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SW: ToR, Future of EA?
Deepfall
Member UncommonPosts: 51
I would like to carry on here with a discussion initiated in the middle of a flame war.
Originally posted by DrakxiiOriginally posted by Deepfall
Originally posted by Demmi77
the mods have more than one link to posts saying the game sucks. Well not posts linking to the game sucks, but haivng a list of common compalint posts is pretty bad.
here's the link http://i.imgur.com/Ve1i8.png to the image and hte post.
I'm wandering on the official forum. Some threads do look like the ones you would have found on SWG official boards right after the NGE.
To bad BioEA anit giving out refunds.
Originally posted by Deepfall
Refund for The Old Republic would be like opening the Pandora's box.
Only EA knows the truth about the number of subscribers. However, if they are openly comparing the profit generated by TOR to the one created by Tiger Wood and SSX, it may be far worse than what we can imagine.
Source: EA’s top executive John Riccitiello
The Old Republic is in EA’s top 10 franchises in terms of profitability, “but it’s not in our top five”. “So it’s a business contributor, while important, is not as important as Medal of Honor or Battlefield or FIFA or Madden or The Sims or SimCity (...)we’re going to grow the franchise and just like we want to see Tiger Woods Golf grow or SSX grow.”
Shall they allow one refund, they could end up refunding 500.000 players. Rumors on CNBC say the company is currently facing a takeover bid from Korean giant Nexus.
Source: Could Nexon buy EA? Rumor floats, stock soars
Despite Battlefield 3 excellent results, EA's stock value started to decline when SW:ToR "casual gamers" started to leave the game en masse.
EA's top executive may pretend that SW:TOR success is not fundamental for his company, the reality say otherwise. They invested far too much money. They won't allow a single refund now that it's turning into a fiasco.
If the Titanic had a LAN gaming center, ToR would have been their game.
I'm not criticizing SW TOR itself. I'm interested by the impact a failure at beating WoW will certainly have on the industry. On one hand EA had the biggest bugdet ever invested in a mmorpg, on the other Bioware had the most popular IP in the world. Warhammer Online already failed to compete with World of Warcraft. It even failed to to become a dominant actor on the market. What are now the odds of seeing another expansive mmorpg based on a famous franchise?
Comments
i probably should have worded my thread differently. I have been dissatisfied with games before, i have never been as hostile with swtor as any other though.
i wanted the game to be so much more than it is, and i think the anger stems from the fact that game publishers are getting away with way to much. there is no regulation on what they release.
the thread i originally opened was intended to really show how bad the damage control is. basically what bioware is doing is , trying to lock all the threads using multiple threads as a way to ease the negative feedback. if you go to the forums and see every topic bashing tor, it looks really bad, if you see one topic , not so bad. the fact they have multiple long topics guiding multiople threads there over and over is really strange. i am just shocked at how irate so many people are and how bioware really continues on the "we're right" path. that is all.
Do they have a choice?
Buying Bioware cost 860millions $
Developping Star Wars: The Old Republic cost around 200 millions $
"The development team involved over 800 people working on four continents, with nearly 1,000 actors recording dialogue for 4,000 characters in three languages."
If the voice acting was really so expansive, if its cost was the justification explaining why EA emphasized it so much during the marketing campain, EA is currently facing a terrible dilemna. Either they abandon it, and tell the shareholders it was a poor idea. Either they keep walking a path they must travel until the end of the road.
If all the features constituting their path are the features on which the money is invested since the start, they may prefer to see SW:ToR under life support rather than admit they were wrong.
The same thing happens when a football team buys an overvalued quarterback (or striker in Europe.) Even if he is mediocre, the manager cannot leave him on the bench. By the end of the season, he crashes the team.
To compare with World of Warcraft, Blizzard initial investment was of 50millions €. In 2010 the game, with all its expansion, had cost 100millions $. If the amount of money spent was proportional to the amount of content available in the game, The Old Republic should make WoW look miserable.
PS: Your topic is fine, it is just currently squatted by walls of unfriendly text :P
Everytime EA's stock got down to 15 bucks the buyout rumors started. Before it is was Disney or Microsoft.
Retail sales of video game titles has fallen year over year. All makers are trading at or near lows, expect for ATVI ( which is had a great run, but hasn't lit any fires recently). There is no hardware cycle near-term. So earnings are low, valuations low.
I've nibbled at EA here in the 14's, there's value here. They have got 5 bucks cash and are trying to transition to digital. But SWTOR looks grim. Barring a catalyst, the stock looks heavy. Looking at a couple of Chinese game stocks, they to are dead but have very reasonable values. If you can trust them.
You all are raving at Torchlight 2. PWRD is releasing it. GA has some funky new Chinese targeted MMO.
ea makes more games then just swtor though.you'd be pretty dumb to base your decision on buying there stock just cuz 1 game isnt looking to good
I think companies will reevaluate how they invest their resources, but I don't think what has happened to EA is necessarily an example of what the rest of the industry faces.
EA is not where it is because TOR is going to lose them tons of money, but because investors believe the time, money, and manpower spent on TOR (as well as Origin and other EA projects) could have yielded a better return if utilized differently or more efficiently. It is a relative failure, not an absolute one.
EA controls a lot of major franchises with significant audiences that basically require an MMO to be a relatively large success to be "worth it." Just like Activision would be better off having Blizzard churn out StarCraft and Diablo games than a "bad MMO" (if it came to that).
On the other hand, companies like Funcom and NCSoft don't necessarily have more gauranteed profitable alternatives. The fact that their MMOs might not make "WoW money" is not as important, because the money they do make is more than what, for example, The Longest Journey 3 or Mahjong clones would bring in, relative to what's spent on them.
Economically speaking, the term is comparative advantage. In layman's terms it's "stick with what you're good at." EA leanred that the hard way, at least with respect to using Bioware to make an MMO.
You're only as hot as your latest product. SWTOR is just the visible symptom of some really poor management decision.
I agree with the concept of stay with what you know, but EA is a victem of bad managing more than this. It needs to be said they had access to some great minds in the takeover of the UO and DAoC companies but managed the staffs poorly and replaced or failed to retain the minds that made these title.
It seems to me EA, a maker of fine single player games, took over companies that made fine MMO's and thought they knew the MMO business better.
Sadly a strange amalgam was born that turned alot of people off... I have wondered if SWTOR could be a good gate way from console players to MMO player?
A long time ago, in a ....... there was a decent company called EA.
Then in 1987 it all started to change and EA started to buy companies, often for large - or very large - sums of money. And the typical result was lots and lots of poorly games and closed studios. The exception being Maxis (Sims).
So it was that 5-6 years ago they decided to buy (the company that owned) Bioware and Pandemic to add to their purchase, a year earlier, of Mythic entertainment. The charge was on: EA were going to break into the mmo world having failed earlier with their purchase of Origin (UO). The dark force that was Activision would be shown how it was done; WoW would be dethroned.
The world has moved on however; the subscription based model has moved on. Social gaming has been born etc. Fear not however, late to the party EA decided to buy PopCap, Playfish and a host of others for huge sums of money.
Bioware and (the now closed) Pandemic under EA have published 13 games (maybe 14 with ME3) after costing $620M cash, (or shareholders c. $860M depening on the value of the stock options). That is money that has to be made back before the purchase can be justified.
Will PopCap and Playfish justify their purchase price?
Borrowing money to fund acquisitions works if the companies bought make enough money. The record however seems to be 'miss the boat', buy into the current big thing at a premium price, whoops to late, close company. Fear not however we have bought the next big thing .. late. No surprise that EA focus on non-GAAP financial measures when announcing their results as this measure ignores 'one off' like purchasing comapnies. One offs?
I hope we never see one again. I hate films based on video games and comics. I want something new not the same old crap. Making video games based on films and pre existing IPs never do great that is a FACT that history have thought us over and over..
Unfortunately we will see one in about a year with TESO
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
Something is wrong with EA management because you don't throw that much money at a game's development and have so little to show for it, especially when you have one of the biggest and most beloved IP's of all time.
SWTOR is a very forgettable game. The sooner it dies the sooner someone else can try again because I truly believe in the awesome potential of this IP in the right hands.
Totally agree.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
Dont get your hopes up. SWTOR will be around for a very long time.
Current EA actually makes SOE look good to me. Feels like the Twilight Zone.
As do I.
That's why I keep up with this forum. I'm anxiously awaiting any news that might quicken TOR's demise so we can have hopes in another company getting it's chance to do it right.
Does that make me a "troll"? Maybe to some but to me it just means I'm a Han shot first, prequal hating old fashion Star Wars fan.
Me getting involved in these threads is a side effect I can't control
Unfortunately if this game truly dies than you can forget about another Star Wars MMO being made. I highly doubt with the destruction/failure of SWG after NGE and than the potential of SWTOR falling to the wasteside, no one will invest the money and resources for a IP that has proven to fail.
Unfortunately that's probably true but we can hope can't we?
Personally I lay the real blame on Lucas and his dumbing down medaling philosophy. I think LA are the ones that are obsessed with being the 'WOW killer' and caused 2 failed MMOs in a roll. Until there is a 180 degree, back to their roots direction change at LA, I seriously doubt if any company wanted the opportunity to be different that they will be allowed to.
Did you not see the article where they decided that SWTOR wasn't going to be their flagship because it was not making enough money?
As a fourth-tier also-ran. After all, from an accounting perspective, they already spent the money. No reason to not try to make something back on the investment.
However, it's not looking to be a commercial success. XFire log-ins, which correllate strongly to future subscription losses, are down to under 20% of peak. That's under 20% of the 1.7 million sub level. When Xfire was down 50%, subs were down 43%. The difference mostly a combination of growing disinterst and the lag of canceling vis quitting. In short, people get bored, then people quit, then the sub runs out. Some people quit with MONTHS on their accounts others quit with days or weeks. In the end, it does take time for all them to clear.
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/367/view/forums/thread/349680/page/18
So was SWG, so is Vanguard so are....lot of games.
Doesnt really mean anything, hanging around.
Personally i think SWTOR has a looooooooooooooooong way until it actually makes a dime, and theres a good chance it will never do.
I think its even probable they started making loss in march. The servers infrastructure deployed to welcome millions of players had a cost. Blizzard developped World of Warcraft infrastructure progressively, absed on the needs of the community. Doing so, servers maintenance costs were naturally absorbed by WoW revenues.
Blizzard spent 60millions€ on WoW during the first 6 years.
EA did the exact opposite. They planned big, wanting to avoid bad press resulting from a failed release. The release was outstanding. However, around march it is possible that EA's infrastrusture started to damage the game's profitability. Having the capacity to run too many instances of the same planet on too many servers cost something in the end.
Bioware announces layoffs
Perhaps EA's problem is that they focus too much on the "earning potential" of the major IP's they buy licences for, rather than trying to produce MMO's with good gameplay.
Warhammer and StarWars, how could those IP's NOT be sure-fire winners ?
If the games built around the IP's were subpar, that's how.
But EA doesn't produce games, they manage "franchises" and "monetize IP's". Their "products" are "leveraged" to produce "maximum shareholder value". No wonder their attempts at MMO's have been such dismal failures...
In this case, the sheer amount of money they had in TOR makes it not just an ordinary game though. If you sink 200 million in it, you are expecting that game to bring in serious cheddar, and be your flagship. That it went from being a potential flagship (alongside the BF series) to not even being in top 5, that raises eyebrows. The development and marketing budget of TOR could've made probably all 5 of those games, and the latter would've been cheaper. That is what we call a boondoggle, and boondoggle's don't inspire investor confidence.
I guess here is the question EA needs to ponder long and hard: What is EA good at? Outside of the sports franchises (which mainly sell so well because of monopolistic practices they can afford to employ), what else do they have? Both ME3 and DA2 came in significantly under expectations saleswise, and it almost permanently damaged their franchise name. They don't have strength in RPG's. BF3 is successful, but the more it tries to emulate CoD, the more it is going to lose.
They have an absurd amount of "brands", but outside of the sports ones (mainly FIFA and Madden), what do they do that can be considered "good"?