Is it fair to consider SW:TOR a failure?

[Azuri]

I'm not entirely sure about the bolded part. I recall their marketing plans to involve terms like: "We're not in Azeroth anymore...". That is one of the few things that really annoyed me about their marketing campaign. It wasn't trying to kill World of Warcraft, but it really was smearing it with a negative brush!

Yeah that Rift comment never phased me and I'm sure Rift knew and still knows they would never nuke WoW. Hell their current campaign is "save a panda" $1 dollar will be donated for every pre-order of their new Xpac to some save the panda's charity. Brilliant and light hearted marketing in the business. Love it! Trion knows they won't get any "loyal" wow fans to move to their game their target is the ones that are done with the game.

[Hyve]

Yeah that Rift comment never phased me and I'm sure Rift knew and still knows they would never nuke WoW. Hell their current campaign is "save a panda" $1 dollar will be donated for every pre-order of their new Xpac to some save the panda's charity. Brilliant and light hearted marketing in the business. Love it! Trion knows they won't get any "loyal" wow fans to move to their game their target is the ones that are done with the game.

I don't see them as light-hearted jokes, but I don't take them as an insult either of course!

I just feel their cheap jabs at a more superior, longer founded game. From what I have sen of Rift, it looks amazing, and if they appealed to the World of Warcraft player base more, rather then hit at it with these small jokes, they might get a more popular game. After all we're very similar groups of people, but it is just the medium of our entertainment that is different.

[Forsedar]

Yeah that Rift comment never phased me and I'm sure Rift knew and still knows they would never nuke WoW. Hell their current campaign is "save a panda" $1 dollar will be donated for every pre-order of their new Xpac to some save the panda's charity. Brilliant and light hearted marketing in the business. Love it! Trion knows they won't get any "loyal" wow fans to move to their game their target is the ones that are done with the game.

I think it has come down to developers trying to access a specific portion of the MMO playerbase. We are no longer in the era where one MMO is going to hold the entire market. Rift has its loyal base of players, with strong potential to attract more and SWTOR also now has its loyal playerbase, which was weeded out after many different mistakes/waits. A playerbase doesn't decide if the game is a failure or not- if people still enjoy it and pay for it, then it was still a success. Its profitable and its still getting content.

[Lord Kristivas]

The failure belongs to the people who expected somethingelse then current SW:TOR.

They said "we are making a new WoW but in SW universe" but most of the SW community was expecting something like SW:Galaxies. Only failure Bioware made was at the start of the path : not making this game a semi-sandbox Star wars experience. They chose to go SW:TOR way..

No. Just no.

Being a sandbox would not have made SWTOR better. It might have made it better for you, but at the same time, those of us who like the theme-park type of games would be in the sandbox-people's boat right now, complaining about it not being theme park. You're just switching one group for another. I, personally, like to be directed along with the story. I don't want to just run around, like a chicken with my head cut off, doing random shit as with Skyrim, or moisture farming and cantina dancing like SWG.

Everyone has their "awesome ideas" as to what would make SWTOR a "better game". Well, if you put all of those things into one game, playing would be as insane as programming a 1987 Panasonic VCR clock and timer. Why? Because the internet is fucking bananas. Either no one knows what they want, or everyone wants such a niche game that it puts off the general populace. I'm sure Warhammer Online is still tits to like 500 people who think it's the best shit ever. Meanwhile, you can't get the same two gamers to agree on pretty much anything else when it comes to development and features.

"Voice acting is amazing!"
"LOL @ this talky RP stuff"
"It was cool at first, but annoying on my 3rd alt."
"Only the class missions should be fully voiced."
"Only class missions and the main planet story quests should have VO, while the side quests shouldn't."
"I like pudding."
"/Trollface"

And the list goes on. Fucking bananas. :P No game will ever be huge like WoW ever again! Not even WoW would be huge if vanilla came out right now.

[Boathouse]

First off - To the people mentioning the original RIFT ad saying "We're not in Azeroth anymore". It wasn't meant to be a dig at WoW. It was meant to say "Hey look, this game has dominated the MMO market for 8 years, here's a breath of fresh air that doesn't involve Azeroth anymore!"

SW:TOR to both my wife and I was the biggest let down in our history of gaming. The game was overhyped by both the company and the fans. They listened to almost no complaints of the players in beta, more than half the problems on the beta forums made it to release and then some. The story was - AMAZING -, probably the most fun I've ever had leveling in any game. But that's a huge problem, you spend the least amount of time in your MMO experience leveling than you do doing anything else. Leveling can't be the only good thing about a game. Raids on release were face roll easy (My WoW guild xfered to SW:TOR) and the "heroic" dungeons were only hard for people new to the MMO genre, which this game brought a lot of and was frustrating in itself trying to PUG anything, the players were just AWFUL at the game style.

[Heksar]

It costs 13€ here, and still nobody buys it :/ It could have been a huge hit with the money spent on the advertising and all, but people are picky.

[Deleted]

SWTOR utterly failed at the purpose it has been made for: to kill wow.

[Venziir]

Precisely. RIFT never tried to be the WoW killer, though some fans certainly wanted to paint it in that light early on. RIFT does it's thing. That's why it doesn't feel like such a failure.

Did you ever watch their first commercials? "Join our Horde", "You are not in Azeroth anymore"... I'd say they did indeed try to "slay the giant". As for SWTOR, the game didn't fail as such, EA just happened.

[Redblade]

I just feel their cheap jabs at a more superior, longer founded game. From what I have sen of Rift, it looks amazing, and if they appealed to the World of Warcraft player base more, rather then hit at it with these small jokes, they might get a more popular game. After all we're very similar groups of people, but it is just the medium of our entertainment that is different.

I'd say they are doing fine they way they are, develop and cater to your audience, not for the one you don't have.

[Antipathy]

Did you ever watch their first commercials? "Join our Horde", "You are not in Azeroth anymore"... I'd say they did indeed try to "slay the giant". As for SWTOR, the game didn't fail as such, EA just happened.

Beating a dead horse replied to by umpteen posters already. I'd say they didn't and as many others have mentioned, those area clearly messages aimed at former WoW players sill interested in the MMO genre.

[RoninaThorstone]

I think it failed just by the fact that it being forced to go f2p. I'm not even sure if that game has over a million subs anymore.

Yeah. League of legends is free to play and thus must be a failure.

Oh wait.

[LilSaihah]

Yeah. League of legends is free to play and thus must be a failure.

Oh wait.

League of Legends was designed from day 1 with the F2P model in mind. TOR was not. (Well, it may have been, but I don't have any evidence either way except for the subscription)

[RoninaThorstone]

League of Legends was designed from day 1 with the F2P model in mind. TOR was not. (Well, it may have been, but I don't have any evidence either way except for the subscription)

EA has been trending toward F2P across the board.

They've even stated that F2P was something they were batting around in development.

Also, there is evidence that they were working on F2P back when they had 1.4 million players.

[Grenzstein]

EA has been trending toward F2P across the board.

They've even stated that F2P was something they were batting around in development.

Also, there is evidence that they were working on F2P back when they had 1.4 million players.

Because those 1.4 million players were never 1.4 million players.
EA inflated their own playerbase when they gave everyone a free month when most subs were almost gone thus people that were not even playing anymore were still subbed. Also, many people paid for 3-6 months.

I don't believe EA were always going for F2P with SWTOR.

IMO the game failed because it was rushed, pretty much the same thing that happened with WAR. Some good ideas, some good new features that were rushed so much that barely worked. Legacy System didn't work at all until a few months on.

If SWTOR launched around 4-5 months later with all that content that was added later it would be a better game and would retain some subs.

[Deleted]

I think if SWTOR got released around April 2012, it may have been a better game, because a lot of features weren't finished for the December 2011 release, which led to it bleeding subs like no tomorrow

[Frozen Death Knight]

Wow this thread blew up fast. Well, might as well drop a couple of sources in here.

Eighty million?
Here: http://www.gamespot.com/news/star-wa...nalyst-6312400

Implied one hundred million?
Here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/sw...t-ever-project

Almost two hundred million?
Here: http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2012/...tic-gamble/#/0

Three hundred million claim?
Here: http://www.1up.com/news/ea-louse-blo...hammer-failure

TOR profitable with half a million?
Here: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/article...h-500-000-subs

Now that "look ma, I'm an analyst," Pachter has always seemed to love whoring himself out to anyone that will quote him. So I stopped paying attention to his "how can I get paid for saying this" bullshit years ago.

About TOR's development?
Here: http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/03/08/be...t-the-problem/

I have got so freaking confused about the whole budget thing for this game. It's like no one can agree on how much actually was used to develop this darn game.

[slime]

What a fun, great game - managed by a failure of a company that was too arrogant to be told how to make an mmo, they knew better... obviously they did not.

[Frozen Death Knight]

EA has been trending toward F2P across the board.

They've even stated that F2P was something they were batting around in development.

Also, there is evidence that they were working on F2P back when they had 1.4 million players.

You simply do not change your business plan so radically for a game, when it's been out for a short amount of time, unless it is for a darn good reason. If they wanted it to be F2P, they would have made sure that it shipped like that, not announcing it some months after the release. Not to mention that this contradicts some previous statements made by people working at EA that they wanted the game to keep growing in subscribers (pretty much becoming the next WoW), etc., etc.

Also, saying that they were discussing it earlier in development does not really mean much when that is the time where tons of ideas get thrown around that do not get used for the released product. It would have surprised me more if it had never been brought up at all, honestly.

[Omgarsh]

I feel like yes, this game is a failure. I say that mostly because EA already had to transition it over to a F2P model they clearly never intended for the game. It's a hard thing for anyone who bought it to swallow, though it's not their fault. They didn't design the game, they didn't create any of its inherent flaws, and so on. A lot of times something called post-purchase rationalization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-pu...ationalization) causes us to feel like we should justify buying something long after it has disappointed us. Especially something that feels expensive like a subscription-based MMO.

[Frozen Death Knight]

First off - To the people mentioning the original RIFT ad saying "We're not in Azeroth anymore". It wasn't meant to be a dig at WoW. It was meant to say "Hey look, this game has dominated the MMO market for 8 years, here's a breath of fresh air that doesn't involve Azeroth anymore!"

I really don't see why they needed to bring up WoW to begin with, regardless of what it meant. I personally find it annoying when a company decides to make slogans and other types of promotional stuff referencing other products in the same market when the point of product advertisement is to show the merits of their product and nothing else.

Regardless if they are mocking, respecting, liking, or are even fearing WoW (it can also be neither of those options, but that's not my point either way), that they acknowledge the game in their advertisement just makes the shadow WoW casts way more apparent. To me, that is not what I would like to see if I wanted my product to stand out from the rest, since I think it screams weakness.