SWTOR: Really EA? Are you seriously surprised?

Recommended Videos

immortalfrieza

Elite Member
Legacy
May 12, 2011
2,336
270
88
Country
USA
MetallicaRulez0 said:
immortalfrieza said:
I think the reason people don't stick around is because they just want to play for ridiculous amounts of time every day and blow through all the content as fast as possible, like they could afford to do with WoW because of how grindy and overflowing with padding their content was, and TOR deliberately avoids putting in such crappy content
In other words, the people who play MMOs more than an hour a day run out of stuff to do. AKA, there's not enough content in the game. Which is exactly what most people here are saying about TOR.
By "ridiculous amounts of time" I meant 12 hours or longer. It doesn't matter HOW much content a game has, if you play that long every day you're going to breeze past everything the game has to offer you, especially if you don't do everything there is to do. Even just doing each class and their class quests alone is enough for hundreds of hours, add in the doing the sidequests for each character, and TOR can keep you occupied for a VERY long time. Besides, if by "enough content" you mean filling the game up with pointless, grindy, and boring quests that are made ridiculously long just for the sake of making longer like WoW is packed to the brim with, I'd much rather have "not enough content" like TOR does.
MetallicaRulez0 said:
I played from early access until mid-February until I finally got tired of logging on, doing Ilum dailies, then getting steamrolled by PvP premades all day. That's all there was to do in the game. Why run flashpoints when PvP gear is better? Why raid when PvP gear is just as good? The end-game was a huge mess of low quality and low quantity content.

Why? To have more to do, that's why! Why complain about having hardly any endgame content when you aren't even willing to do all the content that is already there? You ask why you shouldn't do the endgame content when other endgame content already gives you better equipment than the other content, but WoW's endgame has the EXACT same problem and has for years, but at Bioware at least makes it look like they'd fix it. Besides, the content that IS there is pretty good. They're also constantly adding in new flashpoints and raids practically every month. Also, about PvP, Bioware has been working tirelessly to make it so steamrolling is much less likely to happen to newer PvPers. They've been adding quite a few things to it to make it less one sided.
 

viranimus

Thread killer
Nov 20, 2009
4,952
0
0
Okeh Dokeh.

Lets clarify something here. On the whole thing of "go international" There is a reason not to. Localization. The biggest point OF ToR is the extensive voice acting involved in it. Imagine the staggering ordeal it would be at this point in the game to expand that to say Mandarin, Japanese, and other asia/pacifica languages. And for what? To try and fail at invading WoWs stronghold? Yeah that would be incredibly dumb.

Secondly... lets compare. Yes 10 million to 1.5 million looks like an ant looking up at a giant. But the problem with that is ... again the international divide. If you whittle away WoWs Asia/Oceanic numbers from the mix, you quickly realize that WoW is MUCH more popular in Asian cultures than Western ones. I think the divide is like 6.5 vs 3.5 or round abouts last time I looked at the breakdowns. So if your comparing anything you should be comparing ToRs 1.3 to WoWs 3.5 and realize ToR has done phenomenally well and provided EA/Bioware doesnt try to abandon it by going F2P, they CAN grow the game much like what WoW did. They have the means, it can be done much in the same way it was done with WoW.

Lastly. You have to remember the past. Look at Everquest. 13 years old, 18 expansions.. Subscription model until.... 2012. Total population? Max about 500k currently only about 200k give or take. Once the product is made its not hard to maintain a high degree of profitability to sustain an MMO. Granted ToR has a much greater hurdle to overcome in its initial price tag, but it made back about 1/3rd its production cost in the first 3 months. Profits have certainly slowed, but it CAN make back the remainder IF they dont give up and go F2P. Once it makes back the production costs it does not matter if it has 1 million subs or 10 million subs. It will be profitable enough to thrive.

However thanks to market analysts and public perception in all likelihood the misnomer that if ToR doesnt sport say 11 million subs, its a gigantic failure will end up causing EA/Bioware to give up and just let the thing deteriorate into F2P standing where it will basically generate quick cash for nothing at the expense of neutering any hope at any long term longevity.

Just remember this basic math. 1.3 million subscribers multiplied by 14.99 monthly subscription costs. Granted there are expenses involved, but thats hypothetically just shy of 20 million dollars each month its generating in subscription fees give or take. In the 6 months its been active thats over 115 million dollars generated in subscription fees.

It would be moronic for any MMO developer bringing in that much money on a monthly basis to abandon it and open up F2P that will immediately make a massive cut into that figure.
 

immortalfrieza

Elite Member
Legacy
May 12, 2011
2,336
270
88
Country
USA
LastGreatBlasphemer said:
immortalfrieza said:
Really, the only reason WoW is so popular is because it was pretty much the first real MMO,
Everquest 2 beat it by.....two weeks.
The first Everquest beat it by about 5 years.
I guess I should have clarified and said the first BIG MMO. WoW had 3 things that both Everquests didn't, 1. An already massive fanbase to draw players from, and 2. a much better formula for making it's gameplay addicting and lasting that Everquest 1&2 did, and 3. MUCH better advertising than either Everquest, especially Everquest 1.
Even at their height, both Everquests had but a tiny fraction in comparison to the number of subscribers that WoW has now, and even in it's infancy WoW had more subscribers than Everquest 1 ever had.

I don't care much for WoW, but I have to admit that it's way of doing things works, which is why everybody's copying it, the problem with everybody else is that they're doing it worse. TOR just decided to do everything that WoW does but do it much better than they ever did, and even throw in a worthwhile story in the bargin, something WoW doesn't have.
LastGreatBlasphemer said:
The problem with TOR is they are VERY late to the MMO game.
That's pretty much what I already said.
 

Clive Howlitzer

New member
Jan 27, 2011
2,783
0
0
I remember before WoW came out, having a subscription base of over 200k was considered a massive success for an MMO.
Everyone needs to stop trying to compete and be happy with less. The only thing that can topple WoW is another MMO from Blizzard. It has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with brand name.
 

Raddra

Trashpanda
Jan 5, 2010
698
0
21
Starke said:
The insane thing is that the reason given for not including Rodians, Wookies, and Bothans was because of fears "the player wouldn't be able to identify with the character" or some such tripe. Sorry, my girlfriend just corrected me, it was because the writers were snickering at the prospect of a Wookie or Rodian in one of the romance plotlines.
That pretty much confirms my point 100%.

They took the star wars out of star wars to shoehorn in romance plotlines.

Well, they dug their own grave, they can wallow in it. The #1 thing on their mind should have been faithfully adapting star wars, then they can write plotlines around that.

Who cares if a Trandoshan or whatever felt weird in a romance plotline, romance plotlines are optional (are they? I never played but they should be) and they could always just cut those options out of odd races plotlines and add other plots to make up for it (for example, a racial bounty hunter plotline for Rodians or whatever)

Anyway thanks for the post, I knew it was something like that.
 

Arina Love

GOT MOE?
Apr 8, 2010
1,061
0
0
all i have to say for swtor is that i'm enjoying it. I'm having a blast doing OPS with my guild. and when there is no ops i lvl my alts.
 

Ryotknife

New member
Oct 15, 2011
1,687
0
0
immortalfrieza said:
Anti Nudist Cupcake said:
Could you point out what WOW does better? A friend of mine said some people had complaints about swtor and I want to know what wow does to keep its subscriptions.
I think the reason people don't stick around is because they just want to play for ridiculous amounts of time every day and blow through all the content as fast as possible, like they could afford to do with WoW because of how grindy and overflowing with padding their content was, and TOR deliberately avoids putting in such crappy content (all of TOR's 20 bear asses content is minimal, in many cases completely optional, and most often automatically done during another mission). I personally play for about 3 hours or so each day and do everything available, so it took 3 months or so to get through my first character, and my second is going through not too much faster. I take my time, but others don't, so they don't stay.
if TOR did everything better than wow...people would not be leaving in droves. Was first released TOR better than first released WoW? certainly. but like you mentioned a lot of problems facing TOR are also what WoW HAD (key word here). This is coming from someone who is officially done with WoW as of two years ago (Mists of Pandaria dont tempt me in even the slightest)

PVE in TOR is just horrid. the fact that the bosses in the hardest operations (8-16 people) are a complete joke even by WoW 5 man dungeon boss standards. A shame too, as the first flashpoint, Black Talon, was designed very well and a lot of fun, as were some of the other flashpoints.

Let us not forget how insanely difficult it is to even FIND a group for a flashpoint. I think once i hit 50 i manage to find 3 pickup groups over the course of 4-5 months...

pvp is a whole different bag of problems. Assassins are pretty much perfect, and the other force users are designed pretty well from the word go. the non force classes are pretty much one trick ponies who dont bring much to the table team wise compared to the force classes. course that is from a few months ago when i quit.

I played a powertech (bounty hunter) first time through because i love powered armor. Quite honestly, it was one of the worst classes ive ever played, and ive played quite a few classes in wow that were, at the time, completely terrible. Switched to a juggernaut and it was better than my PT in everyway possible, and hell juggs werent even OP.

Huttball was fun though.

There are things TOR did very well. Leveling was a blast. But it didnt take any lessons from WoW really, and then took forever to implement any fixes.
 

Bat Vader

Elite Member
Mar 11, 2009
4,997
2
41
Arina Love said:
all i have to say for swtor is that i'm enjoying it. I'm having a blast doing OPS with my guild. and when there is no ops i lvl my alts.
I am having a blast with TOR as well. If the game does go fully free to play I think people that pre-ordered the game and bought it on day one or people that purchased the Collector's Edition should get premium access. That is if they offer premium access.
 

lapan

New member
Jan 23, 2009
1,456
1
0
They took a engine that was still in beta and made a ridicolous amount of servers. Then when players start decreasing they can't even transfer the characters for a long time since the engine wasn't able to. Not to mention the outdated graphics and the bugs the game suffers from

Combine that with horrible customer support and you have a formula set for fail.
 

Starke

New member
Mar 6, 2008
3,877
0
0
kingcom said:
I think it was level capped at some point but they got rid of that very quickly, the original f2p model for the game was terrible. They changed it from the complains and now its a very nice, perhaps one of the best f2p models out there.
Yeah, the old saying is really true, "you only get one chance to make a good first impression." The impression that stuck with me was of an incredibly naked cash grab, where if you wanted to do anything you had to cough up real money.

I might go back to it some day at least for a look see, if not for the fact that I'm pretty heavily committed to Champions Online, and now Secret World, which pretty much eats my gaming time.
 

Zetatrain

Senior Member
Sep 8, 2010
752
22
23
Country
United States
Mypetmonkey said:
Your Very Own Personal MeatBag said:
Actually (unsure if someone mentioned this already, though) SWTOR is available in Asia and Australia (and that general area) as well now, and WoW's been around for 8 years, while SWTOR's been around 6 months. I mean, WoW didn't suddenly get 10 million subscribers on launch day, it's a long process. WoW's had its population drops as well over the years (they even had one quite recently). The thing seems to be, that people overall are fairly tired of MMOs, as most of them are having a bit of a rough time (which will likely blow over soon). Adding to this that everyone seems to think and/or want that this and that company or game will fall, things may seem a bit more dire than they actually are. Especially BioWare seems to have had a lot of this. Considering SWTOR has 1.3 million subscribers after only 6 months, it's doing pretty damn well. And to those of you who thought WoW would fall after its recent population drop; one does not simply fall with 10 million subscribers.

In short; SWTOR won't fall any time soon, its only been out for 6 months, stop comparing it to a game that's been out for 8 years (16 times as long).
Finally someone with half a brain posts.

Vanilla WoW had no end game content either. WoW has been around for 8 years. All MMORPGs are the same. Wow end game content is badge collecting doing boring dailys over and over and over... Zzzzzz

Whinge whine whinge whine whinge fucking moan moan moan moan...

Gamers are getting embarrassing.
True, vanilla WoW did not have much if anything in the way of end game content when it first came out, but at the same time I don't think WoW had much in the way of competition back then. Today there are many other MMOs (some of which are F2P)that players can flock to once they get bored of SWTOR, so the need for end game content becomes much more important than it was almost a decade ago.
 

Don't taze me bro

New member
Feb 26, 2009
340
0
0
I liked Swtor for the most part. I played it past the free 30 days, which is something I couldn't say about any other MMO I tried in the past 4 years. But, there were some horrid glaring issues that affected the game, and the attrition from my friend's list meant that I very quickly ran out of people that wanted to play.

My main issues with Swtor are:
1. The engine is ass. It looks pretty, but runs horribly. I can run Battlefield 3 on max settings with nary a glitch, but the same couldn't be said for Swtor. Not to mention that if you get more than 20 people on the screen at once, your frame rate takes a massive nose dive. Tried PVPing in illum? I tried it and endured it every day, to complete the dailies and get the pvp crates.

2. As someone previously said, pick up groups. They don't often happen for 4 mans. Once my friends stopped playing this would be a regular scenario. I log in. I go to the imperial fleet. I spend 20 minutes unsuccessfully getting a group to run something, I log out and do something else. Sure, I get that there was a vocal group that opposed any group finder for Swtor. I bet they don't play anymore either, along with the people who quit because it was missing such an accepted feature for a modern MMO.

3. The Oceanic debacle.
Yes, we Aussies rolled on The Swiftsure, and yes, everyone else there loved or hated us because of it. Then they decided to open Oceanic servers, almost 2 months after release, BUT they didn't have server transfers. Way to fracture a community. The guild I was in at the time literally split in half, from those who jumped ship straight away, to those didn't want to relinquish their main character straight away.

Sure. There's more issues I had. Glitches and bugs. Being unable to complete quests, or dungeons due to bugs. The PVP gearing up issue, how when they decided to change it, it made it almost impossible for new players to gear up to the standard that everyone else was already at, due to PVP crates. The raid content being over far too quickly, or having annoying mechanics (Tower of Hanoi.. ).

Anyway, this game might end up being like Conan. It showed a lot of promise, but it's going to take a lot of patches to bring it to where it needed to be. By then, it's probably too late, and they'll have to cut the development team at some stage.
 

Starke

New member
Mar 6, 2008
3,877
0
0
Don said:
Anyway, this game might end up being like Conan. It showed a lot of promise, but it's going to take a lot of patches to bring it to where it needed to be. By then, it's probably too late, and they'll have to cut the development team at some stage.
Honestly, at this point, I'd be inclined to say, "it's already too late", they've already started to cut the development team down. Meaning new content is now going to start sliding out past release date, and the schedule's going to be shot to shit. Once that happens, any consumer faith in their ability to keep adding to the game will be gone, and then... it's done.
 
Apr 5, 2008
3,736
0
0
Much of WoW's popularity is because it's so popular. WoW was successful because of a combination of events and luck that can never be repeated. In 2004 when it launched, although there were other MMOs (including the titan of the day, Everquest), WoW had something the others didn't. Warcraft III, probably the most popular RTS of its day was played by millions. It had fans worldwide and suddenly they could be a part of the same world as Arthas (who they just watched fall from grace), Sylvanas Windrunner and Jaina Proudmore.

Because these were video game afficionados, this fan base migrated to WoW en masse. Unlike Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix or other film-based franchises, Warcraft fans were avid games players, rather than movie-goers (who may not be interested in playing a game). By disdaining high graphical reqs they had a larger potential audience. They also came up with a "magical" combination of time-sink, grinding and carrot-and-stick gameplay that keeps people playing way past the point they should have stopped. It's so addictive it has destroyed relationships, marriages, killed people and caused others to commit murder.

Then because of its popularity, the income meant it could see the most ongoing development and expansion over time. It attracts many who are otherwise non-gamers, drawn because it's the de facto MMO with the most people. The tragedy is that all other games try to emulate and/or beat it and so every MMO looks and plays like WoW or borrows mechanics/gameplay wholeheartedly. Kingdoms of Amalur was WoW offline for Christ's sake.
 
Apr 5, 2008
3,736
0
0
On topic, SWTOR is a good game and a good MMO. I had no issue with getting, installing or subscribing to the game. My server was very popular to start but after March the population disappeared. The knock on effect meant there was no one to team with, very little PvP and a pathetic economy. I've since moved to a very well populated server and couldn't believe the number of players waiting there for me, but I think too much damage has already been done.

BioWare/EA took too long to bring server transfers about. My guild shrunk to a third in size between March-April, and they still left it two more months for server transfers. They lost the "casuals" to start with, but dragging their feet cost them more than half of the lifers, those players who dedicate to an MMO. More than three months of waiting and begging and failing to find a team for any dungeon/flashpoint, raid/operation or even missions around quest hubs, not to mention an empty marketplace (eg. no crafting mats, few, overpriced items, etc) was too much for many players.

Ultimately, what people fail to realise is that after the Star Wars, LotR, Matrix, "Richard Garriot" (WTF?), Star Trek, DC Universe, etc novelty wears off, it becomes "just another game" with missions, ranged DPS, "LF good geared healer", travelling times, gear and the rest. Concentrate on that instead of trying to get stupid references to a franchise only the fanboys will care about, and forget moments later. It has to be the best game, not the best homage to another work of fiction. This is what I fear Bethesda will do with future TES/Fallout MMOs.
 

AndrewF022

New member
Jan 23, 2010
378
0
0
I honestly don't know what EA/Bioware were thinking with sinking so much money in a subscription based MMO in this market..

When all the big subscription based MMO players (+1 milion subs) like WoW, Aion, Lineage and Runescape are struggling to retain theres, how did they think they would fair with a brand new game (even if they do plonk the 'Star Wars' logo on the box)?. Especially when what they offer doesn't really differ from what's already available, and is an average game overall (well I think it is anyway).

So I don't think theres anyone that didn't see this coming. Live and learn I suppose. Maybe it will grow over time and all will be well in the end.
 

Dresos

New member
Jun 17, 2011
124
0
0
My friends who played it ( I still haven't ) recommended it to me for the singleplayer experience, they played around 2-3 months and unsubbed because there were no more content than that.
 

ChildishLegacy

New member
Apr 16, 2010
974
0
0
Sewa_Yunga said:
Anti Nudist Cupcake said:
Could you point out what WOW does better? A friend of mine said some people had complaints about swtor and I want to know what wow does to keep its subscriptions.
What irritated me most about ToR was its lack of responsiveness.
When I pushed a button in WoW, my avatar executed that ability immediately while going through the animation.
When I pushed a button in ToR, my avatar first went through some animation and then executed the ability after that.

It was kinda like the bending in the Last Airbender cartoon versus Shyamalans movie adaptation abomination.
This. This so much.
Why can't MMO developers get it through their thick skulls that responsiveness feels good in your games, I hate feeling like I'm controlling a fucking tractor rather than a character. This is why WoW is the only hotkey based MMO I can stand, because the tractorish feel goes for RIFT and other mmos like that.