Interesting article on SWTOR

[Darka]

The Forums are nicked named TOR Chan/, just about every thread attracts a fresh battle between the drones and the fanbois even though its got nothing to do with the topic.

The sense of community was cleaned from this site long ago, social features like personal wall, and off topic built relationships and connections between players. The lack of server forums is strange, yes we have a server topic ability. But Its just not the same.

 

I have no issue with moderationg being "harsh" I have more then enough infractions/warnings, to me more consistency across the board would be nice.

 

As for the game. I have no stand out issues with it, maybe because I never rated it that high, or rode the hype train pre launch. Always had a cautiously Optimistic outlook for this game.

 

The future of MMOs are in for a rough ride. I remember when it was Oh I cant wait for Rift to come out, thats going to be awesome, it cant come fast enough. Then Rift turned in to TOR, then TOR turned into GW2 which will turn into something else.

These games will do well, people will enjoy them, but liking them will be seen as "uncool" to do so, and deemed "lolololololfaillolololol" by people because they wont have millions on millions of subs, years of content and polish from day one.

Self set standards and beliefs that everything should be how you imagined because "its 2012!!!!" or because " they had this much money!!!" dont and wont ever help either.

People are living on the dreams of MMOs past, the MMO was once a niche, then more experienced and more were drawn in by that great feeling, now with each new MMO many desperately try and recapture that feeling of excitement they once had, wanting to relive the memories from MMOs past, rather then making new ones.

People easily forget things too, a game could deliver ABC on launch, yet Game 2 could have ABC and D after two years. Many will wonder why D isnt in the first game, and see that as a failing because game 2 has it, even though game two launched with just A.

Given the nature of MMOs the personal attachment and investment is high, and thats why the level of emotion you find in much of the outrage or love is very high, but on both sides can be very blinding. I feel people understand that no game will please everyone, but tend to get annoyed when they are in that group of not pleased. Instead of excepting that they cant like it, the finger comes out and blames someone or something for it, which is the way of many societies these days to blame someone for something somehow.

In the end TOR will be TOR, WoW will be WoW, and it seems it will take a little bit longer for MMO's to evolve a bit more, and thats not all the developers fault, the customers need to give things a chance to grow a bit too.

 

If Bioware spat on a disk and wrote Star Wars The Old Republic on it, the fanbois would hail it an edgy innovative success that games gaming, and likely cause it to sell well. And If Bioware released a game that changed the world, got 2 billion subs. The Drones and haters would still hate it and call it a failure.

 

[Drewser]

For the first half of your reply I would direct you to visit the following...

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=11

 

...and inform them that there are very few.

 

For the second half of your reply I agree. People will complain either way. It's the nature of the beast. You can have "it" Fast, Cheap, or Good. Pick any two.

 

As I said, very few given the total number of people playing.

 

45k total threads with over 2m users is not bad at all.

Edited March 14, 2012 by Drewser

[DarthRavnos]

As I said, very few given the total number of people playing.

 

45k total threads with over 2m users is not bad at all.

 

Only 1.7 million are actively subscribed (300k dropped off since launch). And that forum only represents folks who have reported on the threads. The ratio for phone calls and emails are likely significantly higher.

 

Time will tell.

Edited March 14, 2012 by DarthRavnos

[Drewser]

Only 1.7 million are actively subscribed (300k dropped off since launch). And that forum only represents folks who have reported on the threads. The ratio for phone calls and emails are likely significantly higher.

 

Time will tell.

 

How many total 'box' sales? 2.3-2.5m???

 

That is more representative of the total number of users that may have experienced game breaking bugs and used the forum as well as the avenues you described to get it fixed.

[Vorphalack]

These games will do well, people will enjoy them, but liking them will be seen as "uncool" to do so, and deemed "lolololololfaillolololol" by people because they wont have millions on millions of subs, years of content and polish from day one.

 

You really think people bailed from TOR becasue it didnt get 11 millions subs in month one?

 

I dont give a flying **** how many people play this game, it just isnt fun. Far too many problems, far too few fixes and a cosntant drain on my wallet. No thanks.

[MGriffith]

Maybe they should just stop releasing games 6 to 12 months TOO early (especially MMO's)! WHAT A THOUGHT?!?! DID I BLOW YOUR MIND?!

 

.. or hire some better F'in project managers.

 

Nothing wrong with the project management. These things seem to always be 'make up as you go' type of development.

 

Also, it is easy to say 'keep the game in development for another year'

It shows you have not thought through of the consequences.

At peak (i.e. when gearing up to release) Bioware had over 500 people working on the game full time. Even assuming they made on average 1500 per month (which in itself is a way low estimate), that means 750 thousand dollar each month just to pay the employees. That is not counting insurance and all the other extra costs involved with employing people. Holding back the game another year would have added close to 10 million dollar cost (actually probably double that if you add all the related costs)

And it had meant they had to keep the hype alive for another year. Not to mention selling another 180000 boxes just to cover those extra months.

That is assuming that EA would have let them spend that time and money since to them it would have meant another year of not making any money off their 200million dollar investment.

 

Like it or not, like every project an MMO gets a budget and a timeframe which are ultimately determined by the investors. Yes, the development studio presents their business plan and in it they also outline how long they expect to need to complete development, along with the major costs involved like hiring personel, licensing fees and other expensive stuff (e.g. the plan to have a fully voiced MMO would have been part of that presentation, along with an estimate of what that would cost in terms of money and organisations).

If the investors go ahead with the project then it takes a lot of negotiation to deviate from the development timeline. And whoever is in charge of the development studio is likely to be requested to resign should his project not meet the deadlines.

 

Also, should have never joined up with EA.

 

<heavy sarcasm>

Yes, because Sony would have been sooooo much better

</heavy sarcasm>

 

There are not that many game publishers who can front 200 million development money. About 4 in fact, and only one of those did not already have its own A-title game out.

[Spell_Bound]

^^ Sure they can, and they would have been smart to do that. But the fact the game was UNFINISHED had a lot to do with all the BS we're being put through right now.

 

Is an MMO ever finished?

[DarthRavnos]

How many total 'box' sales? 2.3-2.5m???

 

That is more representative of the total number of users that may have experienced game breaking bugs and used the forum as well as the avenues you described to get it fixed.

 

Last official word was as of February 01, 2012 / 10:00PM GMT. In which the following was stated:

 

2 million people have purchased the game from our retail partners and via direct digital downloads on Origin.

 

As John stated, we have sold through 2 million units of the game since December. We currently have a little over 1.7 million active subscribers. The rest have either not started playing yet or have opted out.

 

Those numbers can't be used as the only metric that determines who is experiencing "game breaking" bugs. Since some users may report and continue to play through. For example, if the crash is only impacting one character and they "wait" by playing another character.

 

Again, only time will tell.

[otterscrubber]

Maybe they should just stop releasing games 6 to 12 months TOO early (especially MMO's)! WHAT A THOUGHT?!?! DID I BLOW YOUR MIND?!

 

.. or hire some better F'in project managers.

 

Also, should have never joined up with EA.

 

/Captain Hindsight

 

I agree joining with EA was probably a bad call. But the other points implying they released too early I think are a bit naive. No piece of software gets released in a perfect condition. The more complex, the more errors there will be. An MMO is very complex.

 

Following that logic it would never have been released. Which is not going to make the spice flow, and we should all be aware that the spice must flow! Know what I mean?

[Ivanblood]

Good article, but I think they missed some things and end up giving SWTOR too much credit.

 

I understand it's a new MMO, can we all stop talking about the fact that there are only x warzones, y flashpoints, z operations.... I KNOW ALREADY! It's new, I can't expect there to be tons of content. That's totally fine, reasonable, and expected. Let's move on for ****s sake.

 

My biggest complaint is game design/features related, and I believe most other peoples' are as well. Think for a second. What does this game do that no other game out there has or maybe does better than other games?

 

Companions? Nope. Every BW game has companions. Games like ME and KotOR in fact, do companions better.

Story? Nope. A 9th grader reads better stories in his English class. Out of video games, this is hardly the best work out there either.

Environment? Nope. Corelia = Nar Shaada with lights turned on. Hoth = Tatooine with snow over the sand. Tons (I mean TONS) of areas are copy pasted and reused. Orbital stations are a joke. Fleets are identical. Nothing is unique.

Abilities? Nope. Ridiculous amount of CC, and copy past abilities between classes lead to only 3 real classes: tank, healer, DPS. Everyone is the same give or take.

Racials? Nope. Races mean nothing.

Voice overs? Nope. Not unique to this game and quantity over quality for the most part in here (only story ones were wel done for most part).

Space combat? Nope. Star fox 64.

PvP? Nope. Guild wars, Diablo, every shooter out there.

PvE? Nope. 9/10 bosses are tank and spank. Very boring boss mechanics in general.

Events? Nope. No Christmas, New Years, or Valentines day events anywhere to be seen. Rift did server wide events. It's been done before.

Community? Nope. This game feels like single player game with a chat window. Even Gauntlet has a more social feel to it with 4 players.

Guilds? UI? Character customization? Auction House? etc etc etc etc

Everything I see in this game feels old, done before, and not innovative at all. This game didn't invent anything new to bring to the table.

 

There is NO FEATURE of this game that is unique to this game. They took parts of other games, mashed it all together, and called it "the next MMO" under the umbrella of story and voice acting.

 

To be fair, I guess legacy system is their new "game changing" perk. But for me, a time sink in leveling up alts is a cop out to developing truly fun game play. Story can only keep me interested for so long before I read a book or watch a movie. Bad game play is the reason I unsubbed and probably will never come back when my time expires. To them, this game is playing as intended. To me, there is better gameplay in other games.

 

You just mostly comparing singleplayer games to MMO.

 

"Companions? Nope. Every BW game has companions. Games like ME and KotOR in fact, do companions better."

 

Companions are fine. In WoW, pets don´t talk at all.

 

"Story? Nope. A 9th grader reads better stories in his English class. Out of video games, this is hardly the best work out there either."

 

The story is actually good. Show me some better stories in MMOs.

 

"Environment? Nope. Corelia = Nar Shaada with lights turned on. Hoth = Tatooine with snow over the sand. Tons (I mean TONS) of areas are copy pasted and reused. Orbital stations are a joke. Fleets are identical. Nothing is unique."

 

Environments are gorgeous in SWTOR. I barely saw any better environs even in a singleplayer games. Very detailed and epic.

 

"Abilities? Nope. Ridiculous amount of CC, and copy past abilities between classes lead to only 3 real classes: tank, healer, DPS. Everyone is the same give or take."

 

Like anyother MMOs arround. No one invented something better. It´s a question of balance, too, like the chess.

 

"Voice overs? Nope. Not unique to this game and quantity over quality for the most part in here (only story ones were wel done for most part)."

 

You are just trashing the game. Voice overs are great. Show me any other MMO with voice overs.

 

"Space combat? Nope. Star fox 64."

 

Space combat is just a nice addition. It´s better than fishing.

 

"PvP? Nope. Guild wars, Diablo, every shooter out there."

 

Lol. Are you kidding. Battlefield > SWTOR. LOL. Apple > Oranges.

 

"PvE? Nope. 9/10 bosses are tank and spank. Very boring boss mechanics in general."

 

Disagree. Bosses are quite challenging. I played WoW untill level 30, I found only 3 epic bosses through the game and I was able to kill them without grouping.

 

"Events? Nope. No Christmas, New Years, or Valentines day events anywhere to be seen. Rift did server wide events. It's been done before."

 

WoW. It´s so deal breaking not able to see valentine hearts arround.

 

"Community? Nope. This game feels like single player game with a chat window. Even Gauntlet has a more social feel to it with 4 players."

 

Comunity is great. The most grouping friendly game I played. People really responding your question if you post them to general chat. I just made 30 k on the galactic market today.

 

 

"To be fair, I guess legacy system is their new "game changing" perk. But for me, a time sink in leveling up alts is a cop out to developing truly fun game play. Story can only keep me interested for so long before I read a book or watch a movie. Bad game play is the reason I unsubbed and probably will never come back when my time expires. To them, this game is playing as intended. To me, there is better gameplay in other games.

"

 

Just in 4 months after realease we are receiving a huge patch with new content. WoW delivered just one battleground after a year from the release.

Edited March 14, 2012 by Ivanblood

[Trolltar]

"Story? Nope. A 9th grader reads better stories in his English class."

 

Really? By drawing from all of human literature you're able to find stories more compelling than the ones in SWTOR?

 

Wow, who would have thunk it?

[Ivanblood]

Haters gonna hate.

 

I hate this phrase.

[GodsRevenger]

this guy was able to write down everything i was thinking, perfectly.

 

great article, thanks for the share.

[Muskaan]

It's pretty much spot on. People's expectations are just way too high these days; they expect a game to be on par or better than WoW straight out of the box. But they don't realise WoW had a lot of issues from launch. TOR has a lot of potential if you give it time but a lot of people are whining.

 

The same was with DCUO, that game was innovative and fresh, yet people were whining and never gave it a proper chance and abandoned it within a few months.

 

Per your logic, it effectively means that any new MMO will be inferior in quality to WoW and is doomed to failure because the new MMO will always be X years behind the market leader. Recall that the end-user i.e. the customer is paying the same subscription ($15 a month) for either product. So, why should the customer pay for an inferior product when they can get better service for the same cost. Alternatively, why would a company want to release a new MMO if they know that it's going to be a failure since it's always X years behind the market leader.

 

Or in case of SWTOR, is the Star Wars IP strong enough to brainwash the customer and keep them happy while they are literally being made to pay to beta test an unfinished and buggy product? So, in 7 years SWTOR will reach the state that WoW is now. Which means that every customer needs to pay 7 x 12 x 15 = 1260 dollars per head while they wait for BW to fix their bugs and poor processes? That's a lot of money to waste on hopes and promises. It would be way smarter to just unsub and come back 7 years later to see if the game is any better.

 

In reality, when a new product enters a market with a strong dominant market leader, the new product is expected to compete at equal footings with the market leader. In most cases, this is impossible since like you said, the market leader has a strong lead. So, the new product needs to offer incentives to sway the customers towards it and away from the market leader. In most cases it means a reduction in price compared to the ML. There are various other ways to try to make your product look more lucrative e.g. offering new features that the market leader does not have.

 

In case of SWTOR--

 

The price is same as the ML - same 15$ a month sub. So, no incentives in that front. Key feature - story. Is story good enough distinguishing feature to entice people? No it's not specially when the non-converging part (the unique class story) is around 10-20% of the character's leveling experience. The unique part is that it's a Star Wars IP. And that to me is the biggest selling point in the game. If it was not a SW MMO, given the current state, the game would have been dead already.

[AHChrist]

Really? By drawing from all of human literature you're able to find stories more compelling than the ones in SWTOR?

 

Wow, who would have thunk it?

 

I found the BH storyline kinda weak.

You join great hunt, you win great hunt, you are so good you get framed, you kill person who framed you, you really GUD now.

 

Edited March 14, 2012 by Parali
spoiler tags added

[SWImara]

Some valid points??. He hit the nail on the head when speaking about the community which comes from these forums.

Couldn't agree more. I've been through many MMOs, forums are always bad, but the SWTOR ones are pretty much in a league of their own.

 

Thanks for the article OP, passed it along to my guildmates.

Edited March 14, 2012 by SWImara

[AceMcVeer]

 

I found the BH storyline kinda weak. You join great hunt, you win great hunt, you are so good you get framed, you kill person who framed you, you really GUD now.

 

 

 

 

Put some spoiler tags up jerk

Edited March 14, 2012 by AceMcVeer

[Ivanblood]

Per your logic, it effectively means that any new MMO will be inferior in quality to WoW and is doomed to failure because the new MMO will always be X years behind the market leader. Recall that the end-user i.e. the customer is paying the same subscription ($15 a month) for either product. So, why should the customer pay for an inferior product when they can get better service for the same cost. Alternatively, why would a company want to release a new MMO if they know that it's going to be a failure since it's always X years behind the market leader.

 

Or in case of SWTOR, is the Star Wars IP strong enough to brainwash the customer and keep them happy while they are literally being made to pay to beta test an unfinished and buggy product? So, in 7 years SWTOR will reach the state that WoW is now. Which means that every customer needs to pay 7 x 12 x 15 = 1260 dollars per head while they wait for BW to fix their bugs and poor processes? That's a lot of money to waste on hopes and promises. It would be way smarter to just unsub and come back 7 years later to see if the game is any better.

 

In reality, when a new product enters a market with a strong dominant market leader, the new product is expected to compete at equal footings with the market leader. In most cases, this is impossible since like you said, the market leader has a strong lead. So, the new product needs to offer incentives to sway the customers towards it and away from the market leader. In most cases it means a reduction in price compared to the ML. There are various other ways to try to make your product look more lucrative e.g. offering new features that the market leader does not have.

 

In case of SWTOR--

 

The price is same as the ML - same 15$ a month sub. So, no incentives in that front. Key feature - story. Is story good enough distinguishing feature to entice people? No it's not specially when the non-converging part (the unique class story) is around 10-20% of the character's leveling experience. The unique part is that it's a Star Wars IP. And that to me is the biggest selling point in the game. If it was not a SW MMO, given the current state, the game would have been dead already.

 

What betatesting ? The game is quite polished. I started to play since februry. And I haven´t confronted any bug yet. I just read in forums that some people have bugs. So this game is far from being a bug fest like some try to make believe us. I only miss some features from WoW which will be added with the upcomming patch.

I played many single player games. None of them has been polished like SWTOR.

 

These game surely has some bugs (I didn´t find any), but it´s far being considered betatesting.

Edited March 14, 2012 by Ivanblood

[souloferdrick]

Hell hath no fury like an MMO player scorned.

 

If the author, in full view of years worth of evidence about the lack of congeniality on MMO forums was expecting a different result, well, there's a word for that kind of thing.

[Jederix]

Maybe they should just stop releasing games 6 to 12 months TOO early (especially MMO's)! WHAT A THOUGHT?!?! DID I BLOW YOUR MIND?!

 

.. or hire some better F'in project managers.

 

Also, should have never joined up with EA.

 

/Captain Hindsight

 

With this mentality, no game will ever release ever again.

[Jederix]

Some valid points??. He hit the nail on the head when speaking about the community which comes from these forums.

 

Well, I didn't read the article, but since you have chimed in, I'm assuming it wasn't very favorable to the game.

 

Hence, why you agree with it. Broken record is broken.

 

Edit: Ah, I may have misspoke; he must lambast the community in the article (again, I haven't read it). Yes, the forum community is horrid. But as the Internet ages, and things like Facebook and Twitter propegate, more and more people feel it is important that the entire world know everything that is in their minds, no matter how ignorant it might be.

Edited March 14, 2012 by Jederix

[Frostvein]

With this mentality, no game will ever release ever again.

 

Why? Are we as consumers not entitled to MMO's being released when they are ready? Where is this unwritten rule that says that MMO's are all supposed to be released early?

[Jederix]

Why? Are we as consumers not entitled to MMO's being released when they are ready? Where is this unwritten rule that says that MMO's are all supposed to be released early?

 

I have realistic expectations. You don't. This is the crux of the issue. You aren't entitled to anything.

[Blloodbane]

Well, I didn't read the article, but since you have chimed in, I'm assuming it wasn't very favorable to the game.

 

Hence, why you agree with it. Broken record is broken.

 

IMHO, the article was more favorable than derogatory.... The gist of the article is that players expectations were too high from their own imaginations and that people expecting it to be better than WoW after it has 10 years of polishing and added content and that SWTOR actually has as enough of some content that other games have (like PVP) and more "raid" content in the end as most just release one raid.

 

Then went to list some of the cons of the game, one of which is the community forums are suprising hostile and full of anger and hate...Some bugs and glitches not really game impairing, and things like that.

 

Summary, SWTOR is Good and has lots of potential to be better and even great with refinement and content. The hate comes three camps of people, SWG people, WoW dethroner hopefuls, and Star Wars Fans..... Each with a different gripe... which makes it sound like one huge gripe...

 

So all in all, people should give BW time to refine and enhance their product...

[Frostvein]

I have realistic expectations. You don't. This is the crux of the issue. You aren't entitled to anything.

 

Don't presume to know what my expectations were or were not, or anyone else's for that manner.

 

You admitted that MMO's never come out finished. I asked you why that is the case. Answer the question at hand, not the one you conjured up out of mid air.