Internet communities are bad because they have no face or risk.
Point being, SWTOR is dropping faster than a tied up swoop bike because they went for fast cash and targeted the casual market. However, subscription mmo's require a constant hardcore base to keep afloat, and SWTOR did not implement the features to keep those hardcores subbing, thus we now are witnessing the leaving of the casuals to newer games like Diablo 3.
It needs to go free to play to stay alive. Unfortatnly were talking about EA here, and Warhammer Online STILL isnt truly free to play yet.....
The more they tighten their grip, the more subs will slip through their fingers.
Nice quote!
I also agree with it in this context.
I tried to get to level 50 in this game after 2 months of casual play. I am quitting the game with a level 37 Commando, level 30 Jedi Sentinel, and a handful of low levels I couldn't stomach getting through the first areas again. I was hooked on the main story for my character only to find out that the quest ends around level 30ish and the new chapter has very little to do with the first one and is not nearly as compelling.
Add to that the fact that it seems, past level 30, battles become a war of attrition even if mods are kept at level in orange or purple adjustable gear, talent trees do not seem to add a lot of oomph to the character class' abilities (or at least not like in WoW or DAoC), and the fact that no one ever groups up for anything drove me away finally.
The last point is the major factor though in my going. Combat is too tedious alone, even with the pet out, but the lack of community tools and the fact that there is no possible way to communicate with those in fleet when one is on a planet makes this an unappealing experience in the end.
I am just going to stick with WoW and D3 and occasional fits of DAoC. Bioware can close all of the threads they want on their forums, which is just an indicator about the overall ethos of this company these days. Perhaps a more customer-friendly attitude should be adopted though since we are their bread and butter so to speak.
The negative threads continue to be populated. The complaints are really all over the map though so it's hard to sort out.
-server merges
-too easy vs. too hard
-too linear vs. not enough of the linear content
-need sandbox (cries of SWG! are not being shouted down immediately any more)
-LFG tool
-fix bugs
-customer service sucks
It's really kind of like the thread list here but all about one game. Can't imagine those devs at BW give a shit any more. Long past caring and have a deathgrip on their stupid model.
Seriously, I know some people don't like to hear it. I know they like to pretend it's a hater/troll conspiracy. But that's what they're apparently asking now. Far different from the questions they asked me when I quit.
I'd personally be surprised. EA has a reputation for not giving anything away if they can squeeze a nickle's worth of blood out of somebody, somewhere. But... I can't deny the reality of the exit questions.
The real disaster is the community and their treatment of an expensive attempt at an MMO. Surely, after seeing the shitstorm Bioware was engulfed in, no new big money is willing to attempt the risk of making an expensive MMO. Just not worth it.
Look, just because BioWare failed doesn't mean the industry, as a whole, can't make some good games. I think the real problem is in the past few years the games we've had released have been all about making money and not making good games.
So we've gotten a lot of half-baked, ill-conceived and under-funded "cash-in" MMOs. SWTOR was one. STO another. APB was a disaster, not even half-baked. Fallen Earth started with promise but ran out of money half-way through, was released to soon and eventually was sold-off in liquidation of Icaraus. And of course, we have Warhmmer and Age of Conan.
Rift got off to a bad start as Trion was underfunded and had to release a not-quite-finished game. But they've started to grow again, so there's one. World of Tanks is an Action-MMO so we kind of over-look it but they're doing very well, far better than SWTOR when it comes to active players. Aion may have lost a lot of players, but with the F2P model and grind reduction, it's climbing back up the charts now. And while I don't think it's going to get back into the #2 slot (Western audience MMORPG) behind WoW, I think it's got a decent future (it's also back to #1 in Korea, so there is that...).
Honestly, what I think is there are two distinct development periods with MMOs. The pre-WoW MMOs were designed with small expected populations that would have low churn-rates as people spent years playing the games. They were to be profitable, but not billion-dollar-revenue games.
Then we get WoW and everyone see is WoW making tons of money. Over a billion dollars a year. This lead to a lot of companies seeing all that money decided to jump into that big ol' pot of money. As fast as they could, thinking they understood what makes a good MMO and just copying WoW to some greater or lesser extent.
Since the MMO cycle is long, we're just now seeing (in the past few years) all the 'cash-grab' MMOs hitting the market. So it skews our peception of the health of the industry.
I think ANet, with GW2, will show that not all developers have sold out for this cash grab. I think there are some other companies that will also give us some good MMOs down the road. I think Planetside 2 (SOE) has a good chance. I think Mechwarrior Online has a good chance. The Secret World... I'm not that hopeful, EA + Funcom is a huge negative... But I'm willing to be surprised. Archage looks to be intriguing.
And I'm sure others will come down the pike. Good MMOs, not shoddy, over-marketed cash-grabs.
The game has a million subs but 40% of people think it will be F2P at the end of the year? Are gamers really this out of touch with reality?
That and a majority of the people active on mmorpg.com are not playnig SWTOR, hence you will see a lot of bias aimed against it. Numbers don't lie, if swtor has over a million subs, then I'm sorry but I don't care how much you hate the game, it's a success.
Advice to haters? Go play Tera, or something. I'm going back to my desktop screen to twiddle my thumbs while waiting for D3.
How is it a success? It cost well over $200 million to make. It cost at least $35 million to advertise. It sold $2.4 million copies which has both cost of sales, royalties (to LucasArts, the publisher who takes 30%) and wholesale discounts to be factored in. EA probably took in, net of costs, royalties and wholesale, $75 million. The game, in the current short-run hasn't come close to breaking even.
The long-term prospects are bleak The sales are in the tank, under 60k a month now and continuing to drop each week. They'll be lucky to sell another $25 million (net of costs) over the next year or two.
That leaves subs, 30% which go to LucasArts, 20% which go to server costs (full costs including customer service) in an MMO with a 15% per month drop-rate... The stable, long-term population projects to well under 500K, which is their threshold for long-term profitabilty. Honestly, there is no one who's ever done even a college-level business case could see any sort of light at the end of the tunnel.
SWTOR is Ishtar the MMO. SWTOR is Heaven's Gate the MMO. This is definately not WoW. It's not even Eve Online - humble beginings, slow but steady growth...
"Until gamers start demanding these incompetent fools design better games "
that would just further make the mmo genre community look bad.and i think world of warcraft has already done a good enough job at being an example
The gaming community already looks bad when they act like suckers and reward these craptastic cash-grabs and half-a** efforts with cash.
Looking bad is one thing the gaming community does very well all on its own.
You do have a point. I didn't fall for it but a "reported" 2.4 million did. I see the same thing happening with GW2. I'm not knocking GW2 but the hype is over the top almost as much as it was for TOR.
The companies keep making bad games but I have to be honest, we keep letting them.
GW2 almost has as much hype as TOR? In my six years on these forums, I have never seen an mmo more hyped than GW2. And the truley amazing thing is that many of the fans on these forums will tell you that the game has no hype.
Well, re. D3 I can only say one thing: this game costs the local of equivalent of $81 around here so I'll buy it the day I'll become 35% richer than average american. Unfortunately for me this won't happen anytime soon.
And in defense of SWTOR - it's unusual for me to defend SWTOR but I try to give credit where credit is due - I could get a digital copy for $20.5.
MMORPG genre is dead. Long live MMOCS (Massively Multiplayer Online Cash Shop).
I looked at the discusions, it didnt look anything but a normal forum to me. There is a few threads, one with 47 pages about unsubscribing, and a few others but considering how things have been I dont think thats anything.
I dont get why especially people in this unsubscribing thread feel its nessasary to have some terrible reason why there quiting the game or have such ill towards it, Iv played it more then most and I dont feel any ill towards it in any way, Its one of my most cherished memories in mmos. I dont think it was ever ment to be like warcrack, there is no starcrack in SWTOR. You play it, store it and come back to it when you feel you want to play it again and why people arnt getting that is beyond me. Maybee if Bioware would have advertised the game as a "play at your own pace" instead of "you have to keep a subscription" the game would have seen less of the critisim is constantly to this day still gets.
I get that it takes supernatural hyping of a game to get non-gamers to try something like an MMO out, but its ridiculous to see this shit.
PS: Any one looking for a good time in SWTOR, make sure to check out the starting planet Hutta with the Imperial agent, that was some great mmo action if you ask me.
"Until gamers start demanding these incompetent fools design better games "
that would just further make the mmo genre community look bad.and i think world of warcraft has already done a good enough job at being an example
The gaming community already looks bad when they act like suckers and reward these craptastic cash-grabs and half-a** efforts with cash.
Looking bad is one thing the gaming community does very well all on its own.
You do have a point. I didn't fall for it but a "reported" 2.4 million did. I see the same thing happening with GW2. I'm not knocking GW2 but the hype is over the top almost as much as it was for TOR.
The companies keep making bad games but I have to be honest, we keep letting them.
GW2 almost has as much hype as TOR? In my six years on these forums, I have never seen an mmo more hyped than GW2. And the truley amazing thing is that many of the fans on these forums will tell you that the game has no hype.
The difference is mainly that the players are creating most of the hype. There's a game there, that people have played, and enjoyed, and want more of it.
TOR on the other hand was completely hyped by BW/EA with CGI trailers, etc, without showing much gameplay at all, especially end game activities. When the game is "end game" you know precisely what you are getting.
I'm not arguing the hype level, i'm arguing where the hype is coming from.
Swtor is the biggest fail in mmo history. EA can't even make a successful star wars game..what kind of idiots do they employ at all. if swtor didn't have lightsabers you wouldn't even know it was a star wars game.
Alas, I feel likewise. Sure, SWTOR has some good sides, you CAN have fun a while. But overall, especially after seeing GW2 and TSW, I feel with their huge budget... I just don't know where it went to. Did they just money laundering for some mafia? They dropped the ball on so many things. It's really unfathomable and sad.
Just seeing how alife, detailled, animated and wonderful the GW2 world felt and how sterile and dead the SWTOR world feels says all to me.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I dont think it was ever ment to be like warcrack, there is no starcrack in SWTOR. You play it, store it and come back to it when you feel you want to play it again and why people arnt getting that is beyond me. Maybee if Bioware would have advertised the game as a "play at your own pace" instead of "you have to keep a subscription" the game would have seen less of the critisim is constantly to this day still gets.
Sometimes I wonder, what if they advertised the game as KOTOR 3, premium SP Co-op RPG with multiple Star Wars stories and PVP warzones? And charged some premium price for box , for example 100$, with no subscription fee.
Maybe such model would prove ground breaking and instant hit. Who knows.
Internet communities are bad because they have no face or risk.
Point being, SWTOR is dropping faster than a tied up swoop bike because they went for fast cash and targeted the casual market. However, subscription mmo's require a constant hardcore base to keep afloat, and SWTOR did not implement the features to keep those hardcores subbing, thus we now are witnessing the leaving of the casuals to newer games like Diablo 3.
It needs to go free to play to stay alive. Unfortatnly were talking about EA here, and Warhammer Online STILL isnt truly free to play yet.....
Completely untrue. No MMO needs a 'hardcore' base to keep afloat. The hardcore base is such a small percentage of the total community that it's almost irrelevent. That being said, it is the hardcore gamers that you should want to 'stress test' the limits of any given MMO as they will be the ones that push level and content limits much more quickly than a casual gamer and can be utilized to do a true beta test of end game limitations.
"Until gamers start demanding these incompetent fools design better games "
that would just further make the mmo genre community look bad.and i think world of warcraft has already done a good enough job at being an example
The gaming community already looks bad when they act like suckers and reward these craptastic cash-grabs and half-a** efforts with cash.
Looking bad is one thing the gaming community does very well all on its own.
You do have a point. I didn't fall for it but a "reported" 2.4 million did. I see the same thing happening with GW2. I'm not knocking GW2 but the hype is over the top almost as much as it was for TOR.
The companies keep making bad games but I have to be honest, we keep letting them.
GW2 almost has as much hype as TOR? In my six years on these forums, I have never seen an mmo more hyped than GW2. And the truley amazing thing is that many of the fans on these forums will tell you that the game has no hype.
All the MMOs from the bigger well known companies have hype and usually for the wrong reasons. That's never going to change and more importantly you're not going to be able to distinguish what's well placed hype for whats BS...so all you can do is play and quit trying to deter people or encourage them through analyzing "hype"
It will be same with every game in the future. It is new generation of players or maybe some old frustrated ones. After wow you cant find anything what will give you satisfaction, you will see that every game which is not produced by blizzard wil fail in the eyes of players. It will be same with tsw, gw2, ae and all of this new mmo's. Next big step will be a titan from Blizzard and untill than only wow will stay strong in subscription .
It will be same with every game in the future. It is new generation of players or maybe some old frustrated ones. After wow you cant find anything what will give you satisfaction, you will see that every game which is not produced by blizzard wil fail in the eyes of players. It will be same with tsw, gw2, ae and all of this new mmo's. Next big step will be a titan from Blizzard and untill than only wow will stay strong in subscription .
Please don't include the "you" as refurring to me. I played or endored WOW a whole 2 hours before uninstalling it. Not everyone is a kiddie cartoon disney game lover.
It will be same with every game in the future. It is new generation of players or maybe some old frustrated ones. After wow you cant find anything what will give you satisfaction, you will see that every game which is not produced by blizzard wil fail in the eyes of players. It will be same with tsw, gw2, ae and all of this new mmo's. Next big step will be a titan from Blizzard and untill than only wow will stay strong in subscription .
I think this post was well aimed at the WoW audience or Blizzard afficianado. You made several points in the subtext there for the rest of us though.
I'm starting to think that when titan is revealed it will be something purposely disgusting, like an Andy Kaufman prank.
hype is only part of the reason why swtor failed imo
you can hype up a game,and actually live up to the hype.swtor didnt
guild wars 2 might.but honestly? im not on the hype train for gw2.all i want is a mmo that looks like it has a good future and the pvp is good.cant really say that swtor has a good future,and the pvp is tacked on garbage
Everytime a game is overhyped cautious voices are drowned out by rabid players who insist their new fad is the best thing since sliced bread.
Then the game launches, and the cautious voices grow to legion, but still they are absolutely ridiculed, spat on and pushed aside by the fanboys who still insist on rowing along in their sinking ship.
Then comes the great period of enlightenment, where everyone suddenly turns around and agree on how much the product actually stinks. How many ways in which they feel let down, and everyone, including the previous enthusiast and rabid fanboys, completely wash their hands of the situation they helped create, and certainly helped flourish.
If you provide an environment where executives can get away with the type of game development and production that Swtor represents then you are part of the problem. If you also help bully those who are critical of the game you happen to throw in with, you further that environment.
If you then, at the end of the day, completely fail to see any correlation between your own attitude, no matter how it changed in the end, the comments your made, posted and discussed, and take no responsibility for how you affect the community, and how the community affects the strategy these money hungry companies chose to use, then, you get exactly the type of games you tell them you're willing to live with. And its your OWN fault. NOT the companies. They are there to make money off of your leniency, which your adulation only intensifies. - Why should they care about your impotent rage once the adulation has faded. You already gave them your money, and history OBVIOUSLY shows you're willing to repeat this pattern over and over and over and over and over ad naseum.
Everytime a game is overhyped cautious voices are drowned out by rabid players who insist their new fad is the best thing since sliced bread.
Then the game launches, and the cautious voices grow to legion, but still they are absolutely ridiculed, spat on and pushed aside by the fanboys who still insist on rowing along in their sinking ship.
Then comes the great period of enlightenment, where everyone suddenly turns around and agree on how much the product actually stinks. How many ways in which they feel let down, and everyone, including the previous enthusiast and rabid fanboys, completely wash their hands of the situation they helped create, and certainly helped flourish.
If you provide an environment where executives can get away with the type of game development and production that Swtor represents then you are part of the problem. If you also help bully those who are critical of the game you happen to throw in with, you further that environment.
If you then, at the end of the day, completely fail to see any correlation between your own attitude, no matter how it changed in the end, the comments your made, posted and discussed, and take no responsibility for how you affect the community, and how the community affects the strategy these money hungry companies chose to use, then, you get exactly the type of games you tell them you're willing to live with. And its your OWN fault. NOT the companies. They are there to make money off of your leniency, which your adulation only intensifies. - Why should they care about your impotent rage once the adulation has faded. You already gave them your money, and history OBVIOUSLY shows you're willing to repeat this pattern over and over and over and over and over ad naseum.
This is older than the internet. Older than electricity.
Its called the Cassandra Effect. And in phrases like "I don't want to be a Cassandra, but ...".
This is named after a character from anicent greek myth who told prophecies that were always true but no one wanted to hear. That what you get when you won't give it up to Apollo when he wants it.
Its not the community. Its human nature. We have known it for 1000s and 1000s of years too.
Comments
Bad MMO's generate bad communities.
Good MMO's generate bad communities.
Internet communities are bad because they have no face or risk.
Point being, SWTOR is dropping faster than a tied up swoop bike because they went for fast cash and targeted the casual market. However, subscription mmo's require a constant hardcore base to keep afloat, and SWTOR did not implement the features to keep those hardcores subbing, thus we now are witnessing the leaving of the casuals to newer games like Diablo 3.
It needs to go free to play to stay alive. Unfortatnly were talking about EA here, and Warhammer Online STILL isnt truly free to play yet.....
The more they tighten their grip, the more subs will slip through their fingers.
Nice quote!
I also agree with it in this context.
I tried to get to level 50 in this game after 2 months of casual play. I am quitting the game with a level 37 Commando, level 30 Jedi Sentinel, and a handful of low levels I couldn't stomach getting through the first areas again. I was hooked on the main story for my character only to find out that the quest ends around level 30ish and the new chapter has very little to do with the first one and is not nearly as compelling.
Add to that the fact that it seems, past level 30, battles become a war of attrition even if mods are kept at level in orange or purple adjustable gear, talent trees do not seem to add a lot of oomph to the character class' abilities (or at least not like in WoW or DAoC), and the fact that no one ever groups up for anything drove me away finally.
The last point is the major factor though in my going. Combat is too tedious alone, even with the pet out, but the lack of community tools and the fact that there is no possible way to communicate with those in fleet when one is on a planet makes this an unappealing experience in the end.
I am just going to stick with WoW and D3 and occasional fits of DAoC. Bioware can close all of the threads they want on their forums, which is just an indicator about the overall ethos of this company these days. Perhaps a more customer-friendly attitude should be adopted though since we are their bread and butter so to speak.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
The negative threads continue to be populated. The complaints are really all over the map though so it's hard to sort out.
-server merges
-too easy vs. too hard
-too linear vs. not enough of the linear content
-need sandbox (cries of SWG! are not being shouted down immediately any more)
-LFG tool
-fix bugs
-customer service sucks
It's really kind of like the thread list here but all about one game. Can't imagine those devs at BW give a shit any more. Long past caring and have a deathgrip on their stupid model.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Why do you think they're asking F2P questions to those who leave?:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/367/view/forums/thread/351128/F2P-Closer-than-we-think.html
Seriously, I know some people don't like to hear it. I know they like to pretend it's a hater/troll conspiracy. But that's what they're apparently asking now. Far different from the questions they asked me when I quit.
I'd personally be surprised. EA has a reputation for not giving anything away if they can squeeze a nickle's worth of blood out of somebody, somewhere. But... I can't deny the reality of the exit questions.
Look, just because BioWare failed doesn't mean the industry, as a whole, can't make some good games. I think the real problem is in the past few years the games we've had released have been all about making money and not making good games.
So we've gotten a lot of half-baked, ill-conceived and under-funded "cash-in" MMOs. SWTOR was one. STO another. APB was a disaster, not even half-baked. Fallen Earth started with promise but ran out of money half-way through, was released to soon and eventually was sold-off in liquidation of Icaraus. And of course, we have Warhmmer and Age of Conan.
Rift got off to a bad start as Trion was underfunded and had to release a not-quite-finished game. But they've started to grow again, so there's one. World of Tanks is an Action-MMO so we kind of over-look it but they're doing very well, far better than SWTOR when it comes to active players. Aion may have lost a lot of players, but with the F2P model and grind reduction, it's climbing back up the charts now. And while I don't think it's going to get back into the #2 slot (Western audience MMORPG) behind WoW, I think it's got a decent future (it's also back to #1 in Korea, so there is that...).
Honestly, what I think is there are two distinct development periods with MMOs. The pre-WoW MMOs were designed with small expected populations that would have low churn-rates as people spent years playing the games. They were to be profitable, but not billion-dollar-revenue games.
Then we get WoW and everyone see is WoW making tons of money. Over a billion dollars a year. This lead to a lot of companies seeing all that money decided to jump into that big ol' pot of money. As fast as they could, thinking they understood what makes a good MMO and just copying WoW to some greater or lesser extent.
Since the MMO cycle is long, we're just now seeing (in the past few years) all the 'cash-grab' MMOs hitting the market. So it skews our peception of the health of the industry.
I think ANet, with GW2, will show that not all developers have sold out for this cash grab. I think there are some other companies that will also give us some good MMOs down the road. I think Planetside 2 (SOE) has a good chance. I think Mechwarrior Online has a good chance. The Secret World... I'm not that hopeful, EA + Funcom is a huge negative... But I'm willing to be surprised. Archage looks to be intriguing.
And I'm sure others will come down the pike. Good MMOs, not shoddy, over-marketed cash-grabs.
The only people out of touch with reality are people that think this game has a million subs. 400k tops, and falling fast.
Are you a Pavlovian Fish Biscuit Addict? Get Help Now!
I will play no more MMORPGs until somethign good comes out!
How is it a success? It cost well over $200 million to make. It cost at least $35 million to advertise. It sold $2.4 million copies which has both cost of sales, royalties (to LucasArts, the publisher who takes 30%) and wholesale discounts to be factored in. EA probably took in, net of costs, royalties and wholesale, $75 million. The game, in the current short-run hasn't come close to breaking even.
The long-term prospects are bleak The sales are in the tank, under 60k a month now and continuing to drop each week. They'll be lucky to sell another $25 million (net of costs) over the next year or two.
That leaves subs, 30% which go to LucasArts, 20% which go to server costs (full costs including customer service) in an MMO with a 15% per month drop-rate... The stable, long-term population projects to well under 500K, which is their threshold for long-term profitabilty. Honestly, there is no one who's ever done even a college-level business case could see any sort of light at the end of the tunnel.
SWTOR is Ishtar the MMO. SWTOR is Heaven's Gate the MMO. This is definately not WoW. It's not even Eve Online - humble beginings, slow but steady growth...
The best thing about SWTOR are those CGI trailers. Should have made a feature length movie instead of an MMO.
GW2 almost has as much hype as TOR? In my six years on these forums, I have never seen an mmo more hyped than GW2. And the truley amazing thing is that many of the fans on these forums will tell you that the game has no hype.
It's going to become SWG--but in only the bad ways, and none of the good aspects.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Well, re. D3 I can only say one thing: this game costs the local of equivalent of $81 around here so I'll buy it the day I'll become 35% richer than average american. Unfortunately for me this won't happen anytime soon.
And in defense of SWTOR - it's unusual for me to defend SWTOR but I try to give credit where credit is due - I could get a digital copy for $20.5.
MMORPG genre is dead. Long live MMOCS (Massively Multiplayer Online Cash Shop).
I looked at the discusions, it didnt look anything but a normal forum to me. There is a few threads, one with 47 pages about unsubscribing, and a few others but considering how things have been I dont think thats anything.
I dont get why especially people in this unsubscribing thread feel its nessasary to have some terrible reason why there quiting the game or have such ill towards it, Iv played it more then most and I dont feel any ill towards it in any way, Its one of my most cherished memories in mmos. I dont think it was ever ment to be like warcrack, there is no starcrack in SWTOR. You play it, store it and come back to it when you feel you want to play it again and why people arnt getting that is beyond me. Maybee if Bioware would have advertised the game as a "play at your own pace" instead of "you have to keep a subscription" the game would have seen less of the critisim is constantly to this day still gets.
I get that it takes supernatural hyping of a game to get non-gamers to try something like an MMO out, but its ridiculous to see this shit.
PS: Any one looking for a good time in SWTOR, make sure to check out the starting planet Hutta with the Imperial agent, that was some great mmo action if you ask me.
The difference is mainly that the players are creating most of the hype. There's a game there, that people have played, and enjoyed, and want more of it.
TOR on the other hand was completely hyped by BW/EA with CGI trailers, etc, without showing much gameplay at all, especially end game activities. When the game is "end game" you know precisely what you are getting.
I'm not arguing the hype level, i'm arguing where the hype is coming from.
Alas, I feel likewise. Sure, SWTOR has some good sides, you CAN have fun a while. But overall, especially after seeing GW2 and TSW, I feel with their huge budget... I just don't know where it went to. Did they just money laundering for some mafia? They dropped the ball on so many things. It's really unfathomable and sad.
Just seeing how alife, detailled, animated and wonderful the GW2 world felt and how sterile and dead the SWTOR world feels says all to me.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Sometimes I wonder, what if they advertised the game as KOTOR 3, premium SP Co-op RPG with multiple Star Wars stories and PVP warzones? And charged some premium price for box , for example 100$, with no subscription fee.
Maybe such model would prove ground breaking and instant hit. Who knows.
Completely untrue. No MMO needs a 'hardcore' base to keep afloat. The hardcore base is such a small percentage of the total community that it's almost irrelevent. That being said, it is the hardcore gamers that you should want to 'stress test' the limits of any given MMO as they will be the ones that push level and content limits much more quickly than a casual gamer and can be utilized to do a true beta test of end game limitations.
All the MMOs from the bigger well known companies have hype and usually for the wrong reasons. That's never going to change and more importantly you're not going to be able to distinguish what's well placed hype for whats BS...so all you can do is play and quit trying to deter people or encourage them through analyzing "hype"
What's the funniest to me is that Bioware is giving out, yet once again, another 4 day free weekend. How many has that been in the past 2 months.
It will be same with every game in the future. It is new generation of players or maybe some old frustrated ones. After wow you cant find anything what will give you satisfaction, you will see that every game which is not produced by blizzard wil fail in the eyes of players. It will be same with tsw, gw2, ae and all of this new mmo's. Next big step will be a titan from Blizzard and untill than only wow will stay strong in subscription .
Please don't include the "you" as refurring to me. I played or endored WOW a whole 2 hours before uninstalling it. Not everyone is a kiddie cartoon disney game lover.
I think this post was well aimed at the WoW audience or Blizzard afficianado. You made several points in the subtext there for the rest of us though.
I'm starting to think that when titan is revealed it will be something purposely disgusting, like an Andy Kaufman prank.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
hype is only part of the reason why swtor failed imo
you can hype up a game,and actually live up to the hype.swtor didnt
guild wars 2 might.but honestly? im not on the hype train for gw2.all i want is a mmo that looks like it has a good future and the pvp is good.cant really say that swtor has a good future,and the pvp is tacked on garbage
The community is 100% at fault.
Everytime a game is overhyped cautious voices are drowned out by rabid players who insist their new fad is the best thing since sliced bread.
Then the game launches, and the cautious voices grow to legion, but still they are absolutely ridiculed, spat on and pushed aside by the fanboys who still insist on rowing along in their sinking ship.
Then comes the great period of enlightenment, where everyone suddenly turns around and agree on how much the product actually stinks. How many ways in which they feel let down, and everyone, including the previous enthusiast and rabid fanboys, completely wash their hands of the situation they helped create, and certainly helped flourish.
If you provide an environment where executives can get away with the type of game development and production that Swtor represents then you are part of the problem. If you also help bully those who are critical of the game you happen to throw in with, you further that environment.
If you then, at the end of the day, completely fail to see any correlation between your own attitude, no matter how it changed in the end, the comments your made, posted and discussed, and take no responsibility for how you affect the community, and how the community affects the strategy these money hungry companies chose to use, then, you get exactly the type of games you tell them you're willing to live with. And its your OWN fault. NOT the companies. They are there to make money off of your leniency, which your adulation only intensifies. - Why should they care about your impotent rage once the adulation has faded. You already gave them your money, and history OBVIOUSLY shows you're willing to repeat this pattern over and over and over and over and over ad naseum.
This is older than the internet. Older than electricity.
Its called the Cassandra Effect. And in phrases like "I don't want to be a Cassandra, but ...".
This is named after a character from anicent greek myth who told prophecies that were always true but no one wanted to hear. That what you get when you won't give it up to Apollo when he wants it.
Its not the community. Its human nature. We have known it for 1000s and 1000s of years too.