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Will SWTOR ever recover?

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  • DavisFlightDavisFlight Member CommonPosts: 2,556
    Originally posted by LizardKing89
    Originally posted by simplius

    BioWare did try

    and at least they didnt launch at the same stage, as sto did,,half finished, and full of bugs

    but just because a man is a good pianist, doesnt mean that he is good at the drums too

    in fact , a specialist , is usually only good at ONE thing

    BW have failed to understand one basic rule of mmos:

    the developer has to seduce the player,,every day

    when they fail at that, the players go for greener pastures

    Well said.  I Don't blame Bioware so much as I do EA.  Bioware had a great track record (DA2 aside) before SWTOR.  If they would have been allowed the time I think we would have seen a much better game.  Once EA got their hooks into the game is was rushed and was a buggy mess from the start.

    Why wouldn't you blame Bioware? Blame all of them.

     

    Bioware made a singeleplayer game and called it an MMO, hence why it failed.

  • LizardKing89LizardKing89 Member UncommonPosts: 61
    Originally posted by DavisFlight
    Originally posted by LizardKing89
    Originally posted by simplius

    BioWare did try

    and at least they didnt launch at the same stage, as sto did,,half finished, and full of bugs

    but just because a man is a good pianist, doesnt mean that he is good at the drums too

    in fact , a specialist , is usually only good at ONE thing

    BW have failed to understand one basic rule of mmos:

    the developer has to seduce the player,,every day

    when they fail at that, the players go for greener pastures

    Well said.  I Don't blame Bioware so much as I do EA.  Bioware had a great track record (DA2 aside) before SWTOR.  If they would have been allowed the time I think we would have seen a much better game.  Once EA got their hooks into the game is was rushed and was a buggy mess from the start.

    Why wouldn't you blame Bioware? Blame all of them.

     

    Bioware made a singeleplayer game and called it an MMO, hence why it failed.

    That's where their inexperience showed I think.  Not to mention that awful engine they used I wish they would have made one from the ground up.

  • TerranahTerranah Member UncommonPosts: 3,575

    They screwed up design and implementation.  There is no recovery from that. 

     

    They could make it better though.  But would the cost justify it?  I don't think so.  There's too many things wrong with the game and they missed that initial window to impress.  It would be better to start over with another developer and a whole new design philosophy and implementation.

  • ZieglerZiegler Member Posts: 159

    This game was a total trainwreck. For one, people thought the same BW that did Baldurs gates and Neverwinter Nights was going to be doing SWG 2.0. That probably would have been a great game.

    Instead what we got, was a fading company riding the fame of previous programmers. Ones who were offended to even have Star Wars Galaxies mentioned. It was only a week or two after the forums went live that one of the very few developer posts basically quoted someone about starwars galaxies and made the comment...this isnt going to be ..a day in the life of starwars"..... That was the very first post that made me feel worried and it didnt get anything but worse as they went.

    EALouse was right. If you can still find the letter he posted, he called this a full year? before release, talking about how they were over budget, had little of the game in place, and the programmers were bracing for a trainwreck due to the suits.

    They squandered probably the most lucrative IP out there..and worse, LA killed SWG specifically to allow them to do it.

  • DEATHRAMENTDEATHRAMENT Member UncommonPosts: 701
    I find this game boring and bland. So no i don't think it will recover. Maybe if they change many things about it. (my opinion of course)
  • ignore_meignore_me Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 1,987
    Originally posted by Ziegler

    This game was a total trainwreck. For one, people thought the same BW that did Baldurs gates and Neverwinter Nights was going to be doing SWG 2.0. That probably would have been a great game.

    Instead what we got, was a fading company riding the fame of previous programmers. Ones who were offended to even have Star Wars Galaxies mentioned. It was only a week or two after the forums went live that one of the very few developer posts basically quoted someone about starwars galaxies and made the comment...this isnt going to be ..a day in the life of starwars"..... That was the very first post that made me feel worried and it didnt get anything but worse as they went.

    EALouse was right. If you can still find the letter he posted, he called this a full year? before release, talking about how they were over budget, had little of the game in place, and the programmers were bracing for a trainwreck due to the suits.

    They squandered probably the most lucrative IP out there..and worse, LA killed SWG specifically to allow them to do it.

    double homicide, so true.

    Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011

  • VidirVidir Member UncommonPosts: 963
    Hm recover,I dont know how the game is doing, for me it was fun for few weeks untill finished the class quest then it was game over for me. Dont Think I will ever even considder playing it again.
  • SephirosoSephiroso Member RarePosts: 2,020
    Was this necro'd or something? How can this thread be alive still.

    image
    Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!

  • nomssnomss Member UncommonPosts: 1,468
    I don't see how it can recover. Look at the MMORPG's release line up.
  • ktanner3ktanner3 Member UncommonPosts: 4,063
    Originally posted by Frostvein
    Originally posted by ktanner3
    Originally posted by BadOrb

    Well it' recovered from this time last year's no updates and F2P conversion. Not just recovered but gained 10% profit. Okay so with EQNext coming out then it might lose a few more subbs even though it's not a sci-fi MMO. At least it is making some money so it should at least be here for a while.

    http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=664635

    Cheers,

    BadOrb.

    Isn't EQNext and TESO supposed to be this year's "bad boys" that will once and for all destroy TOR? I remember when last year it was suppose to be TERA, TSW and GW2 and well, didn't quite happen. I also seem to recall many claiming that EA wouldn't even mention TOR in their quarterly's by this point. Wrong again. Of course WOW is still here after years of doom so we should come to expect bad predictions from  MMO Haters R US";)

     

    People over use the word destroy.

     

    Tera was full of ex SWTOR players at launch, so was GW2 (and I'd bet TSW, although I didn't play it)  Any time a new MMO comes out, its bad news for SWTOR.

     

    SWTOR will probably never go away, as there is a fairly large population of people that play anything with Star Wars on the box, regardless of how good/bad the game itself is. That still doesn't protect it from new releases.

    Of course players are going to try the new releases when they come out. Every MMO has to deal with that so it's hardly a problem exclusive to TOR. New games are going to be released every year and that will have an effect on current titles. That's just the nature of the business. That's a bit different from saying "the new releases will kill TOR" which WAS said around these parts frequently. 

    Currently Playing: World of Warcraft

  • BlazeyerBlazeyer Member UncommonPosts: 562

    If FFXIV can do it, SWTOR can.

    But will they close the game down for a year and pour tens of millions into it? No.

  • FrostveinFrostvein Member UncommonPosts: 157
    Originally posted by ktanner3
    Originally posted by Frostvein
    Originally posted by ktanner3
    Originally posted by BadOrb

    Well it' recovered from this time last year's no updates and F2P conversion. Not just recovered but gained 10% profit. Okay so with EQNext coming out then it might lose a few more subbs even though it's not a sci-fi MMO. At least it is making some money so it should at least be here for a while.

    http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=664635

    Cheers,

    BadOrb.

    Isn't EQNext and TESO supposed to be this year's "bad boys" that will once and for all destroy TOR? I remember when last year it was suppose to be TERA, TSW and GW2 and well, didn't quite happen. I also seem to recall many claiming that EA wouldn't even mention TOR in their quarterly's by this point. Wrong again. Of course WOW is still here after years of doom so we should come to expect bad predictions from  MMO Haters R US";)

     

    People over use the word destroy.

     

    Tera was full of ex SWTOR players at launch, so was GW2 (and I'd bet TSW, although I didn't play it)  Any time a new MMO comes out, its bad news for SWTOR.

     

    SWTOR will probably never go away, as there is a fairly large population of people that play anything with Star Wars on the box, regardless of how good/bad the game itself is. That still doesn't protect it from new releases.

    Of course players are going to try the new releases when they come out. Every MMO has to deal with that so it's hardly a problem exclusive to TOR. New games are going to be released every year and that will have an effect on current titles. That's just the nature of the business. That's a bit different from saying "the new releases will kill TOR" which WAS said around these parts frequently. 

    I think the SWTOR population tracking site still has this data up, so u can see that the biggest hits to SWTOR were around the times TERA, GW2 and D3 came out. F2P was announced shortly thereafter the release of these games.

     

    I wont bother arguing if the game is "dead" is not, but -

    If you don't consider it dead, then those titles obviously maimed it.

    If you think it is dead, then those titles obviously helped kill it.

     

     

  • gervaise1gervaise1 Member EpicPosts: 6,919

    Well there is a thread on the official forums in which the OP and various others suggest SWTOR has already recovered according to EA's Q1 2014 results. Have to assume the thread OP simply doesn't understand as the two quotes from EA's results are incomplete / out of context. Lots of folk high fiving Bioware as  a result.

    Thread link: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=664635

    Original post:

    *********************************************************************************************************

    EA released their Q1 2014 report today and SWTOR saw a rise over 3 months ago and more growth than the last year (since q1 2013 aka may-aug 2012)

    Quote (1):

    First, extra content and free-to-play contributed $177 million, up 35% over the prior year, led by sustained growth in FIFA Ultimate Team, as well as Star Wars: The Old Republic, and FIFA Online 3. This revenue relates to businesses on PC or consoles, where consumers can enhance or extend their gaming experience by buying additional digital content.

    Quote (2):

    In the previous year, Star Wars: The Old Republic was a subscription-only based MMO. This year, some of the revenue was
    recognized in the free-to-play category as we expanded this title to be both a subscription and free-to-play game. If you were to combine all of our extra content free-to-play with subscription, ads, and other, we still saw more than 10% growth over the same period last year.

    Congratulations to the Bioware team for stabilizing and now growing the game's population and income, it's a good sign

    *********************************************************************************************************

    To put things in context the line before quote 1 (from EA's analyst Q&A transcript http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ERTS/2610778646x0x679051/d5d63fd4-8e1f-442e-9969-5ac3508923d8/EA-Jul-23-2013_Transcript.pdf available from http://ir.ea.com/ ) was:

    "Breaking down our digital revenue into its key components highlights the performances of each business."

    So the 35% increase is for EA's total digital revenue - not SWTORs - and as such says nothing about SWTORs.

     

    And the line before quote 2 which again provides the context was:

    "And fourth, subscriptions, advertising, and other digital revenue contributed $61 million, down 25% over the same period last year."

    EA is talking about a) why their sub revenue is down 25% - because SWTOR has many fewer subscribers than it did 12 months earlier - but b) defending their results by saying that all of their digital revenue for extra content + f2p + subs + ads + other digital revenue was up 10%. And whilst this ncludes SWTOR it doesn't say anything about SWTOR in isolation as it is talking about all of EA's digital revenue. So FIFA, Battlefield, WAR, DAoC etc etc. SWTOR may have gone up 200% or gone down 500%. It is buried.

    And if you check EA's statement about SWTOR being the "big reason" for subs/ads/other being down 25% then it makes sense. 12 months earlier SWTOR still had between 500k and 1M subs - according to EA - which will have brought in between $15M and $30M (allowing for the free 30-days rolled out last year) compared to this years say $5M to $10. A big drop for sure. It won't be the only reason for the drop but EA are just giving the big hitter.

     

    To read the thread on the official forums however all is well

     

    The only thing that EA said about SWTOR specifically was in answer to a question on business models:

     

    "we started a free-to-play Star Wars business and part of that is showing up in the extra content. So you’re seeing the subscription business down 25%. That’s a reduction, some of the people moving away from Star Wars subscriptions and playing the free-to-play, which is helping drive the extra content side of the equation"

    So subs down 25% since F2P - maybe the number for the last full month pre-F2P compared to the average sub number for Q1 2014. Either way 25% doesn't sound to bad imo. The rest of the answer - well I understand the generality of the answer (remember the discussion is really about all of EA's games) but suspect that SWTOR is a bad example. People stop being subscribers and then spend money on extra content?  Yes ... but so do subscribers.

    Anyway - all is well according to the poster on the official forums !!!!!

     

     

     

     

  • ignore_meignore_me Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 1,987

    According to a recent survey on themeparkdrone.com

    "4 out of 5 people with nothing to do rated this game as nothing to do."

    I can look up some more statistics but the sum of all the calculations is that SWTOR will waste your time unless you have the entertainment tastes of a unicellular organism. Any game can idle along as this one is, there is no great achievement here except for swindling a whole lot of Star Wars hostages because there is no other MMO. The introduction of this game was Machiavellian in its destruction of the IP for the MMORPG user base. They couldn't have made it worse if they tried.

    Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011

  • simpliussimplius Member UncommonPosts: 1,134

    yes they could,,they took some good decisions too

    they chose themepark,,or would you like them to tweak the engine more?

    no noob ganking, they have isolated the factions, so players have very few opportunities to interact

    with the opposite faction

    thats the way its supposed to be on a PVE server, but they should prolly change that on the PVP servers

    the stories was mostly good,,a known boware feature

    but the implementation of the skill system is very lackluster,,Theres not a single skill for Space

    apparently, nobody can train as a pilot in that universe

    but that would explain the performance of the enemies on the Space maps

  • JacobinJacobin Member RarePosts: 1,009

    No it will not come back because the meat of SWTOR is the single player storyline which has an ending.

    The MMO aspects are just not good to retain players for a prolonged period of time (years) which is necessary for a game to grow rather than stagnate and dwindle.

  • ignore_meignore_me Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 1,987
    Originally posted by simplius

    yes they could,,they took some good decisions too

    they chose themepark,,or would you like them to tweak the engine more?

    no noob ganking, they have isolated the factions, so players have very few opportunities to interact

    with the opposite faction

    thats the way its supposed to be on a PVE server, but they should prolly change that on the PVP servers

    the stories was mostly good,,a known boware feature

    but the implementation of the skill system is very lackluster,,Theres not a single skill for Space

    apparently, nobody can train as a pilot in that universe

    but that would explain the performance of the enemies on the Space maps

    They chose the wrong engine.

    The wrong design.

    The wrong emphasis: story.

    They made a themepark, and then messed that up by making it linear and unvaried even by themepark standards.

    They had an inflexible UI.

    World PvP was advertised, implemented TWICE, and failed so bad it had to be pulled.

    They supplanted a better game for their game through back room brokering and dildoistic avarice.

    They put in a Space game that was a 90's low-capability console rail shooter.

    The group size is smaller than most games except in raid mode, so guildies often had to wait for the ride to be over to ride.

    The abilities had built -in hang and lack of responsiveness that made the game feel sluggish, and to some degree this still exists when compared to other games.

    The sub model failed so they introduced one of the most restrictive F2P models (even when you got everything through sub the game was still bad)

    The factions have very little interaction, and are essentially just separate games.

    Crafting is worse than useless, it's simple and counterproductive for the most part. You are better off grinding to buy from the NPCs or the store.

    The classes are the same for each side with a different skin. The builds are simplistic.

    Lobby play encouraged by locating the activities on a station that is an inorganic hub that feels like the DMV

    No non-combat activities (you can role-play they will quickly add, but you can role-play with a piece of tire rubber with just as much support as Bioware gives you. Tire rubber has no chat bubbles or Bio either)

    No player housing as the ships are just transit screens that are identical to everyone else's ship

    No-multi person vehicles

    Cartoony art style that has nothing to do with Star Wars. rehashed WoW shoulder pads made in Asian sweat shops from the left over budget after the rest of the money for the project went into the entropy bin.

    Formulaic giant monster raids, because no one can understand fighting anything else I guess.

    Bad performance on many systems.

    The stories have a hard time explaining x of y quests ad nauseum. Sith Quest: Go and get medicine for the villagers, but do so Evillly... 

    Content produced at a snails pace, bugs fixed so slow that Morgan Freeman has to explain it.

    It's a comedy of errors

     

    Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011

  • KarteliKarteli Member CommonPosts: 2,646
    Originally posted by ignore_me
    Originally posted by simplius

    yes they could,,they took some good decisions too

    they chose themepark,,or would you like them to tweak the engine more?

    no noob ganking, they have isolated the factions, so players have very few opportunities to interact

    with the opposite faction

    thats the way its supposed to be on a PVE server, but they should prolly change that on the PVP servers

    the stories was mostly good,,a known boware feature

    but the implementation of the skill system is very lackluster,,Theres not a single skill for Space

    apparently, nobody can train as a pilot in that universe

    but that would explain the performance of the enemies on the Space maps

    They chose the wrong engine.

    The wrong design.

    The wrong emphasis: story.

    They made a themepark, and then messed that up by making it linear and unvaried even by themepark standards.

    They had an inflexible UI.

    World PvP was advertised, implemented TWICE, and failed so bad it had to be pulled.

    They supplanted a better game for their game through back room brokering and dildoistic avarice.

    They put in a Space game that was a 90's low-capability console rail shooter.

    The group size is smaller than most games except in raid mode, so guildies often had to wait for the ride to be over to ride.

    The abilities had built -in hang and lack of responsiveness that made the game feel sluggish, and to some degree this still exists when compared to other games.

    The sub model failed so they introduced one of the most restrictive F2P models (even when you got everything through sub the game was still bad)

    The factions have very little interaction, and are essentially just separate games.

    Crafting is worse than useless, it's simple and counterproductive for the most part. You are better off grinding to buy from the NPCs or the store.

    The classes are the same for each side with a different skin. The builds are simplistic.

    Lobby play encouraged by locating the activities on a station that is an inorganic hub that feels like the DMV

    No non-combat activities (you can role-play they will quickly add, but you can role-play with a piece of tire rubber with just as much support as Bioware gives you. Tire rubber has no chat bubbles or Bio either)

    No player housing as the ships are just transit screens that are identical to everyone else's ship

    No-multi person vehicles

    Cartoony art style that has nothing to do with Star Wars. rehashed WoW shoulder pads made in Asian sweat shops from the left over budget after the rest of the money for the project went into the entropy bin.

    Formulaic giant monster raids, because no one can understand fighting anything else I guess.

    Bad performance on many systems.

    The stories have a hard time explaining x of y quests ad nauseum. Sith Quest: Go and get medicine for the villagers, but do so Evillly... 

    Content produced at a snails pace, bugs fixed so slow that Morgan Freeman has to explain it.

    It's a comedy of errors

     

    A fine post!  I would disagree on the fault about making a game around story, though:

    "The wrong emphasis: story."

     

    That is a strength.  Although once the story is completed, it is now a weakness.  EA failed to deliver story even in their first expansion, though.  So while story was important early on, nowadays, it is not. (sadly).  Story was important at launch though.

     

    I think story got a bunch of SW fans to check this game out.  They are kind of wishing that SWG was back, or that a different SW game would come out.  Because SWTOR is really a boring game, a tie with GW2 (for me).

     

     

    Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
    Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.

  • simpliussimplius Member UncommonPosts: 1,134

    the biggest sandbox game was/is at around 500k players, right?

    an mmo with that low expected sale will not get the star wars license, at least not alone

    and i doubt , that it is technically viable to program a sandbox game for millions of players

    at least , we havent seen one yet

    and even if they could, how many want to spend hours on a project, and then see "XXLeninSlayerXX"

    destroy it in minutes, just for the lolz?

  • TalinTalin Member UncommonPosts: 918

    SWTOR was, to me, the best massively single-player RPG ever created. I completely enjoyed the story, and disliked almost everything else (crafting, space missions PVP, etc). If they released an expansion with a significant storyline components - even if it was a single yet expansive storyline for all classes moving forward, I would likely buy it and play through it. 

    Adding in a proper space simulation and social elements might make me stick around after the story was done as well.

  • TheRealDarkeusTheRealDarkeus Member UncommonPosts: 314

    SWTOR.....  So much potential, so much fail....

     

    Sorry, this game is not coming back.  TORTanic will soon be completely at the bottom of the MMO ocean among other pretenders....

  • GMan33GMan33 Member UncommonPosts: 79

    100% will not come back, no way.

    Only chance it has of coming back is firing the entire workforce of swtor and hiring in a whole new team with a vision that is actually smart and knows how to properly make an mmo.

    No this game was doomed from the start.

    The only thing good about this game was the FIRST time leveling a character 1-50, and enjoying the SINGLE player story. Other then that, the rest of the game was an abysmal failure on epic proportion.

    I could list 100 things wrong with this game, but im sure its been posted before.

    This is a game, sadly, I wish it shuts down in hope of one day in the future, it gets another chance, from a wise and seasoned company who knows how to make MMOS to make it.

     

  • rakattrakatt Member UncommonPosts: 14

    I think SWTOR will be here for a while longer.  I don't think it will last as long as WOW or Anarchy Online. However, it won't be disappearing this year or perhaps even next year. It still has some life left in it.  It could surprise everyone and last quite awhile. Back in the day, people said WOW would not last. Apparently, it has. So, who knows?

    Even though so many people are negative toward it, I enjoy it. Sure, it has a lot of faults.  I'm a sucker for a MMO that tells a great story, though. I also enjoy the graphics.  SWTOR was my first MMO. So, I am a bit biased. The bloom has not completely wore off, yet. A person is always fond of their first!

  • ShadanwolfShadanwolf Member UncommonPosts: 2,392
    I hope not.But frankly don't care.Some of the key decision makers still have their jobs = little change.
  • ShezziShezzi Member Posts: 126

    Hearts broke in Star Wars, people were let down. The f2p model was so lacking in appeal, that I never returned to the game. All they got from me was a 6 month subscription, and some regrets over the repetitive linear design. The best parts of SWTOR were the character stories. Once those were done, I didn't want the rest. I don't know if they'll recover. After all the $$ the diva directors wasted on celebrity voiceovers and stuff like that, maybe they don't deserve to.

     

    My hopes are on EQNext. I wonder if their innovative new voxel based changeable world design can get online gaming to move outside the box, far away from linearity and repetitive questing.

     

This discussion has been closed.