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Star Wars: The Old Republic: For Better or Worse
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood has a thought or two about Star Wars: The Old Republic. The amount of money being used in the game's development will either serve as a warning for developers and publishers about the folly of big money investment should the game tank or it will be a shining example of what big money can do if it succeeds. Check out all of Jon's reasons behind these thoughts and then add your own voice to the mix in the comments.
On the one hand, if the game is a success with long term retention of subscribers and hot box sales, that makes a firm statement that players want to see story-driven, theme park designed AAA MMOs. It will set a precedent that if you want to succeed in this market you’re going to have to cough up the how many millions and millions of dollars that Star Wars’ budget is rumored to be.
Read more of Jon Wood's SWTOR: For Better or Worse.
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Comments
The game will be a failure if they expect to get their money back AND have a dedicated community. There is no place for 'cinematic gameplay' in mmos, mainly because they try to offer each player the illusion that they are the protagonist in an expanding world. This is impossible to achieve in a massive multiplayer driven game. 'Cinematic' is not the thing mmos should evolve into.
Good article, might have taken some liberties on why sandbox games aren't the titleholder where themeparks have taken hold, as my opinions differ in the matter, but overall, a very good read.
That's great, for your opinion. I disagree, I think making people feel special with their own story will be great for my gameplay. That is also MY opinion as what you said is YOUR opinion.
Have Played: FFXI, WoW, Aion, DCUO
Waiting For: TSW, World of Darkness, SWTOR
Currently Playing: KOTOR
Tried: Matrix Online, Rift, Xsyon, LOTRO, EVE, Guild Wars
Not all those who wander are lost.
-J.R.R. Tolkien
I think you're wrong about that, on many levels. Cinematic means very little in the context of things, and in actuality, they make up quite a bit of the pre-release hype. Likewise, when done properly (like how BioWare is doing it) it encourages groups and interactions, in ways you never actually see in any MMO. Story aspects have been largely missing, and thats simply because no developer to date has been confident enough in bringing this aspect to the genre without segregating the playerbase or making it a standalone cinematic. They've successfully woven this into the gameplay aspects in every facet, rather then have boring questgivers with no options other than, take the quest, or log out.
I seem to remeber a Star Wars semi-sand box game that everyone loved. Until the beast that kills MMO's did what it does.
I love the idea of a sandbox game, the problem is that none of the recent ones really click with me. Most of the games being touted as sandbox nowadays have open PvP that is non consensual (well i suppose it is consensual...play the game and you are giving consent). I was just reading the article Xsyon and it sounded appealing...until the part where after chatting with a player and agreeing to meetup somewhere to work together, the idiot shows up naked with a baseball bat so he can "pwn the noob". Sorry, but that kind of system is a deal breaker for me, and I have no interest in playing it, and it could be the best sandbox game in the world. So until sandbox games unlink this idea of free world pvp, I probably won't be playing them. Now depending on how many players feel the same way, perhaps that is why many of these games do not get as supported as they could.
Fallen Earth is the exception to the rule and I would LOVE to be able to get into that game because they have a lot of design ideas that I enjoy. My problem there is that I'm just not a fan of the post apocalyptic setting. It just don't click with me. So I may love the sandbox, i just don't care for the "backyard" that the sandbox is in.
So hopefully a sandbox that is in a setting that i enjoy and a gameplay style that i enjoy will come along that i can support, because I really do want these kinds of games to do well.
Andros, you can say that about many things.
There was a movie that came out recently, I think it was a remake of single white female, that was at the top of the box office sales even though it didn't get great reviews.
Little Fockers got 9% on rottentomatoes yet has made 148 million in box office alone.
Now, I"m not going to make judgements on the quality of these movies, especially because I do a B movie night once per week, but just because one person sees something as being inferior doesn't mean everyone does.
I can easily see this Star Wars game doing very well. The average person who plays mmos who is "not" a gamer probably won't care that there is cinematic game play. They might even love being the protagonist.
This isn't an old school mmo. It's an mmo that relies heavily on conventions that single player games use. It's a hybrid of sorts.
It's going to do very well. And by the huge throng of people I saw at pax who were lined up to try it I think it will do just fine.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
The reality for a long time has been that new apathetic definition of success for a mainstream themepark PvE-heavy subscription-based mmorpg's is one that sustains 200k-300k subscribers 6-months to a year out after selling 1million + boxes; history has proven that time and time again.
The exception has been facebook games like WoW and FarmVille, but I dont consider them really mmorpg entertainment outlets.
One of 2 things. Either the market is tired, and has been tired of the afformentioned for some time, or those same mmorpg's are just not sandboxy enough to entertain an audiance that is not looking to pay $15/month for an overly glorified single-player rpg.
It's yet to be seen, but highly probable, that SWTOR is on the path of yet another heavy-pve single-player-esque non-massively-multiplayer design platform, which I think will just feed into what we've seen from those types of games, in terms of lack of sustained subscribership.
But at the same time, its funny to see Bioware back-peddle on a definition of success. I recall a time when analysts said that EA and Bioware would need 2-million subscribers to turn a profit on a supposed $300 million development investment. Then the supposed development budget was remarked to be closer to $150 million and only 500,000 subscribers are needed to break-even. However, expect microtransactions blended into the business model to help support the financial return on TOR.
Then there is their illustrious publisher (EA). lol The publisher's (EA) last attempt to launch an MMO was Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning in 2008. Subscription numbers for the Mythic-developed titled got off to a strong start but quickly dwindled causing the publisher to shut down 63 servers a year later.
Let's not forget people may not be able to afford it in these crappy austere times. I no longer sub, only play f2p and make the occassional cash shop purchase now and again.
If TOR is a p2p then it may find that the plentiful times of previous investments are well in the past and optimistic donations to TOR's development may be wasted due to people being unwilling or unable to dig into their pockets for a monthly sub. Game over in recouping revenue unless a drastic f2p model is adopted and even then breaking even will not be assured.
Awesome article:
I expect Tor to be a solid game. But if Tor and GW2 bomb, then I'll be heading to EvE (& B*!).
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Question:
How many unpolished and half finished , theme park MMOs made it big ?
Answer:
None
Same as sandbox , theme park , or whatever else.
Game needs to be polished and finished to suceed.
Your theory fails
But on a good note, you wont be playing this game for a very long time. Enjoy the videos and highlights then off to whatever game you are actually playing.
Those who complain about wanting something different don't put there money nor their support where their mouth is
I loved the cinematics in Dragon Age and Mass Effect and I think it is going to be very good to have cinematics in mmos instead of reading a wall of text. Atleast I won't have a laundry list of quests to do like other mmos offer.
I disagree, I think the issue is that people in general dont know anything but a theme park game and have heard 'horror' stories which the media itself tends to promote. I think Rifts would have been a dismal failure if it had been buggy as all, just like the other theme park mmos that were buggy when released.
The idea that its okay to release a game that is difficult to play simply because of the bugs and that folks are suppose to 'believe' in the developer is just nonsense. It sets a poor example and should be frowned on.
That was an outside analyst, not coming from EA specifically, that was "1 million to break even" and that "2M+ was possible"
The 300 Million spent was a proven incorrect, rumored post by EALouse. That was AFTER EA released information that the budget for TOR was 150M. There was no backpeddling by EA or BioWare anywhere there, its a bunch of misinformation from outside sources.
TOR also said that Microtransactions (cosmetic items) are a possibility, and that the payment model will have a "twist" and won't just be a monthly sub (stating that instead of a monthly sub you may have other options to pay). Nothing has been released on that so far.
Hope that clears things up for you.
Nonsence, why should i put 50 euro's in a game like MO or DF at launch? im not a producer nor investor, i pay money as a consumer and expect to be treated like one, which means they need to provide me with a good product from the start and not 6 months to 1 year down the road.
they need to put their product where their mouth is and not release something else.
For a while now, I've been watching the news about The Old Republic. I've seen the "OMG THIS IS GOING TO BE FAIL!" or "OMG THIS IS GOING TO KILL WOW!". That might be a bit eccentric and over the top as a summarization of the posts about the game. Not just on these forums, but the other forums in general.
In my very personal opinion and in my own point of view, this is how I see things. Bioware, for many years, has been a company with "quality over quantity". Following the mindset of "It won't be released until it's done." Sadly, I don't know too many companies that have done that in the MMO market. Trion seems to follow the mindset to a lesser extent. And they're doing well I suppose. Only one other company has truly taken that mindset to the max. Blizzard Entertainment. And we all see what happened with their triple A title. Like it or hate it, there it is.
The concern now comes into play because of Electronic Arts. I'm sure a good portion of us know what happens when EA gets their hands in something. -Points to Dragon Age 2-
In so long as EA has kept their hands out of the development of The Old Republic, I think, or at least I hope, that we will see a game, an MMORPG that will be Bioware's finest "peice de resistance".
Am I a Bioware fan? Of course. I won't deny that I am. I'm a fan of their old games. KOTOR 1 and 2, Jade Empire, Neverwinter Nights 2, Dragon Age and Mass Effect 1 and 2. I'm also a Blizzard fan. Starcraft, Brood War, Starcraft 2, Vanilla WoW, and Warcraft 2-3. Why am I a fan? Because these companies proved to me that they care about what their customers want. A well developed game that will entice and enthrall their audience. And they won't release it until it is done in the DEVELOPER'S eyes.
Personally, I wish Bioware had held off showing any kind of tidbits from the game. But that is merely my thought.
Pretty much exactly this.
You can't say that games like Earthrise (!?!!?) and Fallen Earth are games that sandbox fans should have supported. These games were an embarassment to gamers because of the state they were released in. Just because someone calls their unfinished pile of manure a sandbox game doesn't mean you should subscribe to that game for a year to help the industry. Doing that promotes the idea that an unfinished, unpolished product with barely any content is what we're looking for as players. If we were to promote this idea, then the article is right about that: you would not see any multi-million dollar budget MMOs, theme park or not, since we would have clearly sent the message that we don't need content or polish to keep paying monthly for an MMO.
Nonsence, why should i put 50 euro's in a game like MO or DF at launch? im not a producer nor investor, i pay money as a consumer and expect to be treated like one, which means they need to provide me with a good product from the start and not 6 months to 1 year down the road.
they need to put their product where their mouth is and not release something else.
Then enjoy your AAA Themepark mmosI actually do think that "cinematic" and "Story driven" is the route most mmo's will be going in the future, and should have been for a long time now. Right now many of them are just kind of like mindless husks with shallow static worlds.
The highlighted is a lie. A damn dirty ape lie. Fallen Earth was possibly the best launched Sandbox style hybrid in our current generation of MMOs. Icarus Studios is really a fantastic developer, and though some part of the game could have been more polished, everything was functional and more stable than Darkfall, Earthrise, MO and Xsyon combined.
Some could easily make the case that MMOs themselves are never truly finished, and not a single MMO has ever launched bug free, theres just, acceptable bugs, and unacceptable bugs. FE was very playable, but lost players in other areas, such as the economy, the post apocalyptic setting, and a lot of the missing PvP elements that were added a little too late to keep the population. (also they way overbalanced mutations 2 or so months after launch making some builds useless... don't know if they ever fixed it, I unsubbed shortly thereafter).
But I digress.... you see relatively few sandboxes because the biggest companies that make games see very few gains in creating them. If people want to see more sandbox games, they have to be willing to show developers that the money will be there. Its a catch 22... to say the least.
haha. Doesnt clear anything up, really. What was once thought to be an "accounting error" is now shifted to another book that doesnt directly fall under the TOR accounting umbrella. None-the-less. Its still funny to see a studio strive for mediocrity. And I am a Bioware fan, but will have a hard time justifying $15/month for one of their story-rich single-player rpgs.
I was just clarifying the point that you said EA was back-peddling. So, to summarize, the only numbers Officially released by EA: 150 million dollar budget. 500K to break even.
Everything else you posted is speculative, especially the 300M dollar investment comment which would be about as truthful as someone using the age old troll: "WoW was the first MMO."
Lastly, BioWare isn't expecting you to spend 15 dollars a month on a story rich single player RPG. Thats why they're making an MMO.
Shrug. It still amazes me how people bash on SWTOR' story immersive questing that will replace the traditional MMO questing, as if those people are such heavy, passionate proponents of the text-based, no-decision-possible classic MMO questing. It's the ultimate in irony and double standards to me.
It's hard to take people seriously who can't at least see that BW's approach to questing will be an upgrade from what questing is in most current themepark MMO's.
As for sandbox lovers: it's clear to me that a considerable part of those have a very narrow taste, they only want an AAA sandbox MMO that is as polished and with a full feature set at launch as themepark MMO's as WoW or Rift were. If this wasn't true, interesting sandbox and hybrid MMO's as Xsyon, Ryzom, Fallen Earth and others would have gotten a lot more love and attention of those sandbox gamers.
But this didn't happen.
In my opinion it shows that a large group and maybe the majority of those ever-complaining, ever-themepark-MMO-bashing sandbox fans aren't actually fans of the sandbox genre itself, but are actually purely AAA sandbox MMO fans.
I predict that the majority of that last group won't stop complaining and will keep looking futilely for any MMO that can get them their MMO fix, until an ArcheAge or World of Darkness is released. And maybe even then some won't be satisfied.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."