Most of you just dont get it...

[Roak]

People don't get it.

 

FUN DOESN'T EQUAL MONEY.

I played fps games, league of legends, rts and etc. I got bored with them after 1 month.

GRIND EQUALS MONEY!!!

 

People don't understand that if you take away gear progression in the pvp game, swtor will lose a lot of subs.

 

fyi, I played ultima for 2+ years pvping in player crafted armour, I played swg for 2+ years pvping in player crafted armour (I even used the rebel armour that was actually worse than crafted - and a lot of imps used the storm trooper armour that was worse than crafted because it looked good) and I've played almost every post-wow gear grind mmo clone the genre has thrown at us in the last 5 years and never lasted longer than a coupls of months because they're boring.

 

When a game is designed around dailys/weeklys and gear grinds instead of allowing the (key part here) players to generate content themselves the game gets dull quick - wow has conned a lot of people into chasing an ever stat inflated carrot instead of actually developing dynamic pvp.

 

What do I mean by players generating content? example: faction forward bases in swg, buyable with faction currency, placeable in the world (we always had 1 by our towns shuttleport) and destroyable by the opposite faction.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Roak

[Scoobings]

I think getting gear is "easy" when most people are at your level. But if I rolled an alt tomorrow for PVP... getting to 50 and getting geared would be a little more... let's call it "time consuming".

 

X-server PVP would be great, cause you're right, you could then bracket based on skill or experience (eg valor rank).

 

I think you CAN have fun PVP and have gear progression too - as long as it's reasonable, and people with similar skills/gear play together. I have FUN in SWTOR PVP when I'm not being rolled by geared 50s. A little gear difference is okay. (But I don't think you can have ANY gear difference at all when you're talking about competitive, skill-based PVP... but I guess that's something we aren't really expecting from SWTOR at this point.)

 

The lack of X-server match-making is really puzzling to me.

 

Yeah I don't get it either. The PVP in this game has a lot of room to grow to be sure, but I don't like the idea of throwing the baby out with the bath water so to speak.

 

I don't know think that it would be as big of a deal as you're making it at fresh 50, You just have to play to your strengths and adjust your playstyle accordingly.

 

For instance, if you know you're squishy you should hang back in team fights until everyone is fully committed to their targets etc.

 

It is definitely harder at the fresh levels that's for sure, but it doesn't take that long to start to get the ball rolling. I just think I fundamentally disagree when people tell me that it's even a big deal. 100+ hours to get on the same level of people with gear? Please. I'm pretty sure I don't even have 100+ hours played at 50 and am Rank 35.

[Bhorzo]

What?

 

No that is active subscriptions. This is the only thing that Blizzard reports on in their conference call and is a well known number. They don't talk about people doing trial accounts of the 1-20 free to play which are both tiny in comparison.

 

http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=575495

http://www.activisionblizzard.com/corp/index.html

 

They have an interesting definition of "active subscription". Just keep in mind that HALF of their "subscribers" don't actually pay a sub fee.

[Malice_Nihilim]

Vanilla Wow, DaoC, Shadowbane.....

 

Shadowbane....hehe. Yeah...THAT was a grind. The cost of owning a town as a guild was insane. The resources you had to gather was soul sucking.

[Angaurath]

You're right, PVP where everyone is equal is the best kind. Know what the problem is?

 

 

Games that did not have PVP gear were dominated by people who raided.

 

(I love those old Grim videos, it does highlight the problem very well though )

 

There's an obvious solution:

 

REMOVE RAID GEAR FROM PVP.

 

This would be simple to do: make expertise the same, but ONLY applicable on PVE quests.

 

 

BW took the bass-ackwards position of cloning raid gear and calling it "expertise."

[savionen]

I don't know a single person that wants hard gear progression in PvP. Most of them want to play competitively for some sort of rank and want equal footing when doing so.

[Angaurath]

The OP is right...once you get full geared it then becomes about skill. Stop being a crying lazy carebear and do the grind like the rest of us.

 

If you are getting owned by a sorc/merc/mando it's because of your gear or you were not near cover or to stupid to seek it.

 

 

 

This is very much a "hazing" mentality.

 

"Endure this pointless ritual so you can be part of the club, and get your jollies from making other people go through it."

[Lady_Alyria]

I think people would prefer skill progression over gear progression. I'd love to see something like EQ2s AA system, with even slower advancement, maybe like 500 points you could grind up and spend on all kinds of stuff from +5% damage to a specific power to +10% run speed. And I mean taking FOREVER of just puttering around before you could cap it out. People need something they can grind without being able to race to the end of in four days like the level cap. And the gear lotto is just frustrating. And while AA advancement would be helpful, it wouldn't be game breaking depending on how it was done.

 

People drawn to pvp don't necessarily want to pwn everything because they have the best gear, some want the challenge of their skills against someone elses. If they just wanted to HULK SMASH they'd can do that easily, in pve.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Lady_Alyria

[Malice_Nihilim]

FPS don't make more money than MMO. WoW currently has around 4.5 million subs. Multiply that by 15 every month. Then multiply that with $60 every expansion. Then new players will have to spend $100.00 just to get the whole game.

 

Hehe. Using WoW, the only massively successful MMO on that scale.

 

But compare it to FPS sales in a year.

 

BF3 sells 5mil in its first week, 10mil were shipped and sold in the first month.

 

Modern Warfare 3 hit the $1bil in the first 16 days of its release.

 

A not top rated game, like Rage still opened its doors with 500k in sales.

 

Or even a failed title like Brink still sold over 300k in just pre-orders

 

How many FPS's came out in 2011? They all sold well, made good profits, and cost a lot less to produce and maintain then an MMO.

 

Smaller times, higher quality and MUCH higher profitability goes into FPS's and many more are vastly successful, where, in the last 10 years, the only insanely successful title in the MMO sphere is WoW? Sounds like hell of a niche to me.

[Malice_Nihilim]

If end game were strictly about PVP, yes. You could give players really amazing looking armor, titles, mounts, all sorts of things that would give a lot of incentive to PVP and do well that don't provide an advantage.

 

The game has PVE and you can't really do that as easily there without trivializing content or having a very flat scale to difficulty.

 

Mix the two and that's where the problems would start. A lot of players do both, I am one of them.

 

Hrm, yet many games previous to WoW did just that...PvE was just over all more difficult in the sense that it wasn't just a canned amount of people allowed in a box, to fight a boss, no, the bosses required you to convince every person you have ever met, to get playing the game so that you could finally get enough people together to take it down, or figure out some puzzle or some such to complete the objective, and not saying that games don't use slightly better gear as rewards, but it wasn't a gear grind to succeed.

 

WoW, SWTOR, RIFT, etc...you must get your purps or you are useless. You must have Tier X to be viable for doing Y dungeon, or whatever....previous games just slowly improved your character, but you were also expected to be able to compete realistically with a player within 10 levels of you.

[CapuchinSeven]

And it's a prime example of how a sub bar product designed to be noob friendly, combined with good marketing can be hugely successful.

 

Kinda like all apple products.

 

I work in a science lab, we use Dell laptops, HP laptops and a number of Macs used by our communication department. Despite far heavier use, the Macs last years longer than the others.

 

We've also stripped a few of them and they were very well put together and anything but sub par. Thanks for dropping that pointless piece of rubbish in there though, I'll be sure to place value on anything else you say.

[Kolbenito]

They have an interesting definition of "active subscription". Just keep in mind that HALF of their "subscribers" don't actually pay a sub fee.

 

Where do you get this figure? I call ******** unless you can at least provide a link.

[Jebi]

I work in a science lab, we use Dell laptops, HP laptops and a number of Macs used by our communication department. Despite far heavier use, the Macs last years longer than the others.

 

We've also stripped a few of them and they were very well put together and anything but sub par.

 

Small pointless sample is small and pointless.

 

Want to know how many Toshiba's, Dell, and HP laptops we have here (international company) that are over 7 years old and still going strong?

 

I'll be sure to place value on anything else you say.

 

Oh no, please man.. don't do it!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!

 

But seriously, lol?

Edited February 1, 2012 by Jebi

[RamzaBehoulve]

I work in a science lab, we use Dell laptops, HP laptops and a number of Macs used by our communication department. Despite far heavier use, the Macs last years longer than the others.

 

We've also stripped a few of them and they were very well put together and anything but sub par. Thanks for dropping that pointless piece of rubbish in there though, I'll be sure to place value on anything else you say.

 

I've seen Macs drop in 3 weeks and PC last 5 years.

 

Anecdotal evidence is just that.

 

If you want a real comparison, a PC with the same components as the Mac will last just as long. The difference is, there are other components lasting just as long too for 1/4 of the price from Apple products.

 

I personally wouldn't have anything against Apple products if they were priced fairly and were not trying to restrict access to half the possibilities in the name of noobs breaking their computer.

Edited February 1, 2012 by RamzaBehoulve

[Malice_Nihilim]

It is actually 10 million for wow. That's after losing about 1.8 million during Cataclysm.

 

incorrect. 6.5mil subs (the only ones that really count) are the non-china ones.

 

China uses a completely different pricing and pay scheme so they are vastly less profitable than US/EURO subs.

[Kolbenito]

Hehe. Using WoW, the only massively successful MMO on that scale.

 

But compare it to FPS sales in a year.

 

BF3 sells 5mil in its first week, 10mil were shipped and sold in the first month.

 

Modern Warfare 3 hit the $1bil in the first 16 days of its release.

 

A not top rated game, like Rage still opened its doors with 500k in sales.

 

Or even a failed title like Brink still sold over 300k in just pre-orders

 

How many FPS's came out in 2011? They all sold well, made good profits, and cost a lot less to produce and maintain then an MMO.

 

Smaller times, higher quality and MUCH higher profitability goes into FPS's and many more are vastly successful, where, in the last 10 years, the only insanely successful title in the MMO sphere is WoW? Sounds like hell of a niche to me.

 

The trend is micro transactions thanks to Blizzard. So not only do you buy the game, all of the expansions and pay $15 a month but now you can change your name, race, sex, server or faction for a fee between 10 and 25 dollars in addition to buying items from the store that you can use and in some cases even sell in the game.

 

Blizzard is not dumb with money. Say whatever you want about them but they know how to make a profit in games.

[Rogmar]

I work in a science lab, we use Dell laptops, HP laptops and a number of Macs used by our communication department. Despite far heavier use, the Macs last years longer than the others.

 

We've also stripped a few of them and they were very well put together and anything but sub par. Thanks for dropping that pointless piece of rubbish in there though, I'll be sure to place value on anything else you say.

 

I work in a science department which focuses heavily on computational work, and everyone uses PCs. Your story was very insightful in proving that Macs are good though.

[Malice_Nihilim]

Where do you get this figure? I call ******** unless you can at least provide a link.

 

My apologies you don't actually follow MMO's, thats pretty common knowledge.

 

China does a pay by minute system and they don't pay box price, because they generally play in cafes. The end result is they pay pennies on the dollar for there subs.

[CapuchinSeven]

Small pointless sample is small and pointless.

 

Oh no, please man.. don't do it!!!!! PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!

 

But seriously, lol?

 

I've seen Macs drop in 3 weeks and PC last 5 years.

 

Anecdotal evidence is just that.

 

If you want a real comparison, a PC with the same components as the Mac will last just as long. The difference is, there are other components lasting just as long too for 1/4 of the price from Apple products.

 

I'm sorry, I thought we were just throwing random pointless opinions around that had no real bearing on anything to do with what was being discussed because you felt the group needed to hear about how you don't like Macs.

 

You're right dude, totally useful *thumps up*

 

I work in a science department which focuses heavily on computational work, and everyone uses PCs. Your story was very insightful in proving that Macs are good though.

 

We use Macs because we need unix and the Comm's department receives a large discount, anything else can just have BSD installed which works nicely on the HPs, the older Macs also have RISC/PPC CPUs which are very useful for us.

Edited February 1, 2012 by CapuchinSeven

[Malice_Nihilim]

The trend is micro transactions thanks to Blizzard. So not only do you buy the game, all of the expansions and pay $15 a month but now you can change your name, race, sex, server or faction for a fee between 10 and 25 dollars in addition to buying items from the store that you can use and in some cases even sell in the game.

 

Blizzard is not dumb with money. Say whatever you want about them but they know how to make a profit in games.

 

I never said WoW wasn't profitable, the conversation was about the genre. FPS > MMO hands down in number of players and profitability.

[Jebi]

I'm sorry, I thought we were just throwing random pointless opinions around that had no real bearing on anything to do with what was being discussed because you felt the group needed to hear about how you don't like Macs.

 

You say random opinions, I say general knowledge.

 

COD = marketing to the casual gamers and console kiddies. Profit.

 

Apple = marketing to the technological illiterates and sheep. Profit.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Jebi

[Kolbenito]

My apologies you don't actually follow MMO's, thats pretty common knowledge.

 

China does a pay by minute system and they don't pay box price, because they generally play in cafes. The end result is they pay pennies on the dollar for there subs.

 

Yeah I understand that, and China has had various issues with content in WoW over the years.

 

The latest numbers I have heard are ....

 

 

WoW Lost 800k Subscribers, down to 10.3M

Activision Blizzard latest earning call revealed that World of Warcraft lost another 800,000 subscribers last quarter, following the loss of 300k subscribers announced last quarter and 600k loss from the quarter before that. This brings us to 1.7 million subscribers lost in the last 3 quarters. Some things they made note of on the call:

 

Most of the subscriptions were lost in China.

There is normally an increase in subscriptions around December.

The decreased profit came from all of the games in development and no launches occurring.

There will be at least two major releases next year.

 

and

 

World of Warcraft lost another 300,000 Subscribers last quarter, Patch 4.3 this year

Activision Blizzard latest earning call revealed that World of Warcraft lost another 300,000 subscribers last quarter, following the loss of 600k subscribers announced last quarter.

 

In this conference call we also learned that:

 

The next patch will include "major raid and dungeon content", we can most likely expect a raid and a 5-man from Patch 4.3

Patch 4.3 will be the "largest content update since Cataclysm"

It will be released later this year, which means that we can probably expect a PTR soon.

 

It's also worth noting that despite the loss of players, Mike Morhaime pointed out that the new trial system resulted in an increase in new account creations. For more details on the earning call, go check the coverage on sites such as Venturebeat or Gamasutra.

 

They mention China, but not 4 million subscribers worth. That is from just prior to SWTOR's retail release. I don't buy that china makes up 40% of subscribers or whatever semantics we are using to equal "people who pay to play the game".

 

Just saying.

 

If there is an MMO that competes with FPS for Money earned, it is definitely without a shadow of a doubt WoW.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Kolbenito

[CapuchinSeven]

You say random opinions, I say general knowledge.

 

COD = marketing to the casual gamers and console kiddies. Profit.

 

Apple = marketing to the technological illiterates and sheep. Profit.

 

I get it dude, you don't like Apple and you like to feel better than anyone that made different choices than you by belittling them as sheep, it's cool you can go back to talking about something else now.

[Zaskaszh]

PvP gear is for PvP wannabes.

 

The posters claiming otherwise are the incompetent players who absolutely require that gear advantage in order to claim that their "skill" is what's netting them wins, and not some stats advantage from gear they "earned" with exploits, kill trades or a system that rewards you even when you lose...

[CapuchinSeven]

PvP gear is for PvP wannabes.

 

The posters claiming otherwise are the incompetent players who absolutely require that gear advantage in order to claim that their "skill" is what's netting them wins, and not some stats advantage from gear they "earned" with exploits, kill trades or a system that rewards you even when you lose...

 

AAAAND, this. +1.