I'd say much more bitter than sweet, and that's coming from a guy supporting the game.
1.3 needed to be AT LEAST another 1.2. And they needed to flesh out the world they made on top of it. I enjoy many aspects of the game, but it would take alot more to make me stay indefinitely. And if they're gonna lop of a quarter of the workforce already, it's looking more and more likely that it will never earn my indefinite sub.
The Secret World most likely will be about the same: A fun ride to max level, and then I'll be stuck with nice big zones with nothing left to do in them.
Looks like GW2 will be my next hope. At least there won't be a sub fee if I find myself thumb twiddling at max there, as well.
UHhh - 1.3 is NOT good news. Look, I don't know what the mmorpg writers see as being so incredible about the legacy system...?? It has been the focus of every single patch/news release related to the game since 1.2. Instead of addressing the real problems with the game (complete and utter lack of end game content) patches and resources continue to be invested in the fluff and pointless legacy system.
The news that 1.3 will be yet another patch dealing with legacy crap is NOT a good thing.
First ...that is not news... it was announced months ago that 1.3 would be moved ahead of schedule and be content light so as to bring all the features that could not be in 1.2 in the game ASAP as well as a few new ones like group finder.
If you expected content you're just not paying attention.
If you really want more content in 1.3... then I guess they could always push back all these feature another 2 months.
I'm pretty sure less than 5% of the players have beaten the 1.2 raid in Hardmode... heck I'm convinced you don't have a single piece of Campaign gear.
A farily accurate assessment in my opinion. Par for the course after a game is launched, so no worries on that front. However, like the article said, not a good idea with all of the games coming out, as well as some issues they need to fix. Everyone heralding the death knell of SWTOR are seriously overstating things, but SWTOR definitely needs to do something, if it wants to avoid a WAR type status, where it just limps along for years to come (Sort of like SWG.... oh, i'm gonna get it now).
Actually 1.3 is a very good thing. Patch in game play enhancements, then hit with a big content patch later in the summer. Reality is a lot of SWTOR players haven't for example done Denova hardmode or the flashpoints hardmode, so enhcancements like PvE LFG will be very good.
Server merges and transfers is nothing WoW, for example, hasn't seen before. I remember on my original server in WoW Vanilla how at launch there were 60 min queues then 6 months later the pop was sort of lightish. Blizzard allowed transfers and merges and it picked up from that point onwards.
What MMOs need to be persistent is gameplay features to keep you trying for the content. Bioware are clearly on the right lines here.
Actually 1.3 is a very good thing. Patch in game play enhancements, then hit with a big content patch later in the summer. Reality is a lot of SWTOR players haven't for example done Denova hardmode or the flashpoints hardmode, so enhcancements like PvE LFG will be very good.
Exactly.
I garantee you not one person posting here asking for content has a single piece of Campaign Gear or has set foot on Voss since 1.2 unless they weren't even 50, and that would not be so surprising if they weren't
Sad too see some talented devs lose their jobs and income because the suits supposedly know it all,but hopefully these guys can get a team together either get backing the traditional way or maybe go the kick starter route these guys must be champing at the bit to let their creative juices flow after been muzzled for so long.
They fire 200 people and then promote Daniel Erikson to lead developer? He's not a developer, he's a writer - and not only a pretty poor writer but also a player-despising blowhard.
They fire 200 people and then promote Daniel Erikson to lead developer? He's not a developer, he's a writer - and not only a pretty poor writer but also a player-despising blowhard.
Post-launch games need a smaller development team. Daniel Erikson in SWTOR development told everyone how much the writing team were contributing to the game design, that probably explains why he is at the lead now in a streamlined team.
They fire 200 people and then promote Daniel Erikson to lead developer? He's not a developer, he's a writer - and not only a pretty poor writer but also a player-despising blowhard.
Exactly. He's a major part of the problem, and this reinforces they just don't get it.
___________________________ Have flask; will travel.
Bittersweet? 200 people lose their jobs, some hack writer gets promoted to a lead developer position and SWTOR is finally getting a feature that should have been there at launch instead of a content update?
So... 200 odd layoffs apparently. Any idea of what the initial “team” size was?
It’s hard to gauge it when you don’t know the exact numbers (and when you know very little about MMO development,) but 200+ sounds pretty devastating for the future of the game, to say the very least.
Group-finder feature. Let me be the first to welcome the SWTOR development team to 2007. I unsubscribed like many, many others and have no regrets. It's a joyless, mediocre, under-developed game with empty worlds. Not even worth your time when it goes FTP.
The only sad thing about this story is that its those that are NOT in charge that either lost their jobs or were taken off the project.
I just hope the game goes F2P with some sort of cash shop before they lose so many players they have to shut it down.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
I usually don't say anything negative, but I hope the people who got fired were the ones who made those shitty looking armor sets for the last update. I also hope this scares the rest of them into actually putting some thought into the next "Star warsy" content (not more WOW in space).
I love how everybody goes like "oooh, EA has fired just about everybody on SWTOR, yeah, just confirms that SWTOR sucks and that EA is just a stupid joke in itself!"
As of right now we have not seen an offical BW or EA statement giving exact numbers!
So that "huge number" of layoffs could turn out to be just 100 guys.
Which one could argue may still be a large number. But what if it's 45 CSRs in the US and 45 CSRs in the EU? How are being let go for potentially a number of reasons including the fact that the Xmas rush is now over and the number of CSR that are required for efficient opperation can be cut by 50%?
Frankly, we are all guessing... except of course about Stephen Reid who has confirmed that he was laid off.
Which may well be considered a sound professional choice.
I mean seriously, would you really leave a guy who only can give 75% at best in his position (and I'm not looking at SR here, just speaking in general) if you can give the same responsibility to a guy who has prooven that he can give 110%?
And yes, there is also the fact that the future course of SWTOR may come into play: 1.2 offered new content, 1.3 doesn't...
IF BW were to re-foucus the devellopment of SWTOR rather on features (as so many people had been crying for) over new content (which was also an issue for other people), it's a bit like having a load of buckets filled with water at hand when the weather has just changed from dry season to wet season: you very likely don't need them! Them obviously being a full content provider team. ;-)
Let's wait and see...
Uh....... you do realize that letting only 100 people go would still be a ton of people right?
Yet you give the case for managed decline, not expansion. When you are trying to manage a decline, yes, you lay off the person who is only giving 75% and keep the person who does 110%. Yet even then Mr. 110% is still overworked, doing all of his work, and some of somebody else's. Under that constraint, you aren't going to expand.
Do they not have 1.3 million players anymore? That is still a boatload of money if each one is paying $15.00 a month.
I am sure that is a bloated number but I still think they have a pretty good base. The biggest problem is the voice acting. They will have to unload a lot of that stuff and revamp to the game to make it affordable to run and I personally didnt think they could continue with the voice acting. It was nice to have but I do think it will be limited to possible player class storyline at this point. Who knows either way reductions without announcing new development team is bad news.
I feel bad for thinking this. I really do. I want to see everyone do well. However, I'm glad SWTOR is becoming the laughing stock of MMOs. Maybe now future games will actually start to think, "You know what? Maybe we need to think of something new."
I don't want anyone to lose their jobs, though.
This game is just not built to retain interest. There have been countless threads pre-development on their forums and they all went completely ignored.
You want a single-player story? Okay. It's worth 50 bucks. No doubt about that. But a monthly fee? Not even close.
It would've been worth a monthly fee had they included social elements, e.g., larger worlds fit for housing and guild structures, a true world pvp conflict between light and dark, incentives to dwell in all areas of the game (no need to go to tattooine after you leveled through it etc), deep space content etc.
As of now, you are paying monthly to play KoTOR 1 & 2. What did they think was going to happen? I cannot believe how stupid their team was/is. Worst planning EVER.
I can almost hear them all thinking "Warzones will keep them occupied."
Didnt work with Warhammer, Didnt work with Rift and didnt work with any other WoW clone thats came and gone over the last 7 years. Plus not to mention that TESO and Copernicus seem to be following the same WoW model. In fact as long as WoW continues to garner 100+ million scubscribers you're gonna have greedy studio executives trying to emulate Blizzards success.
I don't like RIFT as a WoW clone, but I'm also not going to put them in the same category as Warhammer. They are actually growing their game, and those playing it have an extremely high level of satisfaction with it. They were in the danger zone, but they've passed out of it. And they are a lore more profitable than TOR is, when you consider the ROI involved in both.
... In fact as long as WoW continues to garner 100+ million scubscribers you're gonna have greedy studio executives trying to emulate Blizzards success.
Seriously? You know the numbers go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10... not 8, 9, 100... right?
Actually 1.3 is a very good thing. Patch in game play enhancements, then hit with a big content patch later in the summer. Reality is a lot of SWTOR players haven't for example done Denova hardmode or the flashpoints hardmode, so enhcancements like PvE LFG will be very good.
Server merges and transfers is nothing WoW, for example, hasn't seen before. I remember on my original server in WoW Vanilla how at launch there were 60 min queues then 6 months later the pop was sort of lightish. Blizzard allowed transfers and merges and it picked up from that point onwards.
What MMOs need to be persistent is gameplay features to keep you trying for the content. Bioware are clearly on the right lines here.
Putting content out in the dead of summer is the wrong time. Less people play during the summer. You put content out in summer, it is done by fall, when people become bored..... and all those shiny freaking MMO nextbigthinggames launch.
And stop trying to rewrite history about a game 8 years ago. WoW didn't lose subs after 6 months. On the contrary, they experienced solid growth for several years. WoW wasn't offering transfers for people from dead servers to populated ones. Rather, some servers were becoming so heavy, they were going out of their way to transfer you to the less populated ones, as a way to increase pop on that server. Why? Because they knew their game was growing, but in the meantime, this server needed a temp boost. That worked, and they added even more servers. TOR is different. They have so few people playing, they need to conslidate servers.
And yes, some people haven't done "hardmodes." Yet by the time you are doing hardmode, you likely aren't doing it in a pick up group. You wanna do it with people you know, since they are less likely to cause a wipe. They aren't doing hardmode because they didn't find the normal version terribly compelling. and the only thing "hardmode" about it is it becomes a raw DPS race. Again, for all the ways the game sucks, WoW does this sorta stuff better.
Voices like this are why TOR is in so much trouble.
WTF happened to ranked Warzones? Was that just axed like Ilum?
They do need to fix Ilum but who gives a F about ranked warzones. What a friggin waste of development. I hope they scrapped that so they can concentrate on something to fix Ilum or important.
It is pretty sad. This game did have a lot of promise. I find it amazing that 200 people got fired instead of working on more content. I mean 200 people should be able to pop out new content pretty fast.
I actually saw an interview or something that said that they are going to add more space battle equipment or something... FOR WHAT?!?!
They really screwed up this game by not slowing down the exp. They could have bought themselves so much time if they would have made it so you DIDN'T level out of the content long before you finished the planet. If people were still working on hitting max level.. at least the casual players, they would have been so much better.
The other HUGE problem was the lack of PVP. Arena battles suck. Thad built in faction warfare. All your missions were already fighting the other faction. IF we would have been doing the same quests it would ahve made the game amazing.
I spent about 3 weeks at max level and it sucked. There was almost an entire planet of quests i had to go through and gained no exp because i was already level 50. It was stupid. And that was just so i could get to the Ilum to do stupid repeat crap.
It is obvious that the people working on the game were NOT gamers. Definitely not PVP MMO gamers.
And honestly, it was not that great of graphics or animations.
I don't see much of the sweet either to be honest. It was weird that EA were so dismissive of the game in that last earnings call, and I guess yesterday's events will only reinforce that.
As a player, I don't know what to expect or when I can realistically expect to see whatever I should be expecting in-game.
They need to stop being quiet and give dates for 1.3, ranked wzs and server transfers - and then meet those dates or people will just figure that they've given up on the game altogether. The community when they're not clamouring for blood (they certainly got some yesterday) are pretty clear about priorities - and now it's time for BW/EA to listen and respond.
Unless they do that, the assumption that the game has just entered life-support mode is going to be a very difficult one to refute.
I don't see much of the sweet either to be honest. It was weird that EA were so dismissive of the game in that last earnings call, and I guess yesterday's events will only reinforce that.
As a player, I don't know what to expect or when I can realistically expect to see whatever I should be expecting in-game.
They need to stop being quiet and give dates for 1.3, ranked wzs and server transfers - and then meet those dates or people will just figure that they've given up on the game altogether. The community when they're not clamouring for blood (they certainly got some yesterday) are pretty clear about priorities - and now it's time for BW/EA to listen and respond.
Unless they do that, the assumption that the game has just entered life-support mode is going to be a very difficult one to refute.
It's far to late for them to start listening to their players, it's just not how EA or BioEA works.
Also it's dead Jim.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
Comments
I'd say much more bitter than sweet, and that's coming from a guy supporting the game.
1.3 needed to be AT LEAST another 1.2. And they needed to flesh out the world they made on top of it. I enjoy many aspects of the game, but it would take alot more to make me stay indefinitely. And if they're gonna lop of a quarter of the workforce already, it's looking more and more likely that it will never earn my indefinite sub.
The Secret World most likely will be about the same: A fun ride to max level, and then I'll be stuck with nice big zones with nothing left to do in them.
Looks like GW2 will be my next hope. At least there won't be a sub fee if I find myself thumb twiddling at max there, as well.
First ...that is not news... it was announced months ago that 1.3 would be moved ahead of schedule and be content light so as to bring all the features that could not be in 1.2 in the game ASAP as well as a few new ones like group finder.
If you expected content you're just not paying attention.
WTF happened to ranked Warzones? Was that just axed like Ilum?
A farily accurate assessment in my opinion. Par for the course after a game is launched, so no worries on that front. However, like the article said, not a good idea with all of the games coming out, as well as some issues they need to fix. Everyone heralding the death knell of SWTOR are seriously overstating things, but SWTOR definitely needs to do something, if it wants to avoid a WAR type status, where it just limps along for years to come (Sort of like SWG.... oh, i'm gonna get it now).
I self identify as a monkey.
Actually 1.3 is a very good thing. Patch in game play enhancements, then hit with a big content patch later in the summer. Reality is a lot of SWTOR players haven't for example done Denova hardmode or the flashpoints hardmode, so enhcancements like PvE LFG will be very good.
Server merges and transfers is nothing WoW, for example, hasn't seen before. I remember on my original server in WoW Vanilla how at launch there were 60 min queues then 6 months later the pop was sort of lightish. Blizzard allowed transfers and merges and it picked up from that point onwards.
What MMOs need to be persistent is gameplay features to keep you trying for the content. Bioware are clearly on the right lines here.
Exactly.
I garantee you not one person posting here asking for content has a single piece of Campaign Gear or has set foot on Voss since 1.2 unless they weren't even 50, and that would not be so surprising if they weren't
Sad too see some talented devs lose their jobs and income because the suits supposedly know it all,but hopefully these guys can get a team together either get backing the traditional way or maybe go the kick starter route these guys must be champing at the bit to let their creative juices flow after been muzzled for so long.
They fire 200 people and then promote Daniel Erikson to lead developer? He's not a developer, he's a writer - and not only a pretty poor writer but also a player-despising blowhard.
Post-launch games need a smaller development team. Daniel Erikson in SWTOR development told everyone how much the writing team were contributing to the game design, that probably explains why he is at the lead now in a streamlined team.
Exactly. He's a major part of the problem, and this reinforces they just don't get it.
___________________________
Have flask; will travel.
Bittersweet? 200 people lose their jobs, some hack writer gets promoted to a lead developer position and SWTOR is finally getting a feature that should have been there at launch instead of a content update?
Don't see much "sweet" there.
In June 2010, Ray Muzyka stated they had 800 employees total at Bioware...and that included all employees not just developers : "There’s people focused on… we have like, I don’t know, 800 people in our group, now, or something like that. Four locations: BioWare Edmonton; BioWare Austin; BioWare Montreal; BioWare Mythic, and they’re all doing different kinds of games. "
The only sad thing about this story is that its those that are NOT in charge that either lost their jobs or were taken off the project.
I just hope the game goes F2P with some sort of cash shop before they lose so many players they have to shut it down.
I hope we shall crush...in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country." ~Thomes Jefferson
edit
Uh....... you do realize that letting only 100 people go would still be a ton of people right?
Yet you give the case for managed decline, not expansion. When you are trying to manage a decline, yes, you lay off the person who is only giving 75% and keep the person who does 110%. Yet even then Mr. 110% is still overworked, doing all of his work, and some of somebody else's. Under that constraint, you aren't going to expand.
I am sure that is a bloated number but I still think they have a pretty good base. The biggest problem is the voice acting. They will have to unload a lot of that stuff and revamp to the game to make it affordable to run and I personally didnt think they could continue with the voice acting. It was nice to have but I do think it will be limited to possible player class storyline at this point. Who knows either way reductions without announcing new development team is bad news.
I don't like RIFT as a WoW clone, but I'm also not going to put them in the same category as Warhammer. They are actually growing their game, and those playing it have an extremely high level of satisfaction with it. They were in the danger zone, but they've passed out of it. And they are a lore more profitable than TOR is, when you consider the ROI involved in both.
Seriously? You know the numbers go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10... not 8, 9, 100... right?
Or maybe check your data...
Putting content out in the dead of summer is the wrong time. Less people play during the summer. You put content out in summer, it is done by fall, when people become bored..... and all those shiny freaking MMO nextbigthinggames launch.
And stop trying to rewrite history about a game 8 years ago. WoW didn't lose subs after 6 months. On the contrary, they experienced solid growth for several years. WoW wasn't offering transfers for people from dead servers to populated ones. Rather, some servers were becoming so heavy, they were going out of their way to transfer you to the less populated ones, as a way to increase pop on that server. Why? Because they knew their game was growing, but in the meantime, this server needed a temp boost. That worked, and they added even more servers. TOR is different. They have so few people playing, they need to conslidate servers.
And yes, some people haven't done "hardmodes." Yet by the time you are doing hardmode, you likely aren't doing it in a pick up group. You wanna do it with people you know, since they are less likely to cause a wipe. They aren't doing hardmode because they didn't find the normal version terribly compelling. and the only thing "hardmode" about it is it becomes a raw DPS race. Again, for all the ways the game sucks, WoW does this sorta stuff better.
Voices like this are why TOR is in so much trouble.
They do need to fix Ilum but who gives a F about ranked warzones. What a friggin waste of development. I hope they scrapped that so they can concentrate on something to fix Ilum or important.
It is pretty sad. This game did have a lot of promise. I find it amazing that 200 people got fired instead of working on more content. I mean 200 people should be able to pop out new content pretty fast.
I actually saw an interview or something that said that they are going to add more space battle equipment or something... FOR WHAT?!?!
They really screwed up this game by not slowing down the exp. They could have bought themselves so much time if they would have made it so you DIDN'T level out of the content long before you finished the planet. If people were still working on hitting max level.. at least the casual players, they would have been so much better.
The other HUGE problem was the lack of PVP. Arena battles suck. Thad built in faction warfare. All your missions were already fighting the other faction. IF we would have been doing the same quests it would ahve made the game amazing.
I spent about 3 weeks at max level and it sucked. There was almost an entire planet of quests i had to go through and gained no exp because i was already level 50. It was stupid. And that was just so i could get to the Ilum to do stupid repeat crap.
It is obvious that the people working on the game were NOT gamers. Definitely not PVP MMO gamers.
And honestly, it was not that great of graphics or animations.
Too bad , so sad.
I don't see much of the sweet either to be honest. It was weird that EA were so dismissive of the game in that last earnings call, and I guess yesterday's events will only reinforce that.
As a player, I don't know what to expect or when I can realistically expect to see whatever I should be expecting in-game.
They need to stop being quiet and give dates for 1.3, ranked wzs and server transfers - and then meet those dates or people will just figure that they've given up on the game altogether. The community when they're not clamouring for blood (they certainly got some yesterday) are pretty clear about priorities - and now it's time for BW/EA to listen and respond.
Unless they do that, the assumption that the game has just entered life-support mode is going to be a very difficult one to refute.
It's far to late for them to start listening to their players, it's just not how EA or BioEA works.
Also it's dead Jim.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.