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

[Da_Schwartz]

I think it will do just fine. Starwars has just as much if not more fanboys then WoW. Which is hard ot fathom cause im gonna be 31.. and i know how relevant starwars used to be. And the fact that im assuming that this mmo brings something different to the table that isn't in the form of Orcs, elves, and keeps.. And i also don't pay attention to Jack Emmert. He dev'd then sold out The city of heros game and community only to make some shitty super counterpart too it and failed miserably. Mind you CoH is still going "strong and that games like 5,6 years old. Best MMO most of you never heard of (thanks Jack). So whatever if it's worth 15 a month i don't see why most ppl wouldn't have a problem playing it. I think the community will be good a fair combo of oldschool nerds, space junkies, and diehards. Aside from the minority new trilogy fans, the fact that lucas arts is obliterating any respect i've ever at one time had for the series and that whole starwars galaxies thing...ugh..It'll all come down to the gameplay i guess.

 

[tehroc]

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.

Did anyone think that perhaps most MMOs since WOW have been very poor and mostly rushed? Star Wars Galaxies only failed cause the developers ignored their playerbase and tried to turn the game into a WOW clone, at one time SWG was one of the most popular MMOs

 

[Polock]

Spoiler: Sorry everyone

As good as it may be I just can't see it staying afloat for any more than a couple of years. Anyone remember Aion?

Lol Aion was such crap. Beautiful looking game but lacked so much substance..

 

[Morganan]

What "accolade" has this game won? Best wet-bar at a press event? Best deli spread?

 

[LittleChone]

It had better be a success, DAMN IT!!! Games this good only come so often, and so many of them sink into obscurity. DON'T LET THIS GAME SINK TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Baldr]

There are things that a subscription pays for that you don't find in free MMOs. Customer Service and better server maintenance.

 

[Tehlanna TPX]

I hope its not just me,
But I'd rather pay monthly and get "all" of a game, so to speak, than play for free but have to pay if i want certain items, classes or in some cases even areas and quests/missions :S

This. A thousand times this. Why is it such a hard concept for people to grasp? Instead they see a subscription and start clawing at their faces all dramatic like "ZOMGZ THEY WANTS MY MONIES"

 

[Tehlanna TPX]

There are things that a subscription pays for that you don't find in free MMOs. Customer Service and better server maintenance.

Exactly! People ***** about how 'terrible' WoW's customer service is, but then again they seem to have a selective memory. I remember people being hacked on EQ, calling in to try to get their stuff back and being laughed at. In WoW it's typically hassle free, a short wait, and bam your stuff is back.

 

[zombie711]

do what APB did buy minutes to play the game. the game should come with 10 hours, and 90 minutes should cost a doller and 50 cents

 

[Amalith]

There are things that a subscription pays for that you don't find in free MMOs. Customer Service and better server maintenance.

Tell that to the Guild Wars team. Or Turbine. They didn't drop their services when they went free to play, and Guild Wars never had subscriptions and has done fine.

I wish TOR would go the Guild Wars route, because I'm not paying more for a game to actually be able to play it. It just isn't worth it.

 

[Galad]

WoW can't go on forever. I wonder when it will start dying.

Good question. I hope it doesn't come down to WoW II!
[sub]If not, it would probably just be World of Starcraft instead.[/sub]

World of MineStarCraft, where you use the MineCraft minigame to gather resources etc for your ships that roam in a WoW-like universe, but in space.

Oh, the crackoholics this would produce

*cackles devilishly*

 

[Deathfish15]

I watched the recent combat video and got to say that SW:TOR is actually looking to be quite an MMORPG that I'm wanting to play. It's looking to be fun, and looks like KoTOR Online, just how it should.

 

[SelectivelyEvil13]

WoW can't go on forever. I wonder when it will start dying.

Good question. I hope it doesn't come down to WoW II!
[sub]If not, it would probably just be World of Starcraft instead.[/sub]

World of MineStarCraft, where you use the MineCraft minigame to gather resources etc for your ships that roam in a WoW-like universe, but in space.

Oh, the crackoholics this would produce

*cackles devilishly*

Expected Release Date: 2012

Oh, so that's how it'll go down, is it?

And just to throw more gas on the fire, EA would split the chaos-driven masses with a simultaneous release:

Star Wars: Knights of the Second New Republic
Return of the Zombie Sith​

 

[Exterminas]

Well there has got to be a reason all the sucessors to the MMORpg-Throne failed. Were all of them bad games? Probably not. So searching for explanations in the payment formate seems to be a good approche

 

[Smackadummy]

Everyone keeps talking about how how SW:TOR is going to be good because it's made by Bioware. However, they don't even have any experience with MMOs. All the games that you're all touting as examples are single player RPGS. There's a major difference between the two.

 

[Crimsane]

Hard to take this guy seriously. His company does what? I've never heard of them.

whose company operates a number of free-to-play browser MMOs

Oh. Explains why I've never heard of them. People play browser MMOs?

Have you ever heard of that Farmville-Thingy? Is supposed to be quite popular these days.

Farmville's not an MMO, and is only just barely arguably a game at all.

 

[EvilMaggot]

i hope so much this game dont fails ive been waiting so long... SW: Galaxies got fucked by the patch that changed the combat system... so i really hope they pull SW:TOR off.

 

[Amarsir]

It appears people only want to predict the last thing that happened. It used to be "oh you have to go subscription, there's no other way!" Now it's "oh you have to go F2P micropayments, there's no other way!" No doubt whatever comes next will be the only way also. But not until afterward.

(That's hardly unique to games, of course. Evacuation rates through 2005-06 show that the people who used to ignore Class 4 hurricane warnings started running to the hills every time it drizzled for a year after Katrina. As a species we're just not wired for prediction and probability.)

 

[Xanthious]

The problem is this. There are only so many people out there that a subscription based MMO will appeal to. WoW currently has a stranglehold on 12 million of those people. How many more are left out there? Judging by how well every other subscription MMO has done, not too damn many.

Now it could nab some people away from WoW but that's a tricky thing too because people already have years of time invested in WoW plus they most likely have a good numbers of friends that play WoW as well. So unless they can convince entire guilds to leave at once stealing WoW players isn't very likely.

The other problem is that the way MMOs work it's not like you can realistically play two at the same time either. The time investment required is just too large for it to be workable. Sure people might try out Old Republic to see what the hype is all about but if other MMOs have taught us anything it's that people may try out new MMOs but they eventually end up back at WoW.

I think that Old Republic will sell a lot of copies. I think the first two months or so will probably have a playerbase around 1.5-2 million players. However, after the novelty and hype wear off it will eventually drop off and stay around a half million to 1 million subscribers.

Bottom line, this game won't make a dent in WoW. The best it can hope for is a far far far distant second place. Judging by how much this game was rumored to cost I agree with the fella in the article above. Old Republic won't make money, at least not for a long time to come.

 

[Dhatz]

you have no idea how many people wish pay 2 play died ASAP. im curently an open beta tester of perpetuum and the guys not wanting to continue into paid dont even speak up in the general chat. Worst of all, this shows that money still connects to those who have power and can use both.