Originally posted by eddieg50

Originally posted by eddieg50

Originally posted by gervaise1

Originally posted by eddieg50
A failure at half a million players LOL,  Vanguard would die to have a quarter that many players

The idea of what defines failure is a valid question.

Number of players? Well if you ignore WoW, Guild Wars, Linegage, FF, League of Legions and a host of others then SWTOR didn't do very well.

Ah number of players for a western subscription game you may cry. OK - but on that definition it isn't much better than WAR or AoC. WAR still had 300k+ subs in month 7 and AoC held onto a lot of subs pretty much until WAR launched; AoC still had about 100-150k 11 months after it launched. (Source: EA and Funcom's financial reports -  at the end Funcom gave a revenue range for AoC hence the range for the subs). Even EQ1 managed 650k subs at its peak and 450k for quite a while. UO as well. And we know that SWTOR wil have 0 subscribers in November so at that point it is a failure by this measure.

Sales? Dwarfed by WoW, GW, EQ1, FF, Lineage.

Longevity - no. SWTOR will probably see out 2 or 3 years because of the IP agreement but it doesn't look good.

Profit made. Not a good measure at all. SWTOR cost a lot. And factor in part of the purchase price for Bioware - EA expected 1.2M subscribers at the time they bought  Bioware (source JR after the May results) .... dwarfs the reported $120 for VSoH, AoC was less still and even factoring in $84M or so for buying Mythic WAR will have looked cheap. Ditto TR when allowing for the stock options / damages that RG won in the court case against NCSoft. Against this measure - profit/return on investment  - SWTOR is a solid candidate for greatest failure.

Content: not great for an mmo. People will debate the point but most agree this is a problem.

Single player experience: probably scores highly here.

MMO experience: and not very highly here.

I am sure that there are other measures though.

   I just dont think you can call an mmo a failure with a half million players, that is a problem with our society today, if you are not perfect you are a failure-I dont agree

 

Under normal circumstances it would be good, but SWTOR is not normal

The failure is not having half a million players, the failure is needing half a million players to keep the game alive / break even. From what they say if they do not have half a million subscribers they will be losing money with SWTOR, and without F2P they were heading to below 500K. They are about 500k now (from what they say which is no doubt somehow bloated), but within the next month or two they would have about 300K

Although time will tell if 500K will be spending an average of $15 each per month in the cash shop / subscriptions, after going F2P.

If this was any other P2P MMO, it would stay P2P, and the devs would be laughing.

Although with SWTOR the subs are still declining, and looks like it is not going to stop. The game had 1.7 million subs from launch and now has 500K. Stabilising at 500K is good, but being at 500K and dropping is not good.

Originally posted by eddieg50
   I think SWG has to be right in there when talking about biggest failures, The Hype was HUGE, Time Magazine, News Week, it was everywhere, then when people started playing it they were stunned by how bad it was.  You could actually be killed by a butterfly, AI was totally over powered, Lag was just as bad as Vanguard, it took years to become a full fledged Jedi,  because you could not actually play the game it became a Giant chat room although it was a very good chat room. People left quickly and it was down to a small core of fanatic dedicated Star Wars players, then Sony took over and put the final nail in the Coffin.   Yes Epic Failure!

I have to disagree with this. Yes, that game when it released had tons of issues, but it still had a lot of people playing it. I started playing it in late 2004, a full year and a half after it had been released and there were people everywhere.  It did lose people to WOW, but it still had more than enough to maintain itself as a subscription based game. And this was back in the days when you were only allowed one character per server. What screwed galaxies was the mismanagemant by SOE and LA.  It didn't meet expectations, but then again any game with the Star Wars brand on it is going to have sky high expectations. 

SWTOR is a total failure, perhaps the biggest ever and the numbers do not lie.

EA/Bioware claimed 1.7 million active subscribers during Q1 2012 and now this game is sub 500k, sub 300K according to some estimates.

That is a drop-off of 61% or 83% inside of 6 months. Those figures are insane and do not represent a quiet player exit vs an all out stampede for the door.

The game is an utter failure and is destined for the MMO trash pile.

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by eddieg50
   I think SWG has to be right in there when talking about biggest failures, The Hype was HUGE, Time Magazine, News Week, it was everywhere, then when people started playing it they were stunned by how bad it was.  You could actually be killed by a butterfly, AI was totally over powered, Lag was just as bad as Vanguard, it took years to become a full fledged Jedi,  because you could not actually play the game it became a Giant chat room although it was a very good chat room. People left quickly and it was down to a small core of fanatic dedicated Star Wars players, then Sony took over and put the final nail in the Coffin.   Yes Epic Failure!

I have to disagree with this. Yes, that game when it released had tons of issues, but it still had a lot of people playing it. I started playing it in late 2004, a full year and a half after it had been released and there were people everywhere.  It did lose people to WOW, but it still had more than enough to maintain itself as a subscription based game. And this was back in the days when you were only allowed one character per server. What screwed galaxies was the mismanagemant by SOE and LA.  It didn't meet expectations, but then again any game with the Star Wars brand on it is going to have sky high expectations. 

   I guess i am looking at SWG because no matter who took it over, no matter what they tried to do it failed. The game had everything going for it-Open World, unique and different planets, nice harvesting, nice crafting, good space game (although it came in late when people had allready left) friendly people, nice guilds and fun places to chat.   But its fatal flaws killed it.  So I say that with all those things going for it, to die like that was an Epic Failure.

Originally posted by eddieg50

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by eddieg50
   I think SWG has to be right in there when talking about biggest failures, The Hype was HUGE, Time Magazine, News Week, it was everywhere, then when people started playing it they were stunned by how bad it was.  You could actually be killed by a butterfly, AI was totally over powered, Lag was just as bad as Vanguard, it took years to become a full fledged Jedi,  because you could not actually play the game it became a Giant chat room although it was a very good chat room. People left quickly and it was down to a small core of fanatic dedicated Star Wars players, then Sony took over and put the final nail in the Coffin.   Yes Epic Failure!

I have to disagree with this. Yes, that game when it released had tons of issues, but it still had a lot of people playing it. I started playing it in late 2004, a full year and a half after it had been released and there were people everywhere.  It did lose people to WOW, but it still had more than enough to maintain itself as a subscription based game. And this was back in the days when you were only allowed one character per server. What screwed galaxies was the mismanagemant by SOE and LA.  It didn't meet expectations, but then again any game with the Star Wars brand on it is going to have sky high expectations. 

   I guess i am looking at SWG because no matter who took it over, no matter what they tried to do it failed. The game had everything going for it-Open World, unique and different planets, nice harvesting, nice crafting, good space game (although it came in late when people had allready left) friendly people, nice guilds and fun places to chat.   But its fatal flaws killed it.  So I say that with all those things going for it, to die like that was an Epic Failure.

The trouble with all MMOs they change over time, although SWG had 2 changes within the same year and no one trusted SOE/LA after the NGE, despite the fact then the game had no major changes to it after the NGE.

By the time the game closed it was doing quite well, and the game was far from a failure in 2011 (SOE did a great job in turning the game around during the course of the 6 years), and last year with the free 45 days it brought a load of people back to the game, showing that there was a tonne of interest for the game still and not dead at all. The thing that made people return was the free time plus the free transfers. I suspect a loot of people would resubbed after the 45 days, but did not as the shutdown announcement beat them to it. I do not see many people playing the game for a solid 45 days and then just cancel, a lot would have subbed.

SWTOR has had many free periods, and especially with it being new and having a top rate developer with Bioware, none of the free periods boosted SWTORs servers as much as SWG last year.

Maybe Bioware can turn SWTOR around now but from what they have shown, is that the game is what it is and they can not expand upon it, like add Beast Master or multiplayer space battles etc, but just add more of what the game has already - more flashpoints, more warzones, more operation, more story etc

Originally posted by eddieg50

Originally posted by eddieg50

Originally posted by gervaise1

Originally posted by eddieg50
A failure at half a million players LOL,  Vanguard would die to have a quarter that many players

The idea of what defines failure is a valid question.

Number of players? Well if you ignore WoW, Guild Wars, Linegage, FF, League of Legions and a host of others then SWTOR didn't do very well.

Ah number of players for a western subscription game you may cry. OK - but on that definition it isn't much better than WAR or AoC. WAR still had 300k+ subs in month 7 and AoC held onto a lot of subs pretty much until WAR launched; AoC still had about 100-150k 11 months after it launched. (Source: EA and Funcom's financial reports -  at the end Funcom gave a revenue range for AoC hence the range for the subs). Even EQ1 managed 650k subs at its peak and 450k for quite a while. UO as well. And we know that SWTOR wil have 0 subscribers in November so at that point it is a failure by this measure.

Sales? Dwarfed by WoW, GW, EQ1, FF, Lineage.

Longevity - no. SWTOR will probably see out 2 or 3 years because of the IP agreement but it doesn't look good.

Profit made. Not a good measure at all. SWTOR cost a lot. And factor in part of the purchase price for Bioware - EA expected 1.2M subscribers at the time they bought  Bioware (source JR after the May results) .... dwarfs the reported $120 for VSoH, AoC was less still and even factoring in $84M or so for buying Mythic WAR will have looked cheap. Ditto TR when allowing for the stock options / damages that RG won in the court case against NCSoft. Against this measure - profit/return on investment  - SWTOR is a solid candidate for greatest failure.

Content: not great for an mmo. People will debate the point but most agree this is a problem.

Single player experience: probably scores highly here.

MMO experience: and not very highly here.

I am sure that there are other measures though.

   I just dont think you can call an mmo a failure with a half million players, that is a problem with our society today, if you are not perfect you are a failure-I dont agree

 

I must say eddie your defense is interesting, if I'm corrrect didn't you say the same exact thing when they had 1 million subs? It was either you or someone else but if you don't see the pattern here then I almost(I said almost) fear for you. 

The direction SWTOR is moving in, is not good, 500k IMO is good but to go from approx 2 mill and to go below 1 mill in less than a year? That shit isn't good period.

Direction is not going towards success unfortunately.

Success and failure need to be viewed in context of expectations.  Having said that, it puts SWTOR ad the biggest failure in MMO history.

Some have argued that having (allegedly) 500K subscribers represents a good number and therefore SWTOR cannot be considered a failure, and I strongly disagree. 

For the hype, the expectations, the IP and the large sums of money spent on it, for SWTOR to be down to 500K after 8 months, with more exodus on the way, represents a colosal failure! 

Originally posted by eddieg50

Originally posted by ktanner3

Originally posted by eddieg50
   I think SWG has to be right in there when talking about biggest failures, The Hype was HUGE, Time Magazine, News Week, it was everywhere, then when people started playing it they were stunned by how bad it was.  You could actually be killed by a butterfly, AI was totally over powered, Lag was just as bad as Vanguard, it took years to become a full fledged Jedi,  because you could not actually play the game it became a Giant chat room although it was a very good chat room. People left quickly and it was down to a small core of fanatic dedicated Star Wars players, then Sony took over and put the final nail in the Coffin.   Yes Epic Failure!

I have to disagree with this. Yes, that game when it released had tons of issues, but it still had a lot of people playing it. I started playing it in late 2004, a full year and a half after it had been released and there were people everywhere.  It did lose people to WOW, but it still had more than enough to maintain itself as a subscription based game. And this was back in the days when you were only allowed one character per server. What screwed galaxies was the mismanagemant by SOE and LA.  It didn't meet expectations, but then again any game with the Star Wars brand on it is going to have sky high expectations. 

   I guess i am looking at SWG because no matter who took it over, no matter what they tried to do it failed. The game had everything going for it-Open World, unique and different planets, nice harvesting, nice crafting, good space game (although it came in late when people had allready left)

Jump To Lightspeed was released in October 2004. I started playing around that time. There was still lots of players. The exodus didn't happen until November 2005 with the NGE. 

friendly people, nice guilds and fun places to chat.   But its fatal flaws killed it.  So I say that with all those things going for it, to die like that was an Epic Failure.

The game lasted 8 years so I wouldn't call it a failure. It never again attained that 300 k sub number after the NGE debacle but it was certainly not a failure. This is all opinion, but in my view neither SWG nor TOR is a failure. 

SWTOR only mmo worth playing right now.

LOTRO close but I want pvp. Unfortunately, LOTRO pvp is an afterthought.

Casual noobs want to roll huttball once a week and then moan about getting jacked; I got 3000+ hours pvp experience, both sides of the SAME class. Even if I werent in full WH gear I would roll them. But since I am, its time for Dr. Funtimes:)

Name the magical mmo that's even close to SWTOR; thought so have fun with the crickets.

Nothing else comes close to the depth of the story, nothing else comes close to the difficulty of operations. Nothing comes close to the pvp or the rewards. Nothing. The end.

     To say something is "failure" is very subjective..  Granted people like to resort to the common grading system as the only definition of "failure" versus success..  To me alot what makes up rather something is falied or not is your own personal expectations and work put into it..  Look at USA's olympic basketball.. If we don't win gold and end up with silver or worse, in my opinion that is failure on the teams part.. Using a pro all-star team and not winning the gold is unaccectable..  If on paper you have a loaded team, with huge resources and don't produce the result.. I do not call that success..

    So..... if you have 200+ employees, with a 200 million budget (which is the biggest in MMO history) can people call that failure?  or success?   I guess only the accountants and management have the answer to that.. 

Originally posted by Dreamion
SWTOR, waste of dev time and a waste of our money. They should've done Kotor III, simple as that. I don't wanna hear about SWTOR again really, because its so damn bad. Just shut it down.

Swtor wasnt bad to me i liked it was a fun game just was a single player game is all IMO and not an MMO

Tabula Rasa or APB (with original dev/pub)

ps. SWTOR haven't failed yet, it's still going, sure it has some declined subs, but it haven't failed yet.

Sorry dissagree with everything you say. Bioware and EA never said it was a WoW killer it was the community who said that. Only a game can kill itself. TOR was not the level of success that everyone predicted but a complete failure is false and a lie. The game is still running, still being funded and still being developed.  [mod edit]

Originally posted by Byne25

Sorry dissagree with everything you say. Bioware and EA never said it was a WoW killer it was the community who said that. Only a game can kill itself. TOR was not the level of success that everyone predicted but a complete failure is false and a lie. The game is still running, still being funded and still being developed.  [mod edit]

The fact that it needs 500K subs to break even proves that they wanted a WOW killer. WOW does not need 500K subs to survive, and if their subs did drop to 500K they would not be taking it F2P.  The sub figures for MMOs around WOWs release was about 300K/450K, so they would not have put in the funding to create a MMO that needed 500K subs to stay afloat

Here is Bioware praising WOW and stating that any MMO that does not follow WOW is dumb

The game would hardly be shut down yet, it has only been around half a year, and with the money it was put into it, they are not going to blow it off just yet, they have tried many different typs of free trials, when other MMos just do free trials once or twice a year, SWTOR had it virtually every weekend, and now has a level 15 constant free trial.  Now it is going F2P soon, which is the final attempt to get it from the bottom of the cesspool!

Horizons was the biggest MMO failure to date. Quit whining about SWTOR.

If by failing, you mean the disparity between the expected results and the actual product, then yes, SWTOR, imo, is the largest, followed by TERA (really hurt me, personally).

However, if you mean profitability, then no, SWTOR still remains profitable and will most likely be even more profitable as time goes on given its change to Freemium.

Originally posted by Prankster

Horizons was the biggest MMO failure to date. Quit whining about SWTOR.

 

What is that? I have not even heard of it

To be the biggest MMO failure everyone needs to know about it!

Did it have like 5 million subs then drop down to about 100k in a few months? If it did, then you are definately right!

Originally posted by Vorch

 

 

However, if you mean profitability, then no, SWTOR still remains profitable and will most likely be even more profitable as time goes on given its change to Freemium.

It certainly is not getting profitable at the moment. They say they need 500k subs to break even, and by now (within the next month at the latest) the subs will be below that, so now they are losing money on SWTOR now. They are doing F2P in hope to stop the loss