BioWare expected players to take five months to hit SWTOR’s level cap

[Edge-]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/28/bi...-old-republic/

I'm blown away...like, completely blown away. The "We were an inexperienced studio" bit doesn't fly considering everyone running the show for the game had years (a decade or more in some cases) of experience working on MMO's.

Bright note is that subscriptions are apparently on the rise, so they must be doing something right.

[Deleted]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/28/bi...-old-republic/

I'm blown away...like, completely blown away. The "We were an inexperienced studio" bit doesn't fly considering everyone running the show for the game had years (a decade or more in some cases) of experience working on MMO's.

Bright note is that subscriptions are apparently on the rise, so they must be doing something right.

It's a lie. It's not possible that they all honestly believed that. You don't even need experience working on an MMO, simply playing MMO's is enough to see that what they offered at launch was not 5 months worth of 1-50. Bollocks I say.

EDIT: I see James Ohlen is still with BW. katta will be pleased

[Edge-]

It's a lie. It's not possible that they all honestly believed that. You don't even need experience working on an MMO, simply playing MMO's is enough to see that what they offered at launch was not 5 months worth of 1-50. Bollocks I say.

Take it up with James Ohlen. Those are his words, not mine.

[Deleted]

Take it up with James Ohlen. Those are his words, not mine.

Oh I know, i was refering to the article.

[katta]

It's a lie. It's not possible that they all honestly believed that. You don't even need experience working on an MMO, simply playing MMO's is enough to see that what they offered at launch was not 5 months worth of 1-50. Bollocks I say.

EDIT: I see James Ohlen is still with BW. katta will be pleased

Well it is good to see hes still there.

I also agree there is no way in hell that they though that players would take 3-5 months to hit 50.

Its just another excuse to not take the blame for the lack of content in the game at endgame. Just keep throwing out excuses on why people quit the game and maybe someone will believe one of them. First it was the sub cost(LOL), then it was they were trying to improve on everything we wanted instead of focusing on certain areas and getting them done first, now the latest one of its the players fault because we gave them 3-5 months worth of content that they used up in 1-2 weeks.

Now they said that RotHC would take a month to level.(someone said it and think it was Bioware but dont know). Was that with their old calculations used at launch (so it would take maybe a week max) or is that with them knowing players burn through the content and is with them know that?

[RoninaThorstone]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/28/bi...-old-republic/

I'm blown away...like, completely blown away. The "We were an inexperienced studio" bit doesn't fly considering everyone running the show for the game had years (a decade or more in some cases) of experience working on MMO's.

Bright note is that subscriptions are apparently on the rise, so they must be doing something right.

WOOOOOOOOOOOW

What... The hell.
I could have told them in beta that it would take people a week or two to hit 50.
I had no idea they were that naive.

[SirRobin]

There comes a point where developers can start believing their own hype. Sometimes its a defense mechanism. When the only other option is to accept failure is staring them in the face. Sometimes its a natural phenomenon. From devoting years of their life to creating a product. Whatever the cause, the developers start blowing as much smoke up their own asses as they are their potential customers. So one of them showing just how out of touch with reality they became? Not exactly a surprise.

[Deleted]

Rather tabloid title sicne the actual quote talks about 3-4 months, MAYBE 5 months. Still they obviously overestimated it but they're not exactly the first to do so. Subs rising and 2 million new accounts since F2P launched is the official info we got and seems like the game actually, truly improved its condition. They shouldn't screw up this now. TOR can go back o right track like LOTRO did.

[Frozenbeef]

so when they tested the game they didn't see that it could be done in 1/50 of the time?

[Deleted]

so when they tested the game they didn't see that it could be done in 1/50 of the time?

They didn't expect people playing 6 hours per day.

[Deleted]

They didn't expect people playing 6 hours per day.

Bioware had the ability to tell the world how many hours, missions, kills, modifications the average 'Shepard' had in ME. They posted articles revealing the average amount each ME or DA player spent playing. Granted the MMO world may be different but noone at BW had MMO playing experience? I personally find it hard to believe.

[katta]

Subs rising and 2 million new accounts since F2P launched is the official info we got and seems like the game actually, truly improved its condition. They shouldn't screw up this now. TOR can go back o right track like LOTRO did.

The subs rising and 2 million new accounts is totally misleading.

How many new subs were F2P people using it just to get/buy perks then dropping the subs and going back to F2P?
How many of those 2 million accounts are still actually logging into the game on a regular basis?

They can throw out large numbers to make it look like the game is doing well but remember over 2 million people actually bought the game and payed a sub when it was first released and you know how that went. So with the aproximate 1 million subs they had before F2P and the 2 million new accounts would mean that 3 million people are playing now? Dont think so.

[notorious98]

Color me astonished. Oh wait, James Ohlen said this? In that case, neither am I surprised nor do I believe a single word of it. The guy has zero credibility with me when it comes to anything. It's just another reminder of the sheer incompetence at the top when it comes to this game.

[threads]

Yea, maybe if they removed the ability to skip cutscenes. I think after the first planet or two most people were skipping through them all, minus their class stories. It's almost depressing how much of a difference delaying the release 6-12 months could have made for this game. I started playing again recently and there's quite a lot to do at endgame now. Hopefully people return to play through Makeb and stick around.

[Tychus]

Bright note is that subscriptions are apparently on the rise, so they must be doing something right.

I jumped in the game recently and even as a "preferred" account (as a preorder/launch sub), I still felt pushed and almost bullied into subscribing. I didn't like the experience at all. I found it a bit amusing that I couldn't even equip the silly "Founder" title they gave out early on.

I suspect that people new to the game will be sufficiently interested in the storytelling to allow themselves to be cajoled into subscriptions, but I wonder if it's sustainable.

[Arlee]

Actually I believe it. One thing I heard from all the Devs last year was that they never thought that people would sit and play the game for longer than 3-4 hour periods of time. It apparently completely blew their minds that people were playing for such long periods at once.

[Adam Jensen]

They didn't expect people playing 6 hours per day.

Well, I can understand that, after all, no MMO has any players who play THAT extensively. Even WoW isn't known for players who play all day long, 24/7.

It's not like MMO players are misjudged as no-lifers by anyone.

/end sarcasm.

[Edge-]

Well, I can understand that, after all, no MMO has any players who play THAT extensively. Even WoW isn't known for players who play all day long, 24/7.

At launch? It's pretty common for the super hardcore to play nearly all day till they hit level cap. For the "core" crowd, play for a few hours a night + more on the weekends. I don't see how they can expect a majority of the playerbase to not hit level cap within the first month or two.

[Parrin]

They were completely out of touch with their demographic. But, to be honest, I skipped back and forth between about 4 different classes that I was enjoying. It took me over 8 months to hit 50 on my only character at max level. I still haven't finished his class story line (BH), and I'm enjoying leveling a new bounty hunter and a new agent now (the first one was an operative that I couldn't stand the mechanics). I left behind all of my first 8 characters on a PVP server which I only joined because that was the first one that www.torwars.com supported. I'm now enjoying a PVE server with the new TORWars guild, and still haven't gotten any of the new toons to 50.

But I'm a single-player rpg gamer. I don't usually enjoy mmos. And even I don't feel like this game is right for me. Too much stuff I don't care about, and too much missing that I do. Still, it's a fun game and it's worth my $13/month for what I do with it.

[select20]

I love SWTOR and I can't believe they thought it would take people that long to get to Max level. I played very casually, probably max 6-8 hours a week. And it took me 3 months to get my Jugg to max level, and a few other toons to 30+. And I listened to all the dialogue, still do over a year later.