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  1. #161
    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen Death Knight View Post
    Someone mentioned it, so I responded. Don't see how anything of what I have said is bashing Rift, exactly, especially when I said that I do not have anything else to say about the game or Trion. If that's your interpretation of what I said, roll with it, then. I don't care.

    Much of what you said to me had barely anything to do with my post. I really don't like commercial tactics like that, so even if that is how you wish to look at it, it's not how I see it. I can acknowledge your position and that there are people who did think like that when looking at that commercial, but that does not mean that I have to agree with it.
    All of what I have said has precisely to do with your post, which was (until your random accusations) a constructive discussion on perceptions of marketing campaigns, strategies and target audience - if you can't see the relevance, I can't see how any discussion on the subject can be carried forward, particularly since you've put up yet another straw man and turned the argument into an analysis of any assumptions about my interpretation of what you have had to say.

    Its simple. you don't like something, I explain by saying yes, you aren't the target audience, and are therefore not meant to like it because of XYZ reasons, and then give you my perception of how that very thing you don't like has worked. It's called an exchange of ideas and opinions.
    {I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. }

  2. #162
    Mechagnome Kellytm3's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by iceberg265 View Post
    SWTOR is the most fun MMO currently on the market
    Really ? Keep that opinion to yourself,TOR is one of the least played of the triple A MMO's on the market. Don't believe that,go look its stats up on Xfire and other game trackers. Yes,TOR is a failure. Bioware failed to deliver content promised before launch,their paying customers spoke with their wallets and canceled their subscriptions. In EA's last quarterly call the comment was made that TOR's poor performance was largely offset by BF3 Premium sales.

    Warning - Others are allowed to share their opinions, just as you are.
    Last edited by Ragnarocket; 2012-09-30 at 04:36 PM.

  3. #163
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    Quote Originally Posted by hk-51 View Post
    Because making stuff up about EA expecting swtor to have over 10 million subscribers doesn't make it a failure.

    I can think of like... One guy in middle managment who thought that swtor would have 10 million. I think it was the CEO of EA who said that they didn't expect it to dethrone wow before the game launched. And bioware appears to have been aiming for 1 million or more.

    So... I guess if you want to make up standards based on your own imaginings...
    That was CFO of EA, I wouldn't call him a middle management. Oddly enough, he lost his job shortly after first EA's quarterly report post SWTOR launch.

    Link.

  4. #164
    Quote Originally Posted by Sznur View Post
    That was CFO of EA, I wouldn't call him a middle management. Oddly enough, he lost his job shortly after first EA's quarterly report post SWTOR launch.

    Link.
    Blatent EA hype train. You can't think that the company believes everything it says.

    Look at this. "Brown said he sees the current market for MMOs in North America and Europe at around 12 million people, roughly half of which play World of Warcraft."

    WoW has never broken more than 5 million in NA/EU. At their peak they only had 5 million. Since then, and around this was posted, they've lost 25% of their players. This is just hype. You should know not to take it seriously.

    edit: I mean, what do you expect? The new spokesperson for apple to be like, "Well, the new iphone 5 is basically the same thing that you already have. But a little smaller. We will charge a lot for it. But you should buy it or else risk being ridiculed by your peer group." or gw2 being like "well, its not revolutionary. Just a bit different. Think warhammer and tera mash up."

    This
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  5. #165
    Quote Originally Posted by Biged781 View Post
    Crap, I forgot to multiply.... oops.

    You're right; 2.45m copies sold at $60 / copy = 147,000,000. So yeah, it would seem that they covered initial development costs. At this point they are losing money however as they said they need 500k subs to break even at this point. I assume that means month to month costs.

    But yeah, it doesn't matter. It's not anywhere near what their goal was, so a business failure it is.
    Stores dont buy games for 60 bucks then sell them for the same price. That would mean they dont make an ounce of profit.
    At best stores buy games for half the price they sell it for, and the more units the buy the better deal they get.

  6. #166
    Bloodsail Admiral Televators's Avatar
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    Yes, it's clearly a failure and saying it isn't seems indefensible to me. I have never heard so much hype for a game in my life and I've been playing MMOs since EQ in 1999. Even I was excited and I wasn't a big fan of the Star Wars franchise.

    Here's the deal. If you're a fast food restaurant and you're going to make your own Egg McMuffin, don't exclude the ham, call it a Super Mega Egg Sandwich and expect me to continue buying it. If you're going to make a game that plays exactly like the heavyweight MMOs, you need to include ALL of the functions of those MMOs.

    SW:TOR is a huge failure for two main reason: They had the Star Wars name and the highest production budget in the history of MMOs and they squandered it on a clone MMO that brought zero innovation.
    EverQuest, City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, EverQuest II, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Star Wars TOR, Guild Wars 2, Rift.

  7. #167
    ToR is a classic example of how bad PR management can KILL a game.

    they managed press very badly. The game is better than wow in almost every department. Just with less content overall, wow had original + 3 expansions by the time SWTOR launched, with a 5th already announced and revealed.

    content was the biggest complaint at 50 and it was grossly unfair, blizzard are far more cunning in managing media, their CMs pose as players and covertly direct player responses and opinions.. once you have a feeling or grasp for social dynamics, it is so easy to sway most people becuase they on't think and they always let their emotions rule without their heads.

    furhtermore, they managed extremely well 3rd party sites, blizzard has their community team in almost EVERY major fansite and game sites, forging opinions, offering perks to editors and writers..and getting their views across.

    e.g. SWTOR is more a single player game than an MMO? bull shit - it is more MMO than wow has been for a long time. even conversations are enhanced byhaving more players.

    SWTOR was the most successful MMO at launch ever. It failed to retain its core mmo players that drifted over from WOW when it failed to manage their moaning and slagging off. Most of the players did not return to wow, altho some did.

    Blizzard were clever too, that Annual pass is the only thing that saved mass abandonments to ToR..most people found themselves with the economic downtown havign to only choose 1 MMO, and since they were bound to WoW, and ToR was taking a while, they unsubscribed.

    For the Future?

    ToR can still grab back all those customers with a kick ass expansion and a well co-ordinated media campaign. WoW expansion glitz lasts about a month or 2, it's so retro compared to ToR, but saying that it has some cool new features. Still, most players can be enticed to join ToR if they manage thieir media well.

    ---------- Post added 2012-09-30 at 07:10 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Televators View Post
    Yes, it's clearly a failure and saying it isn't seems indefensible to me. I have never heard so much hype for a game in my life and I've been playing MMOs since EQ in 1999. Even I was excited and I wasn't a big fan of the Star Wars franchise.

    Here's the deal. If you're a fast food restaurant and you're going to make your own Egg McMuffin, don't exclude the ham, call it a Super Mega Egg Sandwich and expect me to continue buying it. If you're going to make a game that plays exactly like the heavyweight MMOs, you need to include ALL of the functions of those MMOs.

    SW:TOR is a huge failure for two main reason: They had the Star Wars name and the highest production budget in the history of MMOs and they squandered it on a clone MMO that brought zero innovation.
    true they could have done much more than they did, even though what htey did was better than wow, they didn't do enough game breaking stuff.

    combat while better was still too similar
    animations while cool, we nre not cool enough, - hardly any jedi acrobatics, no force jump

    they had the clout to get away with innovative upgrades to gameplay like you saw employed in titles like dragonage, guild wars 2, Witcher 2 etc, but stuck to the 2001 EQ model that wow improved on . thatwas disappointingg, but the game was still playable

    you play it it is still enjoyable, and it did have so much more in many departments, like story telling, so hard to do in MMos nailed it. which can be great for single gamming, but MMO you need to definltely have the lastability in gameplay

    at the end of the day, when it came to the most improtantt thign for an MMO, what you do when you hit the level cap, SWTOR offers nothing new from wow, for all the supriority of the game, t's wow with better graphics and featires but far less to do.

  8. #168
    Quote Originally Posted by XeroFive89 View Post
    Surely many of you are familiar with the vast amount of negativity this game has received since its release from sources such as the following:

    http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Paragus1...t-The-Tortanic
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertco...or-surrenders/
    http://www.swtor-life.com/editorial/...r-failed/7143/

    Yet because the game failed to meet expectations and failed to retain over a million players, is it a failure? How do we define exactly what a failure is? Partly because I can't post this on the official forums without an active subscription, I'm posting it here (equips flame retardant shield) among other locations. The idea behind the video is exploring whether or not SW:TOR should be considered a failure. Personally, I think it has been a pretty big disappointment; but then again, so was EverQuest II yet it retained a sizable playerbase years after release. I believe SW:TOR failed to meet many expectations, but as long as BioWare are still pumping out content updates for a playerbase which remains relatively stable over a long time period, I can't say it's a failure. Obviously, to achieve a relatively stable population like Rift and EQ2, the game has to be doing something right in order to keep those people pleased. Ultimately, I think it's too early to say with 100% certainty either way. I specifically site Warhammer Online as an example of a failed MMO, yet it took that game awhile to reach its horrid state. Even though BioWare are still pumping out content updates, a couple years down the road, SW:TOR could also be sitting in maintenance mode with only a couple active servers.

    Anyway, check out the video and let me know why you do or do not consider the game a failure.

    Things SW:TOR did well:

    Artwork (for the most part)
    Environments


    Things SW:Tor did either mediocre or badly:

    Class/combat/talent design
    Immersion
    UI/controls/addons
    Adventure and transitioning between/throughout worlds

    Notes: I got my hands on the game fairly late in the Beta during the free stress test weekends, and I found it hard to even spend the time checking the game out for more than an hour at a time. Character creation was very complex and offered a wide variety of looks, but they chose basic humanoid races and didn't offer a single exotic race (let alone something familiar to SW fans who may not know a single thing about this part of the SW universe). I understand that it wasn't supposed to be related to the movie franchise in any way (except for republic vs empire) and I think that was the problem. You're not going to see a very big fan base for a game based on a niche part of the star wars universe that exists mostly in books and poorly developed console games.

    Aside from that, the character controls always felt sluggish, and they never seemed to fix the ability delay issue. The abilities themselves were too generic and bland to offer much excitement to players, and in pvp they were so homogenized between the 'classes' that playing a character doesn't feel unique or special, let alone epic.

    The story did not draw you in (even the character story) and it really felt like a lot of BS made up lore just to fill out a quest dialogue for an annoying cut scene with some random character you're supposed to care about. All in all, the game never felt natural or exciting, even when it went live and for a year after. The pvp was the most disappointing part of it all, since they never put in addon support and the default UI does not allow for key modifiers to cut down on action bar space and the number of key binds you have. The 'customizable ui' was still ugly and it's a wonder any of the designers didn't take notes from other games and addon developers.

    Even after it goes completely free to play, I don't see myself ever going back to it, because the fact of the matter is all the issues I've brought up will still be there. The game will still feel unnatural and clunky, failing to provide any real degree of immersion and being unable to provide quality entertainment.

    PS. Before any of you hardcore Tor players come here to flame me for what I've said, just take a look around. Look at what kind of player you have to be to enjoy playing SW:Tor.

  9. #169
    I still believe this could have been and exceptional Single Player game, but is a failure as an MMO. The questing and quests were a blast to play through, well most of them. I never felt like it was an MMO though, even being in a guild with people I played MMOs with prior to SWTOR. The profession system was weak, the AH was a debacle and their economy generally was terrible. The Flashpoints/Operations were dull and aimlessly long. And the one major flaw beyond, endless loading screens, was the combat felt clunky. It lacked fluidity that wow/gw2 have spoiled me with.

    Could have been the best single player game of the year though. Should just have been KOTOR 3.

  10. #170
    Mechagnome tennesseej's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lugor View Post
    The real failure of the game comes from the fact that the game designers did not keep a unified vision for what they wanted the game to be. The game has great parts, but the overall experience is less than the sum of those parts.
    I agree with this 100%, and I think it is something that most games (and even many other things in this world) fail to realize. Just because all the parts look good, doesn't mean the final product that contains all the products will be good.

    While playing ToR, I didn't really feel like there was an awesome flow for the game. Certain aspects were very good, and others seemed to have been completely overlooked.

    I don't think ToR was a failure overall. I think it failed to deliver on many things, and definitely failed in terms of development cost and time versus revenue made. I read that ToR cost around 200 million to make. Given their initial sales, their subscription revenue and their costs since launch, I would seriously doubt that they have broken even yet. I think the F2P model is their last ditch effort to break even on the project, and they won't ever make any substantial money off of it. It did change the game market to some extent. You can already see a ripple effect of more games/MMO's specifically focusing more on voice acting, cutscenes and story. The ToR companion system was definitely better than I was expecting, and I think they raised the bar in that sense. Overall, not a failure, from a business perspective though, definitely a failure.
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  11. #171
    Immortal Frozen Death Knight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Antipathy View Post
    All of what I have said has precisely to do with your post, which was (until your random accusations) a constructive discussion on perceptions of marketing campaigns, strategies and target audience - if you can't see the relevance, I can't see how any discussion on the subject can be carried forward, particularly since you've put up yet another straw man and turned the argument into an analysis of any assumptions about my interpretation of what you have had to say.

    Its simple. you don't like something, I explain by saying yes, you aren't the target audience, and are therefore not meant to like it because of XYZ reasons, and then give you my perception of how that very thing you don't like has worked. It's called an exchange of ideas and opinions.
    You're really trying too hard.

    It's only an exchange if the other party lacks the actual knowledge. Pointing out the obvious is not really of much help.

  12. #172
    Deleted
    Compared to other WoW, yes. Compared to the MMO market in general, not really as they have and are still making profit...maybe not as much as some others, but profit is profit.

  13. #173
    Quote Originally Posted by Kittyvicious View Post
    Since you clearly don't come around these parts often, let me tell you exactly how I can say that.

    1) I praise the game when it warrants it and critique it the same. The company is making terrible decisions and I'm very unhappy with that part at the moment.
    Ok, so you're very unhappy with the direction the game is going in.

    2) I am currently worgen elbows deep in Mists of Pandaria because I love that game. So you can throw your bullshit bias claim out the window...since you don't know me at all.
    Not sure how any of that is relevant. What "bullshit biased claim" are you referring to exactly? All I said is that you gave a weak argument that amounted to "no, SWTOR is not a failure becuase I say it's not". That's not a claim, it's what you said, and how am I being biased?

    3) Point number two doesn't change the fact that I think SWTOR is a great game. It still has people playing and must make money. I think box sales alone more than likely brought it into the black. As a continuous business model it can't fail until it shuts it's doors with a loss. Since that is not going to happen, it is not a failure.
    That's nice, but your personal enjoyment of the game means little and less to BioWare and EA. I'm not sure you have the slightest understanding of how a business actually works. When they decided to take on this project goals were set. The goal was not to recoup what they spent making it and possibly to take in a little bit of profit. That's a sure way to tank a business.

    They want to hit their initial goals. If they don't even come close the it was a failed project. Also, the userbase has by and large left the game, which means that most players also see the game as a failure.

    4) The post was made almost solely to promote the OP's youtube video and get him hits. This thread is complete bullshit.
    Ok.

    So essentially you like the game (but don't like where it is heading) and, therefore, it is not a failure. Right. Good analysis, very insightful. Oh, and...

    Quote Originally Posted by Kittyvicious View Post
    Since you clearly don't come around these parts often, let me tell you exactly how I can say that.
    Thank God I don't, lest I have to listen to blithering morons like yourself.

    The game did little to stand out against any other MMO on the market (story was good, that's about it), it failed miserably in many gameplay aspects, it is currently failing from a business perspective. But right, I forgot; you like the game, so it's not a failure. Well I liked pets.com, I guess that means it wasn't a failure either.


    [Infracted]
    Last edited by Radux; 2012-09-30 at 10:49 PM.

  14. #174
    Immortal Frozen Death Knight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SirRobin View Post
    Well there are probably several different numbers you can use. There was a lot of "outsourcing" on this project so what do you count and what do you, well, not? They also opened an entire studio to make it, in Austin. Do you count all of that building, renovating, what have you? When you have the CFO, no less, for one of the biggest companies in the industry saying its their "biggest development project, ever, in the history of the company?" That's a lot of green. How about all those voice actors? Count them? That's before we get into all the advertising too. Lets not forget EA spending over half a billion buying BioWare around a year after they started working on TOR.

    Even resounding successes, like WoW, are not very talkative when it comes to how much they spend making the game. Now for a "troubled" product like TOR? One that EA's own boss was citing development costs on multiple earning's calls prior to launch? Johnny would probably rather have his fingernails ripped out, than admit just how "much" they spent getting TOR from concept to launch.
    Either way, it was a lot of money, then.

    It wouldn't surprise me if some heads got to roll because of the less than stellar results the game produced for EA. A lot of expectations were put on SW TOR and Bioware, so the environment at the company as well as the boards must be quite chaotic.

  15. #175
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    For me, being forced to change to free to play is a sign of failure.

  16. #176
    Immortal SirRobin's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Frozen Death Knight View Post
    Either way, it was a lot of money, then.

    It wouldn't surprise me if some heads got to roll because of the less than stellar results the game produced for EA. A lot of expectations were put on SW TOR and Bioware, so the environment at the company as well as the boards must be quite chaotic.
    Well funny you should mention that...

    One of the two BioWare brought in to run TOR's development, Gordon Walton, actually "left" around ten months before it even got to the shelves. Around the time things changed in TOR's Beta and not long before they started "Death Staring" features, in fact. Two months after TOR was on the shelves, and with the in-game exodus well under way, "biggest project ever" guy Eric Brown suddenly resigned. A couple months after that the layoffs began and would continue through July, including the other fellow they brought in to make TOR, Rich Vogel. Not long after that, the doctor who actually had "Austin" in his title, Greg Zeschuk, we learned had taken it out of his title. Not long after that we find out that Greg is actually taking more than a vacation and so, in fact, is Ray Muzyka.

    Matt Bromberg, with little to no MMORPG background as far as I recall, took over TOR supposedly in May. Though I don't recall reading about it till recently. So, as far as heads rolling? Seems like we've had plenty already.
    Last edited by SirRobin; 2012-09-30 at 10:53 PM.
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  17. #177
    Trent Oster Thinks Fans Negativity and EA Drove Muzyka and Zeschuk from Bioware - Forbes

    “Ray surprised me,” explained Oster. “I had him pegged as an EA lifer. My thought was the Ray agenda was to first usurp Frank Gibeau and then later John Riccotello as CEO.”

    “I’m sure the internal culture at EA had pinned the Old Republic conversion to free to play as a failure and hung that completely on Ray, so that would have hurt his upward climb. But, I figured he would fight harder. EA upper management must have been even worse than I thought.”
    Dunno if Bioware was just too inept to make a proper MMORPG (MMORPGs are vastly different than RPGs, maybe they couldn't handle it) or if it's just EA being evil as usual. Either way the whole situation sucks. Personally I always like to give the benefit of the doubt to the developer and pin the blame on EA as usual (everything they touch seems to wither away and die).


  18. #178
    Quote Originally Posted by hk-51 View Post
    Blatent EA hype train. You can't think that the company believes everything it says.

    Look at this. "Brown said he sees the current market for MMOs in North America and Europe at around 12 million people, roughly half of which play World of Warcraft."

    WoW has never broken more than 5 million in NA/EU. At their peak they only had 5 million. Since then, and around this was posted, they've lost 25% of their players. This is just hype. You should know not to take it seriously.

    edit: I mean, what do you expect? The new spokesperson for apple to be like, "Well, the new iphone 5 is basically the same thing that you already have. But a little smaller. We will charge a lot for it. But you should buy it or else risk being ridiculed by your peer group." or gw2 being like "well, its not revolutionary. Just a bit different. Think warhammer and tera mash up."
    I wouldn't call that blatant hype at all. The man was merely making comments about how much of the market they believed there was for their product. Not particularly sure how that equates to believing the game will have any particular number of subscribers. Just because there is a large market doesn't mean you're going to corner it or even have a quarter of that market. Using words like "potential audience" and "addressable market" make no assumptions of just how much of the market will buy into their product.

  19. #179
    Quote Originally Posted by notorious98 View Post
    I wouldn't call that blatant hype at all. The man was merely making comments about how much of the market they believed there was for their product. Not particularly sure how that equates to believing the game will have any particular number of subscribers. Just because there is a large market doesn't mean you're going to corner it or even have a quarter of that market. Using words like "potential audience" and "addressable market" make no assumptions of just how much of the market will buy into their product.
    Assuming that the addressable market is twice that of the game that has monopolized MMOs for 7 years when every sign has been that the market is saturated is just exaggerating to make it sound better than it is. Also known as hyping.
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  20. #180
    Quote Originally Posted by Televators View Post
    Yes, it's clearly a failure and saying it isn't seems indefensible to me. I have never heard so much hype for a game in my life and I've been playing MMOs since EQ in 1999. Even I was excited and I wasn't a big fan of the Star Wars franchise.

    Here's the deal. If you're a fast food restaurant and you're going to make your own Egg McMuffin, don't exclude the ham, call it a Super Mega Egg Sandwich and expect me to continue buying it. If you're going to make a game that plays exactly like the heavyweight MMOs, you need to include ALL of the functions of those MMOs.

    SW:TOR is a huge failure for two main reason: They had the Star Wars name and the highest production budget in the history of MMOs and they squandered it on a clone MMO that brought zero innovation.
    That pretty much invalidates most of what you said. By "squandering" something, it means you saw no return. The game turned a profit, albeit not the size of which EA or investors would have preferred. However, they still turned a profit. That, in and of itself, means the money wasn't squandered.

    Once again, many of you people need to learn the difference between "Failed" and "Failed to meet Expectations". They are two different things. If the game failed, it would have already been shut down by now.

    ---------- Post added 2012-09-30 at 07:05 PM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by hk-51 View Post
    Assuming that the addressable market is twice that of the game that has monopolized MMOs for 7 years when every sign has been that the market is saturated is just exaggerating to make it sound better than it is. Also known as hyping.
    Or misinterpretation of the market.

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