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Game will "Flop" harder than RIFT did...
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I'll give you Oblivion, but I don't think they even sold in the millions, did they? Pulling that out of my a$$ sort of. But Grand Theft, Fallout series, etc are very very story driven and directed, and bring a large bit of novelty. I loved GTA as much as the next guy - would I play it every day for several years? Hell no. I stopped buying them after GTA II. EvE topped out at half a million, which is a lot of players. I personally hate it, but can't argue there. UO had success from the "only fish in the sea" scenario when the market was incredibly limited. I played it, and loved it at the time, but thinking about some of the things going on in that game... well.. I wouldn't want to return to that free for all.
I just haven't really the success of a true sandbox title.
Anyway, I don't have the real data here to form a decent debate - and I don't want to sidetrack the thread (as ludicrous as it is). But hopefully the sandbox crew's game will come out soon enough, and I'll be shown otherwise. ArchAge looks promising, even though they are trying not to admit it's quite sandbox-y.
Oh and can we please get a sticky or something for these? Like an "I hate SWTOR" forum or something? I'm tired of these cluttering up my front page.
Rift failed? Really? Try telling that to the many servers still holding a medium load on off peak hours. The rest of your post could have been spot on, however misinformed statements like these really discredits your entire post and makes you look like a troll.
and they are all still the same thing same game same idea. and nothing new..
thats why swtor will flop.
if warhammer online wasnt so heavily focussed on pvp it might have been a much better game, but thinking about it, its the pvp aspect that keeps it out of the wow clone group. if it wasnt for that focuss war would just be another typical dull and boreing wow clone.
instead its a mediocre pvp game.
there are only two mmo's i would rate as good!! and they are eve online and starwars galaxies.
all other mmo's are just a pile of shit!! all because of wow.
-RIFT was supposed to kill WoW
This may have been the prediction of some, but none of the gamers I know thought RIFT (or any game) would "kill" WoW. WoW has a loyal fanbase and an intelligent/business savy company behind it. People using the term "WoW killer" for any game are kidding themselves.
-RIFT was also a WoW-copy (please move away from WoW-clone, it sounds immature, clone =/= copy)
Yes, I agree. RIFT is so similar to WoW that it didn't really feel new and exciting in any way.
-RIFT had the same UI, inventory, and skill system of WoW (same thing SWTOR is doing)
Not sure about SW:TOR, but I'll agree on RIFT.
-RIFT flopped REALLY hard, so hard in fact that they viewed their sub number drop rate as a "failure in the making" and have started an aggressive freetrial, discount && "veteran return" plan.
I don't know what makes you think RIFT flopped. By all accounts I've read online, this game made TRION and it's investors a ton of money and continues to do so. Maybe I missed some articles?
Cool story bro. Man, some people have a hard time letting go of the old and moving on to new things lol.
I am not sure why we have to make the same discussion every week again.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
WoW was the same thing as every game before it (DAOC, EQ etc.) it did nothing new, it just took parts from those other games and improved on them slightly and its the BIGGEST MMO success ever. Thats why SW:tor like wise will do well. A few clueless players demanding for a revolution when they don't even like or play the few game that have tried to be revolutionary are not the majority. Most gamers don't play games becaus they are revolutionary they play them for fun, and if SW:tor is fun and slightly evolutionary as WoW was then it will revolutionize the industry like it or not.
Just because you don't like something does not mean it will flop. Your opinuion is just that your opinion. and considering SWG was doing so poorly it was shut down I'd say its safe to say your opinion of whats good isn't in the majority.
Ditto
I came in here just to laugh at the OP stating Rift flopped.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
The pace in fact was soo slow one could go cook dinner or watch tv, read a book etc and come back onc ethe healers/mages mana was back and not miss a thing.
Really if you want community go outside help your fellow man in real life. Actually say hello to the next person you pass even if you don't know them. The reason so many people crave community is because so many lock themselves away from the rest of the world behind their nice safe pc.
I think all the posts about how SWTOR is going to flop is more annoying than the people who expect it to be fantasticly revolutionary. Im not a big fan of the game but damn give it a chance. Unless you have actually played then you have no room to talk. Bottom Line.
P.S. Sandbox mmos ftw.
The OP has clearly run away from the thread after wide disagreement with his statements. :
He who keeps his cool best wins.
My thoughts.
SW:tor will not fail as you predict. Rift has not failed as you have stated, There will be no shift to less popular, smaller playerbase, less money making sandbox MMO's that tend to take more time from people with lives and work.
You will go on to troll the next non-sandbox MMO to be released and predict more gloom/doom while continuing to post more inaccurate/misinformed/false statements twisted to further your agenda.
Simple logic really
You wanna know what Blizzards secret sauce is? quality content updates and expansions. As people begin to get bored or reach their end game, they always have something new to look forward to even after finishing what they consider "The Game". That's what has kept people playing WoW all this time. If they had no regular updates people would have left long ago and never looked back.
BioWare isn't stupid and is looking at supporting every aspect of this game as well as tying it into social media sites. Add that to the fact that it's based on a area of lore that has huge following Star Wars, and KOTOR and this game will do things you have never seen in the industry before. This isn't some fly by nite company with a piss ass budget, this BioWare backed by EA. YOu may hate EA, but they got deep pockets when it comes to promoting stuff.
Whatever helps you get through the day.
SioBabble hit the nail on the head: WoW is a fluke. Pretty sure I read an interview with Rob Pardo a long time ago where he says as much and basically cautions other companies not to make the mistake of calling their game a failure if it doesn't get millions of subs right off the bat. He makes it clear that companies need to focus on shipping and launching complete games that are actually good - that the numbers will come from that, not from focusing on beating other games in sub numbers.
Bottom line: Rift is not a failure in terms of subs if they're clearing a million. That's 15 million dollars in revenue a month for Trion... for a genre where titles were considered a success to pull in one third of that number once upon a time.
Take WoW out of the equation. It does not belong. It is an anomaly that needlessly skews the balance because even the folks who are responsible for it have openly said you cannot use it as the standard for the industry. Now, with the behemoth gone, try recalibrating your measure of success.
1 million subscriptions for Rift (if that number is accurate) is not a flop.
Anecdotal evidence for TOR indicates that some editions were sold out at some retailers within 24 hours of the start of presale in the United States. Once again, in terms of pure box sales, this does not indicate flop at launch (it is impossible to accurately predict active subscription numbers for a game that has not even launched, so your premise is ridiculous. Try again three to six months after launch, once players have tried the game and decided whether to maintain subscriptions).
Even 300k subs (Warhammer) isn't a total failure. It's about standard for the genre, especially considering the game really didn't get a ton of publicity if I recall correctly (not like Rift, and certainly not like SW:TOR or WoW).
It's one thing to have an opinion (wish?), another to try and present that opinion (wish?) as fact. If you don't like SW:TOR and don't care to buy or play it, no one is pulling money out of your wallet. But calling a game a flop several months before it's even launched?
Were you bored and just wanting to troll or what?
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
Did anyone ever teach you that if you are going to create statistics or quote people, that you should probably have your sources listed? As far as we're concerned, you're just vomiting up some re-hashed hate muttering from people who don't have any clue of what they're talking about but love to talk.
Here's the thing about "flop":
If the expectation (and MMORPG.COM is helping this along) is that TOR wil "revolutionize" the MMO industry, then it will flop, based on that expectation alone.
Rift failed to do that. Which is why it's a "flop". Never mind that it seems to be doing well enough to keep operating. This is true of many of the other "underachievers" out there over the past six years or so.
It's a relative term.
Now, keep in mind, SWG before it was radically transformed seemed to be doing well. Maintaining a (pre WoW) respectable 1/4 million subs. Obviously, many people tried it and didn't like it for whatever reason...not "Starwarsy" enough, too bugged, not enough "content" for them...whatever. Supposedly it sold more than a million units, but couldn't retain more than a quarter of that number as subscribers.
It was probably in the black, making money for LA and SOE.
But it wasn't making ENOUGH money to satisfy either, especially after WoW burst on to the scene. If WoW did not exist, SWG with the classic skill system and sandbox approach would probably still be running 200,000 plus subs a month right now.
WoW changed the industry, and in many ways, not for the better. It reinforced the existing "formula" effect of EQ and made it the "industry standard", so much so that SWG was radically transformed into an EQ/WoW clone where it was not before the infamous CU and NGE. Unfortunately for LA and SOE, their rush job to get some of that sweet sweet WoW playerbase backfired on them through their own incompetence and recklesness.
WoW expanded, greatly, the MMO audience. People who had never tried an MMO tried WoW, based on the publisher's reputation (Blizzard) and the IP it was based on, Blizzard's very successful Warcraft franchise.
This ENLARGED the market for MMOs, but it did something that threw all the existing games for a loop. Their market share shrank. They were all probably still makeing money, but WoW was making more, because they enlarged the pie, and even though there was now more pie for everyone, the MBA mentality couldn't deal with a smaller market share.
So we've got this crazy thing were games that could well find a niche, be profitable and prosperous in and of themselves, are considered to be "failures" if they don't splash as much as WoW does. Which is utterly silly, but that's American capitalism in the 21st century for you. If you don't come up with huge scads of money always increasing, you're doing something wrong. You must always be growing at all times. If not, you're a flop.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
So basically what you are saying from your opinionated wall of text is that if a game does not revolutionize the genre, it is a failure? So you mean innovation clearly, something of which many people care about, but it is also an opinion..not a fact. Some people like innovation, some people like iteration on previous ideas.
The fact is that Rift is still alive and well; making more money then they are losing. That is a success. It does not matter if you don't believe they revolutionized the genre because the people who actually pay for the game like it.
I would also love to see any posts by a Bioware developer saying that TOR is planned to revolutionize the genre. Hell, I have seen them say the opposite. Or a Trion developer for that matter..
SOE never figured out the secret sauce (it's Thousand Island dressing, btw..) of WoW. Quality is the key word. The darn thing works. Well. There are bugs, sure...there always will be in any software project of this caliber. But they (Blizz) go about quashing them and they're better at communicating, and they telegraph the major changes months in advance. They actually follow SOE's one time policy of In concept, in development, in testing.
I think BioWare has a solid chance to break the WoW syndrome, but keep in mind that today's BioWare is not the same one that gave us KOTOR. They're doing a lot of things right, as you've pointed out, in the run up to launch. I'm hopeful that they'll diminish the influence of the 800 pound gorilla. It may not result in a sandbox game with an emphasis on building a community right away, but it will be a start in breaking the mortal lock of the gorilla on the imagination of those who direct the industry.
This all depends on how patient EA is with this property of theirs to succede. The damn 800 pound gorilla haunts the dreams of the MBA suits who run these operations.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
I'm saying that building up expectations with hype is bound to be a letdown. It's not BioWare saying it's going to "revolutionize" the genre, it's MMORPG.COM, which is basically, like all gaming publications, dead tree or online, a platform for advertising. SOMEONE is pushing this "revolutionary" meme. It may well be the usual clowns in sales and marketing who never ever learn the lesson to not over promise.
Rift is still alive and making some money, but the problem is, just making some money is not enough for idiots who know nothing about this industry but what they see on spreadsheets. That's true of nearly every single enterprise in this country. They see Blizzard, they see 10 million plus subscriptions, and the fact that Rift is in the black and paying off on the intitial investment is NOT GOOD ENOUGH for them. They are not on the phone with contractors buidling olympic sized pools for all the money that's rolling in. It's flopping! It's making money, but not enough to buy me a new Maserati every month!
I'm describing the overall enviornment that MMOs are operating in. Where you and I look at game play, at community, at content updates and graphics, the guys calling the shots only care about what is on their spreadsheets. If it's not enough compared to some other place to invest, they'll move their money elsewhere.
One of the advantages that Blizz has is that there is still a corporate culture there which is about making great games that people will want to pay to play. If BioWare is true to that idea, then I think they'll succede in the way you've described. If that's enough for the MBAs, though, remains to be seen.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
I would love to see another sandbox game, too many of the games now are cookie cutter. however, I think you are underestimating the Star Wars fans.
Before SWG was ruined by the cu the servers were lively and there were people every where, you could go out to the most remote furthest corner of any planet and just wait a few min and you would see people. I know, I did this while trying to find good places to grind my jedi and keep him out of the public eye and off the terms and I was on a low pop server.
The general assumption is that when people left SWG they all went to wow, this is not the case there are many that went to games like eve, although I never saw the apeal of eve many did and at least it involved space. Hard core Star Wars fans don't want warlocks and Mages or Death Knights and orc fighters, they are sci-fi fans and they want sci-fi.
Every so often as news emerged about SWTOR I would say in wow chat both guild and city chat something along the lines of "so who else is excited about swtor ?" most of the people that had anything to say did not even know what SWTOR was, As I explained the game Jedi, and Bh and etc most said they were not interested in that type of game.
Go to the old republic forums and you find loads of people interested in the game, try eve forums as well, most of those folks are right on top of the most current information. There are a lot of old star wars players also playing a game called Project Entropia, they to are right on top of SWTOR info. Another little known game in live called Earth and Beyond has an emulator up and running again you mention SWTOR and the chat lights up with people talking about it. Let us not forget the SWGEMU again people there are talking about SWTOR.
WoW and SWTOR are 2 dif genere of players, will it kill wow ? I doubt it because the people who want SWTOR the most are not playing WoW. Just myself I know at least 100 people that are looking forward to SWTOR and only a handful of them played WoW and out of that handful only maybe 7 of them actually played past the free trial and those all just let the sub run out and have not renewed it after the first 30-60 days.
People need to stop thinking EVERY new game is a WoW killer or that it should be. Despite popular belief there are a lot of people still playing SWG, most of them have no idea of what pre-cu means and a lot that claim to have played pre-cu can not give accurate information about it, most of them quote things from the NGE when talking about "how it was pre-cu" weither or not they know what pre-cu was tho, they are going to be looking for a new Star Wars game in December. While SWTOR will not be SWG 2 as of dec it WILL be the ONLY Star Wars mmo out there come Dec.
Well, SWTOR will flop, in a way, just like RIFT, SWTOR will fail to retain most of it's original subscribers. RIFT and the decline of WoW are the proofs that people are tired of WoW style MMORPGs and want something new.
I am in the SWTOR beta and all I can say is damn that NDA.
If TOR doesn't seem like your cup of tea TERA seems like it could be interesting, so does ArcheAge if you're into sandbox MMOs. I already have a sub with one MMO, I'm not quite sure if I will stick with it or invest in something else. I preordered a copy of GW2 from Amazon though since it doesn't have a sub cost. I expect it will soak up as much of my free time as the first did.
Minecraft's astounding pre-release sales made Markus a millionaire in no time. MMO it's not, but sandbox it most assuredly is.
I don't think it's a niche market that has been getting sandboxes so few players, but their fairly poor, uninspiring designs to date.