Originally posted by Abdar

Its not BioWare.. it's EA. Bioware is just a name.. EA runs the show now. They didn't spend 700 million not to.

I'm not a huge EA fan but it was Bioware not EA that screwed up TOR. TOR was in development for a year and a half before EA aquired Bioware. Bioware Austin was autonomous and they reported directly to Bioware executives. EA also gave Bioware the largest budget in gaming history.

Face it...Bioware dropped the ball bigtime. They openly copied WoW calling it a 'touchstone' and it was 'stupid to move away from that model.' That was Bioware's direction prior to being aquired by EA.

The NBA finals, summer, FTP, WOW, sure, why not blame the fans. 1 problem though, I was in beta, I saw those forums. The stuff we asked for, the stuff with 50plus pages, we were told, "we are looking into all of this for future updates and expansions". I remember the players saying it was shallow, not launch ready, not fun, too linear, too wow like, felt dead. The reality is not only did the game feel dead, but our voices fell on dead ears. Now they blame us, lol.

Originally posted by Dalgor

No way!......yea like the article said, we knew it was coming,

They would have saved a shit ton of money and made a shit ton more money, not to mention prolly have one of the most succesful MMOs of this decade had they just bought the original SWG rights, reskinned it with batter graphics, and released it.

No, they wouldn´t had. There is a reason the original SWG maxed out at 450K players and then start to drop again fast even before the NGE, it was a fine game but that type does not attract so many players.

As I see it people actually want a multiplayer version of kOTOR but they don't want to pay a monthly fee for that. Most people are still willing to pay monthly fees for massive MMOs but not for anything else these days.

IF they wanted to make TOR the way it is they should have released it as B2P and not really have put so much money in VOs, that would have worked out fine. If Bioware and EA would have studied less massive games like DDO they would have seen this for themselves.

SWG was a sandbox and that just ain´t what BW does well, but they really should either have more multiplaying options or anoher payment model for the game anyways.

Originally posted by Ambros123

Originally posted by Burntvet

Originally posted by cronius77

Originally posted by Dalgor

No way!......yea like the article said, we knew it was coming,

They would have saved a shit ton of money and made a shit ton more money, not to mention prolly have one of the most succesful MMOs of this decade had they just bought the original SWG rights, reskinned it with batter graphics, and released it.

how can you even be serious about what you just stated? Star wars galaxies was massively losing subs within a couple of months of release which is....

I stopped right there: you obviously have no idea what you are talking about.

SWG was one of the few MMOs that actually gained subs for the first 6+ months. Most of the bad patches and failure to fix stuff was from that point on.

Feel free to go over and check at mmocharts.com or whatever it is.

Does nothing for your credibility to state something abjectly and verifyably false right at the begining of a rant.

 

Wasn't it the "WoW" patch that pretty decimated (bit exagerrated but gets to the point) the game?

Prior to the NGE patch on Nov 15 2005, SOE had done a very poor job off fixing existing bugs in SWG and often patches unfixed previous fixes.

I was a player from launch, and more than any other factor, pre-NGE, SOE's failure to fix the broken stuff and finish unfinished game mechanics was the reason people got fed up and quit SWG.

People just wanted the game to work and some new content from time to time instead of endless attempts to balance 32 classes (because of people whining about the ever changing OP FOTM build) and pump out rushed Jedi character/skill updates, which is what SOE wasted time doing.

SWG, for all it's faults (and there were many) was something unique: it had an identity all it's own.

Now everything is a clone of this or a rip off of that.

But to answer your question, the NGE (WoW) patch was the bullet to the head that left SWG, for many years, on life support, though it had been managed very poorly prior to that.

That "article" is a joke, regardless of your opinion on how successful TOR has been.  It had zero fact checking.  Forums only open for three months, really?  The forums were open for years before the game launched.  And the 500 million number is totally unsourced.  Add to that, the only "evidence" we have that there even is a source in BioWare for the article is the word of the article's author, who as I already pointed out, has shown himself to be someone who doesn't engage in any level of fact checking.

Originally posted by Abdar

Its not BioWare.. it's EA. Bioware is just a name.. EA runs the show now. They didn't spend 700 million not to.

Geez, now we're up to 700 million? Is there no end to how high that made-up number will go?

Originally posted by kobie173

Originally posted by Abdar

Its not BioWare.. it's EA. Bioware is just a name.. EA runs the show now. They didn't spend 700 million not to.

Geez, now we're up to 700 million? Is there no end to how high that made-up number will go?

That was buying Bioware LOL not just making TOR and I think it was more than 700 mil wasn't it? Hell I forgot.

Originally posted by helthros

I for one would like to see the metrics that point at the majority of the fanbase pushing for a singleplayer game.

 

Sounds like a load of crap to me.

I agree.  From most I've read fans were interested in a balanced full featured game.  And EA Bioware didn't deliver.

Originally posted by Nadia

already a thread on this

 

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/357745/page/1

EA blames us and to some extent they're right to. but it was fanboy feedback from the day we opened the forums that encouraged us to design it for the fanboys the way it is and that included making it more like Kotor then an MMO like Wow.

 Corrected that.

The fanboys drowned everyone out, they made damn sure nobody got a chance to read any negative feedback by spamming those threads...and they got just enough weak minded morons to jump on board with "its only beta", "give them a chance", "you think you can create a better game than professonials?" and the normal response you get from a consumer that believes they have no power at all or no right to speak their mind...nor do they even know what a beta is for.

EA coulda saved (and made) themselves a whole lot of money, if they just remade a fully 3D Ultima Online.

interesting.

"We should have made it more like WOW" is not a sentiment i would have expected to hear from anyone in regards to SWTOR.

makes me think its either a hoax or a PR stunt.

Originally posted by Slampig

Originally posted by Dalgor

No way!......yea like the article said, we knew it was coming,

They would have saved a shit ton of money and made a shit ton more money, not to mention prolly have one of the most succesful MMOs of this decade had they just bought the original SWG rights, reskinned it with batter graphics, and released it.

People seem to forget that the original SWG was not a super success, in terms of sub numbers and sub numbers are all anyone cares about regarding a games success.

And anyway, that ship has sailed, and I still get a chuckle out of it.

SWG was doing just fine prior to the NGE release, the game wasn't out to get 10 million subscribers and that subscription base # back then was only a pipe dream for any mmorpg (a successful mmo back then was anything over 150k subscribers). The MMO would still be doing fine even if it had its decidated subscriber base.

Sony and Lucas saw the success in WoW and tried to convert SWG to that type of gaming experience in a Star Wars universe only to fail, now we see history history repeating itself once again, but with another developer and still trying to following the same WoW formula for success.

These developers gotta be more innovating and think outside the box, don't over promise the investors and make a game that grows through time and not overnight.

Originally posted by P4YB4CK

Originally posted by Slampig

Originally posted by Dalgor

No way!......yea like the article said, we knew it was coming,

They would have saved a shit ton of money and made a shit ton more money, not to mention prolly have one of the most succesful MMOs of this decade had they just bought the original SWG rights, reskinned it with batter graphics, and released it.

People seem to forget that the original SWG was not a super success, in terms of sub numbers and sub numbers are all anyone cares about regarding a games success.

And anyway, that ship has sailed, and I still get a chuckle out of it.

SWG was doing just fine prior to the NGE release, the game wasn't out to get 10 million subscribers and that subscription base # back then was only a pipe dream for any mmorpg (a successful mmo back then was anything over 150k subscribers). The MMO would still be doing fine even if it had its decidated subscriber base.

Sony and Lucas saw the success in WoW and tried to convert SWG to that type of gaming experience in a Star Wars universe only to fail, now we see history history repeating itself once again, but with another developer and still trying to following the same WoW formula for success.

These developers gotta be more innovating and think outside the box, don't over promise the investors and make a game that grows through time and not overnight.

Any standard which describes any version of SWG as doing "fine" would have to say that TOR is doing better than fine.  And no, more innovation is not necessarily the answer.  Games that differ more drastically from the "WoW formula" often lose a lower percentage of their initial player base than WoW clones do, but they also start off with substantially smaller player bases.  Judging solely on the number of current paying subscribers, TOR is still more successful than most MMOs.

Originally posted by CazNeerg

Originally posted by P4YB4CK

Originally posted by Slampig

Originally posted by Dalgor

No way!......yea like the article said, we knew it was coming,

They would have saved a shit ton of money and made a shit ton more money, not to mention prolly have one of the most succesful MMOs of this decade had they just bought the original SWG rights, reskinned it with batter graphics, and released it.

People seem to forget that the original SWG was not a super success, in terms of sub numbers and sub numbers are all anyone cares about regarding a games success.

And anyway, that ship has sailed, and I still get a chuckle out of it.

SWG was doing just fine prior to the NGE release, the game wasn't out to get 10 million subscribers and that subscription base # back then was only a pipe dream for any mmorpg (a successful mmo back then was anything over 150k subscribers). The MMO would still be doing fine even if it had its decidated subscriber base.

Sony and Lucas saw the success in WoW and tried to convert SWG to that type of gaming experience in a Star Wars universe only to fail, now we see history history repeating itself once again, but with another developer and still trying to following the same WoW formula for success.

These developers gotta be more innovating and think outside the box, don't over promise the investors and make a game that grows through time and not overnight.

Any standard which describes any version of SWG as doing "fine" would have to say that TOR is doing better than fine.  And no, more innovation is not necessarily the answer.  Games that differ more drastically from the "WoW formula" often lose a lower percentage of their initial player base than WoW clones do, but they also start off with substantially smaller player bases.  Judging solely on the number of current paying subscribers, TOR is still more successful than most MMOs.

Let us not forget the biggest difference between the two games: cost.

According to Raph Koster, SWG was "very cheap" to make, back in those days, in the $30 mil range.

TOR is well north of $200 mil by now, including all the marketing.

So, any discussion of "fine or better than fine" also must acknowledge that extremely important difference. And all the expectations that go with it.

KOTOR have a lot of fans around the world.

But the real Star Wars movies have even more.

Making a game 3000 years back where most people don't know anything about any character etc is was killing this game. And the armour design is horrible... That might also hurt the game. And some more stuff ofc...

But I think, if the game was in a world with Stormtroopers, Luke, Vader etc the game would still go strong. More true fans would stay.

And if it didn't look like WoW...

I had fun playing it, but it got boring very fast.

EA - /facepalm

i blame the developers, you started loosing me as soon as space on rails mini flash game was announced, having spent 3 months and the cost of CE edition at the loss for me, i realised once you take away the storylines there is nothing but a very, very sub-par so called instanced mmo left

all that money and thats the best you could do?

blame starts at the top so get Daniel Erickson fired, and never let that man near a mmo again!

Live in Austin, have talked to some of the contractors hired to QA the game.  Except for bug fixes both the fans and the QA personnel were totally ignored by the Developers.  They totally blew off the short comings of the game and blew off advise from people who had years of MMO experience... they reaped what they sowed or in this case stepped in the Bantha poodoo.

All you people dissing swg and its "low pop" or "failing sub base" need to understand that back then, mmo's were only roughly 3-4 years old... There was maybe 2-3 million  (between eq and uo) people willing to pay for a multiplayer experience... Most of you were still sucking on mario's teet playing nintendo and ps1/2 back then slinging newspapers trying to save 40 bucks for a n64 game.. You can't even compare these games subs numbers (swtors and swg).. And furthermore, you people will believe anything eh??? wow never had 10 million subs NEVER has never will.. it never had 5 million subs... Blizzard uses some weird time card system in asia where they use time codes per hour per play thats gets counted as an individual subscriber... Yes... they skew their data to give an illusion of success.. hence the mythical 10 million. Its all a lie. If you want real wow numbers, there are websites out there that report how many copies, digital and box copies,  that wows last expansion sold world wide... Its like 3-4 million.... Yes thats a big number and its also closer to the real subscriber base of wow in the first month the last expansion sold. So stop comparing things to wow and when you do, do some research so you don't like so stupid.

Now, on to this blog bs. It looks like some random noob just posted up some story and linked it to this forum. First of all, its got so many errors in what its claiming as factual statements. I was around the swtor forums since 2008. No one wanted kotor online except maybe 20% of the forum posters back then. Most of the people posting were WoW rejects looking for a pure wow clone in space. They never directly said it, in fact most when asked if they wanted a wow clone said no but what they demanded the game be like, was WoW.. Then you had a group of Pre CU swg vets hoping and praying they made a vastly robust and complex open ended game which never came.. In fact, they (devs) came right out and said many times it was never going to happen and too bad for them cause their game sucked and failed to retain the kotor/wow crowd they were hoping to appease.  If SWG/sony had even half the budget swtor had, it would of killed wow dead in the water.. because they made swg on 30 million dollars... in 2.5 years.. amazing eh.. how you people jump to conclusions without any facts or research behind such asinine bs statements and conjecture.

They said many times they were making swtor as a kotor extension of something like the next 5 kotor games into a mmo, just to charge a fee.. The game is failing. Any numbers coming from EA about swtor is a lie... its been so obvious to anyone who played when they said they had 1.8 million then 1.4 million subs... It was such bs 90% of their servers were DEAD! I.E the game is a massive failure, and when people say it needs saving, this is what they mean.... F2P is a failed mmo. I don't care what anyone says about that but in my opinion its failed. Any company who needs to nickel and dime users in a free to play play model will never get a nickel out of me nor will I play their game I don't care what I.P it is. If I cancelled the sub at 15/month, I sure as shit aint going to play a stripped down version of the original and have to pay for simple things like bag space, or stash space, or better looking gear, or potions etc... If I can't play the game and attain those things by playing, Ill never play period.

Originally posted by soulmirror

Live in Austin, have talked to some of the contractors hired to QA the game.  Except for bug fixes both the fans and the QA personnel were totally ignored by the Developers.  They totally blew off the short comings of the game and blew off advise from people who had years of MMO experience... they reaped what they sowed or in this case stepped in the Bantha poodoo.

ya I believe that.. They were a bunch of egotistical morons who wouldn't listen to anyone... A mmo that plays like a single player game driven by quest cut scenes and radial chat menus = FAILURE. Anyone with 5 years of gaming experience could have seen that coming. The day they mentioned and explained companions, I knew it was a pos shit set for failure. Having voiced such an opinion, it was met with brash crudeness from the forum users who thoght it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.. Where are those morons now? On the Gw2 forum ruining that game with piss poor advice.

It's the fans fault, now excuse me while I go lock all these threads and ban anyone who details what needs to be fixed/improved.

I wish people would stop buying from EA... seriously.