Realistically, do you think we will ever see an expansion?

[Blackavaar]

Or even lotro which just got a real expansion with riders of the rohan?

 

I do not play LotRO any more and did not know they came out with an expansion as I haven't seen it in any stores. I have no clue how large a staff Turbine has.

 

[Monoth]

But with the size of the dev team as it is now, do you really think an expansion is a realistic expectation? I don't.

 

And expansions are only the norm for one game, btw. Most MMOs only do regular updates.

 

 

That's not completely true, especially for MMO's that have Subscription or Subscription / F2P hybrid... Age of Conan had expansion, SWG had 3 expansions that I know of, EQ and EQ2 had lots of expansions, WOW is going on its 3rd expansion I believe, Guild Wars had 3 expansions, LOTRO had expansions..... etc..etc... Only MMO's that don't usually charge for expansions are F2P Only MMO's, Although said content may have some sort of price tag in the cash shop.... It really varies

 

Also Expansions usually only cost $19.99 and not $60.00 like some people are claiming...

 

I personally have no issue paying for an expansion if it's "" QUALITY "" content....

[MidichIorian]

They say that you should never say never but I'm pretty confident that we'll never see a Swtor expansion.. They might release some bigger digital patch but we'll never see an actual expansion on disc in stores.

[Roalmo]

I do not play LotRO any more and did not know they came out with an expansion as I haven't seen it in any stores. I have no clue how large a staff Turbine has.

 

 

Not store sold that I know of.. just digital..

 

Don't "play" it either, just mess with it while SWTOR is down, my main is level 7

Edited October 19, 2012 by Roalmo

[Lord_Ravenhurst]

I expect nothing less than a space expansion of EvE proportions.

At least 5000 Star Systems and one Joystick.

 

With

Alpha and

reviving the Space Sim Genre, even more so.

[WookieIsshe]

Wow so many clueless people in this thread. SWTOR will have at least a few expansions over the course of its run. Even UO is still running and putting out expansions and that game is what 15 years old or older. Cannot remember the year it came out.

[Arkerus]

But with the size of the dev team as it is now, do you really think an expansion is a realistic expectation? I don't.

 

And expansions are only the norm for one game, btw. Most MMOs only do regular updates.

 

 

Do you work there and do you know their exact numbers? Do you know what their multi gen plan shows? What you have posted is nothing but conjecture at best. You don't even have any past experience or examples for the jury.

 

In fact, evidence says even the MMOs with sub 500,000 subscriber base produce expansion packs. Look around you. Stop posting nonsense just to draw attention to yourself.

 

If this was a mass failure like tabula rosa you might be right. But it's not...so....

[EricJS]

Is Makeb really adding 5 levels? Is this confirmed?

 

Not anywhere I've seen. A lot of people quoting that level cap are doing so because Bioware did three surveys through a third party of the "would you pay $X for..." and one of the surveys mentioned a lvl 55 level cap. However, each survey had a different level cap, 52 and 53 were also asked about. The prices also varied between the three surveys, from $10 to $40.

 

It's possible, I've also heard rumor that the new planet is going to be huge. It would have to be to support 5 levels of gameplay. Personally, unless I find a dev mentioning it, I'm not assuming 55 is the new level cap.

[Nordavind]

Expansion, addon, patch, update. I don't care what they call it, I don't care what you define each thing as. As long as new content comes in the form of flashpoints, levels, quests, ops, events and gear at regular intervals, I don't need a so called expansion.

 

Why would I? Oh, because the others do it? Small regular updates > big and rare updates.

[Tim-ONeil]

Absolutely yes.

 

The part that everyone forgets about is that the expansion box sales more than make up for the increase in the development team expenses when you launch an expansion.

 

SWTOR is far, far, from a financial disaster no matter how gloomy your outlook is on the game itself. It made back all of it's hugely unprecedented pre launch budget and made an immediate profit on it's initial retail sales alone. Every month after that it's made anywhere from 25 million to 7.5 million (top recorded sub numbers to lowest) per month gross depending on the number you want to estimate the current sub with.

 

Btw, 7.5 million a month is still 90 million a year in case those numbers are hard to fathom. Adding F2P to this makes it potentially even more lucrative.

 

So before you just jump in and foolishly claim they'd never do an expansion there are significant reasons why they would. An expansion means a box sale plus a jump in visibility on the market and at the very least a short term subscriber surge.

 

It also keeps your current audience entertained and playing your game while requiring as minimum a commitment to the cost as they want. The size of the expansion and internal deadlines set dictate the project costs and they can control all of that. This doesn't impact your live development either because it's standard to have different live teams and expansion teams that work concurrently on different areas of the game.

 

If there's anything Bioware can do well it's market the game. With a new product like an expansion, good marketing hype, and solid developer results all of a sudden that 25 million a month is obtainable again. Launch a new expansion like that every 12-18 months and the cash rolls in.

[bahdasz]

IF they throw out a real honest to goodness pay-for-a-box expansion it will probably be a last ditch attempt to save this game from being a complete money black hole for all parties involved. If they get lucky and start getting players back and maybe even sucker in a couple new ones it might even save the game.

 

My money is on this game going Tango Uniform long before LA/BW/EA drop another dime into developing a much-needed full blown expansion.

Edited October 19, 2012 by bahdasz

[DarthDrachonus]

If they get lucky and start getting players back and maybe even sucker in a couple new ones it might even save the game.

 

How ill informed you are. I just got three new players to get into the game, and they're enjoying it. Those three will bring in more, and so on, and so forth. Players may be bleeding, but new players are coming in. (And yes, these three players have seen endgame. They watched me play a few FPs and Ops, and some PvP). There will be an expansion, there'll be quite a few expansions.

 

To answer the guy I asked a question too:Blackavaar, honestly? Don't care how big WoW's dev team is, and I'm not being ill when I say this. I know Everquest's dev team is relatively small, and they're still churning out expansion packs pretty regular, infact, level cap is 100 now over there. This game has plenty of life left in it, what I don't understand is why the haters can't just go away (actual haters, not those with valid criticisms, there's a BIG difference), and do whatever game it is they wanna do.

[Blackavaar]

Do you work there and do you know their exact numbers? Do you know what their multi gen plan shows? What you have posted is nothing but conjecture at best. You don't even have any past experience or examples for the jury.

 

In fact, evidence says even the MMOs with sub 500,000 subscriber base produce expansion packs. Look around you. Stop posting nonsense just to draw attention to yourself.

 

If this was a mass failure like tabula rosa you might be right. But it's not...so....

 

Dude, I already answered this question. Considering all of their layoffs I can guesstimate the size of their current team based on what it was when they started development 5 years ago, and it's nowhere near the size of that one game that comes out with expansions (as in retail boxes that you have to pay extra money for and include major changes to the game world, not downloadable updates that include a few improvements that would normally be parsed out in a few monthly updates). No game other than that one big piece of panda crap still comes out with boxed expansions that I can find in any retail establishment.

 

I am doubtful that SWTOR will come out with any kind of boxed expansion within the next few years and I don't think it's even necessary. They can easily improve the game in all the ways everybody wants with regular updates. They don't need to put out new boxed expansions. If I am wrong I will eat my words, but until then I have as much right to espouse my opinion on these boards as you do.

 

TL/DR: Go bite yourself!

 

[DaRoamer]

Dude, I already answered this question. Considering all of their layoffs I can guesstimate the size of their current team based on what it was when they started development 5 years ago, and it's nowhere near the size of that one game that comes out with expansions (as in retail boxes that you have to pay extra money for and include major changes to the game world, not downloadable updates that include a few improvements that would normally be parsed out in a few monthly updates). No game other than that one big piece of panda crap still comes out with boxed expansions that I can find in any retail establishment.

 

I am doubtful that SWTOR will come out with any kind of boxed expansion within the next few years and I don't think it's even necessary. They can easily improve the game in all the ways everybody wants with regular updates. They don't need to put out new boxed expansions. If I am wrong I will eat my words, but until then I have as much right to espouse my opinion on these boards as you do.

 

TL/DR: Go bite yourself!

 

 

The distribution model doesn't mean anything. I never bought the boxed version of SWTOR, does that mean I didn't buy an actual game?

 

An expansion is a paid update that adds considerable content and generally new systems to the game. Whether it's a digital only purchase or not is irrelevant.

[Bleakmage]

Expansion, addon, patch, update. I don't care what they call it, I don't care what you define each thing as. As long as new content comes in the form of flashpoints, levels, quests, ops, events and gear at regular intervals, I don't need a so called expansion.

 

Why would I? Oh, because the others do it? Small regular updates > big and rare updates.

 

I agree with you undefined gentlebeing

[AboB]

...Will EA, the company behind the Sims, Spore, and Rock Band have any plans for an expansion for SWTOR? Another poster beat me to my thoughts on the matter:

 

. . . SWTOR will have at least a few expansions over the course of its run. Even UO is still running and putting out expansions and that game is what 15 years old or older. Cannot remember the year it came out.

 

With that being said, is this guy serious?

400+ on the fleet, divided by 10 (the factor of servers deleted) equals around 40 people per fleet. These are horrible numbers. Unsustainable numbers, I would wager.

 

(Weird place to bring math into the discussion, even weirder place to bring bad math.)

[Vis-Tecum]

I'm just curious of what everybodys opinion is, I do like SWTOR but worry thats its going downhill ect which i sincerely hope im wrong about. Do you guys think this game will ever see an expansion?

 

"We are building our first major content expansion. " - Damion schubert GDC online 2012

 

sure sounds like they are working on it

[Eavandar]

Personally, all i want is continuation of our class stories, not dumbed down versions just for the sake of it, but as good (or better) than what we already have.

[OcTwenty]

"We are building our first major content expansion. " - Damion schubert GDC online 2012

 

sure sounds like they are working on it

 

Thanks for that, i had not seen that before, lets cross our fingers

[spectreclees]

I think we will see Makeb, but beyond that I believe it is highly dependent upon the success of the F2P model.

 

Servers (at least Pot5) are still bleeding.

 

I'm on Pot5 and imperial side is always packed with 3 fleets and other planets with 2 instances. I guess you play republic?

[Soljin]

Magic eightball says: Oo...Magic Eightball wont answer...Must have been hired on to Bioware.

[aeterno]

They said on gbtv that watercooler talk is they're working on the expansion and the guy were expecting to hear about it soon. These guys frequent developer conferences and actually talked about watercooler talk of TOR issues back in pre launch and we now know most of it was true, including mythic people being flown in to help push it out the door.

 

That plus payed expansions being one of the major sources of income for f2p games... I don't see why they wouldn't go down that route.

[Jacen_Starsolo]

I think we will see Makeb, but beyond that I believe it is highly dependent upon the success of the F2P model.

 

Servers (at least Pot5) are still bleeding.

 

Guild I was with since first days of CoX were eventually put to Pot5. Of the 100 (exact number) that joined this game, I am the last. I go to the guild site and post information about the game. I get replies to everything like "dude, why are you still playing this game?"

 

I play more on a PvE server I made toons on to play with someone else because Pot5 is so dead in comparison.

[Goretzu]

The normal loss after launch is between 25-35%. We went from 1.7 million to less than one million. I hate lowballing figures but I'm going with 500k (since EA won't tell us I can be as conservative as I like in my estimates).

 

.5/1.7 = 30% of original subscribers. So we lost 70% of all players. That's double the normal loss you see with most mmos after launch. That being said, when WoW first launch they lost quite a few players as they worked out the bugs - WoW was actually buggier at launch than SWTOR - but within 2 years they had more subs than when they started. Not hating, but I don't see that happening here.

 

Yeah, but 1.7m was the peak subscription.

 

Sales were more like 2.5 million putting SWTOR at > 25% retention at the 1 year mark. To put that into perspective that's worse than Warhammer Online did.

[Runetahlean]

Personally, all i want is continuation of our class stories, not dumbed down versions just for the sake of it, but as good (or better) than what we already have.

 

i agree with this. i got game cause a big Star Wars fan and heard about the story lines. want more!