People just don't play this game for long anymore. Time for a new star wars mmo?

[Exylem]

SWTOR isn't old enough to be closed down, in favour of another SW MMO.

[Codedrago]

Ssshhh, everyone is playing Battlefront.

 

Battlefront 2, right?

[well]

What about a mass effect MMO, would yall go for that?

 

Hell no. It just wasn't the ending. How they could have brilliant potions like the Geth and Krogan and the rest be so sub par I don't know. SWTOR is the only thing I will spend money on. I been at this since Beta and have taken a couple of breaks for less than two months combined. I think your just burned out. Maybe a second game to jump into and play for awhile. Take a break or switch around off and on.

[DomiSotto]

I probably get nearly a million credits per day for 30 minutes or an hours worth of trouble selling the resulting purple mats from crits successes (the missions you get from criting on slicing missions automatically reward purples and a crit rewards 5 instead of the standard 2 or 3) on the GTN. I was surprised to find a few of them go for up to 30k each!

 

I do that as well, but save for the circuitry that held the price well at around 25-29 thousand and Mithlith crystals that go for about 20-25 thousand, the other purple mats do not sell at a good price (they are currently at or below 15 thousand) and RNG is not my friend. Despite maxing out the companions and having Slicing on T7, Risha, Andronikus and 2x Scorpio, I do not accumulate circuitry fast enough to both augment self and sell a lot of it. I also cannot sell biochem mats as I need a supply of stims.

 

Each re-log in is about 4 minutes time. On 5 characters, that's 20 min to load, 20 min to take a looksee, and more time to list. I can compress a Yavin run into 40 min for 300 thousand credits. Come the expansion, when we do not depend on the RNG to get the mission we need to crit, the prices will collapse.

 

I also grind lowbie mats on every character I level, aiming for any level 60 to arrive there with 2+ mln to be able to sponsor the augmentation on self.

 

But, yes, credits are not really a problem now when Bio said that MK-10s sockets change into Mk-8s, so no extra million and a half charge to augment each armor set (at least that's how I read their blog).

[Fynnlagh]

What really bothers me about this game is the total lack of customer support - the customer support has to be the worst in any online game I played in the last 15-20 years.

 

And the development team doesn't seem to care what their customers want and how they could make them stay with the game.

I really don't understand how you can think it's a good idea deleting achievements that are in the game for years without any clever compensation. I spent a lot of time and credits on some of those and BW think it's ok to tell me one week prior to the release of an expansion that these will be gone. I'm still massively pissed about that. (same about missing character achievements I'm missing because they somehow didn't count)

 

It's no wonder people leave this game and no wonder they don't get a bunch of new customers. If any of my friends would ask if SWTOR is worth a look I would exactly tell him/her about those issues and suggest him playing GW2 or another game.

[Zharik]

It would depend of the demographic you're going for. the game was launched 4 years ago SWG was launched in 2003. 15 year olds that started Swtor are now 19. 15 year olds that stared SWG are 27. A bit of a swing and probably not the audience that would be courted.

 

15 year-olds never age, they're always 15. Meaning the demographic doesn't change, individual members change demographics yes, but that means nothing to the business that is after your money.

[Rekar]

Make SWG 2 !!!!

[xxIncubixx]

a new star wars mmo wont happen anytime soon if this one flops... 2 in a row is not good, but this one didnt flop still at least EA still invests into the game (Blur sacrifice trailer + expansion) that does mean it still is proffit and most likely by a decent margin, you can safely bet if EA didnt see any revenue from this game there would be no development whatsoever. PLUS voice acting IS expensive so again another good indicator. (look at warhammer online to see a true game that flopped, one expansion after one year and that was it). Edited October 13, 2015 by xxIncubixx

[mrfurly]

MMO's in general are hurting. WoW hemorrhaged several million subs at one point. People are just kind of burnt out on the model. When you have played one MMO you have kind of played them all. Everything kind of feels like a reskin of the last game you played since there is only so much you can do. They are games that require you to spend money monthly and ask you set aside at least a few hours a week to run a raid. A lot of people don't have that option. Of course there is PvP but when MMO's were first designed PvP was never a main focus so the PvP has always been kind of clunky, awkward, and a bit of a chaotic mess. MOBA's are on the rise now too since they are free and games like DOTA 2 have no pay wall restrictions at all. At most you dedicate an hour of your time and their is endless replayability to them. Edited October 13, 2015 by mrfurly

[Fynnlagh]

MMO's in general are hurting. WoW hemorrhaged several million subs at one point. People are just kind of burnt out on the model. When you have played one MMO you have kind of played them all. Everything kind of feels like a reskin of the last game you played since there is only so much you can do. They are games that require you to spend money monthly and ask you set aside at least a few hours a week to run a raid. A lot of people don't have that option. Of course there is PvP but when MMO's were first designed PvP was never a main focus so the PvP has always been kind of clunky, awkward, and a bit of a chaotic mess. MOBA's are on the rise now too since they are free and games like DOTA 2 have no pay wall restrictions at all. At most you dedicate an hour of your time and their is endless replayability to them.

 

That's a conclusion based on no facts.

 

GW2 is gaining players, FFxIV is gaining players, there are a lot of people waiting for Blade&Soul, Camelot Unchained and other mmorpg.

WoW is losing players because of the really bad quality of the current expansion. It's not an indicator for people losing interest in mmorpg only for people losing interest in the biggest one on the market. That is not necessarily a sign for a decline of mmorpg when players leave a game they played 5-10 years.

People never got burned out by the fifa soccer or nba series or the 25th part of CoD, BF or a new Counterstrike or Moba games.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Fynnlagh

[DomiSotto]

Honestly, I love SWTOR as a MMO very much if it did not become overwhelming. I think I would have played it endlessly if they froze the level grind, and focused on lateral expansion, adding content that can be explored with the highest level characters in various modes of difficulty. So, you'd have an intimately familiar character that could have either more and more adventures or gradually work up to the next challenge level in either PvE or PvP.

 

If instead of rebuilding all our ACs from ground up and sinking all the development into the level 65, scaling and crafting rebuilt, they would have given me half the story of the KotFE (5 chapters) with build in Flashpoints, upgraded ops with preserved 3 levels of difficulty, a few new instanced 1 boss Ops like Colossal Monolith, 3 extra warzones (1 of each type)...

 

...then they would repeat the process every 6 month, and rotate in and out the old content to keep it fresh....

 

...that would have been an ideal mode for me. I could have chipped away at perfecting my skills happily without added burdens in a stable environment not being continuously worried about keeping all the balls in the air, and having to relearn all the time!

Edited October 13, 2015 by DomiSotto

[mrfurly]

That's a conclusion based on no facts.

 

GW2 is gaining players, FFxIV is gaining players, there are a lot of people waiting for Blade&Soul, Camelot Unchained and other mmorpg.

WoW is losing players because of the really bad quality of the current expansion. It's not an indicator for people losing interest in mmorpg only for people losing interest in the biggest one on the market. That is not necessarily a sign for a decline of mmorpg when players leave a game they played 5-10 years.

People never got burned out by the fifa soccer or nba series or the 25th part of CoD, BF or a new Counterstrike or Moba games.

 

The difference is none of the games you mentioned at the end require as much of a time sink, require monthly fees, and have better replayability IMO. Add to the fact that the MMO business model is pretty poor. You spend tens of millions of dollars and a year or more of time to develop content that will be consumed in a few months. No I don't have any exact numbers, but you didn't provide any either. I've never heard of Camelot Unchained or Blade and Soul and GW2 numbers, even if they are gaining players, are probably still below their numbers in the first year.

[Mikahrtwo]

That's a conclusion based on no facts.

 

GW2 is gaining players, FFxIV is gaining players, there are a lot of people waiting for Blade&Soul, Camelot Unchained and other mmorpg.

WoW is losing players because of the really bad quality of the current expansion. It's not an indicator for people losing interest in mmorpg only for people losing interest in the biggest one on the market. That is not necessarily a sign for a decline of mmorpg when players leave a game they played 5-10 years.

People never got burned out by the fifa soccer or nba series or the 25th part of CoD, BF or a new Counterstrike or Moba games.

 

Its based on fact no MMO gained 6+m players.

 

FFXIV is gaining players because it launched in new Asia territory. It isnt all thea popular in the west. Apart from that expansion wasnt all that successful and new content was dealyed for at least 2 months (which leaves at least 5 months content gap) It also suffers from huge player drops between content updates.

 

MMO as a genre is losing players for 5+ years now.

 

And you hit the nail: what does every game you mentioned share: PvP. And not crappy gear/level based MMO PvP but skill based PvP.

 

A LOT of MMO players migrated to MOBAs because they got tired killing same boss for months and even paying 15$/month to have the privilege of killing same boss for months because they need gear to be able to play new content.

 

Ye, it aint working any more, what a shocker lol

Edited October 13, 2015 by Mikahrtwo

[AkaSuperJay]

I can't speak to broad trends in the game, but a few things in this thread strike me as odd:

 

 

• The idea that if you've been playing the same video game for 2-3 years and are now bored with it, that's somehow indicative of a problem with that game. That's more likely an indicator that you should do other things with your free time for a while, until you miss SWTOR and want to play again. Let your sub lapse and only re-sub when you're truly interested. It's way too easy to let MMOs become a second job, where you just log in every day because you logged in the day before, and you have all these self-imposed obligations (running dailies, raids, farming, playing the market, etc) that feel very tedious and boring. You're playing a game, it's supposed to be fun - so if it's not, don't criticize the game for failing to keep you interested; take a hard look at how you're spending your time and ask yourself if you're really enjoying what you're doing. If not, move on - there's no harm in doing so and it doesn't mean the game is bad if you do, it just means you need to break out of the monotonous rut you've gotten yourself into.
   
   
  
• The idea that recruiting faceless masses into a guild by inviting any randoms simply b/c they don't have a guild tag - and then not having those players become active members - is somehow indicative of a problem with the game. I just recently started and on almost every new character, I get invited to a random guild without any preamble whatsoever. Once in that guild, I'm generally ignored - I'm just another anonymous number to these guilds and they're just looking to cast the widest net possible WRT recruiting. They obviously just want to inflate their member numbers, they don't really want to invest any time into their membership. Only once have I seen a new guild try to engage its new members - set up guild FP runs, encourage grouping for Heroics, offer to help with questing and gearing, etc. All the others are just big collections of total strangers who never interact with each other. Go figure, when you run your guild like that, people are likely to leave because there's nothing about your guild that makes any different than any other guild (or really any different than being guildless). You have to provide something to your members that makes them want to stay and get involved, and bring all their alts into the same guild b/c they have such a good time with the people in that guild. If you're basically ignoring 80% of your members and they leave your guild or stop logging in to that character as a result, it's not the game that's at fault.
  

Edited October 13, 2015 by AkaSuperJay

[xxIncubixx]

That's a conclusion based on no facts.

 

GW2 is gaining players, FFxIV is gaining players, there are a lot of people waiting for Blade&Soul, Camelot Unchained and other mmorpg.

WoW is losing players because of the really bad quality of the current expansion. It's not an indicator for people losing interest in mmorpg only for people losing interest in the biggest one on the market. That is not necessarily a sign for a decline of mmorpg when players leave a game they played 5-10 years.

People never got burned out by the fifa soccer or nba series or the 25th part of CoD, BF or a new Counterstrike or Moba games.

 

FFxIV is popular on asia not so much on the west... camelot unchained LOL, made by the guy that made warhammer lulz please

[CrazyOldMystic]

I can pick this game apart all day long with the endless list of mistakes and problems with it. I am also happy about some the changes coming. Before I say anything else, I have no issues with any other mmorpgs, or streaming anything except here in this game.

 

At core whats wrong with this game? Its a crappy game. Most people have connection issues, heavy lag spikes, long loading screens, and now a rubber band effect on whole maps. This right here is what drives players away. Do you have any idea how much this stuff drives me up the wall more then anything else.

 

Rumor has it its the engine, and then bioware went out of their way to say they were not replacing the engine for the game, so I take from that the rumor is somewhat accurate.

 

As for wow dont talk about something unless you know the facts. The expansion for wow had very little to do with the loss of subs. The reason it suffers is because their scheme has become plain, simple, and not interesting. Also their is a whole host of issues over their that they have swept under the rug, that is starting to find its way to the surface.

[Sarfux]

Swtor 2.0 with an actual Engine (not a toy), lessons learned and most importantly, a constant budget could possibly pull in new players however I think Star Wars as an MMO will always conjurer memories of the TORtanic and because of that, no matter what, would be a bad investment and an uphill battle from a PR perspective.

 

Its 8 days until a new xpac (really just an RPG plopped on top of SWTOR) is launched and we have so little information. That kind of consumer relations just doesn't fly in 2015.

 

What exactly is TORtanic?

 

Oh, I got it now. It was the nostradamus type people online that forsaw this game dying (which it didn't) The cute trolls online that said TOR is like the Titanic and it's going to hit the iceberg and sink and TOR sounds a little like *** and has the T at the beginning and happens to be 3 letters so you substitute *** and put TORtanic.

 

That's cute It really is.

[Sarfux]

What is WITH people all the sudden attacking the game on it's own forums this past month or so really hard. People, as a whole, are very interesting creatures to study hmm..

 

must analyze posts and behavior tendencies again.

[RickyDaMan]

Not after what they did to the story, combat, and online multiplayer in ME3.

 

No they would likely ruin it, they would butcher it so it had the same combat mechanics as every other mmo, with enemies that stand still (lol)

 

Sorry but I watched what they did to the elder scrolls... never want to see a single player game made into an mmo ever again.

Edited October 13, 2015 by RickyDaMan

[Shwarzchild]

[*]The idea that recruiting faceless masses into a guild by inviting any randoms simply b/c they don't have a guild tag - and then not having those players become active members - is somehow indicative of a problem with the game. I just recently started and on almost every new character, I get invited to a random guild without any preamble whatsoever. Once in that guild, I'm generally ignored - I'm just another anonymous number to these guilds and they're just looking to cast the widest net possible WRT recruiting. They obviously just want to inflate their member numbers, they don't really want to invest any time into their membership. Only once have I seen a new guild try to engage its new members - set up guild FP runs, encourage grouping for Heroics, offer to help with questing and gearing, etc. All the others are just big collections of total strangers who never interact with each other. Go figure, when you run your guild like that, people are likely to leave because there's nothing about your guild that makes any different than any other guild (or really any different than being guildless). You have to provide something to your members that makes them want to stay and get involved, and bring all their alts into the same guild b/c they have such a good time with the people in that guild. If you're basically ignoring 80% of your members and they leave your guild or stop logging in to that character as a result, it's not the game that's at fault.

 

This is absolutely true of a lot of the "leveling" guilds (I aplogize about the classification I just don't really know how else to describe the guild you join for the XP bonus, and guild ship access, while you're leveling to speed up the process). If you do not engage at all with your members then your retention rate will always be insanely low. People definitely play this game a ton still. Guilds succeed when their members know one another and interact. I know for me the guild I am in now is fantastic. I love logging into TS and then the game just to see who is online. We've all gotten to the point where we'll just have a great time talking in TS for hours on end instead of even play the game. There've been times where we're all having a great time laughing at all of our awful jokes, and I found myself just running around my strong hold. Every Sunday we have mandatory meetings followed up by a guild event for those who can make it. We have newsletters going out weekly, and we are always hanging out in TS. There's something to be said for that kind of structure. People connect with each other that way.

 

Bottom line, you have to be engaged to have the kind of experience in guild that most people look for whether they realize it or not. And most importantly, you have to have the leadership in place that really wants to have that guild be awesome for its members. If you're the leader, that responsibility is on you. Unless you just did it for the tag in which case it's all good.

 

I'd say that if you're able to recruit 200 people to your guild that that is the real sign of how many people are playing this game. That would say to me "a lot".

[CKNORTH]

I miss Warhammer, also wish they would make DAoC freemium, if only Spore was a MMO... Oh the mass Havoc of paths to destruction there would be... Sadly I am on Burnout Factor of anything SW..

 

hmm my ideas for a new MMO... How about Buck Rogers.. LOL

 

Seriously though, tired of the same stuff being tossed into cookie Cutter MMO's. oh want to Refresh an epic movie theme to MMO EA? Go and get the rights to DUNE!

[SaerethDL]

I can't speak to broad trends in the game, but a few things in this thread strike me as odd:

 

 

• The idea that if you've been playing the same video game for 2-3 years and are now bored with it, that's somehow indicative of a problem with that game. That's more likely an indicator that you should do other things with your free time for a while, until you miss SWTOR and want to play again. Let your sub lapse and only re-sub when you're truly interested. It's way too easy to let MMOs become a second job, where you just log in every day because you logged in the day before, and you have all these self-imposed obligations (running dailies, raids, farming, playing the market, etc) that feel very tedious and boring. You're playing a game, it's supposed to be fun - so if it's not, don't criticize the game for failing to keep you interested; take a hard look at how you're spending your time and ask yourself if you're really enjoying what you're doing. If not, move on - there's no harm in doing so and it doesn't mean the game is bad if you do, it just means you need to break out of the monotonous rut you've gotten yourself into.
   
   
  
• The idea that recruiting faceless masses into a guild by inviting any randoms simply b/c they don't have a guild tag - and then not having those players become active members - is somehow indicative of a problem with the game. I just recently started and on almost every new character, I get invited to a random guild without any preamble whatsoever. Once in that guild, I'm generally ignored - I'm just another anonymous number to these guilds and they're just looking to cast the widest net possible WRT recruiting. They obviously just want to inflate their member numbers, they don't really want to invest any time into their membership. Only once have I seen a new guild try to engage its new members - set up guild FP runs, encourage grouping for Heroics, offer to help with questing and gearing, etc. All the others are just big collections of total strangers who never interact with each other. Go figure, when you run your guild like that, people are likely to leave because there's nothing about your guild that makes any different than any other guild (or really any different than being guildless). You have to provide something to your members that makes them want to stay and get involved, and bring all their alts into the same guild b/c they have such a good time with the people in that guild. If you're basically ignoring 80% of your members and they leave your guild or stop logging in to that character as a result, it's not the game that's at fault.
  

 

OFF TOPIC - Like other people said I would LOVE a SWG 2!

 

ON TOPIC - I don't think thats it when you talk about guild numbers, I engage with my players every day, I do fps, i help low levels with quest, I hold contest and giveaways every weekend for things like mounts and cartel packs. But the problem is, they DONT log on anymore, and nothing myself or my guild can do to change the fact that they don't want to play anymore.

Edited October 13, 2015 by SaerethDL

[SaerethDL]

No they would likely ruin it, they would butcher it so it had the same combat mechanics as every other mmo, with enemies that stand still (lol)

 

Sorry but I watched what they did to the elder scrolls... never want to see a single player game made into an mmo ever again.

 

ESO broke my heart, it was HORRIBLE... horrible combat, quest uninteresting, engine pretty but ugly, bugs galore, really boring.

[mrfurly]

What exactly is TORtanic?

 

Oh, I got it now. It was the nostradamus type people online that forsaw this game dying (which it didn't) The cute trolls online that said TOR is like the Titanic and it's going to hit the iceberg and sink and TOR sounds a little like *** and has the T at the beginning and happens to be 3 letters so you substitute *** and put TORtanic.

 

That's cute It really is.

 

Dude this game has been known as one of the biggest MMO failures of all time. Just because the game didn't shut down doesn't mean it didn't fail. They spent upwards of $300 Million to develop this game and they had 1.1million subs at launch and lost about half that within the first 6 months. It wasn't too long after that they adopted the F2P model and cash market option so many MMO's turn to once they starting hemorrhaging subs.

[Shwarzchild]

OFF TOPIC - Like other people said I would LOVE a SWG 2!

 

ON TOPIC - I don't think thats it when you talk about guild numbers, I engage with my players every day, I do fps, i help low levels with quest, I hold contest and giveaways every weekend for things like mounts and cartel packs. But the problem is, they DONT log on anymore, and nothing myself or my guild can do to change the fact that they don't want to play anymore.

 

To just be totally honest in an attempt to help you, just doing flashpoints or any kind of content doesn't really distinguish you from the pack. Every guild does content. Give aways are fun little additives, but you have to be able to connect them to something or else you'll get the "plate licker effect". They may not be logging in to that specific character, but there's a better than average chance they are logging on somewhere in game. I'd examine your structure. Having voice comms, and urging people to use them, or set it up so that as a guild training session you walk them through setting up team speak or something could really make a difference. It sounds like you need to provide a hub for your players to actually connect. I would say that if you're in a leveling guild, you're probably fighting up stream. It's much easier to form those connections with comms when you're in a raiding guild, or really end game guild. The leveling experience is too solo minded for people to even think about really getting into the human side of the game. If you are a leveling guild, maybe you re-examine your priorities in game to include end game in some capacity?