Star Wars: The Old Republic Breaking EA's Pre-Order Records

Azmael Silverlance

Pirate Warlord!
Oct 20, 2009
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PrinceofPersia said:
Azmael Silverlance said:
Why cant the game be pre-ordered in Australia again>?
Numbers, sheer numbers of people who really want to play this game.
Yeah ok. But by that logic shouldnt they manufacture more copies of the game to meet the demand. I mean even if the game sucks they will make alot of money from the initial sales.
 

Craazhy

Tic-Tock and Crash
Aug 22, 2009
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ShadowsofHope said:
I've already pre-ordered the standard edition, don't feel spending more than $60 on an MMO of all things - Star Wars or no. I like the gameplay and cinematic videos so far, although Aion and Guild Wars 2 (when it comes out) are likely going to keep the majority of my attention MMO wise for some time yet.

..And then Mass Effect 3 will come along and completely make me give a fuck less about any of them for about a month. Yay!
What the fuck? People still play Aion?

I do greatly look forward to GW2 though.

Sanaje said:
10 bucks tOR's servers won't be able the handle the stress for the first week or two.

Personally just going to wait till they toss out the inevitable trial period, I learned my lesson after Rift.
Let's hope they're smart enough to divert some of this preorder money to building servers. But, they're EA, so they'll probably do something very EA-y instead.

Mr. Moonshine said:
It's just a Star Wars themed World of Warcraft - Bioware said it themselves. The 300 mirrion dorrar budget was blown almost completely on voice acting. And also knowing Bioware the gameplay will suck. I can't see this lasting longer than a few months.
You can't be under the impression that World of Warcraft has great gameplay. Not that you said it, but the evidence supports that successful MMORPGs don't need stellar gameplay, it just needs to be good enough. The gameplay in KoTOR and Mass Effect fucking blows and they're two of my and many other people's favorite games. It's about the total immersion process and, for the MMO angle, the social stamina.

It all depends on the launch, and whether they can maintain the initial player base long enough for those players' friends to start playing because their friends are playing and exponentially develop a digital society, or to do what made World of Warcraft successful. And if their leveling process is as immersive and diverse as they claim they've made it, it's reasonably possible for SW:TOR to be the next successful MMORPG and become the Pepsi to Blizzard's Coca-Cola.
 

Ruairi iliffe

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Sep 13, 2010
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Sennz0r said:
Ruairi iliffe said:
Bah, tried to Pre-order from Origin but cant get the page to go to the UK ver, meaning i'm forced to pay the overpriced Euros and try to translate from german or get someone from back home to order for me... Origin you are NOT making me a future customer this way, even steam lets me change the bloody language at least.
Woah wait, since when are Euros worth more than British Pounds?
They arnt, but prices for games in germany are high if you take into account most shops/publishers dont ajust prices to the increase on the euro over the last 2-4 years.

Thus if something is £40 in the UK and 60 euros in germany, it dosnt take into account you are effectivly paying £10-15 plus. Thats why even though i work in a german Dev. not a single sole buys locally and from the UK.

Pisses me off to no end.
 

Sixcess

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Feb 27, 2010
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Captain Placeholder said:
Also, it is common sense that just because you have an IP (Look at nearly every single Movie/Comic title game ever) and VERY few have been successful with just the IP. It takes good gameplay, something that Bioware has proven time and time again. (Fuck off DA2 haters).
Good single player gameplay. I remain sceptical that Bioware's undeniably impressive track record in single player RPGs will really transfer to an MMO.

Next, all the MMO's who are switching to F2P have... for lack of a better term, fucking sucked since its release. D&D? Sucked. Conan? Sucked. (If they didn't they would have managed to continue on its player base and not failed: Look at Warhammer online for an example).
Wait? WAR hasn't failed? First I've heard of it. Snark aside, WAR has trodden a path that I could easily see TOR following - big launch followed a year down the line by server mergers as population drops off. Admittedly WAR really suffered from the diminishing population because of its high PvP aspect, but still, it amazes me that WAR hasn't gone the full F2P route yet, or died altogether.

I can go on and on. WoW has stayed on Subscription because of its solid gameplay and fanbase. I am pretty sure that the Star Wars fanbase exceeds any of Blizzards' and if the gameplay stacks up well it will survive on a Sub.

Stop comparing it to WoW. Haven't you heard? The only thing that will Kill WoW is WoW itself.
Agreed, but...

Tell that to EA. They've poured a ton of money into this game and if there's not an EA exec sitting looking at these pre-order figures and dreaming that this will be the "WoW killer" to himself then I'll eat my PC. EA is greedy enough to go up against COD with Battlefield 3, and I fear they'll be greedy enough to go up against WoW with The Old Republic.

I don't want TOR to fail, really. I think it would be bad for the MMO genre in general if such a hugely hyped, long awaited and high profile title didn't do great business, but I can easily envisage a scenario where EA push it too hard - by having too many servers at launch setting up the dreaded server mergers consolidations a year down the line, or being too eager to get the cash shop up and running too quick (sub or no sub, I'll be astonished if they don't have a cash shop, and soon.)

That's my biggest fear for this game - that greed, arrogance, over ambition and just straightforward corporate stupidity will force it to try to be everything to everyone and end up being nothing to anyone.
 

ShadowsofHope

Outsider
Nov 1, 2009
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ravensshade said:
ShadowsofHope said:
I've already pre-ordered the standard edition, don't feel spending more than $60 on an MMO of all things - Star Wars or no. I like the gameplay and cinematic videos so far, although Aion and Guild Wars 2 (when it comes out) are likely going to keep the majority of my attention MMO wise for some time yet.
ah you still play aion? i liked it but my general meh attitude to mmo's once the quest pool starts drying up made me falter at i think level 32?
how is it these days?
Well, I've got a level 55 Templar that does regular Beshmundir Temple runs (keyed for SW, of course), and a rather awesome legion that uses voicechat on a daily basis as well. Most of the people I play with are rather casual and social, so I do enjoy my time on there.

As well, being level 55 negates the whole "quest grinding syndrome" ordeal with MMO's, as I can pretty much do whatever I want now. As for how the game itself is doing mechanically, go to Aion's website and look up patch 2.5 that came out in May. Patch 2.6 is coming out on August 3rd as well, so new content very shortly.
 

Jaime_Wolf

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Jul 17, 2009
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I think I'll wait until we know whether the game is actually good. Several people who got to play some of the relatively recent builds have suggested that it's pretty much a reskinned, worse WoW.
 

PrinceofPersia

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Sep 17, 2010
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Azmael Silverlance said:
PrinceofPersia said:
Azmael Silverlance said:
Why cant the game be pre-ordered in Australia again>?
Numbers, sheer numbers of people who really want to play this game.
Yeah ok. But by that logic shouldnt they manufacture more copies of the game to meet the demand. I mean even if the game sucks they will make alot of money from the initial sales.
True but without some hard numbers all they can do is speculate on how many will buy the game, and no one wants to have warehouses full of games that don't get sold. Also add to the fact that if your in Australia you need local servers, which means you need to hire server admins to make sure they are working properly, and space to store them. All that adds up to alot of money, even WoW opened to limited regions in 2004 and only started to expand to other regions in the years to follow.
 

Gather

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Apr 9, 2009
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Australia doesn't need local servers; it's working for WoW and every other MMO. Although we might get a server simply because Mythic put in in Australia (I think).

Azmael Silverlance said:
PrinceofPersia said:
Azmael Silverlance said:
Why cant the game be pre-ordered in Australia again>?
Numbers, sheer numbers of people who really want to play this game.
Yeah ok. But by that logic shouldnt they manufacture more copies of the game to meet the demand. I mean even if the game sucks they will make alot of money from the initial sales.
The other issue might have come from something Mythic discovered on their release; millions of people buy the game and you buy all these servers to prepare for the waves of people about to come in and after a month or so said servers become a proverbial ghost town; ruining the investment on the servers which could lead to server shut-downs (Not to mention, less crowding in the starting zones which means more monsters for everyone). For an assumption on my part, you're bound to lose a lot of people after that first free month when they discover the game "isn't for them".

Oh yeah, order the game off Amazon.com; they don't restrict to area.
 

OutforEC

Professional Amateur
Jul 20, 2010
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Vaccine said:
I'm sticking with TotalBiscuits stance on this game, it's absurdly overpriced for an MMO, namely when the MMO genre is so fickle when it comes to surviving past the few first months.

I'm one of the few not buying into this game simply out of the fact I'm not letting EA gouge me for a game that MIGHT flop in the long run, shame on most of you who let EA do this to you as well.
What the heck does "flop in the long run" mean? If it's a long run, it's not a flop...

Also, how is $60 "absurdly overpriced for an MMO" when not even counting the free month that comes with all MMOs now-a-days, you're getting much more for your entertainment dollar than most single-player games at the same price?
 

rapidoud

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Feb 1, 2008
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They're going to lose the majority of their subscribers outside of the 'initial' regions because we'll forget about it and go play better games. EA, I was going to trial this, but not now, thanks. You went off the advice of some whinging American customers with crappy internet.
 

MaVeN1337

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Feb 19, 2009
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Sweet, World of Warcraft IN SPACE! Just kidding, beta for this is garbage, yeah I know it's beta. It's just an awful game.

Why? Because it's a WoW clone that's why. just like almost everything else. Including rift.
 

ZippyDSMlee

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Sep 1, 2007
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If it was Kotor 3 I might have bothered with pirating it but considering how bad Dragon age is and how much I hate most MMOs I wont be touching this with a ten foot stick!
 

Radoh

Bans for the Ban God~
Jun 10, 2010
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Anyone here remember back when The Escapist ran that story where Bioware said that in order to be a "success" in their book it would need 500,000 initial subscribers?

Remember how there was a bunch of people saying how that would NEVER happen EVER?

Well I do.
 

shrekfan246

Not actually a Japanese pop star
May 26, 2011
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inb4 "Origin is a HUGE SUCCESS!"

Anyway. I'm sick of the people saying "This will be the WoW killer!" whenever a new MMO is announced. I'd almost agree with the person in this thread who said people who love High Fantasy probably won't care about Sci-Fi, but this is Star Wars we're talking about here and as Yahtzee has said before (I think), if there's anything that gamer-geeks are liable to get even more worked up over than WoW, it's Star Wars.

But looking at it as a "WoW Killer" is just plain silly. To the people who claim that Rift was the reason WoW lost so many subscriptions this year? Nope. WoW lost 600,000 subscriptions because there wasn't enough content to keep people interested (in itself hilarious, because there was technically as much or more content on-release than there had been in Wrath of the Lich King). EDIT: Rift just happened to be there as a final push to get the people to say "Well, maybe I'll leave WoW and check out this NEW thing." The thing that has always stunned me about many WoW-players is how many of the "casual" players base their gaming experience on how the Top Ten raiding guilds do. There were are so many people who haven't even experienced the content that claim it is "Too easy" just because a group of people who are paid to play the game killed the end-game bosses a few weeks after release.

(In my own opinion) The only thing that is going to "kill" WoW is WoW itself. There are a lot of assumptions that get needlessly thrown around on these forums when it comes to MMOs, and WoW in particular. Personally, I think that most of the people who do play WoW and would be interested in TOR probably have enough disposable income to have a subscription with both. Someone in my own WoW guild has something like three different MMO subscriptions at the moment.



. . . what, Captcha? Is that a Greek letter?
 

Ikthyace

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Aug 8, 2011
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For one, stop comparing this to WoW. I understand that it is the industry standard for MMOs now, but it has been slowly killing itself over time (I just hear horror stories now) and is losing its ability to be called a standard.

To those who say "Its Star Wars, of course it does well" they expect some fanbase but this exceeds even those expectations. SWG and Battlefront and a host of other SW titles haven't even come close to this.

For those that go on about it going to suck ("overpriced for an MMO" "lost interest in Star Wars") The way Bioware makes games if you liked KOTOR and KOTOR2 then for the same price as a new game you have a month to play in essence KOTOR3. A generous amount of time I would say, maybe a little extra depending on your playing speed and what you wish to experience. I understand the remark about Bioware's combat system and on most games would agree but for an MMO it might actually work out better.

A lot of good things have been said about this game by players, of course with some criticism, and while those may be longtime fans I doubt that this much good would come out of a fan only game (STO anybody?) so I trust it to last a while, hinging on two unknowns that likely only gameplay will answer for me. If the PvP thrives, is rewarding, and also exists in open world, then that will be fine for me balance issues aside. The other main unknown is server stability. The sheer number of players that want this game may cause server troubles, but I can only assume that the Beta tests in September will be stress tests to a degree.

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