Originally posted by Stathis1

Alright, but still, what do people do after 50? Aside from raids and que for the 3 bgs.

Given the state of the untested bugged endgame most of them reroll or play a different MMO.

The way the scoring system works here as the top games popularity drops the other games numbers rise in relation.  So when SWTOR numbers dropped so dramatically the last few weeks all other games below it rose.  Just as Rift and other games scores dropped dramtically when TOR got high marks the first few weeks.

Besides AoC I have never seen a new MMOs score drop here as fast as ToR's. Usually a new release AAA MMO stays number one hre for 3-4 months after release or the next big release.  My guess is part of it is the dislike many people have towards Tor and their agressive fanboys and partly due to ToR not havinga  very long lifespan before people become bored with it.

I would be a fan of dropping whatever is in ones bags along with your money upon death but not equipped gear.  I would also love to see a pickpocket of bag system similar to Shadowbane.  Both would make valuable drop and harvesting areas hotspots as well as entrances to towns.

1.  Dark and Light  -  If you never played this you should take a look back the forums.  A dev compnay has never lied more about a game.  They made promises there was a magic secret build that never existed for 6 months prior to release.  Fanboys were out of  hand.  It was advertised as having the largest world ever.  It may have bt it was completely empty.  I have never seen a more interesting bad launch than Dark and Light.  The game was so bad I had to buy the game just to be part of it.  I have never seen mroe gullible obnoxius and defensive fanboys than on this game.  If you want to have some fun really take the time to read the Dark and Light forums here from release.

2.  Mourning  Released before DnL another game with outrageous lies by devs.

3.  AoC   What makes it bad was the lies by the devs prior to release.  They told beta testers the beta client was 2-3 builds behind the release client which would have all kinds of content that would be avaiable upon release.  Not to mention the bait and switch lvl 13 only open beta.  This whole game was designed to generate asmuch money from box sales as possible with little to no interest in any long term subs. The game was marketed at children with blood, gore, nudity, profanity and simplistic follow the arrow combat system.

4.  Horizons  A pretty big budget game that was absoluetly terrible but great at the same time. The adventure side was awful, stability was terrible but the crafting was amazing.

5.  Anarchy Online the actual game was not bad if one could suffer through launch.  Literally this is what launch was like.  Log into Tir, crash, log back in walk 10 feet towards the quest giver, keep crashing until you eventually got the quest for the mission, then walk across Tir to the instance crashing over and over.  Usually it would take 45 minutes to an hout to walk 30 seconds across the town with crashes.

6. Shadowbane -  Some really cool stuff here.  But after the longest beta possibly ever (3+ years) the game was completely unstable.  It was one constant crash after another.  Ireally loved a lot about Shadowbane.  But the lack of stability killed the game.

Honorable mention

1.  Darkfall  It would have probably been on this list but ti was so bad i deleted it during beta testing.  It was started by 4 guys in a basement in Norway and when I beta tested it looked like that is all who worked on it.   Complete empty world.

2.  Alganon  Just an ugly looking game.  I was kind of excited about Alganon because of David Allen.  I hoped that David Allen was responsible for the good crafting in Horizons but after playing Alganon I began to realize he must have bene responsible for all the bad in Horizons to.

3.  WWII Online I never played it.  But i have heard from many people it had the worst launch ever.  In fact I think the launch was so bad that they  closed it down after launch and sent it back to beta .  Sort of like what they did with Mourning minus the banruptcy and ndver reopenning.

4.  Not a game but I am going to add in SOE here for a number of reasons.  Dishonesty and a destroyer of games.  In EQ1 SOE released unfinished expansions with bugs that would purposely bottleneck progress so they could finish the content ofthe expansions.  In SWG they lied to the community and told them that the Jedi quest was in game for a year.  People spent untold hours looking for it and it was not even in game.  SWG again they made people buy the NGE expansion wthout telling them of the combat and crafting changes.  Vanguard they took oer the game nad basically added no content for their first two years other than APW and the Griffon quest.  Basically they tookover the game for the purpse of marketing its customers to EQ2.  Tthey introducded a bug their 1st patch that caused a ton of crashing of good and bad machines.  It took them 3 months to fix this bug.  By then the population was gone and soon after all the devs were gone and the gamewas on life support to wither and die.

I agree with another poster that this list should only include P2P games.  there is a huge difference in quality of P2P games than free games.  There is almost something to like about a P2P game even most on my list.  But mant F2P games are simply beyond awful.

There are 3 supported raiding games on the market.  WoW, EQ2 and Rift.  Arguably Rift s the best of them right now with the best long term future. 

While I respect your opinion I disagree with you about Rift's raiding.  It is very well done.  HK was a great raid dungeon. Trion will be releasing its 7th raid dungeon in 1.8.  If its anything like HK it will be spectacular.  I loved the difficulty and the longevity of HK.  If anything it may have been to difficult as it broke many casual guilds.  But with allt he nerfs they should have np progressing now.

Hopefully the new dungeon will be just as difficult and massive.

But in terms of supported raiding games there is not much left and really nothing in development other than EQNext and possibly Carbine's new game.

It did not have a PvE raiding endgame.  Almost all games without a PvE raiding endgame fail.  PvP is simply not enough to keep people playing.

You have to remember Gaming websites do not hire people that play MMOs exceppt in the most limited sense.  Writers for this site and other major MMO sites simply do not play the games they write about longer than a couple of hours.  All these companies care about is page hits which generally involves hyping up games.  They repeat company talking points because thats easier and they generally have no idea what they are talking about.

MMO websites like MMORPG.Com are responsible for many of the bad gameswe see and the decline of mmos in general.  They simply give companies free reign to put out any bad game and never question it.  They are not journalists rather theier interests are in line with hyping bad mmmos.

That being said I don't think ToR is a bad game for what it is an ultra casual MMO that is not made for veteran MMO players.

I recall Funcom saying before AoC's release that they had learned their leson from AO's launch and AoC would not be another AO.

I recall them also telling beta testers that the beta build was 2-3 builds behind the internal build and the release build had had full content for many unfinished zones along dx10 and many other things that  the release build did not have.  Most of the prmises they made would not be in game for 6+ months.  I recall Funcom telling many  lies about content that would not be in release that they were knew were false.

I recall Funcom using a bait and switch with open beta only showing levels 1-13 to open beta players while hiding that the rest of the game was completely unfinished.

I recall Funcom spending more time cleansing their forums and deleting posts of upset customers than actually fixing their game.

I recall AoC merging into 6 servers 7 months after release.

All that Funcom has learned is MMO gamers are complete idiots and will believe anything they say and that they will easily give them money for making awful games. It seems it pays to lie and decieve.

After having played AO at release and AoC I will never believe a word any Funcom Dev said and I will never play any of their games.  It is not just the poor product its the outright lies and  dishonesty.  Anyone who works for Funcom should be ashamed of themselves.

Originally posted by ElderRat

Originally posted by GoodAfternoon

Originally posted by ElderRat

also the weekend one ended sunday and I created my account at 12:10 am Monday.

weekend ended at around 2 pm eastern time on monday actually.

 

I had friends disconnect at that time. 

but I did not do the weekend one, I did the 7 day one.  The weekend one was a welcome back one and I have never owned the game so I could not, in effect, be welcomed back.  Welcomed - yea, just not back.

 

I would bet they offer you something free for the inconvience.   When they have made mistakes and friends had to petition in the past they have often gotten free stuff.  I had a guildmate  who got his account hacked and within 4 hours they had restored his character and given him some free game time.  Usually they are very efficient. But keep in mind they may be very busy from the weekend plus there seems to have been a large increase in the populations of every server the last few weeks.  If you look at Riftstatus it has shown the trial servers remaining the same the last two weeks but all the other servers recieving a large number of new people.  My guess is a lot of dissatisfied ToR players looking for an aletrnative.  kind of weird that a new release can help a games population but Tor seems to be helping Rift's.  Part of the increase may be the welcome back people but the number shave been going up for 2 weeks now before weekend started.

Originally posted by Thorbrand

I played some this weekend and liked the changes they have made. However, it is still just a gear grind game at lvl 50 and that just isn't what makes MMOs fun. I wanted to try and get into it but I don't think it is worth the time just to grind over and over to get the next set of gear.

I think the changes they made if we had that at launch I would have played more than a month but now it just isn't enough for me to come back to the game.

Not exactly sure what people who do not like working for gear want to do at end game?  There has to be a reward for doing activities or people will not do them. 

They have made it so people can get really great gear from all activities not just raid.  There is so many things to do at max level especially fluff activies.  Always an event going on, always sourcewells, instant adventures, chronicles, dungeons, explore and find hidden things like puzzles or cairns, always a ton of achievements, dailes, and so on.  One can totally avoid raiding and still have a ton to do.  If you want to get rich just go collect artifacts for a day or simply play the AH.  Although I think raiding is the best part of Rift as its arguably the best raiding game on the market with only 3 supported raiding games still going.  Rift is the spiritual successor to EQ2 with Hartsman and many of the devs.  At its heart Rift is a raiding game but with activities for other playstyles. 

The only things Rift lacks in endgame is what all games have lacked since DAOC and that is open world PvP and construction buildings.  But I think thats mroe of a problem with todays players than developers.

The game was completely unfinished outside Tortage.  The next few zones had limited quests and in the high level areas there was nothing but grinding mobs to max level.  Fortunately at release one could hit max level in 2days but to do so one had to  AOE grind in groups in unfinished zones.  Once 80  the endgame was reroll and play again through unfinished content.

What made matters worse was the bait and switch and lies.  Funcom said there was a miracle patch and the version the beta players were playing was not the same version that would release.  They said there was lots or finished content which never existed.   They said they had directx 10 in this miracle patch that would be there at release along with a ton of other things. Then they used open beta to expose non beta playes to only level 1-13 which was well done but hid the rest of the game from them.

Once most people got out of Tortage and realized the state of the game and how much they had been lied to things went downhill fast and people stopped playing.  By the end of the free month it was a ghost town.  After 7 months they had to merge all the servers into 6 servers.  It was arguably the worst AAA launches since well AO.  But what made it a 100 times worse was the dishonesty and deciet of Funcom.  What they did killed games rep and doomed it.  Funcom spent more of their time the first few months deleting threads from their forums rather than actually fixing the game.  There was massive rebellion form the players going on non stop when people realized how Bad they had been lied to.  if Funcom had been honest and did not lie and do the whole bait and switch there might have been some long run hope for the game even with the premature release..  But their bad rep from their lies and then Fincoms behavior on their own boards pretty much sealed the games fate.  It was not long before the lead dev was fired and made the scapegoat.

If one looks at bad launches AO's probbaly ranks number one along with Dark and Light, AoC, Shadowbane and Mourning.  But for a AAA MMO AoC was arguably the worst launch ever along with AO.  Given the lies and behavior by Funcom.  The game had potential to be a huge success and it ended up being one of the worst released MMOs ever.  To make matters worse many people will never ever play a Funcom game again.  They will have to do something very good with TSW to rehabiltate their rep.  When I think of Funcom now I think of SOE. 

I would wait a year or two.  Tor is not a bad game but IMO it is not game that has much replay value.  You will miss nothing by not being there at release. Wait a year or two and the game will be much better and so will the community.  Even if you wait a few months you should be able to get the game for $5-20 and you end up playing a better product.  ToR is not a game that most people will likley play longer than a month or two.  So why not wait.

I have seen studies that say the average MMO player plays 30+ hours a week.  During release I would expect the average player plays 50-80 hours a week.  I know lots of players that play 40+ hours a week and work full time jobs.   In game like Tor where a knowledgeable player can reach max level in 30 hours or even 60 hours if they are slow that means they better have endgame content ready.  The problem here is ToR did not test thier endgame content and it came out severely bugged and lacking. 

For many years MMO devopers  had to decide between going "big" with a broad amount of content like Vanguard but very poorly done content or going "small" with a very narrow amount of content like Rift.  The advantage to going small is the content can be of much higehr quality and can actually be thoroughly tested prior to release.  Most games have gone the Vanguard route and came out half baked.  With a budget 3 times bigger than any MMO ever released Tor had the opportunity to do the unthinkable and go "big" but with quality.  They wasted that oppurtunity on voiceovers.  The Voiceovers were nice and probably helped sell a lot of pre-sale boxes but it took a lot of development time from the rest of the game.  I have to think Tor is a wasted oppurtunity.  I am sure it will still do well because its Star Wars name but its certainly a missed oppurtunity.  With that budget they really should have made something much much better.

In regards to burning through content I think you exaggerate.  if a company goes "small" like Rift there is always content fpr players who play 12 hours a day.  In Rift there is always something to do.  There was mroe than enough to do at release and the endgame content was well done.  Since release there are always small goals and objectives one can do each day no mater how much they play.  Its not the players fault here it is poor planning and poor development on the part of Bioware. This game should not have been released for another 6 months until the endgame was properly tested and the they had time to add basic functions and features to the game.

Originally posted by ZizouX

Originally posted by parrotpholk

So they plan to retain 800k by years end, so much for the WOW killer estimates.  I do think that might be around the number though if I am being honest.  I do not see it dropping to the 200k version like most.  That being said I also think for the company, title and supposed budget that 800k retained would be a failure with those three things in consideration.

200 million Cost

2.2 Million sold @ $60 (not even calculating increases sales from collectos and digital collectors which accounted for at least 1 milion) = 132 Million

800k x $14 /month = 11.2 Million

 

143 Million as of today.... which means they may be in the hole for another 50-60 million.  If the numbers stay the same, they break even in 5-6 months.

 

You are assuming they keep the entire amount of the sale.  When sold by a retailer like Amzon, Gamestop, Best Buy a developer normlly only gets 25% back on the sale.  But with digital copies they make a much higehr % of the sale.  Now days the industry avergae is over 50% of pre-release sales come from digital sales.  The digital sales sold by Bioware will net them a 100% of the sale price. But the digital sales by retailiers again will be 25%.   Mostt likely the numbers average out to whre Bioware will recover  a little less than 50% of the total pre-release sales..

Looking at your number Bioware should have got back about $65 million in revenue to offset their $200 million cost + whatever interest if any they will pay.  Not even  mentioning the money  lost by not investing that money elsewhere.  So at this point it would be fair to say they are 135 million in the hole plus any interest + the ongoing costs of running and maintaining and advertising the game each month.

What i think he is saying is 75% will subscribe for the first month.  It seems like a pretty big stretch.  But most people who buy MMOs simply do not play them much at all al.  They are pretendplayers and in the case of Tor it probably has a much larger percent of pretend players than any MMO ever made as the game is not targetted at MMO veterans at all.  It may take a pretend player longer than a month to realize they are bored and not playing.

But I would be shocked if more than 10% of the intial box sales are still playing afetr 3 months.  The games endgame was not tested and is in terrible conditon and there is little to no replayability.

When they test the expansion I assume they will do the same as they did for testing prior to release.  Have one server of 1k-2k people and limit it to that.  Notice how effective that was.   Alpha server was able to test the entire game for 7 months and the endgame for 5 months prior to release and there were almost no leaks.

If they do a marketing open beta like they did with the pre-release open beta weekends they may use the trial servrs again for that.  I do not recall any game doing mass marketing open beta of an expansion.  But for real testing I would expect they would do the same thing they did pre-release and limit it to a small group of expereinced players that they can trust.

Originally posted by teakbois

For what its worth, Age of Conan had around 100 in million revenue its first year (source Funcoms financial report that projects TSW at 100 million if it performs like Conan did)

Keep in mind AoC merged down to 6 NA  and 6 Euro servers 7 months after release.  Eventually dropping down to 4 servers a little over a year after release.   Rift is a few weeks from its one year anniversary and still has 40 very full servers. AoC sold a lot of boxes but it was basically a ghost town after the first month.  Plus Rift has shown mild growth in subs the last 60 days.  Rift has retained a very healthy and loyal subscriber base.  The difference here is Rift was a game made for the long run not for box sales.  Trion continues to invest in the game and hire people.  While AoC was all about box sales not long term content or subs.  This is what Hartsman did at EQ2.  Rescuing EQ2 from a bad launch and rebuilding the sub base by continuing to add new content.

After the server merge Rift will have 16 US servers and 20 or so Euroo Servers.  At its peak EQ2 had 16n total servers. 

You can transfer to any server you want for free of your character is above level 15.  teh highest pop servers are Wolfsbane,Seastone Faeblight and Deepwood.  Faeblights population increased 43% in the last week, Wolfsbane 25%, and Seastone 32%.  A lot from people leaving the closed servers but a lot mroe rejoining the game.

Originally posted by Kaburan

Hey all,

  Can some experienced folks enlighten me on the mid to end game content and quality of the game? Is there a lot of unique group and raid dungeons, as well as world pvp? 

 

Thanks folks. 

Rift raiding is very good.  It is arguably the best raiding  since EQ2.  Currently there are 3 20 man raid dungeons and 3 10 man raid dungeons.  2 T1 and 1 T2 of each.   Greenscale and RoS are pretty easy but well done starting raid dungeons.  HK is very well done with 11 bosses.  A new raid dungeon should be hitting the test server very soon.

Rift is about endgame it is the best raiding game on the market.  That is where it is very good.  Ember SIle is a very nice addition for level 50's.  Level 1-50 is very linear, fast and limited.  Endgame is much better than the leveling.  There is additional content forgroups with 11 expert dungeons 2solo dungeons, 4 end game factions and tons of daily quests.

PvP is pretty weak but is undergoing a redo.  It may get some love down the road but Rift is mainly a PvE game.

RiFts/Invasions, zone events and dynamic content are IMO the weakest part of the game.  Ember Isle makes some improvements on these with the addition of sourcewell mechanics and better events.  Increasing the rewards for doing events and planar activities has increased the amount of people partaking in these events. It feels like more community events now than it did 6 months ago with lotsof people working together on events. But overall the dyanamic events have a long ways to go in terms of needed improvements

Crafting is pretty simplistic but is needed for raiding.

Overall Rift is very well done.   There is constantly something to do even if you play 12 hours a day.  They do a good job of giving us constant small goals and new fluff content.

Te community is pretty mature.  Essentially Rift is the successor to EQ2 with Scott Hartsman running the game.

But what imrpesses me most is Trion's commitment to the game.  They continue to invest in the games future with more and content.  They continue to hire new devs.  Unlike most new games which cut and run after they get their box sales Trion seems to be planning for long term subs by giving the game a future.  It is refreshing to play a MMO where I see it has a long term future and I can stay and play there for many years to come.  That is what makes Rifts so good for me.

Certainly Rift is not for everyone.  Most modern MMO players are not real players.  They do not have the patience or attention span to play any game longer than a month or two.  Now that most of those players have left, Rift seems to be settling down into a game for veteran MMO PvE players.  Players who like to raid and play diificult content.  It also offers content for other players. But veteran MMO raiders seem to be its core playerbase.

Originally posted by Xiaoki

After playing TOR since launch I will say Rift is the better game.

BioWare is one of the most incompetent developers I have seen in a while. They are actively making TOR worse or ignoring glaring major problems.

TOR is bugged beyond comprehension, every single aspect about TOR is abound with bugs. From the UI to the instances and raids to the much hyped cut scenes.

TOR needed at least 6 more months of development to eliminate the various bugs, especially the end game which does not seem to have had any testing at all. Maximum level battlegrounds, instances and raids are frustrating at best and unplayable due to game breaking bugs much of the time.

Rift had problems in its first month, that is undeniable, but not nearly this bad or with this much inaction from the developer.

Unlike Tor, Rift actually tested their endgame prior to release.  Expert dungeons were being tested in Alpha back in October almost  5 months prior to release  Many top guilds were invited to Alpha betwen October and December for the purpose of testing endgame.  Greenscale was tested starting in December.  Ros started testing in January.  All this testing and the game did not release until 2/24,  Compare that to SWTOR which opened a special high level server on beta two weeks before release for testing endgame.