For anyone that was wondering about James Ohlen

[johnxtreeme]

Considering that any experience is 'stored' on studio employees, this means one of 2 things:

- life expectancy of SWTOR at EA is shorter than average emplyment lenght of people there(looking at SWTOR history, that doesn't seem to be much)

- number of people working on SWTOR is going to be significantly reduced while they are being funneled into new project.

- OR there is always option that he was just talking randomly and ment nothing by that.

 

 

OR he could mean that they will hire new people to make new MMOs.

Kind of like Bioware Edmonton made Mass Effect AND Dragon Age.

[Capt_Beers]

I think it took my like 3 or 4 weeks to get to 50. I got the game after my buddy was already lvl 34 so a lot of my play time was with him getting virtually no XP. Once I caught up I got to 50 pretty quickly. Playing with a friend made it go by even quicker as well.

 

Even if it took you a month or two to get to 50 by BW's estimate you completed the content almost 200% faster than they had anticipated. No one has mentioned the fact that at launch there were no Legacy XP buffs or XP stims either.

 

It also stands to mention there is no unique storyline for each class this time. If you wanna burn through everything on your main just to start raiding you can do that and see the story at a later point without missing anything.

 

I know I have early access and if I can keep GF aggro down I'll be 55 if not close to it by the time non-preorders get the xpac.

[chuixupu]

Nice article....good to see some positivity, and good to hear from James; his silence was a little sad, regardless of what you think about his work in the game. I'm also glad to see that he dispelled the myth that all the budget went into voice acting.

 

I still think F2P was more of a "band-aid" ultimately. I think they could have avoided going F2P if they hadn't made all the mistakes. But it is what it is, and I just hope that the band-aid won't turn into a full body cast in the end.

 

ps - took my first character about 3 weeks to get to 50....and I didn't really rush it, I just had a lot of time to play it. My subsequent alts took an average of a few months to level.

Edited March 29, 2013 by chuixupu

[DarthOvertone]

Excellent article and thanks for the link OP. A few things that stood out to me from the first article.

 

SWTOR currently holds the record as the second largest subscription MMO ever

 

This is pretty impressive when you think about it. A lot of peeps boo-hoo this game and crack on it, but the fact of the matter is that it accomplished some major achievements. With the glut of MMOs out there, and the considerable amount of gaming choices players have, I don't think the achivement above can be understated.

 

Ohlen also argued that the development time accorded The Old Republic was not overly long when compared to the average development time of triple-A MMOs. He explained that games like Guild Wars 2, TERA, and The Elder Scrolls Online bear a half-a-decade development cycle. SWTOR was no different.

 

This is an interesting point. However, didn't those other MMOs listed cost considerably less to develop than SWTOR? I'm not sure pointing out this fact really helps any sort of argument he was trying to make.

 

Based on BioWare's pre-launch metrics, the team expected players to get through the content in three or four months...So the devs anticipated that TOR would take more consecutive days to complete than the average MMO..."Within four and five weeks, we suddenly had close to a half a million people at the endgame," Ohlen said. "It was something we didn't expect at all."

 

I long suspected that this was the main problem after launch. My playstyle is a little more hardcore than most, however, I took my time leveling my first toon when I started playing SWTOR but still hit level 50 in four weeks. Endgame at that time was near non-existent and what did exist was extremely buggy. I just couldn't believe that BW expected us to simply continue by leveling alts before the next expansion.

 

Now the truth comes out. They didn't expect us to just level alts. They actually completely misfired on how their player base would consume the content.

 

There is a lesson to be learned for the Devs regarding future content in this game. It needs to be more open-ended and replayable. I think they are getting a better understanding of this already based on The Gree Event. Some of the new content proposed in RotHC also appears to fit this bill.

 

When free-to-play launched in November, it "blew all expectations out of the water," said Ohlen. Subscriptions started going up again. Concurrent players on the servers went way up. Both of those statistics continue to rise. As Ohlen put it, TOR is the second biggest subscription MMORPG in the western world, it has had two million new accounts since the F2P launch, thousands of new players try out the game everyday, and TOR is one of the largest microtransaction money-makers for publisher EA.

 

This is awesome news. I have been a subscriber since EGA and haven't tried the F2P option, but I'm certainly glad it's there so players have choices. This past year has been a MMO roller coaster like nothing I've ever experienced before. So many peaks and valleys, it was a very strange experience. I am still subbed though and glad to see the game is doing well. Hopefully, RotHC can maintain the momentum and lift the game to new heights.

[LovarBoy]

Mass Effect MMO made by BioWare?

 

*hahaha*

 

April 1st is 2 days ahead guys.

 

Who the hell will give BioWare millions of millions to develop a MMO after this tremendous flop?

 

Or do you think it will be their last chance to "save" their name when they are making the Mass Effect MMO what SW:TOR should have been?

Edited March 29, 2013 by LovarBoy

[Alduinsm]

Mass Effect MMO made by BioWare?

 

*hahaha*

 

April 1st is 2 days ahead guys.

 

Who the hell will give BioWare millions of millions to develop a MMO after this tremendous flop?

 

Or do you think it will be their last chance to "save" their name when they are making the Mass Effect MMO what SW:TOR should have been?

 

Well,EA will give them, you can know this if you actually read the article.

[MrSchmo]

 

Who the hell will give BioWare millions of millions to develop a MMO after this tremendous flop?

 

You have a wierd definition of a flop. 2nd most subscribed mmo, 2 million new players since f2p, 1 yr 3 months going strong, first expansion coming

Flopping indeed. :rollseyes:

[ninjonxb]

You have a wierd definition of a flop. 2nd most subscribed mmo, 2 million new players since f2p, 1 yr 3 months going strong, first expansion coming

Flopping indeed. :rollseyes:

 

No, Obviously it is a flop because WoW is still very much alive and kicking

 

Also, Millions of Millions translates to trillions... btw. Pretty sure you meant millions and millions

Edited March 29, 2013 by ninjonxb

[LovarBoy]

You have a wierd definition of a flop. 2nd most subscribed mmo, 2 million new players since f2p, 1 yr 3 months going strong, first expansion coming

Flopping indeed. :rollseyes:

 

It's been a flop for sure.

 

Just taking the budget for comparisons it's obvious. And don't tell me it's normal that the most expensive video game ever made, developed to rob the iron throne from the Lannisters ( = Blizzard ) never had any harmful effect on the usurpators and went f2p within the 1st year after launch...

 

And yeah it was meant trillions! And drillions and so on...

 

P.S.:

 

2 million accounts, not players. And this number is completely irrelevant.

 

Well,EA will give them, you can know this if you actually read the article.

 

My sentence should be ironic... and it's just worse that EA will spend another tremendous amount of money for something that will be SW:TOR 2.0...

Edited March 29, 2013 by LovarBoy

[aeterno]

Interesting bit bout the VO being comparatively cheap.

 

I've argued the same before, BW has been doing VOed games for ages now, if the cost of VO was prohibitive to a degree haters assumed, they wouldn't have done it and other companies wouldn't have followed.

 

 

 

Also lol at the haters, being all bitter at the fact there's some positive news about TOR for a change.

[ninjonxb]

Interesting bit bout the VO being comparatively cheap.

 

I've argued the same before, BW has been doing VOed games for ages now, if the cost of VO was prohibitive to a degree haters assumed, they wouldn't have done it and other companies wouldn't have followed.

 

 

 

Also lol at the haters, being all bitter at the fact there's some positive news about TOR for a change.

This is something I don't understand about this community. (I think) You need to have a subscription to post on the forums?

There is a big difference between constructive feedback and what most of the posts on the forum are. Looking at it you would think no one actually likes this game but continues to pay.