The game will be f2p before the end of the year. biggest failure in mmo history.
I present to you: Vanguard, AoC, WAR
SWTOR is not in that class as desperately as some want it to be.
Not even close. In terms of commercial failure, no other MMORPG came close to SWTOR estimated budget of between 250-400mil. Vanguard 's budget was 30 milion and AoC around 90 mil. If you count the 2,5-3 mil sold boxes for SWTOR, you can easily see the huge GAP between profit and costs -- clearly the biggest one in the gaming history, i.e. SWTOR could be seen as the biggest commercial failure in gaming industry to date.
The game will be f2p before the end of the year. biggest failure in mmo history.
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/31584/star-wars-the-old-republic/ 2.34 Mill, 10k more than the last week, looks like even when is ¨dying¨ the keep selling like 10k copies per week. With the merge, the 1.3 update and the free trial that number will be even bigger. What about TERA, as an example, http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44073/tera/ 0.17 Mill, and we are talking about swtor as a fail. Haters need to learn how lo live in a world where swtor is already an HUGE success, the most successful MMO post WoW, live with it.
Though plans change, as server merges, server transfers and LFG probably took priority over some other stuff, and laying off lot of people will surely have some impact.
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/31584/star-wars-the-old-republic/ 2.34 Mill, 10k more than the last week, looks like even when is ¨dying¨ the keep selling like 10k copies per week. With the merge, the 1.3 update and the free trial that number will be even bigger. What about TERA, as an example, http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44073/tera/ 0.17 Mill, and we are talking about swtor as a fail. Haters need to learn how lo live in a world where swtor is already an HUGE success, the most successful MMO post WoW, live with it.
TERA aside... if those numbers are accurate, then SWTOR is still a failure. Keep in mind it cost 250-300mil to make the game. Even though 2.3m sounds impressive, they'd still want double that. Also keep in mind that the populations have been going down, not up.
Investing 2-300mil on a project, to more or less break even, is not generally labelled as 'success'. Not even in the business world. Especially when you factor in that it took over half a decade to make.
SWTOR could be seen as the biggest commercial failure in gaming industry to date.
Except it's not a failure, yet. What if it keeps 300k subs for the next 5 years? Thats certainly feasible based on the IP alone. There is a larger amount of people that arent going anywhere than most think.
Except it's not a failure, yet. What if it keeps 300k subs for the next 5 years? Thats certainly feasible based on the IP alone. There is a larger amount of people that arent going anywhere than most think.
Even if it were to do that (which doesn't really seem practical at this point), that's staying afloat & not 'success'. Games cost a good amount to keep supported. So it's not like they wouldn't have maintenance costs (and I'm not just talking about servers). EA has already basically came out and said they are shifting focus away from this game, so I really don't see how people are still defending this game anymore. The company that made the game doesn't even seem to care about it anymore.
Except it's not a failure, yet. What if it keeps 300k subs for the next 5 years? Thats certainly feasible based on the IP alone. There is a larger amount of people that arent going anywhere than most think.
Even if it were to do that (which doesn't really seem practical at this point), that's staying afloat & not 'success'. Games cost a good amount to keep supported. So it's not like they wouldn't have maintenance costs (and I'm not just talking about servers). EA has already basically came out and said they are shifting focus away from this game, so I really don't see how people are still defending this game anymore. The company that made the game doesn't even seem to care about it anymore.
Except you are calling a game a failure a full 2 or 3 years before its even determinable. 300k is staying afloat? There have been 3 games in the history of MMORPGs in the west that have kept above 300k for a span of 3 years or more. EQ, EvE and WoW. EvE, WoW and SWToR are the only three games currently over that 300k mark. (Possibly Rift, but doubtful).
Just because you wish a game to fail so much does not mean that it will.
Now it will always be a DISAPPOINTMENT, but probably not a failure, in financial terms.
They announced more of the same with some minor surprises. They are doubling down on their design and adding a free expansion + new rails space mission. Assholes.
SWTOR could be seen as the biggest commercial failure in gaming industry to date.
Except it's not a failure, yet. What if it keeps 300k subs for the next 5 years? Thats certainly feasible based on the IP alone. There is a larger amount of people that arent going anywhere than most think.
Considering that THEY said that 1m+ is considered success and that they wouldnt even enter the project for anything less - its epic failure.
300k is decent number - for the game of scope of Rift.
For a game of scope of SWTOR - not.
And they said they need 500k just to stay afloat. Yah, 300k means very nasty things for da game.
While I like to hear news of growth coming to a game...does anyone else here think this info today is a bit jumbled together and not thought out very well? As if they are scrambling and grasping for anything at this point to keep people from labeling it a "failure".
It's just odd to hear about a level cap increase so soon with no expansion announced. How does that figure into the whole class story aspect? I'd rather they keep the cap, drop half the useless abilities or combine them and just revamp the game by removing all invisible walls on each planet, redoing the engine so it can accomodate such changes and have more people in an area at a time, thereby making world PVP worth doing and more fun and add content and horizontal progression to the current game as a whole before extending the "end" of it with more of the same.
Maybe it's just a bad PR team and they are just not "getting" how MMO announcements should be done? Not like it's tough, if even games like Perfect World or Runes of Magic can make pretty good marketing ads for new content patches.
Heh I dislike SWTOR a lot and think personally that companies will finally take notice and try and be creative from all of this ,successful in the end or not. But.... all this comparing the game to SWG??? umm i played SWG at release for quite a long time and it was a buggy peice of crap that a lot of this sandbox crowd seem to forget. SWG was dying hence the NGE and combat changes. Now I can agree with others about the destroying the different classes , it doesnt change the fact that SWG was crap at release with limited amount of things to do, well unless you consider farmville fun. Grind 32 professions for a force slot , build a house, or craft and chase resources planet to planet......the rest of the game was basically rubbish.
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/31584/star-wars-the-old-republic/ 2.34 Mill, 10k more than the last week, looks like even when is ¨dying¨ the keep selling like 10k copies per week. With the merge, the 1.3 update and the free trial that number will be even bigger. What about TERA, as an example, http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44073/tera/ 0.17 Mill, and we are talking about swtor as a fail. Haters need to learn how lo live in a world where swtor is already an HUGE success, the most successful MMO post WoW, live with it.
TERA aside... if those numbers are accurate, then SWTOR is still a failure. Keep in mind it cost 250-300mil to make the game. Even though 2.3m sounds impressive, they'd still want double that. Also keep in mind that the populations have been going down, not up.
Investing 2-300mil on a project, to more or less break even, is not generally labelled as 'success'. Not even in the business world. Especially when you factor in that it took over half a decade to make.
All of the speculation about how much it cost to make is just that, speculation. There has never been any official announcement regarding the cost of production for the game. Before it came out it was 200 million, now people in this thread are claiming 300-400 million. Its silly.
All of the speculation about how much it cost to make is just that, speculation. There has never been any official announcement regarding the cost of production for the game. Before it came out it was 200 million, now people in this thread are claiming 300-400 million. Its silly.
New update adds more generic content which is not really needed for this game to pick up subscribers. Also, I don't see how this update, primarily intended for high level players correlates with inducing new players through F2P to lvl15 feature?
What they should be doing is polishing existing and adding new game systems or features (LFG system, making flashpoints more interesting through better rewards, XP or branching paths, new planets for leveling content, arena PVP, enabling massive PVP (Ilum) in general and maybe even for lower levels through bolstering etc.)
However, again, they are showing no creativity or adaptability and are holding to their predetermined content release schedule, which was created when future was looking bright.
Except it's not a failure, yet. What if it keeps 300k subs for the next 5 years? Thats certainly feasible based on the IP alone. There is a larger amount of people that arent going anywhere than most think.
Because the budget includes only pre-release costs, not planned costs of future development. Servers + HW + developers + rent cost a huge amount of money. There is no possible way to get back the lost 200 milion (at 300 mil budget - 100 mil for initial sales) solely by subscription money even if it keeps 300k subscribers for the next 5 years (which seems like a sci-fi anyway). Again, someone mentioned AoC, which sold 1 milion copies and costed 90mil to make. Which means a loss of 40 mil, not even close to the loss in SWTOR case. Vanguard costed 30 milion, and sold 120.000 copies first month (loss of 25 milion). WAR could be in similar numbers as AoC. Tabula Rasa maybe slightly higher, but still nowhere near SWTOR loss.
Yes, SWTOR seems to be the biggest commercial failure, unless all the estimations of its budget were totally wrong and it costed only around 100 milion (which is extremely unprobable given the long development + expensive voice acting + huge advertising campaign)
I don't think that lvl15 "unlimited" Trial...errr i mean F2P...spin...is worth much. Can't think of a MMO which didn't offer a free trial in some sort or shape.
The difference to two week trials is, people can stay longer and may fill up servers. But let's be honest, does any paying customer wants those people to fill his servers?
Free accounts and lvl15 means nothing, so i expect the chat spam, trolling to explode and what to do? Ban a free account? This is a personal huge downside to me, if they don't put those accounts on seperate servers.
Guess padding user numbers is more important than quality environment, desperate indeed.
"New" Race, (presumably) Cathar? Well, race does not do much seeing as how they still didn't fix basics like appearance of headgear on Pure Blood, Twilek, Cathar, etc...i doubt it's worth much to anyone. It's not much of a race anyway a cheap skin color job rather considering all the iconic Races of the STAR WARS Universe they won't add because of the issues above. (And the basic lazyness of adding proper Voiceovers for non basic speakers).
Companion is nice, but again what's a companion worth in term of gameplay? 30 Minutes of "story", and no use outside solo daily grind. So that's their priority over actual fixing the companion system and giving it life, deepth and true customization? If i could create my own looks for companions with the limited character editor i would spend 500x more time with companions than adding one static dead object into my ship.
New planet, well at least new content worth 4 hours tops. New Ops, guess the hamster wheel people will be happy anyone else still lacks basic core systems for "endgame".
New Warzone, good don't mind it. But again, a new warzone is worth nothing if the warzone system needs fixing in the first place. Proper matchmaking, queues, Ranked, Premade, player pools.
New Space mission? MEH! I'm not one of these people who want a full STO style space fight, i would be actually fine with a good____ railshooter. However SWTOR's "space combat" isn't even one. You can't blow up anything. NOTHING blows up besides tiny fighters. You can't have proper differences in mission goals, whenever you fail them or not (bonus mission failing or succeeding does nothing besides a few credits). Even late 80 Railshooter had different routes whenever i would succeed bonus mission goals or not, different fights, and mostly when i gunned at the big starship it did BLOW UP in the end!
SWTOR's leaders are like spoiled 10 year old city boys trying to make a campfire by throwing more wet wood branches at it without having any means or ideas how to ignite it.
While the new content is great and all, it also shows BioWare is absolutely freakin' clueless as to why they are bleeding subs at such a rapid rate and ultimately why this game will be doomed to go into maintenance mode. More of the Same is NOT what is needed to save the game.
First, they desperately need to correct the server issues, people are quitting daily as this goes on and on.
Second, they need to drop their damn egos and realize that an MMO is NOT a single-player RPG that can be developed in a vacuum. When you are asking players to pay a monthly premium for game play, you better pay attention to where your problems are and rigorously defend not losing subs.
Third, they need to add some MMO player-enabled elements - Pazaak, Player generated pazaak tournaments, rare pazaak card drops sprinkled throughout the game, various gambling games at the biggest waste of space ever developed in an MMO - the casino on Nar Shadda, Guild Ships, player customization on their ships (SWTOR version of housing) with customization drops and boss trophies added in the game, Ranked Warzone PvP finally corrected, open warzone PvP (Ilum) corrected, etc.
Fourth, they need to work on correcting some underlying systems - a real space combat game, rather than a throwback to 1990 (where space games were still better). Space PvP. Capital Guild Ship PvP. Expand existing planets with more exploration zones, etc.
Lastly, finish balancing the game elements and stop the Imperial favoritism (you can deny it but most players play both sides and have pointed out how this favortisim exists and continues to exist). They really messed up with the massive 1.2 class adjustments so soon after launch. Worse, they were told by players during testing not to do it but they still did. Then, their lead designer steadfastly refuses to believe they did the wrong thing - because his data says otherwise. He's looking at the wrong data point - he should be looking at the massive bleed of subs as an indicator that YOU DID THE WRONG THING!
I now shake my head at just how BioWare is looking completely incompetent and out of touch with the customer base when it comes to MMOs. I also know, from long conversations on vent with guildmates, I am definately not in the minority when it comes to this viewpoint.
Overall, many have written off this game - not just because of where it stands today, but because trailers like this show how out of touch BioWare is and that they just don't get (or are too arrogant to admit) what the real problems are. The level cap raise (which will introduce another whole host of issues on it's own) so soon after launch is another example of this. The game is done by the end of this year (it will survive in WAR style maintenance mode) you can stick a fork in it.
No, Eve is the largest P2P Sandbox MMO. The RMT Sandbox MMOS Second Life and Entropia Universe have each around 800k players. Also SWTOR is shrinking so fast it will be below EVE by years end.
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
Comments
Not even close. In terms of commercial failure, no other MMORPG came close to SWTOR estimated budget of between 250-400mil. Vanguard 's budget was 30 milion and AoC around 90 mil. If you count the 2,5-3 mil sold boxes for SWTOR, you can easily see the huge GAP between profit and costs -- clearly the biggest one in the gaming history, i.e. SWTOR could be seen as the biggest commercial failure in gaming industry to date.
REALITY CHECK
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/31584/star-wars-the-old-republic/ 2.34 Mill, 10k more than the last week, looks like even when is ¨dying¨ the keep selling like 10k copies per week. With the merge, the 1.3 update and the free trial that number will be even bigger. What about TERA, as an example, http://www.vgchartz.com/game/44073/tera/ 0.17 Mill, and we are talking about swtor as a fail. Haters need to learn how lo live in a world where swtor is already an HUGE success, the most successful MMO post WoW, live with it.
Some things were known for quite a while now:
http://www.torhead.com/guide/leaks
Though plans change, as server merges, server transfers and LFG probably took priority over some other stuff, and laying off lot of people will surely have some impact.
Some items seem interesting however I'm dissapointed that space is still the same on rail type of affair.
TERA aside... if those numbers are accurate, then SWTOR is still a failure. Keep in mind it cost 250-300mil to make the game. Even though 2.3m sounds impressive, they'd still want double that. Also keep in mind that the populations have been going down, not up.
Investing 2-300mil on a project, to more or less break even, is not generally labelled as 'success'. Not even in the business world. Especially when you factor in that it took over half a decade to make.
Except it's not a failure, yet. What if it keeps 300k subs for the next 5 years? Thats certainly feasible based on the IP alone. There is a larger amount of people that arent going anywhere than most think.
Even if it were to do that (which doesn't really seem practical at this point), that's staying afloat & not 'success'. Games cost a good amount to keep supported. So it's not like they wouldn't have maintenance costs (and I'm not just talking about servers). EA has already basically came out and said they are shifting focus away from this game, so I really don't see how people are still defending this game anymore. The company that made the game doesn't even seem to care about it anymore.
Except you are calling a game a failure a full 2 or 3 years before its even determinable. 300k is staying afloat? There have been 3 games in the history of MMORPGs in the west that have kept above 300k for a span of 3 years or more. EQ, EvE and WoW. EvE, WoW and SWToR are the only three games currently over that 300k mark. (Possibly Rift, but doubtful).
Just because you wish a game to fail so much does not mean that it will.
Now it will always be a DISAPPOINTMENT, but probably not a failure, in financial terms.
yeah considering the amount of money involved on this game production, i think its a lesson on the next decades to come : How to not product a MMO!
They announced more of the same with some minor surprises. They are doubling down on their design and adding a free expansion + new rails space mission. Assholes.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Considering that THEY said that 1m+ is considered success and that they wouldnt even enter the project for anything less - its epic failure.
300k is decent number - for the game of scope of Rift.
For a game of scope of SWTOR - not.
And they said they need 500k just to stay afloat. Yah, 300k means very nasty things for da game.
Bingo.
Just more boring crap for a terrible game
"Possible WoW Killer" to F2P in 7 months.
Enough said about the mess called SWTOR.
Anyone else see that stupid giant alien boss? WTF?
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Heh I dislike SWTOR a lot and think personally that companies will finally take notice and try and be creative from all of this ,successful in the end or not. But.... all this comparing the game to SWG??? umm i played SWG at release for quite a long time and it was a buggy peice of crap that a lot of this sandbox crowd seem to forget. SWG was dying hence the NGE and combat changes. Now I can agree with others about the destroying the different classes , it doesnt change the fact that SWG was crap at release with limited amount of things to do, well unless you consider farmville fun. Grind 32 professions for a force slot , build a house, or craft and chase resources planet to planet......the rest of the game was basically rubbish.
All of the speculation about how much it cost to make is just that, speculation. There has never been any official announcement regarding the cost of production for the game. Before it came out it was 200 million, now people in this thread are claiming 300-400 million. Its silly.
You forgot inside leak of 300m budget.
Anyway, new content might not be free after all
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0Bw6sp6dpJKRcaDdKTHFnQlp6Wjg/edit?pli=1
New update adds more generic content which is not really needed for this game to pick up subscribers. Also, I don't see how this update, primarily intended for high level players correlates with inducing new players through F2P to lvl15 feature?
What they should be doing is polishing existing and adding new game systems or features (LFG system, making flashpoints more interesting through better rewards, XP or branching paths, new planets for leveling content, arena PVP, enabling massive PVP (Ilum) in general and maybe even for lower levels through bolstering etc.)
However, again, they are showing no creativity or adaptability and are holding to their predetermined content release schedule, which was created when future was looking bright.
Because the budget includes only pre-release costs, not planned costs of future development. Servers + HW + developers + rent cost a huge amount of money. There is no possible way to get back the lost 200 milion (at 300 mil budget - 100 mil for initial sales) solely by subscription money even if it keeps 300k subscribers for the next 5 years (which seems like a sci-fi anyway). Again, someone mentioned AoC, which sold 1 milion copies and costed 90mil to make. Which means a loss of 40 mil, not even close to the loss in SWTOR case. Vanguard costed 30 milion, and sold 120.000 copies first month (loss of 25 milion). WAR could be in similar numbers as AoC. Tabula Rasa maybe slightly higher, but still nowhere near SWTOR loss.
Yes, SWTOR seems to be the biggest commercial failure, unless all the estimations of its budget were totally wrong and it costed only around 100 milion (which is extremely unprobable given the long development + expensive voice acting + huge advertising campaign)
REALITY CHECK
I don't think that lvl15 "unlimited" Trial...errr i mean F2P...spin...is worth much.
Can't think of a MMO which didn't offer a free trial in some sort or shape.
The difference to two week trials is, people can stay longer and may fill up servers.
But let's be honest, does any paying customer wants those people to fill his servers?
Free accounts and lvl15 means nothing, so i expect the chat spam, trolling to explode and what to do? Ban a free account?
This is a personal huge downside to me, if they don't put those accounts on seperate servers.
Guess padding user numbers is more important than quality environment, desperate indeed.
"New" Race, (presumably) Cathar? Well, race does not do much seeing as how they still didn't fix basics like appearance of headgear on Pure Blood, Twilek, Cathar, etc...i doubt it's worth much to anyone. It's not much of a race anyway a cheap skin color job rather considering all the iconic Races of the STAR WARS Universe they won't add because of the issues above. (And the basic lazyness of adding proper Voiceovers for non basic speakers).
Companion is nice, but again what's a companion worth in term of gameplay? 30 Minutes of "story", and no use outside solo daily grind. So that's their priority over actual fixing the companion system and giving it life, deepth and true customization?
If i could create my own looks for companions with the limited character editor i would spend 500x more time with companions than adding one static dead object into my ship.
New planet, well at least new content worth 4 hours tops.
New Ops, guess the hamster wheel people will be happy anyone else still lacks basic core systems for "endgame".
New Warzone, good don't mind it. But again, a new warzone is worth nothing if the warzone system needs fixing in the first place. Proper matchmaking, queues, Ranked, Premade, player pools.
New Space mission? MEH!
I'm not one of these people who want a full STO style space fight, i would be actually fine with a good____ railshooter. However SWTOR's "space combat" isn't even one. You can't blow up anything. NOTHING blows up besides tiny fighters. You can't have proper differences in mission goals, whenever you fail them or not (bonus mission failing or succeeding does nothing besides a few credits). Even late 80 Railshooter had different routes whenever i would succeed bonus mission goals or not, different fights, and mostly when i gunned at the big starship it did BLOW UP in the end!
SWTOR's leaders are like spoiled 10 year old city boys trying to make a campfire by throwing more wet wood branches at it without having any means or ideas how to ignite it.
While the new content is great and all, it also shows BioWare is absolutely freakin' clueless as to why they are bleeding subs at such a rapid rate and ultimately why this game will be doomed to go into maintenance mode. More of the Same is NOT what is needed to save the game.
First, they desperately need to correct the server issues, people are quitting daily as this goes on and on.
Second, they need to drop their damn egos and realize that an MMO is NOT a single-player RPG that can be developed in a vacuum. When you are asking players to pay a monthly premium for game play, you better pay attention to where your problems are and rigorously defend not losing subs.
Third, they need to add some MMO player-enabled elements - Pazaak, Player generated pazaak tournaments, rare pazaak card drops sprinkled throughout the game, various gambling games at the biggest waste of space ever developed in an MMO - the casino on Nar Shadda, Guild Ships, player customization on their ships (SWTOR version of housing) with customization drops and boss trophies added in the game, Ranked Warzone PvP finally corrected, open warzone PvP (Ilum) corrected, etc.
Fourth, they need to work on correcting some underlying systems - a real space combat game, rather than a throwback to 1990 (where space games were still better). Space PvP. Capital Guild Ship PvP. Expand existing planets with more exploration zones, etc.
Lastly, finish balancing the game elements and stop the Imperial favoritism (you can deny it but most players play both sides and have pointed out how this favortisim exists and continues to exist). They really messed up with the massive 1.2 class adjustments so soon after launch. Worse, they were told by players during testing not to do it but they still did. Then, their lead designer steadfastly refuses to believe they did the wrong thing - because his data says otherwise. He's looking at the wrong data point - he should be looking at the massive bleed of subs as an indicator that YOU DID THE WRONG THING!
I now shake my head at just how BioWare is looking completely incompetent and out of touch with the customer base when it comes to MMOs. I also know, from long conversations on vent with guildmates, I am definately not in the minority when it comes to this viewpoint.
Overall, many have written off this game - not just because of where it stands today, but because trailers like this show how out of touch BioWare is and that they just don't get (or are too arrogant to admit) what the real problems are. The level cap raise (which will introduce another whole host of issues on it's own) so soon after launch is another example of this. The game is done by the end of this year (it will survive in WAR style maintenance mode) you can stick a fork in it.
What if Apple didn't bring back Steve Jobs?
What if MS Bought Yahoo?
What if Caeser didn't cross the bridge?
[mod edit]
I offer facts and numbers to refute your baseless assertion.
SWTOR has 1.3M subs. Largest sandbox sub is EVE with 400k.
Gdemami -
Informing people about your thoughts and impressions is not a review, it's a blog.
No, Eve is the largest P2P Sandbox MMO.
The RMT Sandbox MMOS Second Life and Entropia Universe have each around 800k players.
Also SWTOR is shrinking so fast it will be below EVE by years end.
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Rightio
Next thing youll say is they laid off half of their staff because they were TOO successful lol