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Will SWTOR ever recover?
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I agree with alot of replies in this thread, especially in regards to SWTOR being a great example of what not to do in the MMO space.
It seems they were attempting a "fun little game", but when you want subscribers to stick around you need more than a casual "little fun game".
If SWTOR would have been marketed as the next game in the Old Republic with some online interaction and just sold boxes like GW2 and then sold expansions that extended the story it would to this day be amazingly successful, but they just marketed the game completely wrong, cause there isn't even close to enough content to be considered an MMORPG.
This game should have been B2P period.
so, having about 500k accounts is not niche,compared to wow?
and no,,not EVERYBODY knows EVE
yes it is niche,,specially, when you consider , that a lot of those accounts are paid by PLEX
i dont know any EVE players, who doesnt run multiple accounts, but only pay real Money for one,,,do you?
and if EVE is so successful,,why did CCP try to go for another playerbase, and a new platform?
EVE is a good Little game,,nothing more,,nothing less
if swtor had EVEs quality, they would be at pandalands numbers by now
Simple answer.
Hero Engine. It is flawed and they can never make the game what it should be. Better to let it die slow and start over in the middle of the new movies. Drop EA go back to SOE and get them to use the forgelight on a new SWG game.
My two cents: -
SWTOR had two fundamental problems: -
It was a bad single player game, and...
It was a bad MMO.
It was just spread too thin. I Preferred playing Mass Effect (2) for the single player experience (which most of the game is) and I preferred playing most other MMOS for a massively multi-player experience. It was ill-conceived from start to finish.
Will it improve on its current figures; of course not. What game has improved its subs/ active player base since WOW? And that was a whole different time and market.
Last I checked, most MMOs have a slight down trend in player activity once summer hits.
Guess all of them are 'failing' too. /sarcasm
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
It's 1 Doomsayer vs the fanboi, the company responsible will ofc say there are millions of satisfied players playing right now.
Noone will know untill the fat lady has sung and everything comes out in the open.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
This is the damage that fanbois do to all mmo's though - there isn't a game I've played that isn't infested with them to some degree.
Aside from WoW, only EVE Online and, possibly, Guild Wars 2 have been released into a more or less unmitigated success, and with the latter one, its too early to tell anyway. Amusingly, both WoW and EVE being p2p, it looks like the Free-to-Play revolution isnt actually turning games into successes, its just an easy way to mitigate a launch disaster into an acceptable loss, or mediocre performer that doesnt kill the company.
SWTOR can easily recover, but for that to happen, a major turn of events would be required, and nobody is going to pay for that. Its simple as that: You have to spend money to earn money, and they spent all they had, not getting enough to earn it back. Its simply a better idea to let it languish than to rebuild a team, re-invest and all that.
Plus, at this point there isnt a silver bullet solution that is going to bring back the players overnight.
Probably the best idea would be to release a major expansion which offers a new class on each side, maybe a race or two, 2 new singleplayer planets, a slew of new raids and equipment, flashpoints and PvP arenas. And then, to top it off, you need one big draw, one major idea that has people interested so they get caught up in the web of new content and polished features. Whether its true space flight, housing and player cities, interesting large scale PvP or something new entirely (SWGs bounty hunt system, for example, was great), you dictate what kind of players you ll attract by that.
But thats a year+ of development and design time we are talking here, and that isnt going to happen.
So, while technically its not too late (the game is not that dated yet), its virtually impossible to ever happen
Is still the MMO with more subs but WoW in the west. The game is good and doing fine, new content is coming this year and the big thing that everyone is waiting is real, know as the secret space proyect, probably the 1st real expansion for the game.
Agree 100%. The ForgeLight with a TRUE old republic mmorpg environment (ie seamless worlds, etc, etc) would be astonishing. Considering the work SoE is doing with ForgeLight, it's hard to imagine how it would look.
http://wyrdblogging.blogspot.com/
guess swtor have summer all year long then
if you can call losing 75% of the playerbase " a slight Down trend",,
ROFL!
Yep and I'm sure the fact it is financially successful is just making people at EA lose sleep. /ROFL!
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
riccitello lost more, than his nap time, i think?
the guy, who made them MILLIONS every year , got fired
i guess they didnt have room for more Money, right?
LOL. Source? Even the (then) CFO of EA said that at some point SWTOR had to be profitable or else .....
Financial analysts estimated $60M from 2M sales - not much is made from box sales (c. 20%) after production costs and the cut retailers like Amazon take. And even if they maintained 850k subs - the max number EA ever announced (just about half of 1.7M) up until they went F2P that would have only brought in just over $100m. And we know they didn't have 850k from launch until F2P ...
Games cost a lot of money to develop, even more if you have a big IP involved - and that's before operating costs. That was why SWTOR - before all the staff lay-offs etc. - needed 500k to break even (make a day-to-day profit) and 1M subs to recover its development costs. Had they managed it - even if they had kept 850k - they would have been very happy.
As it is the future - as presented by EA at E3 - is Star Wars Battlefield. SWTOR was not included in EA's current and future portfolio.
If Vanguard taught us anything, it is that a game, no matter how promising and patched, can ever recover from an epic fail launch. However, I do think a concentrated and clever marketing effort will grow a game's population. WoW's success, largely, is due to their relentless, never-ending advertising.
Luckily, i don't need you to like me to enjoy video games. -nariusseldon.
In F2P I think it's more a case of the game's trying to play the player's. -laserit
LOL. Source? Even the (then) CFO of EA said that at some point SWTOR had to be profitable or else .....
Financial analysts estimated $60M from 2M sales - not much is made from box sales (c. 20%) after production costs and the cut retailers like Amazon take. And even if they maintained 850k subs - the max number EA ever announced (just about half of 1.7M) up until they went F2P that would have only brought in just over $100m. And we know they didn't have 850k from launch until F2P ...
Games cost a lot of money to develop, even more if you have a big IP involved - and that's before operating costs. That was why SWTOR - before all the staff lay-offs etc. - needed 500k to break even (make a day-to-day profit) and 1M subs to recover its development costs. Had they managed it - even if they had kept 850k - they would have been very happy.
As it is the future - as presented by EA at E3 - is Star Wars Battlefield. SWTOR was not included in EA's current and future portfolio.
you didn't mention the cartel market, how come? some people just don't realize how much money that is making them.
its funny how people are always talking about how much money EA makes while ignoring the fact that a whole heck of a lot of people play this game currently, both F2P and subs.
the population really isn't going down much either from what i can tell, at least not on my server.
SWTOR is doing just fine for the time being, even if many of you don't personally like the game.
wrong,,a good advert will sell a product once, but it wont keep the customer for long
only a good product will do that
swtor has reach a stable level.
fleets have good population. group finder/ warzone queues pop really fast in all categories.
newbie areas are heavily populated even during off-peak hours.
the gtn-auction houses is thriving.
so many new guilds are recruiting.
but to the haters/bashers - all these means a game is dying.
Same, on the Red Eclipse yesterday there was at least 3 full instances of the Fleet alone, and the Guild i am in is doing well, seems like there are plenty of people playing, the only question is how much they are spending, likewise i have no clue as to what proportion of the players there were F2P vs P2P, running a paid sub myself though
Have to say though, the PVP is terrible, if they were to do an xwing v tiefighter type of space pvp 'battleground' that would be a 'killer app' but sadly the Hero Engine is too flawed and limited a game engine to support that kind of thing
What is the definition of "recover"?
In the context of my response, I am considering just how many servers were in at launch, and how long the queue times were to get into the game. I don't see how it can suddenly switch direction and "recover". Bioware had a slick marketing campaign and had hooked in an enormous number of potential customers. 30 days after launch, it was visible to the naked eye how the population numbers fell off a cliff. One could probably trend the 3 and 6 month declines against the expiring subscriptions. I lasted 6 months.
The initial crush of player mass at launch is never sustainable. It's normal for an MMO to see this normalization.
But server merges and a major subscription model change not even one year in should not be typical for a game that came in with such hoopla The opportunity is lost. The game company should not try to "recover", but try to appeal to the fans that it has and turn that into a profitable business model.
LOL. Source? Even the (then) CFO of EA said that at some point SWTOR had to be profitable or else ..... Financial analysts estimated $60M from 2M sales - not much is made from box sales (c. 20%) after production costs and the cut retailers like Amazon take. And even if they maintained 850k subs - the max number EA ever announced (just about half of 1.7M) up until they went F2P that would have only brought in just over $100m. And we know they didn't have 850k from launch until F2P ... Games cost a lot of money to develop, even more if you have a big IP involved - and that's before operating costs. That was why SWTOR - before all the staff lay-offs etc. - needed 500k to break even (make a day-to-day profit) and 1M subs to recover its development costs. Had they managed it - even if they had kept 850k - they would have been very happy. As it is the future - as presented by EA at E3 - is Star Wars Battlefield. SWTOR was not included in EA's current and future portfolio.
you didn't mention the cartel market, how come? some people just don't realize how much money that is making them. its funny how people are always talking about how much money EA makes while ignoring the fact that a whole heck of a lot of people play this game currently, both F2P and subs. the population really isn't going down much either from what i can tell, at least not on my server. SWTOR is doing just fine for the time being, even if many of you don't personally like the game.
Same, on the Red Eclipse yesterday there was at least 3 full instances of the Fleet alone, and the Guild i am in is doing well, seems like there are plenty of people playing, the only question is how much they are spending, likewise i have no clue as to what proportion of the players there were F2P vs P2P, running a paid sub myself though
Have to say though, the PVP is terrible, if they were to do an xwing v tiefighter type of space pvp 'battleground' that would be a 'killer app' but sadly the Hero Engine is too flawed and limited a game engine to support that kind of thing
yeah, its hard to say how many people are subbing but i do see a heck of a lot of cartel items, that is for sure.
to me it doesn't matter who is subbing or how much money EA is making as long as he servers are full and there are people to group with.
but the pvp has always been mediocre at best in this game, open pvp is about as bad as you can get in a game that offers it (by design)
oh well, SWTOR for me is something to play while i wait for a better game to come along because right now there are none IMO