1mil daily unique logins out of a 1.7mil player base sounds pretty reasonable. I don't know anyone in my peer group (employed adults) who makes time to play every day. After working all day none of us really want to come home and sit in front of a computer for another 3-4 hours. We'll play about twice per week; otherwise we're with our families or out having drinks.

And as for your "success" question - any game that sells 1.7 million boxes is a success. That's $102mil in revenue. If the developer can't turn a profit with those kinds of numbers then there is something wrong with their business model, not their game.

Finally, I feel really dirty defending a game I don't like, but really, come off it now. This is just sad.

Gamers are the only demographic that constantly need better performance. Some industrial applications need a good desktop (graphic design, CAD software come to mind), but anyone who has ever worked in an office knows that a $600 machine will do just fine for 98% of users. At my last job I had 2 computers, one was 5 years old and the other was 9. They were slow but they worked just fine (and my work revolved around processing hundreds of megs of data).

And honestly, gamers don't NEED better performance. They just want it. I have yet to find a game I can't play with my dual-core athlonx64 and radeon hd 5770. Well, there was the lastest Final Fantasy MMO, but that was poor coding.

I was able to try it shortly before release, and it was totally unplayable for me. I spent more time on the download and installation than actually trying to play. I have a pretty good machine that has been able to handle anything I throw at it except FFXIV. I immediately lost interest because I'm not going to drop $1500 on a new PC just to try this one game.

I have to think that $5/month is not a dealbraker for most MMO players. I don't know about the demographics for gamers, but the average American can earn that extra $5 with 15 minutes of work. I make less than the average but my decision is whether to sub, not whether I will pay $10 vs. $15.

It's easiest to compare a new game to a game a ton of people have played.

Jumpgate was my fist MMO, and it has something close to perma-death: you get a small insurance payout for your ship and gear, but the gear and cargo are gone. All of it. Including hard to get items like artifacts.

But that (and the arcade-style space combat) made it so exciting. I was not very good at PVP, so getting caught in neutral space with my artifacts onboard was terrifying. My heart rate would spike and I'd start sweating when another dot would appear on my radar and in most cases I'd run like hell back to faction space.

I think permadeath is a good game mechanic, provided it doesn't take 200 hours to level a toon and that your toon is protected from max-level griefers in the process. (Being owned by another player close to your level is just fine, though.)

The SWG crafting system was pretty good and so was EQ2. It all starts with being able to craft things that people want. The crafted items need to be better than most others in the game, and certainly better than what is easily obtained.

Crafting should be separate from questing or raiding in that you shouldn't have to kill something (or have someone else kill something) to get your materials. Make the best materials difficult to obtain, but avoid the trap of limiting the ability to obtain materials based on level; if someone wants to level crafting to 50 but only has combat at 20, that's not a problem, that's a player who earnestly wants to contribute to the game economy.

Interdependence between different crafting professions was pretty good in EQ2 - I could gather leather and tan it and make it into bags, except that I needed belt buckles or whatever from a blacksmith, so I had to buy or trade for those. Other classes needed my leather straps. Even if nobody was buying my finished goods, other crafting classes were buying my intermediate materials.

What I specifically liked about the SWG system was that you had to travel to a crafter's store to buy their goods. None of this server-wide market garbage.

Take 10 minutes and find a free forum host, register, and tell your server about it. Problem solved.

Originally posted by sartok

Every single new MMO that comes out people say "Its going FTP in less than a year" How many non total crap games are seriously FTP?  I can only think of LOTR.

 

I get so sick of reading that. 

F2P is the new "shutting the servers off". Before companies would just shut it down and cut their losses, but the item mall concept gives many games a second life when the subscription model is no longer profitable.

I feel the same way. It has been 12 years since my first MMO. I don't have time to really play the 'sandbox' types, and the 'themepark' types don't entertain me. I do pick up cheap/free games on Steam, and it's actually kind of nice to play through a game in 2 weeks and then be done with it. I don't have to feel like I'm working toward anything anymore... I just enjoy the game and the story.

I don't like where the genre is going. The last MMO I paid for was LOTRO; I subscribed for 3 months about this time last year. It's a solid game but I just couldn't justify paying a subscription for what really felt like a single-player game. For now I'll probably stick to traditional single player games and RPGs but I might come back for Diablo 3.

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Originally posted by Sourd420

seems like EA  move not a Bioware one

.facepalm hope this isnt signs of EA now fully running the show over there @ bioware austin

 

Wow people already jumping on the "bash EA bandwagon "

EA has deserved bashing for years. It's just that now the SWTOR crowd is getting in on it.

Originally posted by echolynfan

Originally posted by VideoJockey

Price at release is irrelevant to me because I can't afford to pay release prices. I don't mind waiting a few years for a good game to go on sale. For example, within the last month I got Mass Effect 1 and 2 for $9.99 each and Oblivion for $4.99. I think I paid something like $6.24 for Civ 5 a few months ago. I may be playing old games, but the graphics are good enough and at less than $15 a pop I can always afford to keep myself occupied.

As far as SWTOR goes, I'll wait until it goes F2P. There are so many good games that I haven't played yet that I can't justify paying so much for it.

SWTOR will NOT go F2P so I guess you'll never find out what a great game it is.

Source?

Price at release is irrelevant to me because I can't afford to pay release prices. I don't mind waiting a few years for a good game to go on sale. For example, within the last month I got Mass Effect 1 and 2 for $9.99 each and Oblivion for $4.99. I think I paid something like $6.24 for Civ 5 a few months ago. I may be playing old games, but the graphics are good enough and at less than $15 a pop I can always afford to keep myself occupied.

As far as SWTOR goes, I'll wait until it goes F2P. There are so many good games that I haven't played yet that I can't justify paying so much for it.

I'll take the original SWG as it was, no tinkering needed. I played from day 1 and there was still so much I didn't get to do before it was ruined.

Voiceovers are a nice feature, but the rest of the game determines how they are perceived. They're a gimmick in SWTOR because the rest of the game is weak; the voice talent and cut scenes are the focal point/best part of the game. Compare that to, say, LOTRO, where the voice talent adds to the immersion because LOTRO has great graphics and a robust world to play in.

Voice overs can add depth to a quality game, but they can't BE the game. Strip the voice talent and cut scenes from SWTOR and you're left with a Star Wars-skinned Diablo II clone.

Originally posted by I_Return

depends on the HZ. IF it is 60-120hz it is garbabage. You want 200+ hz for great qualitty.

Check with DirecTV. I know with Comcast you have to choose (and pay extra) for the HD service & box and DTV is probably the same.

Originally posted by vixen2

Originally posted by Zylaxx

Originally posted by Ablestron

Originally posted by C1d0s

Originally posted by Ablestron

I really enjoyed the flashpoints, they had the best combat and the best storylines that Ive seen so far, but The spaces inbetween the storylines with the douzen mini quests and the long trecks to finish those mini quests; its dull as hell. They made the experience out to be something new and refreshing what with the storyline element, but at the same time they fall into the trap of so many MMO's where your always spending large chunks of time grinding through side quests while doing the main quest, just to aproach the right level to get into the content you actually care about. 

The story lines are good, but it doesnt work well with the cookie cutter nature of the rest of the game.

I thought the story added reason to the quests, both side, bonus, and main; however, I'm the type who doesn't skip any cutscenes and actually tries to understand the mission / task - not that you, or anyone who doesn't are bad for choosing to play the way you do.

The grind was definitely made easy for me by the nature of the main quest, which all others are in some way linked. They did well with this in 10+, and I'm not finding myself drawn back at level 25 - and I've been to about four planets already.

I never skipped a cutscene or a diologue, What Im on about is the time it takes inbetween these peices of diologue to get the story rolling again. I spent more time running to GET to the objectives then I did trying to complete them. The longer I stay out of combat, story or buying and training, the less inclined I feel to continue, since I'll be doin the same thing to get back to where I was I feel like Im forcing myself through the long waiting periods to get to the good bits; and how is that any different to WoW's system?

THIS!!!!!

 

When wil lgame companys understand that time spent doing the menial is wasted time.  I want quests that last more then the time it takes to travel to get to it.  Nothing kills immersion like being told to:  Run halfway across the Map to take care of the Man in Black then when you get there you find he is a Imperial big shot on vacation so you spend 5 mins runnign to him, 30 secs finsihing quest and 5 mins running back.  That crap is ludacris.

 

 

 

 ....ummm, you do know you can teleport, ride speeder, and eventually get your own speeder to free fly right?  You don't have to walk...

It's not about the travel, it's about how simple and uninteresting the missions are. When you can "do a dungeon" in 5 minutes, it feels like the story is the focal point of the game, not the actual gameplay.

To put it bluntly, no. While we have an ever-increasing number of MMOs to play, the rate of innovation has diminished significantly. Most new MMOs are just borrowing ideas from previously successful games and tweaking them a little.

The problem with innovation in MMOs is that, by nature, they need a lot of players. It's hard for a small/independent software company to come up with something new and different when failure with their next game would put the company out of business.

Large companies with strong IP licenses have the greatest opportunity to innovate, but they are often limited by the cost of the IP and/or restrictions from the IP owner.

In either case, software development companies have to put out a product that will sell, and the best way to do that is to borrow ideas that have already been profitable.