This Is How Competition Works

[knightblaster]

The point is this:

 

They clearly had the money and development time to match WoW. They chose to focus in a different area. They are gambling that a certain group of players will chose this OVER WoW's more polished results for the simple reason that some people cannot and will not stand playing WoW.

 

Is that a valid choice?

 

This is definitely the gambit, I agree -- it was clearly a design decision based on a strategy. I do think, however, that financial resources were finite enough such that they could not afford to do *both* -- that is, be a BioWare type 100% VA game *and* have a full-flight, including-all-doo-dads MMO, at the same time within what even EA was willing to spend.

[Saitada]

No they didn't, are you kidding me? People hung on the words of people like Furor. I think the FoH website was one of the most popular EQ related websites there was. His input was so valued that Blizzard took him in on the development of WoW. He now makes a fine amount of money off the fact that he was a douchey raid leader that did world firsts and knew encounter design well.

 

Again, rose tinted glasses. You don't want Bioware to make the game like EQ, it would fail hard.

 

I don't see how Ignoring people who acted the trot means I have rose colored glasses on. MY server didn't tolerate jerks and we ignored them as soon as they reared their ugly little heads.

 

What other servers did, or how other servers acted is not relevant to the community I was a part of. As I am basing my comments, on THAT community. There are no rose colored glasses there.

 

Yes, within 2 years of launch, EQ started going downhill (In my opinion) and never stopped it's slide into garbage. Even when it was most popular. My ignore list was almost always full, and sadly, I'd have to un-ignore some trolls, to add others.

 

By the time I quit EQ (about 3 years or so ago) I think I had probably ignored at one time or another, more than 10k people. But when EQ first started, MY server didn't tolerate trolls.

 

~Saitada

[FellintoOblivion]

The smartphone comparison is retarded.

You expect a 15year old athlete to compete with 22year old one? This is a *********** MMO, not the phone you use to like girls pic when you are skipping class.

 

SWTOR's launch ***** all over WoW's launch (and on every other MMO for that matter) on every single level, but hey there's no /roll option and to easymode LFG tool so the game is doomed and can't be compared.

 

SWTOR's foundations are good, whether or not the Devs will be smart enough to improve and make the game better is a completely different topic.

 

WoW is the facebook of gaming and the gamer-hybrid it has spawned is simply disgusting - and everywhere. You don't like the game? Don't play it, spare us the "game dev insight".

 

Disgusting and insanely profitable which is, you know, the whole point of making a product.

[radrev]

I understand what you are trying to say with the analogy of comparing goods from 2004 to 2011. But that is not what's going on here. What people mean when they compare is that anything new, that has not been done before (Star Wars Old republic MMO) will have some growing pains. Especially for a team that made their first game in an the mmo genre. And I think they were reasonably close to the ball with SWTOR, everything else is polish same was with WoW back in 2004 same is with SWTOR in 2012

[Striker]

It depends on how important the features are. Nothing SWTOR is missing is a deal breaker to me. /roll and a moveable UI would be nice, but it doesn't impact me enough to not want to play the game. Fun factor is what is important and it is MUCH more fun than WoW has ever been.

 

And other features are mistakes. Like random dungeonfinder. Adding something like that would make me immediately unsubscribe because it destroys games. By not including that feature its a HUGE positive.

[Myrmedus]

Personally, while I think claiming comparison to WoW 4.3 is a fair comparison this early on in TOR's development is a joke, even if I do compare it TOR still wins out.

 

Why? WoW 4.3 has LOADS of things over TOR right now but for me, at WoW 4.3's core, for all of the technical superiority it may have it is an empty, soulless husk of an excellent MMORPG; Cata completely killed the 'magic' of WoW. Now, if you were to compare TOR to WoW 2.1 then TOR may have an issue!

Edited January 2, 2012 by Myrmedus

[Britainftw]

Let me start this by saying that TOR is a pretty decent game. It has a laundry list of small issues, and a few big ones, but I've had a fair bit of fun with it and it has a good number or redeeming qualities to it as well.

 

Now to get to my point:

 

World of WarCraft is the most successful MMO in history. This is a fact. This is backed up by quantifiable empirical evidence. This also has nothing to do with whether or not you subjectively like it.

 

That being said, it is the top dog. It is the MMO which all other MMOs must aspire to equal or beat in terms of quality. This does not mean they must be clones of it, rather that they must appeal to as many people as it does for their own reasons (or similar ones).

 

Consumer loyalty is a big part of the 21st century Western mindset. I don't blame the apologists for being brainwashed into thinking they are the white knights of a corporation and are thus tasked to defend it at every juncture. I admire loyalty, and loyalty to developers isn't a bad thing, as long as you leave room for criticism when it must duly be applied.

 

The problem here is that so many of you are just flat out denying that TOR is in no way in the same realm that World of WarCraft is in. What's even more pathetic is that some of you are actually trying to justify this inane reasoning by comparing TOR to Vanilla WoW and the issues it had.

 

World of WarCraft came out in 2004. You are trying to compare a product from 2004 to a product from 2011.

 

Do you understand how puerile that is? Try doing that in any other market. Hell, try doing that with any other game if you like.

 

Compare a Smartphone from 2004 to a Smartphone from 2011. If the Smartphone from 2011 was missing features that a phone from 2004 had, you would be laughing your asses off at it, asking yourselves how anyone allowed such a worthless product to market.

 

What if Modern Warfare 3 didn't have online capabilities even though Call of Duty 2 did? What if Portal 2 didn't run on Steamworks, yet Half-Life 2 did? You can pick whatever other comparison you like, it all points to the same issue.

 

TOR should be compared to World of Warcraft 4.3, and the fact that it cannot in any way come close to matching what the current model offers is why so many people are frustrated with the game as it currently stands.

 

There is no /roll or /random command in TOR I mean for ****'s sake, you're going to try to defend minutiae like this away by saying to give it time? It needs time to implement what has been in a seven year old game of the same genre? It needs time to implement graphical settings which have existed for over a decade?

 

How much time does it need to bring itself to speed and match a 2011 title? The ball is in BioWare's court. They're the new kid on the block, and they have to prove themselves as a capable competitor.

 

First half summation: "Games are games, they don't have to be similar to each other."

Second: "TOR doesn't have things WoW has"

 

WHAT?

[Proto]

If you want to compare wow 4.3 to tor, you're effectively comparing a game in development for 12 years to one of only 5. You cannot expect the same amount of content or features.

 

I don't agree with that at all. Its all about planning and time management. Look what Trion did with Rift at launch? That game ended up being very shallow in its story, but the features, raiding, ui, classes, auction house, mail system etc. were very competitive with wow and in some cases innovative.

[knightblaster]

No MMORPG will ever be able to compete with WoW.

 

Problem one is that it is simply far too expensive to create a game with all of the bells and whistles and variety of playstyle content that WoW currently has in the context of the financial realities and timeframes of expected return when it comes to game development. Even WoW did not have to do this when it was released (and it's true that this is irrelevant for purposes of today's comparisons, but it's still the case that a new MMO is not going to ship with all of this stuff out of the box --something that is going to make almost every new MMO "fail" when it comes to competing with WoW.) Just not financially feasible. Even Rift, which managed to include many of the doo-dad type stuff in its release, in doing so had to shave content at end-game, and ended up "failing" anyway as a result. Can't skin this cat financially, really.

 

Problem two is that even if a game comes kind of "close", like Rift did, it will still "fail" when competing with WoW because, in addition to the content-related issues described above, people simply have thousands upon thousands of hours invested in WoW at this point, multiple fully geared level capped characters, existing guild relationships and raid progression, existing friendships and the like. All of these are major barriers to switching, even when the competition is kind of "good for a new game" like Rift was. In order to overcome this psychological barrier, the new release game has to be *markedly* better than WoW, in a complete consensus fashion, and in a quite obvious way, so as to precipitate a massive shift to the new game, which would deflate the "advantages" of sticking with the old one. I honestly don't think that this will ever happen, because it will require catching lightning in a bottle again, and that just doesn't happen very often.

 

What we are going to continue to see, then, are new MMO releases that are "good" but cannot in any way really draw people away from WoW for more than a month or two, and which therefore "fail". It's just how the MMO space is today: it's WoW, pretty much, and then a series of games who have small hardcore fanbases playing them, but which are all clearly considered to be abject "failures" when compared with WoW. It's true that WoW will eventually peter out due to age, but it isn't really that close to doing so, and this will be a gradual process, with some people leaving MMOs altogether, and small bits and pieces migrating to this or that game, thus splitting the community gradually among other "fail" games over the course of time, rather than any one new release being a real head-to-head competitor with WoW.

 

So for a player of this game, the key takeaway is that the game isn't going to be competitive with WoW in the medium-term. That doesn't mean it will be shut down in the medium term, either (SWG was just shut down a couple of weeks ago, and was launched in 2003), but it does mean that the game will see server consolidations and population drain. Whether this is a problem for you depends on the players themselves. LOTRO, for example, had the same thing happen, but retained a dedicated and friendly community, even though WoW players see it as a failure -- many of the people who have been playing LOTRO don't experience their playtime there as an exercise in failure. The same holds true for EVE players or EQ2 players or what have you. But, again, whether this matters to you depends on your playstyle and whether you want/need to play in the most popular game -- because that game will remain WoW for some time to come.

[GetPloughed]

I'm not an apologist at all. I simply dont like WOW. I played it and felt like "Uncle Paul" as I was surrounded by socially challenged kiddies who did nothing more than post about Chuck Norris while dancing as an Elf.

 

I dont want SWTOR to be a WOW competitor - I want it to be a viable alternative where mature, experienced MMO players can find a home away from the kiddies

 

The SWTOR community is the same people from WoW, don't kid yourself that. You may be able to find a guild full of mature, experience MMO players(which you can also do in WoW)but that doesn't stop a majority of the players from being exactly what you hate.

[ITSAmeee]

Originally Posted by LogicalPremise

The point is this:

 

They clearly had the money and development time to match WoW. They chose to focus in a different area. They are gambling that a certain group of players will chose this OVER WoW's more polished results for the simple reason that some people cannot and will not stand playing WoW.

 

Is that a valid choice?

 

I can answer that: no.

 

Who are those "certain group of players" you're referring to? can you please give me a profile of that group?

 

Personally I see this group of players as players that focus more on Leveling and Story telling, a little bit more on the RPG part of a game. I can't think of any other player-profile. Now, from that, do I think one of this kind of players would pay a subscription to experience in this game something he could experience in any other offline-singleplayer-voicenarrated game out there and yet-to-come? Maybe, but couple of months top because as much as you like movies and books no one sane in his head likes to read and watch the same book and movie over and over again, paying every time for it.

 

You make a subscription based game, basing your development choice and players' appeal on something your players/customers can have from other titles, without a monthly free? No. MMO is more than that. Recurring Subscriptions cannot come from having players listen to the same narrated book over and over again.

 

So, I think the answer depends on what you think is the profile of those "certain group of players". By the profile/idea I've of them, the answer to that question is No, it is not a valid choice.

 

Curious to hear yours

[archifikoss]

I'm not fully disagreeing with you, since I said in my original post comparing TOR release to WoW release is simply a better comparison but not perfect, but I would like to ask: what do you think has actually improved for MMOs in terms of industry standards since 2004? If we look at all the MMOs released since then quite honestly the only thing that has significantly improved is graphics, and other things that you quite aptly put like quality of life etc. but even with a modern MMO I would not expect those things to be superior upon initial release.

 

I'm not an old-school MMOer TBH so I really couldn't say much... However I would imagine that certain conveniences, functionalities, tools (like, say, LFG) and the like have enough positive and negative examples for the devs to use as a base to create something up to date and useful.

 

That isn't to say I don't think certain things can be improved but the issue is that when you get into the meat of an MMO, the gameplay, the mechanics etc. what an "improvement" is to the community is entirely subjective. For example, to me, I would prefer endgame to require less dedication to be competitive and be based more on skill. As WoW has evolved it went from needing to fully dedicate yourself to like it was a job (40-man raids) to being able to play more casually (10-man) and/or let skill talk (Rated BGs/Arena). However, some people complain about these changes and think they're bad. Some people think you shouldn't be able to be competitive while playing an MMO more casually, even if you're a very skilled player. The issue is that the demographic for an MMO is so large and varied that what constitutes "improvement" is blurred.

 

I am in full agreement with you here. People seem to forget that Wow, TOR etc. are MMORPGs... And there are so many different types of RPGs around that as you say improvements are indeed subjective. However for a game that has been confirmed to follow the more traditional EQ/WoW format (at least to an extent), obviously comparisons would be made to those types of games.

 

In fact, if we expand this even further and consider it for all games: what has improved? I'd argue that between 2004 and now the main things that have improved in games is, again, graphics. There have been improvements to things such as polish/refinements making the games play more smoothly, some new gameplay mechanics introduced into games (but have not necessarily improved the quality of gameplay!) etc.

I'm a slightly "old-school" gamer in general, with fond memories of games like Privateer, and TBH I find that AAA games these days have quite a narrow scope in many respects. They may be vastly improved technically, but they seem to be less diverse, and "play it safe" a bit too much. So whilst quality has improved a lot, things like charm, scope and individuality have taken a back seat. Always in my opinion.

 

That's not to say that all new games are like that, we have numerous stellar games beign released every year... But... Something's missing...

 

This is the reason why older games like the Zeldas or BG2 etc. still stand up today as great games, and why Nintendo is able to release Zelda game after Zelda game with essentially the same gameplay and it still covets great reviews: because not alot has changed. This is the reason why games like Dark Souls are sought after with more legacy-style gameplay because in today's market it feels like a great deal of games have simply created gameplay style niches (Assassin's Creed series for example), or dumbed down things entirely, rather than significantly improved gameplay.

 

And why is that? Because gameplay isn't something you can really improve. Some people still prefer to play a good old game of Solitare over a computer game because what is fun is subjective.

 

I think you can improve on gameplay greatly even now - given that gameplay is quite a broad term that covers more than just combat. But unfortunately many "improvements" turn out to feel too streamlined, and done to maximize profit rather than create a unique experience.

 

Responses in red!

[DigitalDreamz]

 

World of WarCraft is the most successful MMO in history. This is a fact. This is backed up by quantifiable empirical evidence.

 

Absolutely incorrect. You made that up on the spot by WoW's hype machine and other oblivious players who play WoW. The most successful MMO ever is a China MMO called Happy Farm. It has a total of 230 million subscribers and has an average login number of around 20+ million. As a matter of fact on a daily basis they get double the unique logins a day than WoW has had EVER!! It absolutely destroys WoWs numbers.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Farm

 

Lineage 2 in Korea came close to doubling what WoW had at peak. It was close to 20+ million subs.

 

http://l2.dropspoil.com/

http://pc.ign.com/articles/925/925099p1.html

 

You'll have to use your ctrl+f and search for the sub numbers. I think it's around 18 million now worldwide.

 

Lastly if you break WoWs sub numbers down by region, without Asia WoW has around 4 million subs spread throughout Europe, North and South America. Far cry from what they boast constantly. SWTOR is not in Asia nor in the other regions WoW is.

 

If you think about the sub numbers per region for WoW in TBC and early Wrath you'd see that WoW has lost about 50% of their numbers. TBC and early Wrath numbers were around 8 million not including Asia. Now it's 10 million with 6 million in Asia alone. You do the math and see where the game is headed.

 

WoW is just western pop culture. Such as Justin Beiber, Thursday night sitcoms and celebrity gossip. Just a trendy MMO where Ozzy Osborne and Chuck Norris can tell you how cool it is to play the game. Where you record yourself play and make MTV style music videos of how awesome your character is! Nevermind how it actually plays. It wasn't the first nor will be the last in doing anything. It hasn't shattered any records or is 'THE MOST...' of anything. Just another MMO.

 

I just dislike when someone suggests WoW is the greatest thing to MMOs since sliced bread. It's just another MMO where 'cool kids' go.

 

SWTOR is on the right path and doing great. We've had five patches since release, i'd say they're working overtime to get things situated.

Edited January 2, 2012 by DigitalDreamz

[derliam]

Why people compere SWToR with other MMO's?

First of all, most of the people playing this game have experience from playing other MMO’s.

Second. This game is build up around the basic MMO concept. Uses a lot of the same futures as other MMOs.

This IS an MMO, they commercial them self as an innovative MMO. And if they commercial them self as an innovative MMO, then they need to have something to be innovative from. And the only thing is other MMO’s.

 

The game is not different in any aspect then this is an si-fi. Nothing ells is new with this game. Voice acting? Been in games for ages. They just use it everywhere. Storry heavy lined? Not new, every MMO out there has a storry line, SWToR just lean more heavily on it.

Other then that, SWToR is following the basic MMO recipe, but in a very bad way.

Since they are following the basic MMO recipe, they also should be innovative with it as they say they are. ATM they are lacking a ton of stuff, ok game is new, but they still say they are innovative. ATM there is nothing innovative with the game at all.

Does it come later? Right now they are following an old and outdated MMO recipe.

 

In ever aspect of the game you can compere it to something ells.

And don’t come here and say they don’t have an MMO experience because EA have had an MMO out already.

 

First of all, fine it IS an MMO. I didn't say at one point that it is unique. What my point was however, is MMO's are not clones from each other and that is a GOOD thing. So this endless comparing seems very silly.

 

SWtOR lacks features which improve the usability, and it can be argued they are currently reinventing the wheel. However, it is obvious that the story and voice acting IS the main focus of the game at its current state. This is new, not necessarily very innovative, but it hasn't been done before. Offering constructive criticism is one thing, but the WoW vs TOR-fest is getting old very quickly. Just take both games for what they are, and enjoy them for the features that they offer.

 

If people on this forum would look at things for what they are instead of how they could be, or better what they want them to be, they would realise that what SWTOR offers is not as bad as it is made here. It is not perfect by a loooong shot, but very enjoyable nonetheless. It is rather sad a lot of people are ruining their game experience themselves, rather than the game doing it for them.

 

Criticisms are only productive if they serve to improve the game experience. At the moment of what we are experiencing on the forums, the constant comparisons create criticisms that are achieving the exact opposite. Why waste the energy then? That is my point.

[Syonco]

This game isn't even remotely close to giving any form of competition to WoW. It doesn't even tickle their userbase.

[Striker]

This game isn't even remotely close to giving any form of competition to WoW. It doesn't even tickle their userbase.

 

Browsing their forums would tell another story entirely. I have never seen another MMO get such positive reviews and postings on the WoW forums. And I have been very active on their forums during all other major MMO releases except Aion.

[Englefield]

I don't agree with that at all. Its all about planning and time management. Look what Trion did with Rift at launch? That game ended up being very shallow in its story, but the features, raiding, ui, classes, auction house, mail system etc. were very competitive with wow and in some cases innovative.

 

How much content did wow have compared to rift when rift launched? If you're expecting a new MMO to launch today with all features and content as a massively succesful MMO that's been in constant development for 12 years, with tons more cash available to it than tor has I might add, then you will forever be disappointed.

 

Like I said, this game does need impfovements in certain areas but personally my expectations were reasonable when this game launched. If I really wanted a game with all the content and features available in wow 4.3, there is only ever going to be one game satisfy that.....

Edited January 2, 2012 by Englefield

[Kabloosh]

How much content did wow have compared to rift when rift launched? If you're expecting a new MMO to launch today with all features and content as a massively succesful MMO that's been in constant development for 12 years, with tons more cash available to it than tor has I might add, then you will forever be disappointed.

 

Like I said, this game does need impfovements in certain areas but personally my expectations were reasonable when this game launched. If I really wanted a game with all the content and features available in wow 4.3, there is only ever going to be one game satisfy that.....

 

We aren't expecting 13 tiers of raiding content but you would expect there to be more refined combat, a /roll feature, more graphics options, macros, and mod support. They could save themselves a lot of work by allowing UI mod support. A lot of what the Blizzard UI has today is thanks to modders who designed them such as a built in threat meter.

 

Things like ability delay should of been caught and dealt with well into the development process and quite possibly is the most important bug within the game at this time. Tab targeting needs some refinement as well. Its not the amount of content that bothers me its the lack of refinement in the controls that get to me.

[CandiMynx]

People continually say 'This is a 2011 MMO, it should have all of these features!' - and while yes, this holds some weight, people seem to behave as if this is an MMO run and created by Blizzard, who has been doing an MMo for 12 years. The reality is that even if Blizzard and WoW have been doing things, even if Bioware has been observing them, Bioware is not Blizzard. They haven't personally learned from x, y and z mistakes. Observing and experiencing are two different things, especially when it comes to the molasses-pace that most businesses are willing to use to adapt their practices... just a little food for thought is all.