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Main reason why SWTOR flopped?
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I have no problem admitting it. Can you admit TOR losing over half (even going with EAs spin sub number) of the players that bought the game in less than 6 months? If you want to talk percentages, who really won that one? Hum?
That is still 20% better for a ratio, and 300k vs 1.3M in the first months post launch of each game. Even if you say 1M a whole 6 months in, TOR is still sporting 3 times the subs of SWG at its apex. Four times if you count the 250k SWG dropped to a short while later. Four times the subs, and you guys are running off about this game?
LA/SOE dropped a ton of money on SWG as well, for its time, so it isnt like comparisons arent fair. TOR numbers smack SWG around. So what exactly ya trying to say?
Continue to say what ya guys want, TOR is around, and SWG is no where to be found. That pretty much tells the tale.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
The list you made is mirrored so often on the forums, it's essentially the collective unconscious of the SWTOR player crying out for a whole game. The list you made represents a whole different game, and its one that the Bioware Lundbergs don't want to make. They have their formula, and they are going to ride it in.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Well, they did sell a ton of boxes, sort of anyway. Whether it is the second most subbed game in the West... you know, and EA knows, that sub numbers are funny things. If you reactivate nearly everybody that played the game for free, then of course you're going to be close to the number of people that bought the box and actually played the game. Whether those are the actual number of paying subscribers is of course another matter entirely.
If F2P or Freemium games started handing out free "subs" to every account ever created then TOR would be nowhere near second place. Of course WoW-numbers include pay-per-hour "subscriptions" too, so sub-numbers are really funny sometimes. It's un unfair comparison because people had to buy the box in the first place, but I'm not impressed by how vague/misleading EA is about TOR sub-numbers. So they don't get an undisputed "2nd most subbed to game in the West" just yet, because all they do is blow a lot of smoke.
Cmon
They sold 2.4M already. That isnt some freaking made up number. It was unheard of for a MMO launch.
Hell I have yet to hear GW2 hit the same level of pre orders, and with making folks pre purchase that friggen P2W game, they got the ultimate viral spamming crew known to man.....well the MMO world anyways.
Tor is going to be fine. The folks camping here to bitch about the game.....probably not so much.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
2.4M is a lot, as far as MMO launches go, granted, but that's all. Don't compare it to the likes of Skyrim or other EA successful titles. It's not doing all that well. It cost a fortune to create and is not delivering in proportion to the massive investment.
Lots of people got burnt by the hype, it's doubtful any MMO will beat this preorder record. Great IP, lots of hype, disappointing MMO. I'd expect people to be more careful next time.
As far as GW2 being a P2W game, I'd have to guess that you think your crystal ball has never failed you. But if it's telling you that TOR is going to be fine, then I wouldn't bet my house on what it's saying.
One of the reasons GW1, another story-driven, "single-player-ish" online game was so successful is that it works at both the group level and at the single-player level pretty well. I think that's essential for MMOs and is the reason WoW so very wisely converted all of its elite zone-based content to make it soloable. Who wants to spam in the LFG channel when there are so few to answer the call?
The reason SWTOR fails is that it is essentially an online CORPG but with MMO areas and quests (such as heroics and flashpoints) that can neither be soloed nor completed in a group because you can't find groups for them. In other words, you have big chunks of content that no one can play.
In my opinion, SWTOR would have been far more popular and successful over the long term if Bioware had just made it a B2P online co-op RPG. Treat the flashpoints and operations as group content that is accessible via a cross-server LFG and make all of the planetary heroics soloable. Period. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, make the game buy-to-play and only charge for additional planets/content as DLCs.
In its present form, Bioware is charging way too much for what it is providing, imo. That's a fool-proof recipe for disenchantment and subscriber loss.
If you were able to put up with flying ewoks and jedi running around in the Empire Strikes Back era, then you should have had no problem with those minor insignificants you just mentioned. It's not like Bioware took lore that had already been established in the movies and retconned it.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
TOR is not fine, nothing about TOR is fine except they sold a bunch of boxes using the Star Wars name. The game is sinking faster than the titanic and while it may find some sort of meager existence, that's a sad state for a game that had the hype and potential to be the number 1 MMO out there.
12.6.13
Austin Bioware's Star Wars the Old Republic a flop? Announced Oct 2008, released Dec 2011.
1. It is one of the few games that have tier one population/subscriber numbers (+1 million).
2. It does not have wow #s (6M east 5M west) nor the #2 game Aion (2.5M) but TOR was certainly there at #3.
3. 'the TOR 1.7M subscribers #' ... "we said we had 1.7 million subscribers on the last call, which was about a month ago." (Feb 2012) "What that was about was the fact that only about just about half that number had triggered through their 30-day point and become active subscribers, our definition of recurring subscribers.
We had about half that total still in the 30-day trial period, but they're subscribers because that first month is including with a package good. What I said a month ago was, just over half. I can now confirm for you today that the vast majority of the 1.7 is now triggered through that point and they're recurring subscribers."
4. The swg vs TOR wishful thinking/delusion, SoE's June 2003 Star War Galaxy at its best had about 300K subscribers (SWGs last 13 of 25 servers shut down Dec 2011).
With TOR having about 1.7M, obviously NO COMPARISON #s wise; SWG was not even close; within two years most SWG people had abandoned it due to the CU (Combat Upgrade Apr '05) and NGE (New Game Enhancement Nov '05) fiasco "upgrades."
edit
5. The Runescape population/subscriber #s
It may look that Runescape lost a lot of subscribers, and they did, but there are two important factors you should take into consideration :
First of all with the migration from Runescape Classic to Runescape 2 there may have been some players lost, the listing does not differentiate between the two. Nowadays Runescape 2 is just called Runescape and Runescape Classic is pretty much closed down.
Secondly, and more important, the war against bots, macroers and other cheaters increased to unbelievable heights.
In 2009 thousands got banned, but that was peanuts compared to the 7.7 million banned accounts in Oct 2011. +9M, may be the largest anti cheater operation in pc gaming history.
Runescape now has about as many subscribers as Linden Research used to have in its ftp 2003 Second Life (Second Life stopped releasing #s 3Q11 ref)
The reason why it flopped becasuse it was released too early. None of your reasons in that poll show it, but that's the reason. SWG was released early but back in those days you didn't have whiny kids complaining about end game and other stupid crap that didn't matter. You had other things to complained about like "quest content" and game balance issues. And to top it off Bioware has done a horrible job with customer service.
"Everything is mine and your woman too"
Simply put its not an MMO. Theres nothing massively Multiplayer about the game. Its more like a CRPG with co-op and few people want to pay a subscription fee for that. All out Focus on single player storyline is probably the second biggest fault.
1st. After level 50 I ended up in that same Themepark wagon waiting in a line in some hub for my turn to next War/Battle/front/area/insta. Seen it in so many Themes before and they delivered the same bisquit.
2nd. No open world. I want to feel I defend my faction/home/guilds land/city/village. Large land which could be processed like rush games in battlefields, so that you need to achieve certain controll points before you claim particular area and then move to fight for the next important strategic piece of a map. Or better to be actual sandbox areas with sieges etc.. (but you said you'd never do this, go for sandbox.... might want to suck that over)
3rd. Why didn't you Devs follow the realistic traditional art style you favored in your cinamatics ! ? You wanted to make the most coolest trailers, but what the hell, why not make the game as well. What where you thinking!
1. For EA/BW marketing and finances it was a success.
2. For the standarts of quality expected from developers and the expected quality of full-price released (supposedly finished) products ... it was a crippling hit - in that they got away with it.
3. For the Star Wars franchise it was a huge kick in the gnads.
4. For the respect between large parts of the global MMO-playerbase and developers in general, it was another (kick in the gnads).
I won't even say anything about gameplay, that subject has been overflamed.
Good answer, a short term thinking like in the investors world only hurts the soul of a game. Corporates dont have a soul or heart, they go for the buck with a elbow mindset but they dont recognize the damage they do with certain decisions.
SWTOR died because the dev team was completely useless. When you post on their forums about bugs, issues, etc and ask when they will fix it they do the exact same process of response.
1) Can we find a reason to delete this thread and/or #2 and #3
2) Ban the account from posting on the forums, and do #1 and #3
3) Lock the thread and #4
4) Post a parting shot about how there is no problem and this person is a troll and do #3 at the least
5) Post a new thread in the dev forums about how all these 'bugs' are not 'bugs' then one week later do #6
6) Post a thread in the dev forums about fixing the 'bugs' previously described by someone who has had action #1-4 taken against them
7) Rinse and repeat #1-6 for the upcoming wave of new threads about our blatent lies and ignorance
8) Begin watch on forums for #1
9) This is just out of hand we can't complete process #1-4 fast enough lets just close down the forums and call it 'overpopulation' or something, and when they go back up have all hands on deck for #1
As soon as you drift from 'the customer is always right' mentality you will fail at whatever business you are in. This new age of workforce grew up with the liberal mentality of 'Everyone is a winner!!!' and they have no concept of accepting the fact that they are failing at something. They convince themselves they are winners. It's like an oddball Engineer logic level for people who aren't even smart enough to be an engineer.
The Dev team ruined this game, not EA (although I absolutely hate EA with a fiery passion). They still have not learned their lesson. You cannot post a negative thread in their forums and talk about what they did wrong because of their process tree listed above. They refuse to listen to people who tell them what to change. They don't realize these people CARE about the game and they want it to do good, thats why they take the time to log into forums and talk about it. They just don't get it. I don't understand how they can be that blatently ignorant.
The guild summit was when I quit playing, after watching that feel-good group talk about how awesome they are and OBVIOUSLY censor any negative questions that the entire community wanted answers for, I knew the game was doomed. This is why you can't have these kids in charge, this is why you need older generation project managers who understand the business model. This game could have been amazing and still be growing today if they just listened to their community. Its a crying shame that I have to post this thread on a different website for anyone to read it, as it has been deleted within 1-2 minutes when me or my friends tried to post it on the swtor forums.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Ok I'll bite.
How could you have "saved" SWTOR? You obviously think you have all the answers. Please enlighten us with some of your wisdom.
I think the main reason SWTOR flopped is that its just not what people expected. My personal opinion was that it reminded me of KOTR and KOTR2 with some more features, and a multiplayer function.
There are times when one must ask themselves is it my passion that truly frightens you? Or your own?
Umm... did you read my post? Or are you just another swtor fanboy who can't see the titanic sinking as water is up to your neck? No one person has the answer, that was my whole point.
I could cut and paste my post again, but people like you have some kind of sweet mental block ability that locks out logical answers. I'm sure if you were on the titanic your reasoning would be "IT CAN'T SINK" as you're in the ocean swimming. Wake up son, there are reasons its sinking, even if they are beyond your capabilties to grasp, and its not my gripes with the game that arent being adressed, its the hundreds of thousands of peoples gripes with the game that are being ignored - hence hundreds of thousands are leaving the game.
A million people didnt buy the game, play it solid for a few months and then quit because they hated the game overall - Almost everyone loved what they played, but hated that none of their issues were ever adressed, and most of them were outright ignored and banned from the forums. Its not my place to fix the game, thats the dev team. Same goes for you, as a consumer you make demand, and they supply for it. If they cannot make a supply for the demand, they fail. Its very simple, and its a fact of business, much like the laws of nature. It will always be true, forever, and they for some reason couldnt grasp it, and still refuse to.
Because it was a singple player game for solo players and once they finished with the solo content they left and are leaving.
SWtor never stood a chance from the very beginning. The developer missjudge the MMO market and tried to play it safe by using mechanics from other games. Their priorities did not match the priorities of MMORPG players and that's where it failed. I personally think instead of making the game they wanted to make they let the marketing department make a checklist of things that should be in the game and then decided to add "voice work" which ended up balloning the budget.
I remember reading what EALOUSE was saying and at the time, i thought no company can be this clueless and it turns out he was right, ofc he was being an ass but he was right.
This might sound trollish, but it should not be taken as such, but I think IMO Swtor had to fail to finally get future developers to get off the WoW train mode of development, obviously soon to be release games and games that started development before swtor wont be affected but it is still a good sign.
More X-Wings and TIE Fighters pls, kthx.
You haven't even given one. Let's start naming a few and examining them.
No, please, not again? Insert the html "huge font" tags, as appropriate.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.