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Will SWTOR ever recover?
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Why wouldn't you blame Bioware? Blame all of them.
Bioware made a singeleplayer game and called it an MMO, hence why it failed.
That's where their inexperience showed I think. Not to mention that awful engine they used I wish they would have made one from the ground up.
They screwed up design and implementation. There is no recovery from that.
They could make it better though. But would the cost justify it? I don't think so. There's too many things wrong with the game and they missed that initial window to impress. It would be better to start over with another developer and a whole new design philosophy and implementation.
This game was a total trainwreck. For one, people thought the same BW that did Baldurs gates and Neverwinter Nights was going to be doing SWG 2.0. That probably would have been a great game.
Instead what we got, was a fading company riding the fame of previous programmers. Ones who were offended to even have Star Wars Galaxies mentioned. It was only a week or two after the forums went live that one of the very few developer posts basically quoted someone about starwars galaxies and made the comment...this isnt going to be ..a day in the life of starwars"..... That was the very first post that made me feel worried and it didnt get anything but worse as they went.
EALouse was right. If you can still find the letter he posted, he called this a full year? before release, talking about how they were over budget, had little of the game in place, and the programmers were bracing for a trainwreck due to the suits.
They squandered probably the most lucrative IP out there..and worse, LA killed SWG specifically to allow them to do it.
double homicide, so true.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
Of course players are going to try the new releases when they come out. Every MMO has to deal with that so it's hardly a problem exclusive to TOR. New games are going to be released every year and that will have an effect on current titles. That's just the nature of the business. That's a bit different from saying "the new releases will kill TOR" which WAS said around these parts frequently.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
If FFXIV can do it, SWTOR can.
But will they close the game down for a year and pour tens of millions into it? No.
I wont bother arguing if the game is "dead" is not, but -
If you don't consider it dead, then those titles obviously maimed it.
If you think it is dead, then those titles obviously helped kill it.
Well there is a thread on the official forums in which the OP and various others suggest SWTOR has already recovered according to EA's Q1 2014 results. Have to assume the thread OP simply doesn't understand as the two quotes from EA's results are incomplete / out of context. Lots of folk high fiving Bioware as a result.
Thread link: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=664635
Original post:
*********************************************************************************************************
EA released their Q1 2014 report today and SWTOR saw a rise over 3 months ago and more growth than the last year (since q1 2013 aka may-aug 2012)
Quote (1):
First, extra content and free-to-play contributed $177 million, up 35% over the prior year, led by sustained growth in FIFA Ultimate Team, as well as Star Wars: The Old Republic, and FIFA Online 3. This revenue relates to businesses on PC or consoles, where consumers can enhance or extend their gaming experience by buying additional digital content.
Quote (2):
recognized in the free-to-play category as we expanded this title to be both a subscription and free-to-play game. If you were to combine all of our extra content free-to-play with subscription, ads, and other, we still saw more than 10% growth over the same period last year.
Congratulations to the Bioware team for stabilizing and now growing the game's population and income, it's a good sign
*********************************************************************************************************
To put things in context the line before quote 1 (from EA's analyst Q&A transcript http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/2610778646x0x679051/d5d63fd4-8e1f-442e-9969-5ac3508923d8/EA-Jul-23-2013_Transcript.pdf available from http://ir.ea.com/ ) was:
"Breaking down our digital revenue into its key components highlights the performances of each business."
So the 35% increase is for EA's total digital revenue - not SWTORs - and as such says nothing about SWTORs.
And the line before quote 2 which again provides the context was:
"And fourth, subscriptions, advertising, and other digital revenue contributed $61 million, down 25% over the same period last year."
EA is talking about a) why their sub revenue is down 25% - because SWTOR has many fewer subscribers than it did 12 months earlier - but b) defending their results by saying that all of their digital revenue for extra content + f2p + subs + ads + other digital revenue was up 10%. And whilst this ncludes SWTOR it doesn't say anything about SWTOR in isolation as it is talking about all of EA's digital revenue. So FIFA, Battlefield, WAR, DAoC etc etc. SWTOR may have gone up 200% or gone down 500%. It is buried.
And if you check EA's statement about SWTOR being the "big reason" for subs/ads/other being down 25% then it makes sense. 12 months earlier SWTOR still had between 500k and 1M subs - according to EA - which will have brought in between $15M and $30M (allowing for the free 30-days rolled out last year) compared to this years say $5M to $10. A big drop for sure. It won't be the only reason for the drop but EA are just giving the big hitter.
To read the thread on the official forums however all is well
The only thing that EA said about SWTOR specifically was in answer to a question on business models:
"we started a free-to-play Star Wars business and part of that is showing up in the extra content. So you’re seeing the subscription business down 25%. That’s a reduction, some of the people moving away from Star Wars subscriptions and playing the free-to-play, which is helping drive the extra content side of the equation"
So subs down 25% since F2P - maybe the number for the last full month pre-F2P compared to the average sub number for Q1 2014. Either way 25% doesn't sound to bad imo. The rest of the answer - well I understand the generality of the answer (remember the discussion is really about all of EA's games) but suspect that SWTOR is a bad example. People stop being subscribers and then spend money on extra content? Yes ... but so do subscribers.
Anyway - all is well according to the poster on the official forums !!!!!
According to a recent survey on themeparkdrone.com
"4 out of 5 people with nothing to do rated this game as nothing to do."
I can look up some more statistics but the sum of all the calculations is that SWTOR will waste your time unless you have the entertainment tastes of a unicellular organism. Any game can idle along as this one is, there is no great achievement here except for swindling a whole lot of Star Wars hostages because there is no other MMO. The introduction of this game was Machiavellian in its destruction of the IP for the MMORPG user base. They couldn't have made it worse if they tried.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
yes they could,,they took some good decisions too
they chose themepark,,or would you like them to tweak the engine more?
no noob ganking, they have isolated the factions, so players have very few opportunities to interact
with the opposite faction
thats the way its supposed to be on a PVE server, but they should prolly change that on the PVP servers
the stories was mostly good,,a known boware feature
but the implementation of the skill system is very lackluster,,Theres not a single skill for Space
apparently, nobody can train as a pilot in that universe
but that would explain the performance of the enemies on the Space maps
No it will not come back because the meat of SWTOR is the single player storyline which has an ending.
The MMO aspects are just not good to retain players for a prolonged period of time (years) which is necessary for a game to grow rather than stagnate and dwindle.
They chose the wrong engine.
The wrong design.
The wrong emphasis: story.
They made a themepark, and then messed that up by making it linear and unvaried even by themepark standards.
They had an inflexible UI.
World PvP was advertised, implemented TWICE, and failed so bad it had to be pulled.
They supplanted a better game for their game through back room brokering and dildoistic avarice.
They put in a Space game that was a 90's low-capability console rail shooter.
The group size is smaller than most games except in raid mode, so guildies often had to wait for the ride to be over to ride.
The abilities had built -in hang and lack of responsiveness that made the game feel sluggish, and to some degree this still exists when compared to other games.
The sub model failed so they introduced one of the most restrictive F2P models (even when you got everything through sub the game was still bad)
The factions have very little interaction, and are essentially just separate games.
Crafting is worse than useless, it's simple and counterproductive for the most part. You are better off grinding to buy from the NPCs or the store.
The classes are the same for each side with a different skin. The builds are simplistic.
Lobby play encouraged by locating the activities on a station that is an inorganic hub that feels like the DMV
No non-combat activities (you can role-play they will quickly add, but you can role-play with a piece of tire rubber with just as much support as Bioware gives you. Tire rubber has no chat bubbles or Bio either)
No player housing as the ships are just transit screens that are identical to everyone else's ship
No-multi person vehicles
Cartoony art style that has nothing to do with Star Wars. rehashed WoW shoulder pads made in Asian sweat shops from the left over budget after the rest of the money for the project went into the entropy bin.
Formulaic giant monster raids, because no one can understand fighting anything else I guess.
Bad performance on many systems.
The stories have a hard time explaining x of y quests ad nauseum. Sith Quest: Go and get medicine for the villagers, but do so Evillly...
Content produced at a snails pace, bugs fixed so slow that Morgan Freeman has to explain it.
It's a comedy of errors
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
A fine post! I would disagree on the fault about making a game around story, though:
"The wrong emphasis: story."
That is a strength. Although once the story is completed, it is now a weakness. EA failed to deliver story even in their first expansion, though. So while story was important early on, nowadays, it is not. (sadly). Story was important at launch though.
I think story got a bunch of SW fans to check this game out. They are kind of wishing that SWG was back, or that a different SW game would come out. Because SWTOR is really a boring game, a tie with GW2 (for me).
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
the biggest sandbox game was/is at around 500k players, right?
an mmo with that low expected sale will not get the star wars license, at least not alone
and i doubt , that it is technically viable to program a sandbox game for millions of players
at least , we havent seen one yet
and even if they could, how many want to spend hours on a project, and then see "XXLeninSlayerXX"
destroy it in minutes, just for the lolz?
SWTOR was, to me, the best massively single-player RPG ever created. I completely enjoyed the story, and disliked almost everything else (crafting, space missions PVP, etc). If they released an expansion with a significant storyline components - even if it was a single yet expansive storyline for all classes moving forward, I would likely buy it and play through it.
Adding in a proper space simulation and social elements might make me stick around after the story was done as well.
SWTOR..... So much potential, so much fail....
Sorry, this game is not coming back. TORTanic will soon be completely at the bottom of the MMO ocean among other pretenders....
100% will not come back, no way.
Only chance it has of coming back is firing the entire workforce of swtor and hiring in a whole new team with a vision that is actually smart and knows how to properly make an mmo.
No this game was doomed from the start.
The only thing good about this game was the FIRST time leveling a character 1-50, and enjoying the SINGLE player story. Other then that, the rest of the game was an abysmal failure on epic proportion.
I could list 100 things wrong with this game, but im sure its been posted before.
This is a game, sadly, I wish it shuts down in hope of one day in the future, it gets another chance, from a wise and seasoned company who knows how to make MMOS to make it.
I think SWTOR will be here for a while longer. I don't think it will last as long as WOW or Anarchy Online. However, it won't be disappearing this year or perhaps even next year. It still has some life left in it. It could surprise everyone and last quite awhile. Back in the day, people said WOW would not last. Apparently, it has. So, who knows?
Even though so many people are negative toward it, I enjoy it. Sure, it has a lot of faults. I'm a sucker for a MMO that tells a great story, though. I also enjoy the graphics. SWTOR was my first MMO. So, I am a bit biased. The bloom has not completely wore off, yet. A person is always fond of their first!
Hearts broke in Star Wars, people were let down. The f2p model was so lacking in appeal, that I never returned to the game. All they got from me was a 6 month subscription, and some regrets over the repetitive linear design. The best parts of SWTOR were the character stories. Once those were done, I didn't want the rest. I don't know if they'll recover. After all the $$ the diva directors wasted on celebrity voiceovers and stuff like that, maybe they don't deserve to.
My hopes are on EQNext. I wonder if their innovative new voxel based changeable world design can get online gaming to move outside the box, far away from linearity and repetitive questing.