Executive Producer Rich Vogel Bails on TOR

[Dejoblue]

I preordered and got in for headstart. The game had great promise. SO much that I handed over GM to my guild of 4 years to one of my Co GMs and tried to make a home here. We had personality conflicts and the guild dissolved, I wont blame SWTOR for that but I will blame it for not keeping me. Luckily my WOW guildmates accepted me back as their GM and I didn't lose anything but my pride. By that time it was apparent there was no endgame and nothing on the horizon.

 

I came back to try SWTOR, even paid $15 bucks to do so as I missed the first free chance because my computer crashed and I was early for the recent free retrial.

 

I will not be coming back, ever. I gave it two shots and paid good money.

 

Why did I leave in the first place?

 

*The developers are unbelievably arrogant. They think they know what we want even when we tell them otherwise.

 

*STORY IS A FAILURE. WoW already tried this in WotLK. Yea you may have been 3 years into production, but still you could have saved it because spamming spacebar and the 1 button is not fun. We learned in WoW with WotLK that MMO Gamers DO NOT LIKE to have to wait for RP to play out when waiting to pull a boss or progress to the next part.

 

*They refused to implement core elements like metric(DPS/Threat meters) or a UI API like WoW had at LAUNCH 8 years ago (enough nonsense about WoW having had years to develop they had their core mechanics down at launch. WoW EQ2 and RIFT launched without Dungeon Finders but both RIFT and EQ2 had JUST implemented Dungeon Finders...) And the development team hems and haws about if they are going to add a dungeon finder...

 

 

In the end the community on the forums, the anti WoW fanbois, got what they wanted:

 

A $200,000,000 - $300,000,000 (I wrote out all the zeros so you can really soak that in) Star Wars MMO that is so unlike WoW it doesn't have core MMO features and alienates the masses. It really is that simple.

 

Are ya happy? Ya get to play Star Wars with, with, no one.

 

I WANT SWTOR to fail. I want it to be shut down. I want other developers to take it apart and realize, "hey they didn't listen to anyone when it didn't even have basic MMO features and the developers said they REFUSED to add them."

[Lord_Karsk]

So among the leads who's still in the boat:

 

• James Ohlen
  
• Daniel Erickson
  
• Gabe Amatangelo
  
• Emmanuel Lusinchi
  
• ...?
  

 

So far seems Emmanuel is the one that looks like the most knowledgeable about MMO in general.

He also got great communication skills. I like how he's honest about things and does not bull* people.

 

True ! the others just sounds like they blow smoke up your behind. Beeing honest with the customers the MMO

crowd will get you way longer with most people.

[LtGeneralGezlin]

I preordered and got in for headstart. The game had great promise. SO much that I handed over GM to my guild of 4 years to one of my Co GMs and tried to make a home here. We had personality conflicts and the guild dissolved, I wont blame SWTOR for that but I will blame it for not keeping me. Luckily my WOW guildmates accepted me back as their GM and I didn't lose anything but my pride. By that time it was apparent there was no endgame and nothing on the horizon.

 

I came back to try SWTOR, even paid $15 bucks to do so as I missed the first free chance because my computer crashed and I was early for the recent free retrial.

 

I will not be coming back, ever. I gave it two shots and paid good money.

 

Why did I leave in the first place?

 

*The developers are unbelievably arrogant. They think they know what we want even when we tell them otherwise.

 

*STORY IS A FAILURE. WoW already tried this in WotLK. Yea you may have been 3 years into production, but still you could have saved it because spamming spacebar and the 1 button is not fun. We learned in WoW with WotLK that MMO Gamers DO NOT LIKE to have to wait for RP to play out when waiting to pull a boss or progress to the next part.

 

*They refused to implement core elements like metric(DPS/Threat meters) or a UI API like WoW had at LAUNCH 8 years ago (enough nonsense about WoW having had years to develop they had their core mechanics down at launch. WoW EQ2 and RIFT launched without Dungeon Finders but both RIFT and EQ2 had JUST implemented Dungeon Finders...) And the development team hems and haws about if they are going to add a dungeon finder...

 

 

In the end the community on the forums, the anti WoW fanbois, got what they wanted:

 

A $200,000,000 - $300,000,000 (I wrote out all the zeros so you can really soak that in) Star Wars MMO that is so unlike WoW it doesn't have core MMO features and alienates the masses. It really is that simple.

 

Are ya happy? Ya get to play Star Wars with, with, no one.

 

I WANT SWTOR to fail. I want it to be shut down. I want other developers to take it apart and realize, "hey they didn't listen to anyone when it didn't even have basic MMO features and the developers said they REFUSED to add them."

 

And you are still here, posting on the forums, because...? Honestly, I want to know. IF you want it to fail, why even stay here? Would it be logical to leave everything related to this game and never look back? For example, close your account, delete any SWTOR related things from your computer. And if you (For some reason) bought any SWTOR related books (The Del Rey novels or the Art and making of book) Take them to a used bookstore or a library. Do some good.

[Goretzu]

Me? Like many other gamers, I hate the F2P model It ruined LOTRO for me. But I'm also a realist, and I know it's coming. WoW might not need to do it, but WoW is WoW, and comparing Blizzard's market position with any other company isn't even apples and oranges, its apples and airplanes.

 

Yeah I think EA wanted to F2P WAR, but couldn't see a way to make it work without going P2W (which would have killed the game dead).

 

SWTOR is much more condusive to F2P, even if it will also largely ruin SWTOR as a game and MMORPG.

[Cleet_Xia]

Isn't that part of the gamble of getting the game early? If anything when it comes to MMOs you should wait 6 months till a year to buy it, give it time to flesh out the bugs and add new content.

 

The bugs are tolerable ~ they were expected, and I have a great screen shot of me standing on top of the Gav Daragon to show for it. What I'm talking about is a little regret for the fact that I paid for something that I could have gotten for free, if I had been a little more patient. I would still have subbed after my free 15 levels were up. I'm still playing this game. And I'll be playing it for at least 5 more months.

 

There's a different between minimum requirements and recommended requirements. You can exceed minimum requirements but if you don't exceed recommended, you're going to experience is issues while playing.

 

We're a two TOR account household- with 2 computers. And we see a lot of same issues on the newest machine (bought new in March) that pretty grossly exceeds the recommended harware spec. A lot of the issues on the older machine didn't exist prior to the 1.2 patch. And the 1.3 patch has created even more issues, on both machines.

 

I would agree but really augments and custom orange gear was all crafting had. Adding an appearance tab would just harm crafting even more. As if it's wasn't damaged enough.

 

Yeah I wouldn't mind more appearances. But if anything they should have removed gear and even mods from NPCs to make crafting more player oriented. But too late for that now.

 

They borked crafting so bad from the very beginning, that it's only ever been truely useful for gearing your own alts. Credits have no actual value in this game, because none of the actual endgame gear that people earn can be purchased with credits, and credits are too easily obtained. And that's not really a bad thing. But you can't have a viable crafting economy and worthless currency at the same time. Crafting will never work in this game, so long as credits have no tangeable value. You can't look at cake & eat it too... well at least you probably shouldn't...

 

Name a game where open world pvp had actually worked by design? Well technically it never had. World pvp is a joke and really most of the time limited pvp (BGs, WZ, etc) are often better than world pvp as when it comes to world pvp it ends up being the side who brings the most who are the winners. And if you limit the zone with player caps, then essentially you have a BG or WZ.

This is exactly why they need to make it work, because they need to quit playing catch up ~ and deliver something no other game has. And you're completely right it's just a huge WZ. One you get to walk into whenever you want, with a queue that is only as long as the average time spent in the resbox of a typical WZ. One where the team size is large enough to erase gear differences between teams, & slight population differences of +2 or 3 players. note: half the WH gear would still be available on fleet.

 

Eh can't comment never experienced this but hey could be because my custom built PC (which I only paid 1k for and built myself) is pretty hardcore. But I would say that the game has experienced some server lag every now and then, but certainly not enough for me to take notice and say that it occurs regularly.

We've seen the difference between Internet connectivity issues, and server lag. There are definitely things we can do here on our home network that bork the TOR experience if someone is playing. But the behavior of the game is different when it's coming from outside our home network. And again, we play on 2 different machines, and see the same issues. When it happens on both machines simultaneously- I can chalk some of it up to my ISP. But when we're playing in a way offpeak time, the issues are occuring at regular intervals, and didn't exist at all before the 1.2 patch...

 

Considering that most of the players who play SWTOR doesn't even read the official forums, why would a business spend resources doing what you suggest doing? If anything that could/would cause some tension and backfire. People complain that BW doesn't give enough information, but finally when they do give out information other than "Coming Soon" there are those who fire back because they're not satisfied about some changes that may or will occur. You can never please everyone and the more people there are involved the more out crys you will also see, even though many maybe content or satisfied.

 

The reason why they need to do it, is so they know which direction to take this game, now that they're seeing that their own ideas have been kind of ~ not working. They cannot make sound business decisions for this game, without information from their consumers. You are absolutely right that you can't please everyone all the time, and that most players don't read the forums. Mostly it's just the ones who enjoy playing games so much that they are having carpal tunnel. This website is the first experience most potential players will have with the game. And it is the first experience every new player has when they set up their game account. The site looks good, but the site feels clunky. A few weeks back a goofy web cookie had some players believing that he site was down for days on end. But, the staff devoted to maintaining this community website are obviously stretched too thin. And there doesn't seem to be enough information flow from the site to the devs, when serious issues reported on the PTS forums are acknowledged by devs weeks after patches go live. They don't need to tell the public which suggestions are being implemented, as much as the need to let people know that their ideas were parsed and passed along. Doesn't matter if they were passed along to a trash can. But right now, most people feel that only the BW language police actually read the community forum.

[LordChucks]

While it is never pleasant to hear about core developers leaving a project, I am remaining hopeful with all the changes taking place. Perhaps whatever new blood is brought in will focus a little harder on shoring up the traditional 3 pillars of MMO-ness in the game instead of banking quite so heavily on story to carry it. Of course there is no indication that this will be the case, but I am trying my best to look on the bright side as I really do not want to bail on yet another SW MMO (if TOR goes the way of SWG I will probably be old and grey before a 3rd SW MMO is even attempted again).

[CrazyOldMystic]

It took world of warcraft three long years before their first expansion. This game has barely been around for a year. The biggest complaint I have heard about this game is lack of pve content. The truth is I have done world of warcraft dungeons, but most recently I have done swtor flashpoints. These flashpoints are built much better then any world of warcraft dungeon I have played. Kaon Under siege was the one of the best flashpoints/dungeons I have ever played.

 

Wow did NOT achieve greatness over night, nor will swtor. I think thats part of the problem too, after wow became a hit, most players expected every game that comes out to be a hit on the spot. In reality when you look at the numbers it does not work that way.

 

If EA, and Lucas arts does not interfere with Bioware as they develop this game, then I think this game will survive, and one day become a hit. There is one key hurdle to overcome though, and that is the release of guild wars 2. Ill be staying here, but I think guild wars 2 is going to hurt allot of mmos including wow. So I hope the devs understand this and put something out pretty sweet for that time frame. Also if swtor DOES not go f2p, I have seen the results of that idea first hand, and it was a major fail.

 

As for the exec leaving, devs are dropping like flys now and days, if you dont believe me check it out. There could be a number of reasons for this.

Edited July 18, 2012 by CrazyOldMystic

[Skorz]

F2P model will attract a lot of unwanted players. If they go F2P then the game is officially dead to me.

[Goretzu]

It took world of warcraft three long years before their first expansion. .

 

Well it was just over 2 years, 25 months I think, which is pretty much the standard model for subscription MMORPG expansion development.

[macumba]

It took world of warcraft three long years before their first expansion. This game has barely been around for a year.

 

you are right, but leveling goes way way way too fast in swtor, so people hit the emptiness of max level way too fast.

Beta testers pointed that out during development. Themepark only MMO puts tremendous pressure on development to deliver new content really really fast. Some sandbox content to give you things to do in between content updates would have helped wonders. A working massive pvp zone / planet would have helped wonders. But you need to make people care about that. I read a very nice idea that would work well in a pve/pvp mmo. Relics similar to the daoc ones but tie a 10% increase in credit drop instead of a damage increase and alert the whole faction if that was taken or in danger. of course you would need proper working mechanisms to alleviate faction imbalance (I would leave that to the "pvp-experts" from bioware/mythic that obviously never existed.)

 

will I continue to subscribe ? currently: yes, but if these layoffs mean that we can expect another raid dungeon (this game needs content content content) in december, I am gone.

 

however I am an altaholic thats why I keep playing and even though pvp in swtor is just a shadow of what could be done in an MMO (hear me ? massive online game = massive pvp, youll need an engine capable of that) one thing really works well: 10-49 warzones.

 

well and its also a scifi mmo and I am currently so tired of fantasy I get sick watching the lord of the rings movies even though they are one of my favorites.

Edited July 18, 2012 by macumba

[Razot]

I preordered and got in for headstart. The game had great promise. SO much that I handed over GM to my guild of 4 years to one of my Co GMs and tried to make a home here. We had personality conflicts and the guild dissolved, I wont blame SWTOR for that but I will blame it for not keeping me. Luckily my WOW guildmates accepted me back as their GM and I didn't lose anything but my pride. By that time it was apparent there was no endgame and nothing on the horizon.

 

I came back to try SWTOR, even paid $15 bucks to do so as I missed the first free chance because my computer crashed and I was early for the recent free retrial.

 

I will not be coming back, ever. I gave it two shots and paid good money.

 

Why did I leave in the first place?

 

*The developers are unbelievably arrogant. They think they know what we want even when we tell them otherwise.

 

*STORY IS A FAILURE. WoW already tried this in WotLK. Yea you may have been 3 years into production, but still you could have saved it because spamming spacebar and the 1 button is not fun. We learned in WoW with WotLK that MMO Gamers DO NOT LIKE to have to wait for RP to play out when waiting to pull a boss or progress to the next part.

 

*They refused to implement core elements like metric(DPS/Threat meters) or a UI API like WoW had at LAUNCH 8 years ago (enough nonsense about WoW having had years to develop they had their core mechanics down at launch. WoW EQ2 and RIFT launched without Dungeon Finders but both RIFT and EQ2 had JUST implemented Dungeon Finders...) And the development team hems and haws about if they are going to add a dungeon finder...

 

 

In the end the community on the forums, the anti WoW fanbois, got what they wanted:

 

A $200,000,000 - $300,000,000 (I wrote out all the zeros so you can really soak that in) Star Wars MMO that is so unlike WoW it doesn't have core MMO features and alienates the masses. It really is that simple.

 

Are ya happy? Ya get to play Star Wars with, with, no one.

 

I WANT SWTOR to fail. I want it to be shut down. I want other developers to take it apart and realize, "hey they didn't listen to anyone when it didn't even have basic MMO features and the developers said they REFUSED to add them."

 

You are everything that is wrong with the genre!

Stay in WoW and never ever leave it please...

[Cordelia]

It took world of warcraft three long years before their first expansion. This game has barely been around for a year.

 

Not to be pedantic but it was just over 2 years. WoW launched November 2004 and The Burning Crusade was released January 2007. But yes I take your point this game is only 6 months old and far too early in it's cycle to expect an expansion.

Edited July 18, 2012 by Cordelia

[macumba]

it was only since wow that expansions took that long. everquest and dark age of camelot had much shorter cycles. (6-12 months). So if you just leave wow out of the picture the bar is a lot higher.

[ikemenn]

its sad to see people get 'laid off' especially in the current economy. and hopefully this restructure is the last for bioware and swtor and the people who were let go i hope are onto better things.

 

With so much lay offs, one can't be helped to wonder.. with the current rate of the additions of ingame contents, WHICH IS SO LONG!!! if we are going to see an increase in its frequency and speed? at the moment a lot of people are left idling at end game doing nothing. NO new ops, flash points, most if not everyone at end game i would assume already have all the end game armors and weapons and left wondering to themselves what else is there? no use doing the ops when all the items we can get from ops we already have. IF/WHEN they add the new OP this year that would get demolished and cleared i would guess in 1 - 2 months time (that is me being conservative) my guild can probably do it within a month, then we are back to where we are now.

most of the updates and maintenance are for botched updates and things they broke on the previous patch they did :/ so much down time (unscheduled as well) in the past few weeks. The pvp stunned death bug in alderran warzone is still there, sound bug still there as well :/

I LOVED the game in the first 3 months and thought things would get better with the contents and bugs, but right now i am not seeing any improvement in the foreseeable future.

i was really looking forward to world pvp when the game came out, but when i finally had my first experience in a massive world PVP the whole game lagged.. and not just me, other people in the same battle was going "*** lag, piece of S*** game" over chat and it was only about a 30 vs 30 match. FYI my game rig aint budget btw. game is just not optimised for that massive scale pvp so dont know what Hoth PVP is still doing there. broke down piece of C**p. its really unplayable at fps going down below 10fps. So that was a big chunk of my enthusiasm for the game gone.

 

also i kind of get why people dont like F2P games. "pay to win" thing i also hate that.... but when done right it could be awesome. why would people want to pay for a broke down, low quality game is beyond me.

 

the other thing people speculate is crap about F2P is that people would not be hmmm obligated? (for the lack of a better word that i can think of atm) to play the game everyday of the month so this would mean people would not log on as much in a f2p than a subscribed game. This is one of the main arguments against F2P games...

i would argue against this with a good example: league of legends. even with high queue times sometimes an hour for me i still hang in there just to play it everyday, why? because its contents are great and well, ITS JUST A GREAT GAME!! with swtor you wouldn't see me wait for 1 hour just to play.

 

further to which, i would like to comment A GAME SHOULD NOT OBLIGE SOMEONE TO PLAY EVERDAY BECAUSE THEY ARE SUBSCRIBED AND THAT IT WOULD MEAN WASTED MONEY IF THEY DONT, BUT PLAYERS SHOULD BE ENTICED TO PLAY BECAUSE THE GAME IS AWESOME AND PLAYERS FIND IT FULFILLING AS BEING ENTERTAINING -> league of legends.

 

For me, subscriptions are payments for quality assurance of the game. are we seeing that in swtor? no so why are we paying?, are there other mmo f2p games that have more quality than swtor? yes

Edited July 18, 2012 by ikemenn

[Costello]

It seems strange there is no official word on this.

 

Almost like he left and didn't tell anyone and the community team are running round going I just read on the forums Rich left?????

 

Ultimately this spells the problem in this game, a lack of communication and slow updates and additional content. When are we going to see PvP returned to the open world more content and a reason to log in.

[ikemenn]

It seems strange there is no official word on this.

 

Almost like he left and didn't tell anyone and the community team are running round going I just read on the forums Rich left?????

 

Ultimately this spells the problem in this game, a lack of communication and slow updates and additional content. When are we going to see PvP returned to the open world more content and a reason to log in.

 

cant do world pvp in the game. its fundementally flawed game engine would not allow for massive world pvp battles. just lags for everyone. (as with my post above)

[papaguyo]

The Wow did NOT achieve greatness over night, nor will swtor. I think thats part of the problem too, after wow became a hit, most players expected every game that comes out to be a hit on the spot. In reality when you look at the numbers it does not work that way.

 

Actually WoW did acheive greatness overnight. Upon launch it was the most successfull MMO is history, and still is. There were intial release parties that rivaled movie premiers. Even Blizzard didn't really expect the game to be a susccesful as it was/is.

 

As far as the excetuvie producer quitting the company, I dont really care, it doesn't make a difference to me. I am going to play this game as long as I enjoy it and not one minute longer. Do I think this game will entertain me for years? no.

[Xerkrom]

Wow, this game is going no where.

 

Luckily Guild Wars 2 comes out next month.

 

Hoooray!

[Mogsey]

Wow, this game is going no where.

 

Luckily Guild Wars 2 comes out next month.

 

Hoooray!

 

Lol as much as i didn't want to try that game, i just might after all.

[Xerkrom]

Lol as much as i didn't want to try that game, i just might after all.

 

Best thing is, all you have to do is buy the box, no subs. If you don't like it you return the game if you can. Make up some excuse. And you don't feel like you wasted extra money cause you didn't have to pay for that extra month before you could start playing.

[DDSilver]

Wow, this game is going no where.

 

Luckily Guild Wars 2 comes out next month.

 

Hoooray!

 

Guildwars 2 is a bit meh imho...

Their forums, once more players come to that conclusion, now that's where the fun is going to be.

[ISTrick]

Yowza, Meridian 59 and UO?

 

That's quite the pedigree.

 

Good luck, Rich!

 

My $0.02 is that games often shed their executive producers post-launch -- the set of skills required to get a game launched aren't always the same ones required to to maintain and expand it.

 

I like the cut of your jib young man.

I agree +1 with the ^^above comment.

 

I see this as more neutral news than negative or positive (saying it's positive really is reaching I think..), it's one guy... and an executive producer is big, but not 'world is falling on ones head' big.

[DarthTHC]

He got his 7-figure delivery bonus and he doesn't want to be associated with EA any longer. Can't blame him, really.

[vincent-]

just gonna wish him good luck in the future, we might get someone who isnt scared of pushing the boundrys now.

 

Scared of making a profit isn't the developers it's the guys who pay you. Until you remove that factor which will never happen no one will take risks.

[Valkirus]

I preordered and got in for headstart. The game had great promise. SO much that I handed over GM to my guild of 4 years to one of my Co GMs and tried to make a home here. We had personality conflicts and the guild dissolved, I wont blame SWTOR for that but I will blame it for not keeping me. Luckily my WOW guildmates accepted me back as their GM and I didn't lose anything but my pride. By that time it was apparent there was no endgame and nothing on the horizon.

 

I came back to try SWTOR, even paid $15 bucks to do so as I missed the first free chance because my computer crashed and I was early for the recent free retrial.

 

I will not be coming back, ever. I gave it two shots and paid good money.

 

Why did I leave in the first place?

 

*The developers are unbelievably arrogant. They think they know what we want even when we tell them otherwise.

 

*STORY IS A FAILURE. WoW already tried this in WotLK. Yea you may have been 3 years into production, but still you could have saved it because spamming spacebar and the 1 button is not fun. We learned in WoW with WotLK that MMO Gamers DO NOT LIKE to have to wait for RP to play out when waiting to pull a boss or progress to the next part.

 

*They refused to implement core elements like metric(DPS/Threat meters) or a UI API like WoW had at LAUNCH 8 years ago (enough nonsense about WoW having had years to develop they had their core mechanics down at launch. WoW EQ2 and RIFT launched without Dungeon Finders but both RIFT and EQ2 had JUST implemented Dungeon Finders...) And the development team hems and haws about if they are going to add a dungeon finder...

 

 

In the end the community on the forums, the anti WoW fanbois, got what they wanted:

 

A $200,000,000 - $300,000,000 (I wrote out all the zeros so you can really soak that in) Star Wars MMO that is so unlike WoW it doesn't have core MMO features and alienates the masses. It really is that simple.

 

Are ya happy? Ya get to play Star Wars with, with, no one.

 

I WANT SWTOR to fail. I want it to be shut down. I want other developers to take it apart and realize, "hey they didn't listen to anyone when it didn't even have basic MMO features and the developers said they REFUSED to add them."

 

While I understand your disappointment in the game and we share some of the same reasons for that, I would not go so far to wish the game will fail. And doing so will only lead to more flustration on your part. Because it is not going to fail in the sense of being shut down. Let it be enough that for "you" it has failed. Personally I hope it gets better. Which it can with the correct direction.