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Why is this game considered a failure?
amber-r
Member Posts: 323
I've been looking around and it seems to be one of the most successful titles currently running.
It sold nearly 3 million copies at full price, peaked at well over 2 million subscribers (something almost no MMO manages to come anywhere near) and since going f2p with optional subscription has been shown to make large amounts of money from both ($139 million from it's cash shop sales alone last year). Added to that EA recently renewed the star wars licence and commented it's very happy with how profitable this game is.
Why is it considered a failure when it's one of the biggest and most successful mmo titles currently running?
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Comments
1. Because the production costs were the highest in MMO history.
2. Because it's a Co-op RPG instead of a MMO.
3. Because their customized Hero engine puts an annoying delay on skill activation times.
Where did you get those numbers from? Not trolling, but last numbers i remember were 1.7 million copies/subs. Maybe it sold a few more, but don't know.
Anyway, to answer yoru question OP, it's because it really was a huge finacial failure in the 6 months (mayb a year but didn't keep following it).
TOR had a reported development cost of 200 million dollars. So, it needed atleast 2 million copies and good sub numbers for some time to recoup. Unfortunatly, and there's my numbers btw, it hold sold 1.7 milliom and lost a huge chunck of it's playerbase in those same 6 months. Just check wikipedia, previous posts, massively, etc for yourself.
The greatest proof however, was int he numerous news of layoffs after layoffs from Bioware. If i rememeber correctly, they even lost the head designer, director, whatever it was. It was just like Funcom with TSW. So while it's making money now, there's no doubt SWTOR did "fail" in that sense., ense, getting the "lovely" nickname Tortanic, because really, it was probably the biggest fall for an mmorpg ever.
Also, alot of people hated it. So...... FAIL!!!
It isn't a failure. It's just not as successful as the expectations were for it. Which considering it was seriously expected to reach WoW levels of success, they were unreasonably high. As long as you're willing to pay the subscription, it's a decent MMO, regardless of the narrow definition some have of an MMO.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
As far as I know neither EA or Bioware have ever given out the information as to how much it cost to create, almost everything I've read has been speculation with wild fluctation from 100 to 500 million.
The other 2 points are irrelevant since the question was why people considered it a "flop", as in not a financial success when it's shown that it in fact has been very profitable.
Links.
*2 million copies sold / 1.7 million subscribers as of 1st February 2012
http://www.vg247.com/2012/02/01/ea-q3-swtor-moves-2-million-units/
*2.62 million boxes sold worldwide as of feb 2014
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/31584/star-wars-the-old-republic/
*139 million in cash shop sales
http://static.pcinpact.com/images/bd/news/143436.jpeg
*EA states the game is profitable and renews SW licence for another 10 years.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/11/20/ea-holds-onto-star-wars-games-license-for-10-years-says-swtor-i/
Steam: Neph
The game is a failure but the game engine sucks...crafting is useless at cap...pvp sucks...space combat (please). EA spent the bulk of it's money on voice acting and the actual game...not so much.
The ONLY reason the game sold as many copies as it did is because it's Star Wars. I bought 2 deluxe copies for me and my wife...she lasted only until level 25 and I capped on character and quickly became bored out of my mind. It's another same ole same ole gear tread mill and it's not even done well.
The Repopulation coming out soon seems to have more to it that SWTOR ever had or ever will...and they didn't spend MILLIONS on it.
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
So in other words no matter what we post you will say it isn't so.
I would say dig around in old pre-release information handed out by EA with all their promises. What they promised and what they later added were completely different things. Oh wait, you can't. EA deleted them all and only some reddit copies were saved.
My belief is that it gets much hate here due to one thing:
It's not SWG 2.0
I still play from time to time, mostly when I get tired of sword and sorcery (my friend quipped I go from sword and sorcery to saber and...forcery). I am by no means saying it's the best thing since sliced bread, but for me it will offer enough of a diversion from time to time to have me plop down a sub and just have some fun.
The ip has so much potential, so much material it could draw from, it's a shame that they limited themselves in such a fashion. My biggest gripe is the engine, more specifically what they did to the engine before the engine was finished. If they can find a way to move the came code to the final edition of the hero engine, it would go a loooong way to improving the game as a whole. However, as I understand it, that isn't really feasible.
It is financially successful, which at the end of the day is all EA really cares about.
But it did not dethrone WOW, some folks thought with it's strong IP it had a real shot. But it sure copied some of WOW's core game play which again, to some folks made it too much of a clone in their eyes. So failure on a couple of levels here.
It went F2P (really free to trial) in a very short period of time. Some folks feel that if a title can't hold subs over the long haul, and even grown them the game failed on some level.
It is more like a online version of KOTOR, rather than sandbox style title as SWG was. To some folk, that is considered to be a failure. Some people really did want to be Uncle Owen.
It launched without solid space combat, substituting a mini-game of sort and only recently provided opportunities to dogfight. But others will ask, where are the epic fights between Star Destroyers and Death Stars? Over in EVE still apparently.
It's PVP model is a bit ...... meh, is the kindest way to describe it. Your call whether or not that is failure.
All I can say is I wish I could create and sell something that failed so badly as to bring in the cashflow this title does.
Then I could play EVE all day.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It's only considered a failure by two groups of people; those who don't know what the word means, and those whose tinfoil hats are on a little too tight. There are, as you point out, several sources indicating that the game makes lots of money, likely more money than any other western MMO that isn't WoW, with not one shred of evidence, anywhere, which so much as implies that the game is not profitable.
The largest segment of the "those who don't know what the word means" crowd appears to be people who can't tell the difference between "failure" and "game we don't like."
EDIT: You'll notice, pretty much every attempted explanation in this thread of why the game is a "failure" has absolutely nothing to do with success vs. failure, but rather only with things the posters personally dislike about the game.
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.
heeeeeeeyyyyy! I listed why I thought the game was perceived as a failure, at least on this board. I admit however I did point out my own likes/dislikes, and no further "proof" of success or failure on the games part, my bad.
I think it was cuz of the following reasons:
Too themeparky without certain feats:
At endgame you spent time around the fleets, where the daily npcs where, the design of the area made it feel like a lobby game. No dueling allowed in this area.
Illum endgame zone with promised world pvp didnt live up. For instance you had massive lag, wasnt optmized for big group pvp, the objhectives were simplistic, there were stationary Walkers shooting beams that didnt do anything. Same goes for tattooine.
Zones were too linear, there were no iconic places in the world to hang out, such as cities. In general it felt lifeless where each planet's layout felt the same (in terms of quest hub design).
Zoning from planets consisted on alot of loading screens.
Ship combat felt on rails.
PvP progression was all about farming warzones. There wasnt any arenas at launch.
Devs didnt listen to feedback, pre launch they glorified their game with broken promises, such as James Ohlen saying "we have the best pvp team in the world".
SWG were shut due to Swtor, though Swtor couldnt offer what SWG was all about.
And there is absolutely nothing wrong with disliking a game. It just gets old after a while when people treat "failure" as a synonym for "anything I don't like,' which happens pretty consistently in discussions about TOR. From most of the responses so far in this thread, you'd think the title had been "Why do people who dislike this game feel that way?"
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.
because it wasn't a failure? people just like to use that term because they don't personally like the game.
many many other people do like it.
that said, for me its a decent game but the pvp aspect really is pretty bad, which is what i like to do.
loved the class stories though.
A game can be a failure even if it makes money - and I always thought SWTOR would make money simply because it's Star Wars. SWTOR spent more money on this MMO than just about every other MMO out there and produced a meh game and THAT'S why it's a failure.
Currently playing SWTOR and it's MUCH better than it was at launch.
It's hardly uncommon on this site to see someone trying to pass their opinion off as something more than just one persons point of view.
no, not all mmo's have all the same features nor should they.
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
No, actually, it can't. It can fail to satisfy a particular gamer's desires, but that isn't the same thing as being a failure. A product designed to make money is only a failure when it doesn't turn a profit.
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.
Pretty sure SwampDragons' post was sarcasm in reference to complaints about SWTOR not being SWG 2.0