Scott Jennings: Great Expectations - SW:TOR
MMORPG.com columnist Scott Jennings takes this week's column inches to look at why Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic has the potential to be a disaster for the MMO industry as a whole.
Column By Scott Jennings on March 24, 2010
Something I've been harping on, probably annoyingly, is how the MMO industry needs more independence - specifically independent developers, free to experiment with innovative designs, veer from the path of cranking out more of the same, and avoid a lot of the misery involved in the codependent relationship that much of the gaming industry suffers through with publishers and associated developers.
Electronic Arts has a different idea. Unsurprising, since EA isn't exactly a scrappy indy! Electronic Arts' different idea, apparently, is to spend every other MMO developer into the ground. Or maybe just spend themselves into the ground. Because, as industry analyst Arvind Bhatia reported from an EA investor's conference:
Although "earnings are somewhat depressed due to ongoing expenses of the Star Wars MMO, management has high hopes for this and believes 2M+ subs is possible." He added that a little over 1 million subscribers is needed to reach the break-even point, but the ultimate goal is to get several million subscribers.
The expectation of two million subscribers isn't surprising - although it would be only the second western MMO to reach those numbers (and remember, F2P mavens, that refers to subscribers, not players), if any developer can deliver two million pairs of eyeballs, it would be the combination of Bioware's writing chops and EA's muscle. No, the frightening part of the equation is that last part:
1 million subscribers, to break even.
Mull that over a moment. Again, only one western MMO has reached that plateau (Lord of the Rings Online is believed to have approached that number, but given the lack of press releases, it's doubtful they ever made it). And The Old Republic has to reach that level, just to make their production costs back.
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The implications of this figure are even more staggering when you think it through a bit more. Take for purposes of back-of-the-envelope speculation that EA is willing to give The Old Republic a year to earn back their investment (a very aggressive figure, by the way). And let's just assume that out of your stereotypical $15-a-month subscription fee (which Bioware has hinted is not the only possible revenue source for the game), much of that is taken up due to operational expenses - bandwidth, facilities costs, keeping a live team on the payroll. It's safe to say that Bioware will need probably close to a 25-person live team (an expansion presumably having its own budget). Assume $250,000 a month in payroll and facilities costs (and I am probably vastly underestimating here). Figure $2 per person per month in bandwidth, facilities, and server support (a very rough estimate based on prior performance, and assuming the MMO provider is hosting their own servers and buying bandwidth in bulk). Everything else - ignoring for the sake of discussion marketing, community, any other cost - is operating profit, which by EA's own estimation has to go back to fund that initial investment so that they can break even.
So, what do we have? First, let's reduce that $15 a month subscription fee to $13 to account for bandwidth and other per-user expenses. So, EA is seeing $13 million per month in revenue. Take away $250,000 in payroll costs - and we're at $12.75 million per month in profit. A gross generalization, but let's go with that.
This means that, assuming EA is only giving The Old Republic a year to break even (remember, an aggressive measure), EA is requiring $153 million from The Old Republic to break even. Round that down a bit to $150 million, and that starts to look suspiciously like the sort of round number batted around in executive planning sessions, doesn't it?
$150 million dollars.
This would easily make The Old Republic the most expensive computer game ever produced.
And that is what I mean by EA attempting, at one swoop, to spend the rest of the industry into the ground. Because EA is one of the few publishers that can even consider a $150 million project. By purposes of comparison, World of Warcraft is believed to have cost around $80 million to produce. Everquest? $8 million.
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It's hard to avoid the conclusion that our industry is quite literally going insane. Either this is a calculated effort by EA to ensure that MMO production is priced at the point that only they and a few of their competitors can compete, or that the arms race of "more stuff, bigger stuff, done faster" production has resulted in production costs that result in what by every right should be one of the most successful MMO projects of our time being judged a failure because it only - it only - brings in $10 million a month in profit.
And this is why we as an industry have to move beyond this broken blockbuster production model. Because it is literally unsustainable. EA may well have priced EA out of the MMO market with this project. And in today's economy, rolling $150 million on a bet that you can reproduce the best success in the MMO market, despite a history of failure within your company to do exactly that, is not a mistake you can make twice.
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Aside from this column, Scott is also currently contracting with NCsoft.
Every Wednesday he provides us an insider's look at the MMO industry.
I understand it's a column .... but to my taste there are to many "if's" and "assume" in the calculations ...
Also keep in mind that as MMORPG's have become much more popular and the old-school MMO-ers have "seen it all" ... expectations have gone up .. a LOT. I think the enormous budgets are needed to be able to produce products that can rise up to the expectations of the 1 million players they need :)
Interesting article, but I'm not sure I agree with the conclusion. I think it's perfectly fine for some few companies to try to be massive, to be the Walmart of MMOs. But it doesn't mean the 'little guy' will always be drowned out because of it. The little guys just need to produce something that the big guys don't offer. It might be open PvP, a la Eve, or a completely different setting, like CoX.
One thing that Wow does very well is that it makes it easy for the non MMOer to get their feet wet in an MMO. Once they get used to the general mechanics of MMOs, they can choose to move on or not.
While I can see a few short-minded investors being gun-shy after looking at those kind of bucks, I don't think it's setting a bad precedent or a DOOM for the MMO industry. There are many gamers who have found their niche game and will stay with it til they shut the servers off. You don't need to be as successful as a Walmart or a McDonalds to be in business and still turn a profit.
What's horrible is that this is classic EA mentality. They have yet to produce a successful MMO so they figure the problem is finances. Unfortunately I agree with Scott's findings here, 1 million subcribers is the holy grail of MMO's in a post WoW era. Even Blizzard didn't calculate or expect their numbers to get that high, neither did Blizzard expect to make th eir money back in 1 year. EA can't run projects with a long tail, it's not in their blood. If they can't ship a game that makes it's money back in 1 year they consider it a failure, hence why they have failed at MMO's.
However the realy crime here is that they are spending so much money on SW:TOR and from what has been shown so far, there is nothing about the game that indicates it is twice as good in gameplay as say, WoW was (and I'm not a WoW fan). Sure their budget is huge, their team is massive and I bet their production values, such as full voice, are quite high. But none of that fluff has ever made past MMO's successful. Remember, Everquest 2 had full voice narration too and that feature was so... not cared for by the players that it has slowly worked its way out of the game. Voice acting makes for interesting story telling but it doesn't make your gameplay any better and it doesn't retain customers.
The real question becomes, what about SW:TOR makes it the second coming? What makes it the next holy grail? The Star Wars IP? History h as already proven that's not enough. Sure the market is different now, they'll get over a million in box sales in the first month easy. It's retention that matters and there's been very little I've seen in the released gameplay shots that show it's got the kind of chops to retain those kinds of numbers.
Right now it looks like a heavily instance,d story driven MMO that will be mostly a single player experience with some grouping options. It'll be another MMO on rails, moreso than even WoW was at launch. And right now those kinds of MMO's just aren't doing well when it comes to breaking the 1 million barrier. They are all successful, even the much hated Star Trek Online has over 200k subs making it profitable for what Cryptic spent on it. But then, cryptic spent less than one sixth what Bioware/EA are spending.
EA should've learned their lesson by watching Warhammer ship with similar crazy wow-killer expectations. I certainly hope they succeed, I'd like to see SW:TOR be a sustainable game, the kind you play for years like WoW. But nothing about its currently released information indicates it has those kinds of legs.
Good thoughts as always from Scott. I agree for the most part. EA put to many eggs in this basket. Yes it will be popular but where is all this money going. From what we have seen there just doesnt seem to be that much there. Its a solo game and will be regardless of the other 10 percent of the game that isnt. People will rush due to wow mentality to max level then complain there is nothing left to do and quit. Will be interesting to watch since people also said STO would be the next big thing.
Yes, it's always a risk and a toss of the dice, a high one too if your rough estimates are close. However, if you weigh the odds and consider what they're doing and with whom, it's definitely a well calculated risk.
You have:
- One of the most popular, well recognized, and highest grossing IP's/Franchises in history: Star Wars
- One of the biggest rising stars in game development, well respected and renowned for quality games: Bioware. I think it's
safe to say that Bioware's reputation and following are on par with Blizzards, and I see Bioware taking more and more of
the spotlight.
- One of the most well recieved "eras" of the SW universe: The Old Republic. The games and the lore behind this era have
been well recieved, some even like it better than the Luke/Darth Vader era.
- The backing of EA and Lucasarts ( for whatever that's worth to some )
- Some new, never-before seen features in an MMORPG, like fully voiced NPC's/dialouge for the WHOLE game, choice & consequence system for quests, etc.
Yes, I have high hopes for SWTOR, as I am a fan of both the IP and the developer. But, all games have a chance of failure, I just think SWTOR has a fairly good shot at coming out succesfully.
I have a strong feeling, they have at least one contingency plan on the back burner, incase they do not reach that 1 million subscriber milestone. Most likely tied to MT or something similar. I would think a company spending that much would have multiple plans in place to sustain revenue. Just in case something goes wrong.
I can definitely see EA spending so much in an attempt to corner the market, that sounds like EA sure enough.
I agree if anyone can reach one million, it is a combination of EA and Bioware as well as Lucas Arts (another part of the partnership you left out). Which may even be the most important factor in growing and sustaining a player base.
There's a lot of factors building up here that could spell wild popularity for this game. Not the least of which is this being a star wars game.
What ever happens here, It will most definitely be interesting to watch.
Figures sounds right. And EA can afford them.
Compared to other MMO-only companies (Turbine, Cryptic, CCP, ...), EA produces, develops and sells so many products, ranging from PC to consoles, that those budget, those INSANE budgets can be surely allocated for such projects. Sadly EA requires also break-even faster than other companies, as short timed break-even also bring back high revenues that can be used to fund more ambitious projects.
MMO studies, as long as they don't have other streams of revenues, can allocate smaller budgets resulting in lower break-even points and sustainability with lower number of subscribers.
I agree that EA's expectations are really great, and that could be a problem as they could produce the most succesful MMO closing ever (Tabula Rasa has probably suffered the same fate before, but with lower numbers): they could close SW:TOR after a year or two because it reached ONLY 1,2 million subscribers... I agree that this is simply insane.
Thanks for the coverage Scott, that quote is truly mind blowing, I had no idea ... o.O
But this is the very point of MMO investment: totally insane numbers put up even VCs should be slapped hard for, estimations made one could cry about without anything solid to base it at WHEN they are made.
And on the other hand ... that drives the industry and investment and makes it so hard for small indie games to put something up. MMO's are quite sustainable and profitable if done on small scale and as long term investment. But I'll never forget the reactions of investors when we were shopping for funding and kept low and true: 20.000 subs would make a profit, 15.000 would break even. They laughed at us. Too small scale to be of any interest. Now if we'd become mad and aim (as if you can "aim" for subscription numbers literally) for 100.000 or higher, that would be interesting ...
How stupid can one be? Upscaling is something you can always do, but that you do once you have A PRODUCT to talk about and market reactions to it. And not when there is only "gambling paper" on the table. *shakes head*
Did we believe it is possible our design would attract a number as high as the one they wanted? Yes. But we were not willing to bet on it and wanted some solid business plan. This isn't what is well liked in the scene though.
I've said before and I'll say it again. ToR will never hit 2 millions subs, guaranteed.
Yes it is a Star Wars game, yes it has computer game fanatics who are fans of Bioware (but guess what most non involved gamers don't know who game companies are at all, don't forget that being on these types of forums makes you the minority of customers). But it also has things going against it.
It is being released on PC only correct? Bioware gets a ton of sales from console, so this is immediately a huge hit in numbers. Second it's an MMO. There are still a lot of people out there who won't touch a game if it's an MMO. It's different enough from the MMO genre to lose many MMO fans with it's extremely linear, extremely solo based design.
It is completely unrealistic to ever expect an MMO released in the west to get 2 million subscribers, let alone 2 million in sales.
This game might sell a million copies out the door (preorder and first month), this game might have 500k subscribers by the end of month 2. But to expect anything above that is insane.
EA has been killing itself lately, they don't know how to manage their business. So to spend this much on an MMO and to expect 2 million or more subscribers shows how out of touch they are with the markets. It is also why Activision/Blizzard (Vivendi) are taking over the monster that was once EA. They are now the company to beat and EA is the example of what not to do.
I would put money on the fact this game will not hit 2 million subs or even come close.
I gather it's the combination of the Star Wars IP and the developing company, Bioware. Any other company, and I'd given another SW MMO little thought, even as someone who liked the Star Wars movies (Empire Strikes Back, still one of my favorites). But I consider Bioware one of the few game companies who is as much on top of their game as a Blizzard is. They *might* be able to pull it off (emphasis on might).
I don't really like EA, I see it as a typical example of a big corporation, just as many top music company or top movie company, it's above anything else the big bucks and the pooha that goes with it that's primarily on the mind of its management, 1st, 2nd and 3rd place, making a product you can be proud of further down the list and creativity even farther down the chain. Saying that they need 1 mil subs to break even and being focused on 2 mil subs doesn't exactly help make me enthusiastic about a SW ToR. It's all big words and big goals and actually bad, bad PR.
But as the OP goes, look at the movies: sure, you have the blockbusters and the insane amounts of money they throw around to make it and announce it as if it's something you can be proud of. You'll always have those, but next to that you have a large number of movies that don't need insane amounts of money and still are successful. You only have to look at how a Hurt Locker beat Avatar at the Oscar nominations. It isn't the insane amounts that makes a great MMO, it's how smart you work with the money and resources you have available, the attractiveness of your idea for a MMO and the feats in it, plus how well you implement them in your MMO that wins the race, or at least that wins you a place for your MMO to exist and flourish.
I don't think the problem will be reaching one million subscribers, the problem will be retaining such. There needs to be plenty of content and you can't have players reaching max level in a short period of time.
We will just have to wait and see, but it seems to me to be a huge amount of pressure on Bioware, enough to break the studio.
The real problem is that if EA fails, it could affect the industry for a while. Other companies may just give up on competing in the market at all. Pray to the gaming gods that SWTOR is a hit...
I don't know. look at the whole feverish internet dot com bubble that was such a hype a number of years back. You see the same in a smaller way now with MMO's, now that Blizzard has shown that 11mil subs is actually something that could be reached.
Now everyone else and their dog wants to make a super successful MMO*cough* = make insame amounts of money, whether that's realistic or not. A good burst of that dream bubble is maybe what the MMO market needs, to adjust expectations more to reality again instead of the realm of Investors' Fairytale Neverland where many publishing and investment companies are floating around in now.
You do need to factor in box sales as well...but aside from that, that quote reveals this to be a huge roll of the dice for EA. 1 million subs just to break even?? That's insane. Given what I have seen and heard of the game so far it fails to deliver on many fronts...no one I know is even planning on buying it...anecdotal sure, but come on! Even an astoundingly successful launch (by any previous standard) of say 1m box sales and 500k retained subs in the first year won't PAY FOR THE GAME!...how nuts is that?
Excellent post Mr. Jennings!
I think my expectations are right on. All I want is to play kotor 3 online. Thats it. So no matter what happens, I'll be as happy as a pig in shit.
Maybe the MMO industry does need to pop the bubble. Maybe they need to prove that MMOs need sufficient funding and development time to be successful.
Look at the industry now. You have MMOs coming out left and right and most of them release in very ugly states. It seems that so many MMOs would do so much better if they would've held off release 6 months to a year.
I hope that this Bioware + EA combo gives Bioware the time and money needed to bring a successful MMO about. I mean, EA has the publishing prowess to get peoples attention and Bioware knows how to make a game. So if time and money are not problems, then I am confident that this game will rock the industry in one way or another.
Sure, this game is estimated ~150MM now. I wonder how much Blizzards next gen MMO is costing. There is a quote out there from dev on it saying "Its nice working with an unlimited budget" in reference to Blizzards next MMO.
I hope this is successful and is released in a ready state. I just want another game other than WoW to prove that MMOs need thier development time.
I say boycot this game & see the MMO market go back to a much healthier state.
But, thats just me thinking...
Im a vet gamer. Hell, I used to play by your dumb ass back when you were the raving lunatic Lum the Mad and Nighthawk, Greybeard, and all those other baboons from Joy of Villany made fun of you on their site. Im saying that only to illustrate that Im coming from likely the same viewpoint you are in alot of ways.
I see nothing revolutionary about this game. Nothing.
World of Warcraft was uncreative as all hell, but it made all content MMOs accessible to anyone due to the sheer lack of skill necessary to actually play. Without frustration there was no discouragement. Without discouragement there was no anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to fear. Fear leads to JEALOUSY!
None of that existing, there was nothing holding gamers back. Everyone got involved.
SWTOR offers nothing more than the Lucas franchise and a Sith faction. Big effing whoop.
This game can rot for all I care. I'll play Earthrise... if its good.... or play a decent multiplayer game until a worthwhile MMO is released.... if that ever happens again.
I don't agree with the post at all... look, it doesn't matter how much you spend on an MMO theres a point in any software, mechanical, game, etc production where you need a certain amount of capital to break even. So whats the real problem here? The costs, correct? Because this game will be the most costly MMO of them all it needs the highest revenue stream.
This isn't complicated, but heres the thing, if BioWare could have made this game with less money, I'm sure they would have. BioWare is in a very fortunate position to have a company backing them that isn't shy to dig into their pockets to keep development alive. Could we have seen a game with one half the content release with half the costs? Yeah we could have, but thats not the game they wanted to produce, and maybe thats not the game we want to play.
Will it sell millions of copies? Chances are extremely good that it will. Will it keep millions of subscribers? I'm not sure, but if it doesn't I'm sure it will be a tremendous hit to EA financially and nothing more. Plenty of games -- from FFXI to WAR to AOC have had their issues and came well under their necessary subscriber mark at one point or another. The MMO world didn't end. If that happens again here, there will be no catastrophic event other than we lose a very expensive game from a very well respected developer.
It's all about advertising. EA needs to break the usual boundaries of MMO advertising and do TV spots and celeb endorsements right out of the gate.
EA needs to make sure that there isn't a single person in the world that hasn't heard of their game months before the game hits the shelves. They need people to start lining up in front of game stores the day before release just so that they can have the chance to be one of the first to enter this 'brave new world'.
They need to hype, hype, hype then hype some more and then... they have to deliver on that hype.
2 million + box sales shouldn't be a problem. It's retaining those numbers that will be the hardest part.
Here's my hope. Well, firstly, I hope the game is worth 150 million. Somehow I doubt it. I'm thinking its just another generic run of the mill clone. So, I hope its a great game.
More realisticially, I hope that once they come out with, yet another, failed WoW clone large publishers will take notice. They will leave this genre. Then, we can have innovation again like we were getting before these huge publishers jumped into the foray. Hopefully, we can get back on track with games like AC, UO, and classic EQ.
The worse thing that could happen is this is a well done WoW clone that does somehow get 2 million subscribers(almost impossible, because why would one leave WoW to play the exact same game?). We would never see the end of WoW clones.
Wow Scott ! Great article again !
Probably best MMO colmunist around ! Kudos
As for SWTOR...
One million active subscribers for one year ? Sorry , not gonna happen.
1. The WOW craze is over. Anyway most of WOW subscribers were non-gamers that just followed the new hip trend.
2. You have F2P MMOs now. Which are great alternative.
3. Big part of WOW appeal was that it appealed to girls and non gamers. It was CUTE. SWTOR is definetly not cute. And if it is it will turn off the serious gamers and SW fans.
4. SWTOR just doesnt look that great. I am loyal Bioware fan, but ...sorry. Based of what i seen so far , i can not see a great MMO in making.
The best what SWTOR may expect is 1 million subscribers at first month + 2-3 months after that. Later they may reach 500.000 and even that would be better than any other western MMO aside from WOW.
( BTW any information how many people play WOW today , not in asia ? )
I agree because I already said it and because of awesome formatting.
You're wrong about there being no consequences. Just look at the recent discussion about Farmville. Look at Raph Koster's feelings. He represents a big time publisher, and all their feelings. They are saying it takes too much to make MMORPGs, and they aren't getting the ROI that farmville and other social browser based games get. If SWTOR does fail we will see MMORPG development vanish. Heck, its already slowed considerably from 2 or 3 years ago.
Is that a bad thing? I don't think so. I think that will open the way for indie's to compete(sadly, it also opens us up to all the cheap asian games we have now). Everyone knows large publisher's have zero creativity. It always takes a new company to shake things up.
My only question is, do we as a MMO community want EA to succeed, break even, or fail? There are pros and cons to each of those.
Succeed - Naturally that means that we have a really good game on our hands that is retaining players and generating massive revenue. The con of this would be obvious, EAs mentality of MOAR will be upheld, and we may see companies who cannot afford to keep up (most of them) shrug their shoulders and move on to something else.
Break Even - This could mean that they didn't get the numbers they wanted, but in the long run, no one is losing their job over it, and quite a few players are enjoying the game. The drawback is that EAs mentality wouldn't be broken, and they would probably aim for an even higher budget game next time.
Fail - So the game tanks and cannot retain players after the first month. You can audibly hear the assholes of EAs managers puckering shut. The pro is that the biggest publisher gets a harsh lesson in overinvestment and has to shrink in size considerably to stay alive. The cons include massive layoffs, usually on the side of those who didn't make the decisions (programmers and designers) and a credible game designer, Bioware, takes a massive hit as well.
As a vengeful gamer frothing at the mouth, I really want to see EA fall flat on its face and return the market to smaller projects by game designers with new, great ideas. As a pragmatist, if EA fails, that isn't good for anyone (except of course my perverted sense of justice). The shrinking of our market, coupled with more and more programmers and developers going unemployed, might be too devastating to fully recover from.
I was expecting this to start. The new game to hate will be SW: TOR.
I did however expect it to come from a random angry poster. Not one of the MMORPG staff.
Some how I see this isn't 100% honest. After reading the article and trying to see where he maybe coming from. I am at a loss. Normally I find him intellegent and on the level. This article is full of too many "what ifs". I guess best thing for me is to file this in the "bad day" posts for Mr Jennings and move on.
http://www.massively.com/2008/01/22/world-of-warcraft-hits-10-million-players/
Old article, but back in 2008 it was estimated 2.5 million. EA has to have asia in mind. No way to get 2 million from US, imo. Are there even 4.5 million MMO players in America? I'm guessing, right now, no.
I dont find anything wrong with EA splashing the cash on SWTOR. Its a risk that they have desided to make. And Im pretty sure that Bioware has a long term plan of continuing supporting the game with new content and features. If not then the game will go the way of WAR.
2 million boxes sold of SWTOR is not alot. I think EA ecspects alot more to be fair. Its Star Wars after all. Even tho Tabula Rasa failed with their futuristic game that was pretty much a typical bugfest of an MMO - Im pretty sure alot more fools will fall for the PR hype around this title.
Sadly...
Are there 2 million non-WOW MMO players even available?
They'll need Korea, and especially China for that.
Does anybody know how the Star Wars movies did in China? Does it remind them of Ronald Reagan's missle program? How is WOW doing there (is it even there-the Chinese gov't doesn't make things very easy for them)?
All his assumptions and 'what ifs' are used at EAs benefit. He uses conservative figures to give them the biggest benefit of the doubt, to reduce the impact of his estimation.
And he isn't hating on TOR, he is hating on EA and their need to inject capital into the games like a drug addict injecting heroine with a fire hose.
I have MANY EA titles and I have to agree with most people's sentiments that this is going to tank. EA just isn't willing to POLISH a game before putting it on the shelf. I loved battlefield2. It was a great game...but the UI was clunky, the game was buggy. Same experience with pretty much every game ever played by them.
STO online had my hopes up...but within 30 seconds of Beta, I knew that the game was fundamentily flawed (much like my spelling abilities). Clunky physics and movement. Cheesy ground battles. Counterintuitive controls/navigation. The graphics are ok, but the movement made me feel like I was in KOTOR 1, except not even quite as clean as that. I hear they've added in the inside of ships now. This was one of the big things i was hoping for...but now its too late. The FPS portion of the game is terrible - take the FPS quality of say, planetside, and then beat the crap out of it, bring it back as a button mashing fest (instead of twitch skill) and you get an idea of the crappiness of said FPS portion. The ship combat was fun...it would be an AWESOME game, if it was just a space combat game played for free on armorgames.com. Its simply NOT MMO subscription worthy.
SW:TOR has a lot of potential. From the screenshots its hard to tell if they will polish this enough. First impressions are a BIG DEAL. Will they break the mold? Will they put real passion ($$ does not equal passion or talent) and fun into this?
IF EA failed, the IP wasn't enough to sustain it and LUCAS ARTS and was forced to quit pimping out their IP, would it be enough for developers to make changes? Maybe. As long as Activision Blizzard is pulling down 10million subs per month, some other major game manufacturer with $$ in their eyes chanting *money* like a zombie for brains, is going to try.
A REAL knock on the MMO industry will be if Blizz's new 'secret' MMO tanks. Imagine it. The juggernaut MMO creates a flop...proving WOW was some kind of accidental fluke. Maybe WoW was just the right game at the right time with just enough of the good stuff. Now that Activision is in the mix, the WoW expansions are less polished. Now that some of the major developers for WoW have left to go work on their new project, WoW is more buggy than ever (which isnt that bad...it was a well polished game to start). But Blizz isn't pure anymore. The new MMO will have Activision's ideas in it too.
Here's hoping that Blizz is making a good FPS/scifi mmo that breaks the mold and shows us true inspiration and innovation.
Your right, I have been staring at code all day. Some how the simplest things slip you buy when you spend 10 hours running code for errors.
I stand corrected. After a good lunch and break from my work station, I am seeing things a bit more clearly.
On one point though, I believe if they can inject capital into it and make a better game. why not? If we truely want the best of the best to be designing our games. Well its costs money. With in reason of course.
Jack Emmert claims, well over 100k subs. If they had over 200k he would have said over 200k. Profitable for them supposedly, yes, but not successful.
To get on topic though, I think EA's gamble is a terrible one. Their MMO track record is awful and yet they're throwing money at this project, believing, as another poster said, that financing was the issue. They're setting themselves up for failure. You don't shoot to replicate the market anomoly. Certainly not by throwing money around like a short order cook at a truck stop throws eggs around (RIP Chris Farley). Does anyone believe you can throw a billion dollars at some hardware and software engineers, create a search engine, and compete with Google?
That's not to say that I don't believe SWTOR can be successful or that it can garner and sustain 1 million plus subs, I believe it can. Money alone, however, will not bring them over a million subs. A very well made MMORPG not just a very well made game and a lot of luck will.
He does not represent all publishers, but thats neither here nor there. If TOR failed, GW2, and all those other big SOE games would still release, TSW would still be on its mark to release, and I'm sure Blizzards next MMO would release as well. The MMO market will not hinge on a single games success. MMOs were releasing before WoW and they will release after.
Now Social browser games are becoming popular. Social networking is "in" right now, but thats the ebb and flow of the internet age. Social browser games are played by people like my sister-in-law and her mother. Because social networking is so popular, its bound to attract many others that an MMO wouldn't. MMOs released before those kind of games, and they'll be alive a long time after them. Once MMOs hit consoles, I have a feeling the genre will flux again.
I might have missed it in quick reading - Where does the Box sales figure into the costs - I would assume we need to add another 50 million.
Exactly what i was thinking.
LOTRO was also riding on hugely popular IP. And it is/was pretty good MMO ( at least as good as WOW)
Still it barely holds 300.000 subscribers in west.
And as for WOW numbers.
You must take into account that most of those were non gamers. People that them selves said will never go back to MMOs again. They are not really interested in the genre.
For them it was just popular thing to do. Like Facebook is today. Or Farmville for that mater.
SWTOR has to rely on core gamers.
only time will tell if SW:ToR will hit the bullseye or just get flushed down the tubes like a rotten turd.
As for the search engine thing...well Don't tell Microsoft that lol
"Does anyone believe you can throw a billion dollars at some hardware and software engineers, create a search engine, and compete with Google?"
Actually yes....
Bing is up to 5% market share, so yea, you can compete with Google.
Comments like this show you are not following the development of this game. TOR will have 8 classes that have their own stories and content. Within each of those classes, there will be different choices. Name one MMO that offers that. I plan on playing at least 6 of these classes. That's like playing ME2 or KOTOR six times with a different story. In addition, in resent interviews, they have stated there is content that requires a group. They have also said that they understand how improtant end game is and are consentrating on providing that. Do your research.
As far as this article goes, I respectfully disagree. One of the chief complaints I've heard about resent launches is that the game was released too soon. Why does this happen? Mostly because the game needs to make money. EA is investing the money needed to produce a comple and polished game. Isn't that what everyone wants? If not, then the MMO community are full it.
MS knows already. Bing isn't exactly soaring up the Alexa ranks.
I don't think SWTOR will "get flushed down the tubes like a rotten turd." I just think that EA's expectations need to be tempered. Unfortunately, even if they do temper their expectations, they can't take money back they already spent.
The funny thing to me is that I don't think people honestly equate money with development here. It appears most are saying you can't just throw money at the game and hope for something good. Its not like they are packing content gaps with 5$ bills here. They could easily have made this game less expensive. Supposedly they have created so much content that it is like playing roughly 8 sequels of KOTOR in a single game (roughly their equation).
Just pointing out, that they aren't stocking their lunch room with a golden microwave and a platinum refrigerator, its not that they are purposely throwing money into this game. They didn't say "Guys we have 700 million dollars lying around, create a game and use it all" they are just creating a game, that happens to be extremely expensive, and they are looking for a return on that. All companies do that to an extent.
Aye.
Most of these companies look at how much Blizzard spent on the development of WoW and think that by spending the same amount or even more, they could easily replicate Blizzards success.
Thing is, Blizzard took that money and spent a lot on making a game they thought a lot of people would want to play. Not just the theme of the game, but mechanics, polish, systems, etc. They looked at the titles in the genre and culled through feature sets and player input. They built a game around that research and made sure it worked. Then they released it.
All the other companies look at what Blizzard made, how much they spent and the popularity of the IP and go from there. In the last few years its like all they did was take WoW, slapped some popular IP on it (WAR, etc) aimed the game to a specific player theme (PvP, PvE) and spent tons of money on it (mostly on advertising and hype) and assumed it would be an instant success. Then those games released, most hobbled along for a few months, turned players off and entered a state of gaming life support where a lot are still laying in bed in some MMO ICU.
As for EA, they should know better by now. Sure TOR could have a chance to make 2 million concurrent subs, but they should know that aiming lower than that '1 million players to break even' figure could help protect them from pulling a WAR all over again. And with EA's track record for MMOs (EnB, WAR, UO2, UOX) I wouldnt be making such assured statements.
Scott,
In addition to my other comment, I'd like to add that I think you are understimating the marketing that can be put into this game. Consider that Star Wars already has a popular animated series on the Cartoon Network that can be used to air comercials for the game. In addition, Star Wars will have an adult focused, live action, TV show in the near future. Another avenue to advertize directly to Star Wars fans. And finally, there are all the books and comics.
First off, these numbers are, in my eyes, rather speculative; as different values are being thrown around here and there.
Secondly, I don't completely agree with your Indie love; whilst Indie companies might do some risky stuff like full loot pvp, they have less money to make their games; less money means less scope (as written in an article on this very site), meaning they can't do all that much outside these small different factors.
While Indie companies might be good to try out what the big boys don't risk, it isn't likely they'll hit the big numbers or produce an interely different game experience like some seem to think they do.
The number you throw out there and put on the game might actually come close to what the real cost is, but I think you really speculate too much about the rest of the scheme; these guys have brains, they have planned out all of this; there's no way they'll give a game like this only a year to break even.
And while EA might have made serious blunders with Mythic, Mythic itself was also responsible for quite a bit imo (quality of design team).
Mythic is also not BioWare.
You've left a last factor completely out of the equation btw: Lucasarts, who also have a shitload of money, I'm quite sure the cost of the game is spread out between both EA and them, taking a good bit of strain away.
Ahem, EVE, one of the most popular MMOs to date.
Talking about millions here dude.
I think the major problem EA has is expectation on when they will get the subscribers. WOW didn't start out with 11 million, they worked up to it.
EA's track record with MMOs isn't great when it comes to long term - and MMOs need long term nurturing.
Will SWTOR lack content at launch? Yep no matter how much they have or how good it is - there will be a group who slam through the content so fast that it will make the devs heads spin. Folks that burn through the content are who you aim for initially because they create buzz, problem is they are not usually long term subscribers.
I think the biggest challenge facing EA and Bioware after launch is managing the community - it's a different kind of business for both. I'm not sure either has successfully managed a subscription service of any magnitude in the past - it's another animal entirely when compared to box sales and expansions.
Hurm... in the Force we must put our trust! Clear your mind must be from doubt! XD
..
Seriously, I mean its sorta frightning, yes, but so both game and film expenses have all constantly risen. And I have the greatest respect towards EA for daring such a really big gamble! I mean, big things need big money. I dont believe we really can return to the days of indie gaming. Sorry, I just dont buy that. No pun intended. ;)
So, WoW is the only game that has ever been a success to you?
Hi Scott. Good article.
I have to disagree with your final sentence, though. I was at EA.com for the third and biggest layoff as they began closing shop on the whole studio. I never saw the spreadsheets, but from what I heard we had spent half a billion dollars and had nothing to show for it. This was right in the middle of the original dot-bomb correction.
EA just shrugged and closed shop. No big deal. Didn't even take much of a hit in the stock. My opinion is that EA can easily afford to fail on this project and won't blink an eye if they do. They will probably just try again with twice as much money, ha!
Notice how I never talked about success, I only used the words "big numbers" as that's what is being discussed in this article.
I doubt the budget for SWTOR is over 100 million USD. Getting that number past the board is something I do not see happening, if we look at MMOs hostorically after the release of WoW. So many heavy-weight, large-budget games have attempted a go at WoW and failed I doubt the trust in Bioware and the Starwars IP is significant enough to warrant that sort of budget.
For a game that has been running since 2003, has had a growing subscription base since then, and is making a spinoff game, I'd say it's hard to argue that CCP hasn't made 'big numbers.' Long term, maybe, not the explosion onto the scene that TOR wants, but it counts IMO. WoW didn't explode onto the scene, it had to grow from a buggy game with massive downtime to the polished game that it is now. Expecting an MMO to be a massive success right out of the gate that rivals WoW is very wishful thinking.
When we're talking about a budget around or over 100 Million EVE's 300k subs would be a massive failure. TOR would never recoup its costs if it settled at that level, let alone turn a profit.
So yes, in that context, WoW would be the only truly successful game.
Well, you're half right in the first sentence, but you hit the nail on the head in the next part.
EA needs to break the usual boundaries, yes...and then they need to deliver on the hype.
Why are many MMOs failing? Because they're not delivering on expectations and hype. STO is a fine example of not delivering on expectations or hype. But also, many MMOs are simply copying each other without considering what does and doesn't work. Everyone's so busy copying UO or EQ or WoW that they don't stop to think about the fact that there are large numbers of gamers today who only know UO by name, not by what the game was, or who only know EQ as "EverCrack" but who wouldn't touch it because of that, or who only know WoW as "11 million subs and possibly the worst community ever to curse gaming."
11 million subs is huge, don't get me wrong - but it's an anomaly that a lot of people don't want anything to do with. One thing about WoW (and, yes, I do play from time to time) is that, in terms of skill, it's quite accessible because it really doesn't require much to play for 90% of people. It does require gear and it does require a tremendous amount of patience to be able to put up with jerks, but it really doesn't require much skill. If you think you are an exceptionally skilled WoW player, I invite you to strip down to your boxers/bikini, put away your sword of unrelenting doom, turn off all your macros, and go into the level 80 non-heroic dungeon of your choice to prove your skill. Or at least wear greens or blues instead of farming the place in your T9-T10 with wowwiki up to tell you how to get through the place as fast as possible without beating every boss and trash mob in there.
Everyone wants WoW numbers and to do that, they sacrifice game quality and storytelling to get them. They sacrifice community and skill-based gameplay to get them. EA/BioWare needs to break the boundaries and break out of this kind of thinking to get these kinds of numbers. SOE fell into this rut of thinking and started bleeding subs - they sacrificed the expectations of the playerbase for WoW numbers, they rolled the dice and they lost the gamble. Players looking to play a Star Wars game expect a certain atmosphere, a certain kind of storytelling. When they do not get that, they will be disappointed. Players playing a BioWare game expect a certain standard of storytelling and when they do not get that, they will be disappointed. It is not that EA needs to make a Star Wars WoW clone. We have enough of those already. EA needs to let BioWare do what BioWare does best and they need to let LucasArts do what LucasArts does best (aside from moneygrubbing, Lucas did actually come up with the original Star Wars story) and EA needs to just stay out of the way and write the checks understanding that if they can manage to do that, they will more than likely get a remarkable return on their investment.
edited for typos
It should be pointed out that Scott totally forgot about box sales when calclulating his development cost. If his other calculations were correct, and they're not but probably not horribly bad, then you actually need to add on anther $20 million in profits from box sales (and also subtract a significant forecasted adverstising spend) to figure out what the break even point was.
To all the nay-sayers, this game has everything going for it that WoW did + a TV series and a more recognized IP and a larger company behind it. It doesn't guarantee success, but if you are saying "I guarantee it won't reach X subs", you're speaking from your behind.
This discussion has turned a lot into what is success for an MMO. Silly people say it has to have millions of players for an MMO to be counted as a success, that is of course utterly wrong and silly to say.
Success comes from making a profit, one could also think of how long the game runs as a measure of success since it has staying power.
Games like EQ, UO, AC, SWG, EvE all were success, and very much so. They didn't have millions of subs on at a time (most of them capped out at 250k give or take) but their investments were significantly smaller then modern MMO attempts. As such they are all still running, all still profitable, and all became profitable rather quickly.
WoW invested much more money into making an MMO, but they pulled off the largest subscriber playerbase and became a huge success. Other games like WAR invested more then WoW did but didn't pull off a sustained subscriber base to even rival the original big 3 at their peaks. As such WAR was a major failure.
So does it take millions of players to make an MMO a success? No not at all. Does it take millions of players to make an MMO a success if you spend over 150 mil on it? Yes it does. And that is the issue. They invested way too much into this MMO, and sure it has some fans but it doesn't have what it takes to be a success.
It will be a failure because it will cost them money (and I wouldn't be shocked if the business model changed a few months after it launches to try and make up for the lost money). But it could still have 350K+ subscribers when it hits month 2 or 3. The one thing I can tell you for certain is that it will NOT have 1 million steady subscribers let alone 2 million.
I know this, and that is why I said I find it unlikely EA is only going to give TOR a year to acquire more than a million subs.
These guys have brains as well.
As for big numbers, I explained what I meant, leave it at that; Eve online can be considered a success in it's own right, happy?
Although CCP is not listed as an Indie dev at this point in time.
I'd like to stress the importance of not leaving Lucasarts out of the equasion again though.
BioWare has NEVER EVER made a game that flopped so by that logic, SW:TOR is going to be a big hit as well! There are over 2.5 MILLION players combined playing DA:O and ME2 and SW has a bigger fan base...
"It's hard to avoid the conclusion that our industry is quite literally going insane. Either this is a calculated effort by EA to ensure that MMO production is priced at the point that only they and a few of their competitors can compete, or that the arms race of "more stuff, bigger stuff, done faster" production has resulted in production costs that result in what by every right should be one of the most successful MMO projects of our time being judged a failure because it only - it only - brings in $10 million a month in profit."
Or maybe publishers will simply need to find a team of developers willing to live off of Ramen noodles while the game is being produced with incentives/bonuses coming down the road, dependent upon the success of the game.
Unless I misinterpreted what I had read in the past, from a business perspective, it sounded like there might have been some unnecessary spending going on with Mythic's development of Warhammer, like the spending train they were riding was guaranteed to reach the station of 'success'. I'm sure they are not the only company that may be guilty of such.
It's also my interpretation that several of the heads of these development teams that have been past failures or have been less successful than previously hoped, have all been a bit too optimistic in regards to the future success of their game, which may contribute to some degree, to these obscene production costs we are seeing.
I could be completely off the mark, it's just a thought.
I think you guys are seeing this as an argument of oh its EA developing it and not Bioware. I'm not sure where that logic came in, or where you say EA made x game, and x game was terrible. EA didn't make that game, they published and funded it, but the amount of influence in developing said game varies between developer.
As far as I know EA hasn't really touched or changed what Bioware set out to do, so again who is developing it? If its true that EA has barely touched it, then whats with all the EA hate I see? People need to learn to read in my opinion, if EA has significantly touched it, then it is a different story, but as far as I can tell from interviews they are just funding it.
If EA is just funding it, then what you have a problem with them adding extra money to spend more time developing features? God forbid there are more features...oh not not more content...anything but more content...How dare those dirty developers give us more content...I never...asked for...wait a minute....yeah..I want more content.
Saying they aren't breaking any new ground...really? So fully voiced isn't new? EQ only had partial voices that weren't of good quality to begin with and generally sounded the same. Bioware has over 100 voice actors...yeah that isn't a significant change...nope. No classes being a mirror class, yup that isn't a significant change from the post wow era...not at all, you know with all these new games out that have 10 different classes and 20 different factions...oh wait. Dialogue choices that actually matter and create a story...nope thats not new...WoW had something similiar were you can only push a button to say...so clearly Bioware isn't new.
Each class has a different story that can play out different, and you can even have a side plot with your npc partner...that isn't new. Guild wars did that, except without the real huge story effect...yup totally not a new innovation.
So gamers cry out for change, they want game worlds to have a little more substance and meaning in a story...then are given that and say they hate it? Awesome or super awesome way of thinking, personally I think its super awesome.
Also please look up the history of Bioware its on youtube, and I saw a post about it. Saying Bioware has never tried a server architecture for mmos or multiplayers..sir or ma'am you are wrong. Please learn video game history and go look over Baldur's gate, and Never Winter Nights to see how they implemented not only the build structure of tool kits, but also of making a nice server architecture to host said game. This is a company that has made innovation after innovation, and now they are trying something new...which clearly by your standards isn't new...somehow...and now you guys are doubting their power after all the years of innovation from two doctors who decided to make games in their basement? What does it take...did they touch you guys in bad places?
Yes I think it is alot of money, but as Jennings said its a really aggresive time frame for a year, and it didn't count in box sales, or the fact that Lucas Arts has a time slot on Cartoon Network that could easily push Tor without much more expense. Throwing money at a game doesn't make it work I concur, but its as if you guys argue about money without taking into account what they are doing with that money, or which developer is using that money to make a game.
Starting a debate without all your facts is a fun show to watch, and with that please do continue your debate about how the mmo genere is failing and how money no matter in whose hands doesn't solve anything.
WOW did not get 11 million players over night. The game built on its success. Blizzard kept their playerbase (majority of players) and was able to get more playing when with countinued development.
Now.... as far as EA is conserned - Im really worried about this "breaking even" comment. MMOs are not about 1 year profit or loss. It is about LONGTERM development. My feeling is that EA is talking as a publisher - NOT as a developer (Bioware).
Who cares about subs if you are a publisher of the game ? Look at WAR and see how EA fired pretty much the entire staff and left the game to rot with no new content for 9 months now. Personally I would say it looks like SWTOR could go exactly the same way.
You said it yourself. EA is a publisher - not the developer. But basicly that means BIoware does not have any control over the future of their game. Just like WAR and Mythic had no say in what happened after the publisher got his money worth through box sales. MMOs are not a 1 time hit. They are long term projects AFTER they launch and the success of the game is desided based on the initial launch + the long term support.
Im sorry but I dont' see EA supporting SWTOR for 5-8 years like Blizzard is doing to WOW. Bioware might do it.. But EA ... No - And its EA that makes the disission - Not BIoware.
I tend to agree with Scott Jennings' articles, but I can't agree with his apocalyptic conclusion here. Just because one super high budget game is made doesn't mean smaller developers can't carry on with their projects. Even though he used a lot of guessing and some questionable math in his breakdown of the game's budget, I have no doubt that the budget is indeed enormous. But so what? Compare it to the movie industry: did "Avatar" crush "Precious" out of existence? Can there never be another independent film made now because "Avatar" had such a massive budget and was so successful? Of course not. Comparing smaller budget independent MMO games to SW:TOR is like apples and oranges. There are things that a smaller developer can do that EA could not do with SW:TOR such as create a sandbox MMO or a hardcore PvP MMO.
As others have already pointed out, EA has not shouldered this risk alone. A few people have said that it's a partnership between EA and Bioware, but in fact EA owns Bioware so that's not exactly accurate. But EA does not own LucasArts. That is another huge company that is involved in this project (and one that's maybe a little more well respected than EA), and they are certainly shouldering a large portion if not half of the production budget.
The day I heard about SW:TOR being made by Bioware, my first thought was that this game will be hugely successful on the level of WoW. Obviously, EA and LucasArts think so too so they're making sure that the development team has all the resources they need. When they said that the whole thing would be fully voiced, I realized it would probably be the most expensively produced game ever. Personally, it just makes me more excited to play it when it comes out.
They will support it as long as it keeps making money.
Wow, comments are growing like crazy... jumped by like 4 pages while I was reading.
Anyway, just a thought I had - and saw it mentioned briefly by a couple others in the first few pages - is that I didn't see box sales figured into the $150M figures for calculating revenue - only subscription fees. Granted, subscription fees will generate steady (hopefully) income over several months, but to reach 'break-even' you don't care where that revenue comes from (steady, burst, whatever).
So a few other things to keep in mind:
* At an average price of $49.99, ~3 million copies (digital / retail) must be sold to 'break even' ($150M). Lets assume they sell 1 million in the first few months - keeping in mind that we all know people who have multiple accounts, and you need the account key to set that up. So already we've reached the first third of our goal - $49.99M. I think 1 million is realistic, worldwide, considering again the IP and developer involved here (although admittedly I haven't followed the game much).
* Given the nature of the IP / publisher and production costs, as well as recent trends, it's safe to say we'll see a collector's edition, somewhere in the $60-70 range. Lets say another 100,000 purchase the collector edition (probably those same people who buy a standard copy for their secondary accounts), and we add an additional $6.5M assuming a $65 average.
* Similarly, cash shops seem to be entering mainstream games more and more. I'm not necessarily opposed to these (unless they become 'required' purchases to allow or significantly improve advancement *in addition to* a subscription fee, but that's another argument), but I'm sure these product a good chunk of money as well. How much? I can't really say - but I know on EQ2, average prices seem to be about $2-5 for appearance items, so lets say 100,000 items are purchased at an average of $5 and we add another $0.5M over 11 months (which assumes roughly 9,000 items a month).
* Already we're at about $57M, and haven't even looked at subscription fees. Speaking of subscription fees, we assumed an average of $15 ($13 when accounting for overhead). Who's to say it wont go up? I remember paying $5-$10 / month for MMOs... and $15 has been the new average for quite some time. Further, we usually have the option of paying 'up front' at a discounted rate for multi-month subscriptions, or even lifetime subscriptions. So let's assume we have 500,000 paying $15/month ($13 * 500,000 = $6.5M) over 11 months and we add another $71.5M, bringing our total to $128.5M. Pretty close to our $150M goal (which is also an admittedly fairly arbitrary number), and relatively conservative in my opinion.
I don't know, but to me, this seems reasonable to reach...
To compete with WoW, you either need to offer something that WoW doesn't or take what WoW does and do it one better. To do the latter, you need a polished, smooth game even at launch. And to ensure a polished, fun game even at launch, you need big bucks (and competent developers, but it's BioWare so that's a given).
Looks like this might be the one. No, not the WoW killer, but the first real competitor. I certainly hope so.
I think the problem being discussed was more about what happens if it does hit and keep over 1 million subs. Then does it start a development war that erases the smaller companies? Myself, I think that keeping a million subs in the western market for a year or more is not something I would bet the house on. I also think that this whole issue is just a consequence of the whole Make a WoW killer mentality that seems to be hard-wired now in developer's brains. Forget Wow-killing. Make a decent game and the subs will come - spending the gross national profit of a small country is not the answer - good ideas coupled with good implementation and a smooth launch is more helpful than hundreds of millions of dollars. My opinion.
Exactly...
Truth is as crazy as it sounds with the SW IP and Lucas' full backing the risk is not nearly what it is on other, much less expensive MMO Projects...
This Game will completely blow up wit HUGE Sub numbers at Launch...After that it's anyones guess...They'll have a few Month to show Folks if it's really the best thing since sliced bread or not...But mark my words the initial numbers will be massive...
It's pretty obvious that a conceptual shift needs to happen in MMOs. When every single game released in the last 5 years "fails" because it doesn't capture and hold 1 million subs, that's an indication that it's the expectations that are wrong, not the market. MMO companies, the MMO press and most especially MMO gamers need to recognise that 50K-100K is going to be the norm for playerbases from now on, and that as long as this keeps the servers up, it's perfectly OK.
EA's obviously making some pretty wild assumptions about what they think this game can do, but those assumptions need to be taken in the wider context of the skewed perceptions in the industry as a whole. Are they probably banking on 1 million subs? Definately. Will they take and hold that? Not bloody likely. Will it mean that SW:TOR is a failure if they don't? No.
And just because I haven't had a chance to type this anywhere else this week, I'll reiterate my list of reasons why I wish people would stop hyping SW:TOR until they actually play it for a month on live servers. I'm the biggest Bioware fanboy out there and I've played every RPG they've released, and I am going to buy SW:TOR and do my damned best to love it, but there are some pretty obvious conclusions we can draw from their current performance with those games that should be a real concern for prospective SW:TOR players:
* Bioware's post-release support is awful. Always has been. Patches take months or never appear, bugs are simply never fixed, tech support is always minimal.
* Bioware's game design is pedestrian and conservative. It's exactly the same game structure every single time, along with those bloody Towers of Hanoi.
* By promising 100% voice acting, they're either limiting post-release content to a level significantly lower than any other MMO (because it costs a boatload to get talent back into the studio) or they're setting themselves up to disappoint when they have to start publishing randomly generated flavour-text quests to keep players in the game.
And those are just off the top of my head.
Articles like these are a part of the reason why mmos fail. The media raises the expectations so high that when a game doesn'r reach that expectation it is considered a failure by the players.
Well that and the companies making the MMO should learn when to remain silent on certain things (such as talking about how many players the game could potentially get or how many are needed to break even).
Because the press will remember those words and the players will hold those statements against the company.
Couldn't agree more fyerwall. Hype it up when it is a proven success not before.
my concern about this whole Ordeal is that when the time comes due when EA is demanding this of BioWare and they're not able to deliver 100% EA will drag them through the mud and try to get their filthy claws into a great RPG company that I've long since had respect for unlike EA who are currently 50/50 in my book.
Yup.
If TOR does any less than what EA is expecting (say less than that 1million players to break even number) you can bet EA will hold Bioware accountable. Soon after you will see the downsizing of BW and Ray and whatshisname being 'let go'.
And that will be a sad day... a very sad day....
I agree it is MUCH too early to really draw any conclusions,but i have a simple question...
What "IF" this ends up being nothing more than a copy of KOTOR turned into a MMO?I really have a distinct gut feeling,that is exactly what this game is going to be.Will players tha tare true SW fans and have already done all that KOTOR gaming over and over,be satisifed with the same thing different skin?
I hear what you're saying Mr. J. If true I'm not really worried and this may indeed be a GOOD thing for the industry as from what has been talked about as far as being done with TOR it's not a direction I personally want to see MMOs develop. What gives me more conviction that your estimates and the subsequent happenings may indeed unfold is that EA/Bioware has hired two individuals who were in lock step with one of the groups who have grown this skepticism toward MMO games in Gordon Walton and Richard Vogel. Both are former SOE employees that were with the company well into 2005 and thus I find it hard to believe they didn't know about the NGE coming down the pipe. I have a belief, and if I'm proven wrong by the final results of the game so be it, that their positions and thus influence on the project will generate in reproducing the same old tired game mechanic in total (granted the dialogue and "story" will be at new levels/lengths than seen before) that vogel was evidently behind at SOE with the NGE (he stayed at SOE longer than Walton I believe) and that Walton has praised WoW for and all but legitimized it as a MMO developing bible.
That above makes me believe that reaching the 2 million subscribers point won't happen (concurrently) and the 1 million is most improbable (again, concurrently). As these AAA companies seem content to make more of the same, grab some box sales and start on the next box sale getter I can say that I certainly don't feel badly if they start failing here and there. I have a good friend that, within the last year was hired on by Bioware. I don't want to see him lose his job, sure. But if TOR taking a good swift kick in the teeth resets some thinking about how MMOs are made and we step away from this currently monoploly on design and implementation, then he can crash at my place until another job comes about.
I really like this guy's style of writing. He really understands how to captivate the author's attention on the internet in his blogs. Not too many people sit down looking to read a novel or even a one page article, but Scott Jennings understands this and pulls the reader in with startling statements in claims. Could they have a little bit of false shock value? Sure, but boldness is the thing that blogs are made of, they are complete opinions written down in raw format which makes them so fun to read.
In short, cheers Mr. Jennings and keep up the good work.
Just like with movies, you can throw all the money around you want and toss special effects all over hte place. But if you don't make sure there is something of substance there, it will fail.
I just worry they are banking too much on players WANTING to go back and play through every classes story after they finish the story of their first character.
Because no matter how much content they create and how good it is, players can and will burn through it faster then expected.
So even if you play through all 8 classes and play religiously, like 40 hours a week, and at MOST a single class will have 80 hours of gameplay (though I doubt it'd be that high) you are looking at 640 hours to complete all 8 classes, which if you are able to keep up the break-neck pace of 40 hours a week will take you 16 weeks or about 4 months.
What happens then?
How will they keep you around for another 8 months in order to re-coup their investment? what will you do?
Even if you play 20 hours a week it's only 8 months, what do you do for the last four?
Hopefully they'll be actively creating content but how much can they really produce per-month?
Let's guess at 3 years total development time, and again go with our 640 hours total content. That's 213 hours of content per yer, or 17.75 hours per month.
If they can maintain that content creation rate (doubtful) it's still a month of work for less then a week of play time. What do you do the other 3 weeks?
They REALLY need to start revealing the "MMO" parts of this game, because no matter HOW much story they deliver they'll never deliver enough and be able to maintain a content creation rate to satisfy the "hardcore" gamer and likely not even the more "casual" 20 hours/week gamer.
And those with no interest in playing all 8 classes stories?
hey need to start given us REAL answers about the game rather then keep shoving the talking-points down our throats. Yes, we know you have full voice acting and an alignment system.
What else ya got?
I don't know how many of us there are out there, but I am of the camp that once I have chosen my favorite race/class combination I really don't have an interest in playing another character. I see it as time spent playing on another character takes away from advancement of my primary. So, after hearing Vogel's thoughts on crafting and then hearing that a significant part of their plan was to have people play through content again as another class...well, I purchased my ticket for a seat in the stands on this one. I have no motivation to get down on the playing field.
(this mmorpg.com post editor really sucks! Havent seen it as bad as this on ANY forum!!)
I think it isn't as much the game developers, but more the publishing companies, investment companies and the game directors and other top managers of game companies that are getting a hard-on about trying to score the big hit, the next WoW and big megabucks. And the press being a cheering crowd going into a rabid frenzy when it comes to upping the hype, like about subs numbers and boxes sold.
I think that most of the game developers and designers just want to get a decent to good pay in the field they like, and sure, working on a product they can be proud of. There'll not be many that think 'let's make a WoW killer together that sells millions of subs!'. But I can be wrong.
I'm starting to think that the high profile, potential blockbuster-MMO's are not the ones to look forward to, since to achieve that they have to find a way to please everyone, or at least as much of the mainstream player audience as they can attract. That doesn't bode well for different, innovative gameplay or original ideas.
Maybe the interesting ones to look forward to are the ones that will be aimed at a few 100k subs, with less than 1mil boxes sold. It's an amazingly weird, Twilight Zone thing that suddenly in this post-WoW era those numbers don't suffice anymore as a measure of MMO success to publishing companies, investors, media - and maybe many players as well - where before WoW MMO's and their owning companies managed to do fine by them.
Interesting read and entertaining responces
IMHO what will make or break this title after it releases, is whether or not it is fun and entertaining. I also believe there is alot of miss information being spouted out in this thread. No one will be able to judge SW-TOR until release. I couldnt tell you whether this title will make a profit or not. But I believe with Bioware developing the title is , that it will be a very fun , entertaining and a well made game.
My first computer was a Tandy TRS80 and my first computer game was "Pyramid"
those were the days lol
Ill be pre-ordering the game and a know about 20 people in my college that will be. (do i get commission for spreading the word?) The game without any big marketing pushes is already grabbing people , people are always looking for new mmo''s and then there are the Star Wars fans, then there are the BioWare fans (im all three to be honest), they have a big market before even advertising properly, the forums are jam packed, i mean the site crashed when they started accepting testing invitations
Id be surprised if they don't get to 700k+ withing the first week
This shift needs to happen in the playerbase too. If we're always expecting any new releases to be as complete as WoW upon release, we'll be waiting a lot.. Or we can expect only one successful release every 5 or 7 years.
Developers also need to control the scope of their product. Releasing a game with limited (but functionning) features is better than releasing a plate of bugs and wishful thinking.
well if anyone can match up with Blizzard, I think Bioware's on the top of my list
Not bad, only 5 1/2 'must be good cuz it's SW and BioWare' posts out of 84 so far. Of which these 2 have to be the most rah rah of the bunch.
OK let's put a few items to rest before we go all 'must be good cuz ....'
First - BioWare. Big Deal. I looked at their game titles and you know what? I've never played a single one and that fact has nothing to do with the Company, just that none of their titles interested me.
Second - It's Star Wars. Well technically yes. What if we said 'It's a Chevy! .... OK, but it's not the kind I like.
Which flows into the Third Point - It's a Popular era of SW. There were at least 3 of us on another thread that flat out said we could care less about the OR era. If you're trying to equal popular with KOTOR games sold, that's not a given.
And if you're trying to equal KOTOR units sold with TOR must be a winner in sales. Well KOTOR was for different systems right? And paying $50.00 in a single shot for a game is a lot different than that $50.00 plus $15.00 a month for a year. How many of those KOTOR boxes do you think they would have sold if they had a $230.00 price sticker on them up on the shelf?
EA and yes BioWare are banking on a lot of shakey ground. First that a one shot game that brought in big bucks can translate to a long term money maker and that alot of players will want to replay all those classes / sides and hang around. Unfortunitly I'm like the guy above, Out of all those classes I may want to play 1 or 2 but not all and I could care less about playing the Republic. Just as I never played a Rebel in SWG, I wouldn't play the good guys in TOR either and of the 9 classes (now) in SWG there's only Smuggler and Commando that I'd play and since some changes a while back even Smuggler dropped off my list.
And don't even try to toss in the SWG players or vet's. If they don't play / like SWG cuz Jedi is a starter profession than why would you even think they'd want to come to TOR where the games canon equals Jedi all over the place.
A coworker and I were having an argument yesterday about MMOs. He is a BIG console guy (360 all the way), while I own a PS3 and Wii, I am a heavy PC gamer and have been since the C-64. But something that hit me in our discussion was something about WOW and SW:TOR.
He was saying he is going to have to upgrade his system to play SW:TOR. While I do not need to upgrade, because I play 99.9% of my games on the PC. He said that the reason and the only reason he played WOW was because his 5-6 year old system, could play it very well, no reason to upgrade.
If SW:TOR is going to succeed, it is not going to be because of the budget from EA. First it has to be accessible, then fun. If everyone has to upgrade who has bought their computer in the last two years. I don’t think the game will be a huge success. Unless the game is so fun that everyone and their mother is on it. And that makes people upgrade, which will be good for hardware companies. I also have high hopes for this game and I will be on board. But it will be a wait and see if it will deliver.
Mr. Wood I find your argument at total fault,
The fact is that the Movie and Recording industry have operated in Blockbuster manner for years and have sustained this for a very long time. But still new Independants have succedeed and even thrived in that heavy inductry controled enviroment and so your argument is false. The fact is that the Interview given by Ray Mazucha and the EA president done on G4 channel stated that Mass Effect and Dragon Age were basically test and money making platforms to OFFSET the price of development of SW:TOR. Perhaps you missed that interview. However I am sure that no matter what ,independant MMO's will still succeed.. take for instance EVE: Online. That survived for years before a MAJOR company took intrest in it and eventually folded it into its wings and made it even more successful.
This is the same argument made that BIG companies are never good for the market as SMALL business get ran out of town because of the big businesses, which does not also hold water as that small business is more than 2/3rds our economy and many of them are independant and fill a speacial and needed niche and continue to thrive.
I will keep this short and sweet. The article is well-written and is a VERY well done guess. I think this guess is actually closer to truth. Asheron's Call 1 is the true idea that games don't need to cost a ton of money to make and there are countless other examples. However, I think if Star Wars TOR applies the same formula of gear + raid + class = fun, then guess what? It will fail. The industry wants something new. If this game attempts to even copy this formula, it is finished. There is no amount of voice acting in the world that will save it from that path. Sad, but true.
200+ hours of gameplay per class (from video interviews).
So a really hardcore player would still take a month / class
1) I know the "WoW players don't play games, they just play WoW" meme is a popular article of faith, but is there any actual evidence of it? I know I've never met a WoW player who didn't also play other games, but I can't guarantee the circles I move in are representative.
2) Why does SWTOR have to rely on core gamers? Even if we assume it is correct that "most" WoW players are non-gamers, what magical force enabled WoW to attract all of these non-gamers, and why can't SWTOR do the same thing? Certainly there are a lot of Star Wars fans to be drawn in: obviously neither the Blizzard nor Warcraft brands had any draw at all amongst non-gamers, but the Star Wars brand surely does?
Wow the irony in here is so thick you can smell it. Ive spent the last few months reading through post after post after post (due mainly to cryptics flop) about how developers need more MONEY and time to do projects. I have just read 10 pages of people saying throwing money at a game wont work. Well people how the hell is a company going to make a game you like when you cant even make your mind up if they should spend money on a project or not. So whats it going to be people whinge and bitch no matter what developers do, or put your money where your mouth and your podgy typing fingers are, and support a company that is spending the money you have all been crying about on here.
From everything I've read, EA are pretty much leaving Bioware alone to do their thing. If you look at the fact that EA seemed to have anticipated/planned for SW:TOR launching in the financial year just ended (from the quote), the fact that the game's release window was announced as being much later than that would seem to imply that Bioware are calling the shots in terms of "when it's ready".
I'd be wary of guessing whether or not the game will recoup costs in a year, but I think one worry that hasn't been touched on too much, is that if Bioware are calling the shots on when the game is release-ready, and it doesn't fulfil EA's rather inflated expectations straight out the gate, then Bioware will never again be given a say on when their product is release-ready. Nor will any other sub-studio of EA. The farther away the release, the higher the spend. Unless SW:TOR is hugely successful, development time will be curtailed on future projects. Every gamer know this would not bode well, rushed-out, unfinished, barely tested, bug-ridden messes will proliferate (more than currently, if that's possible) and the MMO market will stagnate as a result. This is something that "the suits"/the moneymen don't recognise as a problem. Too many publishing houses are depending on box sales to recoup and not on subscription numbers/retention rates.
I'd hazard a guess that EA are singing one song to their investors (we will get the money invested back lickety-split on release), and another to Bioware (more money? more time? no problem!). Of course their investors like the idea that the past x years and x $ spending on SW:TOR will magically be recouped in a year from launch, with some extra profit on the top. Throwing in figures like 2m subs is a way to make it seem like that would be possible. Who knows if they really believe their own math? Or whether they'll hold Bioware to it.
That's the point I was trying to get at with my earlier comment. Well, not that hypocrisy is rampant on this site, we all know that already. If you're going to compete, you need a solid, polished game, and to do that you need money and time. That's what BioWare has, but, apparently, because it's "just another themepark," it doesn't really matter how much money and time is put into it. Go figure, right?
I trust BioWare. In my opinion, they're far and away the best game developers in the business, and have been for years. They'll make an amazing game. That's enough for me.
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Blizzard also hired gamers to develop quests and storylines. They poached players from Everquest and then had those poach entire guilds off that game. They probably saved millions on that strategy alone. Blizzard was totally grassroot when it developed wow, and was very smart about getting the word out there about their game. Back then they had much less competition due to the lack of mainstream mmo's back in 2004-2005. EQ, L2 and I supposed swg followed shortly after, but compared with today, not the same competition at all. And Blizzard still went to the players, hired players, spread the words through the communities and got people involved.
I see none of that in Swtor, and havent for that matter in any other mmo since wow. It seems like a huge resource that is laying dormant and being overlooked by all these companies, simply because they havent researched or werent around to witness gaming forums in 2004-2005 where all the zomg wow betainvited my guild and poached all my raider dramas occured.
Sure you want beta testers who are hardcore and experienced, but rather than earning a little commercial space on fileplanet, ftlog, visit all the major serverforums for all major mmos, contact all the guildleaders and extend beta invites to as many people as your beta servers can carry. Thats how you do it, a little time an effort and you probably poached a good chunk of the "bored-of-the-same-old" wow players. Get with the times and stop treating Beta invites like an elitist good. Treat it like a way to poach players off the competition.
I wouldn't say Blizzard poched people from EQ. The main three met while playing EQ. Which would explain why it was simular almost a mirror of EQ.
I agree it's a large bet on EA's pocketbook and bioware's back not to mention a good chunk of the gaming community thats reads and responds to forums don't care for Mystic. I personally think Mystic is only there to provide some detail on combat due to some experience from warhammer, as much as people knock some of it worked and it's still alive. Yet it's not a real good example of a favored system and alot of bad blood player vs. Dev team of mystic.
With mystic onboard, one could only ask why...what real use are they, pvp game mechanics? they won't say much because if that is true holy batbombs people will slash that up and slew the game with bad bad vibes potentially harming a good launch. To expect to kick the king down the hill that is WoW TBH I never played wow, never will not my style. So wtf cares, make a good game and stick to it....every new game gets compared to it, and it's lame.
So the real question is are they creative enough to design a game with as much flex and ability to modify content down the road years and years to provide longevity to SWTOR. Are they planning ahead with expansion possibilities, game design some are worried by the time it is out the engine will be less than par. You need to remember unlike what it is being compared to, if they start screwing the timelines up making a mess of it I doubt LucasArts will like that, as they are a picky group. so that will sorta limit it's flexability to "freehand" new content.
Launching pre-mature like STO will burn the ip to the ground. The game will need a solid crafting/gathering system, PVE content and expansions to keep it fresh, and a rock solid pvp system that has purpose and don't force it's will on "carebear" types. now that I think as I type this I wonder if Mystic is online to work on a RVR pvp lake system, que pvp matches as that is the only thing people still play it for.
If they screw any of that up they didn't research other mmo's from the past on how they failed, why they failed or what made them a sucess/loved. I'll give a good list, and if they ever read it and say oop's forgot about that one......then they got a year to consider it...
Good:
SWG= Crafting system was a sucess and well received, Community feel.
Warhammer= RvR lakes, scenario system was well liked
EvE online= World economy, crafting system and sandbox community
Bad:
Star Trek Online= Money grab shady discounted boxes not even 30d after launch, A horrid crafting system a 5 year old could master, Way to instanced, No community feel, and way way to easy to max out a char. Oh and absolutly no reason to sub after max lvl as no content. Prolly more here but thats a general idea.
Aion= Kinah sellers took too long to crush, Personal stores cluttered the servers (lag), Investment vs. reward on crafting was horrid, A bad market mostly due to drop rates, crafting costs and ability to gather ( farmers ). PvP end game was sub-par and non-interesting, Raids were annoying due to lvl difference was way to strong and inbalanced.
Warhammer= War buddies abouse of the command code ( still?), Forts were horrid making for a non-fulfilling experience defending/attacking usually sat for a hour and never got jack. Lack of tier balance tier 2-3 was a dead zone that was painful to reroll past. Alot of bugs took way to long to fix, IE the mid pq in LotD could be farmed all day for insane xp per run with the turrets. Crowd control was never a idea at launch resulting in alot of balance issues for a long time.
Knowing what the market needs and wants through surveys, polls, reviews and watching other games come and go is key to success. All said, I have faith in bioware and the team working on it.
Look I won't argue in great detail with Scott's numbers, but my gut tells me they're probably a bit larger than what's really the case. He also hasn't thrown in marketing spend, which I expect will be spectacular for this game. There's quite a bit of leverage there, both from the visibility of the IP and EA's access to multiple channels of messaging they can work with and coordinate effectively.
But what EVERYONE on this whole thread is missing are a few, very key points:
1. We have a bunch of, no doubt, veteran Bioware developers involved in this project, some of whom, no doubt, have been at the forefront of Bioware's creative success since the inception of the company. This is one of THE most powerful teams in games development, period, creatively, with, I will argue, the most sustained track record of success in this entire industry.
2. We also have part of the team that's successfully gone through the ringer of the technical challenges of launching an MMO, MULTIPLE times, with people like Rich Vogel going all the way back to Ultima Online. In other words: veterans of how to do this right. Veterans of the technology; veterans of the infrastructure needed; veterans of how to handle CS, community, game design to create a phenomenon that can be sustainable over ten years. I'm not exaggerating the value of this. At all.
3. We have the unprecedented backing of one of the biggest interactive publishers on earth, and I don't care what you think about Riccitiello based on all the news and history, I truly believe he's found a way to Open the Door at EA, from an investment point of view, to let Bioware, and the veterans mentioned in number 2. above, succeed, properly. EA is not about to make the kinds of mistakes they've made in the past, with cutting development short on such a spectacular investment (even if, in overall capitalization terms, it's not that big an investment risk from their point of view). They've been involved in this with Bioware and the team for how many years now? The development of TOR is not some sort of mysterious phenomenon to the Board of Directors at EA at this point, I would gently suggest.
more
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
continued from above:
5. Bioware's been on a roll lately. Have you people SEEN Mass Effect 2 or Dragon Age? They're phenomenal games! They have some of the most sophisticated, compelling story telling in the medium. They're the result of the maturation of a process for storytelling that's been growing at Bioware for what, 15 years now? Bioware is an absolute master at this at this point. Do you think they're NOT going to bring all that expertise to bear on TOR? They sure will! And imagine a game where you get that, for all the classes advertised, ALONGSIDE a fully matured, fully fleshed-out, fully understood full-scale, content-driven MMO environment, with all the necessary content design and balancing to keep a playerbase for a decade, and no doubt, plans for new content delivery, and effective support of same, post-launch, that will rival anything out there.
People, we're on the cusp of having an entirely new kind of MMO, one where the fantasy of who you are isn't replete with all the massive discontinuities, laughable character conceptualization, narrative juvenilia and on-the-fly invention that WoW suffers from. I bet even Blizzard, with all its success with WoW, would be desperate to have the level of competency in all these areas that Bioware can bring to the table, IF THEY ONLY HAD ANOTHER DECADE TO CATCH UP.
Imagine playing an MMO surrounded by characters, situations, worlds you can really care about, that are self-consistent. Ever been there before? I haven't, and I've played 'em all. Conan's first twenty levels of single-player game weren't half-bad, once through, but that's like a mini-game totally split out from an MMO compared with what I bet TOR will deliver, eh?
6. Oh and I forgot then there's the SW IP. We can all laugh about how maybe George hasn't done anything really effective with that since the end of the first trilogy, etc. etc. but of course even with all that epic of what, thirty years of fail, it's still probably one of THE banner IP's of the 20th/21st century. How much do you bet LucasArts would like to see a creative team as competent and versed in their medium as Bioware is do something effective with that?
Anyways, I could write a novel about this, but I think actually EA is being very conservative about their audience expectations. The single biggest thing EA has to do right here is recognize the massive value of a well-supported MMO investment, OVER TIME. I suspect they'll easily make back the initial investment. What EA has to learn, from this team, is how to sustain the investment over the 5-10 years necessary to make it the incredible multiplier it can be for them.
I wish them all luck, and am looking forward to the launch of the game.
best response thus far.
What happens if they can't reach that 1 million subscriber mark? Would they close down the game so soon and cut their losses? This whole thing has me feeling very uneasy about the game, to the point where I'm not going to buy it until atleast 5-6 months after it launches to see if it lives up to these expectations. I'm not purchasing another EA MMO that is developed into the ground or cancelled altogether (Earth & Beyond).
EA is not an MMO company as such ( nor is Bioware) so they most probably will lack any long term strategy required to make any MMO a success - folks tend to forget most MMO's do not reach their peak subscriber#'s on day one - which doesn't bode well. As someone else asked : what will they do if they fail to reach their goals after first year?? Cancel it and accept the loss ? Or show real commitment to this franchise and persevere ? It will all depend on that because I honestly do not believe they will in fact reach that goal . I'm even not inclined to believe SW :TOR will be successful for the very simple reason of overhype . It is bound to be a huge dissapointment for most folks "buying the hype " . That's a lot of potential subscribers lost even well before release :)
I see lots of folks in this very thread believing the hype already ....
I'm inclined to no longer think the huge production scale MMO is the way to go but rather the slow and steady progression: go for long term success and aim for a far lower number of subscribers at launch even if that means working on it with small team . I think what Fallen earth and especially EVE are showing is that strategy might be far more prudent . I think publishers should realize there is no such thing as a "sure win" - witness the Star trek IP - and need to lower expectations significantly .
Considering they have ex- SOE guys in the key positions running this show I'd say his lack of faith is well placed, lol!
SWG had 1 million subs at one point. You under estimate the SW frachise and fan base. Go surf some of the large SW sites and notice the millions of users. I can assure you over 80% will be trying this game. They all want to live the star wars life, its every SW geeks wet dream.
A large-scale MMO takes a level of creative talent; a level of architectural and infrastructural knowledge; and an understanding of how to design for retention, for CRM, that is generally unprecedented in the games industry.
Why do most MMOs fail? Because they don't have all of the above. Almost every single one, except WoW and a very few others, are profoundly lacking in one of these three areas.
The Star Trek IP's not even worth mentioning in the same breath. The scale of commitment to doing that game was a tiny fraction of what it is for SW: TOR, and, no insult to those involved, but the scale of talent on all three levels mentioned above for STO was C+, at best. Sorry, but true.
Not to mention the fact that not a single game has broken the curse of, "if it's Star Trek, it will fail" in games development since the first effort ever to make a Star Trek game, what was that, Interplay? :) Ever. I don't think it can be broken.
Mr Jennings and those who agree with the article are not making an ounce of sense.
The criticisms for newly released MMOs have in recent years invariably been that it is "clunky", "unpolished", "still in beta". How often have I read that a new game isn't great but it has potential? And then how often have I read that you only have one shot at launch? One "reasonable" solution is to have a "quiet" launch, have fundamentally interesting ideas and grow (e.g. EVE, Fallen Earth). This is the path of the independents and whatever happens to SW:ToR that path wont change and certainly wont dissapear. All too often it is a loud launch for a shallow gaming experience (e.g. STO), followed by a massive drop in subscriptions and harsh criticism. This is what we want to see the end of.
The other solution is to have the kind of investment backing that SW:ToR does, which until SW:ToR came along was missing (except perhaps for Blizzard's next gen MMO). A large investment means that the scope, ambitions and development time of an MMO can be, well, exciting.
That's what it is people. It is exciting. From what I've read (on sites like Darth Hater) it is a considered and thoughtful bid to make a very succesful MMO. The doom and gloom are misplaced in my opinion.
My feelings about SW:ToR are a lot like the Lord of the Rings films before I saw the first one. I'm a little nervous about the end product, but it is a good nervousness, if you know what I mean. :)
I'd have to agree with this post here. Lets go back to a year before Blizzard launched WoW and write this same article. Many people wouldn't dream that WoW would have the impact it did. You could argue about the cost difference, etc. if you really want to, but the fact is, noone can predict success... and in the same avenue, under no circumstance should we be predicting failure before this game has even come into beta.
So they need 1 million subs to break even... its unprecedented now, but in the future, we may see more companies doing this same thing.
Sinjin? Did you play EQ, by chance?
Mythic actually did do this for Warhammer. They invited a lot of DAoC players and very early in the beta invited guilds that had been setup prior to release. They attempted to get the gamers who were already interested in the game 2 years pre-release in on their beta stages. It was just a shame that the beta was actually one of the most narrow focused and rigidly structured betas which ignored about 90% of the feedback they were receiving (maybe not ignoring but a lot of what they were being told simply could not be changed at that late a stage so it was basically worthless to have the majority of the beta at all).
Someone mentioned that SW:TOR needs to be attracting the core gamers to make this 1 million subscriber figure in the first few months. And yet the majority of people who I see posting on forums (here and elsewhere) say that they will never pre-order another MMO, nor will they play it for the first 6 months because they NEED to see it once it settles down as they expect (and rightly so) a debacle of a launch.
The failed launchs of the AAA MMOs for the past few years will hurt all future MMO launches as the core gaming public become more and more wary of investing in a failure or paying to play a beta. What Bioware needs to do is ensure all this money they are getting is used to display pre-launch, to the core gaming public that their launch is going to be different - they are not only doing something different design-wise but they are putting out a finished product.
That will be the one true innovation they need to bring to the MMO industry. They need to show everyone that MMOs don't have to be horribly buggy and glitchy with masses of missing content at launch - because this paradigm is ultimately the most destructive to the industry.
SWG never had 1 million subs ,SOE would kill for 1 million subs .You are mixing /confusing with box sales . And guess which mmos done better in past ?Companies with their own IP (wow/lineage /eve etc ) not a licenced ip
I know this is a horrible and cynical thing to say but I actually half hope EA loses their gamble here. If EA can't make a successful MMO with even $150 million it might finally prove to the industry that money is not the answer, the investors do not have a clue what they're doing (i.e. leave the development to the devs) and that these games need to start targetting niche audiences. I just hope to see the evil corporations that are running this industry into the ground get scared away when they realise that soulless money grabs are not going to succeed any more.
Of course the other half of me wants to see it succeed for Bioware's sake... but that desire to see EA lose their money is growing.
What's the source of that $8 million figure for EverQuest? I'd always read $30 million.
Thanks for another great article. Maybe its the grey in your beard, but I think the good-natured doom of these stories really resonates with me.
Star Wars is a diffrent beast. On top of that, Bioware has not made a bad game yet. The only bad thing that has ever happened to Bioware was EA (with the exception for the tons of cash EA has given Bioware).
Here are my predictions:
1.5 million boxes sold within the first month
1.5 million subscribers in 6 months minimum (40% retention rate plus more sales, based on industry standards).
3 million subscribers by the end of the year.
I agree with the article, but not to the extent that many other posters do. I don't think that EA is going to "out-compete" other games or drive away the indies, if that were the case, Blizzard would have already taken care of that. EA is simply trying to be the next Blizzard, probably because it sees the incredible amount of money that company is still making on a 6 year old title. Here's where my concern is:
I played WAR and was so horrified by the unfinished garbage that was delivered I swore that I would wait 3-6 months before playing any new releases, especially those released by EA. If memory serves, EA was counting on WAR to take off and make a shit-ton of money after its release.
I'm not sure how much WAR cost, but it wasn't $150,000,000
Now, if you consider WAR to be a catastrophic failure to investors, try telling them that they only have 500K subs (I'm NOT saying that's all this game will get, this is just a hypothetical) and the company just pissed away more money than the GDP of a small nation- that will cause an investor- relations and Board of Directors nightmare which may lead to negatively affecting the industry as a whole. The best way to kill development of a genre is to have enough major flops that it makes all the big boys shy-away. Not that I don't love my Indie sandboxes, but sometimes I want to go to fucking Disney World.
Maybe off topic a little here... the buisness model I could see happenning for this game is a monthly fee ( maybe more than the now standard 15$ ) + pay for content.
They say they are making KoTOR 3..8, but what I think is going to happen is you'll get a basic package & then you'll have to buy DLC if you want more. For exemple, they'll sell optinal "Flash point" for the different classes in the game, stuff like that. Use your imagination... I'm really tired. lol
WoW set a bench mark in production quality that MMO’s (if we can call STOR a MMO) have yet to see since. That’s what happens when you spend than much money. This is a gamble for EA and as such the likelihood of them looking to other means of revenue other than a subscription is worrying. I predict a Champions style cash shop which starts with Yoda dolls and escalates to gameplay altering before the year is out.
You forget intial box sales. Figure 59.00 regular box, and im sure there will be CE that will sell out. So lets say Avg of 65 a box, times 1 million boxes, thats 65m right away to start working on that 150m rumored price tag. So really only about 9 months if not less of 1 million on going subs to cover all expenses and start making profit. IMO its going to get way more then 1 Million intial box sales, so numbers are even more iffy.
From my own digging around the game looks to be truly massive in scale, 13 worlds & the smallest, starter world, Ord Mantell, is already substantially bigger than WoW's Kalimdor, I've also heard rumours of well over 8500 quests in place already.
So far the only info we've had points at a heavily solo-focused story driven game, but what if that part is only the introductory first world & it then opens up into a much broader game? It's apparently going to have a very well developed endgame, much sidegame activity & includes the full gamut of MMO standard features, like exploration, crafting, PvP, raiding etc....it looks to me to be trying to do everything WoW does, only better, then having the extra stuff (the stuff they've actualy gone into any detail on) layered over it.
I think the investment is not "wasted" except perhaps the voice-overs, but the rest is being spent wisely in bringing a fully fledged content rich game intended to last a year or two till the next expansion, provided they go full out on marketing they could be in a very healthy position, though they'll be competing somewhat with Cataclysm, if they pump the market enough they may just bring non-mmo gamers into the genre in a not dissimilar way to how WoW did, though probably not in quite as big a way.
I do agree that EA are taking a pretty big gamble but the timing may be key, moreso if Cataclysm only offers "more of the same" gameplay, the market could be ready for a new polished top dog, though WoW was till now a fluke the market has grown directly as a result of it's success & gaming in general has grown as a source of entertainment through cultural shifting.
It might not hit more than a million subs in it's first year, but it may well hit 2 million I think, will depend as much on economic climate & job security as it will on a solid & encompassing media marketing campaign, how well it is recieved outside of the U.S. & EU and what other titles get released around the same timeframe, & Facebook may be popularising the home PC or at the least stimulating interest in it again as a platform, knock-on effect being even more exposure.
I dislike EA, but I love BioWare, this game will be make-or-break in many ways.
Don't forget there's other MMO's coming out except Cataclysm and SW:TOR and there is no way of knowing if one of those won't be a surprise-hit .And also take into account Blizzard are also working on their next MMO - besides maintaining WoW - we pretty much know quality is assured because they can take all the time they want . a Luxury most companies - not even Bioware - don't have .
Not sure if anyone has pointed this out yet, but im pretty sure the writer of the article didnt factor in the game sales. $50 x 1m subs + collectors editions - costs = close to $50m straight up right?
If it's profitable, then it's successful.
Sorry, that is just a huge pet-peeve for me. I don't know when the hook of, 'It's profitable, sure...but it's not successful!' came along. It's contradictory and well...just plain dumb.
Two articles in less than 24 hours from MMORPG writers that are biased and class SWTOR as being subpar and not good for the MMO market? Seriously whose payroll you guys on? I am not 12 years old, I can see what is going on here.
TBH the fact that MMORPG.com posted that article about SW:TOR and how much money it's costing to produce this game ($150mil) has made me WANT to buy it...
I mean, of course I want to try out the most expensive game in history... yes, it's 50 bucks, but it's 50 bucks to take part in something which costed countless man-hours and 150 million bucks to produce...!
The Star Wars franchise is indeed a huge boost to TOR but you need to take into account this isint the Star Wars that most people know or care about. The old Republic setting just dosent appeal to alot of Star Wars fans.
Somebodys palms are being greased that is forsure. Who in thier right fucking mind would say "OMG, they spent too much on an mmo, it is destined to fail?" MMORPG writers/staffers/owners built and run a gaming website, so quit trying to act like you know what the fuck your talking about. You guys should stick to reviewing games not trying to predict how economys will react. I was playing mmo's while you guys were all still just thoughts in your dads sac. Do you know how stupid you guys look? I may look bad for cursing but at least I know what the fuck I am talking about.
Everquest - 8 million dollar production, game was good for its time.
WoW - 80-100 million dollar production lasted 5 years strong but now is losing its flavor
SWTOR - 150 million dollar production, see a trend here? The game will be good just becuase they didn't try to cut cost like any big player who wants to survive in todays mmo market. So once again let me say someone was either dropped on thier head a few too many times or someones pockets are being lined to write this trash.
What this guy said. Sums it all up nicely I think.
It may be far from movie-era when it comes right down to the timeline, but this era has a lot more in common, thematically and narratively, with Star Wars IV-VI than did I-III, the Clone Wars cartoon, or the future frontier that the Legacy material is venturing into.
You're not the first to bring up box sales but you make the same mistake most people do -- you assume that a $50 retail box equates to a straight $50 in revenue for EA which isn't the case. There's a wholesale price that is sold to the stores which is significantly lower and then there's retail price. Do people really think Best Buy buys games from publishers for 49.99 and then puts them on sale the first 2 weeks for 39.99 at a loss ot 10 dollars per unit....? No. Considering retailers have other merchandise competing to sit on the shelves, they can drive down wholesale prices forcing narrower margins...but considering store-shelving is the best marketing for games, game publishers have to suck it up and do it.
Digitial distribution has better margins, naturally.
Couple of comments:
"Who paid you guys to say that stuff" - why is it that whenever someone writes something that could be construed as remotely negative towards one's favorite game/developer that they're on the payroll of some EvilCompany? It's almost as insulting as the implication that saying something remotely *positive* implies some sort of payoff. Regardless I have been writing about MMOs for over 10 years now, since the first mass-market MMO (UO) was released, everything I've written is available online for review, and I have said *many* times, including here, that huge budgets are detrimental to creativity and risk-taking. This is not new.
"You forgot box sales" - box sales have so many slices taken out of them (retailers, distributors, publishers, manufacturing costs) that it's difficult to say what impact they have on a bottom line. It's not insignificant (especially in the case of a game that intends to move millions of boxes) but not nearly as profitable as recurring subscriptions, 100% of which go towards the developer (except for games like TOR which have licensing agreements, something else which I didn't cover simply because the terms EA and Lucasarts have worked out are unknown).
In any event, all of my numbers in the column are suspect. Of course. It's a "back of the envelope" estimate, which is all anyone not privy to EA's budgeting/production meetings can come up with. However the key number is not one which originated with me - the fact that EA has said that they require 1 million subscribers to begin to make a profit. Given that there has only been one MMO (WoW) that has posted those numbers, and a great many which have not, it's a fairly breathtaking prospect.
I guess we should just leave it at, everyones entitled to believe what they want to believe. I don't believe people are going to chastise a company for how much they are willing to spend on development. The game will either break even, lose money, or make money... there is no fourth-weird thing that will happen. When this game launches 150 million strong, you'll know they didn't throw 20 million at it and cross their fingers. This will be BioWares showing of what their development team produced and if it fails THEN IT fails.
Indie companies will still produce games, fire will not fall from the sky, and your tin foil hats will still be out of fashion. Pink Cat may have been crass in his comment, but he's right. You can't lose what you don't gamble, but you won't win anything either. You can't have it both ways.
In my opinion they are going to need every penny of that $150 million to make this game what it should be. And the only way they are going to make thier money back is if they make this game the way it should be; the next step of evolution in the MMO world. Not everyone is going to like it, but unless most people like it, they are going to lose. I admit this is one of the few titles I'm actually looking forward to, but I also have to admit that EA has rushed/destroyed some of the other games, such as WAR, that I have looked forward to in the past. Time will tell.
If not a big name publisher, with a hugely popular IP, a dedicated and award winning development team, and hundreds of millions of dollars, then who?
WoW has the market cornered on WoW games...shocker. Now if some major company would want to make something other than a WoW game...perhaps we might be having a different discussion.
MMO win/fail checklist:
1. Is it a famous brand?
Yes - Everyone knows Star Wars, but brand alone won’t sell a product.
2. Does it have a good name?
No - SWTOR is too much of a mouthful and doesn't say much about the type of game.
3. Can people identify with the game content?
No - How many people in the street could tell you what elves and warriors are? How many people in the street could tell you what Sith Thingumyjig is?
3. Will it appear to male and female players alike?
No - Guys might like it but there is nothing to appeal to girls. There is no 'cute' and overall the game is likely to be inaccessible to anyone other than nerds.
4. Will is appeal to a variety of age ranges?
No - Young children in particular will be totally confused by the convoluted Star Wars lore and won’t have a clue what's going on.
5. Will it appeal to a variety of playstyles?
No - Hardcore players will dislike the lack of sandbox and well, 'hardcoreness', but everyone else will likely be happy.
6. Does it have features that are both innovative and value-for-money?
No - Doesn't appear to offer anything new and the fancy features it does provide aren't of particular value to players, e.g. full voicing.
7. Will the core game play be good?
Yes - Likely to follow in the footsteps of every other mainstream MMO, which is what the majority of gamers want and allows the game to be enjoyed with minimal skill.
8. Will the game be polished?
Yes - Bioware seem to know their onions and will likely turn out a very slick product with such a huge budget.
9. Will it have a steep learning curve?
No - Likely to be easy to pick-up and enjoy from a functional perspective but again, the complexity of the Star Wars is likely to put people off.
10. Will it be fun?
? - Can't say. Despite all the plus and minus points, if the game can attract players, only fun will retain them.
My conclusion: It will fail, although I'd rather it didn't.
Aryas
For me i WONT touch anything that has ea attached to it.
I hope for the peps who do play its a good game but i know my family wont spend a penny on this game.
I see it a bit differently.
- the more they spend, the more they need to make
- the more they need to make, the more customers they need
- the more customers they need, the less likely it will be a game I will personally enjoy
- the more they spend, the less I am liable to play
I'll entertain myself by reading the reviews and watching the pretty videos while I play other games to satisfy my MMO hobby.
Not been feeling well,bu i finally did some real homework on this game.
Several things i don't like,maybe one i do like IF it it is done well.
What i do like is the mention of 7 planets to visit,that is a ton of extra work to be done right there,we will have to wait and see if any quality comes of that at all,or will be just some ,real cheaply done planet content.If we can actually spend time on each planet and feel like it is a planet ,containing it's own sort of game world,then big time kudos to Bioware,this is what i have been waiting for,if not,then BAH !
That is about all i see so far that i actually like,now what really seems scary bad is this...
I do not like their so called FAKE grouping xp,that is as cheap/lame as it gets,something i have seen Korean F2P games do.All you do is enter your party,then each player can go on their merry way and solo,and just get freebie xp.I am sorry but i like to play a game,i NEVER whine about grind,i don't need to be bribed with any cheap handouts.
Next on the list,companions,umm already done that in KOTOR,why are they repeating it again?Nobody is going to group unless some boss is absolutely impossible to beat without a large group,like i said the ywil lonly register as a group just to get freebie xp,in other words free levels.Final Fanttasy gave us 3 players in their console games,but they did not copy what we have already seen and done,they implemented a unique MMO for FFXI.
Now maybe the WORST part is their real push for story.From what i have read,your stories will be based on the NPC's you choose to companion with,meaning ,pick a NPC then you get pushed into a linear path of quest after quest after quest,so yep you got it ,a single player game.They go so far as to even claim that your game will change depending on how you interact with your NPC,i am to assume this means if you go killing what the NPC consideres friendly ,it might leave you or something along that lines.
Now for the yet to be determined part...
DIALOGUE...This part will really show how much thought they put into the whole game,or they are just making a linear story that forces you into a direction based on what NPC's you hang with.
It all sounds good on paper,but if you do not follow a distinct linear path ,then what?Does the NPC not say anything?Does the NPC spit out random gibberish that won't even relate to where you are in the story so far?If i am not making sense,then just imagine ,you are following a story as they claim is the BIGGEST part of this game.If you are reading a NOVEL by some famous author,you don't just jump from chapter 20 to chapter 5 then back to chapter 15,get what i am saying now?So to have such a push for story ,equates to total linearity ,you can bet on it.
I had high hopes of enjoying FFXIII,but myself and MANY others,rejected the game as it pushed for that inear story,it really does ruin a game.FFXI did it right ,it created a backdrop story for the whole game,but there was no linear push to play it.I am not alone on this,just google and read all the reviews that did not like a linear story at all.
My guess is this game is gona be the biggest failure yet. They just can't figure out that slapping a brand name on something like an MMO doesn't work. Sony tried it with swg and hows that star trek mmo doing? Oh yeah they all failed miserably. I would be thrilled if this game turns out to be great but after so many failed games from other developers trying to do the same thing it's hard to get all excited about another game like this. They need to focus on making a solid game and forget all this hype and marketing crap mmo's dont make money unless people keep playing them. Selling a million copies to people that quit the first month doesn't do you much good. Ask the people over at conan and warhammer.
This is the game that will come close to brankrupting EA this will FAIL big time...............
Me and my friends are big MMORPG players and even bigger FPS players and if EA are going to run this MMO anything like they do with FPS they will lose subscribers quicker than a prostitute with a dose of the clap........
For instance EA login server always down or crashes.
Patches always take to long to be released.
Has for the game itself Star Wars is a massive world of adventure so it shouldn`t take long for expansion ideas to start floating around the makers office !!!!!! but yet again EA staff are not the quickest workers to solve problems even if you do have a beta running for 1-2 yrs (instead of months).
So alas I do look forward to it being released but I already know there will be a host of issues so I will probably play it in free mode and leave well alone for about 6 months before I even contemplate paying for Membership
How about: 11. Created by BioWare, a company that sells millions of copies of pretty much every game it produces.
How about 12. The most hyped game in development right now
How about 13. Swtor.com has over 500K forum accounts created and the game is still a year away from launch.
How interesting....
1. EA created The Sims line of games, which is widely considered the best series of games ever released since almost everyone has played it at one time or another.
2. Its Bioware, which is widely considered one of the best gaming companies in the world (especially for role playing type games).
3. The game has been in production at least 4 years already, and the estimated release isn't until 2011.
And yet the writer of this article chose to dismiss this out of hand.
EA isn't trying to spend everyone else out of the market. They are trying to do what SWG and STO should have done. Spend the time, and yes the money, to create a proper MMO game. The rest of the industry has gotten complacent. They don't try anything new. Most of the games out there are like carbon copies of each other with different graphics.
This company is giving Star Wars the honor it deserves. The honor that Star Trek SHOULD have gotten, but instead got a company thats actually proud of the fact that they can churn out a generic MMO in a year and a half, with nothing different but the graphics, call it by any name they want and then they call it a success.
So along comes a company with the guts to TRY to be more and different, and somehow a bunch of fear mongers come along and start screaming about how horrible its going to be due to rumors they have heard, or extrapolations they have decided to make from three paragraph tidbits released every month or two for the last year. And if they aren't complaining about how its going to suck, they're complaining about how the company (its THE COMPANY'S MONEY, guys. Their money to waste if they feel like it) is overspending.
This is getting aggravating.
This game could very well be the biggest EPIC FAIL the game industry has ever seen.
Or it could be the greatest game we have ever seen.
I hope its good, I just get the feeling its not gonna be epic enough.
I think EA are a bunch of idiots. In today's world they are the worst game publishers in the world, first they shut down one of my favourite game developers, Westwood Studios (the creators of Command & Conquer) and now they are over spending themselves with mostly bad games (I said mostly because Dead Space was good), these newer Command & Conquer games are a joke and now they are over spending SW:TOR?
I never realised making an MMORPG could be so expensive but personally I think Bioware shouldn't have picked EA as the game publishers for SW:TOR. When you come to think of it, EA is like the equilvent of Atari back in the 1970's, they were making so much yet they soon ended up bankupt and bang, you just got yourself the video game crash of 1983.
EA is going to fall down in a nasty way one day...
"And yet the writer of this article chose to dismiss this out of hand.
EA isn't trying to spend everyone else out of the market. They are trying to do what SWG and STO should have done. Spend the time, and yes the money, to create a proper MMO game. The rest of the industry has gotten complacent. They don't try anything new. Most of the games out there are like carbon copies of each other with different graphics."
No, what he disputes ( and rightly so) is the fact spending this kind of cash guarantees a good or even succesful game ( he doubts the viability of EA's strategy , he uses TOR as an example because it's the most expensive one too date ) . I also question the strategy as used by EA : pour enough resources - i.e. money - into a game and it will be succesful.That is short term thinking and we all know that might work with an offline title- even that's open to debate though - but most definitely not with an MMO .The very essence of the MMO-genre requires long term thinking . By setting these huge expectations/goals so high EA is pretty much 100% certain the game won't meet those expectations. What remains to be seen is what they will do when that happens ( note : I didn't say IF that happens , for me it is a foregone conclusion they won't reach the goals they set for SW:TOR ) .Will they do an "NCSOFT " and shutdown servers or will they persevere and give Bioware a chance ??
16 pages of responses from people who have NOT PLAYED THE GAME. How can everyone be so sure about the quality of a game based on it's budget alone, Avatar was a decent movie that people liked but so was the Blair Witch Project...... you are all a bunch of egotists who feel like you know everything, I even saw some people saying we should boycott the game. For what purpose exactly? No more big budget games from top tier developers? How about you all calm down and wait until the game is released to make such harsh and damning judgement, ooohhhh.... I've seen some videos of instances and solo play, therefore the whole game is instanced, how about you quit being so ignorant.
Noone is boycotting the game- at least I'm not - and that is not how I understood the article at all . What the writer is concerned about is the fact publishers set their goals and expectations so high a game cannot possibly meet those goals and expectations . We're seeing a trend - and the writer is pointing out that trend - to try and make "a quick buck " or - to put it bluntly- to not think further than one (1) year when it comes to an MMO. He points out that trend and wonders if this is a prudent way to conduct MMO-publishing and/or developing .
This isn't a trend just in MMO's either. More and more we see publishers "rush" games into release only to start fixing it afterwards ,if at all . Some games' DLC's were very clearly meant to be in the original game as well,but they decide to split up the game in order to increase revenue . We also see sequels - 99% of the time very bad ones at that - being produced for succesful titles . There's no continuity in development anymore . Almost no developing studio dares to experiment with new ideas . That's because they focus so hard on the thrills of fancy - and expensive - graphics , on marketing, on distribution, on drm etc. they forget about the gameplay . It's all short term strategy .
Four years so far (and counting) in development is NOT a "quick buck" in the ever changing computer world when things are obsolete before they've been in the store for a month.
In the last year alone, we've seen the release of the wireless charger, a 3 mm thick tv that has 11 nanoseconds response time, a cgi movie called Avatar thats blown every other cgi movie out of the water, the release of the 32 nm processor and the announcement of the 22 nm chip (to be released in 2011) with an expected release date of the 11 nm processor in 2015.
What I meant by my remarks is that EA is living under the assumption cash= great game/succesful game . That is simply untrue . And it also means the accountants will want to see return of that investment immediately after release. And that doesn't work either. It's not just EA though, it is a trend in MMO's .
You can't prove that at all. You think EA wanted to spend exactly 150 million on this game? They are spending money on this project until it is completed. They estimate these costs at 150 million. That doesn't mean that at 150 million if the game isn't complete that they launch it unfinished. The game is still a year away, they have ample amount of time and funding. BioWare has never released a game of sub par quality. If they could have completed their vision at 120 million, the cost would be 120 million. If it would have cost 200 million, they would have spent 200 million. This isn't a trend or else we would see posts like this every MMO release.
I suggest you go and check expenditure trends for all EA titles and for all triple AAA MMO's over the past 10 years and then come back. The trend is most definitely upwards in terms of cash spent on each title And they subsequently closed loads of studios as a result of released titles not "meeting expectations " .
The game can be finished, but that doesn't guarantee sucess or even that it is a good game . Accountants are not interested in "finished " , they are interested in revenue and goals they set for any given title .That is what the article is about , Scott makes a simple calculation on how much revenue ( = subscribers ) the title has to bring in to just break even. Today - more than ever - it is the accountants who make the decisions , not developers or even general management .
Nothing is guaranteed success. Thats life. Oh well. See... you err on the pessimistic "this is going to suck" side. I don't. I err on the "wait and see" side.
Spending lots of money ALSO doesn't mean its going to fail just because they took the risk. Better to take the risk and produce quality than to not take the risk and produce crap (like STO).
Completly right, Scot, your article is 100% true.
Its for articles like these that I joined this comunity. Not to listen to what I already know is true, but to find out more news about the industry, in a completly objective and reasonable light that I wont get mad over reading.
Kudos!
Btw how can you possibly estimate the project to be twice the cost of wow?, did they suddenly say "lets double everyone's paychecks :D"??
as i get here talking from EA is going how to get back so much money or something like that and they are talking 10mill in everyt month and calculating like this. oki did they forgot to mention how much will game cost? 50 euro normal and 70 euro some lilted edition how much it will be total in in first month if we multyply 1 mill subcribers?
Costs have risen on a lot of games not just EA. Costs have risen on just about everything. Cars have increased in costs since 1980 as well, that doesn't mean that companies are TRYING to break the budget. Under no circumstances can anyone equate how much money will need to be spent to make anything successful. EA isn't spending any more money then they want to spend on development, and BioWare isn't taking any more money then what they need to create the game. If you want them to spend less money on their game, then they release an 80 million dollar game instead.
The OPs calculation is just that.. .. a calculation based on his best guestimate. Everyone who wants to believe that this is a true honest to goodness news story is fooling themselves. We don't know what EAs books look like. They said they need 1 million subscribers to break even.... based on what? The costs of development to this point? Or what they expect the costs to be on launch? Are they aware of an actual release date? I'm sure they have a best guestimate as well.
The OP has no way of knowing, but he supposes and posts his supposition because its controversial and people are reading and responding. As for EA closing studios, if you haven't noticed EA closed studios upon acquiring studios as well.. its not just due to "poor" performance or lack of sales. Its just what EA does.
Almost what I was thinking exactly.
What I think most peeps are missing however is that this game, imo, will be realeased for consoles as well as PCs.
The whole mono-rail MMO model fits well with the console type games and console player mentality.
I think the combination of Console and PC will get them very close to the mark of 1mil subscribers in the first year.
After that however, based on what I have seen, the game will ultimately fail due to lack of real MMO content.
IMHO.
Another thing - which wasn't mentioned at all in the article or anywhere else- is the fact the smaller studios which are subsidiaries of EA will be the first to be cut loose IF TOR doesn't meet expectations.That's another problem with EA: they buy studios on the basis of some succesful title and that studio is never sure they won't see their staff cut in half or being dismissed in its entirety as a result of some other EA project failing or not meeting acountants' expectations.
The more I read and see of SW:TOR the less I am interested. At this point I am not planning on even buying it based on what I have seen. I am not interested in WoW with Wookies with voice quest and mostly solo/single player instance train track game play.
150 million on 1 MMO is insane period. You would be better off making 3 $50 million MMO's your potential return on investment is so much better and failure if it occurs not so crippling.
EA is a big company but its stock price is in the toilet and balance sheet is pretty ugly and going to get a lot worse if they are betting on numbers in Scott's article.
I feel like this issue is severely compounded by the fact that it's EA we're talking about here. For the past few years, they've managed to ruin just about every game they had anything to do with. Even games like Sims 3 and Spore, which could have been classics in their genre, but somehow got derailed into forgettable mediocrity. And MMOs are a whole lot trickier, it seems.
We keep seeing the whole bit about how they're just the publisher, they only fund games not muck around with their development, but the trend seems unmistakable. Coincedence, maybe, but I really doubt it.
EA's high expectations would just be comical in the face of their cluelessness, if not for the potential caliber of games they ruin. I'm just hoping for a decent MMO, not a great MMO, but I had the same hope for WAR. I'd hate to see SWTOR suffer a more expensive yet all too similar fate.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. What the hell, let's see what happens, who knows, it might not suck
I think it's great -- really
Digressing to movies -- I like big blockbuster movies and I like small indie films. It'sa continuum. So, this is a big Titanic/Avatar blockbuster style game. Fine with me -- looks good, with a top notch developer, Bioware, who knows how to do story. Yes, they never did a true MMO, but neither did Blizzard, before they did WoW. I'm interested in this, and I'm also going to look around to see if there is a small MMO I might like. The continuum of games, from big to small, even big to small MMOs, that's what I'm looking for. I'm hoping that better tools and middleware will enable cheaper MMOs to be made. But -- I'm also interested in the big one here, and it being Bioware and having a name publisher spend money --I lokt that a lot. I'm not going with Scott's niumbers, but I'll give you they are spending " lots" of money.
On the player continuum -- I don't distinguish between gamer and non gamer -- that's all a continuum. Then again, I remember when people didn't consider Sims player to be "real gamers" -- heck some of you probably still think like that. I'm also the person who thinks that Farmville games are games. I'm hoping that this game pulls in a huge diversity of people, just like Blizzard did with WoW. I also think the PC choice is smart, hopefully a game with enough settings to it runs and looks good on a variety of machines, the whole inclusive thing, just like WoW. That's my hope. PC is good because all sorts of people have PCs in their home. And the Star Wars name -- great! I've got lots of hope for this one.
So, all good.
You have one huge flaw in this statement EA is up ($18.56 per share today close) and is for the start of this quarter. On a side note Activition Blizzard is down ($11.72 per share today at close) and is down this quarter.
Thank you
Go look at the EA's 5 year stock price and trend. While you are at it why not also look at its year over year sales and balance sheet during the past 5 years. No flaw. It is off more than 60% from when I purchased, should have dumped it a long time ago but I thought they can not screw up with just about every household in the US having a PC, XBOX, or PSP often times more than one, I was wrong.
Let's start with some realistic data clicky:
1. Tabula Rasa - 105 million
2. Puzzle Pirates - 1 million
3. Sherwood - 100,000 thousand
4. Earth Eternal - 1 million
5. Anarchy Online - 30 million
6. Everquest 2- 30million
7. Vanguard - 35 - 40million
8. Age of Conan - 28million
9. FFonline - 12million
10. WoW - 12 million
11. DAoC - 6 million
Add Aion - 20 milion, to the list (reference) and ABP around the same budget.
Then assuming SWTOR budget is 150 milion seems very unlikely. First as pointed by others the OP forgot to add the income of the box sales then for such a "big" MMO you need way more than 25 people just to maintain the infrastructure live (3 data centers 2 US and one EU at least), feed the customer service, all managers and not to say the live team devs.
About numbers Blizzard has spent over $200 milions for WoW till september 2008 and has over 2000 customer service reps round the world. ==> 150 million just to develop the game would be foolish
100 million while big would have been more reasonable, but if you'd asked me I would have pointed 50 maybe 70ish million and even with that budget you can make one AoC plus one Aion... and add one Everquest 2 if you are in the upper bracket.
[quote][i]Originally posted by Deewe[/i] [b] Let's start with some realistic data [url=http://mmorpgmaker.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=82&t=8326]clicky[/url]: 1. Tabula Rasa - 105 million 2. Puzzle Pirates - 1 million 3. Sherwood - 100,000 thousand 4. Earth Eternal - 1 million 5. Anarchy Online - 30 million 6. Everquest 2- 30million 7. Vanguard - 35 - 40million 8. Age of Conan - 28million 9. FFonline - 12million 10. WoW - 12 million 11. DAoC - 6 million Add Aion - 20 milion, to the list ([url=https://store.cmpgame.com/product/5617/Game-Developer-January-2010-Issue---Digital-Edition]reference[/url]) and ABP around the same budget. [/b][/quote]
Almost seems like the more a game costs to make, the more it tanks. I wonder if its because of massive budgets complicate things too much. Maybe it requires too many grunt workers who are too far removed and grossly outnumber the devs with the real talent. Or is it because the people who throw that kind of money around have no idea what makes one game better (and thus, more financially successful) than another. It's some sort of crazy foreign concept that just maybe a successful game needs good solid ideas at its foundation, and it needs to be able to follow through with those ideas throughout its development cycle.
I'd expect a company like Bioware to have some great ideas, except that they might still be thinking like they're making a single-player game. Even if they do have good strong MMO ideas to work with though, maybe the scale they're trying to work with has cost them those ideas along the way.
On that point your right. However the trend for the past 5 years has been a decline in almost all tech stocks. As it stand EA is still ahead of Activition. As an average. I expect its in respone to the tech bubble we had in early part of the first decade of 2000. During those past 5 years EA's volume trading has been down compared to the 3years prior and its on trend to be a good year. Well first 3 months of the year is horrible indicator for volume trading. If you notice 2008 was the biggest hit year for them. We all know what that was in response too.
You read the G4TV link wrong. Blizz has spent 200M on Wow SINCE 2004, ie AFTER launch, ie NOT INCLUDING development cost.
From your link: According to Activision, Blizzard has spent over $200 million on World of Warcraft since its launch.
Scott my man, you basically have said my fears for this game, thank you for putting it in a way I could not. This is my main issue with EA, they seem to be putting money in every MMO project out there recently, with not a care in the world with their money, it really makes you wonder if they even have a clue, care at all, or just have the mentality that try 10 and hope at least 1 works. It seems that they are doing this MMO experiment as a dating service or something, try 100 times but as long as you get 1 accepted you win!
We all need to remember as well, the way they are doing this, if the numbers do not work the way they see it they will pull their money out of the project and that could destroy it as well. This was my major concern with Bioware getting in bed with EA, and I hope it will not cost them in the end.
If Bioware cant topple Blizzard then no one can imo, there really isn't another studio with the same talent for games as these 2 companies. If SWTOR isn't the next big thing it could be years before we see anything put a dent in WoW...possibly not until we see Blizzards rumored 3rd generation mmo. Very very depressing I would say.
That has basically been my point for a long time, with any new MMO coming out. These companies want numbers, but they fail to realize that WoW had those numbers cause everyone and their sister could play the game with the computer they had for a couple years, or one they just bought at Wal-Mart. The majority of computer owners do not know hardly anything about computers let alone upgrading one. And that is why WoW was so popular, you got in on it and you could invite others that didn't have a clue, and could get right in and play. If you have to upgrade your computer, most will not do it and especially in todays's market. That is what I am waiting for, a gaming company that understands this will be the next big MMO, nothing else will come close.
Ugh, I always loathe this man's articles, he just always makes assumptions out of things without real facts. Everything he prattles is based upon hearsay. But I just thought I'd read this since it pertained to the new Bioware/EA MMO. So disregarding Scott and going back to the topic at hand, I love how people bash a game that isn't even out yet and claim it's going to be a horrible game simply because of how much money is being put into it. Really people? REALLY?? You haven't even played a demo or tested the dang thing yet and you're already saying how bad the game will be?
Does no one read what Bioware/EA were planning for this game when it was beginning development? They don't want to make a MMO that's like todays MMOs where you simply just rack up levels and kill X mobs. They want to focus on STORY. And I applaud that. Because all great games are based upon a great story and Bioware is freaking awesome when it comes to story telling.
As far as money and subscriptions go, I think Bioware knows what they are holding in the palm of their hand. Does anyone even realize the number of Star Wars fans out there that have been waiting for a decent Star Wars MMO since the disappointment of SWG?
I mean, Scott claims that we need more developers that think outside the box to change the MMO industry, well.. isn't taking the MMO industry away from grinding and pointless quests and focusing more on story doing something different? I'm sorry but MMOs suck today because they don't have good story telling. Give the game a chance before judging it. If EA wants to spend truck loads of money on a project because they want to put everything they've got into making a good game then who freaking cares, it's not like they're stealing money from you. It's their damn money, let them do what they want with it. I'm sorry but I've never really been disappointed with a game made by Bioware. Maybe this one will flop, maybe it will finally show the world what a crappy game WoW is, maybe it won't. But I'll wait and see for myself when I play the game to decide whether or not EA wasted millions of dollars than taking the word of some guy who works for cryptic studios that loves to make assumptions. Because you know what happens when you "assume" things.... you make an ass out of you and... well... in this case you just make an ass out of you :P (possibly me too if this post offends anyone ;p)
Well EA 150million to make SW:TOR you know what that means right?
No matter what they will do they go aggresively for the MASS, that means it will be playble on every pc, it will be extreme themepark and fluffy so from 8 to 80years can play it.
What we also will see in SW:TOR is limited freedom involvement by EA to controll everything so players have to do what EA say.
And innovation?
Sure to make it even more playble and fast and easy then WoW.
Knowing EA swtor will maybe even downfall of mmorpgs or at least end of innovation and indys who give up even try.
Or maybe we need failor of big companys so they leave mmo industry and small companys can take over and make there innovative fresh new old/new school games that many wanne play becouse there sick of WoWs out there.
EA's CEO said last year that your mom will be able to play any of their new games. So don't expect anything from them which requires skill, stratergy or dedication. There will be a games in production before he released his grand vision to the world so STOR may escape the worst, but I am sure he has already asked them if Luke's mum could play it. :)
People forget that when a new and anticipated game comes out, tons of people in WoW go and try it. For the last several years this has almost always disappointed because the new games are CRAP (except perhaps LOTRO but that has a more specialized audience, imho). A lot of WoW players keep playing because there's nothing better. I think it is very reasonable to conclude that TOR will be better in a number of ways and at the very least just as good and refreshingly different.
TOR has:
No Holy Trinity combat system (and this doesn't mean people don't have strengths and weaknesses or roles in combat)
You always fight multiple enemies, so you feel awesome.
Full voice acting (I personally think this is a nice perk, though minor).
Quests that have choices AND consequences (this is HUGE, because it helps remove the feeling that you are grinding).
A Group System that supports the above quest system
An awesome and very, very popular genre, more so than WoW.
Will not be painful like that last Star Wars MMO (I know some love it, but washing dishes isn't why most people play games, particularly ones in an action setting).
Two sides, but both sides have good and evil (you can play a good Sith or bad Jedi).
Long beta test of over a year and 6 year Dev time (that means that a really good company like Bioware will deliver a very, very polished game something we've lacked the last 5 years or so).
Standard end-game stuff and group quests (people that think otherwise are wrong, Bioware has explicitly talked about this and how there will also be new end-game stuff that we haven't seen in an MMO)
Large open world (yes, again the people that think differently don't know what they are talking about).
A company dedicated to story, setting, and player CHOICE making an MMO. We've not had this before.
There's every reason to think this will be insanely popular. The people who wrongly think it will be awful will change their minds when people who try it out tell them otherwise (or before that when more information is released).
Personally I'd be surprised if it only has 2 million subscribers.
Also, I play WoW some still and a lot of people are kind of burned out with it but have no other good MMO options. Blizzard seems to more and more focus on gear GRIND and their expansions don't do much more than go to total grind when you get to the end-game (and that happens within a few weeks at most after an expansion). There's not a lot of replayability in WoW anymore. Even with an expansion coming out later this year, I think the time will be ripe next year to steal away a lot of WoW players. Even grabbing 10% of the WoW playerbase would go more than halfway towards meeting TOR's sub goal.
Beyond that I think the MMO community is hungry for something new and well made. TOR should deliver on both fronts and do very well because of it.
But then again : it is very obvious - even for staunch WoW fans- Blizzard is gradually " letting go " of the WoW -franchise. The mere fact a lead developer was specualting on it utilizing a f2p model in the future was indication of that. But we know zilch about their next MMO on which a large number of developers have been working for a long time now .
I also disagree with folks citing past successes of Bioware with regard to RPG's to use as an argument to assume SW:TOR will succeed . We all know - or should know - an MMO is not the same as a very linear ( due to its nature ) RPG . Bioware has been great at " storytelling" but there is no way to incorporate that - efficiently - in a persistant world which is the very basis of any MMO .SW:TOR will require a sandbox environment and that is something Bioware hasn't done yet ( unless they plan on doing everything instanced in which case it's hardly an MMO and more than likely won't succeed ). I even find the "boxed in" environments annoying in their RPG's occasionally , as opposed to Bethesda titles which at least give you the feeling of a sandbox game .
Well, I'd think the fact that they have to pay a slew of actors for voice-work (and a lot more of it than in a single RPG) would account for another couple of million, and also, your figures aren't adjusted for inflation. Even 5 years makes a bit of a difference to the value of a dollar. Let's assume for the sake of argument that Bioware are going to have a massive ad campaign (and they will), and that they've allocated x% of box-sales revenue to pay for that. They only get a percentage of the box-price back anyway so it makes sense to allow ad/marketing spend to cancel box revenue out to a certain extent (unless thay do sell millions of boxes).
Blizz did not start with 2000 CSRs, and neither will Bioware/EA/LA, they'll start at launch with a core team and expand as needed. That's just good business sense. Remember, the game is far from being live - the 25-man dev/testing team they have now is all they need - at the moment.
We can't say anything about the foolishness or otherwise of such a big investment until we see, and play, the final product.
We can speculate all we want, but I'd lay money none of us will hit the nail on the head as regards the financial success or otherwise of the game.
1. Bioware has ALWAYS made good games. There simply aren't exceptions. That's pretty dang impressive and a sign to think they can handle making a good game even if there's a bit of a genre change (especially if they are bringing their big talents to that new genre, in this case story-telling with player choice). Not saying you can be 100% certain, but there's good reason to be optimisitic, especially since they are not rushing anything out.
2. I disagree with this assertion very strongly on many levels.
First, while certain basic events in Bioware RPGs are "linear" and the same, that doesn't mean the story itself is the same or linear. Take BG2 as an example. Irenicus is after you whether you are good or evil (or neutral). He's a powerful force that you necessarily must confront because he gives you no option. However, the manner in which you confront him can vary quite a lot. You can use and abuse everyone you run into, kill indescriminately; you can help those you run into even if it isn't easy; or a number of other things. Yes, the chapters of the game are the same for every character and there is a certain degree of linearity, but in an ethical sense at the very least it isn't linear at all and that's the meat and potatoes of many good stories. Giving choices that MATTER is a big deal in the MMO world.
Secondly, most MMOs are ridiculously linear. You can choose what quest you pick up and you either do it or don't. You have no choice how you do it. You start with low-level ones and work your way up. There's little to no anime to the world.
Thirdly, the idea that Sandbox MMOs somehow better convey a story is flat-out wrong. Sandboxes generally provide pretty poor natural antagonists that aren't very proactive. There are no big figures pushing the story forward, no big plot arcs, etc. Yes, other players doing stuff isn't anything to sneeze at, but that's NOT story 99% of the time.
Fourthly, given my above points, the idea that they can't tell a story or have strong story themes in an MMO is rather silly. At a minimum level, take a game like WoW. Take quest sequences and put them all together into big quests. Now provide ethical and other choices along the way on how you deal with certain revelations during the quest. Then make sure those choices have consequences during the questline. If you want to be more ambitious, as Bioware is, make sure there are consequences AFTER that quest is over. I think you are operating under the false assumption that story has to have global implications otherwise it isn't story. That's hardly the truth. Your choices are just as meaningful if they only have local implications, even if those implications are so localized they only affect YOU (or you and the people adventuring with you).
Fifth, I'd also like to add I think there is room in TOR to have some larger implications for some player actions. I think some of the end-game will be story-based in some manner. You can do this a number of ways with each player contributing a little to the end result, some PvP/PvE mixes, and other things. That's my guess anyhow, but we'll have to wait and see what they come up with. I'm not going to pretend they are limited by my imagination.
3. Well, for what it is worth, they are going to have large and expansive worlds as they've said several times. Ones that have massive sections with no instancing and you can run into other players (I believe a Dev said 90% of the game was like that).
I don't think they'll maintain those number. Sure Bioware is going to sell many boxes. But if this game doesn't shine like the brightest star in the universe, they're going to drop subs after the first 30 days just like every other game that has come along since WoW. The hype alone is going to kill the game. *cough* Aion.
Saying it will do well simply because it's Bioware doesn't cut it with some people. I think Bioware games are boring personally. There were a few I thought were good, sure. I loved KOTOR, BG and Jade Empire. But the thing that bugs me about them is they rehash the same game over and over. The only thing that really changes is cosmetics and names. They've really shown me nothing that proves they can pull of a whole different genre. They're a one trick pony to me so far.
Now I'm not saying I hope it bombs. I do love Star Wars and hope we get a good game out of it. But after buying other "sure things" such as WAR and AOC, I am skepitical. Not just with Bioware either. It's the first time since '97 that I am excited for no announced mmo at all. They keep going down the shitter with every new one that comes out.
Thanks for the highlight, was late when I posted it.
Still we can agree $150 million is really wrong and even $100 million to make the game would be quite insane. Now if you take into account how much EA paid to buy BioWare that's another story ;)
They will get 1 million sales no doubt! If star Trek, and AOC can do it, you better believe that SWTOR will. Im nto sure i agree with the hypothesis that was laid out in this article, but overall i dont believe that SWTOR will have a problem with numbers unless in teh leveling process, things become too repetative, or it lacks the star wars luster!
Eh, those other games didn't shine at all. They dropped subs after 30 days because they were awful AND rushed. We can be certain given a 6 year dev time that TOR is not rushed, and I doubt it is going to be a bad game either.
And hype killed Aion because it is a grindfest that advertises flying when you don't actually get to fly that much. Same sort of hype that results in dropped subs -- bad games with hype fail, just like bad games drop subs after the first month. It just so happens we've had several years with pretty much only bad games coming out in the MMO genre.
i agree i think TOR is going to be a revolution in MMOs i am so excited!
I actually don't give a rats arse about how much they spend on it.
I am a gamer, I love games and all i can hope for is that it will be a great one that will 'love me long time' .... who cares how much money they throw at it :)
To repeat myself, i hope as there is no way of telling yet, despite all the "knowledgeable" people here!
Has I posted before this might be the next BIG thing but alas EA are very poor in technical issues look at the thousands of posts on the Battlefield series forums (Fps) the login server is always down patches take far to long to mature when thousands of posts point out the same bugs glitches etc.etc.
EA are too slow to fix issues with there games they concentrate far to much on Income not Outcome
I can only say the same thing will happen ere GAURANTEED (bet my life on it)
Honestly, I fully believe that TOR will end up costing well over 100M by the time it's launched. And that really isn't alot of money. Just look at Dragon Age for example, not counting ANY DLCs or CEs (expensive Collector's Editions), the game has sold over 3 Million copies to date. 3M x $40 (rough estimate on what EA/Bio would make on a box sale) = 120M.
120M from Dragon Age alone, again not counting any DLCs or CEs, or even the new expansion pack Awakening.
Or if you'd like, if AION/War/AoC can all sell over 1Million boxes, I think it's perfectly safe and rational to believe a BIOWARE developed game on the STAR WARS IP will sell considerably more than then.
I think we can ALL agree on that.
Personally, I expect TOR to sell at a minimum of 2M boxes, and at least retain 1M subs. Guess we'll find out in a year.
Kewl, they are spending all that loverly cash on a big fat shiny for little ol' me? This is my first impulsive thought on reading the potential budget for this game. Maybe the glass is half full.
Second thoughts are, it is Bioware making the game and they have an untarnished rep.
Thirdly, it is Star Wars set in the Old Republic and that so gets my freak on.
All the above get me excited for this game and if it fails to deliver, I lose nothing but the box price. The power is always with the gamers on this score and I have plenty of other mmorpgs to hop about on if it fails.
But the OP is about the model for mmorpg development this represents and its potential repercussions for the mmorpg market as a whole. As such, it is a cool article and is looking at this from a wider perspective.
But using sparkly-eye Jedi technique, I detect the true pulse that beats under this post and its complementing replies: a lot of the old-school sandboxers are still holding out for that "Reservoir Dogs" level-indie sandbox, as opposed to a "Troma" level-indie sandbox. They worry that this current EA model is another step towards the Avatar/Titanic level of funding syndrome. And actually, the movie industry is probably the best model to compare the mmorpg one to imo. And so the fears are valid. If you don't believe me, check out how big budget syndrome actually destroyed the indie-movie scene with documentaries like "Officially Rejected"; about how the so-called "indie" movie festival circuit is anything but indie any more as it's long since been hijacked by the corporations, the A-listers and glitterati, and consequently the quality of "psuedo-indie" movies on the "psuedo-indie" festival circuit is simply dead in terms of real innovation or talent or narrative maturity. So if the mmorpg market is similar in nature to the movie market, then maybe this could be bad news for the sandboxers and hence some of the negatron vibes to these posts.
My own worry is that I am one of the minority who doesn't like the "consequence" system of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, because it is a really simplistic choice between good guy, in-between guy and cheesy-emo-bad-guy. I'd rather have three choices than none, but it is still at a level of characterisation and narrative causality that I outgrew 'round about junior high-school when I got bored of those fighting fantasy books. I would like genuine anti-heroes who face terrible choices in a tragic world, like Macbeth or Cugel or Melmoth or Elric or Kris Kelvin. I ain't waiting for the next sandbox tbh, I am waiting for the next game that doesn't serve me up more of the same old teenage or tweenage narrative simplicity. I went to university, did a couple of masters and now teach English literature...I kinda wanted the games to develop with me, at least a little of the way and I know this is unreasonable and unrealistic of me lol. On this score, the glass is definitely half empty.
Nonethless, ooh shinies. I hope this game succeeds.
Regards
Melmoth
ed. couple 'o typos.
Sounds a little like sour grapes, if I was a game developer or CEO of a game development house… ya, I would be thinking damn what the hell do I got to spend to compete.
But as a player I can’t look at it that way, If the game comes out and I see and feel 100 to 150 million dollars in polish and a high quality gaming experience then I say right-ON EA and Bioware show the rest of those want-a-be’s what it takes.
Personally I feel as a player I’ve dished out my hard earned money time and time again only to get let down and to find that I purchased a underdeveloped piece of crap.
So can I look at a game developer with any negative light that has finally stepped up and said if we do this we do it right and 150M is what its going to take to make the best game we can instead of… this is what we can get away with……NO
If it turns out to be a flop is bug ridden or incomplete when it ships well they are fools, as they know full well what they have to do. The MMO players of today are not going to put up with half-baked games anymore.
The gaming industry is defiantly changing at a rapid pace and if that means fewer developers putting out higher quality games then I’m all for it. The “B” movie era of game development is coming to a end.
This trend has been going on for some time, big fish eats little fish and then gets big enough for the really big fish to take notice and then the really big fish eats the big fish….. or Bioware eats Pandemic and in turn get eaten by EA who also eats Mythic and all of a sudden you have the resources to take the risk of producing a 150M MMO.
How much money do you think Blizzard will spend on there next MMO?.....150M may pale in comparison.
3 Things that strike me.
Observation 1.
Despite the giant flop of WAR, executives at EA still want a foothold into that giant subscription based market...
So they are still talking revenus and finances first ... how about .... gameplay first. (Rob Pardo).
Observation 2.
EA is gambling on the telling story and voice overs and long NPC speeches between the players and those NPC's... how about .... Play, Don't Tell: Players should be playing as much as possible not listen/reading (to) stories (Rob Pardo).
Obeservation 3.
Rob Pardo says that every game Blizzard makes is ... multiplayer first now, rather than single player. Because you create far more depth and replayablitiy with multi players. Just look at Xfire and which games ar being played ... endlessly.
Bioware only creates single player games in all of its history. So typically they have a lasting playing time of a few months at best.
Keeping those 3 observations in mind, I would say EA is good on its way to beat record breaking money losses of things that sure were proven in the past.
Let's see if Rob Pardo was right again.
I think he is.
http://www.wow.com/2010/03/12/rob-pardo-speaks-about-blizzard-game-design/
The sales of PC games is very - very - small compared to the sales on consoles.
Take Dragon Age on PC alone and you would hardly get 500K sales.
Not only that but single player games are OUT for an mmorpg market. Their life expectancy is very short and you don't play on line with voice overs and long NPC relationships. Because in an mmorpg, you really don't need personal NPC's and the voice overs take time/space and put you "out" of the online play (see Conan).
So on PC, TOR will not have 2M boxes at launch and - as can be seen in the past - a 30% retention rate is only for those with extreme good and prolonged multi player gaming value.
It is clear any planning above 1.4 M at launch and 600K retention after 3 months is suicide.
Typical EA. it could be their death.
And nobody would even be sad.
1. High-up corporate stuff will ALWAYS talk about revenue and finances first no matter what the field. Look at what Bioware says and you'll fine they do talk about gameplay first. You have to consider the context and who is talking. You don't go looking at Activision corporate comments for details about the gameplay of the next Blizzard game.
2. Err, the story is part of playing, because you decide how the story unfolds. You make decisions that affect it. They can't do that if they don't actually present a story. Bioware is very, very familiar with how to incorporate story into a game.
I mean, what are you proposing here? That you someone get to make decisions about the story, but no one in the whole game ever communicates or talks? How can you make story decisions in an environment like that? Honestly, this is where Blizzard fails, because in Warcraft you are always a relatively passive element in the story telling with a fixed role that you cannot change. Blizzard doesn't really seem to grock the idea of giving the players any sort of story control. Naturally if you never give players any narative power you should avoid tossing much story at them at any one time, because it can be very boring to have your character passive or shoved around in a story you have no control over.
3. Ever heard of Neverwinter Nights? They've had multiplayer stuff before. Beyond that, they do have some people from Mythic helping.
The game will never do well or even hit 2 mil subs for the simple fact they are chasing the dragon (WOW numbers) and are trying to much to compete with WOW they are trying to outdo them, problem is stories, voice acting isnt going to cut it. When the story is over what then? Raids? Just combat?, crafting as a afterthought? They have revealed too little what other parts of the game are going to be like, which raises alarms with me, why play a game like TOR when people can just play WOW still if thats what their shooting for? When wil the industry learn just to make a game and not compete with WOW or copy it?
I think you are overreacting. There is more than a year to go before the game is released so there's no reason to think they aren't going to be releasing a LOT more information. Heck, they've said as much. Last year they wanted to emphasize story because that is something very different about TOR compared to other MMOs. This year they will talk about the other stuff. There are 9 months more to go in this year, and at least 3 more months after that before the game is released. Like nearly all MMOs, we don't have a lot of detail a year before release. If the year ends and they haven't said anything more, then it is more appropriate to start worrying. Now it is rather silly. Might as well complain about how we know very little about Blizzard's next MMO or something.
<Smiles>
Some people are able to twist anything around, firefly states that as they haven't told him yet that the certain things he looks for in this game aren;'t there or they would have told him. .. Lets try to keep logic simple and assume everything could be in the game until developers state it isn't in the game.
The 2 mil subs comes from the huge investment. Bioware is trying to make a perfect game, with the same goals as BLizzard had when they produced WoW. and that costs a lot of money. even so much money that they need a lot of subscribers to pay for their develoment costs. SO the game needs that many subscribers because they want to put anything possible intoo it.
If you'd read some more interviiews you could have told firefly that there will be endgame raids and PvP... But that there will also be ever continuing stories at max level... the game doesn't change at level 80 as Blizzards game does, it keeps continuing which also indicates that tehre should be raids before level Max. and great PvP before level max. Bioware has stated that there will be more options then we know from the traditional endgame og games like WoW, but that the traditional endgame will be there. SO its the best of 2 worlds.
And do you know why SW:ToR will feel like a great game to most current WoW players ?
Thats because people will feel at home in the game because most ingredients from previous experiences will be there... but the game will still feel very fresh compared to WoW because of the new ingredients. And give people that game experience they want. A new game has to ballance these 2 things....and thats where Bioware will succeed.
So what makes the game feel like you're playing an MMO like you know and like you expect
-UI
-Quests
-Grouping
-Dungeons
-Classdevelopment
-Crafting
So what will make the game feel fresh.
-Combat feel
-Stories
-Mob AI
-Space combat part
-Setting (Mix of the wellknown fantasy game with the wellknown SCi FI game)
PC game sales are depressed primarily due to Piracy. Mass Effect 2 was available on torrent sites a full week before launch.
MMOs don't suffer from this problem. If Dragon Age could not be pirated and it wasn't available on any other platform you'd have seen a hell of alot more sales than 500k.
To win big, you need to gamble big.
WoW seems entrenched, but why is this so? What is it about the game that makes 10million people play it today, years after its launch.
Maybe it was because Blizzard went all out. They really risked their business with it, and they had no replacement single player games ready in the wing to generate some cash in the meantime (Bioware has both Dragon Age and Mass Effect generating cash for them and giving them brandname fans).
Maybe WoW is so big because it WAS a triple A title with a huge budget nobody else so far had spend on a MMO.
I do not know how SWTOR is going to end up. Frankly there are only two MMO's I am following and that is SWTOR and TSW but I fear both might be driving so hard for the console/casual game market they might shoot themselves in the foot and pull a Cryptic (Champions Online and Star Trek Online being less then stellar). But cryptic is a cheap and cheerful company. They spend a fraction of what EA is spending, so if the game fails after a few months, they made a profit anyway.
Will SWTOR be a success? Barring horrible beta reviews, I think we can assume it will sell like hotcakes. 1 million copies sold should be no problem AoC did that or at least came close and Bioware and Star Wars have far better reps.
What I worry about is long term appeal. I finished DOA several times in a month. How long can SWTOR keep a player hooked and paying? It is not just about story. I put DOA at its highest difficulty and still breezed through it. Its combat just ain't difficult enough. I replayed for the stories and because RPG's are thin on the ground. But there are PLENTY of MMO's. Will the combat be intresting enough to hold my intrest? So far I heard little to indicate this to be true.
In fact they seemed to go out of their way to asure me that combat is easy to get into. Uh oh. That sounds like a Cryptic game. Those are simple to. And I got bored with them in the free trial/beta
So, I don't think SWTOR will have any trouble pulling in the punters unless they screw things up horribly. But will they be able to keep them? I got my doubts. I also fear EA might nicke & dime players to such a degree that few will want to bother.
But mostly, I worry for the combat. From the vid's so far, it just doesn't look intresting enough to last years.
I dont see any long term apeal to SW:TOR. Its prime will be 2-3 months past its release date. No doubt that it will sell atleast 1 million copies at release.
Interesting article!
I look at this problem like that: WoW is something like Myspace. There were social sites before it... even better ones. But Myspace made it to the top... But now its all about Facebook. (or twitter... dosn't really matter to prove my point). I don't see a bit difference between those two... (Maybe i'm just not informed as i don't use any of them).
What i am waiting for is a Facebook of MMOs. SwTOR might be it... if it plays its cards right. There are many people playing WoW... Who is to say some of them won't just jump onto the SWTOR wagon like the did with Myspace-->facebook.
The internet works that way... somehow... Fads.. Impulses. It would take 1/7 of WoW population to enjoy SWTOR (Which propably will be the same as WoW just.. better.) for it to be succesfull... And they might pull their friends in. :P
Being a clone is not as bad as you think and it works on the world markest... But only if you're a hyped up, very popular and better clone..
And we on this forum are hardly the judges of SWTOR success. Many here hate WoW, or are seekers after WoW. Taking this into account we look at SWTOR as another clone of WoW... But there are millions of people playing WoW now... They are the ones that will judge SWTOR success. All it has to be to them is better WoW. And with 150milion in it i'm sure EA has a good shot at it.
So what EA is saying is that SW:TOR has 12 months to recoup its development money, sell enough boxes, sell enough subs (well, sell a ridiculous amount of subs that is not even remotely attainable in this saturated market) or EA does another Earth and Beyond and all of us stupid enought o shell out full price end up with another useless box on our shelves and another game we can't play ever again.
Who says history never repeats?
And now I read over on Massively they are looking at letting Kiddy Konsole tards also play the game....
Interest dieing rapidly.......
The countdown is not even on the SWTOR site. I doubt this announcement has anything to do with that game. Its probably DLC for Dragon Age or Mass Effect.
I haven't read through the entire thread yet so this has probably already been mentioned...
How much of that $150 million "blockbuster" budget is licensing fees to LucasArts?
Drev
1m subscribers to break even? Highly doubt they need that when you are forgetting something huge... box sales.
QFT, sir. One major reason they are making this is because so many people wanted to play KOTOR online with their friends, thus ST:TOR is in the works now that BioWare has the budget to make it.
Dread73, I posted this early in The Old Republic community:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2693460#post2693460
I know many of you have heard this before but I'll go ahead and reiterate it for those of you who may be new:
Star Wars: The Old Republic is currently being developed for the personal computer (PC) using the Microsoft® Windows® operating system. While we recognize that there are other operating systems and platforms available for games today, our development is specific to the personal computer using the Windows operating system at this time.
As to why The Old Republic is on that list, we have no idea but to allay any confusion, we should not be on there.
Its always hard to read the CEO's statements to investors compared to what they tell the gamers interested in playing the game.
In some ways we all knew that this is what they were doing, making multiple appearances of hyping up the game, trying to really sell the idea of being the next big mmo with a story as a main focus, and then they announce that everything will be voice acted, which we all knew when we heard this it was a completely unrequired part of any mmo.
If you gained any info from seeing what made WoW such a success and what are its failings, it would be a quality combat system (smooth, instant action, etc.) a very big "world" to really explore and feel around, and that it was the best thing to come out when every other MMO failed.
On the other hand comparing the 80 Million that Blizzard put into WoW initially to the current game is a pretty big difference, and as far as ToR is considered by most people playing WoW that have any interest in playing something else, it has to match if not exceed WoW in just about every way, Thus Bioware/EA is playing catch up to WoW, because if they are planing to gain 2 million subs they certainly are not going to pull them entirely from non WoW subs.
$20 a month
In my experience working with indie MMO production, this is spot-on.
The creativity, energy, momentum, drive and determination are tenfold in indie production studios. What's sinking indies today are the business terms - who you have to get in bed with to get your package out the door.
A great example is TCoS - a fabulously innovative FPSMMO with great gameplay, a good story, and PVP. All was on-board and level until it landed in the hands of a greedy publishing house that stripped it and pushed it out the door as fast as possible just to make a buck. A small buck at that, considering its potential seen in the beta and attested to by the production team.
I'm sure there are dozens, if not hundreds, of innovative games with power and expertise behind them that bite the dust simply because they don't want to sell out to the major studios and compete to be the next WoW.
Today's business model is simply not maintainable. And who wants to play the exact same rogue as anyone else anyway?
I always laugh when people prattle on about how the MMO industry needs to "break away from the norm", as if its some kind of untapped treasure that no one has attempted to obtain before. It has been tried before, and it has been proven to not be as successful as people like the OP made it sound. The same goes for sandbox and "classless" MMO's, yes there is a certain percentage that likes that kind of game, but nowhere near the amount that prefers a more preset story driven experience or the amount that enjoy destinct classes in an MMO. Now, some could argue that this is because no developer as yet has managed to make a good MMO which incorporates such gameplay styles. And they maybe correct. However, note that I said MAYBE. There is no guarantee that any MMO developer could make a sandbox / classless MMO that would retain the level of subs that we see in the most successful "themepark" MMO's today.
Now, whilst it is true that MMO's can survive for a few years on low subs, its a simple fact that many people dont LIKE to play an MMO which has a low sub level. So, whilst such MMO's may technically be surviving and a certain amount of people enjoying it, it may as well be dead to the majority who found it lacking. Yes, I know, Eve Online had a small community. But lets face facts, if Eve Online launched today if the market with greater competition in that area, would it attain the same level of success? Probably not.
So why do they find these MMO's that try to "break away" lacking? Because in general many players look for gameplay elements which they have enjoyed in other games. Their next MMO needs to match the level of quality of their previous one or else theres no point in them playing it. People can cry all they like about how WoW has had a huge impact on the MMO industry, but the fact remains that WoW set the standard which all others have to meet. And when you actually take a good look at it, that standard is not actually very high. And yet, many MMO devs don't even try to attain it.
Just look at Funcom, they introduced a "combo" system for only certain classes, only to implement an incomplete quest system, relatively small game environment (albeit a nice looking one), poor itemisation, very little character progression and a crafting/harvesting system that is downright awful. They failed to even get the basics right before slapping on new "innovations". Cryptic too have gone the way of trying to encourage subs based solely on its IP alone, whilst foresaking the very essence of what made that IP successful and ignoring the basic elements that are needed in a good MMO. So the player is left with relatively small amount of character progression, repetitive quests to fill the gaps in the leveling and a small game environment.
Both of these companies failed to establish a good foundation for their games (one based on tried and tested formulas and include ALL the elements that players search for in a good MMO), which is then refined and polished (just like what Blizzard did). Only THEN after establishing that foundation, can an MMO dev hope to build on top of it, introducing new and interesting concepts that are unique to that game.
This is why I feel the future of the MMO industry lies in the hands of those individuals who have produced titles before in varying genres and thus have the resources and the money to make a good product: the single player game development companies. Bioware + EA may actually succeed in leading the way, showing the other single player game companies that they too can make a good MMO.
considering Bioware sales over 1 million copies of every game they have made, I'd consider that paid pretty quick. the initial bank you get from the $50 price tag is the biggest chunk of making back that money. And of course if it turns out to be really good, then they will see even higher sales plus the price will stay higher, longer.
With a rep like Bioware, EA has nothing to worry about. That's why they aren't afraid to spend the money.
Selling boxes doesn't cover the entire cost of developing and maintaing an MMO. Funcom allegedly sold 800,000 copies. WAR allegedly sold 1.2 million copies. Both of these games experienced a large drop in sub levels a few months later. And did these titles "break even" after 1 year? Probably not.
Bear in mind that the projected income for an MMO is largely based on the amount of money generated from subs because the income needs to not only cover the amount spent during development but also the re-occuring overheads such as wages etc.
Using the OPs figures, if EA came to the conclusion that 1 million subs are needed, and that figure includes the income from box sales, then that implies the game needs to generate $100 million in income from other avenues (e.g. subs). Which itself implies that the game would need to sustain 1 million players for approximately 8 months in order to attain that amount.
So, whilst its definately possible for 1 million copies of SWTOR to be sold, the question still remains as to whether SWTOR can retain 1 million+ subs for a long enough period in order to generate enough income to recoup costs within the pre-determined timescale.
is that so? how is it that Guild Wars stays running? they have sold over 5 million copies of their game but it has made them enough money to take their time working on GW2. They of course don't add content for free, so they come out with expansions that you have to pay full MSRP for. You can gain money from other things other than just box sales as well, like T-shirts and collectables.
you can make plenty of money on box sales, and it is the biggest initial chunk to get back what you've invested. Plus i'm underestimating considerably, because i'm sure EA is seeing sales of over 2 to 3 million. The amount of subs it takes to maintain the game is relative. I'm sure bioware will be able to maintain plenty of subs for that too. plus make plenty for development of newer titles. it's really almost trivial for a company like bioware.
So what's your point Jamkull? That just because F2P games can exist is enough argument to suggest that all MMOs actually dont need subs, because on the whole box sales + other revenues cover all costs? Don't be so naive. Sorry, but you're jumping to conclusions that the development and maintenance costs of an MMO such as SWTOR are the same as those for GW. The differences between the two games are quite obvious. And those differences imply cost.
Now, we know that:
a) SWTOR has a very high development cost.
b) SWTOR will "be more of the traditional business model with maybe some twists as well."
c) EA have said they need 1 millions SUBS to break even, no mention was made in that original article about revenue from other sources, just subs.
Therefore, its not possible for SWTOR to be a F2P game, because the above implies that the F2P business model just won't generate enough income to recoup costs within the acceptable timescale. In the timescale of 1 year, box sales are a fraction compared to the total revenue generated from subs. Do the maths are you'll see.
GW survives for a myriad of reasons. But just because an F2P MMO can exist, doesn't mean that SWTOR (or any other monthly subbed MMO for that matter) can launch as an F2P game and survive solely based on box sales + other revenues.
Very interesting article, but to be honest I loved to read the first pages of this thread, answered by those following not only SW:TOR but the general mmo gaming industry. Pitty I cba to read full 11 pages specially when it becomes dull, repetitive and a bit trollish... as always.
Bioware has a great history for making games. EA has a horrible reputation at running games/franchises. It will be interesting to see which of these two forces wins out.
I'll come back and look at it in five years and decide whether to play - I feed no need to rush out and log into MMOs on day one.
Okay first up i'll take you up on this how much money do you want to put on this so well informed wager ?
I believe this game will have an appeal beyond any other mmo out there
Mass effect, Mass effect 2, Dragon age origins, Dragon age awakening, Jade empire, the amount of copies sold on the pc alone haveto be above 10m and you know what, most people who play bioware games replay them.
We are told that there is for each profession in TOR a completey seperate storyline, with emotion and signature bioware moral ambiguaty (sp) Both me, wife, and our 4 closest friends are going to buy/subscribe and play this game.
I still play through Jade Empire and I can't say the amount of times i've completed mass effect and mass effect 2.
Add to that the idea of not only soloing but joining friends and its a no brainer.
Yes maybe purity mmo players won't like it, maybe power gamers won't like it but this is a new idea a new chance and we are really looking forward to it.
msg me with your wager on this and i'll take it up.
at Calranthe:
You need an exact timeframe for this bet, ie "hit 2mio subs 90 days after release" and you need the info at this time, how many subscriptions this game actually has. If this is possible, I would bet 50 euro or something which wouldn´t hurt both of us much.
---
I know nothing about this game, so I am curious, what kind of fun formula this game is going to have. Longevity? Replayability?
I myself planned to buy GW2 blindly, because Arenanets first game had an interesting setting.
All I played from Bioware was Dragon Age (DLC) and Planescape:Torment (was it Bioware?)
I just hope, that Mythic goes back to the roots and implements 3 factions of PvP into a solid PvE game.
Holy Mother of All That Is Good and Wholesome, Scott. That is something verging on the edge of insanity there but I find that I agree with it one hundred and fifty percent. The fact that everyone and their imaginary girlfriend is betting that SWTOR is going to beat the pants off anything else out there and no one has put hands onto the game yet, just taking EA/Bioware's word for it and their risking a lot on just word of mouth hype
I can easily see EA playing with fire here, investing more than most Uwe Bol features in producing a video game...let me repeat that...A VIDEO GAME!!!! Even if they get lucky and get their minimum 1 MIL subs, retention is going to be the tricky fulcrum there, because if enough of the die hards get into the game, you're going to lose the casual subscriber who is not out to out duel everyone, or be the baddest Jedi/Sith around, but the Luke Skywalker/Starkiller/Darth Whoevers out there are going to make sure to keep those casuals playing the solo game and not even interacting with the rest of the SW community online.
I'm happy that EA feels that SWTOR is worth $150 MIL but the danger there is setting themselves up to fail and then blaming the MMO community for having too high an expectation which is a megalithic company's response when the community complains that the game has failed to meet their expectations and I can tell you from previous experience with other MMO's I've had the honor to Beta test in the past, the minute they remove one cool feature or fail to bring that one cool feature to the game universe, they naysayers will be out in Force (hehe) and calling the devs liars and thieves for ruining the IP and messing up the game, which always tends to happen no matter how much the devs try and reassure the community of its earnest intentions with the IP.
EA, Blizzard and Sony might be the last ones standing after they outspend the smaller independent companies under the table but the question is how long can the MMO industry last under a such limited development pool, when your meager $1 MIL investment pool is just chicken scratch to the Big Guns and you have to rush your product to market before they unless their Uber Massive WoW-Trek-Wars game to crush yours like a little girly man.
Lets hope that SWTOR doesn't disappoint because there is more than EA rep at stake here, there's all those developers who worked hard to try and bring it to fruition here that will pay the ultimate price here and shoulder all of the blame if things don't go as their EA Overlords wanted it to go.
Ahh the Hype engine.
Remember the lessons learned from STO, WAR, AoC, Aion, etc.. etc... etc......
One day people will learn.
I find it truly sad how for some, their vision, and yes their passion barely extends to the end of their nose.
As daddy used to say, it takes money to make money.
What would have happened to Vanguard: Saga of Heros had Microsoft not walked out on Sigil Games barely half way through development? (Microsoft had spent $30M but none of the MS Team could had any idea what a good MMO is, much less what they wanted Vanguard it to be).
What could have Tabula Rasa's potential been with proper management, passion, support and marketing? Unfortunatley, NCSoft thought little of doing any of these things and simply pulled the plug.
With EA/LucasArts/BioWare, all the peices are there -- the right team with the expertise in all facets and all the money they need to produce and deliver the biggest and best MMO ever. They're also thinking out of that box -- That $150M will be well over $200M -- The Old Republic offers opportunities beyond "just" the new MMO -- it's a unique part of the Star Wars IP and work is already underway to develop, market and sell card games, books, miniatures, clothing, ad nauseum and yes, likely a new series of movies.
I remember Microsoft with more money that many Countries worried about how much V:SoH was costing and how much more should they "sink" into "gaming" while at the same time, they were focusing so much time, money and effort on the XBox ...
HAH! I can still see the MS suits with frowning brows wringing their hands over Sigil ... much the same as Mr. Jennings is doing here in his Blog over EA.
Give me the passionate people with the big ideas, the courage and the money to back it up -- that will spell success for SW:TOR.
edited for typos
Because Cryptic, Mythic, Funcom, and NCSoft are in fact the same company as Bioware with the same street creed.
oh wait...
One day people will think.
I too hope for the best for EA and Bioware's SW:TOR. The MMO genre needs a quality crafted and successful MMO right now.... for morale reasons if nothing else. It's like there is the pale of Dread floating across the MMO scene these last few years (just how I see it is all).
added: I am not saying I agree with the soloplay with coop design style that many believe SW:TOR will focus on, but a successful and quality crafted MMO would be well appreciated and is needed none the less.
The part in blue... this is the part that is going to hurt, even though it is needed. MMOs are an Art Form at their core, and the loyalty of MMO Players almost proves it by itself in how they love and hate the Industry and how they banter back and forth with themselves and Developers, Publishers, you name it. An Art form of any type or kind gets messed up when Profiteers enter and attempt to turn it into a money machine. History shows this to be true time and time again.
Now we are seeing it in MMOs and the day will come when the Investors that care little for MMOs themselves will find new places to put their money and the hit to the MMO subculture and industry will hurt.... but I have a sincere belief the genre will endure, but be different in fundemental ways and a true "rebirth" of the MMO genre may take many years. By this I mean a return to MMOs being a Niche group where Developers and Players devoted to this style of online entertainment are pretty much the majority of those involved... instead of being the minority as it is right now. By then many of it's most devoted Fans will be playing a "different" kind of "game" so to speak.
Yes it takes money to make money. But for the love of... Money in and of itself should not be the driving force that motivates a Developer to craft a MMO, rather it is a necessary part of anything Mankind does. Money should be keep as the tool that it is and not the holy grail as some People see it to be. If I would want to make Money my priority the LAST place I would go to make a pile of it is in the MMO Industry or the Gaming Industry as a whole, there are far better places for that sort of activity.
Money, the Real Life Quest for it, has harmed MMOs more than anything else.
Funcom, NCsoft, Atari and EA are the companies. Cryptic and Bioware are registered as studios. I believe the proper name of Bioware is soon to be Bioware Cryptic. Though that is still not settled
I you mean the companies have poor reputations, I agree.
Bioware however has put out quality more often then not. I personally wouldnt lump Bioware in with the lot. Aside to say its parent company is EA.
Doom, Diablo, The Sims, Elite, Dungeon Keeper, Half-Life, WoW, Harry Potter, StarCraft, C&C, Civ, Baldur's Gate...
These are great titles. Some of them are recognised as "great" by all, some - by some only. However, I doubt very much, that all of them (or even some of them) were created with the "let's make a super-hit" idea. The creators just had vision and luck, often both.
It is a capital mistake to theorise without data. (c)
Oh... they will rock the planet... oh no! they will fail utterly... oh... they provide so little info I am not convinced, as a consumer... 20+ pages of rubbish. Waste of server space :)
WoW is not that great. Neither are all the rest of the great games/titles. They just delivered (mildly) new experiences to the (new) crowds of gamers. All of them had something (or a lot of) "new" blended with quite regular features of the given genre.
They delivered new experiences to the gamers' brains, and that's what made them great. Peoples' brains like (new) experiences. Different brains like different experiences, and are quick to see "cloned" experiences that simply repeat the pattern without adding anything "interesting" / "new" / "inspiring".
So, the real question is... will TOR be able to inspire your brain, or not?
Your brain is clean of all the preconceptions, hasty judgement, previous bad experiences, etc. (that's what personality is for). It just wants some new experiences to crunch.
So, it is not the question of what you expect to happen, it is a question of what will happen, how it will play out. And that's the thing that no-one knows for sure. Even the creators.
P.S. You know, Bill Gates used to think that "640 k ought to be enough for anyone".
I think EA and Bioware have made a good bet with SW:TOR, and I'm still optimistic about it. For one, Bioware has had nothing but a string of hits. For two, despite all of the people saying that this will be a single player game with multiplayer tacked on, you have forgotten some of the ultra-successful multiplayer games Bioware has made - NWN, NWN2 and the BG series. All three were multiplayer, and NWN had persistent worlds made with their engine.
I am going to break my rule with SW:TOR and pre-order an MMO. I vowed never to do it again after the failure that was Hellgate:London. Bioware is in the same class as Blizzard, and when you buy a game from either, you know you will be getting a good game, even if it isn't your all time favorite it will be addictive.
In one last respect, I think they have a great chance for high subscription numbers due to the fact that there are a lot of hardcore World of Warcraft players that are sick of WoW. I canceled back in November simply because it just isn't fun anymore. I'm not planning on buying Cataclysm simply because I just don't care anymore. I've tried many different games in the last couple of months trying to find my WoW fix, and while I haven't found it yet, I still have no urge to go back to WoW. SW:TOR might well be exactly what I'm looking for.
For everyone saying storyline isn't important or isn't critical, remember that one of the most engaging parts of WoW is that it most definitely has a story. That's what feels missing in many MMOs - a sense of place, history, and a living, breathing world. SW:TOR will have a world, and I have no doubt that each location will feel as unique as they did in KOTOR, and the Mass Effect series. Bioware knows how to establish a story, a history, and make you feel like you are a part of it, and that's what made WoW feel so special. That's also what was missing from AoC, Warhammer and the many others that crashed and burned out of the gate.
Nobody commenting here seems to have a slightest idea on why WoW is a succes. I say: "you don't have to be good, you just have to be the best". It is as simple as that. WoW is the best MMO at this time. They have everything implemented the best way they could do (and they are very able in blizzard), not like some niche MMOs for PvPers only, or poor games with good graphics. They just covered everything. From PvP to PvE, from crafting to customisation, from proffessions to hobbys. It appeals to many people pecause everybody can find there something he want to go back to.
SWTOR just needs fun PvP, fun story, fun crafting, fun PvE, customisation and crafting done as good as they can. That, with some marketing will give them about 5-8m subscribers at some point in time. You can't compare SWTOR to MMOs that never even tried to compete with WoW. It was only PLYERS who hoped so. Now, it is a clear WoW competitor, the first one in the whole MMO history. And you are all mistaken if you think it is going to fail. At least if EA won't back it's support after 1 year.
rofl... thats what we call "a matter of opinion". Personally, I think WoW is one of the crappiest games I've ever played. So no, I wouldn't say its the best game out there at this time.
If you're a wow fanboi, thats fine, but there are those of us who aren't.
SWTOR shouldn't copy ANYTHING from WoW. Nearly every single game thats been released in the past 5 years has been WoW with different graphics. And nearly every single one of them failed almost as soon as they opened.
The bright person would learn from that and NOT make their game WoW if they had a brain in their skull.
WoW shouldn't copy ANYTHING from EQ. Nearly every single game thats been released in the past 5 years has been EQ with different graphics. And nearly every single one of them failed almost as soon as they opened.
The bright person would learn from that and NOT make their game EQ if they had a brain in their skull.
Are you five years old?
No, Snaylor47 just owned your argument though. WoW is successful because there are many things it does right.
lol... uh huh.. wow is successful and all the games that have copied it have failed. So whats your point? The reason wow is still successful is because of all the people that joined back when it was created who haven't left yet. That doesn't mean he owned my argument. It means he's dismissing facts because he's a wow fanboi.
"Nearly every single game thats been released in the past 5 years has been WoW with different graphics."
I gues what you are saying is: "I played WoW for 5 years and I'm sick of it, please don't make another WoW". This is just silly... SWTOR is nothing like WoW, and only a biased person who played WoW all their life could say so. Or does stylised realism make you think so? Well, it shouldn't. There is not a single released information that makes SWTOR similar to WoW in any way. Or maybe you are trying to say that every game where combat system involves pressing buttons from 1 to 10 or mouse to use skills is a WoW clone? Well, that is strange because it seems like MMOs released before 2004 would be WoW clones too... Did they use a time-machine?
Calling me a WoW fanboi is funny as well. You can't divide people on wow-haters and wow-fanbois. You must deal with being a minority, thats all. People who play WoW ocasionally, still have a lot to explore there. And they probably don't even know about this site existance. You can't judge all player-base only by some poll results on a website or by your own preferences.
All the games that have come out since WoW have been rushed and hence crappy. Not many people would move from WoW to a worse game. That is why WoW has maintained its success against WoW "clones" even when such games had significant features that were beyond what WoW did. "Rushed games suck" is the lesson to be learned not "avoid all features that WoW has".
Exactly. You can't say MMO is like WoW just because it's an MMO. WoW does not have many innovative features (if any) and it is just an ordinary MMO with every feature polished and released in a better state than any other MMOs did.