This right here. I enjoyed the game a lot for a few months, but having to pay fifteen bucks a month is simply ridiculous. Especially when I played it to enjoy the story, not to prance around in PvP. Make it a half of that cost and we can talk...Vigilantis said:
EA Considering "Different Models" for The Old Republic
- Thread starter The Wooster
- Start date
"Riccitiello also claimed that investors are relying too heavily on monthly NPD reports to gauge EA's performance. He pointed out that NPD's reports only track retail sales in the US and don't take into account EA's blossoming digital business."
EA keeps saying that their digital business is blossoming. I think this is appropriate for EA.
[link]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk[/link]
EA keeps saying that their digital business is blossoming. I think this is appropriate for EA.
[link]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk[/link]
It isn't that ToR is a bad game, but its that the market has moved past EQ/Vanilla WoW style RPGs. There are a couple of great Cracked article about just that: http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-crucial-lessons-learned-by-watching-kids-play-video-games/ and http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-ways-to-tell-youre-getting-too-old-video-games/
There is no tolerance for grind anymore and that or pvp is all MMORPG endgame ever is. Nobody is willing to read novels to play just because they have other shit to do. So most of the detail of the backstory is wasted.
If anyone remembers playing Vanilla WoW you know you spend a large percentage of your play time waiting for raids or even instance groups to form. That or you scheduled your life around the game to be there at a certain time, at which point it might as well be a job.
Previously there were only MMO type games as the social outlets for all of the people who wanted to interact with other people but didn't want to do it in meatspace. Now there are gillions of social options including forums like this one, so MMOs lost their niche as the place to "hang out".
WoW has adapted to these changing times with quest markers and automatic cross server party creation. Blizzard is doing their damndest to turn battle.net into a social network not focused on any specific game. But even still WoW is bleeding subscribers and is holding on by sheer inertia. Just recently LoL replaced WoW for the top number of players at, least according to one measure, and its only going to get worse for them.
The market as matured pasted WoW style MMOs. WoW will gradually fade but there will never be another to replace it.
There is no tolerance for grind anymore and that or pvp is all MMORPG endgame ever is. Nobody is willing to read novels to play just because they have other shit to do. So most of the detail of the backstory is wasted.
If anyone remembers playing Vanilla WoW you know you spend a large percentage of your play time waiting for raids or even instance groups to form. That or you scheduled your life around the game to be there at a certain time, at which point it might as well be a job.
Previously there were only MMO type games as the social outlets for all of the people who wanted to interact with other people but didn't want to do it in meatspace. Now there are gillions of social options including forums like this one, so MMOs lost their niche as the place to "hang out".
WoW has adapted to these changing times with quest markers and automatic cross server party creation. Blizzard is doing their damndest to turn battle.net into a social network not focused on any specific game. But even still WoW is bleeding subscribers and is holding on by sheer inertia. Just recently LoL replaced WoW for the top number of players at, least according to one measure, and its only going to get worse for them.
The market as matured pasted WoW style MMOs. WoW will gradually fade but there will never be another to replace it.
60$ to install the game
another 30 on top of that to play it.
I invested 90 dollars into a mediocre MMO. For god's sake, why can't companies be like runsecape? Where you don't have to pay tripple A pricing for just the client, and you just buy monthly subscriptions?
I mean, if I were an MMO creator, I'd just wait a few more months to get my gold plated toilet.
another 30 on top of that to play it.
I invested 90 dollars into a mediocre MMO. For god's sake, why can't companies be like runsecape? Where you don't have to pay tripple A pricing for just the client, and you just buy monthly subscriptions?
I mean, if I were an MMO creator, I'd just wait a few more months to get my gold plated toilet.
I don't think so. I think there is still a decent market out there for a grind style MMORPG. You just have to structure the grind in a way that keeps people interested.rembrandtqeinstein said:
Essentially the point of a grind is to give the player a palpable sense of accomplishment in small bites. Small enough that he won't accomplish everything too quickly, but large enough that he can see his progress advancing. That's still a valid thing for a game to focus on. Especially in the MMO arena where your rank or accomplishment is constantly compared to that of other players.
The problem with SWTOR wasn't that they copied WoW. It's that they copied WoW from 3 or 4 years ago, and then did it poorly. Lots of people bought the game and had a decent time playing it. And if there was a future in it, they would have convinced others to buy it and continued to grow. Instead we had a decent single player game for a couple of weeks, another couple of weeks of mild raiding and then nothing special to do.
There are places where WoW style MMORPGs can innovate. LFG type systems that automate the process of grouping with others was a huge step forward. Personally, I suspect the next big thing will be integrating player actions into the narrative of the game. Like if you kill the big dragon, then your name gets put up on a statue in the town square and the next raid boss is a large scale model of you with some corruption effects attached. Stuff like that will get people more interested because they'll have more stake in what's going on.
Frankly, I think of the reasons why WoW has managed to stay on top so long is that the addon system allows blizzard to basically crowdsource innovation constantly and just pick the most popular or most useful of the crop and add them into the game.
Dear EA and Bioware,
Before you decide to make your game free to play and what business model you make with that, here are two things you NEED to watch first:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/power-creep
and
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/microtransactions
Before you decide to make your game free to play and what business model you make with that, here are two things you NEED to watch first:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/power-creep
and
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/microtransactions
I'm not a wow fanatic but I wanted to see this game die a horrible death just so I could watch all those smug assholes sobbing in the streets.RedEyesBlackGamer said:
I don't get it. If you don't like wow, cool, but why be up in arms demanding everything kill it.
I'm not talking about you, that message is more to the throngs of people who always worship games they think will kill wow
.It's just another game, ignore it and enjoy whatcha like. That's what I'm saying.
I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure TOR doesn't force you to install Origin. I bought and downloaded it from Origin, and I didn't have to install it. It asked you to make an account, sure... but downloading the software is optional I believe. At least for this game.John the Gamer said:
Personally I think someone on this site is trying to milk the TOR not doing as good as it wanted for all it's worth. There are articles here about this game I don't see on any other site. Some journalist here has some real hate boner for the game, I'd reason.
Considering they just made the prologue F2P, I wouldn't hold your breath on anything else happening for at least the next 6 months. It's shrunk, but definitely treading water now, and I'll keep playing at least until the new planet is released at the end of this year.
A moment's pardon while I laugh hysterically into my sleeve.
Yep! That digital distribution thing's doing great fer yeh!... Which I'm sure is why we're seeing DeMartini defending Origin and/or maligning Steam every other week...
Well, no worries about your investors using the available NPD data to make their decisions. All you need to do is release accurate information on how the digital business is actually doing! You're prepared to do that, right?
(crickets)
All snark aside, I'm not beaming with pleasure at SW:TOL struggling. It clearly was a passion project that a whole lot of work went into, and were I buying EA products right now, it was probably one of an increasing few that I would have given serious consideration. I'd rather that big investments went into projects that actually tried to do something with some audacity, rather than have all that money go into advertising for the latest sequel.
Still, one increasingly has to wonder why anyone with any kind of industry awareness would jump in at the ground floor of any pay-to-play MMO at this point... it seems to be setting oneself up for a frustrated sense of bad investment.
"Yeah, we killed Origin and ruined the Ultima series, but buy our final attempt to squeeze blood out of the rock that is now the Ultima series."SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
