BioWare's Star Wars MMO Won't Make Any Money, Says Free-to-Play Developer

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

hmm

nice try on the trolling there

but

what i have to say is,

1) its bioware, they have a great reputation on there hands thats well known
2) they are taking a different take on mmorpg's than most do, they are doing what they do best, characters and story driven plots but bringing it to mmo fashion
3) its star wars, really? it can sell its fucking self.

so overall, i think this game will sell quite nicely, i think they will at least break even and if anything if this game holds up for more than a year or so it'll do quite nicely, not saying it would ever kill WoW, but itll definitly do good hopefully.

 

[Red Albatross]

As gigantic and industry-stifling as WoW is...

Goddamn it, it's BioWare and Star Wars. I will play it just to make sure that BioWare stays afloat to finish Mass Effect 3, I'll play it because I love Star Wars, and I'll play it because I think it's gonna be pretty awesome. Even if it's not, I quit WoW a long time ago anyway.

This guy has a point, but his hyperbole makes him sound like a douchecanoe.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Well that could make sense... I guess. Considering that if its Free to play I will be buying it but if its subscription based I'm passing on it.

Wonder how many people are like me in that regard?

see this is where it'll get interesting, 99.999999% of the time i would agree and so would about 20-30 of my friends, but we all agreed on that we were gonna give it a try, as we love biowares games and its NOT going to be like other MMO's in that it is more bioware based stuff and it builds off kotor, so bioware (based on other results i have seen from other threads like this) is really hitting that market that doesn't buy subscriptions already, and they are hitting hardcore kotor fans, and they are hitting anyone who might not care for wow or likes star wars or bioware, so they have quite a few options to suck people in from.

 

[icyneesan]

Don't forget that its a fully voiced MMO. Thats enough reason for me to buy it, buy copies for my friends, and pay for mine and their subscriptions.

If I had a job, I'd seriously do it too.

 

[WanderingFool]

Ive played F2P games before, in fact I just started playing Vindictus just today, and Vindictus is thus far the only good one ive played, as it didnt try to copy Wow. Im not sure how SW:TOR will go, but the F2P is probably much more of a gamble.

 

[Sixcess]

City of Heroes has been going longer than WoW, and is still subscription based. The only people in the MMO industry who are claiming F2P is the way to go are people who can't convince anyone to pay for their crappy games (Hi Jack!)

The main dangers that SWTOR faces are: they've spent a lot of money developing it and that means they'll be looking to make that back as quickly as possible with a big launch with a lot of servers. They'll hit 100K subscribers in the first month. Probably a lot more than that. The question is how many of them will still be there in 6 months time? A niche title like EVE or Fallen Earth can get along with a small but loyal fanbase. A hugely expensive big name title like TOR doesn't have that luxury.

Which brings me to the second danger. Nothing I've seen about this game says MMO to me. It sounds like a single player game (or more precisely, as someone has said - 8 KOTORs in one game) and the flipside of putting so much emphasis on the story is that people will play through the story(s) and then quit the game. MMOs need retention for months and years on end. Where's the hook that will bring people back?

The third and final danger is that more than 5 years after it happened, there's still a very vocal portion of Star Wars fans in the MMO community who are still holding a grudge about what happened to Star Wars Galaxies. These guys should be the ones who'll be flocking to SWTOR, but they're going to be looking for another sandbox, and TOR most definitely is not shaping up to be a sandbox.

Edit: this games been in development for a long time, and I can't help feel that expectations are too high and it won't be different enough to really win people over. From what I've seen of the gameplay it looks like WoW with lightsabres, and the people who want to play WoW already are playing WoW.

If they really wanted to make guaranteed profit they should have put all that time and money into making KOTOR 3, 4, 5...

 

[darkman80723]

Im leery about TOR myself, could be good or could be bad. Personally Im going to wait for launch and give it a few months to see what it looks like before I try it out. And to be honest, I much rather wish Bioware had sunk that movie into new KOTOR's rather then an MMO, but hey Ive been surprised before.

 

[TaboriHK]

I'm all for working up to challenging WoW over time instead of right out of the gate, but to say that WoW is so successful that no other game could ever possibly succeed is really foolish.

 

[Naheal]

I thought they were going for a microtransaction model.

 

[Electrogecko]

If the game is good, people will come.
....People will come Ray.

 

[Random Argument Man]

Bioware has a few things going for them.

A. It's Starwars.
B. It's Bioware.
C. The game looks kinda fun.
D. It will live off KOTOR and at some extent, KOTOR 2.
E. "It will be somekind of story based MMO".

The only point that I could see fail is point E. Can you really keep the story up for a long time? Will I miss some parts if I level too fast? Will I be restricted if I do level up to fast? Will the story make somekind of difference? Will I actually care after level 10?

Personal question* Will I be able to play it on a Mac? You may be a PC gamer, but you can gain even more user if your game is platform-open. Therefore, you approach a chance of success.

Not only that, it not only compares with WoW, but WoW with many updates.

Personnal opinion* Only WoW can kill itself.

 

[iblis666]

as long as they remember the lessons from other mmos that tried to take a chunk of wows player base they should be fine though it will never be a wow killer

 

[captain underpants]

If there's one thing Star Wars fans have shown over the years, it's their willingness to shell out good money for the same tired old crap with a few superficial changes. I think this game will do alright.

 

[z3rostr1fe]

The only MMORPG that didn't turn into a complete disaster a year after it's launch was The Guild Wars, but it had no subscription.

This guy is right.

MMORPG's are a very small market compared to the gaming market as a whole. 12 million WoW players? Pffffft.

My hypothesis on why Guild Wars survived despite not having subscriptions is due to their efficient resource management. Resources such as network bandwidth, computational power, etc. were all probably considered during its stage of development.

 

[Crimsane]

Gonna wait a bit for reviews before I commit, even though I'm fairly hyped for it. I got burned trying FFXIV based largely on the FF name (and because I liked XI), and learned my lesson. Bioware is awesome, but... cautious is me.

If it's as awesome as I hope, or even less terrible than I fear, I'll likely sub for a long while. (Or until ME3 is out and eats all my time.)

On a final note, I don't expect they're trying to make a WoW-killer. Just trying to make a good game people will buy and sub to. You don't have to beat WoW's numbers to be successful, y'know. Nor does WoW currently hold the wallet of every person willing to pay a subscription fee.

 

[Spinozaad]

Fallacious reasoning is used.

Because The Lord of the Rings Online and Champions Online failed to generate money through subscriptions, does not mean that The Old Republic will fail.

 

[ishist]

Ok, this is of course an extremely long shot, but I would literally laugh myself to death if SWTOR killed WoW. It's Star Wars, it's Bioware, and it's apparently as accessible as WoW. Not to mention that WoW is becoming positively geriatric in MMO years. Oh, well I guess I did mentioned it. Besides which the only outwardly apparent character progression wow can manage is increasing larger shoulder pads. When cataclysm releases people are going to look like mobile fortresses with towers and spikes and dead animals and colonies of murlocks and a teeny tiny little person under it all.

Then there is the slew of people who say they loved KOTOR so they will try it...not thinking that there will be 8 KOTORs in there and before they notice they will have been subscribed for 3 years and Bioware/EA will have made so much money they'll have a license to print Ferraris.

And still it's a bit of a long shot because millions of people are afraid to leave the comfortable old MMO they've been repeatedly grinding through for years. But if SWTOR can manage to sway those millions of WoWtards over they'll be rolling in WIN.

Edit: in reply to a previous post - It could be good, it could be bad...No, there is almost zero chance that a Star Wars game by Bioware with that kind of budget could be bad. It might not be the end all be all lord and savior of MMOs but the idea that it could fall into the Bad catagory is ridiculous.

 

[Credge]

Saturating the market with MMO's means all MMO's will lose.

Making an MMO is not worth it.

 

[Credge]

Fallacious reasoning is used.

Because The Lord of the Rings Online and Champions Online failed to generate money through subscriptions, does not mean that The Old Republic will fail.

No, but saturating the market with tons of specialized MMO's which require expensive upkeeps means that Star Wars is attempting to fill a niche market.

Compare how many MMO's have gone from sub only to alternative pay styles in the last few months (also, how many MMO's have been shut down completely) and two things are obvious:

1. MMO's have stagnated with a lack of good ideas and are rehashing the same content again and again.

2. The current MMO model only works for extremely established games (WoW, EVE, EQ).

The fact that there are more MMO's released in a year than RTS's is an insane sign of market saturation. MMO's require many, many subscribers to work. The more those subscribers get shifted around, the less ALL MMO's will succeed.

It's not fallacious reasoning, it's common sense.

Because LOTR (a niche game comparable to Star Wars) and CO (another niche game that has existing competition in that niche) have had little luck with their models, it is highly likely that, in a market that is saturated in very similar games, that one game will somehow run against the norm.

WoW, EQ, and EVE are not the norm.