Hate MMO's, love Bioware, Love StarWars, Love KOTOR.
Can't... resist.... must..get...The Old Republic!...
Can't... resist.... must..get...The Old Republic!...
BioWare's Star Wars MMO Won't Make Any Money, Says Free-to-Play Developer
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
- Start date
Surely a large part of the problem is WoW fanboys and MMO-haters crowing that the game will fail?
People won't leave WoW because they've invested SO much time in it. Literally months of their life by now. That doesn't mean new players won's start and WoW players won't add this to replace their few remaining free hours.
Free-to-Play is completely different in the market - it's a way to kill fifteen minutes, maybe an hour for a couple of days over a month or so (at which point the absence of quality becomes painfully apparent and you dith it). There's still a market for people who like "social" gaming, and can pay for it, but don't like Blizzard's grindfest time vortex, and this could hit it.
I say good luck to 'em.
People won't leave WoW because they've invested SO much time in it. Literally months of their life by now. That doesn't mean new players won's start and WoW players won't add this to replace their few remaining free hours.
Free-to-Play is completely different in the market - it's a way to kill fifteen minutes, maybe an hour for a couple of days over a month or so (at which point the absence of quality becomes painfully apparent and you dith it). There's still a market for people who like "social" gaming, and can pay for it, but don't like Blizzard's grindfest time vortex, and this could hit it.
I say good luck to 'em.
That guy doesn't realize that most geeks would give their left foot to be a Jedi in an MMO. It will work. It probably wont be as big as WoW but it will make money. There are a lot of SW fans out there. I don't play MMO's though, not even free ones so what do I know...
Honestly? Can't help but feel that there's a sense of (if you excuse the Warcraft 3 terminology) QQ from Bigpoint.
Champions Online may have gone free to play, but City of Heroes shows no sign of going in that direction, largely because most people comparing the two prefer City over Champions. Lord of the Rings Online again has mitigating factors, namely the mad success of Dungeons & Dragons Online going free to play, which was developed by the same team.
While I wouldn't dispute that competing with WoW is difficult, the continued success of EVE and City of Heroes means that you can't make a blanket statement like Bigpoint just did. If the mechanics work well, I see no reason for The Old Republic to bomb.
(Hell, even Aion is still in operation, since they released an update of whacking great proportions a couple of months ago).
Champions Online may have gone free to play, but City of Heroes shows no sign of going in that direction, largely because most people comparing the two prefer City over Champions. Lord of the Rings Online again has mitigating factors, namely the mad success of Dungeons & Dragons Online going free to play, which was developed by the same team.
While I wouldn't dispute that competing with WoW is difficult, the continued success of EVE and City of Heroes means that you can't make a blanket statement like Bigpoint just did. If the mechanics work well, I see no reason for The Old Republic to bomb.
(Hell, even Aion is still in operation, since they released an update of whacking great proportions a couple of months ago).
Have you ever heard of that Farmville-Thingy? Is supposed to be quite popular these days.Crimsane said:
The big question is: how many players does an MMO need to make a profit?
WOW's got 11.5 million subscribers. Aion's dropped from 4 to below 3.5 (and declining), but still better than the 3 million in Lineage 1.
Blizzard and NCsoft are obviously making a big profit.
All the other MMOs are lucky if they have 0.5M (Everquest in it's best days), yet almost all these MMOs with typically between 50000 to 200000 players, are still around.
How many discontinued MMOs can people list? There's only 2 high-profile ones: Tabula rasa and APB.
Then again, even if you have only 50000 people forking over $15 per month, that's still 9 million per year.
WOW's got 11.5 million subscribers. Aion's dropped from 4 to below 3.5 (and declining), but still better than the 3 million in Lineage 1.
Blizzard and NCsoft are obviously making a big profit.
All the other MMOs are lucky if they have 0.5M (Everquest in it's best days), yet almost all these MMOs with typically between 50000 to 200000 players, are still around.
How many discontinued MMOs can people list? There's only 2 high-profile ones: Tabula rasa and APB.
Then again, even if you have only 50000 people forking over $15 per month, that's still 9 million per year.
Remember that EA has BioWare's back. And EA is sparing no expense when it comes to BioWare games. Rest assured that Mass Effect 3 will be VERY well funded, no matter what happens to SW:TOR. Even if it bombs (which is unlikely), EA recognizes that Mass Effect is BioWare's current magnum opus. Finishing a trilogy will also boost sales of the other two games too.Thibaut said:
I'm hesitant to say that SW: TOR will be the best MMO ever made, but Mass Effect 3 is one of the most anticipated games in the industry right now. And I'm pretty sure it won't disappoint.
Pretty much this, and Republic and Sith story arcs are pretty large to boot- and there's the universal story arc... I'm betting an arm that it's about Revan.Irridium said:
Well thats what I think good microtransactions should be. Myself I have only bought 2 character slot upgrades to have 1 character for every prof but thats it. They still do bring in cash to run servers which I am fine with since it isn't missing content.z3rostr1fe said:
My thoughts on the subject are that "free to play" games are typically more expensive than subscription based ones, which is why a lot of companies are going in that direction. In the end people who want to play the game seriously, wind up paying more proportionatly than the company would get if everyone was paying $15.00 a month.
Not to mention the fact that I have a hard time wanting to committ to a game where someone who has more money to spend on games IRL than I do is going to have a decisive advantage.
*THAT* said, I think a big part of this arguement also comes down to greed, pure and simple. The point being made about the development budget is that it might take Star Wars a couple of years to make a profit, rather than immediatly bringing in truckloads of cash every month on a reliable schedule, which is what a lot of producers want. I think the idea of a long-term investment in a product is increasingly foreign to the money-crazed, exceedingly corperate, video game industry of today.
On top of everything else, I think that one of the problems is that there is a sort of psycological block when it comes to "World Of Warcraft" and MMORPGs. A lot of game companies figure they can't throw a comparitively cheap game together and get massive results anymore because of a quality game on the market that people are dedicated to. The differance between a lot of the companies preaching doom and gloom and the "Old Republic" project is that "Old Republic" is taking the time and money to be a quality product, and apparently to realize that it needs to compete with "WoW" as it is now, not as WoW was when it launched.
Blizzard itself has said that they don't expect "World Of Warcraft" to remain top dog forever, and their reveal that they are working on their next MMORPG seems to imply that they expect WoW to take some hits over the next year or two and will need something new to compete with whatever it is that is going to cut into WoW's customer base.
I'll also be honest in saying that while I'm inclined to believe a lot of what "EA Louse" has to say... as you know I'm not a big fan of how today's game industry operates... it seems to me that Mr. Louse has a definate case of "sour grapes" due to what happened with "Warhammer", leading me to believe he was involved in, or emotionally invested in, that product, and is somewhat upset over the attention that a rival in-house project is getting in comparison.
To be entirely honest as someone who was a fan of "Warhammer Fantasy" before hand, looked forward to that game, and tried it, I will say that it was flawed on so many fundemental levels that no degree of additional attention was liable to have made it more successful. Everything right down to the basic balance between the two factions was borked, and if you followed their promotions like "Road To War" which seemed to have over a million people involved (which sort of plays havoc with the idea of poor promotion) you could see early on that people recognized how fundementally broken and slanted the game was to begin with.
I also think that fundemental design desicians like having all of the characters look like the minatures they were based on was a problem. Pretty much all characters of a given level looked pretty much the same.... to a much greater degree than even games like WoW. That right there was something people were griping about since day #1, and represented the need for so many art assets to "fix" so people would be happy as to be almost insurrmountable in any kind of reasonable time table. It seemed to me also that this was an intentional design desician (for fans of the minatures game) rather than some kind of corner that was cut.
Ah well, enough rambling. The bottom line is that while it's impossible to tell for sure, I think "Old Republic" has a lot of potential. I've said that before with games that wound up going down in flames, but I think this one is going to be big competition for WoW.
Also I'll actually be somewhat relieved if they DON'T go free to play, and committ to a long term strategy in general (above and beyond the cost of admission). I think a lot of MMOs turned out like they did because the people developing them expected an immediate liscence to print money, and freaked out when it didn't happen.
Not to mention the fact that I have a hard time wanting to committ to a game where someone who has more money to spend on games IRL than I do is going to have a decisive advantage.
*THAT* said, I think a big part of this arguement also comes down to greed, pure and simple. The point being made about the development budget is that it might take Star Wars a couple of years to make a profit, rather than immediatly bringing in truckloads of cash every month on a reliable schedule, which is what a lot of producers want. I think the idea of a long-term investment in a product is increasingly foreign to the money-crazed, exceedingly corperate, video game industry of today.
On top of everything else, I think that one of the problems is that there is a sort of psycological block when it comes to "World Of Warcraft" and MMORPGs. A lot of game companies figure they can't throw a comparitively cheap game together and get massive results anymore because of a quality game on the market that people are dedicated to. The differance between a lot of the companies preaching doom and gloom and the "Old Republic" project is that "Old Republic" is taking the time and money to be a quality product, and apparently to realize that it needs to compete with "WoW" as it is now, not as WoW was when it launched.
Blizzard itself has said that they don't expect "World Of Warcraft" to remain top dog forever, and their reveal that they are working on their next MMORPG seems to imply that they expect WoW to take some hits over the next year or two and will need something new to compete with whatever it is that is going to cut into WoW's customer base.
I'll also be honest in saying that while I'm inclined to believe a lot of what "EA Louse" has to say... as you know I'm not a big fan of how today's game industry operates... it seems to me that Mr. Louse has a definate case of "sour grapes" due to what happened with "Warhammer", leading me to believe he was involved in, or emotionally invested in, that product, and is somewhat upset over the attention that a rival in-house project is getting in comparison.
To be entirely honest as someone who was a fan of "Warhammer Fantasy" before hand, looked forward to that game, and tried it, I will say that it was flawed on so many fundemental levels that no degree of additional attention was liable to have made it more successful. Everything right down to the basic balance between the two factions was borked, and if you followed their promotions like "Road To War" which seemed to have over a million people involved (which sort of plays havoc with the idea of poor promotion) you could see early on that people recognized how fundementally broken and slanted the game was to begin with.
I also think that fundemental design desicians like having all of the characters look like the minatures they were based on was a problem. Pretty much all characters of a given level looked pretty much the same.... to a much greater degree than even games like WoW. That right there was something people were griping about since day #1, and represented the need for so many art assets to "fix" so people would be happy as to be almost insurrmountable in any kind of reasonable time table. It seemed to me also that this was an intentional design desician (for fans of the minatures game) rather than some kind of corner that was cut.
Ah well, enough rambling. The bottom line is that while it's impossible to tell for sure, I think "Old Republic" has a lot of potential. I've said that before with games that wound up going down in flames, but I think this one is going to be big competition for WoW.
Also I'll actually be somewhat relieved if they DON'T go free to play, and committ to a long term strategy in general (above and beyond the cost of admission). I think a lot of MMOs turned out like they did because the people developing them expected an immediate liscence to print money, and freaked out when it didn't happen.
This will be very interesting, i think. I'm never one to say a game will fail because another game is Goliath, but TOR does stand against serious odds, considering the amount of other MMO's that have come and failed in WoW's shadow, but it sure would be nice to see a new reigning champion out there. I'm just skeptical about a Star Wars game being the one. Wasn't there already a Star Wars MMO that failed miserably?
Just my two cents, i'm not too much into MMO's, so i'll just be on the outside looking in.
Just my two cents, i'm not too much into MMO's, so i'll just be on the outside looking in.
That I understand. I love Bioware to peices but I just simply don't have the time or money to justify spending x amount of dollars on a game I may only touch a couple times a month due to the fact that I have so much homework and so little free time.gmaverick019 said: