Official: Over 1.7 million active subs, 2 + mil sold

[VenthiosLestaran]

With any luck, Bioware will take notes on some of the things they're doing less than ideally now and, in future times, make good on altering things themselves.

 

For my perspective, I don't think they did it wrong to make the PVE game a raidy-geargrindy experience; it's familiar enough for people to take up without much of a learning curve (which bugs some, but I don't think most) and feel confident in that they 'know how to play' sooner.

 

I do think they really need to polish that experience, since they've shipped it, and they are going to be pulling a Sisyphean battle to do it, as they have formally picked a fight with WoW.

 

Sure, from a market perspective, there's no fight at all and none necessary. From a business platform, it's just more market saturation of the delivery model; it's good for both of them in terms of the competition.

 

Unfortunately for the player, it could easily lead into lockstepping and tandemized development cycles wherein which they wind up limiting eachother by mirroring eachother in terms of the raidgame experience and driving players into some other game that're just plain tired of the whole fiasco.

 

They've got a big winner on the immersive storytelling angle. It makes me leery, but they've got two very unrelated models welded at the neck to the SWTOR experience, and I'm just not confident at this time that it'll lead to good things in the community.

 

Those primarily interested in raids, I don't foresee as becoming more interested in and tolerant of lots and lots of immersive story in the content they're primarily here for. I'd foresee them as becoming less and less so over time.

 

If they become less and less interested in and tolerant of such content, they'll come into natural conflict with those that are here more for that content than anything else, including (and perhaps specifically, often enough) the raidy-geargrindy business.

 

I think it's going to get ugly and I suspect it's going to lead to volatile division in the community on that and innumerable related fronts.

 

I can only hope I'm wrong about that. However, I already see things getting more and more common that are falling in perfect line with what I expected would come of such initially.

 

There are more and more people dictating terms for PUG groups as being 'spacebar or you're booted'.

 

There are more and more people (myself included) that are rejecting wholesale the notion of having to farm hardmodes and FP's (like a hardcore raidgamer would be much more inclined to do as par for the course) in order to craft the better end of anything.

 

There are an increasing number of people, strictly in my sphere of awareness (rendering all of this purely anecdotal, of course) that are going "Let me know when this game figures out what it's trying to be and do." and wandering off to do other things, but not cancelling their subs just yet, or making a big fuss about it until they see more.

 

I think it's going to be a pretty big problem. I also think that the intention of merging everyone's interests is naive, and has no good future in the longterm as far as avoiding the creation of volatile divisions in the playerbase goes.

 

 

Again, I could be wrong. Then again, a lot of experience in dealing with and marketing to people tells me that if I'm wrong, it's not by much, and I've been too many times unfortunately correct about things just like this to be able to feel confident or hopeful that I'm just being worrisome, or that I should put on my tinfoil hat.

 

I'd really like to know if Bioware is aware of such things, or if they have a different, better positioned and more hopeful view to take on it.

 

As it is, I don't know that they do. Yet again, my personal and professional experiences alike make it too unreasonable for me to believe that amateurish mistakes just don't get made by big businesses. They happen in every industry with which I'm familiar; horrible, horrible oversights sometimes, often hinging on completely wrong or grossly inaccurate assumptions made about the consumers in question.

 

 

Still, this industry is fairly alien territory for me. I work with health care networks, hospitals, clinics, hospices, care centers and, most specifically, administrative and marketing interests thereof.

 

I won't pretend I'm a guru of what's gonna happen here. But I'm still cringing and prepared to dual wield my epic cringe-face if good ol' human nature as I understand it just keeps on applying here too as it does in so many other ways and places.

 

Again, I'll hope I'm wrong and keep a good and reasonable bearing in the meantime, but things I called verbatim before I was even done with my beta experience (limited though it was) are unfolding like foregone conclusions before my eyes left, right and center.

 

I wish it weren't so. It isn't necessarily going to be so, as I could just be slapping myself upside the head with confirmation bias and misperception.

 

I hope that's the case, or the longterm future of SWTOR is going to be a probably rather successful one financially, but a more toxic community experience than much of anything even WoW's managed to date.

 

/94 cents

 

Extremely well written post, wish more of this type could come out of peoples fingers and minds. We'll just have to see where it goes, time is the only way to actually tell. People can predict until they're blue in the face but, time is what will always give us the answers we seek to find in these circumstances.

[daemian]

Awww we're not all bad. I'm looking forward to GW2 more so then SWTOR but I know that SWTOR will do fine.

 

I admit, I'll be staying away from GW2 for at least the first 3 months based on how some of the 'fans' of that game have been acting. That should be enough time for them to have decided it's failed as well and moved on to the next one.

[VenthiosLestaran]

I just hope the 'no trinity' thing works for me, as I always play a healer. Other than that I think it looks pretty damn good.

 

You'll dig hard on support skillset weapons then. Lots of support style abilities to protect your fellow players from incoming damage and adding to mitigation. It will take some getting used to, but if you're tired of whackamole with HP bars, that may be a really a really rewarding experience. That the giant bubble you drop to reflect enemies shots and protect your team mates is a little more satisfying than +2771 a few times over.

 

Sounds like it to me anyway. But I can only speak for myself. Coming from a top teir raid healer and tank in WoW, I know how you feel.

[lucasomega]

I admit, I'll be staying away from GW2 for at least the first 3 months based on how some of the 'fans' of that game have been acting. That should be enough time for them to have decided it's failed as well and moved on to the next one.

 

I think I'll check out GW2 from day one but stay away from the forums for the first 3 months.

[Heliotic]

Yet the game felt tremendously empty.... I may be forced to call for a lie, again...

 

Although i would love to believe that my dear SWTOR is doing great, common sense and game region counting and difficulty to find groups when we would easily do, wont support this claim.

 

I agree that EA executives would definitely be violating federal laws just to make SWTOR look better.

[Mekrath]

With any luck, Bioware will take notes on some of the things they're doing less than ideally now and, in future times, make good on altering things themselves.

 

For my perspective, I don't think they did it wrong to make the PVE game a raidy-geargrindy experience; it's familiar enough for people to take up without much of a learning curve (which bugs some, but I don't think most) and feel confident in that they 'know how to play' sooner.

 

I do think they really need to polish that experience, since they've shipped it, and they are going to be pulling a Sisyphean battle to do it, as they have formally picked a fight with WoW.

 

Sure, from a market perspective, there's no fight at all and none necessary. From a business platform, it's just more market saturation of the delivery model; it's good for both of them in terms of the competition.

 

Unfortunately for the player, it could easily lead into lockstepping and tandemized development cycles wherein which they wind up limiting eachother by mirroring eachother in terms of the raidgame experience and driving players into some other game that're just plain tired of the whole fiasco.

 

They've got a big winner on the immersive storytelling angle. It makes me leery, but they've got two very unrelated models welded at the neck to the SWTOR experience, and I'm just not confident at this time that it'll lead to good things in the community.

 

Those primarily interested in raids, I don't foresee as becoming more interested in and tolerant of lots and lots of immersive story in the content they're primarily here for. I'd foresee them as becoming less and less so over time.

 

If they become less and less interested in and tolerant of such content, they'll come into natural conflict with those that are here more for that content than anything else, including (and perhaps specifically, often enough) the raidy-geargrindy business.

 

I think it's going to get ugly and I suspect it's going to lead to volatile division in the community on that and innumerable related fronts.

 

I can only hope I'm wrong about that. However, I already see things getting more and more common that are falling in perfect line with what I expected would come of such initially.

 

There are more and more people dictating terms for PUG groups as being 'spacebar or you're booted'.

 

There are more and more people (myself included) that are rejecting wholesale the notion of having to farm hardmodes and FP's (like a hardcore raidgamer would be much more inclined to do as par for the course) in order to craft the better end of anything.

 

There are an increasing number of people, strictly in my sphere of awareness (rendering all of this purely anecdotal, of course) that are going "Let me know when this game figures out what it's trying to be and do." and wandering off to do other things, but not cancelling their subs just yet, or making a big fuss about it until they see more.

 

I think it's going to be a pretty big problem. I also think that the intention of merging everyone's interests is naive, and has no good future in the longterm as far as avoiding the creation of volatile divisions in the playerbase goes.

 

 

Again, I could be wrong. Then again, a lot of experience in dealing with and marketing to people tells me that if I'm wrong, it's not by much, and I've been too many times unfortunately correct about things just like this to be able to feel confident or hopeful that I'm just being worrisome, or that I should put on my tinfoil hat.

 

I'd really like to know if Bioware is aware of such things, or if they have a different, better positioned and more hopeful view to take on it.

 

As it is, I don't know that they do. Yet again, my personal and professional experiences alike make it too unreasonable for me to believe that amateurish mistakes just don't get made by big businesses. They happen in every industry with which I'm familiar; horrible, horrible oversights sometimes, often hinging on completely wrong or grossly inaccurate assumptions made about the consumers in question.

 

 

Still, this industry is fairly alien territory for me. I work with health care networks, hospitals, clinics, hospices, care centers and, most specifically, administrative and marketing interests thereof.

 

I won't pretend I'm a guru of what's gonna happen here. But I'm still cringing and prepared to dual wield my epic cringe-face if good ol' human nature as I understand it just keeps on applying here too as it does in so many other ways and places.

 

Again, I'll hope I'm wrong and keep a good and reasonable bearing in the meantime, but things I called verbatim before I was even done with my beta experience (limited though it was) are unfolding like foregone conclusions before my eyes left, right and center.

 

I wish it weren't so. It isn't necessarily going to be so, as I could just be slapping myself upside the head with confirmation bias and misperception.

 

I hope that's the case, or the longterm future of SWTOR is going to be a probably rather successful one financially, but a more toxic community experience than much of anything even WoW's managed to date.

 

/94 cents

 

Good post.

[Drewser]

I just hope the 'no trinity' thing works for me, as I always play a healer. Other than that I think it looks pretty damn good.

 

Did you ever play CoH? It sounds like GW2 is taking part of their approach to the no trinity.

[russellcsf]

But just 3 days ago, I was able to find groups to do every heroic on Nar Shadda on one of my alts in a matter of minutes. So you theory does not hold water.

 

Talking about my server of choice, Anchorhead. When i started playing, i filtered by population. He was the top one, with queue of 20 minutes. I said "hmm this is my server, once the queue stops, this would be a great server population wise" Turned out that in weeks it went down to the 20th, and from last week on, wouldnt hit heavy during primetime while others were at least still reaching it...

 

Now only a few times, The Fatman, and Dark reaper gets to very heavy, that's for a few hours and then bam, to standard. A standard server means , from my experience that you will find like 60 ppl in corus, 25ish in tatooine, and 18-20 ilum (repub side) because i'm no kid and like to play balanced.

 

All in all i dont regret having cashed Bioware, they are my estimated single player company alongside with Bethsoft, and i want them to go on! They already have my money for ME3. So dont take me for a negative nancy, i just want facts, i dont like fooling myself.

[Drewser]

Talking about my server of choice, Anchorhead. When i started playing, i filtered by population. He was the top one, with queue of 20 minutes. I said "hmm this is my server, once the queue stops, this would be a great server population wise" Turned out that in weeks it went down to the 20th, and from last week on, wouldnt hit heavy during primetime while others were at least still reaching it...

 

 

Right so your data is useless since it applies to one server.

 

Exactly as I expected after reading your first post.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Drewser

[Rasheth]

Right so your data is useless since it applies to one server.

 

Don't forget he said Republic side that must be taken into account.

[mezlabor]

Did you ever play CoH? It sounds like GW2 is taking part of their approach to the no trinity.

 

I did there's a lot of ideas from coh it seems like they are evolving. Side kicking for one thing and the scalable nature of Dynamic events reminds me of how missions scaled to party size.

[Rasheth]

I did there's a lot of ideas from coh it seems like they are evolving. Side kicking for one thing and the scalable nature of Dynamic events reminds me of how missions scaled to party size.

 

off topic a CoH 2 is in the works loved that game

[Tortoises]

I often ask myself.. how come Bioware can make such a great MMO with the best storyline acting and video not only out of any MMO I have ever played before, but out of any GAME I have played before period.

 

But yet Blizzard, with all of its billions, never listened and tried to do the same thing?

 

Hopefully this is a stark warning for all people who are going to try and make an MMO in the future.

 

Good job Bioware, SWTOR is here to stay!

 

Which is good for me since im an avid Star Wars fan

[Mekrath]

Did you ever play CoH? It sounds like GW2 is taking part of their approach to the no trinity.

 

Briefly at release. but I don't remember much about it.

[VenthiosLestaran]

I did there's a lot of ideas from coh it seems like they are evolving. Side kicking for one thing and the scalable nature of Dynamic events reminds me of how missions scaled to party size.

 

That's what it should be about. Improving on what has come, making things better, more fun, more interesting overall. Innovation can come on many levels, it doesn't always have to be a gigantic grand thing. Let's hope both SWTOR and GW2 push this genre out of the stagnation it's been in.

[russellcsf]

I'm being silly but we should believe you because you are a "number checking maniac"?

 

Tell me how many subscriptions do you maintain to keep tabs on all the servers?

 

I dont. I just log out and go to the server population screen when i feel my server is feeling freaking empty. And surprisingly enough, i see grim numbers. Call me whatever you like, but i dont believe the claim that they doubled the capacity of all servers. That's an old trick/lie.

[CadaKai]

Did you ever play CoH? It sounds like GW2 is taking part of their approach to the no trinity.

 

COH had the trinity. I played a tank and a healer in that game......

[russellcsf]

I often ask myself.. how come Bioware can make such a great MMO with the best storyline acting and video not only out of any MMO I have ever played before, but out of any GAME I have played before period.

 

But yet Blizzard, with all of its billions, never listened and tried to do the same thing?

 

Hopefully this is a stark warning for all people who are going to try and make an MMO in the future.

 

Good job Bioware, SWTOR is here to stay!

 

Which is good for me since im an avid Star Wars fan

 

SWTOR is the best singleplayer mmo ever, but probably the worst pvp ever, by far.

Edited February 2, 2012 by russellcsf

[Mekrath]

That's what it should be about. Improving on what has come, making things better, more fun, more interesting overall. Innovation can come on many levels, it doesn't always have to be a gigantic grand thing. Let's hope both SWTOR and GW2 push this genre out of the stagnation it's been in.

 

The Secret World looks like it's doing something a little different by removing character levels. Granted, I won't be trying that game till well after launch if ever because it's Funcom, but it's good to see the trend away from cookie cutter.

[rooklv]

I admit, I'll be staying away from GW2 for at least the first 3 months based on how some of the 'fans' of that game have been acting. That should be enough time for them to have decided it's failed as well and moved on to the next one.

 

So, so true. Except there, it will be "Article says over 2mil copies sold, 1.7mil active accounts. Can't find group 5 minutes before server maintenance. THE GAME! IT HAS FAILED!:eek:"

 

I like the game. Even when I hate it (looking at you, pvp bags and expertise). Plenty of people like the game, even when they hate it. I know I guy at work who moonlights on my server because he loves playing it. His wow guild decided to bail because bugs at end game in a new game is unforgivable even if they leveled to 50 in the same amount of time everyone else was just getting into act 2. People enjoy it. Even if the slavering horde here on the forums swears that everything everywhere is broken and only utter fools would even bother logging in.

 

If loving SWTOR is wrong, I don't wanna be right!

[Tortoises]

SWOTOR is the best singleplayer mmo ever, but probably the worst pvp ever, by far.

 

well thats a matter of perspective. I love the PvP in this game, far more than WoW anyway.

 

I do wish there was a lot more of it. But it is definitely a lot more fun blowing things up and shooting auto cannons or wielding lightsabers than it is auto attacking with a sword twice the size of you.

 

Sentiments from my guild.. we want MORE PvP and gear and incentives and different kinds of PvP.

 

But as it stands now, it is decent for launch and 1 month afterwards.

 

I heard there is a big PvP content patch coming up in March, just crossing my fingers and getting excited for it !

[VenthiosLestaran]

The Secret World looks like it's doing something a little different by removing character levels. Granted, I won't be trying that game till well after launch if ever because it's Funcom, but it's good to see the trend away from cookie cutter.

 

They moved away in that aspect yes, but the combat is very cookie cutter stand there and hit target, it also follows the trinity. Not that it's a bad thing to people who enjoy it. We'll see how they do in implementation of the rest of the game. However, modern fantasy has never attracted me, I'll pass on it simply because I won't find it very engaging. I really like varied races. Which SWTOR didn't really give me sadly.

 

Kel'Dor.

 

I'll be playing a Charr in GW2, that's some fun stuff to look at.

[Uruare]

Extremely well written post, wish more of this type could come out of peoples fingers and minds. We'll just have to see where it goes, time is the only way to actually tell. People can predict until they're blue in the face but, time is what will always give us the answers we seek to find in these circumstances.

 

 

Entirely and absolutely true, yep. And thank you for the compliment as well!

[mezlabor]

off topic a CoH 2 is in the works loved that game

 

I may check it out it depends tho. I really did enjoy DCUO a lot for its action style gameplay thats one of the reasons I am looking forward to GW2 COH2 would have to provide that for me now and with Marvel U online coming next year and both being F2P I'll have my plate full.

[mezlabor]

The Secret World looks like it's doing something a little different by removing character levels. Granted, I won't be trying that game till well after launch if ever because it's Funcom, but it's good to see the trend away from cookie cutter.

 

Yea Looks really interesting but Funcom and their mmo launches are just disastrous. I expect the same from SW after AO and AOC