In your educated opinion, what's the fate of this game?

[Hardwear]

I have never really been into computer games and I have never played an MMO in my life, but I'm really loving this game. True, it has its flaws, but I can overlook most of them. I will be honest, though. I'm pretty concerned about the future of SWTOR. I've heard it's losing subscriptions at an alarming rate, and I don't see how this Free to Play option could be anything but an ominous sign of the future to come.

 

I don't stay caught up with news, so I was hoping someone could fill me in. What does the future of this game look like?

Are the developers optimistic? Pessimistic? Indifferent?

Could SWTOR bounce back, or has it had too many blows in its short existence?

 

I'm looking at this game like a relationship. If the game has a future, I will stick around. If the game is doomed, I would rather bail sooner than later, before I become even more attached.

 

 

Without getting too deeply into my feelings about the F2P craze.

 

In short and in my opinion EA/BioWare did the dummy move they officially anounced the inclusion of the incoming F2P model which instantly pissed off a large chunk of their subscriber base within a few weeks of the GW2 launch.

 

This combination could potentially be the death blow for ToR and corporate exec incompetence at it's finest.

Edited August 25, 2012 by Hardwear

[CorellianWannabe]

Closing the servers will not give em profit as well.

Shopping centers when build take lot's of years to get all the money back and start profiting. Companies like EA have lot of financial health to support the game for the long run and it's just insane to just shut off something you put lot of investment into.

I don't know what doomsayers have in their heads at all, it's all nonsense.

 

So if your car keeps breaking down you would rather keep pouring money into it than buy a new one?

 

So if EA is willing to blow so much money on the game why not make it completely free to play and count on the players buying fluff to make up the revenue? Why did they lay off so many if they have money to burn? Why isn't this product in their top 5 properties if it has so much potential?

[denpic]

This thread has got me wondering how many of us are loyal to one game now. I'd be interested to hear. I suspect many people are like me, in that in the past they might have had one MMO they played almost exclusively, but now we might have a couple on the go.

 

I fit this I Played wow for 7+ years had a sub to dcuo until Soe got hacked

Have a tsw sub running and swtor and a few fps games on the side

I still enjoy swtor the most I find it's pvp is as good as anything on the market today

Not interested in wardrobe simulator 2 the first one never got my interest either

[Darth_Urtani]

The game will die without F2P, even then, F2P will probably only be life support (how long until they pull the plug....).

[Kalfear]

 

I don't stay caught up with news, so I was hoping someone could fill me in. What does the future of this game look like?

Are the developers optimistic? Pessimistic? Indifferent?

Could SWTOR bounce back, or has it had too many blows in its short existence?

 

.

 

No one can truely say what the fate is at this moment as they going F2P and that might be a home run for them (in regards to a F2P market, they will never have the higher profit subscription market they once tried for).

 

Anyone claiming to know the outcome of TOR is lieing to you, we dont know.

 

What we DO KNOW, based on other titles that went from subscription to F2P, the following will occur

 

1) General consensus will be the community will drop a number of rungs on the intellegence ladder as the F2P crowd come in. Its pretty standard opinion out there that the F2P crowd bring with it lowered community expectations. Going Subscription to F2P can be best explained as substituting quality for quantity.

 

I know this one sounds weird as the TOR community wasnt setting any high standard records to begin with on most days. Some good folks mixed in with a whole ton of trolls and what not.

 

But it will get worse before it gets better on this front with F2P coming.

 

2) We can assume now that the developement staff is pretty much a skeleton crew. The game launched with a HUGE support staff to work on updates and bugs and what not and its been pretty common knowledge there have been multiple rounds of lay offs shrinking the support staff size drastically.

 

Strangly enough this doesnt always result in less or worse products. Some times these companies have to many cooks in the kitchen and get lead astray by moronic ideas and agendas of fringe developers looking to make their mark ahead of satisfying their subscription base.

 

So we know there will be less but we dont know if that will be better or worse over all yet.

 

3) All content designs will be designed with one goal in mind from here on in, "will it sell in the cash shop".

 

That doesnt mean the content will be good or bad, just the vision has shifted from "will it make game better" to "will it sell in cash shop".

 

Course for it to sell in cash shop it has to be appealing and adictive so in a strange way the updates now might have more meat to them because TOR is so dependant on microtransactions to make their profits.

 

4) From the day the shift to F2P was announced, TOR WILL BE CLASSIFIED A COLLUSSAL FAILURE.

 

There is no changing that. TOR could stay open for 8 years like SWG did, the small subsciption base can try and argue till they blue in face that they liked TOR and its been around for 8 years so its a success that way.

 

Its all smoke and mirrors and spin.

 

TOR, like SWG, will be classified as a HUGE FAILURE from here on out because like SWG, it failed to grab the bulk of its subscripers and keep them interested long term. Both games lost an obnoxious amount of Subs in the first 6 months from launch and no positive spin will change that FACT.

 

Doesnt mean every person will hate TOR, just means when people talk about it going forward, it will be spoken of as a failure by all but a small minority of posters.

 

Closing: Thats really the only FACTS we know right now. Beyond that its all guess work and what not. F2P can bring a decent level of income to a MMORPG. It will never bring the revenue that a successful subscription MMORPG will bring in, but it can ink out a big enough following that the game is not completely abandoned by the developer.

 

EA is looking to make what ever they can from TOR now. So its going to be low costs, high profit percentage going forward for how they work.

 

When TOR released you could expect maybe 20-25% of the revenue to go back into game (staffing, updates, design, ect). Now they have failled to grab their market they shifting to a bargin bin design where maybe 5% of revenue will go back into game while they try to squeeze what ever they can from game.

 

BUT AGAIN, lower funds doesnt always mean lower quality of product. All it would take is some rookie dev who wants to make a name for themself to get hired on and to push through some groundbreaking but unproven concepts and TOR could actually come out ahead from the previous model!

 

So we just have to wait and see if the quality of product design can rise now the quanity of spending has dropped.

[Draekos]

Quick note on community. I know F2P games get a bad rap, but LOTRO and DDO both in my experience had nice mature communities. At least compared to WoW or this game.

[Knockerz]

I don't think it's just content updates based on what I seen with secret world. Apparently secret world was on schedule when it came to updates and content, but didn't sell well enough nor does it have enough subscriptions to sustain the upkeep cost. Thus, funcom was forced to layoff 50% of it's work force that work on secret world. The problem is further compounded with the fact that the mmorpg market is saturated.

The subscription model isn't sustainable under the current market conditions. Thus, f2p seems to be the only option. However, we still have to wait and see how mop and to a lesser extent GW2.

Edited August 25, 2012 by Knockerz

[DarthScruffy]

It'll be able to keep the doors open (STO shows a game with ZERO support can still get players and $ rolling in).

[TYBERzan]

Ah lol the doomsayers, well guys chillax this game, is not dying anytime soon, in fact I think it has the opportunity to become the leader in mmo's. The reason simply being that it is addicting to get into the story, if you let yourself go into the story you will find it enthralling, unlike wow which has a terrible grindy beginning the main quest in this game is very fun, I just tried 'the messiah, gw2' and found it to be BORING, story included it was not even nearly at the level of swtor. This f2p may sound terrible but you have to remember, they may not even treat it as a true f2p from what we have heard it is more of an expanded trial to 50, they still prioritize subs and I think it will add many. If you say that thats crazy remember the reason people stick to wow, its got lots of players, who collectively keep people together through friendships etc. this game is actually FUN and unlike the wow story-lines make SENSE, I think the 'f2p' could very well make this game a success at a level unseen all it has to do is let people build relationships and they will start spending time in their characters eventually they will feel that they have 'spent to much to leave' and will stay, this game is far from over if anything it was getting rid of the kinks, and rearing for its place as the go to MMO, but instead of being a target for traditional 'MMO casuals" it can be geared towards normal people who don't want anything to do with grind, by having fun stories they will play not because they 'have to' but because they WANT TO. Some claim that this game needs to 'become a sandbox' guess what, if it does it fails, noone wants an overly complex game, i tried gw2 a few hours ago and even after several bwe's/stress tests, it was still hard to get used to, the 'active combat didn't help, it only made it MORE difficult, swtor has an easy to get accustomed to style of combat (tried in wow and other games), it flows don't even get me started on galaxies, i did the trial a few years ago it was TERRIBLE, i couldn't get into it, it was NO fun, way to complex, most people will never play a game like that, this game needs to add MORE stuff for extremely time conscious casuals, and make it fun not a race.

 

I think everyone would agree that some form of shuttles which go directly to a planet from the fleets (think like portals, no one likes the running), some other fun things for casual interaction would be a betting system with pazzack and swoop racing, sitting in chairs, just easy things that immerse people, and eventually they will likely add a free space traveler with the other guild capital ships etc, maybe even a battlefront:elite squadron esqu game in which you can transition from space to a battlefield, destroy ships from the ground/inside system, this would be FAR GREATER than any wvw in gw2. (look up elite squadron and their battle mechanics it was the best of the series BY FAR)

 

To galaxies players , stop trying to get your game ported here, this game will become everything and more that EVERYONE wanted IN TIME, it took YEARS for wow to implement a barber and they found NO ONE USES IT, bioware will add amazing content, and we will be the better for it.

Edited August 25, 2012 by TYBERzan

[Exilim]

Going to slowly plug along until the first official expansion then it's going to pick up.

[Cordelia]

 

TOR, like SWG, will be classified as a HUGE FAILURE from here on out because like SWG, it failed to grab the bulk of its subscripers and keep them interested long term. Both games lost an obnoxious amount of Subs in the first 6 months from launch and no positive spin will change that FACT.

QUOTE]

 

One big difference...SWG had paying subscribers right up to the time it was closed. That's all of it's 8 years. TOR has gone F2P in 8 months

 

Ooops, messed up the quote, i'm too tired to change it

Edited August 25, 2012 by Cordelia

[Goretzu]

I'm looking at this game like a relationship. If the game has a future, I will stick around. If the game is doomed, I would rather bail sooner than later, before I become even more attached.

 

 

 

It's hard to tell.

 

On the one hand it seems to be mirrior in Warhammer Online in almost all ways............ which is bad, very, very bad.

 

On the other it is possible the F2P relaunch might work as well as LOTRO (which bought LOTRO 2-3 good years before player numbers slipped back to what they were before F2P).

[Goretzu]

Going to slowly plug along until the first official expansion then it's going to pick up.

 

 

Makeb?

[VegaPhone]

The fate of this game is not good.

 

Other gaming companies will make better RPGs than the RPG element in the story in this game. Even if its a single player game.

 

Other games will have better pvp.

 

The only thing that is on par or maybe better is the ops and raiding. However, you dont make a multi million dollar MMO just for raiding, and also spend most of the development on VO with limited RPG elements that has limited choice.

 

So, unless the devs try to add more to the mix, then it is not good for them since they are charging for a single player game, and the only good thing is raids which are limited.

 

Well the combat is good as well, but you dont have an MMO just for 4 or even 5 WZs only. It needs more than that. Its just going with expectations as well, and not being demanding since it is a large budget MMO that also charges $15 a month.

Edited August 25, 2012 by VegaPhone

[alricka]

I'm not an expert on MMOs though I have played a few. As far as I know - and please, correct me if I'm wrong - there are not many MMOs, especially not recent ones, who could boast a continuous growth. The almighty WoW is probably the single big exception. Almost all of them start well and then numbers begin to drop. Gamers these days seem to be very vocal and in need of momentous gratification; and when a game doesn't deliver the goods they expect, they jump ship. This is inevitable.

So, in that regard, SWTOR is nothing special. It catches a lot of flak because the hype before the release was enormous. People were labeling SWTOR "The WoW Killer". Of course that didn't happen - it wasn't even close - and now the game gets a lot of mockery and hate on the Internet.

 

For what is worth, F2P doesn't neccessarily means that a game is in trouble. LOTRO went F2P and it actually rejuvenated - players increased and I'm sure the devs made good money.

 

And at the end... I enjoy the game and this is what matters to me. If someone doesn't, that's fine. But I enjoy it and I play it. It's that simple, really. Just play and have a good time.

[jarjarloves]

The difference I see though is that DDO and LOTRO were all very established games, with years worth of updates put into the game already to keep the new players happy.

 

This is not the case with SWTOR.

 

Although I do agree, with DCUO still going strong, that is a good sign, as that was a pretty new game too when it went F2P (I think it was anyway... I might be mis-remembering that).

 

YEARS of UPDATES?? come on you honestly don't believe that do you?

[turjake]

My educated opinion? Well, I am educated and I have an opinion. Close enough, I guess.

 

Anyway. I dont see them gaining more players unless they do something actively about it. Instead they have "released" plenty of developers that could have helped them to create more content and new game systems to lure some new or old subscribers.

 

They stopped adverticing at some point in the spring. Wow, for exaple seems to have regular adverticing campaigns still. I dont think stopping adverticing helps either with gaining more subscribers.

 

They seem to trust that this f2p will suddenly gain them paying customers, somehow I expect most of those free players to play the free part and then go back to their subscribed mmo:s when they run out of free content here.

 

So, what could they do to gain the momentum again? Expansion. Not just some "whocares" planet with "insertgenericmob" and "insertgenericboss". Something like JTL was in swg, atleast the space part.

 

Pvp needs to work too. I know they cannot easily change the current planets so that people would do similar open world pvp as they do (well, did) in wow (I dont think they should change either), but some other planetary pvp area, maybe like ilum tried to be. Also competitive pvp would be one thing that attracts certain type of people.

 

They say that you cannot turn the momentum around once your subscriber amounts have started to decline. I dont believe in that kind of truths. You just need someone who figures out how to do it, and then do it. Firing all your developers and then wishing that Fred the intern and Arthur the junior designer can output enough content so that your paying customers wont figure it out in a few years wont really do it. It just shows that the company doesnt believe in their own product and tries to milk as much money out of it as possible before they turn the servers off.

 

Ah well, looks more like a rant than educated opinion but its what you get this time

Edited August 25, 2012 by turjake

[Kubernetic]

The biggest failure of the creation of SWTOR is, in my mind, undoubtedly the decision not to lock the forums.

 

This allowed agents of other games, as well as loyalists with a grudge, and petty amateurs with a need to pontificate and spread doom and gloom to clutter the game's own forums up with asinine crap, which has undoubtedly affected this game's reach in the short term.

 

The good thing about the F2P/hybrid model is that those people who were hesitant to spend money on a subscription in the face of such negative coverage will now be able to give it a try anyway, and see.

 

My guess is that a good number of those players will find that even though they expected the game to be lackluster and a waste of time, they'll find quite the opposite is the case.

 

I also don't agree with the expectation that the F2P crowd will somehow "lower" the general intellectual level of the player base. This game has had mindless trolls from the very beginning, and my personal expectation is that the general level of community cohesion will remain level or even increase, especially as the QQ Squads leave this game in search of their next feeding.

 

After having read through many of the responses in this thread, one thing I take to heart is that most of those predicting doom have very little to base this expectation on, other than half-truths or complete misrepresentations.

[CorellianWannabe]

The biggest failure of the creation of SWTOR is, in my mind, undoubtedly the decision not to lock the forums.

 

This allowed agents of other games, as well as loyalists with a grudge, and petty amateurs with a need to pontificate and spread doom and gloom to clutter the game's own forums up with asinine crap, which has undoubtedly affected this game's reach in the short term.

 

The good thing about the F2P/hybrid model is that those people who were hesitant to spend money on a subscription in the face of such negative coverage will now be able to give it a try anyway, and see.

 

My guess is that a good number of those players will find that even though they expected the game to be lackluster and a waste of time, they'll find quite the opposite is the case.

 

I also don't agree with the expectation that the F2P crowd will somehow "lower" the general intellectual level of the player base. This game has had mindless trolls from the very beginning, and my personal expectation is that the general level of community cohesion will remain level or even increase, especially as the QQ Squads leave this game in search of their next feeding.

 

After having read through many of the responses in this thread, one thing I take to heart is that most of those predicting doom have very little to base this expectation on, other than half-truths or complete misrepresentations.

 

Lock who out of the fora? Or do you mean lock them completely?

 

Why should players not be allowed to express themselves? Isn't part of their subscription fee the ability to access the fora? Or should only fawning messages about how perfect the game is be allowed?

 

As for lackluster, the f2p crowd won't see that as the lackluster parts will be gated behind the subscription fee.

[Soluss]

YEARS of UPDATES?? come on you honestly don't believe that do you?

 

Lotro was 3 years old when it went F2P. It had already had an expansion as well.

[Exilim]

Makeb?

 

That's not what I would consider an official expansion. That is unless it's the biggest planet the designers ever came out with. Details still sparse on that, something larger and more involved than a single new planet is what I had in mind.

[Apeth]

This is the second highest subbed mmo out there. Gw2 started this weekend and my servers the same as before numbers wise. I dont think the games gonna have millions of subs but I think it'll stay healthy and get regular content. its not turned out quite what people expected hence there's a lot of discontent but if your enjoying the game carry on playing there's plenty of others who are to and dont go near these forums.

[Blackardin]

I'm more worried about the genre as a whole then I am this game.

 

If this was launched five years ago, when people knew, understood, and enjoyed MMORPGs, it would have done much better. However, in this era of instant gratification, constant stimulation, money tight gamers games that launch shelled and are developed over the long haul will have very little chance of corralling the short attention spans of gamers looking for spoon fed shooter type content.

 

I'd venture to say that this game will go down in history as the last of the true MMORPGs. From there, the genre is going to turn into a FTP, quick, cheep, mediocre content barrages designed around cash shop purchases.

[OIFVET]

The issue with going F2P to make more money is sort of ridiculous when they have at least 600k subs paying, that's roughly $8,970,000 monthly. To compare another niche game, Eve online is a niche game with roughly 500k monthly subscribers (many of them alts, as I run 2 accounts) and add to that the plex system where you can buy plex with in game ISK to fund your play. The point here is that CCP has no where near the WOW numbers but they make a terrific game with 2-3 major updates a year. The game is pretty, the ships are cool, and they listen to the community heavily.

 

My question is whats wrong financially with approximately (low end) 5 million per month in revenue? Why is it they feel the need to have a huge subscriber base rather than keeping what they currently have and making a successful MMO based off current subscriber numbers? Would make more sense to me to make a quality game while keeping the niche players who love it and have supported it since launch. Cater to the supporters of the game and keep making it for them, and if new players come along great!

[spellegren]

I'm more worried about the genre as a whole then I am this game.

 

If this was launched five years ago, when people knew, understood, and enjoyed MMORPGs, it would have done much better. However, in this era of instant gratification, constant stimulation, money tight gamers games that launch shelled and are developed over the long haul will have very little chance of corralling the short attention spans of gamers looking for spoon fed shooter type content.

 

I'd venture to say that this game will go down in history as the last of the true MMORPGs. From there, the genre is going to turn into a FTP, quick, cheep, mediocre content barrages designed around cash shop purchases.

 

It's the Zynga era, dark days indeed.

 

I do believe that we will see a few more "traditional" MMOs, just hopefully not this shallow theme park model.