SWTOR: Really EA? Are you seriously surprised?

[MetallicaRulez0]

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.

They have an actual end-game. And players to make that end-game function properly. I played at the absolute height of SWTOR's popularity and there still weren't enough people or content to really make the game last at max level.

The only thing SWTOR does better than WoW is the story elements while leveling up. It's a pretty outstanding single-player RPG until max level... then it turns into a really bad version of WoW with fewer players and less than half the content.

 

[Senor Smoke21]

-snip-

I don't mind p2p as long as the game is good enough and gets enough support to warrant the price. The amount of hours I got out of WoW per month were either higher or on par with the hours I'd get from a game for my xbox which would cost me £40. So if you play enough, MMO's are pretty cost effective.
But yeah, f2p done right is better. Guild Wars 2 (when it's finally out) should be a good example of f2p, in that it's free and the micro-transactions are only cosmetic.
Lord of the Rings Online however is an example of very bad f2p in that a shit tonne of content is locked away and it costs more to unlock than it would to subscribe.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

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.

They have an actual end-game. And players to make that end-game function properly. I played at the absolute height of SWTOR's popularity and there still weren't enough people or content to really make the game last at max level.

The only thing SWTOR does better than WoW is the story elements while leveling up. It's a pretty outstanding single-player RPG until max level... then it turns into a really bad version of WoW with fewer players and less than half the content.

this is the sole reason i am waiting for it to go f2p, i'm gonna blow through all it's single player stuff in a month then toss it to the side

*goes back to circling EA like a starving alone person in the desert*

*sigh* if they had only listened to people in the first place and made kotor 3 (and possibly kotor 4 and 5) they would've pleased the fans and made bucketloads of cash.

 

[Sewa_Yunga]

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.

 

[Starke]

-snip-

Lord of the Rings Online however is an example of very bad f2p in that a shit tonne of content is locked away and it costs more to unlock than it would to subscribe.

Champions freakin' spoiled me for everyone else's F2P, there are still pretty solid incentives for subbing, but the free limitations don't include locked away game content.

D&D Online was, here's two dungeons, you can grind them to level five or give us money. Lots of money.

DCUO was, here's all the launch content, but nothing else, but you can only have 2000 resources at any time.

Trying to remember which other F2Ps I've spent time in, and drawing a blank.

 

[fnartilter]

I liked the CGI cinematics they used to hype it up. After that I had/have no interest.

 

[Tony2077]

i don't really care what happen as long as the servers don't die completely

 

[Lunar Templar]

why even try to make pay to play MMORPGs anymore?

Because dats where da big money is bro! Look at WoW! Making millions!

Never mind the 20 or so other MMO's that tried, failed and ended up making loses. No. Just look at WoW and how successful it is.

i love you for this.

F2P could actually end up saving ToR, as going F2P has given new life to several MMO's already. hell, Age of Conan is still alive and kicking thanks to its F2P conversion and i thought it died long ago

 

[Exterminas]

The game did not fail because of a limited market.
It failed because it had no interesting endgame content and did not offer attractive means to play multiple characters, since the non-story quests were always the same.

Arguing that it failed because of a limited market implies that a game has to be published in asia to be succesful, which is simply not true.

Sure, the limited marked did not help the game. But if it had been better, it would have suceeded anyway. WoW did not start out international either.

 

[RadioactiveMicrobe]

I just didn't buy it because I refuse to play subscription MMOs.

Even If I had to pay the $60, with no subscription fee, I'd be alright with it.

I liked the CGI cinematics they used to hype it up. After that I had/have no interest.

Me too! I thought it was a new KOTOR. And I thought, "Man this looks really awesome!! Oh wait, MMO...So nothing I watched really has any significance to the game.."

 

[Baralak]

Wow I didn't even know they had such a shitty setup, I guess my mate was too embarrassed to tell me the full story after I warned him about this game for so long.

Anyway that is quite the hilarious read and I fucking called this MMO failing like all others the moment they announced it, WoW still owns that market and you just can't beat them with a game almost as good.

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.

At this point, I find WoW to just e totally unfun to play. However, I think WoW has kept it's subscribers by being so big. "Why would I play some Star Wars game when all my friends are playing WoW?"

So it's really more about the amount of players playing it? I found wow unfun too but the things that I thought the game needed are right there in SWTOR. The combat is just much better to me, you are actually in duels with beautiful choreography, blade meeting blade, shifts and changes and adaptations in motion as the blades meet in different places from the counter attacks you haven't even initiated, it is art. Wow's combat felt kind of mindless, dragon age was literally the same stabbing motion over and over and over again, I thought SWTOR did it properly.

Just my opinion.

I prefer games with real deep mechanics that truly differentiate each class, like Lord of the Rings Online, or, even better, games that do away with auto-attack all together, like Age of Conan. I tried TOR when it first came out though and I thought it was okay. Truth be told, I have yet to get really addicted to an MMO like most other people I see, and I'd love to really get that engrossed into a game. Without doing dumb things like copying character builds for better DPS and the like, though.

 

[dark-mortality]

The biggest complaint I have heard about SWTOR is the end-game content, or rather, the extreme lack of end-game. This is what WoW has, it has not only A LOT of end-game content, but it also has somewhat good content. Now, I have only heard this from a friend, but apparently, TOR only have PvP as end-game content. People may bash WoW all they like, but they can't deny that it is a quality-driven, and extremely huge game. TOR may have the quality, but it is simply to small.

Ya hear that Bioware? You need to pump out expansionpacks to have a chance!

 

[Gitty101]

They should've just stuck to making Knights of the Old Republic 3. Or kept the title, but focused on a single-player only game. That would have been much better imo.

 

[bad rider]

I fucking called this MMO failing like all others the moment they announced it

1.3 million players minimum 13 dollars a month = 16.9 million turnover per month

1.3 million players maximum 15 dollars a month = 19.5 million turnover per month

Yes, they are massive failures who should be ashamed of themselves.

Edit:
Also their extremely positive reception by critics.

Aggregate scores
Aggregator Score
GameRankings 84.14% (43 reviews)
Metacritic 85/100 (71 reviews)

Honestly they should have just committed mass suicide.

 

[Amphoteric]

They should've just stuck to making Knights of the Old Republic 3. Or kept the title, but focused on a single-player only game. That would have been much better imo.

Considering what they did with Mass effect 3 i'd rather they didn't completely ruin the KotOR series.

 

[Senor Smoke21]

-snip-

Lord of the Rings Online however is an example of very bad f2p in that a shit tonne of content is locked away and it costs more to unlock than it would to subscribe.

Champions freakin' spoiled me for everyone else's F2P, there are still pretty solid incentives for subbing, but the free limitations don't include locked away game content.

D&D Online was, here's two dungeons, you can grind them to level five or give us money. Lots of money.

DCUO was, here's all the launch content, but nothing else, but you can only have 2000 resources at any time.

Trying to remember which other F2Ps I've spent time in, and drawing a blank.

I tried to have a go at Champions a while ago but my shitty connection at uni made it difficult to get past character creation.
Those others sounds just like LOTRO. For free you could access all the content that was previously the free trial. But that was it. Then you had to pay to unlock an areas quest pack.

 

[Smooth Operator]

1.3 million players minimum 13 dollars a month = 16.9 million turnover per month

1.3 million players maximum 15 dollars a month = 19.5 million turnover per month

Yes, they are massive failures who should be ashamed of themselves.

Their subscription numbers have been falling since day one, and an MMO that only came out less then 6 months ago switching into F2P... call Titanic a success if you want but that boat is still going down at a staggering pace.

 

[Ryank1908]

I really enjoyed SWTOR. I did. But the major problem with it is also its greatest strength - it's a single player MMO. The greatest allure of the game, and clearly the area where Bioware put the most effort, was in the storylines, but after 70-100 hours of climbing levels, you ultimately stop caring and start skipping all the cutscenes, because you just want to reach the level cap. Unfortunately, once you got there there was absolutely shit-all to do. PvP was awfully balanced and raids were incredibly limited for a very long time, and arguably still are.

It's my opinion that MMO's live and die on the strength of their end-game, and TOR's was non-existent. Sad, really, because the game had a lot of virtues.

 

[Thoric485]

1.3 million players minimum 13 dollars a month = 16.9 million turnover per month

1.3 million players maximum 15 dollars a month = 19.5 million turnover per month

Aggregate scores
Aggregator Score
GameRankings 84.14% (43 reviews)
Metacritic 85/100 (71 reviews)

It was a $200 million investment without marketing (and that's 50 million easy).

They won't be in the green until 2013, and after that Lucas will be taking a 30% cut or more from their profits.

Also, go check out WAR and AoC's metacritic scores. Didn't stop them from losing over 80% of their subscribers in less than a year. And despite the numbers, SWTOR's critical reception was lukewarm at best, their biggest accolade is "MSNBC's game of the year".

If they don't enter 2013 with more than 500k paying subs, heads will fly both at BioWare and EA. And looking at the sharp downward trend and GW2 and MoP's impending release, I very much doubt they will.