"We wanted more instant gratification : kill, get treasure, repeat."

[Enako]

If you know so well WoW metrics, you might know that latest sub losses have nothing to do with difficulty slight ramp up (Firelands).

It's either because :

* swtor itself

* no more things to do, therefore boredom

* an ageing game

 

If you want a confirmation of this, just do a bit of homework by analyzing mmo-champion/official forums during those past monthes. I did, by lurking in them daily during breakfast for the last year, and that was clear : people are bored of WoW because it's used and old.

 

By used and old it also means not challenging anymore. You can put as much additional fire circle to avoid as you want, the mechanics are still the same as they were 4 years ago.

It's even fun to compare mmochamp threads before and after 4.3 patch kicked in :

Before, it was all "I don't care about swtor, I'm having a blast with the new Looking for Raid tool !!".

And nearly 3 days after release, it was "I'm sorry to admit, but I've already burnt 4.3 content and I don't feel the need to login anymore".

So if we want to argue, let's at least be honest with each other.

 

the problem is, according to blizzard's own statistics, ALL these people you speak of constitute only 5% of wow playerbase. which is the percentage that made it into 'endgame content' in raids.

 

 

you are showing places that hardcore gamers hang out, as references. that is wrong. 200-400,000 people worldwide can man numerous hardcore gaming forums, mmo outlets, especially because they are rather vocal in their minority. as you can see here too.

 

but that does not mean that such half a million people can actually keep games going, or, be a basis for what should or should not be done in games, or hell - justify building games by relying on them.

 

for they are the minority which is the fastest to leave a game when they burn out of content. and if you adjust your game according to them, you end up by trying to satisfy their very low minority and rely on their subscriptions.

 

that does not work for aaa titles. it works for smaller games like eve, or other niche games.

 

but there is no way in hell that hardcore gaming crowd can actually keep an aaa mmo going and flourishing.

 

if otherwise, ultima online was the biggest mmo today. or, everquest.

[merooo]

I love when people sharing they own, private, subjective opinion suddenly discover that others can have they own - different.

 

People don't like challenge? Are you sure? All people? If yes, I don't belong to human race.

[Enako]

You're wrong on both counts. SWG was losing money. They had to try something to build revenue.

 

nay you are incorrect. smedley -or whatchamacallit - factor from lucas arts had had prompted the changes. by the time 'make it like wow' enthusiasm entered the mix, swg was the biggest mmo on the market.

 

 

And on the WoW thing, remember those reports are on the previous quarter. and it was 6 months ago they reported that..

 

your analysis is shortsighted.

 

subscription loss is not something that has happened only in the last quarter. it only became something that could not be hidden due to the sheer numbers happening in the past quarter.

 

the fact is, out of 18 million registered subscribers, the number of active subscriptions has always been very low. you can gleam this from blizzard's own statistic about only 5% of subscribers seeing the endgame content in first 2 expansions (vanilla and tbc).

 

if you beef up that number with friends of the hardcores, casuals, those who occasionally login to do some stuff and then go away, you get to a maybe 20-25% active subscribers. anything above that 5% is unreliable in a hardcore game that caters to hardcore crowd. and hardcore crowd, as you yourself put it, just goes to another game when they expire the content in one game.

 

...................

 

if it was otherwise, blizzard would not extremely simplify wow to the point of removing talent trees, and incorporate pandas, which do not fit well at all with the hardcore gaming crowd or the general look & feel of the game (A medieval fantasy rpg setting).

 

they are trying to make their game more casual. something needs to be prompting it.

 

it is either :

 

a) the declining revenue

b) the huge profit potential in casual/social gaming crowd

[Grodr]

When we human beings are presented by a dificult challenge, we will fail numerous times but the gratification given from learning and evolving into something fractionally better is nice.

 

When we human beings are presented by a easy challenge, it has no impact nor long term fufillment..we just forget.

[Enako]

I love when people sharing they own, private, subjective opinion suddenly discover that others can have they own - different.

 

People don't like challenge? Are you sure? All people? If yes, I don't belong to human race.

 

95% of the people dont like challenge. how about that.

[Heimskringla]

I love a challenge and I'm definitely classed among the more casual players. One of the worst changes they made to LotrO was dumbing it down, most of us enjoy a challenge and having to think a bit.

 

Please do not change the level of difficulty. I think it's pretty much spot on right now.

 

I'm a casual player who likes to raid sometimes. Also enjoyed LOTRO... but they've definitely removed a fair bit of challenge from the game.

 

Personally, I think Bioware would do well to create difficulty levels available to players aside from hard mode at 50 as well as a 'normal/easy' mode for very casual players.

 

I would like to see each flashpoint/dungeon/instance have normal, intermediate, and hard difficulty. Level scaling would be nice, too.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Heimskringla

[stuw]

I love when people sharing they own, private, subjective opinion suddenly discover that others can have they own - different.

 

People don't like challenge? Are you sure? All people? If yes, I don't belong to human race.

 

rofl. thanks you jerk, i almost spat out my coffee.

 

yes, people don't like challenge. their choice in entertainment and games don't challenge ideas or challenge abilities. people actively avoid hard things

 

proof

 

world of warcraft

pop music

main stream tv

 

 

 

go back to your home planet, you freak.

Edited December 28, 2011 by stuw

[Heimskringla]

95% of the people dont like challenge. how about that.

 

96.5% of all statistics are manufactured on the spot.

[Enako]

96.5% of all statistics are manufactured on the spot.

 

yes. blizzard manufactured this statistics on the spot, and then proceeded to make wrath of the lich king endgame 'content' (ie, raids) more accessible based on that statistic.

 

5% is a statistic that blizzard concluded by checking the number of wow subscribers which had toons that had actually seen endgame raids in vanilla and burning crusade. they also had a post about it in their blog, but now i cannot be arsed to dig around and find it.

[Ralod]

nay you are incorrect. smedley -or whatchamacallit - factor from lucas arts had had prompted the changes. by the time 'make it like wow' enthusiasm entered the mix, swg was the biggest mmo on the market.

 

Smedely is also one of the biggest liars and crooks in the industry. If you look at any of the MMO sites that report numbers you will see how much SWG was dipping, it was no where near the top MMO even then. It for sure took a nosedive after the NGE and all that however.

 

 

 

 

if it was otherwise, blizzard would not extremely simplify wow to the point of removing talent trees, and incorporate pandas, which do not fit well at all with the hardcore gaming crowd or the general look & feel of the game (A medieval fantasy rpg setting).

 

they are trying to make their game more casual. something needs to be prompting it.

 

it is either :

 

a) the declining revenue

b) the huge profit potential in casual/social gaming crowd

 

c) it is something the player base have been asking for in huge numbers since 2007?

 

Once again, the hardcore whiners make you think people are upset about it, yet the hundreds of WoW players I know(many who are playing tor as well) are very excited about it.

 

Here is the real story behind the blizzard numbers you are trumpeting as the end of wow so proudly. Up until this year, blizzards shareholders were confident in them. Then the market crash happened and the stockholders were ancy about every little thing any company does.

 

The truth is, as Mike Morhaime even stated in the same conference call you are quoting, the fluctuations in subscriber numbers was actually normal. As in this has happened in the past. Except that in the past the only reported highs to the press, not lows. But because this is blizzard it was huge news all over, especially to the wow haters of the world.

 

Blizzard has sad the game could be under a million subs and still make a huge profit. The game is not going anywhere, and once people have the new shiny wear off of other games, more then a few will go back to it. MoP will have pandas, you are right. It also is going to be about all out war, and is probably the most exciting growth for the game since BC.

 

In the end, it looks like we agree on hardcore being vocal crybabies, lets not let your unjustified hate of a game I still love cloud that fact:)

[Moltenous]

I agree also. I'm a smugglar and its a pretty hard class to play in pve but I came to swtor for an epic fight and I'm getting just that, don't dumb it down for the whack people who can't fight, they will learn sooner or later

[Tic-]

nay you are incorrect. smedley -or whatchamacallit - factor from lucas arts had had prompted the changes. by the time 'make it like wow' enthusiasm entered the mix, swg was the biggest mmo on the market.

 

 

 

 

SWG was bleeding subs, badly when they went with the NGE.. Smedley worked for SOE, and they attempted to stop the hemmoraging, because WOW was becoming huge..

 

SWG was not the biggest MMO on the market when they tried to make it like WoW....

 

I'll let you guess which MMO was.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Tic-

[kineticdamage]

the problem is, according to blizzard's own statistics, ALL these people you speak of constitute only 5% of wow playerbase. which is the percentage that made it into 'endgame content' in raids.

 

Ah, we're sharing common base here I see. There you have a point, I admit.

And this very point opens up the core debate of it all : to educate players.

 

WoW is responsible for educating mmo masses as becoming this "instant gratification" crowd.

Before LFG tool, badges and easy mode kicked in, I think all of us Vanilla WoW players can admit that we couldn't barely notice such a large amount of instant gratification demanders.

Because at the time, MMO scene was educating players to fight hard for reward (EQ legacy, tbh).

 

It's like Social Security abuses in real life, which you might know well if you're from Europe. Before Social Security gave so many advantages and free indemnisations, we weren't talking about abuses that much. People did have to work in order to gain money, period.

Now, as there are tons of meanings to abuse the actual system, there are tons of people who are cheating on it in order to receive "free money" without working at all.

People were just badly educated on how to receive money.

 

Masses do work like a snowball. The easiest route down the mountain gathers the most snow, which eventually becomes an avalanche.

 

So that's why I never stopped repeating that MMO studios do have a responsibility over the whole MMO scene. They're responsible of what majority of players will expect stuff in the future.

The only one to blame in the current state of MMOs cheesiness is the MMO devs themselves. And we can all agree that Blizzard is the quickest to come in mind, because they dominated for so long.

Edited December 28, 2011 by kineticdamage

[Ralod]

SWG was bleeding subs, badly when they went with the NGE.. Smedley worked for SOE, and they attempted to stop the hemmoraging, because WOW was becoming huge..

 

SWG was not the biggest MMO on the market when they tried to make it like WoW....

 

I'll let you guess which MMO was.

 

 

Exactly:)

 

What kind of logic would it be to break your MMO that was the biggest in the market? Oh people are paying for this and like it, lets break it! The NGE was a desperate move to keep the game afloat, by shunning the hardcore players of the game and bringing in a more casual group. It failed because it was just very poorly done and ending up chasing both groups off.

[Enako]

Smedely is also one of the biggest liars and crooks in the industry. If you look at any of the MMO sites that report numbers you will see how much SWG was dipping, it was no where near the top MMO even then. It for sure took a nosedive after the NGE and all that however.

 

of course i would not rely on someone like him as the proof of anything.

 

and are you aware that swg took its nosedive after smedley has intervened and poked soe - otherwise a very successful company with a lot of different gaming interests - to screw up and fail swg ?

 

c) it is something the player base have been asking for in huge numbers since 2007?

 

pandas ? really ? in my 5 years of wow adventure and active forum participation, i have never seen someone who was requesting pandas into the game.

 

neither have i seen anyone in forums who wanted talent trees removed. yet they happened.

 

there were MANY people who were dead set against any simplification/accessibility for the 'endgame content' (raids, basically), but, it also still happened despite their protests. and wrath of the lich king, in which this happened was the apex of wow with its 18 mil subscribers. which has prompted my guild - which was dead set against wow - to actually come try the game.

 

then they made things harder with cataclysm.

 

Here is the real story behind the blizzard numbers you are trumpeting as the end of wow so proudly. Up until this year, blizzards shareholders were confident in them. Then the market crash happened and the stockholders were ancy about every little thing any company does.

 

The truth is, as Mike Morhaime even stated in the same conference call you are quoting, the fluctuations in subscriber numbers was actually normal. As in this has happened in the past. Except that in the past the only reported highs to the press, not lows. But because this is blizzard it was huge news all over, especially to the wow haters of the world.

 

600 k subscriptions canceled in a quarter, is no joke. fluctuations dont go that haywire in games.

 

moreover, 600 k subscribers from 18 million is only something that comes into equation when those subscriptions are actually among the ACTIVE subscriptions that pay, and therefore will reflect in the quarterly or end year reports of a company.

 

so, it is very safe to assume that that 600 k subscription loss, had had hit blizzard from a spot that considerably affects the revenue. hence the big deal out of it.

 

Blizzard has sad the game could be under a million subs and still make a huge profit.

 

definitely. eve is also still making a profit. but, that profit is not a profit that would satisfy the shareholders of a megacorporation (Vivendi) that fields an aaa rated mmo. and when shareholders start itching, things change.

 

In the end, it looks like we agree on hardcore being vocal crybabies, lets not let your unjustified hate of a game I still love cloud that fact:)

 

not at all. i pvped every day for 1.5 years in wow. i dont regret a single minute of it. and pvping was much more common and fluid, and crowded than before when i did it -thanks to implementation of battleground reward system.

 

while we were waiting for 15 minutes or 20 minutes even in my crowded battlegroup for a bg queue before, after the 'welfare epic' system the queue wait time was down to average 3 seconds. im not kidding. not 1 minute, not 2 minutes, or not even 5 seconds. there would be 4500 people in alterac valley sessions alone in my 4 server battlegroup at 03.00 hours at night. together with all bg sessions if you count the other battlegrounds, they totaled a number of 5500 or so people playing solely battlegrounds at any given hour. these were phenomenal numbers.

 

i was clicking on queue, and i wasnt finding the time to blink before the join prompt came up. there was no downtime in between my battleground runs. all thanks to an accessible battleground reward system.

[Umbral]

you are statistically incorrect.

 

swg was profitable until someone from lucasarts prodded soe to turn swg into a wow clone.

 

then it failed.

 

also, wow lost 600 k subscribers in the last 3 months.

 

so what was your argument again ?

SWG was not profitable, and was losing 50K subs a month BEFORE lucasarts did anything. Gotta love revisionist historians.

 

Anyway, I have read all the same posts from this same type that's supporting the OP before. Repeatedly now. You bunch have always been completely wrong before, repeatedly, and will keep being completely wrong. AoC, WAR, STO, etc etc, all were told their "target audience was RPers and IP fanbois, and in the end, not even close to enough.

 

Like before, I'll sit back and wait, and laugh, but I do have enough class that I don't make "I told you so posts", so you're clear there.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Umbral

[Enako]

Exactly:)

 

What kind of logic would it be to break your MMO that was the biggest in the market? Oh people are paying for this and like it, lets break it! The NGE was a desperate move to keep the game afloat, by shunning the hardcore players of the game and bringing in a more casual group. It failed because it was just very poorly done and ending up chasing both groups off.

 

nge was a move to corner the market wow was going to corner before wow.

 

it may also be prompted by teenage-like tastes and hardcore aspirations of the personas who forced soe to adopt that system. you know, executives are also people too - especially the young silicon valley types. old silicon valley types are even more curious cases with their fixations and quirks. (just looking at what goes on in RIM and its top two personas would tell the entire picture).

 

so im blaming this on two things - either or both of the below :

 

- smedley et al in lucasarts saw wow format as 'the next big thing' or 'cool' or 'the thing'

- they saw that wow was going to corner a market that would be profitable for a few years to come (hardcore gamer market which was noticeable from how everquest was proceeding) so they wanted to cash in on it

 

bad ideas. swg could be as big as how fallout 3 evolved into something much bigger than the original game over a few years. expandability/sandboxing/moddability in games, creates far fetching results in the long run. games become so much bigger that you get lost in them.

 

but thanks to smedley. we have not been able to see zit of that major phenomenon in mmo gaming.

[Enako]

Anyway, I have read all the same posts from this same type that's supporting the OP before. Repeatedly now. You bunch have always been completely wrong before, repeatedly, and will keep being completely wrong. Like before, I'll sit back and wait, and laugh, but I do have enough class that I don't make "I tld you so posts", so you're clear there.

 

wow you are making very sound and rational arguments. you persuaded me that i was wrong. oh how could i not know ........

 

.............

 

be reasonable. dont let your tastes and stuff you identify with, cloud your judgment.

[Skizzik]

I've done every flashpoint up to 30 as well and I have yet to see this "difficulty" you're talking about. In one of the flashpoints, our tank went afk and we just kept pulling without him and were just fine.

[kineticdamage]

I've done every flashpoint up to 30 as well and I have yet to see this "difficulty" you're talking about. In one of the flashpoints, our tank went afk and we just kept pulling without him and were just fine.

 

I didn't find them difficult either tbh, one group I was in did even call me "the crazy rusher".

But let's admit it, we are lightyears away from WoW/Rift/etc leveling dungeons.

[Tic-]

nge was a move to corner the market wow was going to corner before wow.

 

.

 

NGE was a move to put something to do into Kosters overzealous sandbox game.

 

I was a beta tester from day one for SWG (first shuttle they called it), and the day they announced on the beta forums the game was going to be released, folks went pretty nutty telling them the game wasn't ready.

 

It wasn't.

 

There was very very little to do in that game. I believe, if memory serves, there was a single dungeon aboard a Correlian Corvette, that was quite small. You could do endless fedex/kill missions, that were just so basic it was pathetic. Work on your player town, or chase some unkown Jedi character slot, because the game only allowed you one character per server.

 

There were other things to do, but not much (crafting etc) but it had very little Star Wars feel to it.

 

SWG wasn't going to corner anything as it was...

 

it was a mess.

Edited December 28, 2011 by Tic-

[Ralod]

pandas ? really ? in my 5 years of wow adventure and active forum participation, i have never seen someone who was requesting pandas into the game.

 

You must not have been around the Forums in BC days. There was a poll asking what race you would like to see in wow, 2 years running Pandaren won by a massive margin.

 

There was a horde protest that Bloof Elfs were the BC race over padarens. Some guilds refused to allow belfs to join them for a long time because of that protest.

 

And lastly Pandaren were almost the alliance race in BC, but it was changed late in development as they felt it would further imbalance the factions.

 

 

 

You say 600k, mostly Asian country, subscriptions is a huge lose. But even if we go for the year lose figure of 1 million, that is still only around an 8% loss. In a market as fickle as the MMO one is, I'd say that sounds pretty normal, just for wow it is on a massive scale.

[MackumDog]

Pandas in Star Wars ...cooooooool Mine will be called Cha-Cha-******

[Enako]

NGE was a move to put something to do into Kosters overzealous sandbox game.

 

I was a beta tester from day one for SWG, and the day they announced on the beta forums they game was going to be released, folks went pretty nutty telling them the game wasn't ready.

 

It wasn't.

 

game wasnt ready - but not for the reasons you are advocating. for :

 

There was very very little to do in that game. I believe, if memory serves there was a single dungeon aboard a Correlian Corvette, that was quite small. You could do endless fedex/kill missions, that were just so basic it was pathetic. Work on your player town, or chase some unkown Jedi character slot, because the game only allowed you one character per server.

 

There were other things to do, but not much (crafting etc) but it had very little Star Wars feel to it.

 

SWG wasn't going to corner anything as it was...

 

it was a mess.

 

in that 'has very little to do game', the guild i founded has grown from 2 people to 120 people in 1.5 years, set up the biggest player city in eclipse server in dantooine (along with approximately 5-6 other major cities manned by similarly crowded guilds - and ours was even mid-range guild), and has engaged in activities and trading for a total of 2.5 years.

 

granted A LOT has quit after nge was done. but that is not mainly due to hardcoreing necessities or this or that - it was because soe had been totally erasing all the effort that was made characterwise - they made you grind 22 professions to open jedis, and then made jedi available to all. they had made people used to a very flexible, very engaging skill/talent system, and then totally erased it to dumb it down to a wow clone.

 

.............

 

the game was not ready due to myriad of bugs that were existing in the game from the start. excuse me, but i and my guild, neither the approx 6+ over 100 man guilds that has participated in the 'server wide rebel alliance' meetings in swg after a year had had found lack of anything to do in the game.

 

you come out as a hardcore progression gamer type who wants to see a path in front of you that you can progress, in set fashion. i know, because by then i was also someone like you, and i was rather out of my element in swg initially, while all those people were busy doing a lot of things, i was wandering around - with only thing i did being setting up the city and managing it into prosperity.

 

and i enjoyed it very much.

 

so, your argument is basically a hardcore gamer's perspective as opposed to a casual gamers, again. and it shares the same propositions like any other argument that has been made in same fashion.

[TheSwamper]

yes. and the main problem with all this scheme is, the 'hardcore minority', my former crowd, wants everyone to be obliged to THEIR game style :

 

- all of the game should be a grand machine of grind/reward, and they should stand over anyone who has less time to put into menial grinding like them, and entire gameplay should shape up accordingly.

 

the 'casual gaming crowd' they so deride however, does not want everyone to be subjected to their playstyle. hell, they dont even talk in forums, constituting any vocal majority. if they are suppressed in a game, they just quit the game silently and go play something else. like how 600,000 people did in the last 3 months in wow.

 

^This.

 

I consider myself a 'hardcore casual' in that I play a crazy amount of hours but I do not want particularly difficult content. If the design of content is such that I'm expected to die over and over to "learn it", then I scoff at such a design. Dying over and over is not fun, and I seriously doubt the sincerity of those who would claim otherwise.

 

I don't mind a little challenge, but even when taking on a new instance for the very first time, if the party wipes and has to run back more than two or three times, that content is less interesting to me, not more because of it.

 

Slow, steady and CONSTANT progression or it's reroll or find another game.