Wolfshead.com's SWTOR Review: MMORPG Design & Commentary

[DTuloJr]

actually, a rather poor review filled with inaccuracies. Also, any review which claims a game is a copy of WoW while ignoring the fact WoW is a copy of EQ and other MMo's that came before it shows a starting wow bias. On another point i never heard of this site let alone have read anything there so not sure how popular over all it is.

 

P.S. you want to tell him the budget was 150 million not 300

 

1. Yes, WoW combined aspects of many other MMO's. A lack of acknowledgement of the previous MMO's does not itself invalidate anything, nor does it show bias as you claim. After all, are we going to reference every video game that ever came prior to whatever we're discussing, all the way back to Pong, then perhaps the abacus, and the invention of gunpowder and fire?

 

2. NO financials have been released which cover ALL expenses from ALL of EA's companies over the ENTIRE six year development cycle, worldwide. WoW was built in about 4.5 years at a cost of about $63 million dollars prior to its launch, and years later, its development team grew to 140 staff. They did NOT expect such a massive launch or sales. SWTOR had over 700 people working on it immediately prior to launch, NOT including customer service staff, across at least 4 continents. It is trivial to estimate costs of SWTOR being upwards of $300 million dollars, especially when you include all of EA's companies and affiliates working on SWTOR, and all of their staff, hardware, software, licensing, infrastructure, building leases, etc., across a 6 year time span. It's absolutely realistic. The biggest question is... why has EA hidden the development cost numbers? What do they honestly have to hide or be afraid of?

[DTuloJr]

1) Yes cause implementing the acutall core of the game (skills, balancing, animations, ops, FPs, coding, etc.) does not take any work at all and thus they were able to focus solely on these extra things right?

 

EA has stated that they had over 700 staff working on the game. They had the resources to bring in additional resources, or retask some, to put out the game that they hyped, and fix problems before the general public got to see them. They made a poor business decision.

 

2) Say what you will I do space bar through some quests that I have done before....but I hardly ever spacebar through my class quests

 

Good for you. Most people spacebar through most quests.

 

3) Stating your opinion as fact is a sure fire way to show people how narrow minded you are. SWTOR gives loads of more choices than WoW.

 

Your statement is unsupported by any known reality currently existing on this planet. Please try again.

 

4) Yea...quickly rising subs is not a good launch at all....please are you serious?

 

By the very definition of the subject, the launch of a game will always result in rising subscription numbers... because, technically, well... you cannot decline later on, from no subscribers. Your strawman arguement is invalid. Again.

[gaalon]

Dificulty scales dramatically after level 20. 1-20 is the prologe, the game or story hasn't even really begun by then.

 

The way I see it the game doesn't change much between 1-20 and 20-50. It's trivially easy to the point of being boring. I never once found a fight difficult or challenging except if I soloed 2+ or 4 man quests. The single-player part is laughably easy so even the 12 year old BW-fanbois can feel like they're "achieving" something (lol).

 

 

Also:

 

EVE, where real PvP'rs go to play.

 

^this.

 

If you want a competitive PVP game with a decent (read: non-retarded) death penalty then EVE is the only really acceptable MMO. Perhaps Darkfall Online should also be mentioned but that was very grindtastic when I tried it which put me off.

 

But yeah... EVE > all.

Edited February 13, 2012 by gaalon

[KianTremayne]

Wolfshead doesn't like SWTOR. Film at eleven.

 

This is not news. For those people who are familiar with gaming blogs, Wolfshead is one of the standard bearers of the "back to the glorious past" movement. They have happy memories of the older games like the original EQ and DAoC where there was less direction, less hand-holding... and also a hell of a lot less people. Back in those pre-WoW games having 500K subscribers meant being the biggest subscription MMO in the market, now having only that many is seen as abject failure. I'm not sure whether these guys are convinced that all of the WoW era players would love the old fashioned forced-grouping, camp monsters for XP game if only they were forced to try it, or whether they just want all the kids to get off our lawn and have the MMO hobby shrink back down to 1/20th of its size but with the 'right' sort of people and all the rest can go hang.

 

Regardless - SWTOR is not the sort of game that Wolfshead wants, because it 's very much an MMO in the post-WoW themepark mould. He's never going to like it, because it's not built for him. And he's not objective enough to review it fairly for what it IS and decide whether it's a good example of a themepark game, because he's locked into the "themepark = bad" mentality. On the plus side, at least he hasn't embarrassed himself as much as Syncaine has...

 

If you want a counter-example of a popular MMO blogger who has played the game to level cap, is still playing and has admittedly mixed feelings about what is there, check out what Spinks has to say

[sanctimonia]

EA has stated that they had over 700 staff working on the game. They had the resources to bring in additional resources, or retask some, to put out the game that they hyped, and fix problems before the general public got to see them. They made a poor business decision.

 

 

 

Good for you. Most people spacebar through most quests.

 

 

 

Your statement is unsupported by any known reality currently existing on this planet. Please try again.

 

 

 

By the very definition of the subject, the launch of a game will always result in rising subscription numbers... because, technically, well... you cannot decline later on, from no subscribers. Your strawman arguement is invalid. Again.

 

1) I am sure you were there the whole way as they started to make SWTOR and have complete knowledge on what went on as they made the game. Actually....no I dont

 

2) When did these "most people" elect you to speak for them. Just because you do it does not mean most people do it.

 

3) Why would I try again when I was correct the first time?

 

4) If SWTOR was as bad as some people here say they would have lost subs at a faster rate than they are gaining subs right now. They would not be growing so quickly.

[Ercello]

Not a single word of "PVP" in the entire review

[Halfadozen]

And the topic degenerates into the same old *****.

 

Getting back to the OP.

 

Bad review IMO. It was more of a comparison.

 

Interesting read though.

[DTuloJr]

4) If SWTOR was as bad as some people here say they would have lost subs at a faster rate than they are gaining subs right now. They would not be growing so quickly.

 

Most of your posts ignore facts and are pure trolling flame bait. Those parts I'll ignore. However... point 4 is the "meat." There is currently no free-to-play "trial" account version of SWTOR. This is deliberate. Just on the STAR WARS and BioWare names alone, people *are* purchasing the game... and then *registering* the game... and then *subscribing* to the game... because you HAVE to subscribe, in order to TRY the game.

 

The numbers that were thrown out to the crowd were 2 million sales, 1.7 million subscribers, and that "most" were paying subscriptions. No profit predictions were made based upon any trends, yet suddenly, everyone is touting the wild success of the game, completely ignoring the FACT that "most" just means "more than half". There may only be 850,001 paying, recurring subscriptions. Or there may be 1,699,000. The basic fact that is massaged and dismissed by fanboys and those disengenuously trying to pump up EA stock is this; 300,000 people either bought it and decided to cancel their accounts altogether, or have yet to register their purchase. And of those that *have* registered their purchase, the information that they gave us may mean that 849,999 people have already decided not to renew their subscriptions. Based upon server populations active throughout the day, meaning players that we can see while on the servers, it may very well be that 850k people have left. Suddenly, the information that was provided in the press conference isn't as cheerful, is it? THOSE are currently existing, very real possibilities, given the FACTS, straight from EA.

 

Gaining subscriptions? Thoroughly useless strawman arguement. Recurring, paying subscriptions over a 3-6 month trend, are the only numbers that matter.

[ForceCowboy]

Yes, it is. I'm not sure why that's so hard to understand. I get that you don't like it but that's simply the way it is.

 

It's very hard to understand your viewpoint. You're saying that it's perfectly ok to not only NOT meet the standard, but to be so far behind the standard that it will take months of patching to get to the standard.

 

The Car analogy makes perfect sense. The only reason at all to release something that's far behind the industry standard is if you have a pricing point reflective of the fact that you're far behind where other games are.

 

Paying a $60.00 USD box price, plus a $15.00 sub before you can even play one single minute of the game, which doesn't have half the options that other modern games of the same genre have, would be like going to a Yugo dealership and paying Ferrari prices. It's absurd. If the game had a price point of maybe $30.00 box cover and that comes with a free month, then I could maybe forgive all the shortcomings.

 

This game is absurdly, ridiculously lacking for a 2012 game in it's genre. Especially considering the hundreds of millions they had on tap to develop with. This game should be making WoW look like a pre-school playground sitting next to a six flags amusement park, but instead WoW is still schooling this game in the features department.

 

Why don't I go back to WoW? Easy, it's not Star Wars. I want WoW level features with Jedi and Lightsabers and the mountains of lore and the epic story. I should have had that at release, but now we're being told "Just keep paying us and we'll eventually catch up to WoW in a year or two". "Here, spend a million dollars on this Yugo and we'll eventually upgrade you to a Ferrari... We PROMISE *fingers crossed behind their backs* *Gleaming used car salesman smile*"

[sanctimonia]

Most of your posts ignore facts and are pure trolling flame bait. Those parts I'll ignore. However... point 4 is the "meat." There is currently no free-to-play "trial" account version of SWTOR. This is deliberate. Just on the STAR WARS and BioWare names alone, people *are* purchasing the game... and then *registering* the game... and then *subscribing* to the game... because you HAVE to subscribe, in order to TRY the game.

 

The numbers that were thrown out to the crowd were 2 million sales, 1.7 million subscribers, and that "most" were paying subscriptions. No profit predictions were made based upon any trends, yet suddenly, everyone is touting the wild success of the game, completely ignoring the FACT that "most" just means "more than half". There may only be 850,001 paying, recurring subscriptions. Or there may be 1,699,000. The basic fact that is massaged and dismissed by fanboys and those disengenuously trying to pump up EA stock is this; 300,000 people either bought it and decided to cancel their accounts altogether, or have yet to register their purchase. And of those that *have* registered their purchase, the information that they gave us may mean that 849,999 people have already decided not to renew their subscriptions. Based upon server populations active throughout the day, meaning players that we can see while on the servers, it may very well be that 850k people have left. Suddenly, the information that was provided in the press conference isn't as cheerful, is it? THOSE are currently existing, very real possibilities, given the FACTS, straight from EA.

 

Gaining subscriptions? Thoroughly useless strawman arguement. Recurring, paying subscriptions over a 3-6 month trend, are the only numbers that matter.

 

Then how can you say it has failed by the same token if you have to wait 6 months?

 

You are kinda shooting yourself in the foot by saying "SUbs now dont matter only the subs the manage to kep matter" when you havent even given them the chance to keep the subs yet...

 

Just because you want SWTOR to be a flop does not mean it is.

[ArtMonster]

((( Wolfshead.....One of the most popular MMO blogs for the past 5 years. )))

 

 

never heard of it

[DTuloJr]

It's very hard to understand your viewpoint. You're saying that it's perfectly ok to not only NOT meet the standard, but to be so far behind the standard that it will take months of patching to get to the standard.

 

The Car analogy makes perfect sense. The only reason at all to release something that's far behind the industry standard is if you have a pricing point reflective of the fact that you're far behind where other games are.

 

Paying a $60.00 USD box price, plus a $15.00 sub before you can even play one single minute of the game, which doesn't have half the options that other modern games of the same genre have, would be like going to a Yugo dealership and paying Ferrari prices. It's absurd. If the game had a price point of maybe $30.00 box cover and that comes with a free month, then I could maybe forgive all the shortcomings.

 

This game is absurdly, ridiculously lacking for a 2012 game in it's genre. Especially considering the hundreds of millions they had on tap to develop with. This game should be making WoW look like a pre-school playground sitting next to a six flags amusement park, but instead WoW is still schooling this game in the features department.

 

Why don't I go back to WoW? Easy, it's not Star Wars. I want WoW level features with Jedi and Lightsabers and the mountains of lore and the epic story. I should have had that at release, but now we're being told "Just keep paying us and we'll eventually catch up to WoW in a year or two". "Here, spend a million dollars on this Yugo and we'll eventually upgrade you to a Ferrari... We PROMISE *fingers crossed behind their backs* *Gleaming used car salesman smile*"

 

You just called SWTOR a "used car," and called the executives, managers, developers, legal, and marketing staff of Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Electronic Arts, BioWare, and BioWare Austin "used car salesmen." With what's been given to us, with what they spent developing it, and how they're pushing it and their IOU's..

 

You are correct.

[RocNessMonster]

The author makes some OK points. Even though he brought up Everquest a lot, he seemed more of a WOW baby. He claimed EQ was a sandbox and that WOW developed many of the practices used today when nether of these statements are true. The author needs to look back even further back to text based MUDs.

[ForceCowboy]

Then how can you say it has failed by the same token if you have to wait 6 months?

 

You are kinda shooting yourself in the foot by saying "SUbs now dont matter only the subs the manage to kep matter" when you havent even given them the chance to keep the subs yet...

 

Just because you want SWTOR to be a flop does not mean it is.

 

I really don't think anyone posting here wants this game to fail. We're all just angry that they pulled the cake out of the oven when it was only 2/3rd's of the way baked, didn't put any icing on it, and then charged us New York Cheesecake Factory prices for it.

 

That's what all the rage on the general discussion forums really stems from. People are really feeling shafted for what they paid for. I think the raging wouldn't be nearly this hard if the game had been $30.00 USD and that covered your first month of play instead of $75.00 USD before you can even make a character.

[DTuloJr]

Then how can you say it has failed by the same token if you have to wait 6 months?

 

You are kinda shooting yourself in the foot by saying "SUbs now dont matter only the subs the manage to kep matter" when you havent even given them the chance to keep the subs yet...

 

Just because you want SWTOR to be a flop does not mean it is.

 

I've never said that SWTOR was a massive failure. However, it was pushed out the door at least 3 months too early, missing MAJOR features of other MMO's it is in direct competition with, due to nothing more than the arrogence of a few of its developers who refused to listen to an experienced group of testers over the course of over an entire year. As a DIRECT result, the recipe for failure is quite present.

 

However, I have NEVER said I want SWTOR to fail, or flop. You and other gushing fanboys that violently attack any hint of dissatifaction with the product do far more damage than anyone on these boards criticizing the game ever could hope to achieve; you give the developers a false sense that everything is perfectly okay and nothing needs to change, when the reality is that the game is missing major features, has a ton of bugs, and people have been asked to give money to a company who felt it was okay to put out such a mediocre and sub-standard product and then ask for people to continue to pay them while they *might* get around to fixing the bugs, and *might* add some features here and there to appease their customers, though there's no guarantee of either; here's an IOU, *wink*.

 

BioWare Austin just began their relationship with their customers with a bait-and-switch cheap sales tactic, followed by giving them IOU's, in exchange for their customers continuing to pay them so that they might do something. What is just so sickening is the fact that they were WARNED about this *months* prior to release, and the gushing fanboys came in, said how wonderful the game was, and did their damage. Now, BWA is in damage control mode, just as they were warned.

 

Those are the cold, hard facts, that you and others just don't seem to get.

Edited February 13, 2012 by DTuloJr

[kevlarto]

another opinion on the game, why should I care, my opinion is the only one that matters to me, how do I know these people like what i do, another waste of thread space /sigh

[Kourage]

This thread has generated more web traffic to that terrible blog than it's had in it's entire history.

[sanctimonia]

I've never said that SWTOR was a massive failure. However, it was pushed out the door at least 3 months too early, missing MAJOR features of other MMO's it is in direct competition with, due to nothing more than the arrogence of a few of its developers who refused to listen to an experienced group of testers over the course of over an entire year. As a DIRECT result, the recipe for failure is quite present.

 

However, I have NEVER said I want SWTOR to fail, or flop. You and other gushing fanboys that violently attack any hint of dissatifaction with the product do far more damage than anyone on these boards criticizing the game ever could hope to achieve; you give the developers a false sense that everything is perfectly okay and nothing needs to change, when the reality is that the game is missing major features, has a ton of bugs, and people have been asked to give money to a company who felt it was okay to put out such a mediocre and sub-standard product and then ask for people to continue to pay them while they *might* get around to fixing the bugs, and *might* add some features here and there to appease their customers, though there's no guarantee of either; here's an IOU, *wink*.

 

BioWare Austin just began their relationship with their customers with a bait-and-switch cheap sales tactic, followed by giving them IOU's, in exchange for their customers continuing to pay them so that they might do something. What is just so sickening is the fact that they were WARNED about this *months* prior to release, and the gushing fanboys came in, said how wonderful the game was, and did their damage. Now, BWA is in damage control mode, just as they were warned.

 

Those are the cold, hard facts, that you and others just don't seem to get.

 

No those are cold hard opinions...again you some how thing your opinion = fact....it doesnt sorry.

 

I also done see how I can be a gushing fanboy when I have an active WoW account along side my SWTOR account....if I was sucha fanboy wouldnt I forsake WoW for SWTOR? But again you never let facts get in your way yet why start now?

[GalacticKegger]

I've never said that SWTOR was a massive failure. However, it was pushed out the door at least 3 months too early, missing MAJOR features of other MMO's it is in direct competition with, due to nothing more than the arrogence of a few of its developers who refused to listen to an experienced group of testers over the course of over an entire year. As a DIRECT result, the recipe for failure is quite present.

Actually the release schedule was EA's decision, not BioWare's. Worst case the game will lose half a million subs over the next 3 months because of it, half of that in the next 30 days. But that still keeps it over a million subs and more will come in yo offset it. That's just the nature of the beast. I mean, even STO has a healthy base now and its core space combat game was totally unplayable at launch. TOR will be fine. They'll have 3 mil by Christmas, more if space combat is opened up to even instanced free flight exploration and combat. Edited February 13, 2012 by GalacticKegger

[Dezzi]

I thought it was an interesting read, but he meanders too much. His conclusions were a nice summation of his overall point, which is to say he brings up so valid criticisms. Edited February 13, 2012 by Dezzi

[Dezzi]

You just called SWTOR a "used car," and called the executives, managers, developers, legal, and marketing staff of Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Electronic Arts, BioWare, and BioWare Austin "used car salesmen." With what's been given to us, with what they spent developing it, and how they're pushing it and their IOU's..

 

You are correct.

 

Here's another analogy:

 

A city (ElectronicArts) decides to put in a new toll road (Old Republic) out to this great development called MMOland. Unfortunately, winter (read: Christmas) is coming so they have to finish the road quickly over the summer in order to maximize on toll collections during the holiday traffic season (box sales and subscriptions).

 

So EA City hires a contractor (BioWare) that promises to do this--and do it in an excitingly new way (the tolls talk to drivers and don't require actual people to man them). But because of the time crunch and BioWare Concrete's insistence on doing things their own way, by November they end up with a toll road that makes it only most of the way to MMOland, and it's full of potholes.

 

The holidays arrive and EA City is excited it's going to fill up their budget gaps for the last year with collections from the new toll road, so they open TOR Road anyway.

 

That's when it happens--when drivers discover that the road out to MMOland is bumpy and winding, and it's hard to justify paying a toll for such an unfinished stretch of road. Many of them go back to using other routes that might get them to their destination longer, but smoother. Others just park their cars at the end of the road and wait for the contractors to come finish it.

 

EA City then jumps at their contractor, BioWare Concrete, and tells them they need to get their road up to speed and fast! So what does the contractor do? They spend all of what little trickled back down from what the city managed to collect from tolls, and try to fill the gaps and potholes, but the road is still ultimately unfinished. You're not getting to MMOland on the new TOR Road anytime soon.

 

In the end, TOR Road is bumpy, it's missing chunks here and there, and it has an expensive toll considering you never really get to your destination.

 

tldr: TOR is an unfinished road, and BioWare has to spend its time and money filling gaps and holes while leaving the end of the road still unfinished.

Edited February 13, 2012 by Dezzi

[IGsChevy]

The reviewer brought up a few interesting points, but what matters to me is that I'm having fun while I play. As long as the game is fun then I will gladly continue to sub. I'm quite sure there are those of you who will be amazed that anyone could have fun with this game, but *NEWS FLASH* it's happening! There are plenty of people enjoying ourselves in the world of TOR. There are plenty of problems with the game. There are lots of quality of life improvements and bug fixes that need to be implemented. Regardless, the game is fun to me so I will continue to play.