So how many players fit on 30 servers? 1.3 million? LOL
I think Aion had like 30 servers at launch to cater to the 0.9-1m EU/NA players at its launch in the west.
The highest populated TOR servers a few weeks after launch had I think 4-4.2k players at peak times logged in. Full servers, depending on player cap of a server, had I think 3.2-4k players online on them.
Originally posted by pierthJust goes to show the importance of having a quality, compelling endgame.
Not really. TOR is just putting all the focus on soloing so people enjoy the game for 1-3 months and then feel done with it like a singleplayer game. If you want people to play a long time you need to focus on multiplayer instead or at least have 50/50.
I also feel that the quality was piss poor. The Animations & sound were great, don't get me wrong, but the combat, graphics, gameplay, emphasis on solo gameplay, massive linearization, and massive instancing simply cut me off from the game before it began.
You only touched on a small portion of the issue I believe Loke !
Surely we all knew that the majority of this game would be solo-centric and SWTOR did not disappoint in that- but for any real longevity you have to have an endgame that entices players to keep playing. There's simply no way for EA/Bioware to churn out solo content at the rate players devour it, and naturally once they've completed that content they move on- it's a recipe for disaster for a MMORPG.
This is precisely what happens when a Massively Solo Online Role-Playing Game (with optional multiplayer) is created. Those players that insist MMORPGs cater to solo playstyles are actively telling Pubs/Devs to shoot themselves in the foot. Proof that solo content-locust playstyles kill MMOs.
Richard Bartle, one of the more famous game designers in academia, pointed that out about SWTOR, albiet indirectly:
As I regularly mention, I don't play MMOs for player fun. In terms of designer fun, I could have stopped a day after I started, but I kept going for reasons of credentials and solidarity. I was also determined to get involved with the endgame more than I usually do, in the hope that it might offer something new (it didn't). I achieved this goal with some fairly intensive playing that ate up rather too many evenings, but work is work. I reached legacy level 37 (the highest in the guild by some margin) with a /played of 19d 8h 30m on my level 50 Jedi sage healer, 11d 11h 45m on my level 50 gunslinger ranged DPS and 2d 17h 45m on my level 40 Jedi knight tank. Including assorted other characters, that means I played for around 33 days of elapsed time over 137 days, or roughly 25% of my time. This may sound excessive, but when I was marking assignments I was spending 60% of my time on that; I can be dedicated when the job demands it.
SW:TOR is shedding players by the bucketload now, at least on the Republic side. It used to be that our guild could put together three operations (ie. raids) at once, but yesterday it couldn't even put together a group for the Lost Island flashpoint (ie. instance). I can go to planets such as Ilum (where PvP takes place and there are lucrative daily quests) and be the only Republic player present. It may be different for Imperials, but on the Republic side the game is a multi-player wasteland.
I won't be going through the 93 pages of notes I made to tell you why I believe things aren't turning out as well as they might, but I believe that the fundamental reason is the too-large dissonance between the levelling game and the endgame. The levelling game is all about story and solo play; the endgame is all about group play and grinding through dailies. There's too great a disconnect. If new content had been added to the levelling game in patch 1.2, things could have been different. However, the new content added was at the endgame; indeed, the developers' view seems to be that players want to skip through the levelling game quicker on their alts, judging by the introduction of shared buffs across all your characters and legacy items you can use to over-gear them. As a result of this, my level 15 trooper ranged dps is cutting through content like a hot knife through butter. SW:TOR was sold on the strength of its story elements; encouraging players to scoot through the story to get to a generic endgame is of course going to cost it players.
So, they build a story MMO. Those people ran through the MMO and SWTOR can't compete at end-game with end-game/raiding MMOs. Even worse, BioWare devaluates the stories with the legacy system allowing you to burn through them at a higher rate by over-gearing/over-buffing while putting their emphasis on a third-rate end-game.
Originally posted by cutthecrap Originally posted by pierthOriginally posted by cutthecrapAh, you changed your thread title. Good, the former one made you look like you were some dumb ass who can't count and probably failed at math, this one is slightly better.Originally posted by pierthThis is precisely what happens when a Massively Solo Online Role-Playing Game (with optional multiplayer) is created. Those players that insist MMORPGs cater to solo playstyles are actively telling Pubs/Devs to shoot themselves in the foot. Proof that solo content-locust playstyles kill MMOs.Not really. Try to implement enforced grouping for leveling, and you'll have people leaving in droves. It wasn't for nothing that after EQ, Blizzard introduced solo-capable leveling in their MMO. And they were hugely successful with it, far more people prefer to be able to level solo when wanted than having to look for group all the time in order to progress in a game. In the end, it's all about fun.It's only such that you need to have a lot of other features too that is regarded as fun, besides the quest based leveling.Source? Metrics/Statistics? Any proof whatsoever? Because the last two "forced grouping" games that I played were FFXI and EQ1 both of which have run with profitable amounts of players for years.Certainly, if MMO Pubs are only seeking players for less than six months they should focus on soloers- however if they are looking to profit on more than box sales then it shows that it's a stupid, stupid thing to do.
Dude. Do I really have to convince you of the simple given that a lot more people enjoy it when they're able to solo level and questing more than there are people that prefer enforced grouping and/or mob grinding? I mean, seriously?
I'd bet 100 dollars that enforced grouping just isn't as popular and accepted as being able to level solo, and that people hate mob grinding more than they dislike solo quest leveling. WoW's success is enough proof of that.
And EQ and FFXI ran with profitable numbers because there was hardly any choice of MMO. When WoW came however, players left for WoW in droves.
Originally posted by Loktofeit
That you reply with "Any proof whatsoever?" right after he just gave you the behemoth of the industry as an example kinda indicates you're probably too polarized in the group/solo thing to spend more time discussing it.And this.
I had a great time in EQ, but I'm also aware what its flaws were, what players complaints ingame often were about, and why follow up MMO's focused more on providing a larger amount of quests and the option to easier level solo, and with success.
Both of you are thinking way too much in black and white.
First, it is mostly correct that if you make your MMO mostly soloable, it will attract more players. Most people simply don't have the time to spend on waiting around for groups and will thus choose the game that allows them to hop in, have some fun and hop back out again, while still allowing them the option of grouping when it suits them.
However, 'forced group' MMO's still have a market. There are quite a lot of people out there who are actively looking for this kind of experience, as evidenced by the amount of raid guilds in any mmo. While the market isn't as big as the casual one, it does still exist.
The problem with TOR is that it's unfocused, simple as that. It tried to ride on WoW's formula to success, using the Bioware and Star Wars names as leverage. However, they completely forgot what makes an MMO actually work, having segmented their devs far too much, especially in the story department.
Though, it's still an acceptable game. It just doesn't live up to the extremely high standards people have nowadays. I'd expect it to settle at 250k-350k subs at some point, going back to SWG's level of activity.
If developers still thinks that to follow the success of WoW is to just throw tons of quest and let players solo to level up, thought that most players like to roll alts, than they are in for a very big surprise.
If developers still thinks that to follow the success of WoW is to just throw tons of quest and let players solo to level up, thought that most players like to roll alts, than they are in for a very big surprise.
Apparently they never play WoW...
But they can get to play GW2 where... devs think that success will come with throwing tons of quests and let players solo to level up... SURPRISE!
This isnt that big of a deal. They are consolidating servers into mega servers to acomplish two goals.
1) Consolidate servers with low populations to give them more people to play with.
2) Make the game feel more epic my making HUGE servers.
Its a good change the servers feel a lot more alive now.
Can you post a confirmation from BW that these are "mega-servers" they talked about, since, afaik, BW said nothing about mega-servers and these are just regular servers.
This isnt that big of a deal. They are consolidating servers into mega servers to acomplish two goals.
1) Consolidate servers with low populations to give them more people to play with.
2) Make the game feel more epic my making HUGE servers.
Its a good change the servers feel a lot more alive now.
Can you post a confirmation from BW that these are "mega-servers" they talked about, since, afaik, BW said nothing about mega-servers and these are just regular servers.
The Fatman alone went from 200 ish to 600 in fleet, and it had been the most played server around. I dont know about "Mega", but they definitely have been "super sized".
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
It looks worse because they launched with far too many servers to begin with.. I was on Vulkar Highway and we never peaked over like 40 people in the republic fleet during the first few months and that was a decently populated server.. there were servers quite smaller than mine.. so it was dumb to release so many servers to being with.
It looks worse because they launched with far too many servers to begin with.. I was on Vulkar Highway and we never peaked over like 40 people in the republic fleet during the first few months and that was a decently populated server.. there were servers quite smaller than mine.. so it was dumb to release so many servers to being with.
That in of itself isn't necessarily dumb since it was possible that the may have needed the extra servers.
What was dumb was not having the server infrastructure ready for transfers/mergers when the inevitable drop of players occured. The fact that BWAustin didn't realize that they were going to need transfers/mergers just shows how clueless their management really is.
Originally posted by pierthJust goes to show the importance of having a quality, compelling endgame.
Not really. TOR is just putting all the focus on soloing so people enjoy the game for 1-3 months and then feel done with it like a singleplayer game. If you want people to play a long time you need to focus on multiplayer instead or at least have 50/50.
I also feel that the quality was piss poor. The Animations & sound were great, don't get me wrong, but the combat, graphics, gameplay, emphasis on solo gameplay, massive linearization, and massive instancing simply cut me off from the game before it began.
You only touched on a small portion of the issue I believe Loke !
Surely we all knew that the majority of this game would be solo-centric and SWTOR did not disappoint in that- but for any real longevity you have to have an endgame that entices players to keep playing. There's simply no way for EA/Bioware to churn out solo content at the rate players devour it, and naturally once they've completed that content they move on- it's a recipe for disaster for a MMORPG.
This is precisely what happens when a Massively Solo Online Role-Playing Game (with optional multiplayer) is created. Those players that insist MMORPGs cater to solo playstyles are actively telling Pubs/Devs to shoot themselves in the foot. Proof that solo content-locust playstyles kill MMOs.
Richard Bartle, one of the more famous game designers in academia, pointed that out about SWTOR, albiet indirectly:
As I regularly mention, I don't play MMOs for player fun. In terms of designer fun, I could have stopped a day after I started, but I kept going for reasons of credentials and solidarity. I was also determined to get involved with the endgame more than I usually do, in the hope that it might offer something new (it didn't). I achieved this goal with some fairly intensive playing that ate up rather too many evenings, but work is work. I reached legacy level 37 (the highest in the guild by some margin) with a /played of 19d 8h 30m on my level 50 Jedi sage healer, 11d 11h 45m on my level 50 gunslinger ranged DPS and 2d 17h 45m on my level 40 Jedi knight tank. Including assorted other characters, that means I played for around 33 days of elapsed time over 137 days, or roughly 25% of my time. This may sound excessive, but when I was marking assignments I was spending 60% of my time on that; I can be dedicated when the job demands it.
SW:TOR is shedding players by the bucketload now, at least on the Republic side. It used to be that our guild could put together three operations (ie. raids) at once, but yesterday it couldn't even put together a group for the Lost Island flashpoint (ie. instance). I can go to planets such as Ilum (where PvP takes place and there are lucrative daily quests) and be the only Republic player present. It may be different for Imperials, but on the Republic side the game is a multi-player wasteland.
I won't be going through the 93 pages of notes I made to tell you why I believe things aren't turning out as well as they might, but I believe that the fundamental reason is the too-large dissonance between the levelling game and the endgame. The levelling game is all about story and solo play; the endgame is all about group play and grinding through dailies. There's too great a disconnect. If new content had been added to the levelling game in patch 1.2, things could have been different. However, the new content added was at the endgame; indeed, the developers' view seems to be that players want to skip through the levelling game quicker on their alts, judging by the introduction of shared buffs across all your characters and legacy items you can use to over-gear them. As a result of this, my level 15 trooper ranged dps is cutting through content like a hot knife through butter. SW:TOR was sold on the strength of its story elements; encouraging players to scoot through the story to get to a generic endgame is of course going to cost it players.
So, they build a story MMO. Those people ran through the MMO and SWTOR can't compete at end-game with end-game/raiding MMOs. Even worse, BioWare devaluates the stories with the legacy system allowing you to burn through them at a higher rate by over-gearing/over-buffing while putting their emphasis on a third-rate end-game.
Amateur hour is took kind.
Problems with SWTOR:
1) You cannot sell an MMO that is not Massively Multiplayer.
2) Individual story as a primary focus of your game is clearly flawed as there is nothing Massively Multiplayer about that concept either.
Now with the moves they are making, its clear the SWTOR team is in a deep hole they dug & the only Idea they can come up with is to dig their way out.
It looks worse because they launched with far too many servers to begin with.. I was on Vulkar Highway and we never peaked over like 40 people in the republic fleet during the first few months and that was a decently populated server.. there were servers quite smaller than mine.. so it was dumb to release so many servers to being with.
That in of itself isn't necessarily dumb since it was possible that the may have needed the extra servers.
What was dumb was not having the server infrastructure ready for transfers/mergers when the inevitable drop of players occured. The fact that BWAustin didn't realize that they were going to need transfers/mergers just shows how clueless their management really is.
Gotta agree with this idea in principal.
A lot of things going on since launch stand out as a first time MMO maker. All servers were hitting normal at peak times after ;aunch, but to stay there they would of had to kept selling copies like a firestorm. No matter how good a person may like a game, there will be some that dont. Attrition was going to happen.
I am all for the condensed server set up. I wish it hadnt cost any of my characters their name, and that this had happened much sooner, but at least it is finally now here.
BW needs to concentrate now on new PVE content, filling in side stuff, and perhaps even fixing up PVP....although I feel that last one is a lost cause. I do know this....the game would of gone over much better had they waited to launch with all the work up to the group finder patch included.
Ah well....that is a monday morning QB scenario, and devs know by now you only get 1 chance at a first impression. TOR isnt going anywhere, but it easily could of been even bigger than it is.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Originally posted by pierthJust goes to show the importance of having a quality, compelling endgame.
Not really. TOR is just putting all the focus on soloing so people enjoy the game for 1-3 months and then feel done with it like a singleplayer game. If you want people to play a long time you need to focus on multiplayer instead or at least have 50/50.
I also feel that the quality was piss poor. The Animations & sound were great, don't get me wrong, but the combat, graphics, gameplay, emphasis on solo gameplay, massive linearization, and massive instancing simply cut me off from the game before it began.
You only touched on a small portion of the issue I believe Loke !
Surely we all knew that the majority of this game would be solo-centric and SWTOR did not disappoint in that- but for any real longevity you have to have an endgame that entices players to keep playing. There's simply no way for EA/Bioware to churn out solo content at the rate players devour it, and naturally once they've completed that content they move on- it's a recipe for disaster for a MMORPG.
This is precisely what happens when a Massively Solo Online Role-Playing Game (with optional multiplayer) is created. Those players that insist MMORPGs cater to solo playstyles are actively telling Pubs/Devs to shoot themselves in the foot. Proof that solo content-locust playstyles kill MMOs.
Richard Bartle, one of the more famous game designers in academia, pointed that out about SWTOR, albiet indirectly:
As I regularly mention, I don't play MMOs for player fun. In terms of designer fun, I could have stopped a day after I started, but I kept going for reasons of credentials and solidarity. I was also determined to get involved with the endgame more than I usually do, in the hope that it might offer something new (it didn't). I achieved this goal with some fairly intensive playing that ate up rather too many evenings, but work is work. I reached legacy level 37 (the highest in the guild by some margin) with a /played of 19d 8h 30m on my level 50 Jedi sage healer, 11d 11h 45m on my level 50 gunslinger ranged DPS and 2d 17h 45m on my level 40 Jedi knight tank. Including assorted other characters, that means I played for around 33 days of elapsed time over 137 days, or roughly 25% of my time. This may sound excessive, but when I was marking assignments I was spending 60% of my time on that; I can be dedicated when the job demands it.
SW:TOR is shedding players by the bucketload now, at least on the Republic side. It used to be that our guild could put together three operations (ie. raids) at once, but yesterday it couldn't even put together a group for the Lost Island flashpoint (ie. instance). I can go to planets such as Ilum (where PvP takes place and there are lucrative daily quests) and be the only Republic player present. It may be different for Imperials, but on the Republic side the game is a multi-player wasteland.
I won't be going through the 93 pages of notes I made to tell you why I believe things aren't turning out as well as they might, but I believe that the fundamental reason is the too-large dissonance between the levelling game and the endgame. The levelling game is all about story and solo play; the endgame is all about group play and grinding through dailies. There's too great a disconnect. If new content had been added to the levelling game in patch 1.2, things could have been different. However, the new content added was at the endgame; indeed, the developers' view seems to be that players want to skip through the levelling game quicker on their alts, judging by the introduction of shared buffs across all your characters and legacy items you can use to over-gear them. As a result of this, my level 15 trooper ranged dps is cutting through content like a hot knife through butter. SW:TOR was sold on the strength of its story elements; encouraging players to scoot through the story to get to a generic endgame is of course going to cost it players.
So, they build a story MMO. Those people ran through the MMO and SWTOR can't compete at end-game with end-game/raiding MMOs. Even worse, BioWare devaluates the stories with the legacy system allowing you to burn through them at a higher rate by over-gearing/over-buffing while putting their emphasis on a third-rate end-game.
Amateur hour is took kind.
Problems with SWTOR:
1) You cannot sell an MMO that is not Massively Multiplayer.
2) Individual story as a primary focus of your game is clearly flawed as there is nothing Massively Multiplayer about that concept either.
Now with the moves they are making, its clear the SWTOR team is in a deep hole they dug & the only Idea they can come up with is to dig their way out.
Those are definitely not the problems with SWTOR - the last 5 mmorpgs I've played.. there was no more soloing in SWTOR than the rest of them. Just because it has a cool story line for each class doesn't make it any more single player than any of the other recent themeparks.
Being able to solo in an mmo is one thing; that doesn't mean the game has good multiplayer.
Was / is the lack of solid multiplayer the only problem? Probably not. To much instancing for some, not enough ambiance, the UI - a host of different things that when taken together turned sime people off. And at the end of the day the SW IP is simply not what it used to be.
Well they left 20 servers in limbo as to when they will be transferred up. At best 25 servers in total, so much for the 1.3 million subs. This is what happens when you over hype a game and don't deliver.
It will be like swg, as it will have a core of followers playing just because it is star wars and that will be just about it. Another mediocre star wars game in a long line of mediocre star wars games we seen over the years. The reason is this type they took kotor 3 and tried to make it multi-player and lacked the expertise to do it right.
I barely have words for this. I've never EVER seen a game launch with such large numbers only to go as far as reducing their total server count to a small fraction of its original count. 10 or 20 servers sure, but 100s?!
Simply, wow...... O_o;
Can't even compare to WAR, the huge drop came just after 2 months in WAR and SWTOR has been out for 6 months. Even though they lost a lot of players the honor of sharpest decline in player base after release still goes to WAR and AOC.
SWTOR opened with too many serveres and even when they were claiming to have 1.3 million players a lot of serveres were still on light. As of now SWTOR still has second highest player base in P2P category with Rift being third.
Comparison with WAR:
WAR launched in Sept' and had initial through sales of c. 750k (EA never announced 800k). EA gave out some data with their end Sept' results.
Just over 3 months after launch with the end Dec results EA announced 300k subs for WAR.
Just over 6 months after launch with the end Mar results EA announced 300k subs for WAR.
The just after launch numbers for SWTOR were 2.1M sales and 1.7M - lets say subs.
The 3 months after launch sub number was 2.4M and 1.3M - a little better than WAR's assume 800k sales and 300k subs.
The 6 months after launch sub number ...... to be as good as WAR needs to be close to 40% of sales so around 900k. Now because of the free 30 days the people who subbed for 6 months will still count as subs. At the 6 month point WAR hadn't started giving out trials and buddy passes - that started after the 6 month mark.
WAR had a pretty standard launch really; initial hype, front loaded sales, 50-60% left by the 3 month mark the rest stuck around hoping.
SWTOR has had lots of hype and front loaded sales, hasn't lost as many subs in the first 3 months (dur maybe to extra sales) but seems to be doing much worse in the 3-6 month window.
And SWTOR only introduced c. 10% extra servers as well - as EA themselves said, sales were pretty much in line with expectations.
this is what happens when developers become so arrogant they think they know better what should be in a game than gamers themselves
Bioware was so sure of their success they became lazy, took a crap on new ideas, made Kotor 3-X and thought they'd be the second Blizzard
sincerely Im very glad this happenned, now I just with the best of luck to TSW and GW2 so investors will realize that making things different and innovative is the way to go
and ofcourse:
I told ya year before the game was released, you should have listened to warnings and not blindly buy a piece of monthly paid singleplayer crap
there, I feel better
I think I actually spent way more time reading and theorycrafting about MMOs than playing them
I didn't see the value in this game. It didn't look bad, and I'm a big fan of Star Wars, but why would I stop grinding in one game to start all over in another?
I didn't see anything to draw me away from what I know.
My pals all quit seldom bring it up either. I was one of the few saying "you really going to pay that much for voice acting when a movie costs less?" They told me it'd change gaming; I've seen voice acting in gaming for a long time now.
Look I'm as disappointed in this game as the next guy, but this idea that companies cant merge servers is juvenile. They should have done it months ago.
The real conversations that need to be had about this game is why it isn't more successful, and how can we convince investors that this kind of drivel isn't appreciated.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Look I'm as disappointed in this game as the next guy, but this idea that companies cant merge servers is juvenile. They should have done it months ago.
The real conversations that need to be had about this game is why it isn't more successful, and how can we convince investors that this kind of drivel isn't appreciated.
Its not the idea that companies cant merge servers. Its the fact that it happened so quickly, and that we're talking what, ~180 servers gone? Thats, to put it ironically, "Massive".
The fact is this: Within 6 months of launchimg, TOR has gone from 200+ servers to less than 30. What does that tell you about the state of the game?
I agree with you that we need those types of "conversations", but the fact of the matter is, I think we've (well not me - the forum community) has been having them for the past couple years now, calling for innovation. When Bioware Developers think its archaic and foolhardy to put players in a world that excites them, challenges them, and makes them think for themselves, we have a problem.
Additionally, the blind fanboyism needs to stop. I know it probably wont go away, but we need to realize that these developers are not Gods, and that they *clearly* make mistakes, albeit big ones like TOR.
Am I saying you, the TOR player, have bad tastes because you actually like TOR? Of course not. If you enjoy playing TOR, all the more power to you. But facts are facts, EA spent possibly the most on any game with TOR, and its lost over 150 servers. Thats staggering.
Heads must be rolling over at Bioware/EA right now. If I was working there, I'd be hiding under a desk,, hehe.
Look I'm as disappointed in this game as the next guy, but this idea that companies cant merge servers is juvenile. They should have done it months ago.
The real conversations that need to be had about this game is why it isn't more successful, and how can we convince investors that this kind of drivel isn't appreciated.
A game like TOR is always going to be received better than any MMO sandbox. So if your contention is themepark mechanics need to vary, then I can understand your position.
If you are trying to claim we need more games like SWg & UO, I am sorry but I have to point n laugh. Not a single one can top EQ subs from 8 yrs ago, and there are a hell of a lot more themepark gamers these days.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Look I'm as disappointed in this game as the next guy, but this idea that companies cant merge servers is juvenile. They should have done it months ago.
The real conversations that need to be had about this game is why it isn't more successful, and how can we convince investors that this kind of drivel isn't appreciated.
A game like TOR is always going to be received better than any MMO sandbox. So if your contention is themepark mechanics need to vary, then I can understand your position.
If you are trying to claim we need more games like SWg & UO, I am sorry but I have to point n laugh. Not a single one can top EQ subs from 8 yrs ago, and there are a hell of a lot more themepark gamers these days.
Yeah because AoC, War, SWTOR, Rifts, etc,,, are doing SO well. lol
Also what you mean is there are alot more themepark games these days, gamers don't really fit in just one box.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
Comments
I think Aion had like 30 servers at launch to cater to the 0.9-1m EU/NA players at its launch in the west.
The highest populated TOR servers a few weeks after launch had I think 4-4.2k players at peak times logged in. Full servers, depending on player cap of a server, had I think 3.2-4k players online on them.Pretty soon SWTOR will have as many subscribers as GW2.
Richard Bartle, one of the more famous game designers in academia, pointed that out about SWTOR, albiet indirectly:
As I regularly mention, I don't play MMOs for player fun. In terms of designer fun, I could have stopped a day after I started, but I kept going for reasons of credentials and solidarity. I was also determined to get involved with the endgame more than I usually do, in the hope that it might offer something new (it didn't). I achieved this goal with some fairly intensive playing that ate up rather too many evenings, but work is work. I reached legacy level 37 (the highest in the guild by some margin) with a /played of 19d 8h 30m on my level 50 Jedi sage healer, 11d 11h 45m on my level 50 gunslinger ranged DPS and 2d 17h 45m on my level 40 Jedi knight tank. Including assorted other characters, that means I played for around 33 days of elapsed time over 137 days, or roughly 25% of my time. This may sound excessive, but when I was marking assignments I was spending 60% of my time on that; I can be dedicated when the job demands it.
SW:TOR is shedding players by the bucketload now, at least on the Republic side. It used to be that our guild could put together three operations (ie. raids) at once, but yesterday it couldn't even put together a group for the Lost Island flashpoint (ie. instance). I can go to planets such as Ilum (where PvP takes place and there are lucrative daily quests) and be the only Republic player present. It may be different for Imperials, but on the Republic side the game is a multi-player wasteland.
I won't be going through the 93 pages of notes I made to tell you why I believe things aren't turning out as well as they might, but I believe that the fundamental reason is the too-large dissonance between the levelling game and the endgame. The levelling game is all about story and solo play; the endgame is all about group play and grinding through dailies. There's too great a disconnect. If new content had been added to the levelling game in patch 1.2, things could have been different. However, the new content added was at the endgame; indeed, the developers' view seems to be that players want to skip through the levelling game quicker on their alts, judging by the introduction of shared buffs across all your characters and legacy items you can use to over-gear them. As a result of this, my level 15 trooper ranged dps is cutting through content like a hot knife through butter. SW:TOR was sold on the strength of its story elements; encouraging players to scoot through the story to get to a generic endgame is of course going to cost it players.
So, they build a story MMO. Those people ran through the MMO and SWTOR can't compete at end-game with end-game/raiding MMOs. Even worse, BioWare devaluates the stories with the legacy system allowing you to burn through them at a higher rate by over-gearing/over-buffing while putting their emphasis on a third-rate end-game.
Amateur hour is took kind.
Yeah, Agreed, but where are all these gamers that praised Bioware and wanted story, content, and the experience over multiplayer/pvp related content??
I'd bet 100 dollars that enforced grouping just isn't as popular and accepted as being able to level solo, and that people hate mob grinding more than they dislike solo quest leveling. WoW's success is enough proof of that.
And EQ and FFXI ran with profitable numbers because there was hardly any choice of MMO. When WoW came however, players left for WoW in droves.
Originally posted by Loktofeit
That you reply with "Any proof whatsoever?" right after he just gave you the behemoth of the industry as an example kinda indicates you're probably too polarized in the group/solo thing to spend more time discussing it.
And this.
I had a great time in EQ, but I'm also aware what its flaws were, what players complaints ingame often were about, and why follow up MMO's focused more on providing a larger amount of quests and the option to easier level solo, and with success.
Both of you are thinking way too much in black and white.
First, it is mostly correct that if you make your MMO mostly soloable, it will attract more players. Most people simply don't have the time to spend on waiting around for groups and will thus choose the game that allows them to hop in, have some fun and hop back out again, while still allowing them the option of grouping when it suits them.
However, 'forced group' MMO's still have a market. There are quite a lot of people out there who are actively looking for this kind of experience, as evidenced by the amount of raid guilds in any mmo. While the market isn't as big as the casual one, it does still exist.
The problem with TOR is that it's unfocused, simple as that. It tried to ride on WoW's formula to success, using the Bioware and Star Wars names as leverage. However, they completely forgot what makes an MMO actually work, having segmented their devs far too much, especially in the story department.
Though, it's still an acceptable game. It just doesn't live up to the extremely high standards people have nowadays. I'd expect it to settle at 250k-350k subs at some point, going back to SWG's level of activity.
Playing: WF
Played: WoW, GW2, L2, WAR, AoC, DnL (2005), GW, LotRO, EQ2, TOR, CoH (RIP), STO, TSW, TERA, EVE, ESO, BDO
Tried: EQ, UO, AO, EnB, TCoS, Fury, Ryzom, EU, DDO, TR, RF, CO, Aion, VG, DN, Vindictus, AA
I actually believe it is all going as planned.
I'm sure they made a profit with the box sales and subscriptions.
This was never going to be a real mmorpg with a world you could play for years.
Just a single player game with a lot of online features so they can charge a subscription.
If developers still thinks that to follow the success of WoW is to just throw tons of quest and let players solo to level up, thought that most players like to roll alts, than they are in for a very big surprise.
Apparently they never play WoW...
RIP Orc Choppa
This isnt that big of a deal. They are consolidating servers into mega servers to acomplish two goals.
1) Consolidate servers with low populations to give them more people to play with.
2) Make the game feel more epic my making HUGE servers.
Its a good change the servers feel a lot more alive now.
But they can get to play GW2 where... devs think that success will come with throwing tons of quests and let players solo to level up... SURPRISE!
:-p
Can you post a confirmation from BW that these are "mega-servers" they talked about, since, afaik, BW said nothing about mega-servers and these are just regular servers.
The Fatman alone went from 200 ish to 600 in fleet, and it had been the most played server around. I dont know about "Mega", but they definitely have been "super sized".
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
It looks worse because they launched with far too many servers to begin with.. I was on Vulkar Highway and we never peaked over like 40 people in the republic fleet during the first few months and that was a decently populated server.. there were servers quite smaller than mine.. so it was dumb to release so many servers to being with.
That in of itself isn't necessarily dumb since it was possible that the may have needed the extra servers.
What was dumb was not having the server infrastructure ready for transfers/mergers when the inevitable drop of players occured. The fact that BWAustin didn't realize that they were going to need transfers/mergers just shows how clueless their management really is.
Problems with SWTOR:
1) You cannot sell an MMO that is not Massively Multiplayer.
2) Individual story as a primary focus of your game is clearly flawed as there is nothing Massively Multiplayer about that concept either.
Now with the moves they are making, its clear the SWTOR team is in a deep hole they dug & the only Idea they can come up with is to dig their way out.
Gotta agree with this idea in principal.
A lot of things going on since launch stand out as a first time MMO maker. All servers were hitting normal at peak times after ;aunch, but to stay there they would of had to kept selling copies like a firestorm. No matter how good a person may like a game, there will be some that dont. Attrition was going to happen.
I am all for the condensed server set up. I wish it hadnt cost any of my characters their name, and that this had happened much sooner, but at least it is finally now here.
BW needs to concentrate now on new PVE content, filling in side stuff, and perhaps even fixing up PVP....although I feel that last one is a lost cause. I do know this....the game would of gone over much better had they waited to launch with all the work up to the group finder patch included.
Ah well....that is a monday morning QB scenario, and devs know by now you only get 1 chance at a first impression. TOR isnt going anywhere, but it easily could of been even bigger than it is.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Those are definitely not the problems with SWTOR - the last 5 mmorpgs I've played.. there was no more soloing in SWTOR than the rest of them. Just because it has a cool story line for each class doesn't make it any more single player than any of the other recent themeparks.
^^^^^
Being able to solo in an mmo is one thing; that doesn't mean the game has good multiplayer.
Was / is the lack of solid multiplayer the only problem? Probably not. To much instancing for some, not enough ambiance, the UI - a host of different things that when taken together turned sime people off. And at the end of the day the SW IP is simply not what it used to be.
Well they left 20 servers in limbo as to when they will be transferred up. At best 25 servers in total, so much for the 1.3 million subs. This is what happens when you over hype a game and don't deliver.
It will be like swg, as it will have a core of followers playing just because it is star wars and that will be just about it. Another mediocre star wars game in a long line of mediocre star wars games we seen over the years. The reason is this type they took kotor 3 and tried to make it multi-player and lacked the expertise to do it right.
Comparison with WAR:
WAR launched in Sept' and had initial through sales of c. 750k (EA never announced 800k). EA gave out some data with their end Sept' results.
Just over 3 months after launch with the end Dec results EA announced 300k subs for WAR.
Just over 6 months after launch with the end Mar results EA announced 300k subs for WAR.
The just after launch numbers for SWTOR were 2.1M sales and 1.7M - lets say subs.
The 3 months after launch sub number was 2.4M and 1.3M - a little better than WAR's assume 800k sales and 300k subs.
The 6 months after launch sub number ...... to be as good as WAR needs to be close to 40% of sales so around 900k. Now because of the free 30 days the people who subbed for 6 months will still count as subs. At the 6 month point WAR hadn't started giving out trials and buddy passes - that started after the 6 month mark.
WAR had a pretty standard launch really; initial hype, front loaded sales, 50-60% left by the 3 month mark the rest stuck around hoping.
SWTOR has had lots of hype and front loaded sales, hasn't lost as many subs in the first 3 months (dur maybe to extra sales) but seems to be doing much worse in the 3-6 month window.
And SWTOR only introduced c. 10% extra servers as well - as EA themselves said, sales were pretty much in line with expectations.
this is what happens when developers become so arrogant they think they know better what should be in a game than gamers themselves
Bioware was so sure of their success they became lazy, took a crap on new ideas, made Kotor 3-X and thought they'd be the second Blizzard
sincerely Im very glad this happenned, now I just with the best of luck to TSW and GW2 so investors will realize that making things different and innovative is the way to go
and ofcourse:
I told ya year before the game was released, you should have listened to warnings and not blindly buy a piece of monthly paid singleplayer crap
there, I feel better
I think I actually spent way more time reading and theorycrafting about MMOs than playing them
I didn't see the value in this game. It didn't look bad, and I'm a big fan of Star Wars, but why would I stop grinding in one game to start all over in another?
I didn't see anything to draw me away from what I know.
My pals all quit seldom bring it up either. I was one of the few saying "you really going to pay that much for voice acting when a movie costs less?" They told me it'd change gaming; I've seen voice acting in gaming for a long time now.
Oh well, maybe it'll grow?
a yo ho ho
So what.
Look I'm as disappointed in this game as the next guy, but this idea that companies cant merge servers is juvenile. They should have done it months ago.
The real conversations that need to be had about this game is why it isn't more successful, and how can we convince investors that this kind of drivel isn't appreciated.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Its not the idea that companies cant merge servers. Its the fact that it happened so quickly, and that we're talking what, ~180 servers gone? Thats, to put it ironically, "Massive".
The fact is this: Within 6 months of launchimg, TOR has gone from 200+ servers to less than 30. What does that tell you about the state of the game?
I agree with you that we need those types of "conversations", but the fact of the matter is, I think we've (well not me - the forum community) has been having them for the past couple years now, calling for innovation. When Bioware Developers think its archaic and foolhardy to put players in a world that excites them, challenges them, and makes them think for themselves, we have a problem.
Additionally, the blind fanboyism needs to stop. I know it probably wont go away, but we need to realize that these developers are not Gods, and that they *clearly* make mistakes, albeit big ones like TOR.
Am I saying you, the TOR player, have bad tastes because you actually like TOR? Of course not. If you enjoy playing TOR, all the more power to you. But facts are facts, EA spent possibly the most on any game with TOR, and its lost over 150 servers. Thats staggering.
Heads must be rolling over at Bioware/EA right now. If I was working there, I'd be hiding under a desk,, hehe.
A game like TOR is always going to be received better than any MMO sandbox. So if your contention is themepark mechanics need to vary, then I can understand your position.
If you are trying to claim we need more games like SWg & UO, I am sorry but I have to point n laugh. Not a single one can top EQ subs from 8 yrs ago, and there are a hell of a lot more themepark gamers these days.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
Yeah because AoC, War, SWTOR, Rifts, etc,,, are doing SO well. lol
Also what you mean is there are alot more themepark games these days, gamers don't really fit in just one box.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.