[BrokenEchelon]

You cannot whine about comparing TOR to WoW in its current state.

World of WarCraft is the leader of the market.

Star Wars: The Old Republic is a competitor.

TOR, as a competitor, cannot release an inferior product to the current flagship and then complain that WoW had <x> years of polish.

As many have mentioned, BioWare had the ability to learn from every single mistake Blizzard made and study every single thing they did right. They had the best possible source material of knowledge to work from and they released a game that had less features in it than a game that originally launched in 2004. It's pathetic.

No one is saying that TOR should have had enough raids and dungeons to be on par with all of the Outland, Northrend, and Cataclysm content PLUS Vanilla. What is totally inexcusable is that shit like Guild Banks weren't in the game from the start. Basic features which should be staples in an MMORPG releasing at the ass-end of 2011 were missing from the game.

Not to mention some of the awful underlying gameplay problems like ability delay, or the constant crashing on Taris for many players were either ignored or took forever to resolve.

Oh and some of the mobs in one of the original TOR raids were labled as "Boss Add 1, Boss Add 2" In 2011? Seriously?

Sure World of WarCraft had things that were unfinished when it first came out such as the epic tier sets, but by the time most of the population even had a piece of their Tier 1 armor those textures were in the game. Blizzard did a better job of plugging the holes and resolving problems, while BioWare dropped the ball on a myriad of issues, and released a game inferior to the title they were supposed to be drawing marketshare from.

The saddest part of it all is that people still actually try to defend them on this matter.

[Moaradin]

Not to mention some of the awful underlying gameplay problems like ability delay, the constant crashing on Taris for many players were either ignored or took forever to resolve. Oh and some of the mobs in one of the original TOR raids were labled as "Boss Add 1, Boss Add 2" In 2011? Seriously?

1. Been fixed months ago.
2. No there isn't.

[BrokenEchelon]

1. Been fixed months ago. 2. No there isn't.

I sure as shit would hope that a planet-crashing bug and someone's inability to name a variable were fixed by now.

[Moaradin]

I sure as shit would hope that a planet-crashing bug and someone's inability to name a variable were fixed by now.

The ability delay was fixed months ago. There was never mobs in any raid called "Boss Add 1".

Not like something that trivial would matter to begin with. Every MMO has had those errors before.

[Dresden]

Just another notch on the gravestone for Bioware. One more year before EA puts a bullet in its head as Muzyka and Zeschuk nod dumbly in the corner.

[BrokenEchelon]

The ability delay was fixed months ago. There was never mobs in any raid called "Boss Add 1". Not like something that trivial would matter to begin with. Every MMO has had those errors before.

It's the acceptance of the status quo that leads to atrophy and stagnation. They had a beta test for how many months? They failed to communicate well with the community regarding many issues. Those were simply a couple of examples. You could also tackle Ilum, and a number of others.

[g23]

Are there server transfers yet?

[t26]

So would Star War Galaxy be a better comparison? Is it doing better than SWG 6 months after release?

[BrokenEchelon]

So would Star War Galaxy be a better comparison? Is it doing better than SWG 6 months after release?

From the Escapist: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/arti...ng-Up-Galaxies

In June 2003, Star Wars Galaxies launched - at least six months too soon - with an overambitious design, unfinished code and poor content tools. Even so, the game attracted around 300,000 subscribers, a respectable showing then. A year later, World of Warcraft debuted and redefined "respectable." At both SOE and its licensor, LucasArts, WoW envy grew strong.

IIRC it took SWG a fair amount of time to hit a million players. Meanwhile...

Gamespot: http://www.gamespot.com/news/world-o...illion-6132187

According to the company, there are now 4 million "paying customers" that log on to the MMORPG worldwide--with 1 million logging on in the US and Canada alone.

World of WarCraft hit 4 million+ accounts in less than a year. I'm sure it wasn't because the fans were posting on forums telling people to give it time to flourish and that EverQuest had years of time to polish its product.

[bjb]

To be honest there's still significant ability delay. Particularly for melee classes.

This has been noted by countless people in my guild during 16m raids, as well as others via the mmo-mechanics forums.

The Hero Engine is fucking awful. They've improved and optimized it some, but it's no where near as fluid as GW2 or WoW's combat.

Likewise the game can simply not handle large scale open-world PvP. As witnessed by the train wreck that was Ilum. High end rigs turned to slide shows with more than 20-25 people in one area.

Any PvP from here on out is going to be heavily instanced and forced. Completely humiliating for a game released in 2011.

[Derrick01]

Just another notch on the gravestone for Bioware. One more year before EA puts a bullet in its head as Muzyka and Zeschuk nod dumbly in the corner.

Unfortunately mass effect 3 sold like 3 million copies already so that death will have to be put on hold.

[dimb]

This game is crashing even faster than I could have imagined. And these are the numbers with the free month for long time subscribers I'm guessing. I cannot imagine things improving with Diablo 3, Pandaria, and Guild Wars 2 all hitting in the coming months.

[Alex]

The first 1/3rd to 1/2 of SWTOR was pretty fun, but then it really started to drag. It had a few neat ideas and the leveling game was tuned pretty well for my tastes, but it was just too akin to a jankier WoW when the grind kicked in.

And yes, that Hero Engine shit is terrible. Its crazy how poorly that game ran for the visuals it had.

Spending all that time and money on the voice work and other frills was the silly part. A million subs is a *LOT* for something that isn't WoW, hell you could make huge bank off of half of that even with a good budget, especially on a dedicated subscription in the west. Shame they ballooned the costs to hell and back and didn't focus on more meaningful things.

[bjb]

This game is crashing even faster than I could have imagined. And these are the numbers with the free month for long time subscribers I'm guessing. I cannot imagine things improving with Diablo 3, Pandaria, and Guild Wars 2 all hitting in the coming months.

Indeed it's only going to get worse. Which means the game will simply not be profitable anymore (per EA's earnings remarks).

Two things (or both) will likely occur at that point:

1). The business model will switch towards F2P, and incorporate micro-transactions everywhere.

2). The product will essentially be left for dead and be shelved into obscurity.

Either way future updates and/or content are going to suck.

[Dresden]

Indeed it's only going to get worse. Which means the game will simply not be profitable anymore (per EA's earnings remarks). Two things (or both) will likely occur at that point: 1). The business model will switch towards F2P, and incorporate micro-transactions everywhere. 2). The product will essentially be left for dead and be shelved into obscurity. Either way future updates or content are going to suck.

Will Lucasarts ever allow F2P? I doubt it.

[Stuart444]

With all this talk about SWTOR going F2P, I just don't see it happening.

WAR didn't go F2P and iirc that was published by EA. If that didn't go F2P, I highly doubt a game that was as expensive to make/maintain as SWTOR would go F2P.

Granted if it goes F2P and had a good cash shop, it might end up being just as profitable and get a new influx of people but I doubt EA would even realize that before pulling the plug on it.

[Sent]

The 1.3 million also counts all the players they gave a free month to as 'active', right? The drop was larger than 400k if so.

It does. Anyone seeing that "free month" as a friendly gesture and not a grab at retention for these reports are fooling themselves. Everyone I know who played the game has quit. That's almost unheard of in my circle. Star Wars is the only thing holding it up.

[bjb]

Will Lucasarts ever allow F2P? I doubt it.

That's a good question.

I'm not certain. I'm sure there's a lot of ego and pride at stake on both companies part (more-so EA).

That being said, if the game isn't making money (which its well on its way toward), then they're going to do something no matter what.

[FieryBalrog]

Will Lucasarts ever allow F2P? I doubt it.

Why would Lucas Arts care as long as they get a cut of the money?

It's not like it's some matter of honor to them.

[subversus]

Unfortunately mass effect 3 sold like 3 million copies already so that death will have to be put on hold.

yeah, let's see how the next installment sells.

BUT
I'll probably buy it for MP only because it is fantastic. Can't say the same about POS campaign.

[FieryBalrog]

With all this talk about SWTOR going F2P, I just don't see it happening. WAR didn't go F2P and iirc that was published by EA. If that didn't go F2P, I highly doubt a game that was as expensive to make/maintain as SWTOR would go F2P. Granted if it goes F2P and had a good cash shop, it might end up being just as profitable and get a new influx of people but I doubt EA would even realize that before pulling the plug on it.

WAR actually is going F2P, just not in the traditional way. They made 1-10 F2P forever, and they're making Warhammer: Wrath of Heroes as a standalone F2P game. Finally, they added in microtransactions to WAR itself, so they get the best of both worlds there.

I think the reason they still charge a sub for Warhammer is because a F2P conversion actually costs money and isn't a sure thing. They would have to develop new content to charge people for, they would have to design the F2P game, and if they don't have the confidence that the product will actually succeed when it's free, then they won't do it. WAR is so terrible that even if it was completely free I doubt that many people would keep playing it.

[AppleMIX]

yeah, let's see how the next installment sells. BUT I'll probably buy it for MP only because it is fantastic. Can't say the same about POS campaign.

Outside of the last 10 minutes, ME3 was pretty good.

[markot]

Yeah, the drop was even bigger than 400k >.<

Who would have thought that story wouldnt be enough in an mmorpg? I mean apart from EA and Bioware?

[volturnus]

Space combat could've been a real game changer IMO, it could be a nice selling point since the moderate/high-budget space sim genre is dead and no other MMO has both ground and space exploration deep enough. STO failed, but even that was better than TOR's Star-Fox-lite combat.
Plus, even though every quest has a story, most of them fell the same and after level 30 or something they start to feel skippable, and 99% of sidequests bear no consequence at all to the game as a whole.

BioWare (and every other RPG developer for that matter) should learn a lot from Fallout: New Vegas and its imaginative quests, grey morality and consequences.
I'd hire Obsidian to develop the first big expansion for the game and let them finetune the game design in a lot of places, but it seems it's a matter of honour to EA/BioWare to make this game a hit themselves without pushing boundaries.

[Wallach]

Thinking about the data collection window for this report, the free month from the Legacy update is probably not much of a factor in the reported subscription numbers. Which is actually much worse for them really, because the next report will be after all eligible accounts would have had the free game time expire if they were ever eligible to receive it, and I feel like their retention is not going to do anything but slide more before the next report. They've been very slow to respond to the issues with the population density being too spread and it doesn't sound like even their first proposed effort to fix it (server transfers) is coming for more than a month from now.

[BigDug13]

Why is it that WoW is unmatched on maintaining an interesting and beautiful look and art design while working smoothly on mediocre PC hardware? It took completely cluttered areas like Ironforge auction house to cause slide shows to creep up. No zoning across the continent and yet performance was solid.

What is so magical about the WoW engine that had allowed this and why can't anyone else really replicate it? The accessibility of WoW allowing great performance on crap hardware was so much of the draw IMO of achieving great subscriber numbers. At the end of the day, we want a smooth gaming experience.

[StudioTan]

Existed in EQ2, first of all. In any case, none of that is anywhere near as revolutionary as changing the entire philosophy of mainstream MMOs from entirely group based to "solo progression, group end-game". Not only is this obvious from comparing what we're talking about, it's obvious from just how little imitation EQ2/TOR is going to inspire, what with the "fully voiced questing" costing such ridiculous money. In every gameplay system by the way, TOR is basically a copy paste of WoW. I'm talking about even the most nitty gritty details, 2 raid sizes with 3 difficulties and weekly lockouts and badge gear. I'm talking about the exact same PvP progression system and the exact same idea of dailies for gold, and very similar classes and powers. It's identical. Got absolutely 0 imagination or interest in doing their own thing. I mean try doing this with EQ vs WoW, go ahead, seriously; it's a goddamned joke. It's like saying all musicians have influences, therefore Jet is an original band.

You're funny. You're so determined to not give credit to SWTOR for anything that you have to stretch the truth to the breaking point. There was voice in EQ2 but not nearly in the same way that is used in SWTOR, and if you're the least bit honest with yourself you'll admit that's the truth. Of course, EQ2 has nothing to do with my comment that WoW does not have this feature in the slightest, but that's what you and Yanger do, constantly move the goal posts and distort the truth to try and "win" some argument.

"Companions aren't anything special, they're just glorified pets". Really? Come on now. You can have conversations with them, you can do quests for them, they comment on events that happen in your story, you can even marry them. Again though, stretch the truth to fit your world view.

You know what my favorite part of SWTOR is? The stories. I love the dialogue choices and the cut scenes, even for mundane side quests. I love the lines my character says. It keeps me interested and invested in my character. I haven't felt this invested in a character since SWG. Everyone has different things they want out of a game. I didn't care a lick about my generic warlock in WoW. The world was boring to me, the humor was sophomoric and I hated the art style. That said, I don't wish for the downfall of Blizzard. I don't squeal like a teenage girl when something bad is reported about them. The amount of schadenfreude that exists on this forum for SWTOR and all things Bioware just puzzles the hell out of me. "I didn't like the ending to ME3 so I hope EA closes down Bioware and everyone is out of work!" What kind of attitude is this?

I wish TERA and GW2 and WoW and The Secret World nothing but success and I hope people enjoy them and the artists, designers and programmers can have fun, get paid and earn a good living making games that people like.

[Dueck]

1. Everybody compares an MMO at launch to World of Warcraft, which has been out for almost 8 years.
2. MMOs in general are a dying genre.

[DBT85]

should have just made KOTOR 3

This was my feeling as soon as they announced that it was going to be an MMO. The first 2 games I enjoyed incredibly and then they just pissed me off with this.

I don't play MMOs any more. I'm 5 years clean.

[Oni Link 666]

Have they fixed how you could not move with Ctrl held down?

[Dueck]

should have just made KOTOR 3

This. I honestly don't know what they were thinking. Lucasarts makes Bioware release an unfinished 2, then rather than make up for that in a way EVERY fan would like, they piss all over a large number of them. If you played KOTOR and KOTOR 2, there's 99.9% chance you'd play KOTOR 3.... But an MMO?! Seriously? I hope some people lose their jobs.

[Angry Puppy]

Maintaining over a million subscribers is good for a normal MMO, but TOR was never supposed to be a normal MMO. There was a lot of money poured in to this and I don't know where it went and why it ended up as such a bad game. They needed a lot more in order to be successful. They had a decent launch, but subs are dropping too quickly as players realized that it wasn't the good game they were expecting. Now, it just seems like EA is trying to not lose too much money on this failure.

Not to mention losing incredible amounts of subscribers before the actual heavy competition arrives. I wonder what the numbers will be at the end of the year after D3, GW2 and MoP launches.

[Rokal]

Why is it that WoW is unmatched on maintaining an interesting and beautiful look and art design while working smoothly on mediocre PC hardware? It took completely cluttered areas like Ironforge auction house to cause slide shows to creep up. No zoning across the continent and yet performance was solid.

WoW textures are stylized but very low-res. They do not hold up to close scrutiny. If you want to understand how WoW runs so well on older machines, all you have to do is look at the character models for the old races: that sort of texture work makes up the *vast* majority of the world. It's more easily noticeable on character models, but it touches everything from the flat low-res armor to all of the terrain. I like WoW's art style, but it's not some magic optimization that allows them to have high performance on low-end machines. A 7-year old game that launched with modest system requirements will get that effect.

[Cystm]

This. I honestly don't know what they were thinking. Lucasarts makes Bioware release an unfinished 2, then rather than make up for that in a way EVERY fan would like, they piss all over a large number of them. If you played KOTOR and KOTOR 2, there's 99.9% chance you'd play KOTOR 3.... But an MMO?! Seriously? I hope some people lose their jobs.

Obsidian Entertainment


I am just going to leave this here.

[dimb]

Obsidian Entertainment I am just going to leave this here.

You forgot to post "--------RINE ENDS HERE"

[Cystm]

You forgot to post "--------RINE ENDS HERE"

Ah Shit!

[MaddenNFL64]

I'm part of the 1.3 million, so eh. Not even 50 yet, so I have a shitton to play before I run out of shit to do.

[MisterAnderson]

What's kind of sad is that I played Galaxies for probably 2 years but have already stopped playing SWTOR. Even sadder that I'm level 48. I should go back and just get to 50 at least and finish my class' story.

Regardless, I do plan on returning once I give Diablo 3 the attention it needs. Whether or not it will happen is another story. I'm also balls deep in Tribes: Ascend and StarCraft II multiplayer. With Mechwarrior Online around the corner....fuck. Too many games.

[Ushojax]

Outside of the last 10 minutes, ME3 was pretty good.

It was OK, but it had poor enemy variety, stupid side-quest system, linear level design, masses amount of glitches, lack of choice compared to ME1/2. It needed another 9 months.

That combined with the ending probably made a lot of customers wary of future BioWare titles, especially after DA2. They've fooled us twice now.

[michaelius]

Does this number already include people who got a month of subscription for free ?

[fizzelopeguss]

EA is in competition with funcom for mmo launches at this point, not Blizzard.

this ain't going f2p, it's a fucking embarassment to them and an albatross hanging around their necks sucking up resources from their traditional box product market. The dev team will be scraped to the bone soon and when the subs fall again from lack of content the game will be taken out back and drowned in a bucket of water.

I wish I didn't take any sadistic pleasure in watching them squirm. but i do

Even dark&light had it's hardcore defenders, i shit you not.

[TheYanger]

You're funny. You're so determined to not give credit to SWTOR for anything that you have to stretch the truth to the breaking point. There was voice in EQ2 but not nearly in the same way that is used in SWTOR, and if you're the least bit honest with yourself you'll admit that's the truth. Of course, EQ2 has nothing to do with my comment that WoW does not have this feature in the slightest, but that's what you and Yanger do, constantly move the goal posts and distort the truth to try and "win" some argument. "Companions aren't anything special, they're just glorified pets". Really? Come on now. You can have conversations with them, you can do quests for them, they comment on events that happen in your story, you can even marry them. Again though, stretch the truth to fit your world view. You know what my favorite part of SWTOR is? The stories. I love the dialogue choices and the cut scenes, even for mundane side quests. I love the lines my character says. It keeps me interested and invested in my character. I haven't felt this invested in a character since SWG. Everyone has different things they want out of a game. I didn't care a lick about my generic warlock in WoW. The world was boring to me, the humor was sophomoric and I hated the art style. That said, I don't wish for the downfall of Blizzard. I don't squeal like a teenage girl when something bad is reported about them. The amount of schadenfreude that exists on this forum for SWTOR and all things Bioware just puzzles the hell out of me. "I didn't like the ending to ME3 so I hope EA closes down Bioware and everyone is out of work!" What kind of attitude is this? I wish TERA and GW2 and WoW and The Secret World nothing but success and I hope people enjoy them and the artists, designers and programmers can have fun, get paid and earn a good living making games that people like.

Yeah I liked the story too. Too bad I finished it the first week and was left with nothing else but a bad wow clone. And while I know you liked to pretend that was abnormal and people played way too much yadda yadda, the simple fact is my /played time to get to 50 was like 6 days, and I wasn't trying to be efficient about it at all, I spent LARGE swaths of time logged in accomplishing nothing. Hell, I stayed logged in OVERNIGHT the first 3-4 nights to avoid queues, just running my dude in circles. I stayed logged in while I was raiding in wow so that I would avoid queues, etc. My actual time doing things was probably only about 3 or 4 days /played tops. That is pathetic amounts of content. WoW at release took on the order of 14 days played for someone with the same kind of 'do stuff most of the time' mentality, and you would have probably done only about 1/3 or 1/4 of the levelling/questing content in the game. In SWTOR I estimate I did 80% of it to hit max level.
Too bad they make a game that SHOULD have great replayability (because of the different stories) a fucking chore because I'm forced to grind out the rest of the 95% same quests.

The rest of your post is inane drivel as usual. You can have conversations with your companions, and go on quests!...really? REALLY? You are describing NPCs that are just quest givers. You can't even 'talk' to your companions outside of your ship, and when they're on your ship they're no different than any other static quest giver. I got all of a half dozen 'quests' from my companions ever, and they were the same boring fucking quests I did for everyone else. My dialogue options made almost no impact on them either. In fact, the dialogue has no impact on ANYTHING IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING GAME aside from your personal story. It just illustrates how so disconnected the MMO aspects are from the solo-play personal story aspects.

If you stripped out all of the MMO parts, you would actually have a stronger game. That should be pretty telling of how shitty an MMO it really is. They wasted so much potential and time making all these dialogue systems and voicing every line and all that shit, just so that 95% of the quests could:
A) Serve no purpose/your choices have no effect on anything (every generic quest in the game plays out exactly the same no matter what you choose).
B) Waste shitloads of money voicing all of these pointless endeavors.
C) Use the same stale gameplay/quest design that wow had 8 years ago.
Seriously? Your three choices for quests are: Pick up/interact with item after fighting through a cave full of mobs. Kill X mobs/loot X items....I'm struggling to even think of a third type. MAYBE 'click an item in your inventory sometimes' meets that criteria for you but to me it's the same as the first two (click it near a hotspot, click it while targetting a corpse/mob). WoW had a lot of these kinds of quests in Vanilla, but their design has evolved significantly. The biggest issue is since all of these involve killing mobs, the combat design always comes back to the forefront, and killing shit is simply more satisfying in wow.

[injurai]

This is what happens when EA doesn't think like a gamer. Their corporate side has no idea how to carry out business, they are cuttings jobs and losing stocks all over the place.

[Draft]

Wow, first Blackberry and now Bioware. The Canadian tech industry is on the verge of collapse.

[dimb]

Wow, first Blackberry and now Bioware. The Canadian tech industry is on the verge of collapse.

The Old Republic is a product of Austin, Texas.

[Truant]

TOR is a good game. The story stuff is great. It would have been great as a purely SP game.

[Shadybiz]

I played until around lvl 25 or so, but I just wasn't feeling the pull to go back and keep playing. It's a shame too, because I really liked how you had choices in conversation, and I found the voice acting to be pretty good. Meanwhile, I still pay for WoW, and haven't played in maybe 3 months, like an idiot.

[Cheech]

1. Everybody compares an MMO at launch to World of Warcraft, which has been out for almost 8 years. 2. MMOs in general are a dying genre.

MMOs aren't dying, but they are incredibly stagnant. The market is ripe for somebody to come in and make a truly different experience; look at the excitement and hype that surrounded the ES MMO. Then it was outed as another me-too WoW clone, and that was the end of it. People are sick to death of that formula.

[michaelius]

MMOs aren't dying, but they are incredibly stagnant. The market is ripe for somebody to come in and make a truly different experience; look at the excitement and hype that surrounded the ES MMO. Then it was outed as another me-too WoW clone, and that was the end of it. People are sick to death of that formula.

Someone like WoT which has 18+ milions accounts after 2 years ?

[lastplayed]

Someone like WoT which has 18+ milions accounts after 2 years ?

WoT is bascially just team death match with tanks, it's a pretty classic formula. It'll be interesting to see how it does with warplanes and battleships.