BioWare Says SWTOR Subscriptions Haven't Dropped
- Thread starter John Funk
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haha i imagined hk-47's voice there with a "statement" and "query" in there.Fr said:
OT: if they had just listened...and went with kotor 3...all would be well in the world.
Quite the contrary. Granted sometimes choosing one option may lose or gain you immediate access to some credits when the opportunity arises, however when you chose the other option an hour later you are likely to receive a message relating to the quest carrying an item or a similar amount of credits as a reward for that choice. So no there really is no monetary favouritism for dark or light choices.DVS BSTrD said:
Isn't it always like that when there's a choice between good and evil? Also good Jedi consular + cocky attitude = best Jedi ever. Similarly, Sith Marauder + light side = good story.Fr said:
Hey, it's John! Nice to see an article from you.
OP: Seeing as how the game is single player oriented, I'm not surprised at a decline in people playing. The content is burned through faster.
OP: Seeing as how the game is single player oriented, I'm not surprised at a decline in people playing. The content is burned through faster.
Eh, I'm currently subscribed but literally the only reason I am is because my SO is bored of WoW and wants somethin else to do.
Don't get me wrong, the first Imperial and Republic character I made were great. You were learnin all kinds of new stuff, doin new things, meetin new people. Awesome. Here's the problem. There is literally only 1 way to level with 1 extra choice. You have to go to each planet, in order, every single time. After each planet you have a choice (or well, have made a choice too). You do a few space missions on the daily to get nice big chunks of xp then jack all xp after the first. You can pvp a bunch and pray you don't get roflstomped over and over. Or you can do the bonus series for the planet you're on. Those are your only options, ever.
The only quests that are different for same faction characters is the first planet, so Hutta/Korriban for Imps and Tython/Ord Mantell for Republic, and the class quests. That means at least 90% of the content in that game is the same content that everyone else on your faction is doing. For someone who really enjoys rollin alts (at least 5 max level characters on WoW with roughly 7 more that range from 30-70), that is a death sentence for me. The emphasis on story makes it even worse truth be told. The first time its nice, the rest of the times? Not so much. I find myself skippin through all the dialogue every single time and pickin completely random responses simply because there are no consequences to doin so. My character can go from a Sith with a heart of gold who will help you move to your new apartment free of charge to a murderous sociopath who goes out of his way to kick puppies all in the same conversation. Its ridiculous.
My biggest gripe is still the fact that no matter what people claim about ToR bein new and excitin, everytime I play and we come across some weird thing my first reaction is to say "Hey! Its like old WoW!" which is not a compliment at all. I shouldn't be comparin ToR to the very first boxed release of World of Warcraft and yet I am constantly doin so because the game is set up like old WoW.
Luckily D3 comes out next month which means I can safely cancel my subscription and can come back to it when they decide that tryin to compare to a 8 year old MMO that has evolved way past that point is a really dumb idea.
Don't get me wrong, the first Imperial and Republic character I made were great. You were learnin all kinds of new stuff, doin new things, meetin new people. Awesome. Here's the problem. There is literally only 1 way to level with 1 extra choice. You have to go to each planet, in order, every single time. After each planet you have a choice (or well, have made a choice too). You do a few space missions on the daily to get nice big chunks of xp then jack all xp after the first. You can pvp a bunch and pray you don't get roflstomped over and over. Or you can do the bonus series for the planet you're on. Those are your only options, ever.
The only quests that are different for same faction characters is the first planet, so Hutta/Korriban for Imps and Tython/Ord Mantell for Republic, and the class quests. That means at least 90% of the content in that game is the same content that everyone else on your faction is doing. For someone who really enjoys rollin alts (at least 5 max level characters on WoW with roughly 7 more that range from 30-70), that is a death sentence for me. The emphasis on story makes it even worse truth be told. The first time its nice, the rest of the times? Not so much. I find myself skippin through all the dialogue every single time and pickin completely random responses simply because there are no consequences to doin so. My character can go from a Sith with a heart of gold who will help you move to your new apartment free of charge to a murderous sociopath who goes out of his way to kick puppies all in the same conversation. Its ridiculous.
My biggest gripe is still the fact that no matter what people claim about ToR bein new and excitin, everytime I play and we come across some weird thing my first reaction is to say "Hey! Its like old WoW!" which is not a compliment at all. I shouldn't be comparin ToR to the very first boxed release of World of Warcraft and yet I am constantly doin so because the game is set up like old WoW.
Luckily D3 comes out next month which means I can safely cancel my subscription and can come back to it when they decide that tryin to compare to a 8 year old MMO that has evolved way past that point is a really dumb idea.
I really don't get why Bioware didn't think this would be a problem, even before release. They have the legacy system that tries to make people play alts in basically all the wrong ways. Merely playing a different class is a good enough reason to level an alt like people do in other MMOs, having a story is an even bigger one. Then doing all the same content just completely kills all desire to have an alt, and ANYTHING the legacy system brings won't change that. The only way they can save the leveling experience is to make it possible to level entirely with flashpoints like you can in wow. Hopefully, counting heroic quests as small FPs, fixing the population and adding the group finder will make that possible, (they will also need to increase the exp from FPs by about 800%) otherwise the games has no longevity and altaholics are just forcing it on themselves and will jump ship as soon as something better comes along.shintakie10 said:
In wow people play a new patch for 2-3 months then unsub for 3 months till the next one and thats fine cos they always come back. TOR is already at this point and its far too soon for that to be happening, and the patches are not good enough to bring many people back.
Pretty much this. TOR simply doesn't have much going for it as an MMO. It's a great RPG, but as an MMO there are some very basic failures in the mechanics that simply aren't being addressed. I give it another 5-6 months before it goes FTP.Fappy said:Holy shit John Funk!? You're back? I heard you were in China or something
Also, on topic: A lot of people currently not playing all that much are probably considering their options. TERA just came out and Guild Wars 2 is just over the horizon. I really don't see Swtor surviving on the subscription model for all that much longer.
I'm really hoping TERA doesn't go the same way. It seems promising now, but I thought the same of TOR in January
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Well, maybe people have just hit the "end" or whatever and are deciding to move on, at least until some expansion pack or other comes out.
Though I haven't played TOR, I do know that once I finish what could be considered "the campaign" in an MMO I'll get bored and move on.
Though I haven't played TOR, I do know that once I finish what could be considered "the campaign" in an MMO I'll get bored and move on.
It's the people who reached max level and now feel they have nothing to do. When BW implements new end game content, I'd expect to see people on more frequently.
Secondly, I believe they need to fold in some servers. I have characters I'd love to play but unfortunately the PVP server they're on is dead and it's pretty boring playing an MMO in a strictly single player fashion.
Secondly, I believe they need to fold in some servers. I have characters I'd love to play but unfortunately the PVP server they're on is dead and it's pretty boring playing an MMO in a strictly single player fashion.
Its more than just people who hit the end. Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, but I know a lot of people who love to roll alts who quit simply because there isn't enough to do. You have a completely linear quest path that you must follow on every single character. It absolutely kills the enjoyment out of levelin alts when there isn't any other path to take.WouldYouKindly said:
WoW has this problem in the later levels. I love alts and I love makin alts. There is so many different ways to level characters now in WoW. You can level through dungeon finder. You can level through pvp. You can quest in half of one continent, flip over to the other half, the go to another continent completely and do the same over there before roundin back and finishin up on the first continent. The quest experience gets somewhat railroaded once you hit outlands, but you can still level through dungeons or pvp and then you go to northrend and have choices on where you want to go to again.
ToR needs more content, period. End game content it desperately needs, true, but it also desperately needs low level content as well. It is not fun to level the third straight character through the exact same zones that your previous two leveled through. This needed to be addressed before they made their ridiculous legacy system, but now that it is out it is imperative that they actually support it with content.
The game's failings are a result of bad design. They created a single-player game and expected people to pay monthly for it. They ignored the very thing that made MMOs worth a monthly fee in the first place -- buying real estate in a virtual world.
This generation of MMOs are so linear, or at least heavily corralled experiences. Your primary means of leveling is following someone else's story... so basically, you're not paying for the right to create your own character, you're just leasing one of the pre-mades. In trying to make the story content deep, they've also made it incredibly narrow.
MMOs are probably the one place where, especially at the beginning, it's okay to err on the side of "a mile wide and an inch deep." Players need a variety of things to do, not just one thing that's really interesting (the first time) and nothing else -- that's what single-player games are for.
Of course, the other problem is that it's a Star Wars game. That means you're supposed to play through the story of "your favorite character," which you must select from the short list of archetypes. Are you Luke, Han, Anakin, Maul, or Fett? Those are your choices. It's such a huge galaxy that you can live one of five stories, and ever smuggler gets the same Wookiee companion...
Go F2P or go away.
This generation of MMOs are so linear, or at least heavily corralled experiences. Your primary means of leveling is following someone else's story... so basically, you're not paying for the right to create your own character, you're just leasing one of the pre-mades. In trying to make the story content deep, they've also made it incredibly narrow.
MMOs are probably the one place where, especially at the beginning, it's okay to err on the side of "a mile wide and an inch deep." Players need a variety of things to do, not just one thing that's really interesting (the first time) and nothing else -- that's what single-player games are for.
Of course, the other problem is that it's a Star Wars game. That means you're supposed to play through the story of "your favorite character," which you must select from the short list of archetypes. Are you Luke, Han, Anakin, Maul, or Fett? Those are your choices. It's such a huge galaxy that you can live one of five stories, and ever smuggler gets the same Wookiee companion...
Go F2P or go away.
I don't play MMO's, but I've always been silently hoping that TOR does well. Maybe because I'm tired of hearing about WoW, or, more specifically, listening to WoW fanboys. I also can't help but think that power leveling uber players max out their characters in a fraction of the time a normal player would then compare it to WoW and complain about lack of endgame. Blizzard's opus has had years and years to build up it's endgame. I think it's an unfair comparison.
In the end, I'm not playing it so if it flops it's no skin off my ass. I would just like to see WoW taken down a notch.
In the end, I'm not playing it so if it flops it's no skin off my ass. I would just like to see WoW taken down a notch.
Good, stable MMO. Hit 50 on my Trooper Vanguard pretty early on, what with wanting to power through that story as fast as possible - I'm a military nut, it's "my thing" one could say.
Been doing PvP and the occational hardmode (heroic as WoW players might know it) flashpoints (dungeons) pretty regularly with my friends and I'm quite literally having a blast. The especially interesting thing is that tanking works in PvP, with Guard (which reduces damage taken by a friendly target of your choosing, by transferring some of the damage to you) and taunts reducing enemy damage against everyone but yourself.
I agree with Dirty Apple. People I leveled with on release started bitching about lack of content the moment they hit 50. Once I politely reminded them how little endgame content WoW had on release, that shut up quite a few naysayers. Those same folks are now back in 1.2 with the new PvP warzones and the new operations (raids).
Like I said right off the bat: It's a good, stable MMO built around the mechanics people ought to be familiar with by now if they've ever played an MMO. It does everything an MMO needs to do well or at the very least it does them well enough, but it shines in the story department. (In before individuals with tech issues. I've had none, but I didn't say the game was perfect did I?).
I'm not surprised the numbers are steady. Heck, I'm still happily enjoying my 30 days of free playing time because I had a level 50 character. That's right, I got a month of free gametime just because I'd played on release, and they wanted folks to give the new content update a go. Can't remember the last time a company running an MMO gave a month of gametime for free just for playing their game. Folks like Blizzard could probably let people play for free for months and months, and still be looking at a positive bank account at the end of it...
Been doing PvP and the occational hardmode (heroic as WoW players might know it) flashpoints (dungeons) pretty regularly with my friends and I'm quite literally having a blast. The especially interesting thing is that tanking works in PvP, with Guard (which reduces damage taken by a friendly target of your choosing, by transferring some of the damage to you) and taunts reducing enemy damage against everyone but yourself.
I agree with Dirty Apple. People I leveled with on release started bitching about lack of content the moment they hit 50. Once I politely reminded them how little endgame content WoW had on release, that shut up quite a few naysayers. Those same folks are now back in 1.2 with the new PvP warzones and the new operations (raids).
Like I said right off the bat: It's a good, stable MMO built around the mechanics people ought to be familiar with by now if they've ever played an MMO. It does everything an MMO needs to do well or at the very least it does them well enough, but it shines in the story department. (In before individuals with tech issues. I've had none, but I didn't say the game was perfect did I?).
I'm not surprised the numbers are steady. Heck, I'm still happily enjoying my 30 days of free playing time because I had a level 50 character. That's right, I got a month of free gametime just because I'd played on release, and they wanted folks to give the new content update a go. Can't remember the last time a company running an MMO gave a month of gametime for free just for playing their game. Folks like Blizzard could probably let people play for free for months and months, and still be looking at a positive bank account at the end of it...
I just canceled my sub yesterday... for Tera.
The plague was an interesting event that really brought the two factions together which flamed world pvp... but at the newness wore off and it just became a repetitive grind with the ultimate aspiration being "some gear that will never be better than epics" people stopped doing the quests and world pvp is tapering off.
Not tooting Tera's horn or anything... but given there is no faction... I'll never be want for pvp unless there's just no one logged in.
The plague was an interesting event that really brought the two factions together which flamed world pvp... but at the newness wore off and it just became a repetitive grind with the ultimate aspiration being "some gear that will never be better than epics" people stopped doing the quests and world pvp is tapering off.
Not tooting Tera's horn or anything... but given there is no faction... I'll never be want for pvp unless there's just no one logged in.
