I guess this is my question. There is a lot of chatter about The Old Republic being an epic failure. I'm just curious by what standards are we judging this by? 

As it stands right now (to my knowledge at least), the game is touting 1.7 million subscribers. So, I can only assume that it's "failure" cannot be judged on subscribers alone. If you told me that Rift had 1.7 million subscribers, I guarantee you that Trion would be abdolutely overjoyed. They probably have 400,000 to 500,000 subscribers and they're still overjoyed.

Is it their 250 million dollar budget? Is it because the game didn't live up to the high expectations? I'm really just curious. I play SW:TOR but I certainly have issues with the game. I'm just trying to figure out where people are coming from when they call the game a failure.

It has Fail aspects to it, but it is far from a failure. I still play and enjoy it but I can see, like most other mmo's, it doesnt have legs. Maybe this will change over time, maybe it will go f2p, who knows.

SWTOR: The only MMO with 100% retention rate.

1.7 million forever yo.

Originally posted by RefMinor
Mine

    What ? I dont believe it. You ?

Its Flop by investors standards.

There is no way the game will even return the money invested in it, and far cry  from bringing any profit.

So if that is not called flop, i dont know what is.

And I am not even talking about being flop in eyes of gamers

I think you'll find that the 1.7m figure was first touted back in December.

Early February they made another statement still touting 1.7m subscribers but if you read carefully, it also says that was the figure from the "December quarter".

There is absolutely NO WAY on earth that SWTOR still has anything like 1.7 million subs. I think half that figure is too optimistic!

Things are failures for different people for different reasons...I will list most probable for you.

1. Budget - People are wondering where the money went, and how 'bad' they percieve the game, given its huge budget..

2. Percieved retention rate - No solid numbers, just trends, graphs and speculations, but the 1.7 million number many say was false to begin with, as they counted people that were not past a free month yet...I personally feel the game will hover around 400-500k western subs, some will say higher, some lower... 

3. Game/style - I thought the personal story and mmo meshing was bad, so people think it is a flop, I think as a MMO it is a flop...I got my $ out of it, played it a month, but for me, that is a flop...Shortest I have ever played a mmo that I had paid for.

If you are happy playing, that is all you need, well and enough people to keep BW/EA and Lucas happy, most importantly, the last one....Lucas likes to tinker with things, and imo was the driving force behind the CU/NGE for SWG, and I think they had 350k subs at one point, and he wasn't happy....The mmo market is even bigger now, and I imagine even with inflation TOR cost 4-5 times what SWG did, and the IP license is probably steeper...

Originally posted by Jakard

I guess this is my question. There is a lot of chatter about The Old Republic being an epic failure. I'm just curious by what standards are we judging this by? 

As it stands right now (to my knowledge at least), the game is touting 1.7 million subscribers. So, I can only assume that it's "failure" cannot be judged on subscribers alone. If you told me that Rift had 1.7 million subscribers, I guarantee you that Trion would be abdolutely overjoyed. They probably have 400,000 to 500,000 subscribers and they're still overjoyed.

Is it their 250 million dollar budget? Is it because the game didn't live up to the high expectations? I'm really just curious. I play SW:TOR but I certainly have issues with the game. I'm just trying to figure out where people are coming from when they call the game a failure.

"After having that kind of budget and this is the best they can deliver" standard

Thanks for all your feedback.

Just to clarify, I don't believe the game has anywhere close to 1.7 millions subs. I was only going off the only "solid" information that I had. Anyone who's logged onto the game knows the game doesn't have 1.7 million subscribers (or at least active players).

I don't think I've really disagreed with what anyone has said (not that I was looking for a fight, LOL). LIke I said, I am still a subscriber at the moment. I like the game, don't love it. But was really interested to see why the game was perceived as a failure by the community.

Originally posted by ajrock622

Putting subscription numbers aside.

 Now why in the name of Bob would you ever do that? It's the only thing that matters the rest is extraneous nonsense.

Originally posted by Jakard

Thanks for all your feedback.

Just to clarify, I don't believe the game has anywhere close to 1.7 millions subs. I was only going off the only "solid" information that I had. Anyone who's logged onto the game knows the game doesn't have 1.7 million subscribers (or at least active players).

I don't think I've really disagreed with what anyone has said (not that I was looking for a fight, LOL). LIke I said, I am still a subscriber at the moment. I like the game, don't love it. But was really interested to see why the game was perceived as a failure by the community.

I don't think it's a failure personally, from a buisness stand point, even if they only have 1 mill subs, that 15 mill a month give or take a couple million dollars, have they broke even yet? nah probably not, but it's well on its way IMHO. I don't like the game too much, i resubbed last month just to get back into my gaurdian, went back to other games last weekend, it just gets boring for me, but people enjoy it and to each their own, i just wish i made a product pulling in 15 mill a month haha.

Originally posted by Jakard

I guess this is my question. There is a lot of chatter about The Old Republic being an epic failure. I'm just curious by what standards are we judging this by? 

As it stands right now (to my knowledge at least), the game is touting 1.7 million subscribers. So, I can only assume that it's "failure" cannot be judged on subscribers alone. If you told me that Rift had 1.7 million subscribers, I guarantee you that Trion would be abdolutely overjoyed. They probably have 400,000 to 500,000 subscribers and they're still overjoyed.

Is it their 250 million dollar budget? Is it because the game didn't live up to the high expectations? I'm really just curious. I play SW:TOR but I certainly have issues with the game. I'm just trying to figure out where people are coming from when they call the game a failure.

 "Any game we don't like."

That's basically it in a nutshell. Mostly from MMO players who haven't like an MMO since World of Warcraft.

Oh and by the way, I'd LOVE to be failing at the tune of millions of dollars in profit every month.

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by Jakard

I guess this is my question. There is a lot of chatter about The Old Republic being an epic failure. I'm just curious by what standards are we judging this by? 

As it stands right now (to my knowledge at least), the game is touting 1.7 million subscribers. So, I can only assume that it's "failure" cannot be judged on subscribers alone. If you told me that Rift had 1.7 million subscribers, I guarantee you that Trion would be abdolutely overjoyed. They probably have 400,000 to 500,000 subscribers and they're still overjoyed.

Is it their 250 million dollar budget? Is it because the game didn't live up to the high expectations? I'm really just curious. I play SW:TOR but I certainly have issues with the game. I'm just trying to figure out where people are coming from when they call the game a failure.

 "Any game we don't like."

That's basically it in a nutshell. Mostly from MMO players who haven't like an MMO since World of Warcraft.

Oh and by the way, I'd LOVE to be failing at the tune of millions of dollars in profit every month.

 

  This

I wouldn't say a "Flop"  but certainly not to expectations.   And that's player expectations, EA/Bioware's expectations.. etc.  But this game was hyped to the moon, so it was pre-destine to disappopint no matter how you look at it. 

Proof is in the current populations on almost all servers. (even the populated ones.) Anybody who says otherwise hasn't played the game or logged in since launch week. 

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by Jakard

I guess this is my question. There is a lot of chatter about The Old Republic being an epic failure. I'm just curious by what standards are we judging this by? 

As it stands right now (to my knowledge at least), the game is touting 1.7 million subscribers. So, I can only assume that it's "failure" cannot be judged on subscribers alone. If you told me that Rift had 1.7 million subscribers, I guarantee you that Trion would be abdolutely overjoyed. They probably have 400,000 to 500,000 subscribers and they're still overjoyed.

Is it their 250 million dollar budget? Is it because the game didn't live up to the high expectations? I'm really just curious. I play SW:TOR but I certainly have issues with the game. I'm just trying to figure out where people are coming from when they call the game a failure.

 "Any game we don't like."

That's basically it in a nutshell. Mostly from MMO players who haven't like an MMO since World of Warcraft.

Oh and by the way, I'd LOVE to be failing at the tune of millions of dollars in profit every month.

 

By mine, I guess, and I'm still playing it. Despite this, however, it's very apparent to me how shallow character, class, and story choices are in this game, which is odd coming from a development studio like Bioware, which toutes choice as being the pennacle of what story telling is in the gaming medium. On top of this, and I'll exclude any relation or comparison people may wish to draw to previous MMO's, EA Bioware created an extremely linear game that offers almost no deviation from the two possible activities they provide players: PvE or PvP.

The particular problem I encountered with this dychotomy is that their combat system simply isn't fun to use, and being forced to use it in everything you do gets old pretty quickly. Not to mention the serious problem you create for yourself as a devloper when you're designing a linear MMO, which is to say that anything linear has an unarguable beginning and end, as opposed to a personal preconception that MMO's are supposed to be games we can play "forever".

I also found the class story's interesting until around about level fifteen (for all of them), where I was completely bogged down by the sheer number of side quest bullshit, almost all of which is inconsequential, that I stopped caring completely and spacebar'ed my way from 15ish to 47 on one character, and 15 beyond 30 on multiple others.

To me, this game brought together the failings of modern linear MMO's and SRPG's and combined them, rather than stay true to the design concepts and mechanics (aside from pause-combat) of their previous single player series, KOTOR. There's absolutely nothing that makes me think of TOR as a unique or special game, but it's certainly a game.

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by Jakard

I guess this is my question. There is a lot of chatter about The Old Republic being an epic failure. I'm just curious by what standards are we judging this by? 

As it stands right now (to my knowledge at least), the game is touting 1.7 million subscribers. So, I can only assume that it's "failure" cannot be judged on subscribers alone. If you told me that Rift had 1.7 million subscribers, I guarantee you that Trion would be abdolutely overjoyed. They probably have 400,000 to 500,000 subscribers and they're still overjoyed.

Is it their 250 million dollar budget? Is it because the game didn't live up to the high expectations? I'm really just curious. I play SW:TOR but I certainly have issues with the game. I'm just trying to figure out where people are coming from when they call the game a failure.

 "Any game we don't like."

That's basically it in a nutshell. Mostly from MMO players who haven't like an MMO since World of Warcraft.

Oh and by the way, I'd LOVE to be failing at the tune of millions of dollars in profit every month.

 

 

Not if you had spent over 200m usd before you could start to earn the income and your revenue stream was dropping before you were in a position to have paid the investment back.

Agreed, but how many people bought boxes? 5 mill? lets say 2 mill just as a number. 2m x 60, just go with the basic, thats 120 million bam, not CE, jsut basic 60 box or DD, it's been out 4 months now? i'm losing track, 4 months times an average of 1.7 million at 15 bucks each, another 100 million, thats 220 mill give or take a large amount of money :) Are they even yet? nah probably not, but 1 or 2 more months and they turn a profit, not too shabby.