1.2 really should have been 1.0

[Andryah]

And if SWTOR was competing with those games in their launch state that would matter. But it isn't.

 

No MMO ever actually competed with their competition at launch in terms of content UNLESS they both launched at the same time.

 

YET, they release unfinished content and add new content through patches. That's what MMOs do. EVERY MMO. Amazingly enough they are even successful at it and prosper in most cases.

[Andryah]

The problem is that there are millions who disagree with you. Not saying I'm one of them, but it is the reality of the situation.

 

Millions eh?

 

LOL

 

Some yes, millions.....

 

It would be more accurate to say that on a planet of over 6 billion people, most of them don't give a rats poop shoot one way or the other about SWTOR. Because most of them are just trying to get by day by day and put enough food on the table to feed their family.

 

But we do have a minority in the planets population on a game forum explaining each day to anyone who will listen how bad Bioware and SWTOR are. It numbers in the hundreds at the most.

Edited March 16, 2012 by Andryah

[iceperson]

The problem is that there are millions who disagree with you. Not saying I'm one of them, but it is the reality of the situation.

 

there's 6 billion people on the planet who agree with me that wow isn't worth playing. weee, this is fun

[Scoobings]

No MMO ever actually competed with their competition at launch in terms of content UNLESS they both launched at the same time.

 

YET, they release unfinished content and add new content through patches. That's what MMOs do. EVERY MMO. Amazingly enough they are even successful at it and prosper in most cases.

 

New to MMOs? There is a huge list of MMOs that followed this business model that tanked something awful. At best, they are making a modest profit when if they had launched as a polished game ready to compete with WoW they would have a significant market share, and squandered their opportunity.

[Scoobings]

Millions eh?

 

LOL

 

Some yes, millions.....

 

Says the subscriber numbers.........

[Scoobings]

there's 6 billion people on the planet who agree with me that wow isn't worth playing. weee, this is fun

 

Judging by the numbers on how many people subscribe to WoW that's a mathematical impossibility. Although, it is definitely in the billions of people who don't consider video games in general to be worth their time.

 

They're probably right, too.

 

*edit*

 

Actually, maybe I'm wrong here. What's the population of the planet at these days? Anyway, the point is if they're not going to play video games at all then they aren't a target demographic are they? People who subscribe to WoW and NOT SWTOR are people who have voted, with their money, that WoW is worth playing over SWTOR.

 

The only reason I care about their opinion is because the more money this game makes, the more resources it has for content development. That's why we should care.

Edited March 16, 2012 by Scoobings

[Andryah]

New to MMOs? There is a huge list of MMOs that followed this business model that tanked something awful. At best, they are making a modest profit when if they had launched as a polished game ready to compete with WoW they would have a significant market share, and squandered their opportunity.

 

Sorry pal, not new to MMOs. Been playing them for 12 years now. Played most of them in fact. Thanks for trying to talk down to me though.

 

And an MMO failing or succeeding is not the point. They fail or succeed for many reasons, most often it is fundamental design issues NOT missing content at launch that is patched in later.

 

Content released via patch after release is something every MMO does, so get over it. And there are always some people willing and committed to complain that an MMO does not have every single thing in it at release. Even the almighty WoW, put most of the things people are whining about in this thead many many months, or years after release.

[Andryah]

Says the subscriber numbers.........

 

subscriber numbers say how many people are playing, NOT how many are whining and complaining.

[Scoobings]

Sorry pal, not new to MMOs. Been playing them for 12 years now. Played most of them in fact. Thanks for trying to talk down to me though.

 

And an MMO failing or succeeding is not the point. They fail or succeed for many reasons, most often it is fundamental design issues NOT missing content at launch that is patched in later.

 

Content released via patch after release is something every MMO does, so get over it. And there are always some people willing and committed to complain that an MMO does not have every single thing in it at release. Even the almighty WoW, put most of the things people are whining about in this thead many many months, or years after release.

 

Absolutely, whiners will whine and that's a given. My point is not not really a frustration with this game so much as it's my frustration with the business model of MMOs in general. I've seen way too many MMOs that had massive potential crap themselves because they released in an unpolished "not-ready-to-compete-with-WoW" state.

 

This game is MORE polished than most of those games, which is good and why it has retained it's numbers more or less. It's only bleeding them off slowly. That's great for an MMO in today's market.

 

My only point was, this game would be doing a lot better if it had been released in a "ready-to-compete-with-WoW" status and EA hadn't rushed the release.

 

Just because this is the way things are done doesn't mean the business model works. You can look at the graveyard that is today's failed MMOs and see that plain as day. There are plenty of MMOs that cave in on themselves because of lack of content. That issue is secondary only to bugs in the programming at release.

[Scoobings]

subscriber numbers say how many people are playing, NOT how many are whining and complaining.

 

Where people are subscribed is a direct representation of people "voting" with their money which game they think is better. I don't happen to agree with them, and popular doesn't neccessarily mean good that's for sure. But, that is the way of the market.

 

Also you're right, there will always be a disproportionate amount of people whining on the forums. All I'm saying, is this game should be doing better and it would be if it was more polished.

[Trolltar]

No MMO ever actually competed with their competition at launch in terms of content UNLESS they both launched at the same time.

 

YET, they release unfinished content and add new content through patches. That's what MMOs do. EVERY MMO. Amazingly enough they are even successful at it and prosper in most cases.

 

A) Yes, they competed with their competition. If they didn't, they wouldn't be the competition.

 

B) It's not like content is the only thing we're seeing complaints about. The end game apparently has tons of bugs in it. Legacy, which BW calls a huge part of the game hasn't been released yet. There aren't guild banks. There's not a lfg tool of any kind (not even the rudimentary one that wow had before the current cross server tool). These aren't content issues, these missing features and/or design flaws.

[Trolltar]

Guys, why are you arguing about exactly how many people don't play the game?

 

Lot's of people like it, lot's don't.

Now back to your neutral corners and come out swinging at the sound of the bell

[Andryah]

.My only point was, this game would be doing a lot better if it had been released in a "ready-to-compete-with-WoW" status and EA hadn't rushed the release.

 

I understand.

 

The way I observe it, this game IS competing quite well with WoW and other MMOs. It's got a very large population for an MMO at launch and the populations have remained stable during the very formative first months of a new MMO. Wherease WoW is bleeding subscriptions, which is to be expected for an 8 year old MMO.

 

Yet the two MMOs are quite different in terms of IP, content, and play style. Which just shows that there is room in the market for multiple successful MMOs.

 

I don't subscribe to the often professed "ABC MMO is an XYZ MMO Killer" mind set that is often prevalent when a new MMO launches. It's pointless and neurotic IMO. Each MMO stands on it's own merits and they all share the total available market and carve out their share. Different games appeal to different players. And I REALLY do not understand people complaining about one MMO and then subscribing to another one and then whining that it's different or missing features of the MMO they were complaining about. It just shows me that they are complainers, not constructive contributors to MMO discussion.

[Scoobings]

I understand.

 

The way I observe it, this game IS competing quite well with WoW and other MMOs. It's got a very large population for an MMO at launch and the populations have remained stable during the very formative first months of a new MMO. Wherease WoW is bleeding subscriptions, which is to be expected for an 8 year old MMO.

 

Yet the two MMOs are quite different in terms of IP, content, and play style. Which just shows that there is room in the market for multiple successful MMOs.

 

I don't subscribe to the often professed "ABC MMO is an XYZ MMO Killer" mind set that is often prevalent when a new MMO launches. It's pointless and neurotic IMO. Each MMO stands on it's own merits and they all share the total available market and carve out their share. Different games appeal to different players. And I REALLY do not understand people complaining about one MMO and then subscribing to another one and then whining that it's different or missing features of the MMO they were complaining about. It just shows me that they are complainers, not constructive contributors to MMO discussion.

 

It's doing better than MMOs on release that's for sure. It also was more polished than most MMOs on release. Anyone who says otherwise just hasn't been trying the new MMOs. My only issue is that I feel like this game squandered it's opportunity to have a way more positive experience than it is right now.

 

Seems like we agree on that more or less. Good chat

[Mossesman]

I imagine someone will make a similar thread in a few years time when SWTOR releases its 3rd expansion.

[Andryah]

Seems like we agree on that more or less. Good chat

 

Indeed.

[LizardSF]

I agree partially to this. A lot of it depends on the flavor of your project's stakeholders. Typically there is the list of features required to make the project a success and then the list of "if we have time we'll do this items". And often those lists change mid-development.

 

Yup. And, usually, that list gets shorter and shorter. BioWare has said they rushed the GTN interface because they screwed up the database access code and a usuable interface would have been too slow and there wasn't time to fix it before deadline.

 

I've hear people saying "We told them about this in beta!" The problem is, beta is pretty much last-minute triage, figuring out which things are bleeding too badly to save and which can be made marginally functional. By the time there's a beta large enough to count, so many of the systems are set in stone, and are so interrelated, that major changes aren't possible, no matter how much people complain or how justified those complaints are.

 

And normally shipping the product is a tricky business too. A lot of times there is an incentive for shipping early (bonus check) and a penalty for shipping late (10% payment deduction for every 2 weeks behind). Granted the variables always tend to change.

 

My experience, and I speak as someone who has programmed professionally for more than 25 years, is that the "bonus" for shipping early is "you keep your job", and the penalty for shipping late is "You can use the company Xerox to make copies of your resume before security escorts you out." (I have also worked in the game industry, and while I abandoned the ship I was on before it sank, many of my friends at the company didn't, and they got to work one day to find security in the parking lot, escorting them in, one by one, to clean out their desks.)

 

MMOs represent a pinnacle of complexity, and have to serve many different masters and integrate many different subsystems, all developed by hundreds of people trying to hit a constantly moving target of technologies and gamer expectations. Saying, "Oh, game X has this feature, why didn't they copy it?" ignores the fact Game X might NOT have had it when development started... and if you keep redesigning the product to meet new standards, you never ship, or you ship very late and very poorly. See: Daikatana and Duke Nukem Forever.

 

I worked on a project once where I was told something had to be done no matter what by X date. I programmed it completely to spec and was able to fit all the required features in. Then the client turned around and decided they didn't need the software. We only found out like a few days before the project closure meeting. Personally I didn't care cause I got paid anyway, but it was still a strange situation.

 

I sympathize. Been there. Done that. But there's also the case that X date comes and the code ISN'T to spec. It happens; it can't be helped. So the irresistible force and immovable object collide. Either the date slips, or the project goes live in an incomplete state.

 

We don't know what happens behind closed doors because to my knowledge no one on this thread is part of the BioWare development team. We don't have ESP. So they could have said...

 

"For this project to be successful we simply have to allow the customer the ability to log in to the product. All these other features <holds up list of standard MMO features> are extra and if we have time."

 

Seriously, that's pretty much what probably happens. EVERYTHING is fungible except "The game boots."

 

Partially this is due to the age of the internet and streaming patches. It was a lot different when you had to buy a game on a 5.25 inch floppy. By the same token, games were a lot simpler then, as well, and hardware platforms were more defined. Lord British didn't need to think about dozens of different graphics cards when he coded up Ultima for the Apple II.

 

(For that matter, people old enough might remember Daggerfall or Ultima IX, which shipped with hundreds of bugs, some of which rendered the games unplayable in many ways.)

 

I said this somewhere else but, the thing BioWare has to watch out for is the better pastures. The MMO market is very saturated and is only going to get worse with the other releases this year. If BioWare says...

 

(Deletia)

 

Ah, but here's the thing... all the new games face the same problems. Anyone who thinks GW2, or Secret World, or whatever, is going to ship in any better state is kidding themselves. It's simply not possible. The complexity of the systems is beyond the physical capacity of humans to test and debug in the time allotted by the economic realities of the development process and the pace of technological change. Eventually, something will have to break, and the entire process will shatter, and a new process will form... but not soon.

 

People like to use car analogies, so, here's mine: Complaining about missing features, class imbalance, etc, in a newly shipped MMO is like complaining the new car you bought doesn't get 400 MPG and contain a self-driving AI. To fairly judge if a product is worth your money, you have to set your expectations properly. Anyone who expects a new MMO to have the polish and features of a well established one is not an informed consumer, and in the internet age, that's THEIR fault, not the company's. SWTOR shipped with all *announced* features. I may be wrong, but, as far as I know, nothing which BioWare *promised* would be in by launch, wasn't, at least within a reasonable timespan (6 months, say) of launch. (Things like "fun" are purely subjective; they don't count.) BioWare promised a rails-shooter space game, not a free-form one, and that's what they shipped. They promised open-world PVP and warzones, and they shipped them. (Something Blizzard, I must note, did not -- no battlegrounds at launch, and they were, I am pretty sure, originally promised for launch and pulled later. Hell, Blizzard kept promising "Hero Classes" and managed to get ONE in, in the SECOND expansion.) Etc.

 

I've been playing MMOs since UO, or since Isle of Kesmai if you want to count that. SWTOR launched as well as any of them, and better than most of them. If anyone expected more than what they got, the fault is entirely with their inability to set their expectations correctly. BioWare can't be held accountable for what someone *imagined* the game would be; they can only be held to what they explicitly said they'd deliver.

[Tricky-Ha]

It's not unnatural. I had to wait for SWG to become awesome over time before it got crushed by the NGE. SWTOR needed time to become a better MMO, 3 months of live beta is not much of a problem for me cause I didn't make it into the closed or open betas. I fill out bug reports probably telling BW the same things that beta testers were telling them were bugs 2 years ago.

 

I hope that 1.2 is worth it & that it actually works. I tried testing it on the PTR today, but 1.2 isn't up yet.

[Patsilver]

I wonder who was the person or persons that made the decisions to not put in some of the little things that we are missing like guild banks ect... I bet there were many game playing employees at BW that knew these things would be a source of annoyance for players. So who was it that said "no we don't need that or that or that, we can always put that in later"

[jarjarloves]

I sure wouldn't push out a unfinished product that would have a chance at pissing off players whom I would be counting on to make back my investment.

 

it worked for Blizzard and WoW.

[NaimiIflya]

Sure... 1.2 COULD have been 1.0. But, then Launch would have been in April in that case.

[Robbydog]

it worked for Blizzard and WoW.

 

EQ was the competition then, this is going head to head with some good games.

 

So a completely irrelevant observation.

[Patsilver]

I'm no designer or coder so I don't know what all is involved but if they have some of the things ready that so many people are saying are missing, couldn't they patch it in sooner than the big 1.2 patch? It would probably help with customer relations at this point. It couldn't hurt anyways lol

[DarthTHC]

Would it have been nice to have been playing 1.2 (whatever that will be) since 15 December?

 

Absolutely!

 

Would it have sucked not being able to play from December to April so that 1.2 could be the initial production release?

 

Absolutely.

 

I'm happy to have been able to play the game for these past few months. While it's not perfect and sometimes painful or frustrating, overall it's a good game and it has held my interest.

 

So, no, 1.0 should have been 1.0. Quite possibly 0.9.1-5 should have been 1.0. But that's another topic entirely.

[Revenaught]

I dont see why they should bother. People on these forums will rave and foam at the mouth regardless of what they do or dont do.