I noticed that problems of SWTOR are heading up,although it's still not released in China.
http://technorati.com/entertainment/...tar-wars-the1/
I do agree some of this guy's opinions, but some others are just annoying!
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/1...g__analyst.php
Gamasutra is telling us one more idea from an analyst and I'm just wondering whether SWTOR has a chance to stand against World of Warcraft.
swtor-beta.jpg
Last edited by CrazyEthan; 23-04-2012 at 06:31 AM.
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That document is hilarious.
Dude is a financial analyst with NO IDEA what he's talking about. Even WoW at release had about a 50% resubscribe rate, to expect SWTOR to hit 75%-90% is hilariously ludicrous. SWTOR is going to have between 10% to 20% at release, and that's it.
WoW did offer something new, while SW:ToR offers the same experience coated in Star Wars theme.Originally Posted by R-F
WoW is the Ford Model T of MMOs (you can have any race of hunter as long as it's a Nelf), it was released onto a mostly unrealised market and, while not being a great leap forwards in technology, did what it was supposed to do well enough, and shifted enough units for it to be ubiquitous. I really don't think we'll see one game wrest WoW from it's pedestal, the market has changed, I expect WoW's player base will quietly slope off to play other games, but none will be as big.
I think one of the main problems is the development time of the games; had it been released when development started SW:TOR would probably have been much bigger, but several years down the line things have changed. Are MMOs heading the same way as FPSs? Once upon a time there was Doom, now even first rate FPSs slip under my radar as there are just too many about.
What was that about Piracy? I did not hear about any server code being leaked. I thought the article was just blatant speculation and doom saying with no real evidence. It's shoddy articles like this that makes games journalism seem a joke.
I played for about a week and I think the game is shit but I kind of hope it can retain enough of a player base to keep going. It will give Blizzard an added incentive to push out Titan.
TOR was a challenger to WoW? In marketing, yes, but in the months before release - and now post-release - it seems to have faceplanted a bit.
Wow (no pun intended) is that guy in the OP's link bitter.
First, it spills out like nerd rage. Yes, the sith warrior is a copy of the WOW warrior - why not try the powertech tank instead? It's a goddamn straw man argument.
Lack of innovation complaints - well, SWTOR has done one thing incredibly well, and that's a story driven MMO. It's successfully combined an actual, RPG, story driven narrative with an MMO in a way which no other one has done before. Denying that is stupid and foolish.
Finally, its one thing to complain about high review scores, quite another to then complain about bugs being overlooked - Skyrim stands as a shining pillar of an example in that case.
As for the TORtainic, people predicted doom when burning crusade was announced. Those same people probably ate their hats sometime in recent years, where WOW hit 11mil subs.
SWTOR will survive. It has the combined legions of ex-galaxies players, star wars fans, and relocated WOW/other MMO fans. People are enjoying it. If you don't enjoy it, shove off and play one of the many, many free to play games that are around.
SWTOR doom talking is old now. It is still the biggest, heavily marketed and driven MMO next to world of warcraft. It was, and still is, perhaps the only MMO capable of challenging WOW. I see nothing on the horizon that will even come close to it. I suspect subs will go up when Phantom menance 3D is out and the SWTOR adverts start playing in the trailers.
Finally, All this talk about "Guild wars 2" has honestly jaded me to the game already, as it sounds like it will be the best thing since sliced bread. The market is now over saturated and free to play is a way to up numbers for investors. I don't see Guild Wars 2 able to compete in the same way.
Nowadays, its just too easy to be "Cool for hatin' on games". I seriously suggest people step back and take a look at a bigger picture, one where the truth of the matter is that people are enjoying SWTOR and it has sold very, very well at a higher than normal price. It's still early days too - far too early for crappy articles like this to be written. Hopefully the world will just acknowledge SWTOR's numbers with a nod and move on, and the rest of us can get back to playing the games we want to rather than bitch about them.
I've ranted enough for one day.
It was never meant to be a 'WoW challenger'. It's a fundamental mis-understanding of the industry and audience to categorise things like that.
See, way back in the pre-WoW days there existed a type of gamer known as the 'career MMO' player. These people loved MMOs, moved from one to another as new ones launched, re-visiting old favourites from time to time, only ever playing one at a time, because they put so much time into each. This was the market for MMOs - to be a success you had to tempt subscribers away from their current game of choice.
Career MMO players still exist. Many have moved on to TOR for a while. But they don't make up a significant percentage of the audience any more. WoW appealed to a whole new bunch of players, they weren't MMO players, they were just gamers who saw an interesting game a decided to play it. The idea that WoW massively grew the MMO audience is misguided. WoW massively grew the WoW audience. They get bored and they move on, occasionally revisiting it. They're not desperately looking for a new MMO to replace WoW, they played it for varying amounts of time, but not for enough hours each week that they can't comprehend of a life without an MMO in it. They're just gamers.
The flip side of this is that you can be a hugely successful MMO without needing to steal away all of WoW's customers. The developers said at the time they weren't expecting TOR to do anywhere near WoW numbers. It appeals to a broader audience, like WoW did, and it'll find that audience and it seems to be doing just that.
It's only in MMOs that we have this attitude that playing one is mutually exclusive with playing another, it stems from the notion that people won't want to pay two subs fees at once (which is reasonable, but I don't think a hugely limiting factor for most players) but it's actually grounded in the notion of hardcore MMO gamers looking at MMOs and going 'how could you possibly fit in playing more than one at a time?' which is not an issue for 90% of players who are just putting in a few hours here and there, like with any other game.
No-one says every indie game is a failure because it doesn't do Minecraft numbers. Because you can be a huge hit and hugely profitable without getting anywhere near WoW's figures, or Minecraft's sales.
Sure it was. SWTOR is to WoW as MoH/Ao2/BF is to CoD. EA isn't looking to eke out a living off the crumbs, they want the prize. Enormous budgets with ambitions to match.
I forgot to mention, recently I also read some joystiq comments that called out Blizzard on the latest patch - basically, its the last content patch for what looks like a year or so (give or take depending on how far out Panderia is). SWTOR has more new content in that time that WoW will have, so why subscribe? for people whom have already beaten the bosses, played through a few expansions worth of content and been through cataclysm, I can't see them sticking in one place anymore. Which means that their subscriptions are paying for the development of a new expansion. Which they then pay for. Nice.
I'll also tip my hat to deano, whom has handled the "WoW challenger" argument nicer than I have.
EDIT: Rii, the fact of the matter is that investors/publishers have bigger eyes and stomachs than developers seem to have. I imagine it depends on whom you ask. The point I'd take away from Deano's post is do EA make money from TOR? If yes, they have won - if no, they have lost.
Last edited by Hirmetrium; 06-02-2012 at 12:38 PM.
Hence the Diablo 3 deal, perhaps?
Perhaps to an extent, obviously they're not going into it hoping they'll come second, but WoW has had over a decade of development, they know they can't compete with that right off, and they've said before than over a million subs would be making a nice profit. It's a starting point. Maybe from their they can grow, expand into other territories and so on, but I don't think they expect that necessarily. There's a quote from an interview here that sort of sums it up:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-success/page5
The point is that if you even reached half of WoW's numbers then you're so far ahead of the rest of the pack that you're one of the biggest success stories in gaming. Even if you're not 'winning'.
That OP link mentions piracy?
How the fuck was TOR pirated? Is it? Have they already worked out server commands and already set up unofficial servers?
Or is it possible to download a pirate copy of the game data and subscribe using that, without paying the £50 charge for a copy?
Or is he talking shit?
I agree with most of what was in this post, but have quibbles with the parts I've quoted.
Yes, TOR does have a story line, with cut-scenes and dialog choices, but Guild Wars and the expansions were plot-driven, too, with multiple cut-scenes per story mission. Hell, don't all MMOs have a story of some sort? It may be buried, but there usually is a reason why you start at 1, and moved to max level. What TOR has done differently is have explicit story-lines for all 8 classes, with inter-active dialog.
Considering that as of the summer of 2010, Guild Wars had sold 6.5 million copies(most recent data from a quick Google search), it isn't a stretch to think that GW2 will have multimillion sales at launch. So, while it may not "compete" in the same way, it still will easily be a Top-Ten seller, if not Top-Five, in the year it is finally released.
I think the big draw is, yes it has very similar and shares game mechanics and skills, but the game is new content. Think of it as a double/triple WoW expansion of content. People want new content. Blizzard even admits this is a problem with new content coming out to slow. I know if I tried TOR i would instantly like it for being 1) Star Wars 2) new content 3) familiar mechanics 4) story oriented questing 4) shooting blasters and wielding lightsabers.
That article is not well done. Some cry ramblings.
He posted 2 days before EA announced what they sold:
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/40044..._worldwide.php
What piracy? Even so, WoW private servers are not in the millions of players.
Also, Michael Pachter makes wild random predictions that sound good and keeps him working. When he is wrong(most of the time) he "readjusts" his analysis to what has been fact. I think TOR will keep a lot of subscribers until WoW expansion or some other big MMO is released or the content is consumed to fast.
Wow, that article in the original post is rather bad, isn't it? Piracy? Greg Zeschuk was responsible for WAR? The entire games press is corrupt? This man is being paid money for his writing?
I've played some SWTOR, up till about level 41. Following the development I thought I would absolutely hate it, but its actually surprisingly good. Yes its basically WoW in space - but the story quests, companions, and story driven dungeons are making it pretty fun for me. Whether these things will continue to be a draw at endgame is the big question in my mind.
it seems to have faceplanted a bit.
Well that puts everything in a different light, your right!it seems to have faceplanted a bit.
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