Nope.. TOR is dead to most everyone that left.. I won't even consider coming back unless TOR pulls a NGE and revamps the entire gameplay away FROM it's current end game (raid centric).. and revise most of the leveling process as well.. It would have to be almost a whole new game.. That isnt' going to happen..
Originally posted by Souldrainer Vanilla WoW nearly tanked before TBC came. People were enraged at space aliens and alternate dimensions in a medieval game. That said, TBC solidified the game's status as a top seller. It's a good point of reference. SWTOR is a young game, and if Xfire can be believed (highly debatable) it is holding the #2 spot behind WoW... So it is possible that the game is actually doing well, even in spite of the last two patches sucking and driving massive chunks of people away. Can the game be saved? Sure. Will it be saved? That depends on a lot of things, but the biggest factors will be their decisions regarding their first paid expansion and the FTP or B2P payment models.
For me it was the exact oppisite, after TBC came even tho I have all the expansions, I kinda just stopped caring. I think about the time they added Ahn'Qiraj that was about as good as it got for me.
Personally I dont think mmos need expansions, its just wasted money, I think that kills a mmo in my opionion but hey, im not a developer.
I have made an honest attempt to log in. I've done the transfers and re-allotted my skill points but I cannot get motivated to actually play the game. I;m just dreading so much more of the same that drove me from the game at the end of my first free month.
Maybe if they made drastical changes to core game mechanics and came up with a good F2P model. But probably only due to catering to a different market segment.
Most MMO players if they turn their back on a game / company don't ever look back and return even when things look better.
Hard to see the future is, always on the move always changing....no
It would take another 200 million to make the real MMO they were supposed to. the entire MMO is flawed and the design is so restricting they make Wow look like a sandbox MMO.
Plus the devs there seem to be in save my job mode. we don't have long until lucas steps in since he has the ultimate power over TOR. some guy was yelling at me in another thread for saying lucas has the power and not BW but it's true. try to deny it and not long from now you will see.
Lucas stepped in on sony and tried to fix SWG. but they had no clue. SWG suffered a premaure release from beta as well with no space combat and many many features missing. TOR had the same problem.
It seems history is repeating itself and GW2 looming like Wow was looming over SWG in 2003 it will have the same effect.
If History sticks here then expect a huge shake up and the SW:TOR:NGE in 5 months. in the end 8 years from now they will be closing it down for the next great lucas made MMO since he won't allow anyone else to mess it up but him now after this last screw up.
Free to play? Has f2p "saved" other games? Basically you are into the whole Zynga debate. Can you combat churn? Can you persuade people to spend money? And there are games that have gone f2p that have now closed. I just don't see SWTOR as being suited to f2p.
Now a reduced sub - just to cover the servers - and then a charge for expansion packs might help it limp along but once the agreement with LA is up for renewal I think there will be some hard bargaining.
Well, according to a lot of people, going f2p 'saved' Lotro and DDO, however I kind of remember Lotro doing ok before the switch, just my perception of course. Never been a big player of either game.
I do not have a lot of faith in Bioware of EA in turning this ship around. I look at what happened to Warhammer Online and I see a similar fate for this game. I don't think the game is going anywhere time soon, but as far as regaining a lot of subscribers I highly doubt it. Personally I will probably never try the game again. Just not my cup of tea.
LOTR as developed by Turbine, should have been a much cheaper game than SWTOR. It had a good launch, good press and seemed to avoid a post-launch meltdown. Can't say of course whether it recovered its development costs - and once Warner Bros stepped in the financial results were lost in the noise - but it should have been in a better position.
DDO never made it at launch (should have been f2p with paid for adventures). 100k sales were never announced. Lots of talk about how revenue grew when it went f2p but not since - and no mention of the profit word. Again the game will have been cheaper to develop.
However the biggest factor will have been Warner Bros. They bought Turbine. From that point the only thing that mattered was whether LOTR / DDO was covering its running costs.
Analogy: someone buys a property, spends huge amounts doing it up, finds they can't pay the bank loan and you step in and buy the property at a knock down price. You have no interest in what was spent doing it up just what it cost you to buy / run. Same with Warner Bros.
EA have to worry about what SWTOR cost to develop however; they have a "bank loan". And as they said back in Feb' what matters is the number of paid monthly subscriptions. SWTOR is even less "f2p" friendly than WAR - what would they sell? And EA's efforts to produce fluff that was worth buying in WAR got nowhere.
It is really hard to see how they can get a big influx of players again. Looking at the last 12 years of MMO releases there are few games that has turned their numbers and profits up in any remarkable way. DDO and EvE Online are probably the two big titles in this regard. DDO by going free to play with a very high profiled ingame shop with lots of big advantages for players. EvE I cant really say why but I suspect the gameplay apeals to micromanagers and PvP players in a way no other MMO game does.
To go free-to-play they need a cash-shop system that gives players advantages that they feel gives them an edge in gameplay. Pets/Companions wont really do unless you can buy Yoda or some other supercool guy/gal/pet. The game just isnt structured in a way that needs this type of advantages. Why buy experience boost elixirs or stuff like that if the levelingcurve is fast paced already? New races could work, but would likely require a lot of new work to be put into the game. New classes also. Stuff that can be unlocked for play in a F2P environment. As far as I can tell the cash-shop possibilites are slim because of the core game design.
Another route would be to change core mechanics in the game to try to appeal to former or new players. This is a very dangerous route because the guys and gals that are still paying and playing are accustomed to the game as it is. The risk of an NGE style backlash is very high.
The smartest way to go about it based on how the game is performing at the moment is a mix of elements here. Some core changes to apeal more to social aspects like complex crafting. New levels with more difficulty to them and cash-shop items to lessens the time needed to reach level cap or alternate advancements. There are definitely possibilites for making the game more apealing to former/new players.
However, I think there are some big obstacles in place for me to believe they can turn it around. The biggest reasons are corporate egoes. Management that feel that they have a lot of political investments in how the game has been designed and operates as it is. Also, I'm not sure the developers are as open minded about the changes needed to be done as they need to be. So, as strange as it sounds I think seeing key management/developer members leave the company or position is actually positive. But the new people obviously needs to deliver also.
It's a complex situation and I dont think EA/BioWare will be able to do it. This game was designed to be a blazing success (from a corporate viewpoint) and has massively underperformed. The corporate machine just hasnt anticipated what has transpired the last 6 years.
You can always hope for good change, but I wouldnt bet the farm on it. Personaly, I wouldnt bet a penny on it. But if you enjoy it, enjoy it while you can. I dont think it will be around for long.
Good points made by BloodyViking. And on top of the corporate ethos / ego situation you will have the cost side. Internally they - whoever is left to run the game - will struggle to get funding. For the last few years wndless stats and charts will have shown that SWTOR was going to be a great hit. So if the game isn't bringing in the revenue it needs to fund new development it will be very hard to produce stats and charts that support EA throwing more money at it. Maintenance mode is likely.
Another route would be to change core mechanics in the game to try to appeal to former or new players. This is a very dangerous route because the guys and gals that are still paying and playing are accustomed to the game as it is. The risk of an NGE style backlash is very high.
There is a problem with the NGE anology and comparing TOR with Galaxies. Prior to the NGE, Galaxies was already a very complex and deep mmo and the powers that be thought the level of complexity was a barrier to new subs.
On the other hand, with TOR: tor is like a baby's building blocks compared to Galaxies in the CU, pre-cu, or any other time. With Galaxies we had the most complex crafting and resource system ever created, but with TOR the crafting system is non-existant. In other words with TOR, by its nature, a massive change would be quite different -- because there is nowhere to go but up...
When galaxies was created the designers wanted to make a deep, immersive experiance for the player. TOR, by contrast, was simply designed to be an insulting cash cow, wherein the player would have zero impact; moreover, resubbing to TOR is rewarding that corporate insult.
For me they have walled themselves in, they need to bring out more end content but they have the probem of how they made the game - voice overs / cut scenes all over the place ect - which will take longer than most games to make also more expensive.
Lack of content = lack of players
Lack of players = less money to make content
With what we have seen so far they will have to do something big or pack it up, we have seen all the job loses which will effect any updates/expansions. If any expansion cant be blown through in the space of a couple of weeks people may stay for those 2 weeks before unsubbing - or wait for a please come back to us week for free -
I'd like to think so, but I'm not so sure for the variety of reasons people have listed. Voice over/stories, too time consuming and costly to produce for a 300k sub mmo. They pretty much made very bad choices in all the fluff game play(no mini games, and absolutely nothing that made any other starwars game a hit)
I really wanted a massive sci fi universe to play in, but TOR is not it.
I'll check on it in a year or so though.(just because I love starwars)
Well, having finally gotten bored enough to try the free dl and played a couple of characters up to level 15...
The game is pretty bad; I'm not going to go into a point by point argument of what they got right and wrong...but overall the game is just 'not very good'...from what I have seen it would have a made a decent single player game...maybe with some kind of a co-op online mode...but as an MMO it fails pretty hard...
That said, it is fun in small doses...there is zero chance of me continuing to play if I have to buy the box to do so (which is how it stands now)...if it was just a matter of paying a monthly sub, I'd goof around with it for a month here and there in between other things when I was bored...but at least they'd get some money out of me.
Nothing short of a total (and I mean TOTAL - beyond NGE level redesign) would get me to subscribe long term or give them the kind of money they really need to be making on this.
MMORPGs do not turn around. They start small and grow, start big and stay big or decline/struggle forever.
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
TOR will never recover, even if it goes F2P who would bother playing it again? TOR is yesterdays news, sure some players might play it fro the first time if it went F2P, but not enough to recover even a small percentage of the lost subscriber base.
TSW has better pve, TERA has better pve, GW2 is F2P and will have far, far better pvp and then there are games like PS2 on the horizon as well which is, once again, F2P.
TOR was fun for 2-3 months, but now it's done.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
DDO - like most games that go f2p in a blaze of publicity (and DDO had the benefit of being in the forefront of changing over) can increase its "subs". The problem is they are all $0 subs. And based on Zynga's subscribers a) only 5% actually buy anything and b) they have massive churn - people simply move on to the next new f2p game.
And if a game has underlying problems - that resulted in (paid) subscribers leaving then those problems remain. And a f2p sub" having played the game for a week / month / quarter - whatever - can simply leave. Hence reports of new f2p games attracting huge numbers of new "subs" when they first go f2p are common; stories about year old f2p games having kept said subscribers are .... well maybe someone can find some. Stories about profit - the same.
And as mention by me and others above SWTOR is a very bad candidate for f2p. Paid for DLC - sure but what would you want to buy in a cash shop?
swtor is still bleeding subs out. They will be lucky to keep whats left of the player base. They are not going to recover. Even if they got total free to play you would have to have a huge cash shop in place that has something in it,as they would have to have a way to make money.
Honestly they already limited themselves, I cant see them fixing what they have. The hero engine is whats killing the game.
Even if Bioware fixed all the reasons I left (idiotic nerfs, uninspiring dungeons, incredibly poor customer relations, Ilum being an epic failure, lack of things to do at endgame, lack of meaningful story continuation) I still would not give them one more cent of my money.
They've ruined too many franchises to be forgiven. Dragon Age, Mass Effect, TOR, and now they're planning on raping the Ultima franchise with their latest abomination. Hell, the only one of their franchises they haven't bent over a table yet is Jade Empire, but I'm sure that's coming down the line.
I will admit that SWTOR was some of the most fun I've had going 1-50 (until I played TSW) and I don't regret the initial purchase, but between the game's problems and EA's bullshit I'll never go back.
So no, it can't make a comeback unless a minor miracle occurs and the project is taken out of EA's grubby hands.
Bioware is a joke of a once great company, they are living from the memories of the past and it's what we are seeing at SWTOR.
The games smells to old, outdated and unfinished.
They can add more planets, more species, open pvp ... but the core of the game is rotten. The planets are the same templates recicled, there is no difference betwen any of them, Hoth and Tatoinne are the same but in different colors, the only slighty different planet is Nar Shadda but in fact is just a corridor festival like the whole game.
The quests are a joke, click and kill all the way. Dudes, SWTOR is becoming the "For 12 years old starter MMO",is like those books of "MMOs" for dummies. I dare any of the Bioare fans to play The Secret World investigation missions or the Polaris heroic and then go back to SWTOR dailyes.
The pvp is boring and cheap, no real skill but at Huttball, also the engine is not massive pvp friendly, just compare Fusang warzone at The secret world with 100 vs 100 vs 100 and the Illum lag festival.
The character creation is so lame that embarrases.Just humans to play , and the only non human species are headless when wearin helmets (Twileks cant wear any hat because BW is too lazy to program specific gear for each specie, like SWG did) Ashara's head is gone since months and not fixed yet. Also the new Katar thing is just another human with cat eyes and pointly ears...lame. The truth laziness, but they call it inmersion.
This game is what EALouse said, just voice acting for a pile of outdated programming from 2005. Dudes nobody will play a game that doesnt offer anything new, not a single thing. Not even a nice looking or awesome enviorenment.
The game was bad designed, worst developed and leaved at it's risk.
I was reading some comments about how the servers are packed and the future assured ...12 euro servers, 3 asian and 12 US, from a total of more than 200 ...yes it's a total succes, but dont worry , then becomes the excuses.
People will come back when they launch 1.2, then 1,3 ...now the future 1.4...people will come back when they get tired from Diablo... No dudes, we leaved the game just because it was bad and boring. FOR US, and US are more than 60% of the population of the game.
You can hide your head in the sand but numbers are there, try to go to the most populated euro servers and take a look.
I just transfered to RED ECLIPSE with my 7 days and there is not people enough to open 2 istances of imperial fleet, 236 peak players at imperial fleet. Of course is packed... if you compare it with the 17 folks at Luka senne.
Also you can say pay to play is ended...yah sure, I never had any problem ever for pay my 7 accounts of SWG for 8 years...why I cant pay even 1 at SWTOR? My mind suddenly changed or is just the game doesn't worth the money?
Now the last excuse, is my fault, not the game, is not my genre, not my kind of game , not my mood... Everything but admit the game is losing players as fast as hell.
I'm not lying, I'm not a WOW fan throwing crap... but I'm a hater, a hater because the game made me hate it. And I'm sorry because I'm a real SW fan.
Bioware is a joke of a once great company, they are living from the memories of the past and it's what we are seeing at SWTOR.
The games smells to old, outdated and unfinished.
They can add more planets, more species, open pvp ... but the core of the game is rotten. The planets are the same templates recicled, there is no difference betwen any of them, Hoth and Tatoinne are the same but in different colors, the only slighty different planet is Nar Shadda but in fact is just a corridor festival like the whole game.
The quests are a joke, click and kill all the way. Dudes, SWTOR is becoming the "For 12 years old starter MMO",is like those books of "MMOs" for dummies. I dare any of the Bioare fans to play The Secret World investigation missions or the Polaris heroic and then go back to SWTOR dailyes.
The pvp is boring and cheap, no real skill but at Huttball, also the engine is not massive pvp friendly, just compare Fusang warzone at The secret world with 100 vs 100 vs 100 and the Illum lag festival.
The character creation is so lame that embarrases.Just humans to play , and the only non human species are headless when wearin helmets (Twileks cant wear any hat because BW is too lazy to program specific gear for each specie, like SWG did) Ashara's head is gone since months and not fixed yet. Also the new Katar thing is just another human with cat eyes and pointly ears...lame. The truth laziness, but they call it inmersion.
This game is what EALouse said, just voice acting for a pile of outdated programming from 2005. Dudes nobody will play a game that doesnt offer anything new, not a single thing. Not even a nice looking or awesome enviorenment.
The game was bad designed, worst developed and leaved at it's risk.
I was reading some comments about how the servers are packed and the future assured ...12 euro servers, 3 asian and 12 US, from a total of more than 200 ...yes it's a total succes, but dont worry , then becomes the excuses.
People will come back when they launch 1.2, then 1,3 ...now the future 1.4...people will come back when they get tired from Diablo... No dudes, we leaved the game just because it was bad and boring. FOR US, and US are more than 60% of the population of the game.
You can hide your head in the sand but numbers are there, try to go to the most populated euro servers and take a look.
I just transfered to RED ECLIPSE with my 7 days and there is not people enough to open 2 istances of imperial fleet, 236 peak players at imperial fleet. Of course is packed... if you compare it with the 17 folks at Luka senne.
Also you can say pay to play is ended...yah sure, I never had any problem ever for pay my 7 accounts of SWG for 8 years...why I cant pay even 1 at SWTOR? My mind suddenly changed or is just the game doesn't worth the money?
Now the last excuse, is my fault, not the game, is not my genre, not my kind of game , not my mood... Everything but admit the game is losing players as fast as hell.
I'm not lying, I'm not a WOW fan throwing crap... but I'm a hater, a hater because the game made me hate it. And I'm sorry because I'm a real SW fan.
But this game is not even starwarsy.
this is my feelings as well.
i signed in for my free 7 days, looked at my toon and signed out.
there was nothing there that pulls me to play.
in SWG i had crafting, checking to see any good resources, actual space combat, or even just messing around one of my houses, (i liked to decorate and redecorate).
in swtor all i got is hotkey combat against npc's, or the same hotkey combat against players. thats it. the crafting sucks, the rail shooter sucks.
Comments
Nope.. TOR is dead to most everyone that left.. I won't even consider coming back unless TOR pulls a NGE and revamps the entire gameplay away FROM it's current end game (raid centric).. and revise most of the leveling process as well.. It would have to be almost a whole new game.. That isnt' going to happen..
Yes it can, in the same way I can win a lottery jackpot.
For me it was the exact oppisite, after TBC came even tho I have all the expansions, I kinda just stopped caring. I think about the time they added Ahn'Qiraj that was about as good as it got for me.
Personally I dont think mmos need expansions, its just wasted money, I think that kills a mmo in my opionion but hey, im not a developer.
Seriously, who cares?
I stopped playing 3 weeks after launch because it just sucked. This game isnt fixable, patchable or w/e.
It suffers from a conseptual design flaw.
It will be difficult for 2 reasons
1) They need to turn SWTOR into a MMORPG
2) They have to make the game more Starwarsy
The way I see it, is that the game is a long way off, also EA won't put any big money to rebuild SWTOR.
I think $100 Million is already enough money thrown at this game.
So my answer is no.
I have made an honest attempt to log in. I've done the transfers and re-allotted my skill points but I cannot get motivated to actually play the game. I;m just dreading so much more of the same that drove me from the game at the end of my first free month.
Maybe if they made drastical changes to core game mechanics and came up with a good F2P model. But probably only due to catering to a different market segment.
Most MMO players if they turn their back on a game / company don't ever look back and return even when things look better.
Hard to see the future is, always on the move always changing....no
It would take another 200 million to make the real MMO they were supposed to. the entire MMO is flawed and the design is so restricting they make Wow look like a sandbox MMO.
Plus the devs there seem to be in save my job mode. we don't have long until lucas steps in since he has the ultimate power over TOR. some guy was yelling at me in another thread for saying lucas has the power and not BW but it's true. try to deny it and not long from now you will see.
Lucas stepped in on sony and tried to fix SWG. but they had no clue. SWG suffered a premaure release from beta as well with no space combat and many many features missing. TOR had the same problem.
It seems history is repeating itself and GW2 looming like Wow was looming over SWG in 2003 it will have the same effect.
If History sticks here then expect a huge shake up and the SW:TOR:NGE in 5 months. in the end 8 years from now they will be closing it down for the next great lucas made MMO since he won't allow anyone else to mess it up but him now after this last screw up.
Can't see it being saved.
Free to play? Has f2p "saved" other games? Basically you are into the whole Zynga debate. Can you combat churn? Can you persuade people to spend money? And there are games that have gone f2p that have now closed. I just don't see SWTOR as being suited to f2p.
Now a reduced sub - just to cover the servers - and then a charge for expansion packs might help it limp along but once the agreement with LA is up for renewal I think there will be some hard bargaining.
Well, according to a lot of people, going f2p 'saved' Lotro and DDO, however I kind of remember Lotro doing ok before the switch, just my perception of course. Never been a big player of either game.
I do not have a lot of faith in Bioware of EA in turning this ship around. I look at what happened to Warhammer Online and I see a similar fate for this game. I don't think the game is going anywhere time soon, but as far as regaining a lot of subscribers I highly doubt it. Personally I will probably never try the game again. Just not my cup of tea.
^^^^
LOTR as developed by Turbine, should have been a much cheaper game than SWTOR. It had a good launch, good press and seemed to avoid a post-launch meltdown. Can't say of course whether it recovered its development costs - and once Warner Bros stepped in the financial results were lost in the noise - but it should have been in a better position.
DDO never made it at launch (should have been f2p with paid for adventures). 100k sales were never announced. Lots of talk about how revenue grew when it went f2p but not since - and no mention of the profit word. Again the game will have been cheaper to develop.
However the biggest factor will have been Warner Bros. They bought Turbine. From that point the only thing that mattered was whether LOTR / DDO was covering its running costs.
Analogy: someone buys a property, spends huge amounts doing it up, finds they can't pay the bank loan and you step in and buy the property at a knock down price. You have no interest in what was spent doing it up just what it cost you to buy / run. Same with Warner Bros.
EA have to worry about what SWTOR cost to develop however; they have a "bank loan". And as they said back in Feb' what matters is the number of paid monthly subscriptions. SWTOR is even less "f2p" friendly than WAR - what would they sell? And EA's efforts to produce fluff that was worth buying in WAR got nowhere.
It is really hard to see how they can get a big influx of players again. Looking at the last 12 years of MMO releases there are few games that has turned their numbers and profits up in any remarkable way. DDO and EvE Online are probably the two big titles in this regard. DDO by going free to play with a very high profiled ingame shop with lots of big advantages for players. EvE I cant really say why but I suspect the gameplay apeals to micromanagers and PvP players in a way no other MMO game does.
To go free-to-play they need a cash-shop system that gives players advantages that they feel gives them an edge in gameplay. Pets/Companions wont really do unless you can buy Yoda or some other supercool guy/gal/pet. The game just isnt structured in a way that needs this type of advantages. Why buy experience boost elixirs or stuff like that if the levelingcurve is fast paced already? New races could work, but would likely require a lot of new work to be put into the game. New classes also. Stuff that can be unlocked for play in a F2P environment. As far as I can tell the cash-shop possibilites are slim because of the core game design.
Another route would be to change core mechanics in the game to try to appeal to former or new players. This is a very dangerous route because the guys and gals that are still paying and playing are accustomed to the game as it is. The risk of an NGE style backlash is very high.
The smartest way to go about it based on how the game is performing at the moment is a mix of elements here. Some core changes to apeal more to social aspects like complex crafting. New levels with more difficulty to them and cash-shop items to lessens the time needed to reach level cap or alternate advancements. There are definitely possibilites for making the game more apealing to former/new players.
However, I think there are some big obstacles in place for me to believe they can turn it around. The biggest reasons are corporate egoes. Management that feel that they have a lot of political investments in how the game has been designed and operates as it is. Also, I'm not sure the developers are as open minded about the changes needed to be done as they need to be. So, as strange as it sounds I think seeing key management/developer members leave the company or position is actually positive. But the new people obviously needs to deliver also.
It's a complex situation and I dont think EA/BioWare will be able to do it. This game was designed to be a blazing success (from a corporate viewpoint) and has massively underperformed. The corporate machine just hasnt anticipated what has transpired the last 6 years.
You can always hope for good change, but I wouldnt bet the farm on it. Personaly, I wouldnt bet a penny on it. But if you enjoy it, enjoy it while you can. I dont think it will be around for long.
^^^^^^
Good points made by BloodyViking. And on top of the corporate ethos / ego situation you will have the cost side. Internally they - whoever is left to run the game - will struggle to get funding. For the last few years wndless stats and charts will have shown that SWTOR was going to be a great hit. So if the game isn't bringing in the revenue it needs to fund new development it will be very hard to produce stats and charts that support EA throwing more money at it. Maintenance mode is likely.
http://wyrdblogging.blogspot.com/
For me they have walled themselves in, they need to bring out more end content but they have the probem of how they made the game - voice overs / cut scenes all over the place ect - which will take longer than most games to make also more expensive.
Lack of content = lack of players
Lack of players = less money to make content
With what we have seen so far they will have to do something big or pack it up, we have seen all the job loses which will effect any updates/expansions. If any expansion cant be blown through in the space of a couple of weeks people may stay for those 2 weeks before unsubbing - or wait for a please come back to us week for free -
Star Wars Galaxies relaunch by December 2012
I'd like to think so, but I'm not so sure for the variety of reasons people have listed. Voice over/stories, too time consuming and costly to produce for a 300k sub mmo. They pretty much made very bad choices in all the fluff game play(no mini games, and absolutely nothing that made any other starwars game a hit)
I really wanted a massive sci fi universe to play in, but TOR is not it.
I'll check on it in a year or so though.(just because I love starwars)
Well, having finally gotten bored enough to try the free dl and played a couple of characters up to level 15...
The game is pretty bad; I'm not going to go into a point by point argument of what they got right and wrong...but overall the game is just 'not very good'...from what I have seen it would have a made a decent single player game...maybe with some kind of a co-op online mode...but as an MMO it fails pretty hard...
That said, it is fun in small doses...there is zero chance of me continuing to play if I have to buy the box to do so (which is how it stands now)...if it was just a matter of paying a monthly sub, I'd goof around with it for a month here and there in between other things when I was bored...but at least they'd get some money out of me.
Nothing short of a total (and I mean TOTAL - beyond NGE level redesign) would get me to subscribe long term or give them the kind of money they really need to be making on this.
MMORPGs do not turn around.
They start small and grow, start big and stay big or decline/struggle forever.
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
its possible but highly unlikely
there have been exceptions like DDO
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/10/ddo-free-to-play/
subscriptions have gone up 40 percent since the game has gone free-to-play.
EQ2 fan sites
DaoC never recovered.
WAR never recovered.
TOR will never recover, even if it goes F2P who would bother playing it again? TOR is yesterdays news, sure some players might play it fro the first time if it went F2P, but not enough to recover even a small percentage of the lost subscriber base.
TSW has better pve, TERA has better pve, GW2 is F2P and will have far, far better pvp and then there are games like PS2 on the horizon as well which is, once again, F2P.
TOR was fun for 2-3 months, but now it's done.
Expresso gave me a Hearthstone beta key.....I'm so happy
DDO - like most games that go f2p in a blaze of publicity (and DDO had the benefit of being in the forefront of changing over) can increase its "subs". The problem is they are all $0 subs. And based on Zynga's subscribers a) only 5% actually buy anything and b) they have massive churn - people simply move on to the next new f2p game.
And if a game has underlying problems - that resulted in (paid) subscribers leaving then those problems remain. And a f2p sub" having played the game for a week / month / quarter - whatever - can simply leave. Hence reports of new f2p games attracting huge numbers of new "subs" when they first go f2p are common; stories about year old f2p games having kept said subscribers are .... well maybe someone can find some. Stories about profit - the same.
And as mention by me and others above SWTOR is a very bad candidate for f2p. Paid for DLC - sure but what would you want to buy in a cash shop?
swtor is still bleeding subs out. They will be lucky to keep whats left of the player base. They are not going to recover. Even if they got total free to play you would have to have a huge cash shop in place that has something in it,as they would have to have a way to make money.
Honestly they already limited themselves, I cant see them fixing what they have. The hero engine is whats killing the game.
Even if Bioware fixed all the reasons I left (idiotic nerfs, uninspiring dungeons, incredibly poor customer relations, Ilum being an epic failure, lack of things to do at endgame, lack of meaningful story continuation) I still would not give them one more cent of my money.
They've ruined too many franchises to be forgiven. Dragon Age, Mass Effect, TOR, and now they're planning on raping the Ultima franchise with their latest abomination. Hell, the only one of their franchises they haven't bent over a table yet is Jade Empire, but I'm sure that's coming down the line.
I will admit that SWTOR was some of the most fun I've had going 1-50 (until I played TSW) and I don't regret the initial purchase, but between the game's problems and EA's bullshit I'll never go back.
So no, it can't make a comeback unless a minor miracle occurs and the project is taken out of EA's grubby hands.
Bioware is a joke of a once great company, they are living from the memories of the past and it's what we are seeing at SWTOR.
The games smells to old, outdated and unfinished.
They can add more planets, more species, open pvp ... but the core of the game is rotten. The planets are the same templates recicled, there is no difference betwen any of them, Hoth and Tatoinne are the same but in different colors, the only slighty different planet is Nar Shadda but in fact is just a corridor festival like the whole game.
The quests are a joke, click and kill all the way. Dudes, SWTOR is becoming the "For 12 years old starter MMO",is like those books of "MMOs" for dummies. I dare any of the Bioare fans to play The Secret World investigation missions or the Polaris heroic and then go back to SWTOR dailyes.
The pvp is boring and cheap, no real skill but at Huttball, also the engine is not massive pvp friendly, just compare Fusang warzone at The secret world with 100 vs 100 vs 100 and the Illum lag festival.
The character creation is so lame that embarrases.Just humans to play , and the only non human species are headless when wearin helmets (Twileks cant wear any hat because BW is too lazy to program specific gear for each specie, like SWG did) Ashara's head is gone since months and not fixed yet. Also the new Katar thing is just another human with cat eyes and pointly ears...lame. The truth laziness, but they call it inmersion.
This game is what EALouse said, just voice acting for a pile of outdated programming from 2005. Dudes nobody will play a game that doesnt offer anything new, not a single thing. Not even a nice looking or awesome enviorenment.
The game was bad designed, worst developed and leaved at it's risk.
I was reading some comments about how the servers are packed and the future assured ...12 euro servers, 3 asian and 12 US, from a total of more than 200 ...yes it's a total succes, but dont worry , then becomes the excuses.
People will come back when they launch 1.2, then 1,3 ...now the future 1.4...people will come back when they get tired from Diablo... No dudes, we leaved the game just because it was bad and boring. FOR US, and US are more than 60% of the population of the game.
You can hide your head in the sand but numbers are there, try to go to the most populated euro servers and take a look.
I just transfered to RED ECLIPSE with my 7 days and there is not people enough to open 2 istances of imperial fleet, 236 peak players at imperial fleet. Of course is packed... if you compare it with the 17 folks at Luka senne.
Also you can say pay to play is ended...yah sure, I never had any problem ever for pay my 7 accounts of SWG for 8 years...why I cant pay even 1 at SWTOR? My mind suddenly changed or is just the game doesn't worth the money?
Now the last excuse, is my fault, not the game, is not my genre, not my kind of game , not my mood... Everything but admit the game is losing players as fast as hell.
I'm not lying, I'm not a WOW fan throwing crap... but I'm a hater, a hater because the game made me hate it. And I'm sorry because I'm a real SW fan.
But this game is not even starwarsy.
this is my feelings as well.
i signed in for my free 7 days, looked at my toon and signed out.
there was nothing there that pulls me to play.
in SWG i had crafting, checking to see any good resources, actual space combat, or even just messing around one of my houses, (i liked to decorate and redecorate).
in swtor all i got is hotkey combat against npc's, or the same hotkey combat against players. thats it. the crafting sucks, the rail shooter sucks.