Eurogamer re-reviews SWTOR

[Atrimentus]

SWTOR is yet another victim of high expectations mixed with beliefs that the game should last you more than a year like it did with your first MMO. Where's TERA? Secret World? Those games used to be so hyped for bringing new things to the table like new combat (TERA) and look where they ended up. They did mediocre at best. Expectations were incredibly high (much like for this game back in 2009-2010) and didn't do as were expected. Truth be told, once you burn through an MMO you're less likely to play a similar one for a long time. The games that try to be different are flopping left and right or going F2P and the only one's that staying above the water is GW2 which has mostly attracted the old GW1 crowd and I've already seen the new people quit after a mere 2 months or so. It did not do enough of what some people expected. Compared to years ago (I'm talking 5+), people are making less and less of a commitment to MMOs. Only the most dedicated are sticking for longer. Buy your MMO, play it for 1-3 months and move on - that's the current market. Edited November 27, 2012 by Atrimentus

[Darth_Haderach]

Let's see, when the hype was immense Eurogamer were absolutely adoring SWTOR and praising it very highly. The game lost a huge amount of subscribers, we can't argue that, and now Eurogamer thinks it's a horrible game. I can't take this seriously, it's unprofessional and serves no other purpose but to hurt the marketing of SWTOR. It can't even be considered a "warning" towards new players to not "waste" their money, since it is free to try it.

 

When I state my opinion on something I can always stand behind it, because I've thought about it and it expresses how I feel and what I think about a given point. I have no respect to those who are blue today, but tomorrow red.

 

Again, for me this is only an attack against SWTOR's marketing.

[Costello]

I just wish the devs would start seeing some of these reviews and realising they have to do something. Server mergers and free to play are only a stop gap, if there is little game to play then people will still be leaving faster than new players subscribe.

[Goretzu]

I just wish the devs would start seeing some of these reviews and realising they have to do something. Server mergers and free to play are only a stop gap, if there is little game to play then people will still be leaving faster than new players subscribe.

 

Unfortunately I don't think the only thing that can make SWTOR what it could have been (serious amounts of development) is ever going to happen.

 

SWTOR seems to be mirroring WAR (slow developement due to massive understaffing and too little development far, far, far too late), not exactly, but the curve seems pretty similar, with F2P it's looking like they are going after thr STO model of lockboxes, lockboxes and more lockboxes.

 

Without core development no MMORPG can be great.

[CosmicKat]

SWTOR is yet another victim of high expectations mixed with beliefs that the game should last you more than a year like it did with your first MMO. Where's TERA? Perfect World? Those games used to be so hyped for bringing new things to the table like new combat (TERA) and look where they ended up. They did mediocre at best. Expectations were incredibly high (much like for this game back in 2009-2010) and didn't do as were expected. Truth be told, once you burn through an MMO you're less likely to play a similar one for a long time. The games that try to be different are flopping left and right or going F2P and the only one's that staying above the water is GW2 which has mostly attracted the old GW1 crowd and I've already seen the new people quit after a mere 2 months or so. It did not do enough of what some people expected. Compared to years ago (I'm talking 5+), people are making less and less of a commitment to MMOs. Only the most dedicated are sticking for longer. Buy your MMO, play it for 1-3 months and move on - that's the current market.

 

This is indicative of the product, not the consumers of that product.

 

The ultra-fast, ultra-simple, ultra-dumbed down MMO is all that is made today. There is no alternative available to players. When option A is the ONLY option, it is not a valid point to say "option B never sells".

[Urael]

This is indicative of the product, not the consumers of that product.

 

The ultra-fast, ultra-simple, ultra-dumbed down MMO is all that is made today. There is no alternative available to players. When option A is the ONLY option, it is not a valid point to say "option B never sells".

 

^QFE

 

Indeed.

[Atrimentus]

Let's see, when the hype was immense Eurogamer were absolutely adoring SWTOR and praising it very highly. The game lost a huge amount of subscribers, we can't argue that, and now Eurogamer thinks it's a horrible game. I can't take this seriously, it's unprofessional and serves no other purpose but to hurt the marketing of SWTOR. It can't even be considered a "warning" towards new players to not "waste" their money, since it is free to try it.

 

When I state my opinion on something I can always stand behind it, because I've thought about it and it expresses how I feel and what I think about a given point. I have no respect to those who are blue today, but tomorrow red.

 

Again, for me this is only an attack against SWTOR's marketing.

To me this review (if you can call it that) is nothing but click-bait. A rant by a disappointed player who from the beginning probably had expectations that were bigger than the game's budget. That's his fault, not the game's. I'm not being a fan boy about it but at this point you should've already learned not to expect too much of new MMOs. Edit: Just look at how WAR, TERA, Perfect World have fared. I've even seen a lot of players being disappointed at GW2, the game that was incredibly hyped about how different it was and in the end it did very little but at least it was a step in the right direction.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Atrimentus

[Andryah]

This is indicative of the product, not the consumers of that product.

 

The ultra-fast, ultra-simple, ultra-dumbed down MMO is all that is made today. There is no alternative available to players. When option A is the ONLY option, it is not a valid point to say "option B never sells".

 

Most of the "old school" complex, slow, "high intellect" MMOs are still running and taking subscribers. So while I understand your sentiment about the new generation MMOs..... players are NOT flocking to the old school ones.... so it's more indicative of the consumers then the products in this case. And frankly companies will focus on giving what their marketing analysis says the market wants. Market data says the majority of consumers want ultra-fast, ultra-simple, ultra-dumbed down MMOs. IE: consumers want console games stamped with "MMO" on them.

[Larce_Apollo]

The vindictive attitude of the writer just makes the review more of a hit piece then an actual review. I think that is the issue most have with the review, not if they have any sort of true/false statements about issues with the game.

 

You can have a negative review of a game, but when you go out of your way to be negative while giving a negative review, you turn into an arse.

 

Which Eurogamer ended up doing here.

 

Does this game have issues? Why yes it does, but who doesn't.

[CosmicKat]

Most of the "old school" complex, slow, "high intellect" MMOs are still running and taking subscribers. So while I understand your sentiment about the new generation MMOs..... players are NOT flocking to the old school ones.... so it's more indicative of the consumers then the products in this case. And frankly companies will focus on giving what their marketing analysis says the market wants. Market data says the majority of consumers want ultra-fast, ultra-simple, ultra-dumbed down MMOs. IE: consumers want console games stamped with "MMO" on them.

 

Again, false argument that completely misses the boat on two highly important factors.

 

1) The hundreds of thousands of people who played the oldschool games played them, past tense. They have been played out.

 

2) The oldschool games are old. They stand about as much chance in the open marketplace with new consumers as Casablanca has in competing with Avatar 3D in Blu Ray sales.

[Temad]

Let's see, when the hype was immense Eurogamer were absolutely adoring SWTOR and praising it very highly. The game lost a huge amount of subscribers, we can't argue that, and now Eurogamer thinks it's a horrible game. I can't take this seriously, it's unprofessional and serves no other purpose but to hurt the marketing of SWTOR.

 

So you really can't acknowledge the idea that the reason all those subscribers left is because the game is bad.

 

They praised it when it was new, when the lack of content, bugs, pvp (Ilum) had yet to be exposed by people getting to the end game and finding out it was trash.

 

Then then went back after the "curtain was pulled back", a ton of subscribers left, the game has gone F2P and they re-examined it and found out why all those people left. Other than the admittedly good class story process the game offers nothing but terribly linear questing and terrible end game dailies built on a UI and game engine that is out of 2002.

 

I get a feeling from the people who can't comprehend how a review could be good at the opening but be total crap 10 months later. It is almost like you can't admit that the game you seem to think is just awesome is total crap to most others.

 

This entire thread is like an episode of Kitchen Nightmares where a restaurant is dieing and about to go out of business but the owner refuses to consider the idea that his food is crap, it must be the customers not having good taste. There could never be anything wrong with what they are doing...all the while they just keep sliding closer to being finished.

 

SWTOR gives me the same feeling. No one will admit they F'ed up and that the food is crap. You can't keep blaming the customers...maybe you look inward and see...DAMN gotta change this and fast.

 

Bioware is in denial and so are a bunch of posters in this thread.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Temad

[whyzerman]

Let's see, when the hype was immense Eurogamer were absolutely adoring SWTOR and praising it very highly. The game lost a huge amount of subscribers, we can't argue that, and now Eurogamer thinks it's a horrible game. I can't take this seriously, it's unprofessional and serves no other purpose but to hurt the marketing of SWTOR. It can't even be considered a "warning" towards new players to not "waste" their money, since it is free to try it.

 

When I state my opinion on something I can always stand behind it, because I've thought about it and it expresses how I feel and what I think about a given point. I have no respect to those who are blue today, but tomorrow red.

 

Again, for me this is only an attack against SWTOR's marketing.

 

Did you even read the first review? There was very little praise in the first review aside from sound and class stories, and they even pointed out potential problems that would (and have) plague SWTOR if they weren't fixed. Some of the highlights of the original review include boring side (planetary) quests that made you want to wear out your spacebar, questionable/boring quest dialog, the grind from 1-15 being borderline suicidal to the game, almost no PVP implementation (world PVP as well as a lack of choices in warzones), Space combat being "throwaway" and only being single player, no PVP level caps (all players play together at level 49 stats or level 50), no individual warzone queues (you can only queue for a random - you can't choose which you want to play), Light/Dark side choices being pretty much an afterthought and those choices not really impacting anything endgame except the reward for reaching full Light or Dark V, the implementation of social points as a way to get players to actually play together, the implementation of companions, the tunneling nature of planets like Nar Shaada, large planets with little to no content, questions about whether or not BioWare can flesh out endgame content fast enough, etc...

 

Honestly with this review, I find it odd that it still got an 8/10, and looking back on this review I have to give the reviewer credit for pointing out the issues that people still cry about today.

[RichT]

Meh, can't really take too much from this disgruntled persons "new" review.

 

He makes some decent points in the rant, but when I see things like "Worthless rail shooter"...I lose a little bit of respect for the review. While some players do find this approach to be lacking, others may like it as a side minigame. Certainly someone trying to appear somewhat unbiased wouldnt be stamping words like worthless on any part of the review. This immediately turns "objective based review" to "opinionated rant from the kid next door'

 

 

I also have to question the integrity of a review that goes from a solid 8....to a 4....after ADDING content.

While there are some issues with the F2P implementation, I am sorry...it's not worth 4 points to a legitimate review.

 

 

Sorry Eurogamer, but you dont look credible on this one IMO.

Edited November 27, 2012 by RichT

[ryathal]

So you really can't acknowledge the idea that the reason all those subscribers left is because the game is bad.

 

They praised it when it was new, when the lack of content, bugs, pvp (Ilum) had yet to be exposed by people getting to the end game and finding out it was trash.

 

Then then went back after the "curtain was pulled back", a ton of subscribers left, the game has gone F2P and they re-examined it and found out why all those people left. Other than the reportedly good class story process the game offers nothing but terribly linear questing and terrible end game dailies built on a UI and game engine that is out of 2002.

 

I get a feeling from the people who can't comprehend how a review could be good at the opening but be total crap 10 months later. It is almost like you can't admit that the game you seem to think is just awesome is total crap to most others.

 

This entire thread is like an episode of Kitchen Nightmares where a restaurant is dieing and about to go out of business but the owner refuses to consider the idea that his food is crap, it must be the customers not having good taste. There could never be anything wrong with what they are doing...all the while they just keep sliding closer to being finished.

 

SWTOR gives me the same feeling. No one will admit they F'ed up and that the food is crap. You can't keep blaming the customers...maybe you look inward and see...DAMN gotta change this and fast.

 

Bioware is in denial and so are a bunch of posters in this thread.

 

So much win

[lokdron]

So you really can't acknowledge the idea that the reason all those subscribers left is because the game is bad.

 

They praised it when it was new, when the lack of content, bugs, pvp (Ilum) had yet to be exposed by people getting to the end game and finding out it was trash.

 

Then then went back after the "curtain was pulled back", a ton of subscribers left, the game has gone F2P and they re-examined it and found out why all those people left. Other than the admittedly good class story process the game offers nothing but terribly linear questing and terrible end game dailies built on a UI and game engine that is out of 2002.

 

I get a feeling from the people who can't comprehend how a review could be good at the opening but be total crap 10 months later. It is almost like you can't admit that the game you seem to think is just awesome is total crap to most others.

 

This entire thread is like an episode of Kitchen Nightmares where a restaurant is dieing and about to go out of business but the owner refuses to consider the idea that his food is crap, it must be the customers not having good taste. There could never be anything wrong with what they are doing...all the while they just keep sliding closer to being finished.

 

SWTOR gives me the same feeling. No one will admit they F'ed up and that the food is crap. You can't keep blaming the customers...maybe you look inward and see...DAMN gotta change this and fast.

 

Bioware is in denial and so are a bunch of posters in this thread.

 

I am going to have to agree somewhat I mean bioware just broke companions completely after a small patch today. I mean they BROKE them hard.

[wrmrstacrdwower]

No. I believe irony in this case is claiming consumers want simple, fast, dumbed down MMO's in the forum of a simple, fast, dumbed down MMO that is (by almost any measure) a failure because it is a simple, fast, dumbed down MMO.

I would say its more an access to content issue. Being able to play 2 hours a day and get something accomplished through a Raid Finder or Dungeon Finder that puts you at some point of parity with what more dedicated players achieve, or allow you to see the content is what most players for MMO's are looking for. As long as their is new content every 3-4 months players will run the same instance over and over until there eyes fall out of their heads from the sheer amount of bleeding from the eye socket. Which for how most content is developed in MMOs isn't difficult to achieve.

 

All it takes is an actual development base. Which for EA they decided Bioware didn't need.

[Deewe]

The fact that it's impossible to implement something directly the moment you request it, doesn't mean they aren't listening. People lacking patience, is hardly BioWare's fault.

 

Occasions where they've listened so far, for example:

 

- Group finder implementation for flashpoints.

- Raid finder implementation (partially, just story mode so far).

- Additional character slots.

- Customizable UI (although I'd still prefer modding options and addons).

- Bind to legacy gear (although could still use some iterations).

- More frequent patching (currently they're keeping up, 1.4 late september, 1.5 mid november, 1.6 already on PTS).

- Increased difficulty for NM raiding, not just HP buff on bosses compared to HM (so far done for EC, am sure TFB will follow).

 

And there's numerous smaller items as well. Whether or not they were pieces which were on your personal wish list, isn't of importance. BioWare is not there to cater to the desires of a single person.

And it took them one year to do that yet we don't have simple things like :

• Chat bubbles,
  
• Target of target transfer,
  
• A draw distance slider,
  
• Mouse over target.
  
• They did not drop the orbital stations,
  
• Nor improved loading times pre-loading say space ship hangars.
  
• Neither did they gave us save key-binding
  
• Where are the gear dyes,
  
• or the dual specs?
  
• Still missing the auto re-queue for WZ (that has been removed some time ago)
  
• We can't yet choose to which WZ to queue
  
• PvP is even more a Stun fest since 1.4
  
• Trooper have been "fixed" to a point they aren't playable anymore in PvP
  
• World PvP has been removed from the game
  
• We are still stuck with using companions we don't like because they have fixed roles
  
• There's not even a single new V.O. story content
  

 

Well however a Trooper can force choke like a Sith Master, a Jedi can feel epic using glow bats in Hutt-Balls, most charters can show off like be on a stage for a [insert other MMO name] fashion parade, our bosses are so epic that we need dozens of player to be beat the crap out of them. Speak of the players being the heroes...

[RazielHex]

I guess you didn't read them.

 

He points out that MMO's along with gaming isn't fun anymore and hey guess what? He's right..

 

Stating subjective opinion as truth completely nullifies your argument.

[Pulpp]

Stating subjective opinion as truth completely nullifies your argument.

 

It's not incumbent upon him to clarify that a clearly subjective opinion is not universal truth; it's solely up to the reader to not be absurdly obtuse by intrepreting in such a way. Discussions are severely limited if we have to assume our audience is completely retarded...

 

I'd suggest you keep that in mind the next time you want to use that oft rehashed, conversation killing argument.

 

As the actual statement, I think the development of games has so skyrocketed in costs that developers/investors are afraid to take chances anymore. So I agree, it's all stagnating and there is sufficient evidence to support that view. It's actually why I am really interested to see how some Kickstarter projects turn out -- you can bet if they are well received, the big guys will take note of any innovative ideas that come out of those projects.

[Slipfeed]

And with that, any shred of credibility Eurogamer had left, is thrown out of the window. Something you prior rated an 8, which in essence remained the same with several endgame additions and an extended trial for those who do not wish to subscribe, doesn't suddenly become a 4 unless you're completely incompetent as a reviewer. Eurogamer already strongly leaned towards incompetence, and now they've begun making it more obvious apparently.

 

What really happened here..

 

Eurogamer had been a paid advertiser for this game. Their contract came up, and it was time to renew. They did not get the deal they wanted, or did not get a deal at all. They reviewed the game again, and surprise surprise, it scored half this time what it did when EA was paying them for advertising.

 

Even though the game has improved a ton since then.

 

Of course I have no direct evidence of this. Besides the fact that... you know.... that's how it happens.

[Tulukord]

With how today's patch turned out 4/10 is generous.

[Soluss]

The investment on TOR remains undiclosed. One financial analyst stated 300 million, others stated 150 - 200 million, whereas many more estimated 100 million or even less at 'just' 80 million. In other words, any speculation in terms of TOR's financial situation is pointless concidering as we don't even know what sort of figure we're dealing with.

 

And the downsize was inevitable, anybody with the slightest form of sense would have realized that if they'd take a look at the credits listing. There were hundreds and hundreds of people involved in the development of TOR, much more than any company would ever use to maintain a product.

 

It would have been shocking if they didn't go, considering as to how they had roughly 800 names listed their associated with development teams, artists, story writers, QA, etc. Averaging employee expenses at gross 50k anually prior to tax cut offs etc, on top of budgetting work space maintenance at 5k per employee anually it'd already cost them 3.6 million a month just to pay those salaries.

 

You have some curious statements here. The first one is you say investment is all speculation. True to an extent but nothing wrong with speculating. I think the average consesus is 200 mil. Sounds about right. It may have hit even 300 mil.

 

The second thing is in your last paragraph. This is where you speculate costs. You imply in your first paragraph that we shouldnt speculate and then you go on to speculate, yourself. I actually agree with your speculation too though. Which leads me to my next point....

 

How long do you think they had those employees? I would say around 5 years. If we take your speculation and do the math... thats around 200 million just in salary. That doesnt include the higher ups that surely earn alot more. That also doesnt include any hardware, leasing, utilities or any other cost this game has incurred. So while it may be speculating.... you can easily see how this game was over 200 million.... by your own numbers.

 

On to the middle paragraph. While it may be true that some were bound to be let go. It wasnt their plan to let near as many go. They had touted keeping the team. This isnt just for "maintainence" as you put it. This was to continually pump out more content at a faster rate. If you take what they said about keeping the team and add in the comments of having patches every month... you can very well say that was their plan. The drop in sub numbers changed that plan. It wasnt just the typical after launch drop of employees that you want to brush off. This company was dismantled of Bioware and now only EA exists.

[Andryah]

I am going to have to agree somewhat I mean bioware just broke companions completely after a small patch today. I mean they BROKE them hard.

 

My guess is they fiddled with something companion related trying to fix the HK gear problem and slipped on a banana peel in the code while the QA team was on a coffee break.

 

It happens. I still have fond memories of stuff that was working and "never touched" in a software release that would mysteriously go broken (and sometimes escape a full regression test and end up in customers hands). I used to think Microsoft had the patent for this kind of thing... but then I discovered over the years that it is epidemic in the software industry.

 

When you have code parsed across a large team of developers, and lots of intricate interconnections, silly stuff like this happens. Add in the fact that with all the changes in staff at Bioware since launch, and who knows how well the code is documented, it gets worse. It does not excuse bad regression testing before release, but frankly in my experience code teams have large blind spots in their approach to code changes and unless you have a very organized and separate regression test team (with actual teeth to bring code problems as a valid halt to a patch release) you have blind spots here as well.

 

This kind of thing should not happen, but in my experience over the years driving large scale projects... this kind of stuff happens way too often, even with good QA safeguards in place. And when I saw a repeat bug appear out of nowhere... our approach was to task a specific QA person to have a specific and deliberate test workflow for said bug check and put said QA person as a late gate to green light a release. If the check popped the bug, we flushed the release and sent it back. It required the top level Program Manager to have a spine too.. to push back on the suits who wanted a deadline met.

Edited November 28, 2012 by Andryah

[Goretzu]

My guess is they fiddled with something companion related trying to fix the HK gear problem and slipped on a banana peel in the code while the QA team was on a coffee break.

 

It happens. I still have fond memories of stuff that was working and "never touched" in a software release that would mysteriously go broken (and sometimes escape a full regression test and end up in customers hands). I used to think Microsoft had the patent for this kind of thing... but then I discovered over the years that it is epidemic in the software industry.

 

When you have code parsed across a large team of developers, and lots of intricate interconnections, silly stuff like this happens. Add in the fact that with all the changes in staff at Bioware since launch, and who knows how well the code is documented, it gets worse. It does not excuse bad regression testing before release, but frankly in my experience code teams have large blind spots in their approach to code changes and unless you have a very organized and separate regression test team (with actual teeth to bring code problems as a valid halt to a patch release) you have blind spots here as well.

 

This kind of thing should not happen, but in my experience over the years driving large scale projects... this kind of stuff happens way too often, even with good QA safeguards in place. And when I saw a repeat bug appear out of nowhere... our approach was to task a specific QA person to have a specific and deliberate test workflow for said bug check and put said QA person as a late gate to green light a release. If the check popped the bug, we flushed the release and sent it back. It required the top level Program Manager to have a spine too.. to push back on the suits who wanted a deadline met.

 

 

So you're basically saying that either Bioware EA doesn't test properly, or they do and they release anyway?

[turjake]

 

 

So you're basically saying that either Bioware EA doesn't test properly, or they do and they release anyway?

 

I think that he is saying that no matter how much you test there will be some bugs left. Its impossible to test this kind of complex software so well that a group of 500k+ users wont find anything wrong when they start using the new patch.

 

And no, I dont think this kind of thing should happen but sometimes it happens anyway. I think they are fixing it today.