EA Considering "Different Models" for The Old Republic
- Thread starter The Wooster
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- Apr 1, 2009
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GW2 isnt directly competing with wow, since its got no monthly subscription people can play it and wow at the same time, the big reason these all fail is that its hard to play and pay for 2 mmos at the same time, but if you eliminate the need to pay for one than people can play the free one whenever the payed one runs out of content and vice versa.Dendio said:
![Fr]anc[is](https://eg-forums-escapist-data-bucket.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/data/avatars/l/93/93202.jpg?1620797781){kind=avatar}
I only unsubscribed from the game because I wasn't in the mood for it anymore. I fully intend to go back to it once I am again, as there's still plenty for me to do and I very much love TOR. However, I'm thinking I should hold off until EA stops being vague about the free-to-play notion (that and my income has slowed recently, freelancing isn't that great).
Also, for the love of bog, stop using that screenshot for TOR articles. It was funny BEFORE that bug was fixed. That bug was fixed months ago.
Also, for the love of bog, stop using that screenshot for TOR articles. It was funny BEFORE that bug was fixed. That bug was fixed months ago.
The problem with SWTOR is simply that it literally made every mistake it wasn't supposed to. The WoW-killer might appear, or simply a game that will replace WoW, but in order for that to happen it pretty much has to do everything that SWTOR was going to be in the minds of it's fans and what it's devs implied.
A lot of the predictions for TOR wwere based around the information that it was pretty much the "Avatar" of MMO projects, with close to a billion dollars being fed into this thing. In reality the amount of funding it had was considerably more modest, which also meant that it wasn't going to meet the heights of what was possible, and be more along the lines of what we'd expect from a "normal" high budget game.
Among the first things the fans were asking is what was the endgame going to be like, EA played it coy, but implied it was going to be huge. As a result when people played the game and found out we had a typical (ie very weak) endgame that was pretty much it's death knell as any kind of wow-like phenomena. It's very true that WoW didn't have a huge endgame when it first started, but at the same time it wan't really competing with anyone else that did either, where games coming up now are competing with WoW. Developers constantly fail to learn from their mistakes, and EA/Bioware pretty much jumped into the same pit as everyone else. People are going to play through any amount of content and hit whatever the "top" is for a character pretty quickly, the make or break point for people is being able to keep those players motivated to play their top level characters and re-upping subscriptions in order to do so.
I'll also go so far as to say that probably 99% of the problem is casual gamers and deciding to cater to them. The problem with a robust endgame is that casual players will QQ that they don't think it's fair that they won't be able to get the phattest lewts and biggest rewards without putting in a huge amount of time and effort, and actually having to become skilled at the game. By making a game where casuals can acheive the lofty heights of power, you kind of removed a lot of the motivation from the other players, assuming there was much content for them, which there typically isn't.
Likewise a lot of the "streamlining" is kind of counter productive. A point a lot of people miss is that while the "old school" 40 man raids meant that not many people could raid because of the time, committment, and organization, it means that you wound up with a VERY dedicated base of people who kept reupping their subscriptions just so they could raid once or twice a week. Something that gave WoW a solid, core audience during it's most pivotal times of development. It had the benefit of having sprung off of that kind of thing, to add/change things in a more casual direction to get the best of both worlds.
Most people become attached to one or two characters, if when you max them out all you really have to do is use the game as a glorifed chat client, and hang out on a space station waiting for queues or groups.. groups which can zerg most of the content (though admittedly not all of it), your going to lose a lot of people, your certainly not going to keep enough to get the kind of mainstream uber-success ToR was angling for.
A lot of the predictions for TOR wwere based around the information that it was pretty much the "Avatar" of MMO projects, with close to a billion dollars being fed into this thing. In reality the amount of funding it had was considerably more modest, which also meant that it wasn't going to meet the heights of what was possible, and be more along the lines of what we'd expect from a "normal" high budget game.
Among the first things the fans were asking is what was the endgame going to be like, EA played it coy, but implied it was going to be huge. As a result when people played the game and found out we had a typical (ie very weak) endgame that was pretty much it's death knell as any kind of wow-like phenomena. It's very true that WoW didn't have a huge endgame when it first started, but at the same time it wan't really competing with anyone else that did either, where games coming up now are competing with WoW. Developers constantly fail to learn from their mistakes, and EA/Bioware pretty much jumped into the same pit as everyone else. People are going to play through any amount of content and hit whatever the "top" is for a character pretty quickly, the make or break point for people is being able to keep those players motivated to play their top level characters and re-upping subscriptions in order to do so.
I'll also go so far as to say that probably 99% of the problem is casual gamers and deciding to cater to them. The problem with a robust endgame is that casual players will QQ that they don't think it's fair that they won't be able to get the phattest lewts and biggest rewards without putting in a huge amount of time and effort, and actually having to become skilled at the game. By making a game where casuals can acheive the lofty heights of power, you kind of removed a lot of the motivation from the other players, assuming there was much content for them, which there typically isn't.
Likewise a lot of the "streamlining" is kind of counter productive. A point a lot of people miss is that while the "old school" 40 man raids meant that not many people could raid because of the time, committment, and organization, it means that you wound up with a VERY dedicated base of people who kept reupping their subscriptions just so they could raid once or twice a week. Something that gave WoW a solid, core audience during it's most pivotal times of development. It had the benefit of having sprung off of that kind of thing, to add/change things in a more casual direction to get the best of both worlds.
Most people become attached to one or two characters, if when you max them out all you really have to do is use the game as a glorifed chat client, and hang out on a space station waiting for queues or groups.. groups which can zerg most of the content (though admittedly not all of it), your going to lose a lot of people, your certainly not going to keep enough to get the kind of mainstream uber-success ToR was angling for.
The problem with Star Wars is that they tried to copy WoW's end-game to an absurd degree. It's almost like a Star Wars mod for World of Warcraft, that's how similar their PvE end-games are. You cannot directly compete with an opponent who has 8 years head start and TEN MILLION PEOPLE already playing it. MMO players are creatures of habit: if their friends play WoW, they will play WoW. Even if your game is good, it has to be good enough to pull entire social groups and guilds away from WoW, and you don't do that by doing a quick copy/paste job.
Appropriate, I think.Devoneaux said:
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.
Wasn't EA's motto at one point "Challenge Everything"? Hmm...DVS BSTrD said:
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.
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.Fr said:
OT: I would re-install this game if it goes free to play. I liked it but not enough to pay by the month.
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!
http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/
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!
A bit more appropriateParagon Fury said:
http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/
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.
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.
+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.Sneezeguard said:
I do wonder how well TOR would have done if the subscription was £5 a month from the get go.
