The real problem is companies like EA are shooting for massive success and are unwilling to truly support anything less. TOR's major issue lies in longevity, you don't fix that problem by reducing staff, you fix it by throwing all available hands at it.
The problem is clear here, it's not the game that is the problem it's EA and the Suits in charge. When they're saying things like TOR isn't a developmental priority, it shows they weren't in this for the long haul to begin with.
TOR could be a good MMO, if they wanted to take the time to make it so, they don't. Last word they still had close to a million or so subs. That's not enough for EA, which means I personally will never touch an MMO they put out again. It will be the same song and dance every time no matter the design. If it doesn't put them in the TOP spot, they don't give a rats ass about it.
I disagree that the problem here lies with EA. Believe me, I'm not one of their fans. To me, they are the antichrist of gaming. But THEY didn't design a game that uses concepts that could only work in a one-off, single player game. The massive reliance on story as an engine driving this game as an MMO was a fundamental flaw. Story can't sustain long-term interest because it is, in itself, a short-term hook. Once you've gone through the story, that's it. Time to put it on the shelf and move on to a new one.
So they put most of their emphasis on delivering a great story, which apparently they succeeded at, but didn't bother putting the same amount of effort and resources into the one thing that *is* able to sustain an MMO over the long-term, and that's the gameplay. Instead, they lifted much of it from a convenient and already successful source, that being WoW, expecting that the bulk of the design work had already been done for them. Kind of like a company purchasing the license for a graphics engine rather than spend the money and time to do it in-house.
EA at least threw the money at the game to ensure that the it's name was on everyone's lips and succeeded in making it the biggest launch in MMO history. It was the game itself, which was Bioware's responsibility, that didn't deliver.
I have a laundry list of crimes against games that I think EA should be held accountable for, but SWTOR ain't one of them. Bioware erred. They didn't understand MMOs and they didn't understand MMO gamers. They brought a product to market that was ill-suited for the target audience and it's decline was inevitable. It doesn't matter how much more money gets poured into this project, it won't fix the core problems because they are so deeply ingrained into the design. It would require an NGE level overhaul, and that's just never going to happen.
Despite it all, the game isn't going to fail. The IP is strong enough and it's polished enough that it should be able to keep itself going indefinitely, albeit with much more moderate success indicators than what was expected. However, if they'd done it right, yeah, it absolutely could have been a WoW-killer. It had everything going for it but one small thing: developers with enough balls to leave their single-player roots behind and go for broke in a new universe. Unless they took their marching orders from EA when it involved concept and design, responsibility for the game's decline is all Bioware's.
I don't think it's impossible to fix what is wrong. First they have to recognize the main problem, which is lack of endgame features and then move that to the front of the priority list. Leave the legacy fluff for a later time. Ilum was a good concept but they need to fix it. I know a lot of players would love to be able to have huge fights on a planet over natural resources. As long as you can provide the player with an interesting and fun incentive, the player will PVP. Most players I know get tired of fighting NPCs.
Sadly i don't think its savable. The problems with the game is that it wasn't original enough to catch people who bought it. So you can't recapture these people with the same game. The complaints about htis game were the same complatins whispered and hushed before the game. But delusion is an amazing thing before a game. Check out the TSW forums. Imagine, SWTOR's graphics and combat is a lot smoother and more fluid.
Game companies ride off these dedicated fans and don't realize that they are dealing with a relic of a system in the broader gamers eyes.
I have to play this game most of the time. How do you make this game easier for me to play. I thought there were a lot of good elements to the game, but the stale 12 year old combat got to me when the long distances between everything started nagging me.
So, I'm not sure what you thought you correcting. But it's more than 8 million units for the ME series (about 11) and Skyrim, without a single expansion pack, is larger. As for your new 'time frame' argument I don't really see the point. TES aren't the only games Bethesda has released since 2002.
Oblivion - 2006, Knights of the Nine, 2006, Shivering Isle 2007 (7.5 million sales base)
Skyrim - 2011 (12 million sales base)
They also published or released, during this time: Call of Cuthulu, Star Trek Legacy, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Legend of Jack Sparrow , Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Rogue Warrior, Wet, Brink, Rage and some other games as ZeniMax, the parent company has bought quite a few development studios including id Software and they had to integrate all that as well.
Moral of the story: make a good game, and you will be rewarded. ME2 was hailed by critic and player alike as one of the best games of recent memory. instead of expanding on that, they were too busy ripping out any bit of choice, and shooting copies of the game into space. At this point, EAware became all hype, no substance.
Bethesda knows their target audience, and they don't try to do something else. While Skyrim was a bit simplified, this is still not a game that someone looks to "beat", because if you are looking to "beat" the game, you are doing it wrong. Even the console players recognize this.
EAware couldn't figure out their target audience, they are constantly trying to make it into something its not.
I only hope the EA employees go first as many of them were heads of bioware. Bioware did their part the class stories were enjoyable, leveling was fun. EA did the endgame.
I only hope the EA employees go first as many of them were heads of bioware. Bioware did their part the class stories were enjoyable, leveling was fun. EA did the endgame.
Bioware IS EA now.. there is no separation. You can't blame one without the other. Bioware ceases to exist for all intents and purposes.
It's amazing how the fanboys still defend this game. They will still defend this game when it becomes free 2 play soon. Fanboys will still defend it when it gets shut down like other EA MMO's.
OMG, yes. And out of complete ignorance as well. In a different thread I had some fanboy who worked in a data center for a couple of years tell me my 30% estimate of the fully weighted server costs was too high because he made $21 an hour and was the only employee at some 300-server data center... Some of these fanboys have absolutely no concept of math, forecasting, projecting, finance and accounting or even reality...
WoW, last quarter, took in $251 million in sub revenue. Their costs for the NA/European servers was $59 million. They don't pay for the Chinese servers, they license that out to NetEase and get some of the revenue as royalties. A deal they just, btw, renewed:
World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment today said that it will continue its partnership with Chinese MMO operator NetEase, with NetEase operating WoW servers in China for at least the next three years.
So, when we talk about 24% of costs to revenue, it's not entirely accurate. Blizzard counts all revenues as sub revenues, but only has to bear the costs of the NA/Euro servers. Since they don't break-out the Chinese subs from all the subs, I can only go by what I have. And that says that costs are 24% of revenue which includes the 'no cost' Chinese revenue. Clearly this means that 24% as a cost to direct-operated-server costs is too low.
Then we have economies of scale.. Blizzard servers are bigger. Economies of scale will give them an advantage over SWTOR as welll...
And last, server costs to operate have a huge fixed-cost component and a small variable-cost component. Empty or full, they cost close to the same to operate. So if it costs $100/month to operate a server and you make $500/month on the server, your cost is 20% (100/500). But if you loose $250 now your cost is at 40% (100/250).
So, in fairness, I think 30% is a good estimate for the BioWare costs and I think it could easily be higher. I don't think $251 million in WoW sub revenues is the correct denominator and using it understates the percentage costs. I think the real western sub revenue was about $180 to $190 million as I think they really only have 4 million western subs now (they didn't even sell 4 million of the last expansion so even that is a bit on the 'hmmmm...' for me). But Blizzard hides it all behind the 'world-wide' picture and doesn't provide the regional data.
I think the real fully-weighted server cost percentage for Blizzard is closer to 32%. But I can't prove it with hard numbers so I go with what I have, which I fully believe understates actual, fully-weighted costs. So I think I'm being more-than-fair at 30% because I think that's pretty close to Blizzard's and BioWare has two additional hits -- a lot of EMPTY servers and poor economies of scale.
Accounting is hard. Tracking all this stuff is hard. Making sure you understand all the financial information and issues is hard. And yet some fanboy who worked in a data center, who is completely devoid of facts and lacking (entirely) in education and experience in this area is telling me I'm full of bull... Frack me Ray Bradbury...
Originally posted by mindsplit "We executed one of the largest, most successful and stable launches of any MMO yet in industry history."It's true... doesn't change the fact that it's engame is a total fail.
Based upon name/branding alone though, not due to any quality present in the product.
It needed a real engine and another year+ on the dev bench.
Alot of the blame can be dumped on the downies who coded/purchased the Hero engine.
But I can't prove it with hard numbers so I go with what I have, which I fully believe understates actual, fully-weighted costs.
So let's call it by the name that is quite fitting: your "data" is all guesswork.
Here is what I'd suggest: either provide the hard data including obvious links to Blizz and BW/EA's detailed operational costs for running their WoW and their SWTOR operation.
Or just shut up!
Otherwise you just sound like
Originally posted by MosesZD
some fanboy who worked in a data center, who is completely devoid of facts and lacking (entirely) in education and experience in this area is telling me I'm full of bull...
well, I should probably scratch the "fanboy" and replace it with "SWTOR hater"... *shrug*
Anyways, point overall is: there are layoffs at Bioware Austin.
Maybe TOR will be the last chapter in this book of generic theme-park carrot on a stick game design approach for mmo's. Or maybe not... But I cant see another company rounding up investors to drop this kind of cash on another mmo any time in the near future though, so itll probably be the last one of those any of us will see for a long long time.
Sorry, but Devs havent learned anything
/inc The Elder Scrolls Online
To be fair, according to anything that's out there, TESO began development in about 2006-2007 timeframe, roughly same time as SWTOR. That boat left long ago, and they're not going to change it up to suit longtime TES fans at all. This far in development? No way, not unless you want a disastrous revamp late in development like Tabula Rasa had.
To me, as a longtime TES fan, TESO is a lost cause.
As for the BioWare layoffs, maybe this will kick them in the nuts enough to do things the old school BioWare way. Back when the company was undisputedly the best RPG dev house out there.
But that's being overly optimistic.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
I only hope the EA employees go first as many of them were heads of bioware. Bioware did their part the class stories were enjoyable, leveling was fun. EA did the endgame.
I found them to be dull and uninspired. A lot of this stems from I'm 51 and extremely well-read in Sci-Fi and Fantasy. So I could see where they came from. But a lot comes from the writers weren't good enough to palagerize or re-write old cliche's in fresh, interestiing way.
So, we have some of the more obvious palagerized rip-offs of rip-offs such as the Jedi Knight story of Chapter 1. I mean, seriously, a planet blowing up superweapon... My mentor is killed by the powerful Sith Lord... Holy thinly-disguised Star Wars Episode IV rip-off... And there were others, but that one was so striking I found myself laughing at the blatent rip-off.
Plenty of other stories that were palagerized or were such old cliche's that unless done exceptionaly well, they were going to be problematic. The 'find the mystery cure' jidi consular arc is a classic plot coupon device done to death. The Great Hunt plot device for the Bounty Hunter orginated in Medieval literature (Arabian Nights) and has been done (mostly badly, sometimes good (Raiders of the Lost Arc)) to death. The Smugglers Chapter 1 story arc... Treasure hunt in space with a princess... You must be kidding me... It was so Raiders of the Lost Ark... Only not as good...
But I can't prove it with hard numbers so I go with what I have, which I fully believe understates actual, fully-weighted costs.
So let's call it by the name that is quite fitting: your "data" is all guesswork.
Here is what I'd suggest: either provide the hard data including obvious links to Blizz and BW/EA's detailed operational costs for running their WoW and their SWTOR operation.
Or just shut up!
Otherwise you just sound like
Originally posted by MosesZD
some fanboy who worked in a data center, who is completely devoid of facts and lacking (entirely) in education and experience in this area is telling me I'm full of bull...
well, I should probably scratch the "fanboy" and replace it with "SWTOR hater"... *shrug*
Anyways, point overall is: there are layoffs at Bioware Austin.
Whatever that means for SWTOR remains to be seen.
Oh please. You expect us to put our brains away because you don't like the news? Tough.
They lost 900,000 customers in 70-days. That's 43% of their customer base. In just 70-days. That's what BAD MMOS do. Good ones grow for months or years after release. Bad ones contract immediately after release.
So it is, so it has always been with MMOs. From Asheron's Call to SWTOR. Good ones grow for months and years. Bad ones fail right out of the gate.
And calling a failure a failure doesn't make you a hater. A hater, in a more realistic sense of the word, is someone that bags on a successful, growing IP over trivial issues and is in a significant minority of the gaming crowd. Not one of the nine-hundred thousand that found a stinking pile of dung and said "Oh, look, a stinking pile of dung. Don't step in it."
Maybe TOR will be the last chapter in this book of generic theme-park carrot on a stick game design approach for mmo's. Or maybe not... But I cant see another company rounding up investors to drop this kind of cash on another mmo any time in the near future though, so itll probably be the last one of those any of us will see for a long long time.
Sorry, but Devs havent learned anything
/inc The Elder Scrolls Online
To be fair, according to anything that's out there, TESO began development in about 2006-2007 timeframe, roughly same time as SWTOR. That boat left long ago, and they're not going to change it up to suit longtime TES fans at all. This far in development? No way, not unless you want a disastrous revamp late in development like Tabula Rasa had.
To me, as a longtime TES fan, TESO is a lost cause.
As for the BioWare layoffs, maybe this will kick them in the nuts enough to do things the old school BioWare way. Back when the company was undisputedly the best RPG dev house out there.
But that's being overly optimistic.
This WAS old-school BioWare:
1. Over-hype game. Go back to NWN and the DM tool. What we got was a shadow of what was promised. Plus the campaign was pretty crappy. Every game since then has followed the same pattern.
2. Do not admit mistakes. ME3's ending where they made a Deus EX ending ripped off from Deus Ex. Aristotle pointed out somewhere around 325BC that you dont do that. THat the solution for story has to come from earlier in the story and not some Deus Ex ending. It's 2400 years later and they couldn't get it right.... It's one of the oldest and most sacrosanct rules in fiction. And they blew it trying to be 'clever.' DA2 was a mistake.
3. Blatently lie. Jade Empire was advertised and released as an "XBox exclusive" to only be released on the XBox with no PC release. Two years later, when they needed money they released it on PC. They LIED on the forums about what they said. When people hit the old Internet Way-Back machine and linked up what they said, BioWare banned them as 'disruptive.'
4. Blame the gamers. BioWare has a history of shoddy engine and effects work. When things go bad, they always blame the gamers and say it's just some small percentage of malcontents. SWTOR is a classic example, but it happened in other games, too.
Comments
SWTOR has a lot of features that sound good on paper, but in execution quickly show major flaws.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
I don't think it's impossible to fix what is wrong. First they have to recognize the main problem, which is lack of endgame features and then move that to the front of the priority list. Leave the legacy fluff for a later time. Ilum was a good concept but they need to fix it. I know a lot of players would love to be able to have huge fights on a planet over natural resources. As long as you can provide the player with an interesting and fun incentive, the player will PVP. Most players I know get tired of fighting NPCs.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
Sadly i don't think its savable. The problems with the game is that it wasn't original enough to catch people who bought it. So you can't recapture these people with the same game. The complaints about htis game were the same complatins whispered and hushed before the game. But delusion is an amazing thing before a game. Check out the TSW forums. Imagine, SWTOR's graphics and combat is a lot smoother and more fluid.
Game companies ride off these dedicated fans and don't realize that they are dealing with a relic of a system in the broader gamers eyes.
I have to play this game most of the time. How do you make this game easier for me to play. I thought there were a lot of good elements to the game, but the stale 12 year old combat got to me when the long distances between everything started nagging me.
Moral of the story: make a good game, and you will be rewarded. ME2 was hailed by critic and player alike as one of the best games of recent memory. instead of expanding on that, they were too busy ripping out any bit of choice, and shooting copies of the game into space. At this point, EAware became all hype, no substance.
Bethesda knows their target audience, and they don't try to do something else. While Skyrim was a bit simplified, this is still not a game that someone looks to "beat", because if you are looking to "beat" the game, you are doing it wrong. Even the console players recognize this.
EAware couldn't figure out their target audience, they are constantly trying to make it into something its not.
Crazy???? A single player MMO underpreforms????
I only hope the EA employees go first as many of them were heads of bioware. Bioware did their part the class stories were enjoyable, leveling was fun. EA did the endgame.
i wonder how much they paid him for trolling sounds like the perfect job for me
It's not just some dev members that were bumped off, the CRM Stephen Reid got bumped off to, a CRM.
Bioware IS EA now.. there is no separation. You can't blame one without the other. Bioware ceases to exist for all intents and purposes.
OMG, yes. And out of complete ignorance as well. In a different thread I had some fanboy who worked in a data center for a couple of years tell me my 30% estimate of the fully weighted server costs was too high because he made $21 an hour and was the only employee at some 300-server data center... Some of these fanboys have absolutely no concept of math, forecasting, projecting, finance and accounting or even reality...
WoW, last quarter, took in $251 million in sub revenue. Their costs for the NA/European servers was $59 million. They don't pay for the Chinese servers, they license that out to NetEase and get some of the revenue as royalties. A deal they just, btw, renewed:
World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment today said that it will continue its partnership with Chinese MMO operator NetEase, with NetEase operating WoW servers in China for at least the next three years.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/166857/Chinese_World_of_Warcraft_operator_NetEase_renews_Blizzard_contract.php
So, when we talk about 24% of costs to revenue, it's not entirely accurate. Blizzard counts all revenues as sub revenues, but only has to bear the costs of the NA/Euro servers. Since they don't break-out the Chinese subs from all the subs, I can only go by what I have. And that says that costs are 24% of revenue which includes the 'no cost' Chinese revenue. Clearly this means that 24% as a cost to direct-operated-server costs is too low.
Then we have economies of scale.. Blizzard servers are bigger. Economies of scale will give them an advantage over SWTOR as welll...
And last, server costs to operate have a huge fixed-cost component and a small variable-cost component. Empty or full, they cost close to the same to operate. So if it costs $100/month to operate a server and you make $500/month on the server, your cost is 20% (100/500). But if you loose $250 now your cost is at 40% (100/250).
So, in fairness, I think 30% is a good estimate for the BioWare costs and I think it could easily be higher. I don't think $251 million in WoW sub revenues is the correct denominator and using it understates the percentage costs. I think the real western sub revenue was about $180 to $190 million as I think they really only have 4 million western subs now (they didn't even sell 4 million of the last expansion so even that is a bit on the 'hmmmm...' for me). But Blizzard hides it all behind the 'world-wide' picture and doesn't provide the regional data.
I think the real fully-weighted server cost percentage for Blizzard is closer to 32%. But I can't prove it with hard numbers so I go with what I have, which I fully believe understates actual, fully-weighted costs. So I think I'm being more-than-fair at 30% because I think that's pretty close to Blizzard's and BioWare has two additional hits -- a lot of EMPTY servers and poor economies of scale.
Accounting is hard. Tracking all this stuff is hard. Making sure you understand all the financial information and issues is hard. And yet some fanboy who worked in a data center, who is completely devoid of facts and lacking (entirely) in education and experience in this area is telling me I'm full of bull... Frack me Ray Bradbury...
This video sums up SW:TOR better and it's much shorter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuSdU8tbcHY
Based upon name/branding alone though, not due to any quality present in the product.
It needed a real engine and another year+ on the dev bench.
Alot of the blame can be dumped on the downies who coded/purchased the Hero engine.
So let's call it by the name that is quite fitting: your "data" is all guesswork.
Here is what I'd suggest: either provide the hard data including obvious links to Blizz and BW/EA's detailed operational costs for running their WoW and their SWTOR operation.
Or just shut up!
Otherwise you just sound like
well, I should probably scratch the "fanboy" and replace it with "SWTOR hater"... *shrug*
Anyways, point overall is: there are layoffs at Bioware Austin.
Whatever that means for SWTOR remains to be seen.
To be fair, according to anything that's out there, TESO began development in about 2006-2007 timeframe, roughly same time as SWTOR. That boat left long ago, and they're not going to change it up to suit longtime TES fans at all. This far in development? No way, not unless you want a disastrous revamp late in development like Tabula Rasa had.
To me, as a longtime TES fan, TESO is a lost cause.
As for the BioWare layoffs, maybe this will kick them in the nuts enough to do things the old school BioWare way. Back when the company was undisputedly the best RPG dev house out there.
But that's being overly optimistic.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
They have to fire and replace the Lead developer and not the small employees.........
again the wrong decision .
I found them to be dull and uninspired. A lot of this stems from I'm 51 and extremely well-read in Sci-Fi and Fantasy. So I could see where they came from. But a lot comes from the writers weren't good enough to palagerize or re-write old cliche's in fresh, interestiing way.
So, we have some of the more obvious palagerized rip-offs of rip-offs such as the Jedi Knight story of Chapter 1. I mean, seriously, a planet blowing up superweapon... My mentor is killed by the powerful Sith Lord... Holy thinly-disguised Star Wars Episode IV rip-off... And there were others, but that one was so striking I found myself laughing at the blatent rip-off.
Plenty of other stories that were palagerized or were such old cliche's that unless done exceptionaly well, they were going to be problematic. The 'find the mystery cure' jidi consular arc is a classic plot coupon device done to death. The Great Hunt plot device for the Bounty Hunter orginated in Medieval literature (Arabian Nights) and has been done (mostly badly, sometimes good (Raiders of the Lost Arc)) to death. The Smugglers Chapter 1 story arc... Treasure hunt in space with a princess... You must be kidding me... It was so Raiders of the Lost Ark... Only not as good...
And so it went... Time and time again.
Oh please. You expect us to put our brains away because you don't like the news? Tough.
They lost 900,000 customers in 70-days. That's 43% of their customer base. In just 70-days. That's what BAD MMOS do. Good ones grow for months or years after release. Bad ones contract immediately after release.
So it is, so it has always been with MMOs. From Asheron's Call to SWTOR. Good ones grow for months and years. Bad ones fail right out of the gate.
And calling a failure a failure doesn't make you a hater. A hater, in a more realistic sense of the word, is someone that bags on a successful, growing IP over trivial issues and is in a significant minority of the gaming crowd. Not one of the nine-hundred thousand that found a stinking pile of dung and said "Oh, look, a stinking pile of dung. Don't step in it."
This WAS old-school BioWare:
1. Over-hype game. Go back to NWN and the DM tool. What we got was a shadow of what was promised. Plus the campaign was pretty crappy. Every game since then has followed the same pattern.
2. Do not admit mistakes. ME3's ending where they made a Deus EX ending ripped off from Deus Ex. Aristotle pointed out somewhere around 325BC that you dont do that. THat the solution for story has to come from earlier in the story and not some Deus Ex ending. It's 2400 years later and they couldn't get it right.... It's one of the oldest and most sacrosanct rules in fiction. And they blew it trying to be 'clever.' DA2 was a mistake.
3. Blatently lie. Jade Empire was advertised and released as an "XBox exclusive" to only be released on the XBox with no PC release. Two years later, when they needed money they released it on PC. They LIED on the forums about what they said. When people hit the old Internet Way-Back machine and linked up what they said, BioWare banned them as 'disruptive.'
4. Blame the gamers. BioWare has a history of shoddy engine and effects work. When things go bad, they always blame the gamers and say it's just some small percentage of malcontents. SWTOR is a classic example, but it happened in other games, too.