Republic Commando etc
SWG was slated as too dull, and not Star Warsy enough, and then SWTOR was all action and Star Warsy but ends up being short lived, and treated like a single player game.
Like I said "Hardcore, dedicated player" and dont get me wrong, nothing bad about that, its just that i noticed hardcore players think "differently". Super you dont get your name on the front page of Time and Newsweek especially back then if you are not super big and super hyped, so yes along with Everquest it was one the most hyped mmo'S of all time.
Some of SWG's components were very good such as the open world, immersion (although hurt severly by lag) crafting and eventually Jump to Lightspeed, but Lag, bad combat, having to get yourself qued in a wait line before getting buffed, and intially not having any space game at all (by the time JTL came along many had left), along with the torture of having to go eons before becoming the most important character in the game a Jedi just killed SWG-then Sony came along and did NOT fix the lag, did not expand JTL, made jedi to easy to get! Fixed the combat somewhat but made it to easy to kill AI, transfered the skill system to an inferior wow leveling, added speed racers right away (nice touch) at that point the game though was so jumbled it was doomed and thus an immense failure on all fronts by all develpers.
The game held on for the same reason sony held on to Vanguard, they were hoping tht with the changes WOW players would come aboard and alas they did not.
Perhaps the Worlds were to large, I certainly remember complaints to that effect when I was playing. "SWG was slated as to dull" -yes that is going to happen when you have lag combined with bad combat.
In a way you are right- Add the open worlds to SWTOR (not to the extent that SWG did it) add the crafting, harvesing (again not harvesting to the extent that SWG did it), add Jump to Lightspeed- add those things to SWTOR which allready has excellent story lines, production values, cut scenes, very little lag ( and i have an average computer), great companions, nice small groups with social points, good combat ( its good but i like Tera's better) and HOT DAMN Now that would have been a GREAT GAME!!!
Originally posted by eddieg50 A failure at half a million players LOL, Vanguard would die to have a quarter that many players
The idea of what defines failure is a valid question.
Number of players? Well if you ignore WoW, Guild Wars, Linegage, FF, League of Legions and a host of others then SWTOR didn't do very well.
Ah number of players for a western subscription game you may cry. OK - but on that definition it isn't much better than WAR or AoC. WAR still had 300k+ subs in month 7 and AoC held onto a lot of subs pretty much until WAR launched; AoC still had about 100-150k 11 months after it launched. (Source: EA and Funcom's financial reports - at the end Funcom gave a revenue range for AoC hence the range for the subs). Even EQ1 managed 650k subs at its peak and 450k for quite a while. UO as well. And we know that SWTOR wil have 0 subscribers in November so at that point it is a failure by this measure.
Sales? Dwarfed by WoW, GW, EQ1, FF, Lineage.
Longevity - no. SWTOR will probably see out 2 or 3 years because of the IP agreement but it doesn't look good.
Profit made. Not a good measure at all. SWTOR cost a lot. And factor in part of the purchase price for Bioware - EA expected 1.2M subscribers at the time they bought Bioware (source JR after the May results) .... dwarfs the reported $120 for VSoH, AoC was less still and even factoring in $84M or so for buying Mythic WAR will have looked cheap. Ditto TR when allowing for the stock options / damages that RG won in the court case against NCSoft. Against this measure - profit/return on investment - SWTOR is a solid candidate for greatest failure.
Content: not great for an mmo. People will debate the point but most agree this is a problem.
Single player experience: probably scores highly here.
MMO experience: and not very highly here.
I am sure that there are other measures though.
I just dont thing you can call a mmo a failure with a half million players, that is a problem with our society today, if you are not perfect you are a failure-I dont agree
Originally posted by eddieg50 I think SWG has to be right in there when talking about biggest failures, The Hype was HUGE, Time Magazine, News Week, it was everywhere, then when people started playing it they were stunned by how bad it was. You could actually be killed by a butterfly, AI was totally over powered, Lag was just as bad as Vanguard, it took years to become a full fledged Jedi, because you could not actually play the game it became a Giant chat room although it was a very good chat room. People left quickly and it was down to a small core of fanatic dedicated Star Wars players, then Sony took over and put the final nail in the Coffin. Yes Epic Failure!
The hype for SWG may have been huge but was no where near as huge as SWTOR. The internet was not common place then, and most people were still on dial up, and I did not realise about it until it was released in the US. I heard vague things about it, and then went to check on its status and was already released.
I actually didn't know about the game untill a guild friend out of my Medal of Honor guild invited me into a beta event, so not sure even though I already was fairly active on the internet I didn't notice much hype, it became even more terrible when the game released and could hardly find a vendor to buy the game, eventually had to order it which took another 3 weeks. Oh you (superniceguy) where right about the box sales and Tubala Rase you corrected in my former reply
When I played it I felt like I was in the Star Wars universe, and even coming across Banthas was the most awesome thing ever. It just felt like a game like no other, it was more than a game, you were actually in the Star Wars universe.
Mannnn, same here, this is what I thought was what this genre would be more evolving into, true virtual worlds, this went beyond what we knew from single/multiplayer games even though my first MMORPG was Meridian59 and somewhat UO, SWG is what made me fall in "gamers" love with the genre as it showed so much potential to what this genre could grow into. Unfortunaly too much freedom in a game in the MMORPG genre isn't what the masses of today want as they believe it's boring and I truly believe that, nothing wrong if they feel that way. But on the same hand they are the loudest and bring in the most cash (even if short term)
Despite everything even the NGE, it still took over 3 years to do server "mergers" from the NGE, yet SWTOR had it done within 6 months.
Despite the bad coding of the overall game, I do feel the game was far more complex to simply do a character transefer. Today's MMORPG are so incredible limited that it's so much easier these day's to do character transfers.
SWG was the best design for a MMO, but those who did not like SWG then MMOs are not for you, and stick to playing the action games like Battlefront, Republic Commando etc
So agree with this, unfortunaly for us they didn't stick to the playing those others games as proof where this genre is today.
SWG was slated as too dull, and not Star Warsy enough, and then SWTOR was all action and Star Warsy but ends up being short lived, and treated like a single player game.
To be honost there isn't a Star Wars game for me that felt more Star Wars then SWG made me feel. As you said it placed me in the Star Wars Universe, the rest of the story of Star Wars is known, my time to create my own story within that universe.
Perhaps because I use to play with Lego/Playmobile/Star Wars when growing up, I was used to making up my own story's or with friends that it transelated really well with the MMORPG genre. But also play most other genre of gaming, that's why I want so much more from my MMORPG then today's MMORPG are able to deliver.
Reklaw I agree SWG did have some inovative and fun attributes, There lack of a space game and all the other problems I have mentioned lag, bad combat, no jedi, etc led to a mass exodus except for hard core dedicatied players who were more into chat, crafting, harvesting, exploring-and it just did not have enough people for sony to keep the way it was-now did sony make the game worse? Absolutely- with the exception of speed racers right away -they fumbled the ball
What exactly is it about SW:TOR that makes people take it so personally that it wasn't the exact game they wanted it to be?
I'm just blown away about all the complaining and moaning some have to do about this game, instead of saying "Not my cup o' tea" and move on.
Seriously, I can't figure it out.
Great question Doy. There was tons of information of what SWTOR was going to be like, in fact I almost did not play because I had read that the space game was not going to be as expansive as Jump to Lightspeed, Coming in I knew it was going to be on the linier side, I knew it would have starndard combat, I knew it would have standard crafting, I knew it would have standard PvP (arenas and such) . Why did I play then? Because I love Bio-wares stories, I love the way they shape a story with great production and I was not dissapointed, knew what I was getting and glad I got it.
Originally posted by eddieg50 A failure at half a million players LOL, Vanguard would die to have a quarter that many players
The idea of what defines failure is a valid question.
Number of players? Well if you ignore WoW, Guild Wars, Linegage, FF, League of Legions and a host of others then SWTOR didn't do very well.
Ah number of players for a western subscription game you may cry. OK - but on that definition it isn't much better than WAR or AoC. WAR still had 300k+ subs in month 7 and AoC held onto a lot of subs pretty much until WAR launched; AoC still had about 100-150k 11 months after it launched. (Source: EA and Funcom's financial reports - at the end Funcom gave a revenue range for AoC hence the range for the subs). Even EQ1 managed 650k subs at its peak and 450k for quite a while. UO as well. And we know that SWTOR wil have 0 subscribers in November so at that point it is a failure by this measure.
Sales? Dwarfed by WoW, GW, EQ1, FF, Lineage.
Longevity - no. SWTOR will probably see out 2 or 3 years because of the IP agreement but it doesn't look good.
Profit made. Not a good measure at all. SWTOR cost a lot. And factor in part of the purchase price for Bioware - EA expected 1.2M subscribers at the time they bought Bioware (source JR after the May results) .... dwarfs the reported $120 for VSoH, AoC was less still and even factoring in $84M or so for buying Mythic WAR will have looked cheap. Ditto TR when allowing for the stock options / damages that RG won in the court case against NCSoft. Against this measure - profit/return on investment - SWTOR is a solid candidate for greatest failure.
Content: not great for an mmo. People will debate the point but most agree this is a problem.
Single player experience: probably scores highly here.
MMO experience: and not very highly here.
I am sure that there are other measures though.
I just dont think you can call an mmo a failure with a half million players, that is a problem with our society today, if you are not perfect you are a failure-I dont agree
Originally posted by eddieg50 A failure at half a million players LOL, Vanguard would die to have a quarter that many players
The idea of what defines failure is a valid question.
Number of players? Well if you ignore WoW, Guild Wars, Linegage, FF, League of Legions and a host of others then SWTOR didn't do very well.
Ah number of players for a western subscription game you may cry. OK - but on that definition it isn't much better than WAR or AoC. WAR still had 300k+ subs in month 7 and AoC held onto a lot of subs pretty much until WAR launched; AoC still had about 100-150k 11 months after it launched. (Source: EA and Funcom's financial reports - at the end Funcom gave a revenue range for AoC hence the range for the subs). Even EQ1 managed 650k subs at its peak and 450k for quite a while. UO as well. And we know that SWTOR wil have 0 subscribers in November so at that point it is a failure by this measure.
Sales? Dwarfed by WoW, GW, EQ1, FF, Lineage.
Longevity - no. SWTOR will probably see out 2 or 3 years because of the IP agreement but it doesn't look good.
Profit made. Not a good measure at all. SWTOR cost a lot. And factor in part of the purchase price for Bioware - EA expected 1.2M subscribers at the time they bought Bioware (source JR after the May results) .... dwarfs the reported $120 for VSoH, AoC was less still and even factoring in $84M or so for buying Mythic WAR will have looked cheap. Ditto TR when allowing for the stock options / damages that RG won in the court case against NCSoft. Against this measure - profit/return on investment - SWTOR is a solid candidate for greatest failure.
Content: not great for an mmo. People will debate the point but most agree this is a problem.
Single player experience: probably scores highly here.
MMO experience: and not very highly here.
I am sure that there are other measures though.
I just dont think you can call an mmo a failure with a half million players, that is a problem with our society today, if you are not perfect you are a failure-I dont agree
Under normal circumstances it would be good, but SWTOR is not normal
The failure is not having half a million players, the failure is needing half a million players to keep the game alive / break even. From what they say if they do not have half a million subscribers they will be losing money with SWTOR, and without F2P they were heading to below 500K. They are about 500k now (from what they say which is no doubt somehow bloated), but within the next month or two they would have about 300K
Although time will tell if 500K will be spending an average of $15 each per month in the cash shop / subscriptions, after going F2P.
If this was any other P2P MMO, it would stay P2P, and the devs would be laughing.
Although with SWTOR the subs are still declining, and looks like it is not going to stop. The game had 1.7 million subs from launch and now has 500K. Stabilising at 500K is good, but being at 500K and dropping is not good.
Comments
Took years to become a 'full fledged jedi' ? I can see where your anger comes from. I unlocked jedi in 4 months.
The only thing that failed with SWG was Smedley.
Honest question here...
What exactly is it about SW:TOR that makes people take it so personally that it wasn't the exact game they wanted it to be?
I'm just blown away about all the complaining and moaning some have to do about this game, instead of saying "Not my cup o' tea" and move on.
Seriously, I can't figure it out.
I think it has to do more with people's expectations rather than just not liking certain particular aspects of the game. I think that's why so many people are so "hurt" about it. I can see the level of dissapointment and agree with it to a certain degree myself. Considering the fact that Bio/EA were behind the game, with the amount of money spent, and with the IP of Star Wars, the game "SHOULD" have been much more than what actually came out. I think that's the crux of the issue. Severe dissapointment = moaning and complaining.
Just because you don't agree with the moaners and complainers, it doesn't deligitimize their distress; I guess you could say its just not your cup o' tea and move on :-)
Never said I didn't agree with them, funny that's how it's taken though. If I ask a question about why everyone takes the "failures" of this game personally, does that make me an automatic fanboi? Again, honest question
I honestly want to know why there so much hate for this game. Is it because features were promised that were not implemented? Did Bioware ruin Star Wars?
Maybe it's because there was so much hype around it before release, that people expected more. If that's the case, can we expect the same after a few months of GW2? (hypothetical... the last thing I want to do is start a GW2 thread in a 30+ page "TOR Sucks" thread)
Just curious is all. Never played the game.
I think that a large amount of people actually wanted SWTOR to fail because of all the design principles behind it. It has a large focus on single player gameplay and highly directed content. It also basically forced Star Wars into the WoW model, which probably wasn't the best idea.
If SWTOR would have been a big success, then we could expect more games like it down the road. Seeing it fail means that we're not likely to see any SWTOR clones...and IMO, that's a good point.
And about GW2...
Not every game is the same. Just because one game that folks were excited about turned out to be a massive disappointment, does not mean you can apply this "rule" to every game that has "hype."
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
You almost can... people love to hate the popular things.
In all seriousness though, people wanting TOR to fail makes a lot of sense. Never thought of that.
Exactly. It is not the game's quality relative to nothing but rather relative to what people expected it to be. Star Wars + Bioware + all the hype such as being rival to WoW, lead to some huge expectations which the game did not deliver on, at all.
And no, when you have such failed expectations you cannot just move on. It's like the enormous critique Lucas got on the SW prequels. It is nothing people will just shrug of, as this is Star Wars we are talking about. The single largest sci-fi IP ever. You cannot expect people not to complain about such a dissapointment.
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This is all speculation, but I believe that the fact is that this is Bioware we are talking about, the people who brought us the AAA space opera RPG trilogy Mass Effect, and more importantly, the gem that was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The fact that these games pretty much put Bioware on the map and more or less crowned Bioware as the king of western RPGs, made us set our standards high for Star Wars The Old Republic. SW:KotoR and ME 1 and 2 (maybe 3 depends on what people think of the ending) raised the bar for both western RPG and space opera standards, and people view SWTOR as well under said bar. People feel insulted that Bioware did what they did for their previous games so well and apparenttly not for SWTOR. To them, Bioware did not live up to the legacy it made for itself.
Its like how Blizzard fans feel insulted about Diablo 3 after playing Diablo 2. Its not that SWTOR "isn't their cup of tea", its that Bioware's signiature quality that it puts into its games is sorely lacking (I haven't played too much of SWTOR yet, but so far it looks like standard MMO fare with a Mass Effect cutscene/conversation choices paint job, so I understand their position).
Since when is Tuesday a direction?
To the poster above.
Bioware dosen't exist anymore except in name. Hasn't for a long time. This is EA through and through.
The "Biggest MMO Failure to date" is the MMO Player.
What once was a united group, looking to revel in the majesty of sweet online gaming in a live and let live environment, is now a debauched assortment of self-important, opinionated know-it-alls, crapping on one another's dreams.
Just like anywhere in real life? That's the nature of people plain n simple. It is the company's responsibility to sort out through all the bickering to find solutions which they did not even when players provided sound solutions.
There were so many other things they could have done with that budget differently.
Number one would be the game engine, they could have gotten a WAYYYYYYYYYY better engine, and that could have made everythign right, instead of using hero and rebuilding it from ground up.
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Carl Sagan-
The idea of what defines failure is a valid question.
Number of players? Well if you ignore WoW, Guild Wars, Linegage, FF, League of Legions and a host of others then SWTOR didn't do very well.
Ah number of players for a western subscription game you may cry. OK - but on that definition it isn't much better than WAR or AoC. WAR still had 300k+ subs in month 7 and AoC held onto a lot of subs pretty much until WAR launched; AoC still had about 100-150k 11 months after it launched. (Source: EA and Funcom's financial reports - at the end Funcom gave a revenue range for AoC hence the range for the subs). Even EQ1 managed 650k subs at its peak and 450k for quite a while. UO as well. And we know that SWTOR wil have 0 subscribers in November so at that point it is a failure by this measure.
Sales? Dwarfed by WoW, GW, EQ1, FF, Lineage.
Longevity - no. SWTOR will probably see out 2 or 3 years because of the IP agreement but it doesn't look good.
Profit made. Not a good measure at all. SWTOR cost a lot. And factor in part of the purchase price for Bioware - EA expected 1.2M subscribers at the time they bought Bioware (source JR after the May results) .... dwarfs the reported $120 for VSoH, AoC was less still and even factoring in $84M or so for buying Mythic WAR will have looked cheap. Ditto TR when allowing for the stock options / damages that RG won in the court case against NCSoft. Against this measure - profit/return on investment - SWTOR is a solid candidate for greatest failure.
Content: not great for an mmo. People will debate the point but most agree this is a problem.
Single player experience: probably scores highly here.
MMO experience: and not very highly here.
I am sure that there are other measures though.
There is no doubt SWTOR has lost numbers but there is still a lot of people playing. Going free to play makes sense since games like GW2 are being released in the format anyway.
A game that sold so many boxes and digital downloads could not be considered a total failure by any means.
Haha couldnt agree more. I miss the old school crowd and games.
Most people would agree that SWTOR is a candidate for biggest MMO failure to date. Some are pointing out that other failed games may have had a bigger splash when crashing, I would contend that SWTOR's failure has had a much greater ripple effect.
If my tally is right, 6 executives from Bioware have been burnt by this game. Lucas Arts CEO has left LA. EA's CEO's job is hanging by a thread. 300 layoffs of staff at Bioware Austin, no one knows the number of contractors terminated or not renewed. Most would agree that Bioware's reputation has been greatly sullied.
This title's failure is widely believed to have caused EA's stock to plummit, which has caused EA to spend $500 million in a stock buyback to raise the value of its stock. This isn't just to appease investors, it also reduces the risk of a buyout by a competitor, which was a large rumor just a couple of months ago.
The Secret World, essentially a coproduction of EA, is rumored to be being preasured by EA to convert to Freemium. A possible buyuot od Funcom by EA is less likely.
Many are speculating that TES online is undergoing drastic design changes and may not be released at all.
Many market analysts are pronouncing a subscription based pay model as dead due to this game's failure.
Whereas other games failures where blamed on a bad design, this is the first failure where the developer blames its playerbase.
As I said, a lot of ripples. You could argue that everything I mentioned is circumstantial. OK. That's a lot of circumstantial ripples.
Really?
I can go down a huge list of people that I know who have ALL heard of SW:TOR who have also NEVER heard of Tabula Rasa.
Like I said "Hardcore, dedicated player" and dont get me wrong, nothing bad about that, its just that i noticed hardcore players think "differently". Super you dont get your name on the front page of Time and Newsweek especially back then if you are not super big and super hyped, so yes along with Everquest it was one the most hyped mmo'S of all time.
Some of SWG's components were very good such as the open world, immersion (although hurt severly by lag) crafting and eventually Jump to Lightspeed, but Lag, bad combat, having to get yourself qued in a wait line before getting buffed, and intially not having any space game at all (by the time JTL came along many had left), along with the torture of having to go eons before becoming the most important character in the game a Jedi just killed SWG-then Sony came along and did NOT fix the lag, did not expand JTL, made jedi to easy to get! Fixed the combat somewhat but made it to easy to kill AI, transfered the skill system to an inferior wow leveling, added speed racers right away (nice touch) at that point the game though was so jumbled it was doomed and thus an immense failure on all fronts by all develpers.
The game held on for the same reason sony held on to Vanguard, they were hoping tht with the changes WOW players would come aboard and alas they did not.
Perhaps the Worlds were to large, I certainly remember complaints to that effect when I was playing. "SWG was slated as to dull" -yes that is going to happen when you have lag combined with bad combat.
In a way you are right- Add the open worlds to SWTOR (not to the extent that SWG did it) add the crafting, harvesing (again not harvesting to the extent that SWG did it), add Jump to Lightspeed- add those things to SWTOR which allready has excellent story lines, production values, cut scenes, very little lag ( and i have an average computer), great companions, nice small groups with social points, good combat ( its good but i like Tera's better) and HOT DAMN Now that would have been a GREAT GAME!!!
I just dont thing you can call a mmo a failure with a half million players, that is a problem with our society today, if you are not perfect you are a failure-I dont agree
Reklaw I agree SWG did have some inovative and fun attributes, There lack of a space game and all the other problems I have mentioned lag, bad combat, no jedi, etc led to a mass exodus except for hard core dedicatied players who were more into chat, crafting, harvesting, exploring-and it just did not have enough people for sony to keep the way it was-now did sony make the game worse? Absolutely- with the exception of speed racers right away -they fumbled the ball
Great question Doy. There was tons of information of what SWTOR was going to be like, in fact I almost did not play because I had read that the space game was not going to be as expansive as Jump to Lightspeed, Coming in I knew it was going to be on the linier side, I knew it would have starndard combat, I knew it would have standard crafting, I knew it would have standard PvP (arenas and such) . Why did I play then? Because I love Bio-wares stories, I love the way they shape a story with great production and I was not dissapointed, knew what I was getting and glad I got it.
Under normal circumstances it would be good, but SWTOR is not normal
The failure is not having half a million players, the failure is needing half a million players to keep the game alive / break even. From what they say if they do not have half a million subscribers they will be losing money with SWTOR, and without F2P they were heading to below 500K. They are about 500k now (from what they say which is no doubt somehow bloated), but within the next month or two they would have about 300K
Although time will tell if 500K will be spending an average of $15 each per month in the cash shop / subscriptions, after going F2P.
If this was any other P2P MMO, it would stay P2P, and the devs would be laughing.
Although with SWTOR the subs are still declining, and looks like it is not going to stop. The game had 1.7 million subs from launch and now has 500K. Stabilising at 500K is good, but being at 500K and dropping is not good.
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