[Effect]

It might be huge in other mediums, but we are talking about videogames here. There´s the perception among gamers that SW games are generally shity cash grabs, and as you say... Lucasarts has done nothing to dispel that notion. So the prospective player base for SW titles has never been even remotely near the most other AAA franchises. You can´t compare SW with the Halo, Mass Effect, Blizzard games, Valve games, Elder Scrolls, Call of Duty, EA Sports franchises, it will never sell as well. I think EA and Lucasarts thought the Old Republic would sell huge numbers and have massive subscription numbers just because it was Star Wars... they grossly misjudged the market.

They also misjudge the type of game someone who would be interested in Star Wars would enjoy. Perhaps I'm wrong but I always thought Star Wars Galaxies was fairly popular until the developers started chasing World of Warcraft after seeing it do incredible numbers (which was a first). SWG was it's own thing. Closer to Ultima Online then Everquest and then eventually WoW. I figured it had solid numbers at least when Jump to Lightspeed came out.

Its selling point was that you could exist in the Star Wars universe. You could hunt things, take part in the civil war, visit locations from the films, books, and comics. You'd encounter iconic characters. In that you had a few quest lines (the themeparks which I think were there before the combat upgrade), mission terminals (ala Anarchy Online) that provided random content for you to deal with either solo or as a group to get better rewards. Bounty Hunters could actually hunt other players via mission terminals I believe. If you want to craft you could. You could even have factories out in the field gathering materials.If you wanted to build a city you could. Have a house in the middle of nowhere where you can be alone you could do that as well. If you wanted to fly in space and dogfight it out with Imperials, Rebels, or pirates you eventually could as well. If you wanted to just hang out in the cities, spaceports, or out in the middle of nowhere you could. You were your characters and you got out of it what you put into it. A "epic" storyline wasn't needed to push you or to make you feel important.

I think this a problem with mmos in general. Many (not all) don't allow you to just exist in the world you are playing in. Don't allow you to really just pretend for a few hours.

Edit: Hmm. I think I finally understand (in words) what my problem with recent mmos are and what I'm really looking for that I'd not finding. Wow.

[BattleMonkey]

They also misjudge the type of game someone who would be interested in Star Wars would enjoy. Perhaps I'm wrong but I always thought Star Wars Galaxies was fairly popular until the developers started chasing World of Warcraft after seeing it do incredible numbers (which was a first). SWG was it's own thing. Closer to Ultima Online then Everquest and then eventually WoW. I figured it had solid numbers at least when Jump to Lightspeed came out.

SWG was failing long before they attempted to WoW it up.

[doomquake]

whatever they did, they did it right, because I bought it

..and played it for 2 hours and uninstalled it.

[Effect]

SWG was failing long before they attempted to WoW it up.

Was it more from a dislike of the game or that more mmos were releasing around that time and people were willing to try more games? I think Everquest 2, City of Heroes, and World of Warcraft all came out a year after it.

[markatisu]

It might be huge in other mediums, but we are talking about videogames here. There´s the perception among gamers that SW games are generally shity cash grabs, and as you say... Lucasarts has done nothing to dispel that notion. So the prospective player base for SW titles has never been even remotely near the most other AAA franchises. You can´t compare SW with the Halo, Mass Effect, Blizzard games, Valve games, Elder Scrolls, Call of Duty, EA Sports franchises, it will never sell as well. I think EA and Lucasarts thought the Old Republic would sell huge numbers and have massive subscription numbers just because it was Star Wars... they grossly misjudged the market.

You don't even want to acknowledge Force Unleashed do you? Yeah that was not big at all, nope no way no how

You are right at the perception but people still keep buying the games in droves. Also you exempt the Lego games which is pretty shitty on your part given that SW Lego sells better than any other Lego game, meaning the license has its power

Also how do you know they misjudged anything, by this time in its life cycle two other big time big license MMO's had went under (DC Online and Star Trek Online). But DC Universe and Star Trek are shitty no power license too right?

Wow @ this thread, some of the unreal shit being said (sigh)

[BattleMonkey]

Was it more from a dislike of the game or that more mmos were releasing around that time and people were willing to try more games? I think Everquest 2, City of Heroes, and World of Warcraft all came out a year after it.

It was due to the game being a disaster. The game was one of the most ambitious games made MMO wise but it was just a massive mess of a game. Almost every skill tree in the game had skills that did not work properly for months. Patches after patch would come out to fix one thing, yet it never would actually do anything, and when they did fix something, they broke a bunch of other things. Game features stayed broken for long periods of time.... the pvp battlegrounds on planets never worked right and eventually after months of trying to fix them they simply removed them from the game. The amount of bugs in the game was crazy. They kept rehauling entire class trees at a time, which didn't go well when the game had from what I remember 32 professions to choose from, all wanting attention. Balance was all over the place in many aspects..... and then the whole Jedi issue.... oh boy.

You are also dealing with a game that was pre WOW culture and sub numbers. Game peaked at around 400k people only after launch and it was just down hill after. Combat upgrade was meant with alot of disdain as well..... all of this was pre NGE and their attempt to simplify the game into something more WoW like.

SWG was great in concept, but it was a massive failure. It did have lot of great things about it, but it had ton of bad that caused ppl to drop it.

[Disheveled_Zen]

They also misjudge the type of game someone who would be interested in Star Wars would enjoy. Perhaps I'm wrong but I always thought Star Wars Galaxies was fairly popular until the developers started chasing World of Warcraft after seeing it do incredible numbers (which was a first). SWG was it's own thing. Closer to Ultima Online then Everquest and then eventually WoW. I figured it had solid numbers at least when Jump to Lightspeed came out.

SWG was never as popular as many people would have you to believe. Sure it was steady, but the sub numbers weren't massively thriving. Yes I played it, and yes it was a fun game that allowed you to freely go and do what you wanted, but it also had a list a mile long of things that were flat out wrong with the game.

Like I said earlier, the problem is they played it too safe with SWTOR's features. I mean generic skill trees for character progression when so many other games have done it better. Even Rift pulled the skill tree system off by making it new and semi unique.

The stories are great and they have kept me playing so far, but I wont lie and say I don't spacebar through everything besides class specific story lines.

If they want to continue growing, and not see a downward spiral off lost subs, they need to move away from the simplistic creation of more raids, flashpoints, and warzones and give us something more substantial. Ship housing, better space combat, outfit slots, better ambiance on the worlds, better performance, dynamic events, world PvP and sieges, and the list goes on.

[Effect]

It was due to the game being a disaster. The game was one of the most ambitious games made MMO wise but it was just a massive mess of a game. Almost every skill tree in the game had skills that did not work properly for months. Patches after patch would come out to fix one thing, yet it never would actually do anything, and when they did fix something, they broke a bunch of other things. Game features stayed broken for long periods of time.... the pvp battlegrounds on planets never worked right and eventually after months of trying to fix them they simply removed them from the game. The amount of bugs in the game was crazy. They kept rehauling entire class trees at a time, which didn't go well when the game had from what I remember 32 professions to choose from, all wanting attention. Balance was all over the place in many aspects..... and then the whole Jedi issue.... oh boy. You are also dealing with a game that was pre WOW culture and sub numbers. Game peaked at around 400k people only after launch and it was just down hill after. Combat upgrade was meant with alot of disdain as well..... all of this was pre NGE and their attempt to simplify the game into something more WoW like.

Yikes. Maybe my memory is bad but I don't recall things being that bad but then again I was young at the time and jumping around to a lot of mmos (or playing an hour or two at a time and not ever day) and I rarely looked at patch notes. I guess I never gave games enough time to really pay attention or to think about the issues I was having. I just remember having fun in them when I played. I just recall what pissed me off to no end was the chat system. Maybe I am looking at it with rose tinted glasses. Also I judged everything around that time by how Anarchy Online was at it's launch.Which was unplayable for me. In game for no more then a few minutes before I got crashes or blue screens, etc.

[Desaan]

SWTOR is the only MMO, paid subscription or otherwise, that has failed to hold my interest beyond the one month mark (and it's a very long list over a very long time).

[krameriffic]

In cubic meters, probably. But it doesn't FEEL that way when you walk out of a spaceport, get on your mount and after 30 seconds of leaving a city...you're fatigued due to the shitty modular design.

The effect you're talking about is to keep the two factions from entering the other faction's main base, Mos Ila or Anchorhead. They put fatigue zones in that you can only cross by using a faction speeder point.

[Kem0sabe]

You don't even want to acknowledge Force Unleashed do you? Yeah that was not big at all, nope no way no how You are right at the perception but people still keep buying the games in droves. Also you exempt the Lego games which is pretty shitty on your part given that SW Lego sells better than any other Lego game, meaning the license has its power Also how do you know they misjudged anything, by this time in its life cycle two other big time big license MMO's had went under (DC Online and Star Trek Online). But DC Universe and Star Trek are shitty no power license too right? Wow @ this thread, some of the unreal shit being said (sigh)

Sorry, just now read the previous force unleashed numbers post, after going WTF is this guy talking about :)

Yeah, Force Unleashed was huge, sales wise, and could have been the kick start of a new line of mature oriented SW games, but no... they went ahead and fucked that up as well with the sequel.

I dismissed the Lego games because they aren´t oriented to the target audience we are talking about here, gamer´s old enough to play mmo´s and recognize the SW brand as the main pull and not the added flavor. Harry Potter Lego sold like hot cakes as well, while many other HP games failed to make an impact... why? because it´s the "Lego" gameplay that makes the sale, not the other way around.

In the end, would you buy another Force Unleashed game? after what they did with the sequel.

[BattleMonkey]

The effect you're talking about is to keep the two factions from entering the other faction's main base, Mos Ila or Anchorhead. They put fatigue zones in that you can only cross by using a faction speeder point.

Fatiuge zones don't separate the Pubs from the Empire, you can easily get to each others bases in the game, they are just put really far apart hub wise.

The fatigue zones are the games fake walls (end of the game world).

[vaelic]

SWTOR is the only MMO, paid subscription or otherwise, that has failed to hold my interest beyond the one month mark (and it's a very long list over a very long time).

I made it 1 month as well

[Banana Kid]

The problem I ran into with TOR is just that I don't have the patience for endgame. I'm in a guild I like and could potentially run a bunch of high-level instances, but I don't really want to run hard modes and shitty dailies over and over to get the gear I'd need to be useful.

[FieryBalrog]

Fatiuge zones don't separate the Pubs from the Empire, you can easily get to each others bases in the game, they are just put really far apart hub wise. The fatigue zones are the games fake walls (end of the game world).

They do on Tatooine.

[BattleMonkey]

They do on Tatooine.

No they don't, you can get to the pub areas and vice versa through various travel routes in game on that planet. The fatigue zones block various paths as artifical barriers but nothing stops you from getting into other faction areas. The recent event also required it to do various parts of the event.

[Hari Seldon]

It was due to the game being a disaster. The game was one of the most ambitious games made MMO wise but it was just a massive mess of a game. Almost every skill tree in the game had skills that did not work properly for months. Patches after patch would come out to fix one thing, yet it never would actually do anything, and when they did fix something, they broke a bunch of other things. Game features stayed broken for long periods of time.... the pvp battlegrounds on planets never worked right and eventually after months of trying to fix them they simply removed them from the game. The amount of bugs in the game was crazy. They kept rehauling entire class trees at a time, which didn't go well when the game had from what I remember 32 professions to choose from, all wanting attention. Balance was all over the place in many aspects..... and then the whole Jedi issue.... oh boy. You are also dealing with a game that was pre WOW culture and sub numbers. Game peaked at around 400k people only after launch and it was just down hill after. Combat upgrade was meant with alot of disdain as well..... all of this was pre NGE and their attempt to simplify the game into something more WoW like. SWG was great in concept, but it was a massive failure. It did have lot of great things about it, but it had ton of bad that caused ppl to drop it.

Yet with all the bugs and broken crap, SWG was fucking amazing. Imagine a SWG2 with the TOR budget.

And I think the lack of balance in SWG was part of what made the game great. There is no rule that all classes *must* be balanced. Asymmetrical gameplay is a lot more interesting to me than perfectly tuned e-sport style balancing. Life is asymmetrical! Some people are BA warriors, some valued doctors, and others extremely wealthy merchants. That game was just too ambitious. But I would rather have too much ambition than cookie-cutter copycats at this point.

[BattleMonkey]

Yet with all the bugs and broken crap, SWG was fucking amazing. Imagine a SWG2 with the TOR budget. And I think the lack of balance in SWG was part of what made the game great. There is no rule that all classes *must* be balanced. Asymmetrical gameplay is a lot more interesting to me than perfectly tuned e-sport style balancing. Life is asymmetrical! Some people are BA warriors, some valued doctors, and others extremely wealthy merchants. That game was just too ambitious. But I would rather have too much ambition than cookie-cutter copycats at this point.

Ambitious was one thing, but not working was the big problem with SWG. It wasn't simply an issue of balance, that was just one problem with the game which had a laundry list of problems. Carbineers had a skill that was broken for over 6 months, and despite being fixed in patch notes multiple times, it never worked. Game was jammed with that kind of stuff. Life isn't fair sounds fine for a world simulation, but for gamers it's often just going to make you quit.

SWG was old school and great for it's social aspects though.

[Wallach]

No they don't, you can get to the pub areas and vice versa through various travel routes in game on that planet. The fatigue zones block various paths as artifical barriers but nothing stops you from getting into other faction areas. The recent event also required it to do various parts of the event.

I don't think this applies to Mos Ila and Anchorhead; I've never seen a way to get to either of these main hubs as the opposite faction (though you can get to any of the others easily).

[Mammoth Jones]

The effect you're talking about is to keep the two factions from entering the other faction's main base, Mos Ila or Anchorhead. They put fatigue zones in that you can only cross by using a faction speeder point.

I know the reasons *why* but it's still poor, modular design. A world should be open and there are other ways to keep players out of opposing faction's cities.

[SatelliteOfLove]

The MMO model is so bad these days that they have to struggle to keep people around even before it actually becomes a problem. They can't stop the decline because it's all in the design. You don't have any reason to dwell around areas longer than the advancement curve requires (which these days is like 4 hours). You almost never have any other meaningful things to do outside of leveling and crafting up until max. There's pretty much never a reason to group so nobody does it. And the loot...It's like everybody who makes MMOs these days have never played an RPG before. Loot is so carefully balanced these days. In SWTOR you got the same stat organization on your shit straight up to the top with little surprises thrown in even on the rarest shit. It's like that in nearly every MMO now. If i see it i'm immediately canceling my subscription. And there's never enough art. Three of the last five MMOs i played didn't even have helms put in properly before I quit. Nobody spends enough time before they put out the game. They always think they can do it after the fact but it never pans out. If you put out unfinished bullshit, then you aren't going to get the bodies to help you make up for it later on.

Yet with all the bugs and broken crap, SWG was fucking amazing. Imagine a SWG2 with the TOR budget. And I think the lack of balance in SWG was part of what made the game great. There is no rule that all classes *must* be balanced. Asymmetrical gameplay is a lot more interesting to me than perfectly tuned e-sport style balancing. Life is asymmetrical! Some people are BA warriors, some valued doctors, and others extremely wealthy merchants. That game was just too ambitious. But I would rather have too much ambition than cookie-cutter copycats at this point.

Hear hear!

Ambitious was one thing, but not working was the big problem with SWG. It wasn't simply an issue of balance, that was just one problem with the game which had a laundry list of problems. Carbineers had a skill that was broken for over 6 months, and despite being fixed in patch notes multiple times, it never worked. Game was jammed with that kind of stuff. Life isn't fair sounds fine for a world simulation, but for gamers it's often just going to make you quit. SWG was old school and great for it's social aspects though.

Vanish. Blink. Healer off-specs.

This sort of thing iss not quite as black and white as some now believe.

[Effect]

For all the problems SWG had, more then I realized, I still very much enjoyed my time. Especially Jump to Lightspeed. I wish someone would make another game like it.

[jj350]

I think the #1 problem with this game is it's lack of Mac support. Mac users are a large portion of the type of people who would frequently play an MMO like TOR these days. If you go to any university you will notice how the vast majority of students are using Macs, and I know that most of my friends have Mac laptops as well. Mac support has had a lot to do with the success of Starcraft 2 & WOW, cutting out Mac just doesn't make sense if you want a large online user base these days.

[vaelic]

I think the #1 problem with this game is it's lack of Mac support. Mac users are a large portion of the type of people who would frequently play an MMO like TOR these days. If you go to any university you will notice how the vast majority of students are using Macs, and I know that most of my friends have Mac laptops as well. Mac support has had a lot to do with the success of Starcraft 2 & WOW, cutting out Mac just doesn't make sense if you want a large online user base these days.

what??????

[Orayn]

For all the problems SWG had, more then I realized, I still very much enjoyed my time. Especially Jump to Lightspeed. I wish someone would make another game like it.

There will never be another game like SWG, so here's to absent friends.



Unless the SWG Emu team eventually finishes the damn thing.

[FieryBalrog]

what??????

He's not right that it's the #1 problem, but it may be relevant. I have a friend who games on a macbook pro, and he was interested in TOR until he found out it was bootcamp only. And a LOT of people do use macbooks nowadays, at least from a casual glance around any college or graduate school.

Actually all my friends who play MMOs were interested in TOR, but for one reason or another they ended up not buying it, I was the only one.

[vaelic]

There will never be another game like SWG, so here's to absent friends. Unless the SWG Emu team eventually finishes the damn thing.

I loved the crafting in swg

[blind51de]

SWG was a fantastic sandbox MMO. It's something that wouldn't have been made after WoW found its success. These days it's all about themeparks, so what can you do?

[Pollux]

what??????

I've been asking for it on Mac since day 1, and I know many of my friends would play it if it were on Mac.

[FLEABttn]

SWG was a fantastic sandbox MMO. It's something that wouldn't have been made after WoW found its success. These days it's all about themeparks, so what can you do?

Have someone who knows how to make mmo's Kickstarter a sandbox mmo because no publisher is going to for the foreseeable future.

[DonasaurusRex]

Oh boy this thread again. http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/04...now-declining/ http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...h-500-000-Subs The only problem is that they launched too many severs (because people were demanding them). They just need to merge severs and everything will be fine.

thats usually what happens a bunch of servers get jammed because a lot of people decide on a handful of them, then the queues...then the demands for a new server...then tons of dead servers when people realize theres only 8 guilds on the server. These games need more robust servers and authentication capabilities maybe they wont get so many wait times and so on.