Your ten people per guild estimate is a little off, also you neglect to mention the 1.5 million people registered for closed Beta.

You are right when you say ToR Wont topple wow (atleast not if we believe the 12 million number, rather than going by the amount of Cataclysm box sales which was 4 million ish.... go figure 8 million people playing without the latest expansion?)

What it will do is settle in nicely into the number 2 spot, errode wows massive lead show other developers that you can live with the big white elephant and eventually overtake it as other games come and further errode wow.  Wow was the catalyst for mainstreaming MMOs but its had its best days and will slowly decline to a steady and still impressive user base.

ToR wont fail, it might not be groundbreaking (Though it IS an evolution of the "Theme park MMO" Subgenre much like GW 2 will be) It will succeed on its merits and do welll for EA.

My prediction = 4-5 million box sales witth a retention of 2.5 million subs after a year.  Beyond that it depends how fast and how good the content support is from BW.

Despite of what the doomsayers claim, this game will be a huge sucess because of these reasons:

1. It's a Star Wars game and Bioware will nail it perfectly. It will be a living breathing world!
2. It's Bioware, they have quality standards they are not cryptic, mythic, funcom. They have a high reputation unlike these other developers.
3. They have a team full of experienced people in the MMO world and also veterans from Bioware working on the game.
4. The game has quality, it's fun, it's immersive, it has alot of content unlike previous MMO's released after WoW and it's going to be bigger at launch than any of the previous games released. ie: RIFT, AoC, Warhammer.
5. EA is not forcing them to release the game like they did with warhammer online and they are putting biginvestment into it.

I could be here all day saying why this will be the 2nd biggest MMO in the market right after launch. But heres a resume:

• quality of the game.
• quantity of content.
• more replayability than any other MMO before.

Originally posted by KyBo

Originally posted by Deewe

Has the Heroic term been abused by TOR PR? 

• Combat was supposed to be heroic and from what we saw it's the exact same thing as in WoW. Boss kiting... heroic?
• Quests: going into a sith temple to kill worms... heroic?
• Crafting: selecting a companion - click to have him/her do something - get results... heroic?
• Space sim: Point and clicking in 2D on space ships not even trying to stay in your six, heroic?
• Having the exact same ship (mobile home) as any other [insert class name]... makes you fuzzy?
• Look & gear: grinding gear to look like any other maxed out character, so unique feeling!
• Companions: wandering around with the same disguised companion(s) as anyone else.. heroic?
• Being "obliged" to use companions to solo... heroicness ftw!

 

 

 

      You've pretty much hit all of the points as to why this game won't come anywhere near WoW in terms of success, but the game will not fail from a financial standpoint.  There are too many people who will be sucked in by the EA PR machine, the reputation that BioWare has earned with the KoTOR series, and the simple draw of Star Wars for the game not to at least recoup its expenses.  That doesn't translate to TOR rising anywhere near the level of being considered an immense powerhouse MMO, however, and something tells me that EA already knows it. 

     The last I read, there were something like 36,000 guilds pre-registered.  It takes a minimum requirement of 4 players pre-ordering to register a guild.  Even if there were an average of 10 players per guild, which is a very generous estimate, that would still only amount to 360,000 preorders.  That is a decent base of players, but not nearly an amazing number, especially when you consider the amount of hype the game is generating, and the financial investment that has been put into it.  You can bet that while no one knows the exact figure, the development cost of this game is definitely well in excess of $100 million.  As EA has stated, it's their most expensive game to date, and that doesn't factor in the pre-launch marketing blitz that is sure to come when launch day is announced.  Using the new "Green Lantern" movie as an example of a sizeable ad campaign, in which WB spent roughly $100 million to hype the film, I would expect that EA will spend at least a comparable amount to hype up launch day for TOR.  Using a conservative estimate that TOR cost $150 million to develop, and EA spends another $100 million on advertising, that's an estimated $250 million price tag. (which I still believe is a much lower estimate than what the actual total cost of the game will be) 

     Even if you assume a 100% profit margin, it would take 1 million people pre-ordering a $100 special edition box, and subscribing for the full first year for EA to see a profit, which will not happen, and every part of this estimate is unrealistically skewed in TOR's favor.  Over the course of five years, there is no doubt that TOR WILL eventually pay for itself, and turn a profit.  The overall return on EA's immense investment, however, remains to be seen.

     The game is not completely lost by any means.  The issues that you list will probably plague the game when it launches, but all of them can be fixed.  The question is, will developers like Dallas Dickenson be able to swallow their pride, part with their dream of "STAR WoW's", and admit that this idea has failed to produce results twice?  Only by admitting that copying Blizzard's Baby is not a recipe for success can you fix the problems with this game.  It may come to pass that the only way to get these issues addressed will have to come from EA, in the form of pink slips for game directors like Dickenson and Daniel Erikson for these changes to occur, and run yet another PR drive after changes are made.

     The bottom line is that TOR will make a profit, but as is, this attempt at the "NGE 2.0" is not the hit you're looking for.  The game will have to break away from the boring combat, lack of diversity, and other uninteresting features that come with aping WoW in order to realize any great success.     

 Your math is going to be way off as I believe your estimates of Guilds  is innacurate and as pointed out you did not figure in the massive amount of folks who registered for beta. The guild I am in has well over 250 members last I checked and it is not one of the typical named guilds you usually see with massive numbers like the Old Timers Guild.

Also, there is enough out there about TOR for people who pay attention to realize this is not an attempt to make Star WOW or NGE 2.0 . I won't bother to comment further accept to say this game is more like KOTOR + ME 1 &2  turned MMO with updated technology and using MMORPG and single player RPG standards (which WOW uses as well).

None of us will really know how good the game is or if it is a game for us until it is live and to place lame labels on it now is just silly. Only a vocal minority of Sand Box cultists and former SWG fans who wear rose colored glasses thinking it was great pre-NGE are bashing this game repeatedly as far as I can see. I said this before, but for a great many players this may very well be the first MMO they play so everything will feel pretty fresh to them and with over 200 hours of personal  story per class not including group content, PVP, Raids, Flashpoints, etc I should be a strong competitor and a market success story.

EDIT- I am in the OLD REPUBLIC DADs guild currently at 346 members as a reference.

Originally posted by dougmysticey

Originally posted by KyBo

Originally posted by Deewe

Has the Heroic term been abused by TOR PR? 

• Combat was supposed to be heroic and from what we saw it's the exact same thing as in WoW. Boss kiting... heroic?
• Quests: going into a sith temple to kill worms... heroic?
• Crafting: selecting a companion - click to have him/her do something - get results... heroic?
• Space sim: Point and clicking in 2D on space ships not even trying to stay in your six, heroic?
• Having the exact same ship (mobile home) as any other [insert class name]... makes you fuzzy?
• Look & gear: grinding gear to look like any other maxed out character, so unique feeling!
• Companions: wandering around with the same disguised companion(s) as anyone else.. heroic?
• Being "obliged" to use companions to solo... heroicness ftw!

 

 

 

      You've pretty much hit all of the points as to why this game won't come anywhere near WoW in terms of success, but the game will not fail from a financial standpoint.  There are too many people who will be sucked in by the EA PR machine, the reputation that BioWare has earned with the KoTOR series, and the simple draw of Star Wars for the game not to at least recoup its expenses.  That doesn't translate to TOR rising anywhere near the level of being considered an immense powerhouse MMO, however, and something tells me that EA already knows it. 

     The last I read, there were something like 36,000 guilds pre-registered.  It takes a minimum requirement of 4 players pre-ordering to register a guild.  Even if there were an average of 10 players per guild, which is a very generous estimate, that would still only amount to 360,000 preorders.  That is a decent base of players, but not nearly an amazing number, especially when you consider the amount of hype the game is generating, and the financial investment that has been put into it.  You can bet that while no one knows the exact figure, the development cost of this game is definitely well in excess of $100 million.  As EA has stated, it's their most expensive game to date, and that doesn't factor in the pre-launch marketing blitz that is sure to come when launch day is announced.  Using the new "Green Lantern" movie as an example of a sizeable ad campaign, in which WB spent roughly $100 million to hype the film, I would expect that EA will spend at least a comparable amount to hype up launch day for TOR.  Using a conservative estimate that TOR cost $150 million to develop, and EA spends another $100 million on advertising, that's an estimated $250 million price tag. (which I still believe is a much lower estimate than what the actual total cost of the game will be) 

     Even if you assume a 100% profit margin, it would take 1 million people pre-ordering a $100 special edition box, and subscribing for the full first year for EA to see a profit, which will not happen, and every part of this estimate is unrealistically skewed in TOR's favor.  Over the course of five years, there is no doubt that TOR WILL eventually pay for itself, and turn a profit.  The overall return on EA's immense investment, however, remains to be seen.

     The game is not completely lost by any means.  The issues that you list will probably plague the game when it launches, but all of them can be fixed.  The question is, will developers like Dallas Dickenson be able to swallow their pride, part with their dream of "STAR WoW's", and admit that this idea has failed to produce results twice?  Only by admitting that copying Blizzard's Baby is not a recipe for success can you fix the problems with this game.  It may come to pass that the only way to get these issues addressed will have to come from EA, in the form of pink slips for game directors like Dickenson and Daniel Erikson for these changes to occur, and run yet another PR drive after changes are made.

     The bottom line is that TOR will make a profit, but as is, this attempt at the "NGE 2.0" is not the hit you're looking for.  The game will have to break away from the boring combat, lack of diversity, and other uninteresting features that come with aping WoW in order to realize any great success.     

 Your math is going to be way off as I believe your estimates of Guilds  is innacurate and as pointed out you did not figure in the massive amount of folks who registered for beta. The guild I am in has well over 250 members last I checked and it is not one of the typical named guilds you usually see with massive numbers like the Old Timers Guild.

Also, there is enough out there about TOR for people who pay attention to realize this is not an attempt to make Star WOW or NGE 2.0 . I won't bother to comment further accept to say this game is more like KOTOR + ME 1 &2  turned MMO with updated technology and using MMORPG and single player RPG standards (which WOW uses as well).

None of us will really know how good the game is or if it is a game for us until it is live and to place lame labels on it now is just silly. Only a vocal minority of Sand Box cultists and former SWG fans who wear rose colored glasses thinking it was great pre-NGE are bashing this game repeatedly as far as I can see. I said this before, but for a great many players this may very well be the first MMO they play so everything will feel pretty fresh to them and with over 200 hours of personal  story per class not including group content, PVP, Raids, Flashpoints, etc I should be a strong competitor and a market success story.

Totally agree,I'm in a gaming community myself and it seems that there is like 400 + people interested in the game and after seeing what happened recently with Rift(around 400 members subscribed)I'm expecting this number to double as  release date is announced.

Well, they said they were going to give us a refreshing combat system....but then they put up a poll =/

It asked something like "Do you guys want a combat system like Dragon Age 2, or something more like all of those WoW clones out there?" in not so many words. WoW clone fans won.....or, at least, that's what the poll said.

Originally posted by Deathsmind

Are you being sarcastic? You think GW2 will do good??? thats laughable. SWTOR will be amazing. Everything looks amazing and all i hear is good talk except from people that has never seen it or has played it. I love a game that has an  advance story line. SWTOR is blowing everyone out of the water with the quest/storyline. I doubt anything will come close to this game for years to come. 

TOR will satisfy a lot of players who've wanted a story-heavy MMO, but it's gameplay won't satisfy those who are looking for a genuine alternative to WoW, or simply don't like Star Wars or sci-fi. For those people, there's GW2, which has put an extremely heavy emphasis on playing for the fun of it, anti-grind, the lack of dedicated healers, dynamic events and other innovative gameplay features. It also has a fully voiced personal story line along with a personality system that's (shockingly) not based on good vs. evil. That being said, I think if there's one thing TOR will beat GW2 in, it's the story. I expect Bioware's story paths to be much more emotionally involving and complex than those in Guild Wars 2, though I do like its biography/backstory feature.

From Arenanet's perspective, it helps that Guild Wars 2 has no subscription fee, meaning box sales count for much more than they will for TOR, which is sticking to the subscription model. The press surrounding GW2 has been overwhelmingly positive and when it's been shown alongside TOR, Arenanet have made sure to put on fantastic, convention-stealing shows. People have seen and played this game and Arenanet have sometimes streamed developer walkthrough demos live from conventions. Whenever they release information, they follow it up a couple of days later with FAQs from various forums. They converse on said forums with the fans, especially when people are worried about this feature or that feature.

Guild Wars 2 is going to do very well indeed.

Now here's the important part. The success of Guild Wars 2 will not come at the expense of TOR. I'm sure reviewers will play the two off against one another for a few months after the release but both games are going to launch well. The two games have different USPs (unique selling points) and will attract different kinds of people, or the same kind of people for different reasons, as GW2's business model makes getting both less wallet-killing than is normal for MMOs.

When it comes to WoW-killing, I'm not sure either will manage it, but neither game needs to 'beat WoW' in order to be successful anyway. On the other hand, if both MMOs do as I think they will and gain a strong playerbase for at least the first year, then Blizzard will pay attention. As I said before, competition is good for the industry and it's extremely good for the fans. Why wouldn't you want to see WoW be as good as it can be, or GW2 deliver on all its promises, or TOR's story to be incredibly involving and entertaining? -headtilt-

Originally posted by SaferSaviour

 

Now here's the important part. The success of Guild Wars 2 will not come at the expense of TOR. 

***snip***

When it comes to WoW-killing, I'm not sure either will manage it, but neither game needs to 'beat WoW' in order to be successful anyway.

Quite so. I'd say if there is a war with GW2 it's more likely to come from diablo III as F2P too.

Many players I know feels they invested too much time to move on a new MMO, unless a new Blizzard one.

D3 is B2p, not f2p. D3 has LoL to worry about....im a huge LoD fan and i was looking forward to D3. but once i started playing LoL, im sure i wont be buying it. LoL has/will have superior pvp balancing and interesting characters to suit all playstyles, whereas D3 is primarily a PVE game.

Originally posted by dougmysticey

Originally posted by KyBo

Originally posted by Deewe

Has the Heroic term been abused by TOR PR? 

• Combat was supposed to be heroic and from what we saw it's the exact same thing as in WoW. Boss kiting... heroic?
• Quests: going into a sith temple to kill worms... heroic?
• Crafting: selecting a companion - click to have him/her do something - get results... heroic?
• Space sim: Point and clicking in 2D on space ships not even trying to stay in your six, heroic?
• Having the exact same ship (mobile home) as any other [insert class name]... makes you fuzzy?
• Look & gear: grinding gear to look like any other maxed out character, so unique feeling!
• Companions: wandering around with the same disguised companion(s) as anyone else.. heroic?
• Being "obliged" to use companions to solo... heroicness ftw!

 

 

 

      You've pretty much hit all of the points as to why this game won't come anywhere near WoW in terms of success, but the game will not fail from a financial standpoint.  There are too many people who will be sucked in by the EA PR machine, the reputation that BioWare has earned with the KoTOR series, and the simple draw of Star Wars for the game not to at least recoup its expenses.  That doesn't translate to TOR rising anywhere near the level of being considered an immense powerhouse MMO, however, and something tells me that EA already knows it. 

     The last I read, there were something like 36,000 guilds pre-registered.  It takes a minimum requirement of 4 players pre-ordering to register a guild.  Even if there were an average of 10 players per guild, which is a very generous estimate, that would still only amount to 360,000 preorders.  That is a decent base of players, but not nearly an amazing number, especially when you consider the amount of hype the game is generating, and the financial investment that has been put into it.  You can bet that while no one knows the exact figure, the development cost of this game is definitely well in excess of $100 million.  As EA has stated, it's their most expensive game to date, and that doesn't factor in the pre-launch marketing blitz that is sure to come when launch day is announced.  Using the new "Green Lantern" movie as an example of a sizeable ad campaign, in which WB spent roughly $100 million to hype the film, I would expect that EA will spend at least a comparable amount to hype up launch day for TOR.  Using a conservative estimate that TOR cost $150 million to develop, and EA spends another $100 million on advertising, that's an estimated $250 million price tag. (which I still believe is a much lower estimate than what the actual total cost of the game will be) 

     Even if you assume a 100% profit margin, it would take 1 million people pre-ordering a $100 special edition box, and subscribing for the full first year for EA to see a profit, which will not happen, and every part of this estimate is unrealistically skewed in TOR's favor.  Over the course of five years, there is no doubt that TOR WILL eventually pay for itself, and turn a profit.  The overall return on EA's immense investment, however, remains to be seen.

     The game is not completely lost by any means.  The issues that you list will probably plague the game when it launches, but all of them can be fixed.  The question is, will developers like Dallas Dickenson be able to swallow their pride, part with their dream of "STAR WoW's", and admit that this idea has failed to produce results twice?  Only by admitting that copying Blizzard's Baby is not a recipe for success can you fix the problems with this game.  It may come to pass that the only way to get these issues addressed will have to come from EA, in the form of pink slips for game directors like Dickenson and Daniel Erikson for these changes to occur, and run yet another PR drive after changes are made.

     The bottom line is that TOR will make a profit, but as is, this attempt at the "NGE 2.0" is not the hit you're looking for.  The game will have to break away from the boring combat, lack of diversity, and other uninteresting features that come with aping WoW in order to realize any great success.     

 Your math is going to be way off as I believe your estimates of Guilds  is innacurate and as pointed out you did not figure in the massive amount of folks who registered for beta. The guild I am in has well over 250 members last I checked and it is not one of the typical named guilds you usually see with massive numbers like the Old Timers Guild.

Also, there is enough out there about TOR for people who pay attention to realize this is not an attempt to make Star WOW or NGE 2.0 . I won't bother to comment further accept to say this game is more like KOTOR + ME 1 &2  turned MMO with updated technology and using MMORPG and single player RPG standards (which WOW uses as well).

None of us will really know how good the game is or if it is a game for us until it is live and to place lame labels on it now is just silly. Only a vocal minority of Sand Box cultists and former SWG fans who wear rose colored glasses thinking it was great pre-NGE are bashing this game repeatedly as far as I can see. I said this before, but for a great many players this may very well be the first MMO they play so everything will feel pretty fresh to them and with over 200 hours of personal  story per class not including group content, PVP, Raids, Flashpoints, etc I should be a strong competitor and a market success story.

EDIT- I am in the OLD REPUBLIC DADs guild currently at 346 members as a reference.

 Here's another little fact that the doomsayers seem to overlook: Not everyone who is going to play this game is going to join a guild. I plan on playing this game and have no interest in doing so. I'm not sure what the numbers are in MMOs, but I'd hedge to bet that at least half of the players in MMos don't join guilds. There will be many that do, but want to wait to try the game out first and there is no way in knowing how many of these people exist.

Still, I think it is remarkable that a game which isn't even close to its release has already got 36,000 pre-registered guilds.

Originally posted by Deewe

Quite so. I'd say if there is a war with GW2 it's more likely to come from diablo III as F2P too.

 

Many players I know feels they invested too much time to move on a new MMO, unless a new Blizzard one.

 

Considering the founders of Arenanet included three of Blizzard's key developers, including the company director and programmer (O'Brien), as well as WoW's lead programmer (Strain), that would be extremely ironic. xDD

D3 isn't competition for anything. It's its own game and because it's a regular ol' B2P game, people can pick it up without having to invest in subsequent monthly payments. I won't. It's not my type of game in the slghtest, but grabbing it wouldn't burn my money like a subscription game would. -shrugs-

Originally posted by ktanner3

 Here's another little fact that the doomsayers seem to overlook: Not everyone who is going to play this game is going to join a guild. I plan on playing this game and have no interest in doing so. I'm not sure what the numbers are in MMOs, but I'd hedge to bet that at least half of the players in MMos don't join guilds. There will be many that do, but want to wait to try the game out first and there is no way in knowing how many of these people exist.

Still, I think it is remarkable that a game which isn't even close to its release has already got 36,000 pre-registered guilds.

This is a point but I'm not sure how valid it is. The majority of MMO players do join guilds... but many don't do so immediately and a lot of people don't publicise their guild information as they prefer to have a guild that's a small collection of friends rather than a game-affecting organisation.

And you're right; that number is remarkable for an unreleased MMO

Originally posted by Feverfew

Well, they said they were going to give us a refreshing combat system....but then they put up a poll =/

It asked something like "Do you guys want a combat system like Dragon Age 2, or something more like all of those WoW clones out there?" in not so many words. WoW clone fans won.....or, at least, that's what the poll said.

Was this serious?

WoW clones fans?...........*grabs my shotgun* 

:P

My very late reply to the first thread would be. Will this website be anything more than a bunch of new mmo bashing (while keeping in mind you have not played any of the games you bash) buttfaces. The answer is no. To those who actually make educated assumptions ok. Buuuuut yeah.