EA Considering "Different Models" for The Old Republic

[Paragon Fury]

Hilarious that they just won't admit they blew it. Can't wait to see how long they decide to stretch things out before they announce an F2P model.

EA, time to admit that you threw an awful lot of money at a game - and it didn't work. Worse, you threw an awful lot of money at a BIOWARE game and it blew up in your face.

That takes skill.

And what's more, they're already setting up to do it again.

NOOOO! GOD PLEASE NO!

Appropriate, I think.



Also, EA admit you fucked up, and that you made Bioware fuck up (multiple times). There is nothing great, or even really that good about SWTOR: you CTRL+C, CTRL+V'd WoW, then fucked it up a bit, added cartoony graphics that actually look worse WoWs at times, re-skinned it as a Star Wars game and added some voice actors - who, while interesting for the first quests, start really grind your nerves when wiping your ass involves a 3 minute exposition or dialogue cutscene.

 

[shrekfan246]

EA's CEO calls pushing a subscription model in a largely free-to-play market "challenging."

It would help if the people pushing it weren't challenged themselves.

Wasn't EA's motto at one point "Challenge Everything"? Hmm...

Anyway, it's not like Free-To-Play is going to herald the death of the game, there are plenty of Free-To-Play games that make tons of money. And the fact that this one would have decent production values behind it would probably catapult it even further.

 

[NiPah]

Well thats the last time I deem anything a WoW killer. I give up. WoW will burn itself out and the mmo market will never attain the peaks wow did. Swtor is also likely the last mmo im buying. Guild wars 2 doesn't have a chance

It's those types of statements that made you so susceptible to believing SWTOR would be a WoW killer. I never understood why people actually believed SWTOR would be a WoW killer in the first place is beyond me.

 

[ServebotFrank]

anc[is]Why does that screenshot get so much mileage? It's a shoulder. This must be at least the 10th time I've seen it used.

It's not a picture of a shoulder. It's a picture of a glitch that makes NPCs become tiny in cutscenes. You can kinda see him.

OT: I would re-install this game if it goes free to play. I liked it but not enough to pay by the month.

 

[beniki]

Eve says hello. You know people buy two accounts for that thing? And they have the extra cash laying around to develop an FPS... which will tie in to their existing space ship game.

I had misgivings about this game once they started releasing class information. Didn't take a genius to see the design principles going into the game them. Streamlined mechanics for easy balancing, simple duplicates with different skins on each side.

But hey, the best thing about the game was the multiplayer conversations, and the dark side light side business... although to be honest the scoring system ruined most of the fun. You choose a certain option to grind points, not to stay in character. And now, people will be able to try that out for free!

Appropriate, I think.

A bit more appropriate

http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/

 

[godofslack]

The thing that always dooms MMOs built around subscription fees is that they never innovate. I mean, there are things SWtOR does better than WoW, things Rift does better too, but they fail to change enough to attract a seperate demographic. Consider a WoW player, they have the choice to go with a game they are already established in, and know is well made and well designed, or paying more money to go with a game that they have to start over and have no knowledge if it's good or not, most people will go with the former. Which leads us to the issue of marketing a game to compete with WoW, to the point of designing it to be WoW with X, set in Y. You don't compete with an established product by being that product with a new coat of paint, it won't sell.

The free to play model gets around that by not competing with WoW, and offering a risk free way to try it. Someone will try SWToR as free-to-play if they even have the slightest bit of interest, compared to if they had to bet 60 bucks that this game will be good. Right now buying a MMO is a major risk, more so than any other game, because if you buy it and don't end up liking it you lose your license after a month, and if you, like me, want to play the game but don't want to pay 15 dollars a month for it, you have to wait until it inevitably flops and goes free to play.

 

[Giftmacher]

You know what I don't get why does every MMO charge £8.99 or 15$ a month?

Why does no one charge less? That might actually work you know, charging less than the leading competitor, but no apprently in the world of MMOs it's £8.99 or free to play. There is no middle ground!

+1, my thoughts exactly. No one seems to have experimented with the subscription model much. Most subs are in within a pound or two of each other. You'd have thought a packed market would induce a bit more in the way of undercutting and competitive pricing, but apparently not.

I do wonder how well TOR would have done if the subscription was £5 a month from the get go.

 

[Vie]

And what's more, they're already setting up to do it again.

Oh Christ.

Ok, that's it; I'm going to have to come up with a scriptmonkey script to remove any reference to EA products on webpages.

 

[Kragg]

You know what I don't get why does every MMO charge £8.99 or 15$ a month?

Why does no one charge less? That might actually work you know, charging less than the leading competitor, but no apprently in the world of MMOs it's £8.99 or free to play. There is no middle ground!

+1, my thoughts exactly. No one seems to have experimented with the subscription model much. Most subs are in within a pound or two of each other. You'd have thought a packed market would induce a bit more in the way of undercutting and competitive pricing, but apparently not.

I do wonder how well TOR would have done if the subscription was £5 a month from the get go.

there is probably market research that was done saying people who would pay 5 would pay 15 too and a cutoff point below for peopl who wouldnt pay 5 but would pay f2p, someone with marketing degree help me out here i cant remember the terms

 

[Chaos Marine]

Even if this does go free to play, this game is a bog-standa WoW clone with a Star Wars paint job. Blagh.

 

[Zing]

Well I guess considering I already own an account with a level 50 on it I might as well see if the game is still completely trash. From current videos it looks slightly better gameplay wise, no stupid clunky animations and such. Unfortunately it still suffers from the biggest problem: its exactly the same game as WoW but shittier.

 

[lukey94]

I love the way they describe it as a free to play market when the market leader is pay to play (ok yes it has free accounts, but they are more of a demo than the actual game from what I've read of them.)

The market leader for MMOs is League of Legends now, it's more popular than WoW thanks to Asian players.

I don't see why the game going F2P means it's dying, TF2,LoTRO,DDO,DCUO all managed to more than triple their revenue by going F2P, that seems better than sticking to P2P and dying out slowly, I mean 4 years ago WoW was the best thing since sliced bread, it was all anyone ever spoke about it seemed, now all it gets is people complaining about out.

 

[PingoBlack]

Single player game with tacked on multiplayer fails to be good enough for long term subscription demand ... yes, people called this game Kotor 3 multiplayer a long time before release and predicted this. You know, not experts like EA, but random schmucks like me.

Then they talk about F2P just to notice game is not designed to properly support F2P ... yes, same schmucks on the interwebz mentioned that if their sub model fails, game must be designed to support micropayments, for example it needs a large variety of useless stuff to sell. And Kotor 3 multiplayer just didn't have any fluff, hell it lacks birds even!

Honestly, BioWare got EA, exactly as they deserved. Now they can use their PhDs to wipe their behinds after EA eats them alive. I just hope all developers then frame a copy of those dirty PhDs on their walls as a warning of what to never ever do in life.

 

[JediMB]

They should go for one of those hybrid models where you can either subscribe to get the full experience, or make micro-transactions for the stuff you're missing out on. I think Champions Online did this?

EDIT: And as someone else pointed out earlier, why do all MMO subscriptions have to be in the same price range? Why not mix things up a bit there? Maybe even have two or three tiers of subscriptions for the same game?

 

[Falterfire]

You know what I don't get why does every MMO charge £8.99 or 15$ a month?

Why does no one charge less? That might actually work you know, charging less than the leading competitor, but no apprently in the world of MMOs it's £8.99 or free to play. There is no middle ground!

+1, my thoughts exactly. No one seems to have experimented with the subscription model much. Most subs are in within a pound or two of each other. You'd have thought a packed market would induce a bit more in the way of undercutting and competitive pricing, but apparently not.

I do wonder how well TOR would have done if the subscription was £5 a month from the get go.

There is one game that is still doing incredibly well despite a lower subscription rate. It's... Wait for it... Runescape!

 

[DTWolfwood]

This will "cheapen" your franchise EA. You can't give it a 100% off sale!

 

[ASnogarD]

I dont get why there is so much debate on why the game failed, its a pretty dull game. If some Korean company had made the game and not used the Star Wars trimmings it wouldnt of got passed the beta phase its so generic.

The only good part was the sound, and that was just by using the SW audio banks no real hard work needed there.

Graphics ? Modest at thier best, mediocre most the time if not completely bland.
Mechanics ? Same as WoW, find a basic rotation and use the rotation to grind through the levels.
AI ? D-uh stand here and attack enemy if they come too close or attack us, and the rare patrol spot to spot types... nothing interesting, nothing new.
Storyline ? This is arguable, personally the voice didnt really add much after the first few missions and I even sort of mentally disregarded the talking... but many did like it so its a personal taste issue.

So we have a graphically bland and technologically mediocre game with good audio due to having a ready supply of usable audio assets from the franchise, with typical run of the mill MMO mechanics and no real attempt to make them interesting and enemy AI that is basic at best.
The story is arguably good or not depending on taste (but I think the settings ruined any story anyway).

The biggest joke is that EA probably spent more money on the marketing of this game than on the technical aspects, and probably more for the voice actors too... hell I got the impression that the actors accomadations costed more than the actual engine which the game is running on.

 

[John the Gamer]

I was interested in the 15 levels free-to-play-trial, but then whilst getting ready to download it, it mentioned installing origin and I just left, saddened. Possibly in disgust.