SWTOR is having issues.

[BloatedGuppy]

Personally? It'll have a devouted enough player base to stay active, but WoW doesn't really have much to fear from TOR anymore.

WoW's subscriber based was so anomalously huge it never really had anything to fear from anyone. The only thing WoW needs to fear is WoW, and the slow, inexorable tug of entropy that comes with age.

 

[ckriley]

It's not dead. But it is dying. The whole deal with TOR was to provide a different MMO experience with a more story based view and to not provide end game content as that was the character's end of the story.

However ( i don't play TOR, but this is from someone who does), all TOR seems to be doing now is reverting to the WoW model, in focusing on providing end of game raids (flashpoints i think they're called?) and PvP rather than developing new stories and characters which has started to cheat the players out of the main selling point of the MMO. (Viewpoint of Richard Bartle, Co-Developer of MUD and basis of all MMOs)

Personally? It'll have a devouted enough player base to stay active, but WoW doesn't really have much to fear from TOR anymore.

I have never heard ever that BioWare set out to make a different kind of MMO. Ever. In fact, all the interviews and write-ups about the game I remember from back in 2008 and 2009 all said explicitly that they were making a traditional MMO in the same vein as EQ and WoW. The only thing they were doing differently was story.

Anything else that people thought was going to be in the game was purely wishful thinking on their own par.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I have never heard ever that BioWare set out to make a different kind of MMO. Ever. In fact, all the interviews and write-ups about the game I remember from back in 2008 and 2009 all said explicitly that they were making a traditional MMO in the same vein as EQ and WoW. The only thing they were doing differently was story.

Anything else that people thought was going to be in the game was purely wishful thinking on their own par.

Their very earliest interviews were quite different in tone. They were very conscious of WoW and how poorly the other WoW-alikes had fared in its shadow. As I noted above, though, that tone changed very quickly, and before long they were nattering away about Jedi tanks making a shield out of the force.

I suppose if someone had read one of those very early interviews and then spent the intervening 3-4 years ardently ignoring every piece of information about the game, they might have felt waylaid.

 

[Emiscary]

I desperately want not just SWTOR but the entire Star Wars franchise to die. It's become a walking parody of itself. Same thing with Star Trek really...

 

[Ranorak]

Personally? It'll have a devouted enough player base to stay active, but WoW doesn't really have much to fear from TOR anymore.

WoW's subscriber based was so anomalously huge it never really had anything to fear from anyone. The only thing WoW needs to fear is WoW, and the slow, inexorable tug of entropy that comes with age.

In which cause they have project Titan running.

OT:
I played SWTOR, I wanted a break from WoW, and it was fun.
For about a month, then I realized it was boring.
The dialogue, while spoken, still offered quests that ended in Gather X of Y and kill Z.

A friend of mine still played WoW, and I could literally just use the WoW terms and names for attacks, and he's knew the class.

Corrosive shot?
Oh that's just Serpent Sting.
Ahh...

 

[MetallicaRulez0]

It's not dying, but there are population issues that need to be addressed.

I think EA is probably fudging their numbers a fair amount. I unsubbed in March, but I still have an 'active' account because they gave everyone a free month right after the fairly unpopular 1.2 patch.

That's probably why what's a 24% drop in subs so far seems much worse than it should be. I'd like to see their numbers in another two weeks, after the free time has worn off.

Yea, I feel the same way. Half of my WoW guild was playing that game, 30+ people, as well as many of my RL friends. I don't know of a single one of us that still plays it. Everyone cites the same reason: awesome fun while leveling, but NOTHING to do once you hit max level. Raiding is a joke and PvP is imbalanced and shallow.

 

[Dandark]

I feel a bit guilty whenever I hear about SWTOR because I can't help but alway's feel happy that it was not a big success like EA wanted, yes I hate EA that much.
I don't wish ill on the people who enjoy it but I can't help but take pleasure in the fact that it is not meeting EAs expectations.

 

[Midnight Llamaman]

I went back to WoW. SWTOR has some amazing story elements, but being able to see 90% of the content on one character freaking blows chunks.

I'll resub, almost definitely, when I can rock more story on my Inquisitor. Until then, I'd rather play a game with polished as hell gameplay and fun PvP with my friends.

 

[FoolKiller]

Oh it's not dying, for heavens sake. It's settling back to whatever its natural sub base is going to end up being. It needs 500K to be profitable. It's still north of a million. Everquest peaked at 800K, which was the biggest pre-WoW total, and made it a hugely profitable enterprise.

Agreed.
the problem is the number of servers. They added a huge amount when the game opened; now the population is too spread out. Couple that with just how much content requires groups, and you end up not being able to play a bunch of content.
I've been playing for months, and have only done the first three flashpoints. Trying to get a group for any further is futile - over an hour of spamming group invites to no avail.

It's not dying, but there are population issues that need to be addressed.

Oh it will die. If EA ever gets a whiff of it not pulling its weight, they'll shut down the servers rather quickly. Hmm... now I know where all the servers that I used to play Burnout and previous iterations of NHL went. They went to host 60 people play TOR.

 

[viranimus]

LOL, 1.4 million subs is not enough.

A: Wows 12 million peak, and their current 10 million figure was and has always been an inflated non factual number.

B: The bulk of wow users.. is from the oceanic market. At peak there were only about 4 million in western markets.

C: ToR is not even in the Asian markets.

D: 500k = profitable for most MMOs, Granted ToR had a much higher budget, but at 1.4 million in western only markets on equal criteria has matched roughly 1/4th of wow, not 1/10th.

Now, thats not to say the game doesnt have problems or a LOT of those cricitisms arent justified. The problem was hitching their star to WoWs structure, and inheriting wows biggest flaws. But, they can overcome it, but its going to take more content that can actually present a challenge to players.

Now I know coming from an UO, EQ, DAoC, FFXI, sort of MMO background I am adapted to challenge. So much so that it used to be when people would ask me if I played wow, I said I had, but I found it to be like MMOs for kindergarteners. The biggest problem ToR faces is that somehow it makes WoW look challenging. The game is so insanely easy that people blow through the content. I know no one likes raid wiping or time sinks but honestly if you dont have something to slow the players progress they will burn through the content, and quickly become bored to tears.

Thats what needs to be added, long term highly involved difficult content. Add that, and make it entertaining and the game will do just fine long term.

 

[pure.Wasted]

SWTOR could have been a comfortable success if it had launched with realistic aims, but they tried to take on WoW head on and got chewed up and spat out, same as every other MMO in the last half decade that's done the same. The level of ignorance of the MMO market that EA and BW have shown is mind boggling.

The weird thing is, if you read some very early interviews with Bioware regarding TOR, they seemed acutely aware of the futility of picking a fight with WoW on its own turf. I can't remember the exact verbage of the quote, but it was something along the lines of "We don't want to make another World of Warcraft. There's already a World of Warcraft, and they're doing really well. We need to do something different." Then, as time went by, the game started shaping up more and more like World of Warcraft.

My guess is some bean counters got concerned about how expensive the game was becoming, and there was more and more push to be conservative with the design. Because they went from "We're gonna do our own thing" to "We're not gonna reinvent the wheel" in fairly short order.

That's a solid guess, considering there was a time when WoW didn't want to be WoW. That would be pre-beta, if not pre-alpha. But then they presumably sat down and had a nice long talk about what the hell was going to keep people playing the game and feeding them money, and realized that epic adventurous quest chains spanning continents kinda sorta wasn't going to cut it. Enter: the concept of end-game content. Raiding, PVP, arenas.

Presumably Bioware had that same talk. It seems like either the approaches weren't right from the ground-up (not bold enough, as you say?) or our current technology simply doesn't allow for the sort of MMO that these guys were trying to build.

 

[LetalisK]

Jesus can it just go F2P already?

I'm waiting for this too and I play the game. WoW's massive success with the subscription model is an anomaly, not the rule. The F2P model makes money hand over fist, so I don't get why TOR, Rift, and WoW aren't running like crazy for that model.

 

[Scars Unseen]

Can't stand F2P. If a game is good, I'm willing to pay for it. If it's really good, I would be willing to subscribe to it, even. What I'm not willing to do is play a game that holds parts of itself for ransom.

Granted, I don't view SWTOR as being really good, so I no stopped subscribing once my guild went back to WoW. I got tired of WoW years ago. The last thing I want is more of the same. Although I probably would have stayed if the game had been "WoW + XWing" or even "WoW + Rogue Squadron" instead of "WoW + badly done Starfox clone."

Do you hear that Bioware! You can get me back as a customer! There is a way!

 

[Meight08]

Jesus can it just go F2P already?

I'm waiting for this too and I play the game. WoW's massive success with the subscription model is an anomaly, not the rule. The F2P model makes money hand over fist, so I don't get why TOR, Rift, and WoW aren't running like crazy for that model.

The f2p model is difficult to properly design and only truly works when its designed from the ground up a conversion is always very very rough

 

[dancinginfernal]

Dying or not, It's Bioware and EA. I wouldn't shed a tear, TBH.

That's cold, bruddah.

Ice cold.

 

[Sean Hollyman]

Shame, it looks like quite a good game

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

Oh it's not dying, for heavens sake. It's settling back to whatever its natural sub base is going to end up being. It needs 500K to be profitable. It's still north of a million. Everquest peaked at 800K, which was the biggest pre-WoW total, and made it a hugely profitable enterprise.

And it should be noted here I'm irritated at and disappointed in TOR, so I'm not flocking to the defense of my precious, but if I had a nickel for every single time someone screamed "ITS DYING" about a MMO on the internet, and that MMO went on to be just fine, I'd have a billion dollars.

This...

please just shut up already. Yeah 62 people people are online midday usually means they are working. I come home at night as see around 350 people in the fleet station alone. Its fine.

 

[Saviordd1]

Jesus can it just go F2P already?

I'm waiting for this too and I play the game. WoW's massive success with the subscription model is an anomaly, not the rule. The F2P model makes money hand over fist, so I don't get why TOR, Rift, and WoW aren't running like crazy for that model.

Well to be fair WoW and Rift have a huge amount of subs and a comfortable amount respectively.

But from what I hear TOR is much worse off. Honestly I'd like it to be F2P, its a good game, but like STO and others its not worth 15 bucks a month.

 

[shintakie10]

Oh it's not dying, for heavens sake. It's settling back to whatever its natural sub base is going to end up being. It needs 500K to be profitable. It's still north of a million. Everquest peaked at 800K, which was the biggest pre-WoW total, and made it a hugely profitable enterprise.

And it should be noted here I'm irritated at and disappointed in TOR, so I'm not flocking to the defense of my precious, but if I had a nickel for every single time someone screamed "ITS DYING" about a MMO on the internet, and that MMO went on to be just fine, I'd have a billion dollars.

Wasn't that 500k remark from EA though and it was followed by them sayin they were aimin for 2 million?

 

[LetalisK]

Jesus can it just go F2P already?

I'm waiting for this too and I play the game. WoW's massive success with the subscription model is an anomaly, not the rule. The F2P model makes money hand over fist, so I don't get why TOR, Rift, and WoW aren't running like crazy for that model.

Well to be fair WoW and Rift have a huge amount of subs and a comfortable amount respectively.

But from what I hear TOR is much worse off. Honestly I'd like it to be F2P, its a good game, but like STO and others its not worth 15 bucks a month.

TOR is blowing Rift(250k) out of the water. The only two MMOs with more subscribers/active accounts than TOR is WoW, of course, and Aion(2.4 mil).