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I think the reason ToR is retaining its popularity is that it appeals to the the RPG audiance rather
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You're basically getting at the fundamental conundrum of the developer-driven MMORPG, which is that there is a clash between two facts:
1. An MMORPG is supposed to be played for a very long period of time.
2. Developer driven content is by definition finite and will inevitably be completed faster than it can be developed.
No matter how much content a developer makes, players are always going to blast through it and then ask "what next?" And this is where you get the "mechanics focus" as you call it. Developers have to give players something to do once they blow through their finely crafted story or content, so they provide a way for players to grind their mechanics on highly repeatable pieces of content.
I really think that in a purely developer-driven MMORPG, this will ALWAYS happen. There's no way out of it. A developer cannot make enough content to keep players occupied for years, simply because content can be played and completed exponentially faster than it can be developed.
The only real solution is to have an element of player-driven content in your MMORPG.
Open world PvP, town building, politics, social systems...
All of these are "renewable" resources. Players can make these things interesting for a LOOONG period of time. Just look at the retention rate of the old sandbox MMORPGs compared to the new themepark ones. Eve actually grows...GROWS. Shocking for an MMORPG...and especially an MMORPG with such complicated and inaccessible gameplay (I couldn't get into it).
WoW has made itself successful by focusing on the end-game "mechanics grind" but I think other MMORPGs should try for a less tedious approach.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
That, they should. A company would have to be total idiots to focus on endgame at launch. Most of your players will never get to max level in the first couple months(unless you're DCUO) so the focus should be on the journey before launch.
But yes indeedy, they're gonna have to push out some serious endgame over the next few months. I haven't maxed yet, so I dunno how much/little there is, but the game will start being top heavy in a couple months, I suspect. I'll still be going through alts, but not everybody is gonna be doing what I do.
And it deservs to GROW for many many reasons. Give it a chance and you ll see that after spending some time, the complicated becomes brilliant
Almost every1 gets to max lvl before the first couple of months
If you want to focus on the journey then it must be a long one, else there is no point.
I think that one of the reasons why SWTOR didnt get much deeper drop in subs is that a lot of palyers come from single player RPGs with no knowlege of how subscription works and they dont know yet why they have to put their credit card numbers in order to play. But after few months when bill from bank arive they will learn it hard way.
Fromn me to you : A tip, DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE. Be it good or bad. Nothing is ever "as good", or "as bad" as claimed.
In a more personal direction, maybe you should adjust your view. It should be obvious that the MMO market has MUCH lower standards than we, MMO players, like to admit. SOoooo it could very well be that ToR is better than you think, in the eyes of the masses. I doubt that there were/are hundreds of thousands of NOn-MMO players that suddenly flocked to ToR. Not to say that there arent, but to claim that ToR's pop is made up mostly of these is silly.
You seems pretty sure about your numbers, where do you get your information?
Because from Swtor official forums, it looks like people are already asking for Server consolidation due to lack of people on several servers.
If I have to be honest Bioware got it completely wrong actually, because after the player run out of stories (and after the second Alt the storuy is pretty much the same), people will move on to something else.......because there are very little MMO features to keep people playing the game until the next content update in a year time (Next expansion)
Rift will end up having more subscribers than Swtor in few months time, mark my words
Marked, pray your words don't return to haunt you.
Currently there are 16 American servers for Rift. 100 plus American servers for Tor.
I have an idea. The End Game content, those big nasty only a select few can do them things. For the first 3 months, every time your group wipes in them, every member on the team loses 10 levels of experiences and has to go back and learn to play before trying it again.
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
yes................. 16 servers half empty (or half full) that's why people are asking for a merge already.........1 month after launch.
I don't think my words will return to hunt me, I am quite confident we will see server mergers in 2 months.
Where you get these numbers at?? Took a screenie one day and seen some at light did ya? Lets see the link on this one, I'm callin BS on it. Lets see ALL these people screaming for merges already (oh and yes I do read the official forums too, lets see your proof here).
(DISCLAIMER - The use of the word YOU in the above post is not directed at any one person in particular, but towards those who fall into the category itself - there is no personal attack here, neither intentional nor implied.)
Not really true. While there are some who have switched from 1 month to 2-3, a decent amount of people were calling this game a 3 monther LONG before release. I myself was one of those people. My reason is simple, standard themepark MMO's just can't hold people very long anymore. If you were in beta then you should know about those threads discussing the longevity, or lack there of, of SWTOR.
The game X releases have been a wildcard for a while now, infact if you look back to the old "how many subscribers will SWTOR have" threads you will see them included. GW2, D3, and Secret World will certainly have an impact on SWTOR's population, this isn't something that just came up after launch.
3-6 months is when you'll truly see the outcome of the game. It took most players a month to hit 50 and they didn't really experience endgame before the sub period was upon them, so naturally the first month isn't going to be the final nail. Month 2 is when most people will experience endgame and make a decision to stay or leave. Month 3 is when the people who thought Bioware could put out a miracle patch realize that it simply won't happen. Obviously the 6 month people are going to be the hardcore fans that refuse to believe Bioware isn't going to make it better. Sorry to say it, but the game needs far too many changes to be able to retain players and they simply won't happen. The best that Bioware is going to do is keep adding content every 2-3 months and that lasts a week if you're lucky.
I am not english native man, it sounds like nonesense to me. "It appeals to the rpg audiance, rather than traditional RPG player" so the "traditional RPG player" is not part of "RPG audiance"?
I am the one who is saying that the game is dying now, not in 2-3 month, the game is dying right now at the very moment, and this process will take more than 6month, and the only way to prove otherwise or, for that matter, prove that it is dying, is to see the real subscribtion numbers for each week, for atleast 2 month.
Right now, it only talk
from gamelovers: i see 150 at republic fleet each evening
from not-gamelovers: game is dying look at the xfire, swtorarena charts.
I believe not-gamelovers, haters, whatever you call us, but there is no real numbers to discuss, what we know for real? only our own feelings about the game...
Not everybody pcked it up on December 20. I didn't start until a couple of weeks ago, mainly because I was looking for something at least a little different from WoW, and the space setting appealed to me.
I think 3-4 months is a good estimate of how long I will stay. I've played a bit of every class and not found one that is really "me". It was also disappointing to learn that there are really only two stories in the game, so once I play a Republic and a Sith, and dabble int he endgame, I will be ready to leave.
Maybe I'll go back to GW while I wait for GW2.
Its not going anywhere until at least GW2 / Tera come out, and even then it will have a bunch of people who just like Star Wars / traditional MMOs that hang around.
Bottom line is that its better than WoW / Rift at the moment, but its upper potential is fairly limited since they aimed for the old school MMO market.
they definatley did not aim for the old school mmo market.. they aimed for people who never played MMOs before because those are the ones who won't notice all the glaring problems and things they poorly implemented from MMOs of the past. Also people like me who have been playing these game forever aren't pleased with getting more of the same from such a high profile game.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/339443/Video-FollowUp-Guide-For-Enhancing-Graphics-and-Performance-in-SWTORSorry-still-Nvidia-Only.html
As pointed out in the last sentance " of course to retain that long term it will require updates to the story on a regular basis " meaning that if the player base is there for the story then it will require patches that are story centric to keep them playing . I would think this wont be easy .
I think people have become jaded with over exposure to WoW and wow-clones alike for the past 7 years.
I don't think it's the mmo, I think the community has changed.
A lot of people say Rift is better than SWTOR. I liked rift but quit for my own reasons.... If that's the case, that Rift came with all of the things you expect in a AAA mmo, why isn't more successful than it is? It's making a profit but not retaining the subscriber base that is in line with the praise it's getting.
It's not SWTOR that's a "problem" it's the genre and people become tired of MMOS in general. People want to recapture their favorite mmo experience and that's a cup of expectation that can never be filled.
I enjoy SWTOR for what it is....an extension of Kotor and Mass Effect, with pvp and mmo components. I play 2 hours a night, because of career and family and absolutely love it.
Rifts a great game I hope your right . Its far superior to most mmos out there at the moment . Not perfect but Trion do an amazing job with it . Very reason I've taken a years sub out with it . Actually cant think of another mmo ( other than EvE which caters for a different market ) I would recomend to someone who wants to play s sub based mmo on a monthly basis .
if you can't answer that.. well it's pretty simple... the IP, it's star wars end of story.. if Rift had a famous IP it would be immensly more popular than it is.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/339443/Video-FollowUp-Guide-For-Enhancing-Graphics-and-Performance-in-SWTORSorry-still-Nvidia-Only.html
Agree to disagree. Best part of Rift for me were the Heroics and RAids... really well designed and fun. Worst part for me was Macro based combat that dumbed down the game.
Another part of the game I didn't care for was the identical Quest Hub based leveling. Pick up 10 quests, kill 10 rats, return to quest giver, go to another location, rinse repeat. I never read a single story in Rift, nor did I care to. I had no idea what the hell the game was about in terms of story other than us vs. them.
SWTOR, some people dont care about the voice acting or say they over the whole VO thing. Well i'm not one of those people. I love the story, I love the quests, I love companions, I love the dialogue, huttball, and the crafting.
To each his own.....
Heh, let's see what happens in 2-4 months time. For me this game has no lasting appeal, like most of recent MMO productions. I suppose I just grew up from cheap entertainment most of MMOs offer for...a monthly fee. I poke around at times, but MMO market has grown so stale lately that I think about Tabula Rasa and Darkfall times in a new light and with a healthy dose of sentiment.
I predict that The Secret World will end up as a disppointment as SWTOR did. I still look forward to Guild Wars 2 and ArcheAge.
Companies charging for a licensed game world and shallow, stale content can forget about my money.
Same here I play Rift and ToR on a casual basis for maybe an hour or three of an evening . Theres no real pressure in both games to rush to max level . I'm enjoying the story in ToR in the same way I enjoyed it in mass effect . I'm pleased ToR are holding onto far more people than I expected them to and I'm glad Rift has survived what could have been a wipe out had ToR been the next Warcraft . And I'm quite relieved Warcrafts there because had it not been some of the people in it might have been in these other games and we would have had Barrens chat all over again .
I always think of WoW as a sieve . Nuff said .
Agree to disagree. Best part of Rift for me were the Heroics and RAids... really well designed and fun. Worst part for me was Macro based combat that dumbed down the game.
Another part of the game I didn't care for was the identical Quest Hub based leveling. Pick up 10 quests, kill 10 rats, return to quest giver, go to another location, rinse repeat. I never read a single story in Rift, nor did I care to. I had no idea what the hell the game was about in terms of story other than us vs. them.
SWTOR, some people dont care about the voice acting or say they over the whole VO thing. Well i'm not one of those people. I love the story, I love the quests, I love companions, I love the dialogue, huttball, and the crafting.
To each his own.....
The difference between the two is that SWToR can improve the base game mechanics, and has some time to do so. Rift cannot add a story. They have lore, but no story. There's no reason to get invested in your character(s) or the world.
I'm not knocking Rift as a game. I played it an enjoyed it longer than any of the people I game with. There was just no reason to stick around any longer.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
I think a lot of people are going to stick around for 1.2. If that updates provides a lot of the bug fixes and additions that people want then the game will continue to do well. It's quite possible that if 1.2 is good some people may even come back and check the game out again. If the patch undelivers or breaks more than it fixes - I think a lot of people will just never bother with it again. I don't think it will die if 1.2 sucks, but it will hurt the game in the same way Funcom's inability to get AoC to where it needed to be after three months hurt it.