For anyone that was wondering about James Ohlen

[Alduinsm]

Better article with more detail

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/03/29/gdc-2013-james-ohlen-on-how-f2p-saved-swtor/

 

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/28/bioware-gdc-panel-star-wars-the-old-republic/

Good to see he's still with BW.

Edited March 29, 2013 by Alduinsm

[aeterno]

Excellent news!

 

Give us a wave James!

 

 

Wish they looked at other mmos more carefully, not just at the smoothness of launch experience, but content consumption and shape of endgame at launch. If only EA gave them 6 more months to get some more stuff into place + server merge/transfer infrastructure in place for launch and who knows where the game could have been without the 2012 agony.

 

Good to hear about subs actually going up with f2p tho. Onwards and upwards.

[Illyean]

sorry, this guy is one of the key idiots that resulted in a launch that was late and so very far from being ready. Its nothing sort of complete lunacy to say they were surprised that the content they thought would take 3 to 5 months to consume was consumed by most in 3 to 5 weeks and by a lot in 3 to 5 day! Having any mmo gamer play the game would have shown that to be the case, as it did on launch. The whole management of the SWTOR launch by the key staff was nothing short of an embarrassment, Im sure EA were equally to blame but as the bean counters what do you expect, they would keep pouring millions into the game that was never going to be finished or ever launch?

 

In any great success or great failure there are key players and teams, no mater how good a team is if the captains suck the team loses. I wish James all the best, but he's an idiot and probably needs to reconsider his career choices in mmo game making

[Shoogli]

Excellent news!

 

Give us a wave James!

 

He he same, I'd like James to come say hi on the forum !

 

Been a while...

[turjake]

hmh, no wonder he does not talk in the forums

[Alec_Fortescue]

Come on, James... You're like the only person left Say "hi" to age-old fans.

 

Just loling at the ridiculous article. Took me two weeks to hit the cap with my first character, haha.

Edited March 29, 2013 by Alec_Fortescue

[Izorii]

Good to know his around, and also he is very releastic about what happened to STWOR after launch and even in its current state. However I suspect that his estimate for players to hit level cap will be way off unless of course they have simply made the xp needed insane and not put in enough content to level a player so they have to run a few thousand dailys to get the xp needed.

[Costello]

Biowares first big problem was spending the entire pre-launch phase saying 'we will only talk about it when its ready and too late to change anything'. The community were telling them they needed more end game content but some of the developers continued to think that the community were all idiots and they could do whatever they pleased and it would work. They have since been proven wrong.

 

They then failed to address issues quickly enough, I have no idea how many people are now working at bioware or how they priorities issues but the engine is lacking if it takes 3 months for each new piece of content. They created a theme park world with no dynamic events, no life (not even a day and night cycle) and pretty much static NPCs, No guild support, no player housing and then act surprised when people get to end game and get quickly bored.

 

If Bioware had listened to the community it would have done far better, in many ways I hate to see how badly the game has done. But as a lesson of the importance of getting your fans/community on bored hopefully future development will start to listen.

[PseudoScience]

3 to 5 months to hit level cap....ummm how much market research did the company do? If any.

[Davenmor]

sorry, this guy is one of the key idiots that resulted in a launch that was late and so very far from being ready. Its nothing sort of complete lunacy to say they were surprised that the content they thought would take 3 to 5 months to consume was consumed by most in 3 to 5 weeks and by a lot in 3 to 5 day! Having any mmo gamer play the game would have shown that to be the case, as it did on launch. [...]

 

I don't get how people like you always call "powerleveling a char from 1-50" consuming content? This game is so rich of content that you will have a hard time experiencing the content in under 80 days (and this is by playing 6 hours a day)

SWTOR is a game build around story and if you as a player just dont care for the story and see the game as done once you have played (or skipped) through 1 class story that is nothing but your problem.

 

Imaging eating only the tomatos from a pizza and then complainig that you want some more tomatoes cause you're not full yet.

 

 

I know what you want to say but you also have to reflect on what this means. As I said swtor is not a mmo like wow where the game starts once you've reached lvl 50 ...

The biggest mistake that Bioware made was indeed that they overestimated the number of players that would actually play more than 1 class from 1-50 for the story!

Edited March 29, 2013 by Davenmor

[Kubernetic]

That's great. So.... seeing that he understands what the biggest problem was with SWTOR's launch and creation methodology.... I'd love to hear more about this awesome team that is obviously now set up and funded to do nothing but generate open-ended end-game content..... right?

 

Or does this mean they realize the lack of end-game content is the biggest problem in SWTOR.... so they're going to give us 3 operations a year to tide us over?

 

EDIT: It's nice to see him around. I hope someone's working on that mechanized ground combat thing sometime soon too. But what I hope most is that they've done something with these launch and early-game-life learnings other than fill up panel notes with them...

Edited March 29, 2013 by Kubernetic

[PseudoScience]

That's great. So.... seeing that he understands what the biggest problem was with SWTOR's launch and creation methodology.... I'd love to hear more about this awesome team that is obviously now set up and funded to do nothing but generate open-ended end-game content..... right?

 

Or does this mean they realize the lack of end-game content is the biggest problem in SWTOR.... so they're going to give us 3 operations a year to tide us over?

 

They probably assumed we would only be just entering KP HM.

[Sunjammer]

Good to see James is still aboard this "bucket of bolts".

 

*happy dance*

[Illyean]

I don't get how people like you always call "powerleveling a char from 1-50" consuming content?

 

I didn't, nor did James in the write up though he may have done in the actual panel presentation. So if you are going to quote at least do so correctly. I was remarking on what he said, he and BW thinking they had 3 to 5 months of content when in reality they had far far less, facts that no one disputes including James now.

 

I do agree they placed far too much on the repeat play of their levelling content, but they did this AFTER they had seen it consumed by many many players and as a defence to the pitiful lack of end game and QoL content.

 

I've enjoyed the story and a lot of the normal quests, but they do not bear up to much in the way of repeat play, the story, while good for an MMO lacks any real meaning, with a few notable exceptions it makes no difference what options you choose to the coming story and content, a few dark side/light side points (themselves more or less inconsequential) a flirt or fight, nothing you could truly say changed how the story goes. Great fun, but not the great story often spoken of.

 

James and the leadership team know they made huge mistakes, the fact so few of them are left means EA knows that too. The fact we still have a game that is at least moving forward is something to be grateful for, but the promise of SWTOR was not delivered and for that there is no one to blame but those who failed to grasp even the most basic concepts of MMO gaming at the very start.

Edited March 29, 2013 by Illyean

[aeterno]

I for one am very glad JO is still the creative director of this game. Someone that still genuinely cares about the story driven aspect. IT has been a steep learning curve but while daddy Ohlen is still behind the wheel I'm more confident TOR will stay at least somewhat true to the original vision as opposed to just falling apart into warhammer mk2.

[tekhiun]

3-5 months ? So it takes 4 days of game time to reach to 50 and then from 50 to 55.... at leas 85 days ?

 

Either he is talking about leveling all acs to 55, which is still a high enough estimate ( my estimation is that it will take 1 week to get from 1 to 55 ) or the leveling curve is nothing like we had on the PTS or we get nearly no XP at all from questing in makeb and doing 50+ content.

[LovarBoy]

It's stunning that one of the main problems in SW:TOR's failing process is still out there and still is producing vocal crap...

 

Maybe it's his punishment to suffer day by day on working in his biggest fail / mistake.

 

I for one am very glad JO is still the creative director of this game. Someone that still genuinely cares about the story driven aspect. IT has been a steep learning curve but while daddy Ohlen is still behind the wheel I'm more confident TOR will stay at least somewhat true to the original vision as opposed to just falling apart into warhammer mk2.

 

He doesn't care about anything. Just think of the guild summit 1 year ago. Much promises, nothing left.

 

If he would care, there would be class storylines.

Edited March 29, 2013 by LovarBoy

[AlaricSevGirl]

sorry, this guy is one of the key idiots that resulted in a launch that was late and so very far from being ready. Its nothing sort of complete lunacy to say they were surprised that the content they thought would take 3 to 5 months to consume was consumed by most in 3 to 5 weeks and by a lot in 3 to 5 day! Having any mmo gamer play the game would have shown that to be the case, as it did on launch. The whole management of the SWTOR launch by the key staff was nothing short of an embarrassment, Im sure EA were equally to blame but as the bean counters what do you expect, they would keep pouring millions into the game that was never going to be finished or ever launch?

 

In any great success or great failure there are key players and teams, no mater how good a team is if the captains suck the team loses. I wish James all the best, but he's an idiot and probably needs to reconsider his career choices in mmo game making

 

Wait, how was Bioware supposed to know that people lived in their parents basements, didn't have a real life and could play the game 120 hrs a week? It took me 5 months to reach level 50 on my bounty hunter and my shadow.

[TheBBP]

That was a good article. It is good to see them being honest about what they learned. It means that they know that things had/have to change and that is the first step into fixing things.

 

I think that they are on the right track.

[Callaron]

Wait, how was Bioware supposed to know that people lived in their parents basements, didn't have a real life and could play the game 120 hrs a week? It took me 5 months to reach level 50 on my bounty hunter and my shadow.

 

Yeah, that's where they went wrong... I find it hard to believe that they didn't have a single MMO player on their creative team to tell them that some people live glued to their computers (with an empty bottle nearby for when they have to go! )

If you've played these games for several years and been in some guilds, you've come across these kinds of players before.

I guess when someone tried telling that to James he went like "Nah, dude! People don't do that! Even if they are unemployed they are bound to have other interests and friends to absorb their free time!" - boy was he wrong

[kevlarto]

Good read, and really confirmed what I kind of thought was a lot of the problems, now that game is doing much better lets see if the really do dump some of those profits back into the game, I a not holding my breath.

[LovarBoy]

It took me 5 months to reach level 50 on my bounty hunter and my shadow.

 

That kind of player is a minimal amount. And you are nothing "better" than the guys who leveled in ~ 1 month to the max level.

[DarkSaberMaster]

I don't get how people like you always call "powerleveling a char from 1-50" consuming content? This game is so rich of content that you will have a hard time experiencing the content in under 80 days (and this is by playing 6 hours a day)

SWTOR is a game build around story and if you as a player just dont care for the story and see the game as done once you have played (or skipped) through 1 class story that is nothing but your problem.

 

Imaging eating only the tomatos from a pizza and then complainig that you want some more tomatoes cause you're not full yet.

 

 

I know what you want to say but you also have to reflect on what this means. As I said swtor is not a mmo like wow where the game starts once you've reached lvl 50 ...

The biggest mistake that Bioware made was indeed that they overestimated the number of players that would actually play more than 1 class from 1-50 for the story!

 

I know this gets said a lot, but I seriously can't tell if you are serious with your rich with content comment.

[tekhiun]

Wait, how was Bioware supposed to know that people lived in their parents basements, didn't have a real life and could play the game 120 hrs a week? It took me 5 months to reach level 50 on my bounty hunter and my shadow.

 

By doing some research ? The "first MMO" excuse can't cover everything. They seem to have decided to ignore most of the things mmos have done, right or wrong and screwed up badly cause of it.

[Tatile]

Wait, how was Bioware supposed to know that people lived in their parents basements, didn't have a real life and could play the game 120 hrs a week? It took me 5 months to reach level 50 on my bounty hunter and my shadow.

 

My husband blasted to 50 on his Sorcerer in around a week, starting at launch. I got mine up about, maybe, a fortnight later? He was deliberately playing a lot, but when you work part time and it's the middle of winter, going out and having all night movie-pub-club binges isn't exactly an option. And then there was the fact that his gaming-social group was broken up over the Christmas period due to the University it runs out of being closed for Christmas and half the people going back to live with their parents...

 

...there are a lot more reasons for having free time than living in your parent's basement.

 

I actually play a lot more than him and have several level 50s now. Funny how being forced to work part time gives you so much free time, but not a lot of money to spend on "social" activities.