There is only one reason to keep a game alive, and that's to make money. The fan base of this game was never enough to keep the lights on, let alone make profit. At some point you have to cut bait. Move along.
Originally posted by MikeB Depressing. Despite all its issues, there still isn't a PvP MMO out there that does it for me the way WAR did. I wish they would have done more to rescue it.
That certainly IS true. I had good in with my Bright Mage raining down fire on Chaos players. Still, it was just very ugly, totally imbalanced, lame PVE and was overall just a very mediocre MMO. But they just gave it up! It'S what we have seen so often, when a MMO goes wrong, big companies just drop it like a hot potatoe. They take no effort to turn it around, especially in the case of EA.
And look at the screenshots! It looks like 15 years old not five years. So much to the theory that cartoony ages better, eh?
And this is exactly why - mark my words - EA will never (ever) have a successful MMO. They simply do not have the slightest inclination toward what it takes to build a great MMO.
Not only do they have little knowledge in this area, they have no common sense, no wisdom, no foresight, nor do they have any realization of the nurturing that goes into making an MMO great! They believe that great MMOs are simply born rather than slowly grown and when theirs immediately fail, they lack the humility to listen to why they were defeated and overcome those problems; rather instead they amplify them or even create additional problems.Warhammer and SWTOR are both perfect examples of this!
One example with Warhammer Online, is they took far too many months until they finally pulled the trigger on merging servers, or allowing players to transfer. This killed their playerbase of remaining dedicated players that were left after the inevitable initial dropoff from launch. I was a 3-month/per paying customer stuck on a server for months that was an absolute ghost town; with no other option but to eventually cancel my sub.
I actually feel bad for Mythic as they must have been in between quite the “rock and a hard place” dealing with both Games Workshop and EA. Not the place I’d want to be. Although who truly knows; some of the stubbornness in terms of not listening to its players could have stemmed from Mythic, but I really doubt it.
Long story short, there is absolutely zero reason why such a great IP should have tanked so badly. The fact that EA has done it twice with the two biggest IPs you could possibly imagine for an MMO tells you all you need to know about that company’s future in this genre. Only EA could pull that off!
Finally though, Mike you were correct: few games were as much fun PvP-wise! I had more fun [wreaking havoc with my Witch Elf] than in any other game I’ve played. I’ll never forget that one scenario at Highpass Cemetary where I had 80-something kills and 1 death. I pissed so many people off that I had the whole opposing team doing a b-line for me by the end of the match! It was friggin’ awesome!
The game itself though had a lot wrong with it from the outset and much of what was wrong was passed on to the devs time and again by the players but EA/Mythic refused to acknowledge or address these problems in a timely manner. The BWs Scorched Earth exploit immediately springs to mind.
The lesson here i think is that you don't mess with an IP unless you really know what you are doing. Some people claim that it was the IP that brought people on the game, but from my experience this is not true. From all my friends that play RPGs (MMOS, CRPGs, tabletops or a mix of them), and that's about 12 people, only 1 actually knew about Warhammer IP before the MMO, and guess what? This guy never played a MMO yet... From these 12 people we were 6 that joined Warhammer on release, i was the only one with a tabletop background and that was only on Forgotten Realms stuff... The rest five were all ex-wow players. Most of them left the game after the first 3 months or so. I played for two years and had my fun with it, in fact it's my favorite MMO of all time, and i 've played quite a lot of them.
What i am trying to say is that, yes, some players joined cause of the IP ok... but were these players enough to actually balance the IP's costs? Hell no. And i am not talking about now, i am talking about the very beginning of the game. So it was a bad choice. The game could have some random lore and most people that played it would still play it. That way all the cost for the IP would have gone to actually develop the game further and i believe it wouldn't have ended up to this.
Really they should have made DAOC 2 Set it in the old world Have empire and dwarfs instead of albion Have orcs and goblins instead of hibenian Have warriors & beasts of chaos instead of midguard
Expansion could have seen wood elves, skaven and ogre kingdoms join the play.
Originally posted by MikeB Depressing. Despite all its issues, there still isn't a PvP MMO out there that does it for me the way WAR did. I wish they would have done more to rescue it.
i think they decided to shut it down instead of saving it as F2P because Swtor is not doing well with their awful hybrid model. Since Mythic is also part of EA they just opted to let it die. My opinion, of course.
I never played SWG but i remember when it shut down SOE said the license ended, then EA took the license and made Swtor. Now WAR's license is ending, i hope a better company gets revives it or make a better version. I would definitelly have played this game without a sub.
Bioware offered Lucasarts 20% more on the Star Wars License to make to TOR, LA thought well were getting more out of Bioware so they went to SOE and asked them for 20% more and SOE declined, hence the closure of SWG. SOE tried to negoitate for a more fairer price but LA wouldn't budge. So blame Bioware for SWG's closure, not that TOR is doing well today anyway , and a little inside info say Bioware is trying to get out of the contract with Disney so you may see TOR get shut down in the next couple of years.
"Inside knowledge" posts warm my heart.
So, SWTOR at its stable lowest has as many subscribers as SWG at its peak highest, yet SWTOR isnt doing well? Its defanitly not doing what they wanted it to do, but compared to all other MMOs not named WoW, its doing quite well for itself.
Now back on topic. This is pretty sad news. The most giddy fun iv ever had in an MMO is doing a 100 man keep siege, watching 3 tanks hold off everyone trying to get through the door.
Comments
It is just to bad that EA/Bioware could not have made SWTOR an updated version of SWG with the good parts of both it would be a great game.
Give me back SWG at sunset and keep adding to it and I would pay twice what it was costing.
And this is exactly why - mark my words - EA will never (ever) have a successful MMO. They simply do not have the slightest inclination toward what it takes to build a great MMO.
Not only do they have little knowledge in this area, they have no common sense, no wisdom, no foresight, nor do they have any realization of the nurturing that goes into making an MMO great! They believe that great MMOs are simply born rather than slowly grown and when theirs immediately fail, they lack the humility to listen to why they were defeated and overcome those problems; rather instead they amplify them or even create additional problems.Warhammer and SWTOR are both perfect examples of this!
One example with Warhammer Online, is they took far too many months until they finally pulled the trigger on merging servers, or allowing players to transfer. This killed their playerbase of remaining dedicated players that were left after the inevitable initial dropoff from launch. I was a 3-month/per paying customer stuck on a server for months that was an absolute ghost town; with no other option but to eventually cancel my sub.
I actually feel bad for Mythic as they must have been in between quite the “rock and a hard place” dealing with both Games Workshop and EA. Not the place I’d want to be. Although who truly knows; some of the stubbornness in terms of not listening to its players could have stemmed from Mythic, but I really doubt it.
Long story short, there is absolutely zero reason why such a great IP should have tanked so badly. The fact that EA has done it twice with the two biggest IPs you could possibly imagine for an MMO tells you all you need to know about that company’s future in this genre. Only EA could pull that off!
Finally though, Mike you were correct: few games were as much fun PvP-wise! I had more fun [wreaking havoc with my Witch Elf] than in any other game I’ve played. I’ll never forget that one scenario at Highpass Cemetary where I had 80-something kills and 1 death. I pissed so many people off that I had the whole opposing team doing a b-line for me by the end of the match! It was friggin’ awesome!
The game itself though had a lot wrong with it from the outset and much of what was wrong was passed on to the devs time and again by the players but EA/Mythic refused to acknowledge or address these problems in a timely manner. The BWs Scorched Earth exploit immediately springs to mind.
The lesson here i think is that you don't mess with an IP unless you really know what you are doing. Some people claim that it was the IP that brought people on the game, but from my experience this is not true. From all my friends that play RPGs (MMOS, CRPGs, tabletops or a mix of them), and that's about 12 people, only 1 actually knew about Warhammer IP before the MMO, and guess what? This guy never played a MMO yet... From these 12 people we were 6 that joined Warhammer on release, i was the only one with a tabletop background and that was only on Forgotten Realms stuff... The rest five were all ex-wow players. Most of them left the game after the first 3 months or so. I played for two years and had my fun with it, in fact it's my favorite MMO of all time, and i 've played quite a lot of them.
What i am trying to say is that, yes, some players joined cause of the IP ok... but were these players enough to actually balance the IP's costs? Hell no. And i am not talking about now, i am talking about the very beginning of the game. So it was a bad choice. The game could have some random lore and most people that played it would still play it. That way all the cost for the IP would have gone to actually develop the game further and i believe it wouldn't have ended up to this.
Set it in the old world
Have empire and dwarfs instead of albion
Have orcs and goblins instead of hibenian
Have warriors & beasts of chaos instead of midguard
Expansion could have seen wood elves, skaven and ogre kingdoms join the play.
"Inside knowledge" posts warm my heart.
So, SWTOR at its stable lowest has as many subscribers as SWG at its peak highest, yet SWTOR isnt doing well? Its defanitly not doing what they wanted it to do, but compared to all other MMOs not named WoW, its doing quite well for itself.
Now back on topic. This is pretty sad news. The most giddy fun iv ever had in an MMO is doing a 100 man keep siege, watching 3 tanks hold off everyone trying to get through the door.