SWG was failing long before they attempted to WoW it up.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.what??????
I loved the crafting in swgThere will never be another game like SWG, so here's to absent friends.
Unless the SWG Emu team eventually finishes the damn thing.
what??????
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?
Oh boy this thread again.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/04/19/analyst-says-swtor-subs-peaked-at-1-7-million-now-declining/
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107477-Star-Wars-The-Old-Republic-Profitable-With-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.