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Why is this game considered a failure?
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This has been the best response so far...probably why it was ignored.
For me personally it failed to live up to it's own promises at launch and the months after.While it did release content regularly that content was short and easy and didn't hold most peoples attention beyond a week or two at best,hours at most.
Add to that their failure at open world PvP in Illium and Tatooine,constantly changing their token systems and the isues with it's game engine,it shouldn't be a surprise it failed as a sub only game.
However all that being said the game has found an audience as Freemium game which makes sense to me as it's bite sized content would appeal to the casual/time challenged market that model attracts and anyone that does want to play new released content hardcore can sub for a month then go back to free.
It failed to capture the market it was initially after but found one and is on it's way to making a profit soon or already has so has found success.Whether it would of if it wasn't Star Wars branded is irrelevant.
most people are just hating because of their huge mistakes at launch.. and i guess they have'nt bothered to give it another try.
the mmo community can be quite unforgiving at times.
anyways i guess you could say it was a failure at 1 point before they got their act together ..
I had fun once, it was terrible.
You must not know much abut the video game business. After a game, any game from any company, releases, its almost guaranteed some or most of people who were employed making the game will be let go. EA esp. has had a rough time the past few years and they also have a long history of firing people right after their game is released.
Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?
Remember, I live in a world where juggalos and yugioh players are real things.
you quoted him to prove his point? you think it's a failure because you personally thought the game was "meh"? to the OP, i think you got the answer to your question lol
And if you follow that line of reasoning it stands that if you LIKE the game that doesn't mean it's a success either. In reference to those saying people didn't like SWTOR because it wasn't SWG 2.0 - SWG had more in that game at launch than SWTOR does right now. There's no excuse for a AAA MMO to have a lackluster content and performance given the amount of $$ spent producing it.
that's correct, i believe GW2 is a successful mmo and i really don't care for it personally. also, just because you feel that SWTOR should have all the sandbox features a sandbox game had doesn't make it a failure. its a different kind of game that many people pay for and enjoy. by the way, i would say SWTOR is more successful than SWG ever was
If SOE hadn't screwed up by changing the game in mid stream with the NGE SWG would have been a more successful game than it was. However (and I don't know if you played it) SWG was one of the most interesting and fun MMO's I've ever had the pleasure to play - the game was so far ahead of it's time it's not funny. Jump To Light Speed was the most incredible space combat design and makes SWTOR's look like Asteroids in comparison.
You may think that SWTOR is more successful than SWG but I'll bet you it's not around as long and DEFINITELY won't have emu servers after it's gone.
i remember when they game first launched, i was playing EQ at the time and thought about playing it but as soon as i heard how horrible the launch was i steered clear (also was in a hardcore raiding guild at the time and didn't really have time).
not saying it was a good or bad game, just that in terms of success, SWTOR has had more of it.
anyways, i get you liked SWG more, that's cool. i just wish people wouldn't call games a failure just because they didn't like it or didn't have the features they wanted.
you could say that the SWTOR open pvp experiment was a failure and i would totally agree with that, they had to scrap illum completely and the open world pvp is almost non existent compared to most mmo's with a similar open pvp system..
from a pvp standpoint i would agree SWTOR is not very good IMO.
SWtOR never has 2 mil subs, and it does not have 2 mil subs right now.
I consider it a total failure 'couse it did not deliver anything it promised and supplied low budged quality content and visuals.
Just goes to show you that IP can carry a rather horrible game.
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Everything you said, except maybe sub numbers, is opinionated and has no factual basis. The fact that SWTOR is financially profitable and has no servers below heavy at this moment, shows that there are plenty of people that enjoy the quality of the content.
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It is a success where players are concerned, but for EA/BW it is not. They wanted to keep the game P2P, but was forced to make it F2P when subs were just under 1 million ! Which shows that SWTOR requires abnormally high figures to be a success. There was mass layoffs, and the Doctors also quit BW and gaming altogether, which I doubt they would have done if it was a success.
While it is ticking along nicely currently, it is no where the success it was aimed for being, and getting lower development priority, as not getting more class stories which was in the Doctors main vision for the game.
Whether it is making money now, is anybodys guess. It is earning a lot of money, but who knows how much is actual profit, after all the expenses.
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
This post reads like you haven't bothered to play the game since months before it added the free option. The revenue may rely heavily on gambling boxes, but so what, you aren't forced to buy them. They have released as much or more "real" content in the time since they went Freemium as any other MMO releases in a similar amount of time, more than most.
But in terms of the actual thread topic, most of your post just reinforces my original point; people consider the game a failure because they are trying to redefine the word to mean "stuff I don't like," not because it ever actually failed.
That's true, it's not getting more class stories because that plan was reliant on getting WoW level numbers. Which was an epic pipe dream, I wish I knew what they were smoking and where I could get some. As for how much is profit, in terms of the total over the lifetime of the product, who the hell knows, but in terms of month to month in the current fiscal year (since all the original development costs were recorded in previous years) the numbers are probably extremely attractive at this point.
And I never heard any indication that the Doctors were even heavily involved at BioWare Austin. I'm fairly sure their moving out of the company was planned from the day they sold to EA, they just had a transition period first. Also, BioWare announced the numbers they needed to be profitable on subscriptions alone, more than once; roughly 500k. As far as I recall, they never actually dipped below that prior to adding the free option, they changed models because they wanted more profit, not because they weren't making any. That's what happens when a company was aiming to create Coca-Cola and only managed to make Pepsi, they have to make some adjustments. Please correct me if I'm wrong about the sub numbers.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Free to play is not only accepted but welcomed as a savior. Saviors do whatever they want. People even pretend they didn't hear the ceo telling investors this was a free game with microtrans. Or that the ceo was just mistaken lol.
But they hear 200 million dollars even though it feels like 5 million.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
I feel that if the game was truly a success, it would not have gone f2p so quickly, ea would not have layed off so many people so quickly, and the doctors would not have left.
Yes eventually an mmo typically goes f2p, yes layoffs are common, and yes game company founders do move on to other ventures. But all of these things occurred all within a few months of each other and all within the first year of the game's launch.
Pre launch, you had devs talking about the years ahead with swtor. How this was what they would be doing, adding content for the long term. And in less than a year, not only were most of those same people gone, but even the founders bowed out of the entire industry as a whole (or so they said at the time).
All of that occurring simultaneously with one of the largest player drop offs I have seen and cries for server merges within a few months of launch.
I am glad that they are doing right by this game, adding housing, space PvP etc. But the first year was brutal. And that stigma tends to stick with people when they think about this game being a success or failure.
I am well aware that's how regular games work, but that's because there is nothing new to produce in a regular game. For some games there is still dlc, but that money is not enough to keep everyone involved in the product.
When it comes to MMO's the development doesn't stop when the game is shipped, you are building the game with each content patch, and to build those content patches you need to keep people in your staff. That's part of where your $15 sub goes, to pay for all the content patches you get to play.
The problem for swtor is that they weren't earning enough money to keep the game rolling, so they had to let more people go. They did it because the game would drop below 500k subs and they also changed the payment model. That's not what successful games does, that's what failed MMO's do.
TOR announced f2p conversion after 8 months, the reason it took 11 months was because of technical reasons.
Rift was launched the same year as swtor, so they experienced the same market as swtor during the launch. Rift did convert to f2p eventually but it took them 2 years. If it hadn't been for swtor showing profits when they converted to f2p rift would have sticked to p2p.
Blade&soul has been active for almost two years, and still run with a sub in korea. In japan it will release as P2P.
FF14arr has been live 6 months, and no announcements about converting to f2p.
Darkfall unholy wars is still P2P, although I have no idea if that game is profitable.
Both elder scrolls online and wildstar is launching as P2P, so publishers still see P2P as a viable option.
Swtor was a far better game when it converted to f2p, and if that's how the game would have been at launch it would have had a better shot at staying P2P.
How many subs do you think this game has?
How much money are they making off F2P right now?
SWTOR was one of the top 10 F2P games in revenue in 2013. I know you won't ever believe that and I also know that you'll dismiss any reports or data that support that, so I'm not going to waste my time digging up links as that has consistently proven to be, well... a waste of time.
SWTOR, no matter how much you want to believe otherwise, is doing well.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Publishers still see it as a viable launch window option. Give it a year or two, we'll so how many of this crop haven't added a free option yet, if any. (If I had to put money on it, I would go with Wildstar adding a free option before ESO does, but both doing so within the two year mark.) Every time a quality game adds a free option, it's going to get harder for people to justify spending $15 a month on a different game, it's just the way people's (the cheap ones) minds work.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
In my opinion
Financially the game may be a success, but too me it is an utter failure due to design.
Yes, many of my issues have been dealt with, or now have workarounds, still I have have never felt even the slightest desire to 'come back' with these Cartel Coin, and Premium Item offers. Why?
- For the number of 'worlds' each has a tiny and very channeled map. It is like the Planet Earth being only the stretch of road from New York City to Albany, completely skipping the rest of the planet. Invisible walls abound. A sadly controlled and contained chase from Hub to Hub. Virtually no replayability as all chars in the same faction get shoehorned into the same or very similar experience. While I don't like fighting my way through crowds of people for every kill, the world felt incredibly barren and empty as I seldom encountered anyone I hadn't already brought with me.
- If one of your friends had the audacity to be your same class they couldn't share storyline completions, each had to initiate their own. In some cases they couldn't even enter 'your' quests. Made the game feel like anything BUT an MMO.
-The quest/event dialog system that most wore out their SPACE bars slamming through, until one party member walked off to get a sandwich, change the kids diaper, whatever and the rest are stuck with the massive timeout wait at every step. As well, does every single farmer needing you to kill 10 xxx to clear his fields really need 6 pages of text and a celebrity voice-over to tell you to go kill some rats?
-Whether they spent 10 million or 500, couldn't they have spent a couple of those dollars and a few minutes of time on an auction hall that worked? Incapable of even the most basic filters and sorts.
-Space combat and other dailies that could be macroed they were so much the same day in, day out. Reminds me of that parody of Battlestar Galactica 1979 where the same Cylon gets blown up in the same film clip week after week.
-A Light/Dark side faction system that really meant absolutely nothing, as the most evil and despicable Jedi ever could never convert to the Dark side. (btw the gameplay was heavily biased towards darkside play being the 'fun', light being the 'bad' style)
So while the game may have thriving players and be into the black financially, to me it is still a failure as it utterly failed to capture any sort of epic Star Wars feel. People will pay for and do the most incredible things, things others think are beyond insane. Take Bungie/BASE jumping, fans think it is the most fun ever, other people look at it cringe and call the cops.
1. Use most lucrative and loved fanchise in this world... star wars - check
2. Dump 200 million into it - check
3. Do not make an mmo - check
4. Yawn - check
5. Compare numbers with other f2p mmos that didn't even have 1/10th of the budget to go with - check
6. Yawn again - check
Star Wars, Star Trek... It seems to me that all the loved themes are destined to be "gamefied" by accountants and not by real games. SWTOR was made by someone who wanted to make money and does not care about gaming. It will go down just like SWG did, in flames.
No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
Saying it's a failure is like saying living is a failure. And you only fail at living when you've died. That is a fact. There is however a standard of living among the many people who are living. And it varies widely between them. The problem with trying to set a standard of living across the board is yours maybe higher than mine and mine maybe high than the homeless guy on the corner. Therefor we may never agree on exactly what that acceptable threshold is. Do you have to own a home? A car? Have a job? My personal standard of living is mine and yours is yours. And yes, even that homeless guy has one.
So what I'm saying is that our standards of how successful SWTOR is will vary depending on the personal standards we have in our heads to measure it by. Mine maybe a little lower than yours. But it doesn't mean it's a failure. If it was, no one would be playing it, because you cannot play something that does not exist. Thus when it does finally shutdown I'll consider it a failure.
But I pose a even more perplexing question to you:
What is considered a standard for success in this genre?
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
If one only see success or failure as a monetary figure, one could come to those conclusions. I think there are many ways to define success and failure so perhaps there are some miscommunications happening in this thread.
People's mistaken assumption that bad gameplay or design, or their enjoyment of the game's aspects, somehow equal 'failure'. Commercially, SWTOR is doing pretty well for this era, though not as good as the early inflated estimates said it would. You can easily have something that's poorly done be a raging success (See the Twilight empire there). Or vice versa.
I like the story elements in SWTOR, justt not enough to buy the game at launch or pay a subscription. I will probably finish up one each of the Sith/Jedi, just to see that story.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
So so true. Take it from someone that was actually playing the game in its so called "glory days" before all the changes. SWG was NEVER on the same level as TOR popularity wise. Not even close. If it had been as popular as the revisionists claim it was, it would have never changed it's core design. SWG did that not once, but TWICE. And if you think the gripes about TOR are bad they pale in comparison to the gripes that was on the SOE/SWG website in that time frame. Everything from players stuck, crashing to desktop, NPCs being stuck in walls or in water, overpowered templates, too much focus on Jedi, boring grind, repetitive mission terminals, too few quest lines, etc. etc. etc. The game was decent, but hardly the great king that its small band of followers make it out to be. Basically if you were an entertainer, crafter , social chatter or into city building the game was great. For the rest of us that wanted to do more than moisture farm or play house the game was seriously lacking.
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
People like to blame the CU or the NGE for breaking SWG, personally I blame the Hologrind. I was still having fun in the game until I broke my build (which did not take an insignificant amount of time to put together) pursuing skill trees I had zero interest in actually playing, repeatedly, in the attempt to unlock the FS slot. I never actually did get it unlocked, the hologrind experience killed all the joy I had in the game and I decided to do other things with my time. But even before it was broken, regardless of which change you think broke it, it's numbers were never fantastic.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.