Originally posted by Astropuyo

Originally posted by Latronus

It failed because too many people wanted it to be something it was never going to be. 

SWG fans wanted SWG2

KOTOR fans wanted KOTOR3

Eve/X-Wing fans wanted free roam space

RPers wanted, well they wanted to sit down in a chair, to swim, day/night cycles, houses, etc etc etc

A very vocal minority wanted SGRAs

Raiders wanted well, they wanted end game

PvPers wanted, well does it really matter because are they ever truly happy? 

WoW players wanted group finder/macros/add-ons/8 years of content at release 

The list goes on and on.  The game was doomed before it ever launched because no matter what EA/Bioware did or did not do, there was no way to satisfy a majority of the players with the direction they finally took the game...

 

 

^-- This is exactly on the mark.

 

Meanwhile I cannot allow someone to say something failed that is still open, if people thought any sort of rough spot was failure in the real world you'd all be aborted. (Me as well) and really whom are we to say what is fail? Last time I checked the majority of this community is either..

 

A).Unemployed

or

B)Really really obsessed with bashing the big rocks into smaller more sharper barbs.

 

Or

C). Every mmo player is now an entitled ass not fit to game with as they flee anything for anything new.

Why just blame the customer base when you can insult them as well?

Originally posted by Draron

Originally posted by defector1968

Originally posted by Draron

Originally posted by Obraik

Except, SWG didn't fail.  SWG had more success than SWTOR has had.

A little over a year or so after launch SWG had 250k subs after selling a million copies. And that was just after an expansion. So it's retention rate was ~25%, less than SWTOR nearly a year in. At worst neither would be more of a fail retention wise than the other.

The biggest issue I have as a subscriber is the limited content - it all revolves around the space minigame or planet/class quests. I'd like a nice diversion.

it stayed for 6 years with NGE with 300k-400k, it wasnt a huge success, but not a big failure either

time will tell if swtor is big or a normal failure, the game isnt  a year old.

Everything I found showed the NGE lost subs. Source?

Edit: I'm finding mixed sources on whether the CU drew in or exhaulted players. Not sure which to go by as the only official numbers released was the 250k. it's clear the NGE drove them away, though.

Even after the NGE, there were no server consolidations until 2009, which was over 3 years. SWTOR had server merges after about 6 months, and is now less than SWGs max. SWG may have been losing subs, but no where near as fast as SWTOR, otherwise SWTOR would have held off on "merges" too.

That was one other problem with SWTOR I did not like was the way they handled the server consolidations. There were about 200 servers, and they only gave you the choice to move to 1, and did not allow paid transfers where you could choose to transfer to another server. I had characters on 2 different servers creating 2 different legacies on purpose. Then with the final forced move a few months ago, it put all characters on to the same server, and stuffed up what I was doing, and had to delete some characters because of it, and redo them on another server. Whether I redo them or not, I will have to see after F2P, but I am certainly not subbing/paying more money to do so.

To me, since I started reading about it, it looked always like a super generic theme park game with a star wars skin and nothing really new. *shrugs*

im playing mmos for few years now

main reasons why swtor flopped for me is

bad engine - when more players appear on the screen game is unplayable even on nasa pcs ( means pvp is just terrible exp)

lack of living world - monsters just staying on same spot in pack of 3 waiting for someone to kill them

quest and combat system i saw that before ( WoW clone with lightsabers)

cutscences and voice acting is fun for first few hours then i just skipped it becouse it was soo boring

I chose Other.

SW:ToR is more like good single player/ Co-Op RPG, and if you treat it as such, taking a character or two through the class storyline is fun, but as soon as you start looking for all the MMO related content, it is severely lacking.

Originally posted by Astropuyo

Originally posted by Latronus

It failed because too many people wanted it to be something it was never going to be. 

SWG fans wanted SWG2

KOTOR fans wanted KOTOR3

Eve/X-Wing fans wanted free roam space

RPers wanted, well they wanted to sit down in a chair, to swim, day/night cycles, houses, etc etc etc

A very vocal minority wanted SGRAs

Raiders wanted well, they wanted end game

PvPers wanted, well does it really matter because are they ever truly happy? 

WoW players wanted group finder/macros/add-ons/8 years of content at release 

The list goes on and on.  The game was doomed before it ever launched because no matter what EA/Bioware did or did not do, there was no way to satisfy a majority of the players with the direction they finally took the game...

 

 

^-- This is exactly on the mark.

 

Meanwhile I cannot allow someone to say something failed that is still open, if people thought any sort of rough spot was failure in the real world you'd all be aborted. (Me as well) and really whom are we to say what is fail? Last time I checked the majority of this community is either..

 

A).Unemployed

or

B)Really really obsessed with bashing the big rocks into smaller more sharper barbs.

 

Or

C). Every mmo player is now an entitled ass not fit to game with as they flee anything for anything new.

It failed because it was not a MMO, and the game is pretty much the same as it was when it was released. All other MMOs epsecially the main AAA ones, have had plenty more content / updates / progression / social events added to them since their launches.

Instead of them adding content, all EA/Bioware seem to do is come up with excuses why it is losing players so fast, laying off staff, and the main Bioware people leaving Bioware and even the gaming industry. Something no one would do if it was any kind of success.

The fact the game is still open can still means it is a failure, because if they are under a contract then they can not shut it down,as may end up having to pay more money to do so, especially after paying A LOT of money to create the game and it is the reason it has gone to F2P, to get back the cost of creating the game, as the direction it was heading was into complete financial loss, and EA have seen that other game gone F2P has turned things around, and now making millions more profit than before. They may have intened it going F2P at some point, but no where this soon. I do not think the same success of converting to F2P will be the case with SWTOR, but the next few months will be interesting again. we will have to see. The amount of players playing after F2P can not be deemed as a success either as we will not know whether they are paying or not. million players playing and paying $0 is still $0

What would have brought players back more so, and paying, would be more content / an expansion etc, expanding/enhancing the game, not F2P

SWTOR at its core is a single player game with multiplayer functionality. You do not need to pay a monthly fee to play ME3, and that is why people do not want to pay a monthly fee for SWTOR.

LOTRO is not like SWG, but I like LOTRO, it is my 2nd favourite MMO. I did not want a SWG, I wanted a decent MMO, and all other costly MMOs are better / more worth a monthly fee than SWTOR.

It failed because it was $15 a month while catering to a mainstream userbase, case closed.

that business model is dead unless you're a niche game.

Originally posted by mechtech256

It failed because it was $15 a month while catering to a mainstream userbase, case closed.

 

that business model is dead unless you're a niche game.

you actually believe the "state of the game" letter?

Woah.

So you say, gambling boxes, paying for skill bars and getting nickeled and dimed for standard features is great and will save this game?

Sorry, but -- lol.

Voted "Other" because of no "All of the above" option. I would also add:

*Dead, static worlds

*Meaningless crafting

*Little to no non-combatant activities

The lack of meaningful crafting, housing, chat bubbles, and non-combatant activites didn't help SWTOR either.

Originally posted by superniceguy

SWTOR at its core is a single player game with multiplayer functionality. You do not need to pay a monthly fee to play ME3, and that is why people do not want to pay a monthly fee for SWTOR.

Exactly this. Maybe some people disagree with it (Mike even wrote a column, why TOR is NOT a singleplayer game :) ), but it still is the truth. I can play any time I want with GTA's or the Elder Scroll games without any additional fee. TOR is the same, the only difference is that EA promote it as an mmo. So what? I don't pay for cosmetic fluff (= most mmo's with cash shop), I don't pay for gambling (= PWE lockboxes), and I definitely won't pay for a chat window and for occasionally see other players in-game (yep, = TOR)

Edit: the last part left out :) So, I'd pay for content. They give me content, I give them money. That's how it works. Expansions, new classes, extended crafting or housing, etc. I'd pay for in mmo's. And I pay for it in single player games too, one time with the box. And not every month, like they wanted it in case of TOR.

If the person that plays SWTOR likes the game, he will sub no doubt, there's no reason to F2P if you're enjoying the game- you're handicapping yourself if you stay F2P, their F2P model is a ridiculous joke. You know EA/Bioware will be receiving emails complaining about how crappy the F2P is, after declaring the sub model dead.

If I ever bother to play SWTOR I'll probably spend my cartel on the 2 quickbars and be done with it. In City of Heroes there was little I wanted on the market besides enabling invention origins for 30 days and I had 4500 cash points to blow (30 day IO costed 180).

Originally posted by Obraik

Originally posted by eddieg50

Originally posted by just1opinion

 

There were too many things to choose just one.  Overall, the combination of those things caused me to burn out quickly and lose my will to log in.

 

I can't help but think that if SWTOR had been more like SWG (pre-NGE) and less like WoW it would have been more successful. Still....I enjoyed the game for the brief time I played it and don't regret buying it.  Live and learn, I say. :)

   You are one of many people who say this, but the fact is that SWG was a failure so Sony instituted changes which kept the game afloat for awhile but was still a failure

Except, SWG didn't fail.  SWG had more success than SWTOR has had.

   That is a flawed aruguement because TOR has not been out very long. Look at Vanguard, UO, Asherons call, the realm.  games that have been going on for year after year with very few players.  The fact is that Sony saw the game as a failure because of its population and changed it to something they thought would increase it and that failed-so it was a double failure

Originally posted by superniceguy

Yeah, all of them and then some, but MAIN reason would be End Game - not enough to keep you playing once maxed.

SWG did not have space to begin with, but its open worlds / sandbox style, many customisable professions and crafting systems etc kept me busy until JTL came

For me, the main reason is that it didnt have a good engine for large scale anything.

EA is the reason.

Seriously, now theyre going to charge in order to have hotbars. MONEY for UI elements. What are they going to do next, take out the map unless you pay for it.

EA is greedy and has no interest in quality games.

Originally posted by Jonoku

Originally posted by superniceguy

Yeah, all of them and then some, but MAIN reason would be End Game - not enough to keep you playing once maxed.

SWG did not have space to begin with, but its open worlds / sandbox style, many customisable professions and crafting systems etc kept me busy until JTL came

For me, the main reason is that it didnt have a good engine for large scale anything.

Ummm... I don't know what you are talking about there, in the original game, there was 150 vs 150 PvP that rolled from Bestine to Anchorhead for hours.

There were several times I had 100+ people on my screen fighting at once.

And it worked fine on a not even top end system.

Post NGE, yeah, you couldn't have more than 30-40 people in an area without lagging the hell out of stuff, but that was just one of many things SOE broke with the NGE and they did not refresh the server tech very much after the population tanked.

So, there was nothing wrong with the SWG engine (no collision detection notwithstanding) until SOE revamped the game, twice.

Originally posted by ignore_me

Originally posted by eddieg50

Originally posted by just1opinion

 

There were too many things to choose just one.  Overall, the combination of those things caused me to burn out quickly and lose my will to log in.

 

I can't help but think that if SWTOR had been more like SWG (pre-NGE) and less like WoW it would have been more successful. Still....I enjoyed the game for the brief time I played it and don't regret buying it.  Live and learn, I say. :)

   You are one of many people who say this, but the fact is that SWG was a failure so Sony instituted changes which kept the game afloat for awhile but was still a failure

I guess this goes to show that 'Failure' is a relative term. 8 years of subscription; Fans who wish it was still running; Comes up anecdotally as a model when crafting, space combat, and many other systems are discussed.

At this point I am disgusted by the comparison. The two games share the same IP but that is it. SWTOR isn't worthy to be mentioned in comparison to SWG.

   They are actually different games, the problem is SWG fans thought they were getting SWG2, they refused to research the game , they did not play the beta, they did not understand that Bioware was making the game.  It is hard to compare them, SWG had a more open world, get a speeder right away (post nge i believe) and have fun driving around, good crafting and harvesting (if you really get into harvesting) and a good space game, TOR has better production, voice overs, cut scenes, combat, story progression, performance, graphics (it is newer after all), small grouping, flash points.   SWG always felt to ME like a chat room combined with a sandbox and a very realistic (to realistic, do i really want to spend my game time being a dancer?) SWG world,      Tor reminds me of a single player with mmo elements and Bioware elements, WOW like but with much better story etc, linier world.  Both have their good points and bad points.     By the way length of time does not necessarily mean success, look at Vanguard, UO, the realm, asherons call. It simply means it has rabid fans (although few in number) and the developer has the resources to keep said game going.

Originally posted by Obraik

No, SWG's subs topped out at around the 300-400k mark.  In pre-WoW time, this was very successful for an MMO - Everquest was really the only other Western MMO to have hit higher.  They hit 1 million boxes sold in August 2005

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/star-wars-galaxies-sales-top-a-million-units

The link you offered shows 1 million sold but 250k subs - a 25% retention rate, and that was just after an expansion. Much less than the "tortanic" which at there latest report had at least 33% which is what SWG was after the CU (though it crashed yet again after the NGE), and I'd bet an expansion for SWTOR would bump it up way further than 25% when that time comes. Even if SWTOR fell to 25% itself a few months from now, they both were pretty much following the same trend retention wise.

SWG isn't the success people on this board claims it was.

I chose "Linear worlds," but, as we know, that is only the beginning. I don't mean to sound ouster, but I would like to see EA/Bio pull the plug on this one; we all know a great SW mmo is possible, and this should have been the one. Some one else deserves a shot at making a SW mmorpg, and I love the old republic timeline but TOR is ridiculously bad from the engine up.

Hopefully, TOR will serve as an object lesson on "what not to do" in creating an mmorpg. MMO developers please stay away from the "gaming experience" philosophy though it were the plague.