APAC server & SWTOR promotions

[obek_kwae]

Flawed argument. If they genuinely wanted a fresh start, ALL boosts should have been disabled. Can't have a fresh economy when people can have 70/80's on day 1/hour 1 earning high level credit income instantly.

[Samcuu]

39 minutes ago, obek_kwae said:

Flawed argument. If they genuinely wanted a fresh start, ALL boosts should have been disabled. Can't have a fresh economy when people can have 70/80's on day 1/hour 1 earning high level credit income instantly.

How much is high level credit income? 100k? Lol cmon the original servers economy is messed up because of credit expoits, has nothing to do with lvl 80 players making credits the way the game intended them to. 

[eabevella]

2 hours ago, Samcuu said:

This is a made up thing in ur mind. It has good reviews on steam and every single month there's a couple of youTube channels reviewing the game that almost always giving it rave reviews. Reality is that as a base game with the 8 stories it's a fantastic rpg, and you can easily sink 100 hours into the game while having a blast, if not more. The idea that there are no new players is also incorrect btw. It's really only on the forums where u see the veteran players complain about the game. Ppl play through the vanilla stories and then leave after they get to the expansions or end game because it does fall off a pretty steep cliff at that point. 

This.

People should stop hyperfocus on APAC server because even though it's a nice new thing, it won't change the root.

Let me ask: when a new/old player ask you "why should I (re)subscribe the game?" what would you answer?

"they left for x years, the game is new to them" No. The game is not new. The UI/Gearing system is new (better or worse if up to debate). But the contents are old. If they left before KOTxx, then sure, I'd say subscribe a month and play the story, it's totally worth it. In fact, I've been using this to lure people into playing. But that's 1 month of subscription. After you play through all the story, the game is empty. It has little replay value except the 8 class stories and you can do it easily as f2p. You can't keep the rpg part of the players when most % of the rpg contents and the best part of the game is f2p. It doesn't matter whether you have 300ms or 10ms ping when you just want to play the story.

There's no constant new story, and no constant group activities (pvp and pve raids) that can make people think "I'll keep subscribe because I get new stuffs every few months" And "new stuffs" I mean new actual contents not making useless UI or gearing changes or new space barbie items. We have what? 10 raids in 10 years? and like half of them were released 10 years ago? how do you attract the mmo part of the players when there's no mmo contents? It doesn't matter whether you have 300ms or 10ms ping when there's no new group contents to play with.

Send all the emails, buy all the ads, drug the Disney CEO into making this game on their #1 promotion list, but as long as you don't get to the root of the problem, it won't help attracting more people as long as the game has the same 10+ years old contents where 90% of them were made years ago.

[Cattooo]

I decided to resub because of the new server and I am absolutely loving the feeling of it. It is a true Fresh Start and I hope to Odin that they do not allow transfers any time soon. Everything is like it was when I first started playing in 2012. It feels better, comfortable and familiar. No billions of creds, no ridiculously priced (save for some who think people are millionaires already) sales on the GTN. I have a brand new legacy. 

I never started a new one on a previous server because I didn't see the point. But with a Fresh Start, I truly hope they keep it for a long time. No characters brought over, no items being able to be transferred and then sold, increasing the levels of credits in the game.

I know that in some point in time, it may well revert to how it is on the servers already, but I am going to enjoy it as much as I can before that happens.

 

 

And I realise I didn't give any ideas for advertising or anything, I just wanted to pitch in my two-cents worth.

[Jarcen]

5 hours ago, xxSHOONYxx said:

SWTOR did not shy away from marketing before launch/after launch either. At launch it was estimated they spent 100-200 million dollars on marketing alone.
They did some stuff like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHT51XxPqNQ
Which meant a worldwide advertisement since at the time it was a very popular series, if i recall correctly it was an episode around swtor or with a big part of it.

Issue was not advertising but the game that has fundamental and core issues. Tried to be everything and ended up being nothing. They decided to just focus on one thing in 4.0 and failed badly and population plummeted for the second time after release.
Game has no "staying" power, you see review gaming/mmo channels on youtube saying it's a good game but can't be anyone's main mmo because endgame is lackluster. If you pair up star wars as a whole is not doing good lately with disney and KK, game issues and lack of identity outside of CM simulator, advertising won't help much.

Without paying money they don't have/EA won't give, the only way i can think of is to go on an interview Jason Schreier style where they are allowed to promote a bit the game/new server if they answer stuff about bioware too. Because the fall of what once was a great developer will create tons of views and then people will report on it. But EA will never allow it, especially when they are on the late stages of dreadwolf.

The minimum they could/should have done was to send mails to everyone with existing accounts/existing accounts and inactive for a period of time, with the news or some special rewards/event if they come back. 
Pretty sure if they bring the OG Dark vs Light event on the new server many will flock there, since it is basically an event to keep people from leaving after kotfe failed for everyone to do all the old content/fresh start plus the xp armor

Well first things off, the marketing you spoke of was then; circumstances now are different in that it's been more than 10 years since that time. Over time of course people move on, find new games or just face real life in general. Clearly now the game needs to be pushed aggressively again. One of the biggest draws of the game is that it still consistently gets positive reviews. For a game that's more than 1 years old, that is impressive.

It can be spun that the game is still "in progress"--meaning that the story is still evolving. Most MMOs are like that anyway--stories are often open-ended with no real resolution, since having an actual end game would defeat the point of an MMO, in which it is basically a community of players getting into the game each day, nothing else. So MMOs typically have weak end games. They're not single player games with a resolved ending, but with an evolving storyline that goes on indefinitely.

The strength of the game lies with its storytelling overall. That has always been the draw of SWTOR and that should be the marketing focus. Star Wars as a brand is still very solid, despite Disney handling it very badly. Even more that SWTOR takes place at a time far removed from what Disney is focusing on so far. Many SW fans are protective of what Disney hasn't touched yet and that again is another draw for the game--it has content that hasn't been touched yet by Disney and is possibly the last remaining active lore of the old EU.

Now I'm not certain about the official Twitch channel of SWTOR--haven't really looked into it yet, but from what I've read they again lack the marketing savvy to really keep players engaged. If you play or follow Wargaming's Twitch channels for World of Tanks and World of Warships, you can see the devs and management there really engaged with the players. I read that SWTOR doesn't even have drops every livestream, something that Wargaming never fails to have every livestream. That is marketing in itself and what keeps players engaged. Broadsword should take notes on that and really focus on player retention, and that is one way of retaining players--by positive engagement.

Yeah, I really think having more events ingame would keep players engaged. That is especially true for Shae Vizla. Anyone familiar with MMORPGs know that weekly ingame events are something players look forward to. Again I remember Ragnarok Online and the weekly War of Emporium (WoE) that happens on weekends and is server-wide. Something like that is needed in SWTOR. Having ingame events is another way of keeping players engaged. I say that as a personal experience since I was a Game Sage for a game in Aeria Games from 2012 to 2015, and one of the things we did then as GS was to facilitate weekly ingame events for the players.

[BulbulusTheGreat]

idk honestly i don't know why SWTOR isn't promoted anywhere, if not for my friend i wouldn't ever know this game exists despite knowing about star wars in general even less known legends stuff, its kinda disturbing how unless you actively search for SWTOR you'll never ever hear about it anywhere, like even in MMO/gaming communities you barely hear about it, its only when you purposelly look up MMO games or something swtor related does swtor show up, same thing with SW content, if you look up star wars games stuff everything is about jedi survivor and pretty much every other star wars game out there except swtor, its most underrated game i know of, if i was a paranoid type of person i'd think that someone is actively trying to make swtor irrelevant.


i don't think they have will power or resources for something big like steam, idk why but they just don't so i think that at the very least they should do it via youtube, like if raid shadow legends can do it why can't swtor? that game was promoted everywhere and its a mobile game nobody plays, why wouldn't broadsword reach to some youtubers that game and get them to promote SWTOR? idk how that stuff works but it really doesn't seem to be all that hard, it doesn't have to be a big campaign but i think just getting few ads out there might make a lot of difference.

Edited November 30, 2023 by BulbulusTheGreat

[TrixxieTriss]

8 hours ago, DWho said:

One of the big problems you are going to have in advertising the game to the APAC region is that SWTOR is predominantly an English language game. Once you get outside Australia and New Zealand the number of proficient english speakers drops off quickly (and the languages spoken are very different so translation is not particularly easy). While that may not impact PVP (which is basically a button pushing exercise with little need for coordination beyond the basics), all of the PVE content either is delivered heavily in English or communication between players needs to be in a common language. If the game had a Chinese (or even Japanese or Korean) language version, I think it would have been much more successful in the APAC region than it was. I'm not sure the APAC server can survive without US players playing on it.

We never had American players on the original servers 🤷🏻‍♀️. Plus I had people from India, Malaysia, Japan & Korea in my old APAC guild. All were perfectly capable of using English in the game. We don’t need the US players if Broadsword actually advertise the game to the region. 

[TrixxieTriss]

5 hours ago, eabevella said:

they left for x years, the game is new to them" No. The game is not new. The UI/Gearing system is new (better or worse if up to debate). But the contents are old. If they left before KOTxx, then sure, I'd say subscribe a month and play the story

The original APAC servers were closed & merged in 2013. That’s 10 years ago, we’ll before 4.0 was released. So yeah, the game has 10 years of stuff that those players haven’t seen. 

[TrixxieTriss]

7 hours ago, Samcuu said:

It's a harmless thing that apac players shouldn't be triggered about considering if they are still playing the game they are already accustomed to the ping on the NA servers

I was ready to quit again if they hadn’t opened the APAC server because the “so called harmless ping” is much worse on the US servers since they went to AWS. You can get accustomed to it, but it’s not good or enjoyable.
So please don’t say 220-330ms ping is harmless. It’s anything but harmless, which is why so many APAC players abandon the game when we lost our servers. And that’s why I’m asking Broadsword to reach out to APAC gamers because they don’t know we have a server again. 

Edited November 30, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[TrixxieTriss]

Can we please get back to ideas on how Broadsword can promote the APAC server to the actual APAC gamers 🤦‍♀️

Edited November 30, 2023 by TrixxieTriss

[Lord_Malganus]

14 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Then what was the point in opening up a new APAC server & then not even informing the old APAC players they had done this?

Good question! What was Broadsword's answer to that?

14 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

 If they don’t promote the server, it is destined to fail because US & EU players don’t want to play with massive ping anymore than APAC players do.

Another valid concern Broadsword needs to address!

14 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

So once the novelty of the new server wears off, they’ll go back to their old servers & the APAC server will die.

I guess that is up to them to decide?

14 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

If they do nothing at all to get the message out to non playing swtor gamers, then this whole thing had been a cynical waste of time.

Agreed.

14 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Setup to fail all because they didn’t do the most basic marketing to the old APAC players or the APAC region. Something that could be done for much less money than making any new content at all. 

Agreed that It was not a smart well thought out decision.

 

I was happy from the start to see APAC get a server and really do want it to succeed. While all your points above are valid, have any of them been addressed or answered officially? With their longstanding propensity for completely ignoring player input and concerns, how is discussing what the developers should have done or need to be doing, going to make it actually happen?

Edited November 30, 2023 by Lord_Malganus

[Spikanor]

10 hours ago, Samcuu said:

This is a made up thing in ur mind. It has good reviews on steam and every single month there's a couple of youTube channels reviewing the game that almost always giving it rave reviews. Reality is that as a base game with the 8 stories it's a fantastic rpg, and you can easily sink 100 hours into the game while having a blast, if not more. The idea that there are no new players is also incorrect btw. It's really only on the forums where u see the veteran players complain about the game. Ppl play through the vanilla stories and then leave after they get to the expansions or end game because it does fall off a pretty steep cliff at that point. 

there are other platforms also that people use for there trash talk he like reddit or youtube or facebook that are platforms there not controle what can be talk about.

the reason the new server is failing hard is that there have mess up again since the new server is now showing a lot of problems there have implat in the game what is hurting the new players a lot.

there quick travel fee is good for old players that have all a lot of credits but its hurting a lot the new players since there cant make a lot of credits from the start and if you remember all the 8 class story's on the starter planet you know where the end story from the starter planet is going to end and how far it is walking back to the starting town without any mount or speeder that is what the new server is showing us what is wrong with there quick trave fee is doing bad for the new players thats why most players go back to there old server again since there have a lot of credits there and not on the new server.

 

if there wane increase the population on the new server there need to chance the quick travel fee in the game or add more side missions on the starting planet agian.

for the quick travel fee there can me it so that players that are lvl 1 t/m lvl 10 pay no quick travel fee at all but when there reach lvl 11 there need to pay the quick travel fee so there have some time to save some credits before there need to spent then.

or add more side missions on the starting planets again there have remove in 6.0.

2 good solutions to fix the problems the game has in general and the new server also for new players.

 

[TrixxieTriss]

54 minutes ago, Lord_Malganus said:

With their longstanding propensity for completely ignoring player input and concerns, how is discussing what the developers should have done or need to be doing, going to make it actually happen?

I was hoping the get player support & ideas to ask Broadsword to try implementing some of them. Because I have a sneaking suspicion they no longer have a marketing department for that. 

[eabevella]

1 minute ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I was hoping the get player support & ideas to ask Broadsword to try implementing some of them. Because I have a sneaking suspicion they no longer have a marketing department for that. 

Buy some gaming journal articles? Ride the BG3 train and promotes it as a well versed mmoRPG focusing on the RPG part, especially the stories and the fact that it is fully voice acted? People are asking on the BG3 forum and while a lot of people have played and recommended Bioware games, little of them even know about SWTOR because to them, it's MMO, not RPG, and let's be real, the game's only selling point now is the RPG part, at least the vanilla stories are still worth a full game price.

I would feel like I'm scamming my friend if I promote this game as "come play SWTOR we have APAC server and great PvP/PvE contents" But I always say SWTOR has the best base story that's worthy of dumping 100+hr in.

[Lord_Malganus]

43 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

I was hoping the get player support & ideas to ask Broadsword to try implementing some of them. Because I have a sneaking suspicion they no longer have a marketing department for that. 

I certainly hope the support grows and Broadsword listens. 

 

[DWho]

4 hours ago, TrixxieTriss said:

We don’t need the US players if Broadsword actually advertise the game to the region. 

I think this is a fatal mistake for the APAC server to believe this.

[SoyElSenado]

23 minutes ago, Anhkriva said:

SWTOR is single player game with co-op option, at least that's how most players play it.

Yeah this is true. When I tell friends about the game I always use the term “multiplayer-lite” or something like that. The problem with this game is they continue to not put any resources into things that keep bringing consistent value to players and keep them subscribed. PvP systems are total garbage and have no longevity to them as there is no progression/competitive aspect. PvE systems have progression but they don’t do anything with them. They’ve released one raid in 2 years, other mmos have one every few months. These things are the bread and butter of MMORPGs and putting effort to make these things at least serviceable is what keeps people subscribed. Story updates every 6 months do not do that. If they took 25% of what they put into story away and moved it to the actual game features (PvE and PvP), they would maintain more players. 
 

4 hours ago, eabevella said:

I would feel like I'm scamming my friend if I promote this game as "come play SWTOR we have APAC server and great PvP/PvE contents" But I always say SWTOR has the best base story that's worthy of dumping 100+hr in.

This kind of goes exactly with my point. For APAC players a lot of whom may have quit in 2013 or so when their servers closed, the draw of the vanilla stories isn’t going to do it for them like it would a new player. These folks are also coming back to a totally different game, one that is not focused on endgame stuff but rather moderate story updates. You might get these APAC players back to subscribe for 2-3 months to replay some vanilla stories and play through all the new xpac story content since 2013, but due to the abysmal endgame systems I’d wager most of them wouldn’t stick around. 

[Lord_Malganus]

Swtor has no draw left for long time players. The only draw the game has left is for brand new players or those that never finished the 8 original story lines and maybe up to SOR.

Edited November 30, 2023 by Lord_Malganus

[OlBuzzard]

22 minutes ago, Spikanor said:

the reason this new server is failing hard is that there not have make a good long therm plan for it.

its the same there not have done with the game it self also.

if you not have a long therm plan for the game it self and you release a new server then you can see all its going to fail since people wane see what there long therm plan is with the game it self before there wane put some effort in the new server.

to release a new server you need to have first a stable game it self and when the game it self is unstable then it has no use to release a new server that is going to work good.

and what is also one of the reasons this new server is failing is that there never ever have promote the game it self outside the forum at all.

 

How hypocritical !!  You're demonstrating contempt for NOT mentioning the game outside of this forum board .... and yet you're insisting that nothing be done!

This thread has been hijacked! 

There are a number of reasons why SWTOR is in the shape that it's in.  ANYONE that's been around for the duration of the games existence (with more than two brain cells) KNOWS that... WITHOUT question!  THAT IS A SEPERATE THREAD !!!!!!!!!!!!

The original theme behind the OP was to simply to engage in a brief promotion to those that now have access to the APAC network and have been away for the largest portion of the 10 years of SWTOR existence and try to re-introduce the game to ANYONE in that area.  It may work ... It may not!  

As for the status of the game ... I guess the best thing to do is just let the entire thing die and get it over with.  That would bring a smile to the face of several people who are posting in this thread (if for no other reason than to prove that THEY are right!).

NO!  Just simply NO!

I have my own issues with what has happened over the years!  I AM NOT HAPPY with SWTOR right now!  BUT I see no reason to punish someone who would like to try getting the word out to an area that was cut off YEARS ago!

WELCOME APAC players !!!

[xxSHOONYxx]

11 hours ago, Jarcen said:

Well first things off, the marketing you spoke of was then; circumstances now are different in that it's been more than 10 years since that time. Over time of course people move on, find new games or just face real life in general. Clearly now the game needs to be pushed aggressively again. One of the biggest draws of the game is that it still consistently gets positive reviews. For a game that's more than 1 years old, that is impressive.

They did more, like this one when it went f2p
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS5H6CxmROg
And they did some more through the years especially the trailers that have an average of costing 1m each minute.
But no matter how much they spend on advertising the game as i said is completely flawed, they tried to make a continuation of kotor, but also as a mmo. What part of the players were happy with that? People that wanted kotor 3 were not happy because it was not kotor 3, people that wanted a star wars mmo were not happy because the mmo part was an afterthought. 
Lets say they make a new successful add that costs 5 millions and brings 100k new people, 70k are f2p because the best stories of the game are now f2p, 30k sub because they liked base game, from those 30k, 25k leave first couple of months after they see once the stories are done there is little to do, or some still play but just go f2p because the only thing under a subscription is OPs that have been left to rot for years.
5 million in advertising to make with luck 2-3 million.
Advertising is done by a percentage of what they foresee the game to make, if they don't make advertising is because they don't think they will gain more than what they need to spend. And as bad and low effort EA is, EA actually put a lot of money on this game and it simply did not work on the scale a star wars mmo should have. 

And you can't compare world of tanks to swtor or any mmo, in world of tanks last time i played it was a $$$ fest, you could even buy premium ammunition with cash, totally different style of game and monetization. World of tanks is more like the garbage mobile games with $$$$$$$$ in everything. 
 

11 hours ago, Jarcen said:

The strength of the game lies with its storytelling overall. That has always been the draw of SWTOR and that should be the marketing focus. Star Wars as a brand is still very solid

If they truly want focus on story then they need to get rid of subscription and change their monetization to something like New World because story doesn't keep people subscribed.
Star wars a solid brand depends what you define as solid, Disney has been able to get L's lately, and like a month ago south park made a whole episode mocking them and especially KK. Who would have thought that prioritizing a message to feel moraly superior instead of good stories and dumping on the beloved OG characters would alienate so many people...

 

11 hours ago, Jarcen said:

I read that SWTOR doesn't even have drops every livestream, something that Wargaming never fails to have every livestream. That is marketing in itself and what keeps players engaged.

 If i recall correctly jackie once replied to this, but don't remember what was said. They probably have not worked on the code to make it possible

[BulbulusTheGreat]

1 hour ago, Lord_Malganus said:

Swtor has no draw left for long time players. The only draw the game has left is for brand new players or those that never finished the 8 original story lines and maybe up to SOR.

this is up to taste more than anything, i know this first hand becuse only thing that finishing SOR and ziost did for me is get the sub for first time to unlock future expansions becuse i really got into the game, putting a sub before KOTFE was really smart marketing in my case becuse i just grew to really love the game and got blocked by "oh hey you need to pay for this game you really love but the sub is really cheap anyway" and the same day i couldn't progress more i got a sub to unlock everything.


what im saying is that "draw" is different for everyone, origin stories are great and all but they're not entire content, in reality they're very small part of huge content game has and if person really gets into the game they'll most likely sub at least once to continue playing the story.

[Samcuu]

3 hours ago, Anhkriva said:

SWTOR is single player game with co-op option, at least that's how most players play it.

Having ppl zoom all over the map with no cd on quick travel is a great disservice to the game, especially for low level newish players. One of its biggest attributes is the gorgeous planets they designed. When u play an mmorpg you want to feel like the world is vast and alive, and the different locales all have a distinctive feel, it pulls u into the rp aspect. Experiencing that is important to form a bond with the game, especially an mmorpg. 

[TrixxieTriss]

5 hours ago, DWho said:

I think this is a fatal mistake for the APAC server to believe this.

Why would US people want to purposely have 200-300ms lag 🤷🏻‍♀️

[Samcuu]

4 minutes ago, TrixxieTriss said:

Why would US people want to purposely have 200-300ms lag 🤷🏻‍♀️

As has been discussed if u want a fresh start server and ur only playing story the server lag isn't really a big issue. 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Samcuu

[TrixxieTriss]

5 minutes ago, Samcuu said:

As has been discussed of u want a fresh start server and ur only playing story the server lag isn't really a big issue. 

Fair enough.

So can we now get back onto the topic of how Broadsword can promote the game directly to APAC gamers.