Are MMO players going to leave SW: TOR enmass?

[longboardfan]

So about November'ish most of my friends started playing Star Wars: The Old Republic and kept calling me up to tell me to join in. Now, its Feb, and they've all stopped playing and gone back to whatever they were playing before (MW3, WoW, Skyrim, etc). Since I don't play online games much anymore, and I'm a bit out of the loop, I was surprised at this rather sudden mass exodus from "the most awesome game evar." The most frequently cited excuse was, "there's no end game content." Meanwhile I keep reading on the Internet that people are still nuts about this game, but yet none of my college classmates or my real life friends play it anymore. So what gives? The only thing I can think of is everyone's free subscription deals are starting to run out and no one can muster the interest to keep paying for it.

Thoughts? Why is there such a huge discrepancy between my IT college classmates and real life friends and the Internet? These same people that wouldn't shut up about skyrim, BF3, MW3, the new WoW expansion this year, and so on, have completely stopped talking about and paying for TOR. Is this indicative of general observation, or is this isolated to just my 60'ish person sample group?

 

[Zhukov]

I'm not into the MMO scene, but I was under the impression that that is the standard life-cycle for any MMO that isn't WoW.

1. Launch. Huge rush of players. Decent reviews. Money flows. Good times.
2. 1-3 months later. Trial subscriptions run out. Initial honeymoon is over. Everyone goes back to WoW.
3. Game shrinks down to relatively small base of 'core' fans. Ticks over in stable but unremarkable fashion.
4. Game goes F2P. Obscurity ensues.

Also, not sure about what you mean about people on the internet being nuts over this game. ToR has been receiving a veritable torrent of hate since just after launch. Not sure why.

 

[Sangnz]

Been playing since launch still playing now.
Like most new MMOs big intake in the first month as everyone try it out and normally see a big drop after initial month as the people with casual interest bugger off back to their normal games.
Swtor has retained fairly well (at least on my server) from what I have seen

 

[Dendio]

I played tor for two months,then went back to wow. WoW is more familiar, but im keeping an eye on tor. I plan to head back eventually. I love the kotor series and swtor is the closest thing to kotor 3. I'll probably be playing mass effect 3 before heading back though

Bioware has said they are in it for the long haul. People like me leave and come back every few months.

 

[The Madman]

I got the chance to play TOR thanks to a good friend of mine and... yeah, the free month runs out in the next few days and I wont be subscribing. Not a bad game really but there's just no real lasting power. The story isn't compelling enough to make me want to play further and neither is the gameplay entertaining enough to warrant my playing by its merits alone.

Interesting experience that game but I honestly cant see it having much long lasting appeal for most players. I expect it'll probably maintain a playerbase of maybe 1 or 2 hundred thousand which isn't bad by any stretch, but compared to the supposed millions that bought the game on launch...

 

[demotion1]

I am still playing. For now i see no reason to stop playing. Maybe a reason for your colleagues leaving is that as students they have a lot of free time (i know as a student i had), so they just burned out of the game by playing non-stop.

 

[Bostur]

I tried it, had a lot of fun for 30 levels, then I got bored with it and probably wont play again. The problem with making a WoW clone is that unless the game is far better than WoW it serves no purpose.

SW:TOR is not bad, but it's not excellent either. For a game that is scared of trying something new that simply isn't good enough.

Zhukov's description of the typical phases of MMOs is pretty much spot on.

 

[Sylveria]

There's people who still say Champions Online and Star Trek Online are the best games ever; there's always gonna be die-hards.

I'm not into the MMO scene, but I was under the impression that that is the standard life-cycle for any MMO that isn't WoW.

1. Launch. Huge rush of players. Decent reviews. Money flows. Good times.
2. 1-3 months later. Trial subscriptions run out. Initial honeymoon is over. Everyone goes back to WoW.
3. Game shrinks down to relatively small base of 'core' fans. Ticks over in stable but unremarkable fashion.
4. Game goes F2P. Obscurity ensues.

Also, not sure about what you mean about people on the internet being nuts over this game. ToR has been receiving a veritable torrent of hate since just after launch. Not sure why.

This is probably how it'll go, though I imagine they'll retain enough people to avoid F2P for some time. Then again, this MMO has EA's backing and few MMOs have any real financial power-houses behind them to try and draw people in or get them back.

I just never saw the appeal of SWTOR. I retired from WoW years ago, but watching the SWTOR gameplay did nothing for me. Perhaps they should have focused more on making an MMO rather than a full-priced single player game with a subscription fee.

 

[Seishisha]

The main complaint i field against swtor and one im sure others share is that the game realy doesnt justify being an mmo, it could have easily been a single player rpg, also the fact that there realy is no innovation in the gameplay; its pretty much a reskin of wow. Atleast that is the conclusion i came up with after a few weeks in the beta test shortly before the game was released, it is also the reason i decided not to buy it on launch and i can honestly say even if the game goes free to play i still wont be interested.

 

[GigaHz]

I said it around release and I'll say it again. As cool as it is to have fully voiced cutscenes for quests instead of strictly text, it becomes old really fast. Especially when there's hours upon hours of it. I am saying this as someone who still plays the game... rarely, with friends. Playing it semi-casually is probably that only reason why I can still stomach the game at all. Considering the fully voiced quest lines were a large focus of the game, people have had their share of the feature and have now collectively washed their hands of it. All that leaves is the actual 'game' portion of the Old Republic, and sadly it isn't fresh enough to hold peoples interests.

WoW players have shared a similar gameplay experience, only in a more polished and open ended fashion. As much as I'm at odds with World of Warcraft, I could still say more positive things about the gameplay than I can about the Old Republic. For one, WoW handles the illusion of being in an alive and connected world very well. Towns feel like busy, community hubs. Zones felt like they are full of life and activity, even when devoid of player characters. Compare that to TOR and it's almost the exact opposite. The two faction hubs, despite acting as the centre of the faction, never feels as if it's at capacity. It always feels as if there's only a handful of people in the area at once. You hardly feel as if you're part of a large faction at all. The zones are easily my biggest complaint. You've seen one zone, you've seen them all. There are aesthetic differences, but not much else. In corridors and open zones alike, mobs wait around in groups, like their sole point of existing is to wait for you to kill them. There are few wandering mobs and a small, small percentage of unique encounters. In summary, WoW has the illusion of being fairly organic and TOR feels very sterile and rigid.

This on top of PvP, Heavily instanced areas, Lack of connectivity between worlds (some form of open communication would help when looking for flashpoint/heroic members), Tacked on Space combat, and a poorly implemented crafting system (practically useless) are some additional reasons why TOR may have lost its appeal for some.

I plan on playing it for as long as my friends are still enjoying it but do I have the will to play by myself on my own time? Not really, no.

 

[A-D.]

Yes they are. In fact every MMO faces that one moment. WoW was no different, once the initial Trial runs out, People have to decide whether to stick with it, or not. And there will be a rather big amount of Players that will leave TOR because they expectations werent met. Doesnt mean the Game failed, or that its crap or similar.

I've seen alot of People who have switched from one of the MMOs im playing to go play TOR and have since switched back for a variety of reasons, Combat, Story etc. People will leave eventually, a sizeable amount will stay, so the game is in no danger of being shut down soon and neither Bioware or EA is in financial difficulty that would lead to it, which is the reason APB for example failed, they couldnt get enough cash in to prevent going bankrupt.

So in short, yes alot of People have and will continue to leave SWTOR behind for other Games for whatever Reason, and no the Game will not fail, be shut down or otherwise sink into obscurity because of it. Thats how the MMO Business works really.

 

[tippy2k2]

4. Game goes F2P. Obscurity ensues.

I'm waiting for that part before joining. I loved KotOR and am confident that I would highly enjoy TOR just as much but I could never justify to myself spending $15 a month (or whatever the amount is) to play one game when I have a bunch of games that I just got that don't cost me extra money to play.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

4. Game goes F2P. Obscurity ensues.

I'm waiting for that part before joining. I loved KotOR and am confident that I would highly enjoy TOR just as much but I could never justify to myself spending $15 a month (or whatever the amount is) to play one game when I have a bunch of games that I just got that don't cost me extra money to play.

I wouldn't hold your breath. It could take years for it to go F2P.

If you can take some time off, I'd recommend buying the game and playing it for the free month. You'll be able to get to 50 within that month, or in two months if you play it fairly casually. (If you do this, play Imperial Agent. It's the best story to come out of Star Wars in a very long time.)

 

[TheLoneTerran]

I played for 2 months and then stopped. One of the bigger reasons was that while all the stuff to make it more compelling like an actual story and the cut-scenes was that my friends and I didn't really ever feel like we were playing an MMO. The single player part was cool and all but we never really felt drawn the the MMO aspect. There were 7-8 of us playing for the couple months and the small, niggling annoyances got larger and larger until we just said forget it and left.

Now this is going to get me some huge flack I think, especially from the really hardcore fans but SW: TOR had some holes that could have been filled nicely if they had borrowed and improved upon certain aspects from WoW. Mainly dual-spec and some sort of dungeon finder.

Our tanks and healers were getting pretty annoyed at the ridiculous amount of credits you had to sink into respecing over and over and over again. They needed to spec for PvP, solo/leveling content and then running the flashpoints. And I'm not talking switching between ACs, that would be dumb, just regular talent trees within the AC. We were also chipping in but the lack of being able to switch roles without paying thru the nose really discouraged a lot of people I spoke to and definitely my friends that were playing with me.

Then there was the very, very difficult time we had finding flashpoints by ourselves. During the big, initial surge of players I spent 2 1/2 hours looking for a group as a Marauder.I heard lots of people saying that no LFG tool made the community closer knit than wow. That was definitely not my experience nor anyone who wasn't part of a large guild. And before I get jumped on for saying I should wait for my friends to level or whatnot, I didn't have the days and days and days it would take to wait that long. Sure I could have leveled up super fast to catch up with the lead tank and healer but that kind of defeats the purpose of wanting to see content my level. I wandered between the Fleet and planets at my respective level looking for groups but was usually met with "Can you tank? No? Nvm" or "Ranged DPS only plz."

Oh, and lack of pvp diversity but its a Bioware game, we weren't expecting world shattering pvp.

Basically, wall of text can be summarized into excellent single player story/immersion, lack of OOMPH needed to really engross in the MMO aspect. Will prolly go back after it goes F2P so I can finish my Marauder story.

 

[Lunar Templar]

MMO have a kind of ebb and flow as far as how many are playing, just the nature of the beast

i've been playing for a couple weeks now and I'm still enjoying it, (the 'on rails' space shooter bit is actually fun, as a opposed to what Yahtzee said), i will say this though

ToR dose what WoW did with the Warrior class BETTER, meaning I'm very rarely in a situation where I'm out of rage/focus (the jedi version) for any meaningful amount of time, unlike WoW where i was ALWAYS out of the stuff

 

[lumenadducere]

Yeah, this is fairly typical with most MMOs. People leave after the first few months, and it's really only 4+ months in that you see whether the game has any real staying power. Part of the issue is that people keep comparing the game to the big behemoth that is WoW without understanding anything about game development - i.e. time and budgets and how they factor into things. You really can't tell a MMO's direction at launch, but it's the first one or two major updates. Usually the second one, because generally speaking the first big update to the game is stuff they wanted to add in before launch but didn't have time for. The second and third updates are things that include requested features that people ask for from beta and the early stages of the game, and then things go from there.

For me personally, I'm playing long enough to get each class to 50 to see their stories, and then I'm likely going to be departing, at least until an expansion comes out. I may change my mind, as I have a decent guild that I like playing with, but the 50+ content is way too similar to everything else for it to hold any interest for me. Grind dailies for a week, grind flashpoints to get Columi drops, then raid for Rakata drops...and then sit and wait, or repeat content again with a new character. The class stories really help mix things up and provide way more motivation to making alts, and that's the main reason I have for playing right now, as if it was the same exact content I likely would be bored already. But some of the stories are really good, and I think all of them are worth playing through.

Next month they're supposed to be releasing a big new update to the game, so we'll see what comes in it. It's the first actual content update (I don't really count the last one, it was just a flashpoint and changes to Ilum), so if they're making some changes that I think are good then it'll likely keep me playing for longer.

 

[Sylveria]

4. Game goes F2P. Obscurity ensues.

I'm waiting for that part before joining. I loved KotOR and am confident that I would highly enjoy TOR just as much but I could never justify to myself spending $15 a month (or whatever the amount is) to play one game when I have a bunch of games that I just got that don't cost me extra money to play.

$15 a month a I could justify. $60 retail + $15 a month, in this day and age of online games, I can't.

 

[Worgen]

Probably because the lack of end game stuff combined with a monthly cost, playing an mmo can get expensive so really people can only have one active mmo account at a time, if they have both wow and tor then chances are they are going back to wow.

 

[Odbarc]

4. Game goes F2P. Obscurity ensues.

I'm waiting for that part before joining. I loved KotOR and am confident that I would highly enjoy TOR just as much but I could never justify to myself spending $15 a month (or whatever the amount is) to play one game when I have a bunch of games that I just got that don't cost me extra money to play.

$15 a month a I could justify. $60 retail + $15 a month, in this day and age of online games, I can't.

Too bad it doesn't come with four months subscription upon purchase to justify those dollahs.

 

[ResonanceSD]

G-G-G-Guild Wars 2! =D Can't wait for it to come out.