Will the game survive 2013 ?

[Abuelo-Jedi]

This game will definitely survive as long as EA doesn't do something crazy like NCsoft did and pull the plug on a successful MMO.

 

This game is really fun and has reinvigorated my love for Star Wars.

 

Being a refugee from CoX I definitely hope this game continues for as long as that one has, I also see some things that EA/BW could learn from it that would help this game to survive.

 

As long as the Cartel shop has good stuff to invest in, I'll definitely be putting more time and money into this game.

[waterdaemon]

A direct question - what is EA's roadmap for this game ?.

EA spoke up loud in clear in July: “Disappointing performance of Star Wars: The Old Republic was offset by powerful performance of Battlefield 3.” “Star Wars is the primary driver for adjusted guidance to a lower number.” “Our diversity allows us to make up for a miss on one franchise (SWTOR) with a hit on another (BF3).” One of the last things EA said to investors during that quarter’s investor call was to give a brief rundown of their F2P strategy. Next report for EA is end of Oct. and there will be nothing new to say other than they are banking on F2P to turn things around. The months of Nov., Dec., and Jan. SWTOR is probably fighting for its life. That’s the roadmap. [note: this is all public info. EA is a public company and I don’t have any insider info!]

 

BW may be subject to some criticism, but I for one would not want to see BW, the company responsible for the Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age learn some hard-knocks lesson about the viability of ambitious PC games in the console age. So yeah, some may be disgruntled because they can’t play a pink Ewok while wearing Revan’s pajamas, but no one should really want SWTOR to fail, even if they hate it, even if they gave up playing it long ago. As a PC, RPG, SW, and MMO fan I see a lot on the line here. YMMV.

[Newyankalt]

i know what u mean,,i bought lots of stuff in CoX 4 months before thery closed

 

the best way to support a game is to buy it, play it,,, and remain silent:p

 

Lol this guy

[simplius]

I had forgotten that!

 

ROTJ would have been A LOT better if it was set on Kashyyyk!

 

no,,wookies are okay, but ewoks are EPIC:D

[Urael]

no,,wookies are okay, but ewoks are EPIC:D

 

For that I give you

! And

!

 

Edited October 25, 2012 by Urael

[Arkerus]

I don't think they'll make it. The biggest problems I see are:

1) they are SO slow to fix bugs.

2) they cater too much to the elite player. This is the primary reason I finally quit. They design a game that leads you by the nose all over the galaxy on a long series of quests. But they make the quests so *********** hard that you have to either be an elite player to finish it, or group up. If you don't complete the quest, then the game is over. That's not a smart way to design the game and I'm sure they lost a large percentage of subs because of it. I can't tell you how frustrated I was to have my consular at the end of Correlia, the end of my class quests in my sights, just to find the the final boss is over the the top, rediculously hard. I finally logged off and cancelled my account. I can't be alone in that feeling.

 

(This one:

)

 

I'm not sure how you got to this conclusion. The 1-50 leveling is, quite honestly, very easy. Some boss fights take a few tries but if you have the gear from previous quests, its not hard. Would it kill you to go back and get some gear or ask someone for advice on the boss fights? This game doesn't cater to the elite. It's without a doubt, one of the most beginner friendly mmos I have ever played. If you want to talk about elite then lets talk about final fantasy 11 or the original Everquest. How about eve? Those games cater to elitists.

 

You need perspective. Bioware has gone out of their way to make sure every player has a home here. The leveling experience from 1-50 was explicitly designed to be solo'd. They even talk about the 4 types of players they are marketing to in their past interviews.

[Urael]

I'm not sure how you got to this conclusion. The 1-50 leveling is, quite honestly, very easy. Some boss fights take a few tries but if you have the gear from previous quests, its not hard. Would it kill you to go back and get some gear or ask someone for advice on the boss fights? This game doesn't cater to the elite. It's without a doubt, one of the most beginner friendly mmos I have ever played. If you want to talk about elite then lets talk about final fantasy 11 or the original Everquest. How about eve? Those games cater to elitists.

 

You need perspective. Bioware has gone out of their way to make sure every player has a home here. The leveling experience from 1-50 was explicitly designed to be solo'd. They even talk about the 4 types of players they are marketing to in their past interviews.

 

So much so that it is a face roll for the experienced gamer.

 

Indeed.

[Arkerus]

So much so that it is a face roll for the experienced gamer.

 

Indeed.

 

Let me clarify that. The different types of gamers WITHIN the class of folks that enjoy a themepark base MMO.

 

Obviously they are not trying to reign in the sandbox crowd or the simulation fans.

[Bojangle]

No the game will die during 2013. All the money put in to this game for 2 years!!!

/sarcasm

 

The game will be alive and well in 2013.

God why are people so worried and feel the need to ask stuff like this? Is Lord of the Rings still alive? Is Aion? Is Star Trek Online? Is EQ1 and 2? Is Warhammer? Is Age of Conan? (all those games are way lower in subs than ToR) The sub base as of right now is still one of the tops. It is way higher than Tera and likely Rift. Once f2p hits it will get even higher. I have faith the devs will keep pumping out content as well.

 

ToR will be here for a long time.

[Bojangle]

Thing is that even in Guild Wars 2 - with it's silly Black Lion chests and keys - which are essentially gambling boxes you can find those from a lucky drop and get the content without spending a dime.

 

But crippling the user interface and having people pay for access to the most basic features like hotbars is completely wrong. I expected cool armor sets as CP content but having to buy essential features just shows how little EA understands about running an mmo.

 

You do not gut the basic controls - imagine if Battlefield 3 required a micro transaction to enable the WASD keys.

LotR says hi and doing fine and has even worse limits on what you can do along with UI.

[TerraNovaSWTOR]

Seriously? Yes.

 

As long as Subscribers and F2P Whales keep supporting George's Share and 1 Server technical support, SWTOR will remain open. Heck, the worst-failed MMO I ever saw (WaR) is still open.

 

EA would be cutting their own throat by shutting the game down entirely - no more revenue to hold against their horrendous losses. So SWTOR will languish with an estimated 3 devs, 1 community rep and a half-dozen guys in a call center. I doubt the game will see a lot of development unless F2P actually works - which I have severe doubts about.

[_Zhatan_]

No the game will die during 2013. All the money put in to this game for 2 years!!!

/sarcasm

 

The game will be alive and well in 2013.

God why are people so worried and feel the need to ask stuff like this? Is Lord of the Rings still alive? Is Aion? Is Star Trek Online? Is EQ1 and 2? Is Warhammer? Is Age of Conan? (all those games are way lower in subs than ToR) The sub base as of right now is still one of the tops. It is way higher than Tera and likely Rift. Once f2p hits it will get even higher. I have faith the devs will keep pumping out content as well.

 

ToR will be here for a long time.

 

So your point this game will go the coma state of the listed above...cool. Very good for a 250+ m$ AAA game...

But you are right, the game will be in life support for the next 5 years and when the license expire the game will too.

 

This is the 2nd big failure of EA in MMO genre and will follow the same path (aka WAR) milk the remaining players till servers go empty and the invest recovered.

[DonosCaan]

Another "the end is near!!" thread...

These guys are like rakhgouls:rak_01:

[Gomla]

The keys should have been taken when he substituted Ewoks for Wookiees.

 

Don't you be abusing those little Ewoks....

 

Nothing wrong with Ewoks.

[SOULCASTER]

To keep it simple: NO

This game will not survive 2013, in my opinion. It would need to do a complete 360 to what its doing right now in order to survive, and i just don't see that happening.

[CosmicKat]

 

BW may be subject to some criticism, but I for one would not want to see BW, the company responsible for the Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age learn some hard-knocks lesson about the viability of ambitious PC games in the console age. So yeah, some may be disgruntled because they can’t play a pink Ewok while wearing Revan’s pajamas, but no one should really want SWTOR to fail, even if they hate it, even if they gave up playing it long ago. As a PC, RPG, SW, and MMO fan I see a lot on the line here. YMMV.

 

I think that's where they failed the most. In the age of console games, to compete they made... a console game for the PC?

 

When movie theaters were in serious trouble from home video competition, did they try to bring in home vide features? Nope. They took what was different and upgraded it with bigger screens, better sound, better theaters etc.

[Minack]

To keep it simple: NO

This game will not survive 2013, in my opinion. It would need to do a complete 360 to what its doing right now in order to survive, and i just don't see that happening.

 

Yeah, that's the ticket.

[denpic]

It won't in the apac region

[seatown]

SWG bombed because the devs had to make the game "easy"

 

Actually, if you remember, the devs went easy mode after loosing a ton of subs BECAUSE SWG was bombing. I'm not saying CU and NGE didnt essentially kill the game but lets face it, SWG was already on life support.

 

As far as will TOR survive 2013, I think it will though if they dont pull a rabbit outa the hat with F2P, development of new content will slow to a trickle. Personally I hope that F2P turns it around cause with all its problems and missing bits that should be in any MMO... I still like the game.

[oakamp]

look at

http://www.torstatus.net/

pve server getting a little better,

pvp server is getting worse,

i don't know it will survive or not,

but it just doesn't deserve 15 per month,

that is for sure.

Edited October 26, 2012 by oakamp

[maxetius]

They will remove the harsh restrictions over time when they realize people don't like paying money for basic game features, but they will pay out the WAZOO for stupid fluff items or gambling boxes.

 

They'll learn. In the meantime what comes out 2013? Botwars 2[GW2] was supposed to be the TOR killer as i recall.

[HammersteinSW]

Actually, if you remember, the devs went easy mode after loosing a ton of subs BECAUSE SWG was bombing. I'm not saying CU and NGE didnt essentially kill the game but lets face it, SWG was already on life support.

 

As far as will TOR survive 2013, I think it will though if they dont pull a rabbit outa the hat with F2P, development of new content will slow to a trickle. Personally I hope that F2P turns it around cause with all its problems and missing bits that should be in any MMO... I still like the game.

 

Thing is that with SWG they should have built on it's strenghts instead of gutting the whole system. Namely the open world, the interesting classes (creature handler was awesome), the crafting, the housing, the space part. These things were fantastic, if they had added a more interesting questline on top and some regular content updates they would have been fine. Instead they ruined their own game and subs went from dwindling, but with a stable core community, into free fall.

 

In a way they made the same mistake as Swtor (no wonder Rich Vogel was involved as lead designer with both games, you see his handiwork there) - they tried to make the game too much like WoW instead of trying to create something with it's own identity.

Edited October 26, 2012 by HammersteinSW

[Ssfbistimg]

A direct question - what is EA's roadmap for this game ?

 

I really want to enjoy the class stories and invest the majority of my game time into Swtor. But EA does so little to make me trust in the future of this game. There is no real communication with the playerbase, the Q&A panels only focus on silly stuff like "Can we marry Wookies ?" while I am more concerned if I will still get to enjoy Swtor next year.

 

I don't want to pour money for Cartel Points and the little game time I have into a game which might already be doomed. The weird f2p decisions (paying for an extra hotbar), the fresh bugs introduced with every patch and the dwindling subscriber numbers often make me wonder if sometime next year they will just close it down because it does not create enough cash to pay for the Star Wars license and the running costs.

 

my guess is this game will die december 20 2012 just like the rest of the world.... but on a serious note yes it will last till 2013 but I cant guarantee it will see 2014. EA buying bioware was the death of this game. It's not will it die but when. And I'm pretty sure EA will give F2P around 6 months to make revenue and when it fails to bring in any new subscibers they will pull the plug.

[deucexmachina]

EA spoke up loud in clear in July: “Disappointing performance of Star Wars: The Old Republic was offset by powerful performance of Battlefield 3.” “Star Wars is the primary driver for adjusted guidance to a lower number.” “Our diversity allows us to make up for a miss on one franchise (SWTOR) with a hit on another (BF3).” One of the last things EA said to investors during that quarter’s investor call was to give a brief rundown of their F2P strategy. Next report for EA is end of Oct. and there will be nothing new to say other than they are banking on F2P to turn things around. The months of Nov., Dec., and Jan. SWTOR is probably fighting for its life. That’s the roadmap. [note: this is all public info. EA is a public company and I don’t have any insider info!]

 

BW may be subject to some criticism, but I for one would not want to see BW, the company responsible for the Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age learn some hard-knocks lesson about the viability of ambitious PC games in the console age. So yeah, some may be disgruntled because they can’t play a pink Ewok while wearing Revan’s pajamas, but no one should really want SWTOR to fail, even if they hate it, even if they gave up playing it long ago. As a PC, RPG, SW, and MMO fan I see a lot on the line here. YMMV.

 

BioWare is a rubber stamp logo now as the founding members gave their notices in April after the EA head ceo called SWTOR a failure in March because it was only in the top 10 and not the top 5 of their money makers. Mind that EA Sports just reskins the old sports game versions with nothing really new ever added.

 

May was the large layoff, and yes some were just filling in for launch and early support, of employees associated with SWTOR. Shortly after the original BW ideas were run through and EA had to continue from somewhere, like their interns from the EA Sports dev teams (a hunch on the intern part).

 

June 26 is when 1.4 Allies came out. And so many of the old bugs rolled back in along with the addition of even more nerfs that made no sense. A trend that is continuing to this day.

Edited October 26, 2012 by deucexmachina

[LordVilos]

Will the game last? Yes. It will. If you want an example just take a look at a game called City of Heroes it is a horrible game yet it has been around for years on a very similar model to this game to be honest and it is still doing just fine it has a worse population than us but the game is still alive. So will this game survive? Imo my opinion yes it will however just don't expect it to get anymore higher populated.

 

I mean 30 seconds after logging into the game City of Heroes I was like how is this game still alive? Yet it is. That gamw is a very posdible future of swtor.

Edited October 26, 2012 by LordVilos