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SWTOR - Too big to fail?


Flyjedi

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Say what you want about the game. You love it, you hate it. It made you laugh, it made you cry, it was better than Cats (don't Google it, it's not an MMO).

 

My real fear is that for whatever reasons the game *doesn't* do well and either loses a lot of money, or does not meet its fiscal expectations. This will hurt future MMO gaming ventures as investors will be scared to end up like "that star wars game".

 

Now, I am not saying I think the game will fail, or that I want it to fail. I am saying the exact opposite. If this game does well, there is a lot more opportunity for new games down the road to get the huge financial backing it takes to make a quality MMO.

 

What do you think?

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If a game is bad no matter how much money and hype went into it is never too big to fail, in fact it needs to.

 

But SWTOR doesn't have to worry as it is an amazing game and the population is still growing (2.5 million according to the investment group Crowley & Associates) I think some folks on this forum desperately want it to fail and would probably sell their souls to make it happen....but the game has a bright future.

Edited by Jett-Rinn
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Well, if it's a massive success the industry will just be an endless haze of EQ clones. People need to try new things in gaming as a whole. The budgets don't really allow that sadly, too much money to risk on something untried. Sony took a chance and made an MMO that was actually different from the awful sandboxes that ruled the prehistoric internet, hopefully more daring ventures are coming in the future!

 

Maybe a huge investment in a boat full of holes would wake up the industry. Of course I really don't want TOR to sink, it's done some awesome things that I hope have changed future MMO design philosophy.

Edited by Quip
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Make its money back? Are you serious...

Game cost $150m dollars, so with purchase fees it only needs a few million subscribers and it will have made back its money within a few months. Surely making its money back isnt the question here, its how much more it will make and how many more people does it have the potential to bring into mmo gaming! They just need to sort out the bugs and issues which they should have done at beta stage so they can be working on imporving the content and responding to the community. As they released the game before it was ready they have created for themselves a storm of crap to get stuck in resolving which will slow down developement.

 

They will make their money back but seriously guys, learn for the MMO's that have come before, not just in stealing their interfaces but look at their launch issues and try and do it better cos this launch has been the worst mmo lauch ever!

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You can be 100% sure that MMO development is considered a somewhat risky project by investors and game development companies.

 

But thats not a problem,

 

Take SWTOR for example, I think Bioware said that 1.5 million players joined SWTOR for the holidays. That is at about $50 for every person who bought SWTOR or $75,000,000. Even if most people leave, Bioware and AE are certain to recoop the money they spend on this game by sales + after a few months of subscriptions ( even to the cost that some people claim of $300,000,000 ). The game could tank completely after that and neither companies nor investors would lose money.

 

On the flip side, the possible monetary gain from an MMO is be outright insane. WoW has been printing gold for years. Blizzard has more money than it knows what to with it (probably gives it to shareholds and to fat bonuses for execs). We are talking about insane amount of money from monthly subscription for a fraction of the cost to continue development and updates.

 

On a sidenote, I dont think Bioware will lose money at all. Although I dont this game being a huge sucess either. Lets face it, no matter how you look at it, the game was not finished. There is no serious PvP and no serious endgame PvE, and that takes at least 5 months to develop even for Blizzard that has been doing it for years and is able to crack out content like crazy.

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No game is to big to fail. If the game does fail it is because Bioware failed to address the biggest concerns of the community in a timely matter. UI needs to be adjustable. Guild tools need to be in place(guild banks anyone!). The plethora of bugs that need squashed(how did so many bugs get passed beta and into live?). Combat responsiveness needs addressed.

 

So many other things that I could spend a day listing them...for a game that is was touted as being the most complete and polished game ever released.

 

I do not think so. Can a game this big fail?

 

Of course it can.

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The game is a mixed bag.

 

Some things work as promised. It is very stable, there is a ton of voice-overs, it really is a story-driven MMO, and the game mechanics are solid. Many of the game's problems are hidden under the surface, no doubt a consequence of developer priorities considering reviewers first, players second. That leaves a game that looks polished at a glimpse, but has huge responsiveness issues, same-ish ability trees between same-faction classes, unadjusted encounters with over-the-place difficulty, an extremely bad progress curve where you'll outlevel a lot of non-optional content, useless crafting paths, missing features, and a growing list of other serious problems. Even with all its problem it still is probably the smoothest MMO release in years.

 

You can't measure an MMO's success during its first month of life, however. The official numbers (one million active accounts right now) is meaningless. Age of Conan got more than one million box sales, but only about 700K were active after the free month, half that number a month later, and the game was dead weight in the 100K range after that. Rift's launch numbers are similar: it is faring better, but shows a clear decline. There is nothing right now to see if TOR is going to follow this path or not.

 

My personal opinion: the game will do OK, but it is not going to be a WoW killer. The numbers will be good enough to convince EA not to pull the plug, but not good enough to convince others to invest $300 million in more WoW clones. And it is all right and deserved IMHO.

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Well, there is Guild Wars 2 aswell you know.

 

The game is too far into development to just be cancelled like that.

 

There is also Tera and that Secret World.

 

SWTOR is not the 'big thing' seriously :)

 

Anyway, it will succeed, just not with me being around in it. I paid for the game, a preorder, so EA and Bioware can keep those money, but I cancelled my sub, as I got a very deep interest in Guild Wars 2, when I found out Jeremy Soule was going to add music to it.

 

And that man is a genius when it comes to music for fantasy games.

 

SWTOR is great, and Bioware just needs a little time to fix the bugs and become a little more experienced with MMO's as a whole.

 

It was a fun week, but it did not please me as I did hope it would.

Edited by Cankiie
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No game is to big to fail. My biggest concern for this game is EA. If at any point this game fails to meet EA's financial expectations we're doomed. Don't believe me? Then you obviously don't remember what they did to Westwood Studios and Earth and Beyond.
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