SWtOR going F2P, WoW has won?

[Druidjezus]

Just curious to hear(read) people's thoughts on this. I realize this may derail into some fanboi-ism and I just want to clarify:

I AM NOT, IN ANY WAY, TALKING ABOUT THE MERITS OF THE GAMES THEMSELVES, I AM MERELY LOOKING AT THIS FROM AN MMO-MARKET PERSPECTIVE, IF YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT HOW ONE GAME IS BETTER THAN THE OTHER THIS IS PROBABLY NOT THE THREAD FOR YOU.

You've been warned!

With Star Wars going F2P, does this solidify WoW's position on top of the MMO heap? SWtOR was in development longer than World of Warcraft and Bioware/EA sank a fortune into cranking it out, now little more than a year later the game has dropped below a million subscribers. Obviously WoW has been losing subscribers at a greater speed than that but they have a lot more leftover to cushion the loss. SWtOR was the latest (and won't be the last) in the long string of expected "WoW killers" but it seems that Blizzard's model has insulated them well against MMO competition.

Personally, I feel it is a combination of WoW's lengthy tenure at the top and the impatience of most gamers when it comes to new games that protects WoW's subscriber base from getting bitten off by new games. They have found a model that seems to work, and most new games that come out seem to try to conform around it since it was so successful, however the players they get then end up comparing so many things to WoW and when the new game inevitably falls short (because it's new) the player becomes dissatisfied since the game is then "less polished". Obviously certain players will understand that as a new game it's still very unpolished compared to a game that's been out nearly a decade, and they will either be fine with it and continue to play or they'll still walk away.

It seems that the only way another MMO can really be successful is to offer an entirely different experience from WoW gameplay. Take, for example, EVE online. It is a fairly successful game with a fiercely loyal following, however the gameplay is nothing like WoW and (most likely due to the complexity) attracts less people.

My theory is that the only true WoW killer will be a game that offers an entirely new style of play that massive amounts of people enjoy more than WoW's gameplay, and that all game developers seeking to hit the subscriber numbers of WoW using the same style better be prepared to have all the features of WoW ready at launch (good luck with that) or be ready for a flop, as we have seen now time and time again.

Thoughts?

In b4 "zomg, GW2 is totally gonna kill WoW dude!!1!".
No, just no.

[Deleted]

SWTOR was never even a competition to WOW, neither will gw 2 be. Arenanet knows gw 2 isnt going to kill wow but im pretty damn sure it will be popular game, even among people who never played the original gw.

Did some people honestly think swtor would kill wow? lol.

[LocNess]

Nothing will "kill" WoW. The only possibility of that is Blizzard turning off all WoW servers which someday in the future they will. WoW has too many subscribers to lose no matter what comes out.

[Sunseeker]

F2P is the way of the future, so are smaller games, I don't think we'll ever see a game with the number of subscribers WoW currently has, short of as you say, an entirely new genre-defining game with a style and flair unlike anything we've seen before.

[Deleted]

Wow will eventually be surpassed when a decent game is made without all the fanfare. People go crazy in anticipation of stuff like Aion, Rift, SWTOR, millions join and then a year later people talk about them dying.

What will eventually happen is a good game will be made with no hype, which will offer engaging gameplay. People will gradually join said game, building the playerbase over time. This will continue until the game takes over.

[reemi]

SWTOR don't even worth to be downloaded and installed

[Crummy]

Blizzard won the day Swtor launched.

[Felya]

Secret world is awsome and has no hype!

SW would have been pay to play still, if they were not so bullish early on with dungeon finer. Am getting gw2...

---------- Post added 2012-08-01 at 06:03 PM ----------

SWTOR don't even worth to be downloaded and installed

Oh please! It wasn't bad at all...

[Deleted]

swtor had only low a mount of ppl interested in, and the worst thing was create an mmo based on star wars. It wont actualy bring mmo fans to look at the game, only the star wars fans loved it.

[Eadoin]

The simple fact is WoW was released during a time when the MMO market was in it's toddler stage (EQ/DaoC would be the infancy stage IMO). It was built off an already successful IP, and had the backing of a gaming company that (at the time) could do no wrong. It was casual enough that it had something for everyone, and was able to capitalize on that for years and years before any real 'competition' could do the same.

Which is why for the most part I agree with your statement, I don't think it's possible for a WoW Clone to ever kill WoW, because WoW has had nearly seven years to polish it's game and build up it's fanbase. Couple that with the fact that, aside from WoW, the subscription based MMO is being quickly phased out, I don't think we'll ever see the number of active subscribers Blizzard had during the highlight of WLK in any game ever again. In 5 years or so I suspect the important number for MMOs will be "active players" rather then subscribers, similar to the GW2 model. (No, I'm not implying GW2 will kill WoW, I'm simply saying that's where the Markets going).

At this point, I don't even think Titan will be successful as an MMO if it's subscription based (unless that subscription was somehow tied into WoW). World of Waracraft and subscription based MMOs are like Disco. There was a time and place for it, but that time is more or less over... for new MMOs that is, I suspect WoW will be able to stay Sub based for years and years.

Edit: Also, I can understand the merits of your thread, however I think the Title is misleading enough that you're going to end up in a flame war, with the thread probably being locked.

[Druidjezus]

Has it "won"? Sure, SWotOR has a hugely popular franchise to speak for it, but they entered the market against a established behemoth. Why anyone needs to "win" in this scenario, I don't know. Maybe the SciFi theme is not as popular for a MMO.

I may have used "won" inappropriately, I more meant that WoW has asserted itself at the top of the MMORPG heap, since SWtOR had even more hype, a bigger budget, a larger franchised idea etc. going into its release than WoW did.

Obviously there are other factors at play here, and I'm curious to see what people think, because I am definitely one of the million+ people that tried SWtOR and left, I know what gameplay factors I enjoyed that kept me there, and I know why I left, but I don't think a million people did it for the same reasons. I personally remember telling my brother the day they announced SWtOR and one of the BioWare people was quoted as saying they were going to give WoW a run for their money that I wished it was possible to invest in a stock to go down long term (I'm familiar with short selling but my understanding is that has to be a 3 day turnaround) because it was going to hype up big, and crash, like it has.

One thing I'm seeing here is some people think the hype hurts games more than it helps, which is definitely interesting and is quite contrary to some long held principals of marketing.

[Puremallace]

I know it solidifies it in certain peoples heads that WoW is better lol

[Ofire]

The simple fact is WoW was released during a time when the MMO market was in it's toddler stage (EQ/DaoC would be the infancy stage IMO). It was built off an already successful IP, and had the backing of a gaming company that (at the time) could do no wrong. It was casual enough that it had something for everyone, and was able to capitalize on that for years and years before any real 'competition' could do the same.

Which is why for the most part I agree with your statement, I don't think it's possible for a WoW Clone to ever kill WoW, because WoW has had nearly seven years to polish it's game and build up it's fanbase. Couple that with the fact that, aside from WoW, the subscription based MMO is being quickly phased out, I don't think we'll ever see the number of active subscribers Blizzard had during the highlight of WLK in any game ever again. In 5 years or so I suspect the important number for MMOs will be "active players" rather then subscribers, similar to the GW2 model. (No, I'm not implying GW2 will kill WoW, I'm simply saying that's where the Markets going).

At this point, I don't even think Titan will be successful as an MMO if it's subscription based (unless that subscription was somehow tied into WoW). World of Waracraft and subscription based MMOs are like Disco. There was a time and place for it, but that time is more or less over... for new MMOs that is, I suspect WoW will be able to stay Sub based for years and years.

Edit: Also, I can understand the merits of your thread, however I think the Title is misleading enough that you're going to end up in a flame war, with the thread probably being locked.

I concur with these statements. I'm also really curious as to how blizzard will handle the launching of Titan or whatever it will be called.

[Waterisbest]

The only reason MMOs go F2P is because their sub model is not making enough profit. F2P make more profit then the sub model FOR THE SAID GAME, NOT ALL GAMES, because many more try out the game and some people eventually buy some stuff cause it's not big problem spending so little. Like how people people pay for Facebook games.

F2P however, is not the future of gaming like many think it will be because some popular game went F2P after failing in the sub model, or there are some popular games that start out free like Dota2 or LoL. If F2P was the future of gaming, every game would be free where added features could be bought. Some games benefit from the F2P model. However, some games benefit from B2P model (not buy to win I might add).

Different games require different strategies to bring in money.

That being said, SWTOR "lost" to WoW long time ago. This change, which many believe will be SWTOR going completely F2P, is not what people think it is. The game will be free TILL level 50. They are increasing the level cap, so to enjoy that raised level cap, you will still need to pay for the sub. In simple words, it's the same thing as playing for free till level 20 in WoW and RIFT.

[TheGhostAgent]

In the subscription model of MMOs, sure. As for GW2 release coming out soon, their discarding of the trinity class system, PvP and WvW centered play with decent PvE story lines, they'll be a good contender in the MMO market. As for any MMO de-throning WoW anytime soon, that is unfortunately highly doubtful. Perhaps with arenanet pushing the envelope of what it means to create an MMO, what defines fun, will pull some players from subscription based models to them. Time will only tell, I can only remain cautiously optimistic with GW2 in the same way I was with SWTOR.

[Eadoin]

I wished it was possible to invest in a stock to go down long term (I'm familiar with short selling but my understanding is that has to be a 3 day turnaround) because it was going to hype up big, and crash, like it has.

Maybe call it Long-Short Selling

SwToR definitely wasn't the only reason though EA's stocks fell, http://www.cinemablend.com/games/EA-...ets-43822.html was a good article I read a while ago that gives a bit of insight (had to dig that one up!)

[Mexa]

I think that an MMO is generally just a bad design for a game and that WoW is the odd one out. Everyone thinks that the fact that WoW is an MMO is a major factor in why it is so popular, but if you ask me, its not. An MMO is just like a normal multiplayer game, the only differance is that you can meet other ppl, and sure, in the start, that is awesome, but after this many years of that, how many of you talk to random ppl u find ? not many ppl do that.

WoW is what made MMOs so popular... one might think that, but alas, no. WoW did not make MMOs popular, it only made itself popular and created the illusion that the MMO genre is a good game design, but its not.

And then you all think, well, if MMOs aren't popular, how come the hype around them is so much bigger then the hype around other games. And how come that in general, MMOs sell a lot of copies on launch and pre orders and so on? That must be because MMOs are popular, but its not. Ppl hear that a new MMO is on its way, then they think about WoW instantly and how successful wow is and has been, so they immediately create this correlation between WoW being a successful MMO and this other MMO also being an MMO, so it must be good, but most of the time they end up disappointing and going F2P.

I dont know if GW2 will be F2P from the start, because im not following the news about that game, but if it wont be, it will follow the exact same formula as every other MMO before it and since WoW. It will sell over a million copies in preorders, and another many copies after that, but it will slowly decline after that, not because it will be a bad game, but only and solely because an MMO is a bad game design that doesnt last with WoW being the odd one out.

[haxartus]

People just don't want to pay $15/month for a game that they barely play.
But that's actually a good thing. I'm fairly certain that WoW is going to become F2P in a few years. And given the enormous development cycle, it's going to be the biggest and most popular F2P game of all time.

[OneSent]

I agree that one of the major reasons new MMOs don't last long has alot to do with the impatience of the gaming community nowadays. People were leaving SWTOR en masse when the game was barely 2 months old.

I also agree that if any new MMO should want to come close to what WoW has in terms of subscription numbers and overall success, the only thing left to do is to take such a different route that it doesn't compare to WoW in the slightest. Unless you can take WoW's model and do it better than WoW (which is highly unlikely), your game will most likely not be the success you want it to be. People don't want to play a lesser version of the same thing.

I think SWTOR's failure has been an eyeopener for any unannounced MMOs currently in development. For the sake of the MMO genre as a whole, I certainly hope they finally get the message that trying to carbon copy WoW's system with a few tweeks here and there and failing to make it work will only hasten your game's demise. How many times does it need to happen before developers stop trying to do it? They would be better off doing something completely different and pulling in a smaller but more loyal audience. Maybe even start something new that takes off completely.

Looking at DayZ's over-the-night success, what the MMO genre really seems to need is another good sandbox MMO. I think people crave that deep, immense, living, breathing world full of exploration and discovery that no MMO has truly offered in nearly the past decade. The theme box thing has been done to death and there's only so many ways you can take it. But with hundreds of thousands of people playing an Alpha version of a Mod to another game, I think there's something to be said about that.

EDIT: I also agree 100% with what Eadoin said. WoW launched when the gaming world was still curious about MMOs. There was no right or wrong way to do it back then. WoW basically copied from what was already established by games like Everquest and Ultima Online and somehow became a bigger success. I don't think that's possible anymore. As much as I hate to admit it, that old school style of MMORPGs (people don't even use the RPG part anymore) is gone for good. The community has changed and so has the genre. F2P is here to stay and gone are the games we can dedicate years to.

[Coldkil]

It's not truly going f2p, the end game can be unlocked only if you subscribe. To me it's even more pointless than it was before, sorry.

Personal opinion anyway.