I thought the game was nice, I was only bothered by how small the zones were and the copy/paste-esque content. (Storylines, classes, abilities) but other than that my first playthrough was rather enjoyable, I loved the theme and I did quite enjoy the PvP.  If only they had left some perfect imbalance I'd still be playing it. But they tried to avoid any imbalances at all by the copy/paste-esque.

Surely if it all hadn't been a copy/paste-esque feeling to it with lack of ANY replayability without total boredom it would have been a terrific game. And the artstyle was quite alright. It was a bit too demanding to play on ultra settings, most likely due poor graphical tweakings so on and so forth.

The whole atmosphere of all the zones were amazing aswell in my opinion. I think that was what I enjoyed the most. I did think that the combat was alright aswell but a bit clunky at times.

I personally loved the game during my first month, until I reached the levelcap and did not play it again. Was it worth the money? Possibly not, but without doubt not the worst MMORPG out there. Might be one of the biggest flops however.

Was TR backed by a film moghul? Did TR have a world-famous IP? From what I have heard TR had great potential but some very poor design executions and the devs didn't give it a chance. 

SWTOR has had its chance the market has spoken. 

I don't think the Freemium model will bring it the consitent userbase EA hopes itn will. My evidence is AoC which has the same subscription/F2P model. 

Originally posted by Souldrainer
So, the OP has never heard of Tabula Rasa, Everquest 2, City of Heroes, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Hellgate London, APB, or Tabula Rasa? interesting...

with everyone's definition lately of failing, just about every MMO since WOW has failed. It certainly didn't maintain subs like I thought it originally would, but I wouldn't call it a failure when compared to most other MMOs. The problem all MMOs have nowadays is that there are so many choices. It really is becoming a more and more segregated and niche market.

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by Souldrainer
So, the OP has never heard of Tabula Rasa, Everquest 2, City of Heroes, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Hellgate London, APB, or Tabula Rasa? interesting...

how was CoH a complete failure? it's done pretty well for itself so has EQ2

I think the poster was showing other games that went F2P without the world ending.

SWTOR failed because of one thing; they were making a Star Wars MMORPG geared towards non-Star Wars fans.   This translated to as 'easy-as-possible' or -basically- a dull world.  EA thinks that easy-as-possible also means completely dumbing down everything, with no real depth to the game.  They chase the illusionary 10-million casual crowd that simply does not exist.   This lesson should have been learned after LoTRO failed to do any better than EQ II.

Originally posted by eyelolled

I'd say Tabula Rasa over SWTOR but if you just wanted to feel the glory on your sparkle pony, don't let me ruin your parade.

TR was the biggest failure of anything with Garriot's name attached to it. To be fair, what was released was NOT what Garriot intended. I've always gotten the impression his original idea was so ambitious, the suit wearing bean counters were uncomfortable and so he was instructed to dump everything he had done and start from scratch. And then he was increasingly marginalized until he finally ragequit.

TR didn't have the hype behind it nor the IP. In my opinion, there ARE IP's that are practically licenses to print money and I think Star Wars is one. It's a testament to just how BADLY mismanaged SWTOR was that BW has such a giant turd on it's hands.

Imagine if someone like Trion had gotten their hands on it. Rift may be a WoW clone, but it's a well coded one and it does have some novel ideas.

Originally posted by pharazonic

SWTOR has had its chance the market has spoken. 

Let us agree to disagree on TR.

But again you are right, the market have spoken and what most said was that they woudl not pay a sub fot the game, now with that fixed we will ahev to wait and see what the market says next. After all if we should go by your logic EvE would have been dead trice over today.

Of games that have been shutdown, I'd agree TR is probably the poster child of failure.  How could RG of Ultima fame blow it so badly>

Of games still running, WAR is the biggest let down in my book, I mean how could the creators of DAOC fail so badly in round 2?

But wait, perhaps a close 2nd is Vanguard, Brad M should have been able to deliver better.

And of titles that never were the recent closing of 38 Studios has to rank right up there with major failures and most people who followed Darkness and Light might call it one of the greatest failures.

SWTOR is still up and running and we don't have any real idea how much it cost to make, how much money they've recovered, nor how many subs they really have at this point.

I'll tell you this much, my guild still has 20+ raiders twice a week still playing so it couldn't have totally died off even if the majority have moved on to TSW and GW2.

So no, I don't see SWTOR as the greatest failure, except perhaps in not living up to the hype some folks put around it.

I mean hey, it's Star Wars, it's too big to fail.

Funny thing though, the people making TESO are saying the same thing, relying on the IP to carry the day.  They'd better start making their F2P plans right now.

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by Souldrainer
So, the OP has never heard of Tabula Rasa, Everquest 2, City of Heroes, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Hellgate London, APB, or Tabula Rasa? interesting...

how was CoH a complete failure? it's done pretty well for itself so has EQ2

Originally posted by fiontar

MMO developers need to anticipate innovations that will evolve the genre during the five years they will be spending developing the game and position the end result to compete with next generation games. TOR is maybe two generations behind and that's what killed them.

 

This, 100 times this!  That is exactly how I felt when I tried TOR for a month.  It's like they were building TOR and decided they wanted to compete with 2007 WoW and didn't bother to look at any innovations after that date.  As you stated, had TOR released in 2007 it may well have competed with WoW, we'll never know, but there was no way it could compete in 2011/12.

What was really funny was when it launched many people pointed out all the features the game was lacking and all the fans defended the game pointing out how WoW didn't have this feature or that feature at launch and they missed the point that whenever you're creating anything, you need to be ready to compete with the competition as it exists when you go live, not what it used to have. 

Originally posted by pharazonic

This has got to be the biggest MMO failure to date. Big and I mean BIG budget studios (BioWare, and then all of Mythic), many millions of dollars, reknown voice actors and actors, world-famous interllectual property (Star Wars - who doesn't know it???), one of the titans of video games, EA and many years of anticipated development - all of this to crash and burn in less than a year? 

 

Sure you guys can argue that F2P is not a failure and that the game had "always been intended for F2P/Freemium" . Personally I think this view is bogus but whatever.

 

But the FACT remains that this game was THE WoW killer. Everyone from EA's CEO to BioWare's developers to SWTOR community managers said that this was the game that was going to face Blizzard's juggernaught, WoW. (You can look up articles posted during SWTOR's development that how this was the next big thing; I am not making this stuff up.) 

 

Well, one game still requires you to buy the latest expansion at FULL PRICE. One game still requires you to buy the game to level to levelcap. One game still has a major expansion coming up. One game still requires a subscription fee. That game isn't SWTOR. 

 

This has got to be the most monumental MMO failure - way beyond other "WoW killers" like AoC, War, etc. I mean, even WAR still has a subscription. How sad. 

These are video games for people to throw this big of a temper tantrum over a game is ridiculous.  A grow adult like myself who was let down by TOR would do what I did.  I move on, I stopped playing, I didnt come on some website and think I know all and whine and cry about a game that failed.  These post are old, boring and serve no purpose.  I am happy for the people who enjoy TOR or any other game.  Why do you care so much?  

And if we shoudl speak of failed games going F2P

Champions Online

a superhero MMO based on the most popular superhero RPG system in history, made by the masters of Superhero MMO's (yes before champion Cryptic was looked upon as true blue example of the american dream, a small unknown studio that produced one of the best MMO launches seen to up to that point) and all that mounted up to absolutly jack and less. 

Originally posted by Warley

SWTOR failed because of one thing; they were making a Star Wars MMORPG geared towards non-Star Wars fans.   This translated to as 'easy-as-possible' or -basically- a dull world.  EA thinks that easy-as-possible also means completely dumbing down everything, with no real depth to the game.  They chase the illusionary 10-million casual crowd that simply does not exist.   This lesson should have been learned after LoTRO failed to do any better than EQ II.

Nicely put.  It was not a game designed around the 30-40 somethings, as originally intended (with a splash of 20 somethings).  It ended up, unfortuneately, to be made to compete with WoW for the teenage market, who was polluted with WoW and the instant gratification and easy mode methedology.

If it just hit a nice market with Star Wars fans with amazing new features never before seen (like how the original movies were such a shift from Star Trek clones in the 70s), this game would have been flippin amazing.  Since it was made to be an equivalent to current interest (ie Star Trek in the 70's), it came off as not very innovative at all.

Originally posted by pharazonic

Was TR backed by a film moghul? Did TR have a world-famous IP? From what I have heard TR had great potential but some very poor design executions and the devs didn't give it a chance. 

 

SWTOR has had its chance the market has spoken. 

 

I don't think the Freemium model will bring it the consitent userbase EA hopes itn will. My evidence is AoC which has the same subscription/F2P model. 

No TR was headed up  by Richard Garriot..a man with far more talent and imagination than George Lucas and virtually his equivilent in the gaming world. If the number crunching penny grubbing suits had left  Garriot alone to do his thing...Tabula Rasa would likely have a very different ending...perhaps even no ending.

Originally posted by tawess

Originally posted by Aerowyn

Originally posted by Souldrainer
So, the OP has never heard of Tabula Rasa, Everquest 2, City of Heroes, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Hellgate London, APB, or Tabula Rasa? interesting...

how was CoH a complete failure? it's done pretty well for itself so has EQ2

I think the poster was showing other games that went F2P without the world ending.

perhaps although tabula pretty much just shut down

Originally posted by BarCrow

Originally posted by pharazonic

Was TR backed by a film moghul? Did TR have a world-famous IP? From what I have heard TR had great potential but some very poor design executions and the devs didn't give it a chance. 

 

SWTOR has had its chance the market has spoken. 

 

I don't think the Freemium model will bring it the consitent userbase EA hopes itn will. My evidence is AoC which has the same subscription/F2P model. 

No TR was headed up..initially by Richard Garriot..a man with far more talent and imagination than George Lucas and virtually his equivilent in the gaming world.

 

The movie industry is bigger than the gaming world. $300 million dollar budget is bigger than TR even if TR is ten thousand times the game SWTOR ever will be. 

I'm basing my post on fact, not which game was better and failed in the eyes of gamers. I mean SWTOR is the game that had an opening event in Times Square, New York. 

Originally posted by eyelolled

I'd say Tabula Rasa over SWTOR but if you just wanted to feel the glory on your sparkle pony, don't let me ruin your parade.

Yeah, Tubula Rasa, the Matrix Online or Vanguard were much bigger fails than The Old Republic, commercially and critically.

The Old Republic sold very well initially, over 2 million copies, and still has over 500k subscribers, so it is a failure somewhat but not to the same extent as the games mentioned above.

Don't let this site fool you, The Old Republic is not as hated everywhere as this site makes it out to be, I mean come on, could the "Worst MMO of all time" or "The death of the MMO genre" really retain 500k+ subs?

Also, people saying "The Old Republic is a failure because it hasn't made it development costs back" are stupid, it's an MMO, not a single player game, it's supposed to make the majority of it's money over years, not right away like a single player game.

Tabula Rasa and the Matrix did so bad they were shut down after just over a year each, and neither did very well critically. The Matrix had a massive IP and following, not as big as Star Wars, but still big. And Tabula Rasa had Richard Garriot behind it, probably the biggest and most well known man in the MMO genre.

Vanguard was a massive budget and some big names behind it too, SoE and the creators of EverQuest, and it did terribly commercially and critically. It's only now, years after it's release, well recieved and about to be re-launched. 

Also, F2P will also keep The Old Republic from holding the title "Biggest MMO failure to date" it will make a heap of money from this conversion and probably keep 200-500k+ active subs, along with Free players who purchase from the item shop.

So, no, in my opinion The Old Republic is far from the "Biggest MMO failure to date."

MO was ended on its own terms. SWTOR is pathetically kept on life support - when the devs probably hoped it would be a racehorse. I'm sorry but this is definitely a huge fail. You guys are focusing on the end result ignoring the expectations that rode the games. People expected SWTOR to be "dethrone WoW" (stupid term but whatever). Instead it's struggling to keep 250k subs and going F2P. 

Originally posted by pharazonic

Originally posted by Gaborik

Originally posted by pharazonic

This has got to be the biggest MMO failure to date. Big and I mean BIG budget studios (BioWare, and then all of Mythic), many millions of dollars, reknown voice actors and actors, world-famous interllectual property (Star Wars - who doesn't know it???), one of the titans of video games, EA and many years of anticipated development - all of this to crash and burn in less than a year? 

 

Sure you guys can argue that F2P is not a failure and that the game had "always been intended for F2P/Freemium" . Personally I think this view is bogus but whatever.

 

But the FACT remains that this game was THE WoW killer. Everyone from EA's CEO to BioWare's developers to SWTOR community managers said that this was the game that was going to face Blizzard's juggernaught, WoW. (You can look up articles posted during SWTOR's development that how this was the next big thing; I am not making this stuff up.) 

 

Well, one game still requires you to buy the latest expansion at FULL PRICE. One game still requires you to buy the game to level to levelcap. One game still has a major expansion coming up. One game still requires a subscription fee. That game isn't SWTOR. 

 

This has got to be the most monumental MMO failure - way beyond other "WoW killers" like AoC, War, etc. I mean, even WAR still has a subscription. How sad. 

These are video games for people to throw this big of a temper tantrum over a game is ridiculous.  A grow adult like myself who was let down by TOR would do what I did.  I move on, I stopped playing, I didnt come on some website and think I know all and whine and cry about a game that failed.  These post are old, boring and serve no purpose.  I am happy for the people who enjoy TOR or any other game.  Why do you care so much?  

[mod edit]

I post on threads like this in an effort to help these poor poor OP's that cant let go.  I really wanted TOR to work, it didnt, I moved on to a new game, well went back to a game. [mod edit]

Originally posted by pharazonic

Originally posted by BarCrow

Originally posted by pharazonic

Was TR backed by a film moghul? Did TR have a world-famous IP? From what I have heard TR had great potential but some very poor design executions and the devs didn't give it a chance. 

 

SWTOR has had its chance the market has spoken. 

 

I don't think the Freemium model will bring it the consitent userbase EA hopes itn will. My evidence is AoC which has the same subscription/F2P model. 

No TR was headed up..initially by Richard Garriot..a man with far more talent and imagination than George Lucas and virtually his equivilent in the gaming world.

 

The movie industry is bigger than the gaming world. $300 million dollar budget is bigger than TR even if TR is ten thousand times the game SWTOR ever will be. 

 

I'm basing my post on fact, not which game was better and failed in the eyes of gamers. I mean SWTOR is the game that had an opening event in Times Square, New York. 

Tabula shut down completely at just over a year. Right now although no concrete numbers SWTOR still has thousands playing. If swtor shuts down for good next year sometime i'd say it would surpass Tabula as greatest MMO failure in my eyes..