You better watch out for what you wish for, it might come true.
After 1.1 patch dropped, I noticed a lot of bloggers and “news” sites hammering SWTOR. The doomsayers are back on their soapbox spouting off numbers and analysts quotes. People are backtracking to EALouse. People are raging on the forums and MMOers from other games are throwing pennies in a wishing well. People are assholes!
If all these people took the time to remove their blinders of hate, they might understand what the failure of SWTOR means. It doesn’t mean the game will just close shop and never be heard from again. It doesn’t mean a few people will lose their job, just to find another one later. It doesn’t mean all your friends will return to your favorite MMO. It means investors will stop backing the MMO genre. It will become extinct. All future, western produced MMO will vanish.
I’m not against free to play MMOs, but if AAA MMOs keep failing, even free to play will have a hard time acquiring funding. We will see more Eastern MMOs that are driven by nickel and dime’en people. Having a good handful of F2P games is great for the economy and genre, but a flooded market of trash will turn all players off. When the players loose faith in a genre, it will start becoming nonexistent.
A lot of faith went into SWTOR. No matter how many millions of dollars were spent, the amount PR for the game is enormous. 1 investors hunch of a direction the game is going he doesn’t like, sends the media in a blood thirsty frenzy. The immaturity of the media sites seeking hits just fuels the negative environment. What new investor would want to drop their money into a new game if such a great developer like BioWare can fail? You think they won’t look at their tiny investment and say, “Well, if a $300 million AAA MMO can fail, what is this MMO going to do to succeed with a lot less money?” You think their faith in the new revolutionary mechanic will sway them to blow millions of dollars on an experimental system? They’ll take their money and invest in birth control to help reduce the idiot gamer population.
It really doesn’t make sense for the MMO community to wish SWTOR fails. It’s ok not to like the game and say that, but constantly harp on everything the game does wrong will turn away future MMOers. If a new guy can’t trust a AAA MMO, who can they trust? Even seasoned MMO veterans are starting to leave the genre in disgust with the negative community. Who does that leave playing these games, a mass of whinny trolls?
It’s great that Rift is doing great. It’s great that people think Guild Wars 2 will be the perfect game with a community of people with halos above their head. It’s great WoW is still going strong. Unfortunately though, all eyes are on SWTOR and if it fails, it could bring down the future all those other games are hoping for. Yes, SWTOR does matter that much. It would be like Apple declaring bankruptcy. It would devastate the technology market. The failure of SWTOR will send a really bad message to future investors of all games.
We need SWTOR to succeed if we want to see more MMOs in the future. We need investors to want to throw money at MMOs. We need to show them we are not spoiled brats that wish the world to end before Christmas because we didn’t get what we wanted last year. We need to grow the fuck up and help the MMO genre not hinder it with our bitching.
It doesn’t matter though, you are so caught up in your hate, you can’t see you are damning your own future.
35 Responses to “I Wish SWTOR Would Fail”
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- Narrative and The End « Tish Tosh Tesh - [...] I don’t want SWTOR to fail, but dagnabbit, the stresses inherent in shoehorning strong narrative into the MMO mold ...
- Too Long; Didn’t Listen episode 12 — SWTOR and sandboxes - [...] Scarybooster: I wish SWTOR would fail [...]
Do I think SWTOR will fail? No. If it follows the line that every other successful subscription MMO follows, it will retain about half the day sales in subscribers. That’s a million people pouring in the local equivalent of $15 a month. Not too shabby, indeed there’s a great Gamasutra interview where BioWare’s quoted as saying the game’s healthily profitable.
Do I think they could have done better? Undoubtedly.
Do I think SWTOR can be allowed to fail by the MMO community? Absolutely. I would not encourage anyone to spend money on anything that they don’t get enjoyment out of. Game studios are not charities and cash is tight enough for people as it is.
I *hope* that BioWare pulls their finger out and responds to customer requests, and I’m flexible enough to get enjoyment out of the game by doing other things. But you and I aren’t everyone. Sometimes both hope and realism need to be heard.
People are far too quick to put their emotions before “realism”. Realism is understanding these these games are enormous undertakings with an unbelieveable number of moving parts intertwined in ways that can be hard to untangle even by those who worked on it in the beginning. It’s a tightrope walk whenever someone touches code, because making a minor change in one system can cascade into a total clusterfk of unintented consequences unless the utmost care is taken 100% of the time. Stay up too late last night and not feeling your best the next morning (maybe you have a baby or a sick child, or some other legit emergency)? Distracted by something in the office?
Mistakes happen. We’re blessed an embarassment of riches in that we have so many options for where to get our entertainment that we feel that we don’t need to support anything that doesn’t meet our exacting standards. We piss and moan and threaten to quit a game because we can’t tollerate a mistake that was made, because we feel that we shouldn’t support a company that makes mistakes. How nice to be in a position where judgements like that can be rendered with a feeling of smug self-satisfaction!
How about sticking with a product you believe in? Jumping ship is easy; even cowardly. These games aren’t going to get better by fleeing the ship and leaving them with no funding to fix their problems, or the moral support of people who actually want the product to improve. People complain, but do nothing but turn their backs instead of reporting bugs and having a little fucking faith that these developers are working their asses off to make a decent product, NOT to make a shitty game. Contrary to popular internet belief, developers probably don’t relish the abuse that dispshits lavish on them in the forums. I said before that I would NEVER want to work in the games industry because I couldn’t take the unmitigated abuse.
I know what coding is like – been there, done it. I also know what designing a complex system that supports millions of users is like. I work in that environment and I’ve had to deal with the fallout. It’s a hard job to do right and yes, mistakes are made. It’s one of the reasons I wasn’t leaping on the “Patch 1.1 broke my PvP” bandwagon.
I agree with you that threatening to quit, bleating and moaning on forums is a pretty rough practice. Beta testing, offering suggestions and solutions and encouraging the game to move in the right direction is better. If you’re going to unsubscribe then just do it – cancelling payment details is just as effective a signal to the developers.
I understand that developers are there to make a good game, not to push out something substandard. Like all craftsmen, they’re proud of what they accomplish. They also need the support of the community to test their products and make sure they’re ready for primetime. I get that, I really do.
But by the same token, I can’t endorse spending money on hope. Not in the climate we’re in, not with everyone having difficulties. While I’ll make the judgement myself and tell people what I’ve done (I’m still subscribing because the game is still full of things I want to do) I encourage people to make their own decisions. Not on hope, but on realism, on announcements about what’s going to be implemented in the future, about what’s in the pipeline.
And yes, I agree that unconstructive forum dipshits that have nothing better to do than hurl vulgarities need to die in a fire.
No, people like me put emotions first because you don’t know what it was like to diligently test the game years before launch and talk about it in person with developers only for them to act like you didn’t know what you were talking about when collectively voting the game a fucking 5 because gameplay was terrible.
Most of the problems that exist today, both bugs and lack of engagement were all prominent YEARS (2) before launch.
They ignored the community and no matter how much people begged to see combat and gameplay, all they talked about was STORY. Like anyone gave a fuck about RP and story.
They overzealous attitude about their own titles caused them to gimp themselves. BioWare games have always had bad gameplay and because they think their story telling is amazing (I disagree), they think they charge people monthly for a pop-up book. But even their story telling in SWTOR is bad and no matter how much the community screamed to see gameplay so they can make sure this shit was good, they ignored it.
This title was doomed from the get-go. Now, developers still stand on an imaginary pedestal making erroneous claims that their game is the biggest MMO and 1.2 was going to be the biggest patch in MMO history. When 6 months after launch WoW had 2 40 man raids twice the amount of bosses and 3 legendaries.
BioWare is in denial and it is borderline creepy how they live in a fantasy. Its a fucking joke. Stop standing by and letting a developer try to trick you into giving them your money. The whole thing a reuse to try and reap the benefits from the genre without delivering the product to do so. Their customer service is a perfect example. Outsourced across the country and GARBAGE.
WoW was developed to be a good game. Back then there was no 8924892894 million dollar a year MMO for them to try to be like. It developed to that because their original goal was wholehearted. And believe it or not, despite what haters say, the attitude is the same. Which is why their support is continuously getting better, they constantly communicate, act upon community suggestions and their level of knowledge as PLAYERS during panels crushes BioWare. But BioWare not even knowing WTF they are doing during their panels and obviously don’t even play the game is another story for another nerd rant.
mmo players are not forgiving but there are basics to follow a good crafting system let the player set a goal i want that gear this is not what is in swtor u have a chance on getting a item and there are 4 to 5 diffrent vertions of that item this was not thought out and of all of the professions the one that was worth having biochem was nerfed instead of adding recipes to the other professions wich would make everyone happy this was not done leaving subscribers feeling cheated.pvp i would say half of any mmo comunity are pvpers people expect a lev playing feild brackets and such this is not the case good or bad at pvp u want a fighting chance u are not given that option.instance hardmode easy mode are bugged boring and not fun.these are the 3 basics crafting pvp and instances 200 million was spent and these three basics were not perfected. u had people from conan and warhammer u hire people that dont learn there lessons to make your game your invesment is gone
declan osullivan:
you made some good points there, however I wanted to add that there is a 4th important aspect to MMO gaming – the population. I love everything about SWTOR except how it seems like I am playing a single player game most of the time. The only main obstacle to the game’s success is the large amount of low population servers. I was grouped up with 2 friends today and we were the only 3 people on the entire planet of Ilum. This is a level 50 planet where a good amount of dailies are for end game gear and it also has a large open world pvp battle zone. It’s not just PvE that suffers from low population. The queue for PvP warzones can be up to 2 hours some nights and the match usually ends early as a result of not having enough players on one team.
Fix the population issues: add server transfer capabilities like Rift, consolidate low population or highly unbalanced faction servers and the game will far surpass the WoW giant in time.
Well said. In the East, where quantity seems to be more important the quality, a failure is expected, but it’s not even a speedbump because it’s a hydra-industry over there. Here, with budgets where they are, there can only be so many torch-bearers for the genre. When a AAA game falters, the ripples are more pronounced, but too many people are so self-absorbed that they can’t seperate their feelings from the potential ramifications on a business level.
Despite what they might believe, the gaming industry and the MMO genre isn’t fueled by emotions. It’s fueled by business, investment, and spreadsheets, the same way any other industry is operated. I don’t care if someone has a problem with STO’s take on the Star Trek canon, or whether SWTOR has issues (because all games do) that prevent me from enjoying something the way I feel should for a short amount of time. The fact is that no decisions are made in a vacuum, they all have repercussions far beyond someone’s ranting blog post, and there’s always more at stake for the company and it’s employees then there is for one bloggers enjoyment.
NO ONE should wish a game to fail. That’s self-centered and self-important, and you hit the nail on the head that failure can lead to a chilling effect on further production of a genre we all claim we “enjoy”. It’s easy to badmouth something when we’re detached from the real-world implications, because to us it’s another product in a disposable, commoditized society, but people put a lot of work into making these things (and they are NOT simple…not even close), and their livelyhood depends on their success, or at least their continuing operation and improvement over time. Taking enjoyment over bad news, or claiming that you “called it” is total bullshit. I’d like for those people to have years of their work slammed on a massive scale, to the point where they fear for their jobs in this economy.
At the same time, if you’re really doing your job, you should be able to pay attention to some of this stuff that bloggers have been pointing out from day one. The biggest one in my mind is that a sub model is antithetical to a story that ends. This isn’t rocket science. As a rank and file desk jockey, sure, you’re not going to be able to right the ship of state (and heaven help you if you try sometimes), but as a player, I think it’s fair to call out bad design decisions, and to refuse to support games that you don’t like. We’re not beholden to any company or greater loyalty to the “MMO market’s health”, or at least, we shouldn’t be.
Speaking to my own experience inside the game industry, especially working with EA, if your’e not high on the totem pole, you’re less than invisible unless you screw up. You’re eminently replaceable if you don’t sign on to “The Vision” of a project. You shut up and work, never mind concerns.
In the end, I don’t want SWTOR to fail, but I want the market to send a loud and clear message about what it wants. That’s what markets are supposed to do. If BioWare/EA can get ahead of it and profit, more power to ‘em. If they can’t see their serious structural problems, then they deserve the reality check. That’s the hardball world of business, and EA has played this game for long enough they earn no pity from me on that count.
Yes, this might mean some heads will roll. That’s not the playerbase’s fault, though, that’s on the heads of the company for screwing up in the first place.
I wish it to fail, and my hate makes me powerful.
So what I’m getting from the comments is:
1. SWTOR shouldn’t fail but it should be made an example of Olin a bad way because it did exactly like WoW and all other MMOs years ago I should stumble until the developers are knocked down a peg for being unoriginal and using millions of dollars to mask that fact.
2. SWTOR is a step in the wrong direction because it played it safe. They didn’t:
A. Put their jobs on the line for a passionate story based MMO
B. Added a in depth companion system
C. Changed the way we view PvP with levels 10-49 almost flawlessly competitive
D. Made the first Faction bs Faction based PvP arena
E. We’re willing to let 33% cut off the top when they knew their ass could be on the line
All overshadowed because the chose to do a theme park MMO with a gear treadmill. Idk sounds a bit ballsy to me. Sounds like they are the first MMO in years to do more than 1 new thing to shake things up. I forgot Rift is polish because it is a total WoW clone on bigger rails than Mario, but they are polished and have dynamic repeating content…
Ya they could’ve done more and laid all their card on the table at once, but then it would become stall like WAR with years between updates.
From me? Nah, I really don’t care about PvP. Seriously. They could have made Illum so bad that as soon as you land there your PC locks up and plays Justin Bieber music continually until you pull the plug and I still wouldn’t care.
They did put their jobs on the line for a story based MMO, and that aspect does rock. It is very, very good and has a strong amount of replay value for those of us that are big fans of rolling and levelling alts.
BUT.
There is a huge amount of endgame content that’s currently inaccessible to a shedload of people. The biggest request I hear from the community is for an LFD system. That’s it. I read about a lot of people hitting level cap and getting bored, but unable to do anything about it. Give them the tools to help themselves so that more people get access to all this awesome content (and it is awesome – Kaon Under Siege is a better dungeon that anything in WoW) and that’s it. For me and a fair chunk of other people.
I *want* PVP space combat, but I’m happy to wait for that.
Tell us how you really feel, Scary.
I don’t wish SWTOR to fail. Not one bit. I’m not seething with rage about the shortcomings of the game, they are what they are. Every game has issues, and if certain players are so upset about the problems that a game has AT LAUNCH then they need to A. step back for a while and B. be thankful that they don’t have worse issues in their lives. Constructive criticism is good, games are only made better by constant improvements, but the devs do need to be willing to listen to their playerbase.
That said, I do think that as far as innovation in the MMO genre goes, you’re really going to have to look to independent games from this point forward, not the AAA companies. Yes, SWTOR innovated as far as stories and companions, but it took them how many years and how much money to do so, and then people still complain that they played it safe? Any time that you have game dev companies with huge parent corporations and shareholders pulling the strings, you’re going to have “safe” and “mass-marketable”. Those companies don’t do “risky”… leave that to the Mojangs, CodeClubs, Tiny Specks, Paradoxes, eGenesis’, etc.
If SWTOR fails, you may see fewer AAA MMOs, but it might be better for the growth (not player numbers, but quality) of the genre if you see increased attention towards the indie guys that are actually out there making nifty things on limited budgets.
As far as I’m concerned, WoW is still the dominant and best MMO, and that is not even questionable. If I don’t enjoy the game I’m not going to spend 15 bucks a month on it. If that’s whiny to you, you’re delusional. Why should I pay 15 dollars a month for broken pvp, unresponsive interface (and that’s putting it lightly), little end game content, and little to no social interaction? They copied a few things from WoW and the only thing that makes it worthy of a purchase is the massive amount of dialogue. This is coming from someone who has two level 50 characters on opposite ends of the spectrum.
I don’t wish it to fail- but I don’t want a game that doesn’t focus on the critical aspects of an MMO to be wildly successful. If they listen to the users I only wish them well, but if they don’t then it doesnt deserve to continue being successful. It would set a terrible example for future MMOs and games in general.
Also you wildly exaggerate the importance of this game. Their massive budget means nothing if they aren’t willing to be flexible with their design. A complete failure by the old republic would be insignificant as long as the WoW expansion sells which it undoubtedly will. Why would investors stop backing MMOs when WoW is the most financially profitable game in history? If blizzard makes another MMO (which is already in development I’m sure) it will be very successful regardless of star wars.
Again, you can call me a whiny gamer, but that says a lot more about you than it does about me. Quite frankly, saying we shouldn’t criticize star wars for its many many faults (WoW, a relatively old game is much more polished) is disgraceful to the medium. Let’s also not forget that the media coverage has been overwhelmingly positive, so I think you are making a big issue out of nothing. People are buying the game and it is doing well. This is just one article of many calling out the gaming community despite its huge support for developers.
On the remark about me calling you a whinny gamer: I prefer not to insult people at all based on their opinions. It is what they think and I do not need to bulky them into playing my game. I played WoW for 7 years. The game is shit now. It is a joke of a shell of what it used to be. Comparing a 7 year old game that built up from 200,000 playerbase to 1 million past their year mark to go on to be a huge success, make any MMO from now on a failure. No game can compete with WoW until WoW is dead. I personally don’t like the game anymore. It is boring to me. The parts I still love are in SWTOR plus their new stuff.
I appreciate your comment and any great debate, but I will never stoop to name calling. Call it boring, but I don’t need that shit in my life
Ahmed, dude, you are a WoW fanboy. That’s okay, I have been too in the past, but the whole “WoW rules, SWTOR drools” tone to your post really reduces the effectiveness of whatever it is you’re trying to say.
WoW is losing subscribers like crazy and is no longer the solid investment it once was. I mean, hey, enjoy playing it, but Blizzard is no longer the keystone holding the MMO market together that it once was.
People are welcome to not like SWTOR and not pay for it and not play it! But there are a number of posts lately where people are actively rooting for it to fail as though that will be the key to a glorious MMO Renaissance where we’ll all be playing sandbox PvP games and like it, and it’s not true. If SWTOR suddenly dies (it won’t), it just means that no one is going to invest that kind of money into an MMO again for a long time.
Shameless plug of my rant along these lines. http://bit.ly/x7vvwY The people wishing SWTOR would die are shortsighted. I don’t think anyone should support a game with their wallet if they don’t like it. That is a lot different than the “DIE DIE SWTOR DIE” posts and comments I’ve been seeing. WoW was a lot of fun for me for several years. It’s not anymore. I don’t rage about the pandas or the goblins. I just stopped subscribing.
WoW fanboy? I don’t play it any more because I lost interest. It’s still much more polished though. It’s still the benchmark. They are losing subscribers but even at full potential star wars is not a threat to WoW financially. It will never reach 8 million subscribers so even if WoW continues to lose subscribers it will still be a juggernaut compared to star wars.
Those are facts for the most part. Im not a fanboy for stating the very obvious facts. In terms of polish the pvp system and accessibility is far behind a 7 year old game in WoW. Their end game content is scarce. Their interface is wow but less responsive. Attack animation is not smooth and quests are still fetchy. The best part is the huge amounts of dialogue which is why I bought the game. I like the game – I play it- I haven’t played wow in.a year, but these things are very obvious even to me.
Great post and right on the mark. The success or failure of SWTOR will be a major factor in all of pc gaming. Not just MMO’s.
I don’t think you speak knowing something about economy and concurrency. So one competitor fail and this will damage my budget too? Wrong. Only crisis affect all participants in one way or other, but one’s fail is really good for others, translated in bigger market share.
I played WoW 6 years and I preordered SWTOR since first day, even in my country is not launched yet and I still have 3 month prepaid. I lost interest to log in after I reach 50, I don’t see any reason to do the same brainless grind for gear. Maybe is me and not the game, was happened before in Rift, where I renounced after two months due to the unbalanced classes.
I don’t want SWTOR to fail, but more important is Bioware to want the same thing.
WoW success was made by conjuncture and market situation at that time, nobody have the same patience like 7 years ago. Sure SWTOR is big project, but I’m not sure that all the money was spent well. They tried to copy WoW success, armed with Lucas Art franchise and overestimated budget, but the situation now is very different then 7 years ago, they made one very good solo Kotor 3, but just a weak mmo.
I hope Bioware will wake up soon.
/bow
Tbh I think we need it to fail. It tried hard to copy and steal wows userbase and for awhile there i thought they just might do it till all these persistent little core design flaws kept popping up. Im also tired of people comparing anything to wow. They fudge their numbers so badly its not even funny so do some real research before spouting off 11 million subs cause its no where near that with the pay by hour use in asia being counted inaccurately.
Unfortunately, swtor will fail and in fact the first 30 dayers are long gone and the population is drastically reduced and especially noticeable on the republic side. Its so bad I actually stopped playing a level 40 jedi and re rolled empire just to have a chance at seeing group content and im glad i did because its night and day difference where the population is concerned.
Many people saw this game was going to fail hard back in beta. It all boiled down to poor designs which seemed horrifically simplistic and almost felt like fillers for something better. But the game launched with the same boring crafting systems and space. Most of us came from swg and like it or not it, in its original incarnation had vastly superior crafting and space systems, and thats going back to 2005.
If anything, wow set the bar so low on polished mediocrity that it destroyed the mmo genre and continues too. With the failure of swtor, we can only hope the attempts to clone wows theme park end with swtor. Rift was a failed attempt as well. Its a very polished a good game but why play it when its so similar to a much larger wow.
It sucks this game turned out as bad as it did. But if you play it like a single player extension to kotor with co op abilities its not that bad. I wont be playing it next month though.
I honestly wouldn’t worry about SWTOR failing and the future impact any failure would have on the MMORPG industry because the failures of SWTOR and what they did wrong are so blatantly obvious to everyone but the actual people making the game and the people playing the game at level 22 who are still enthralled by the storyline.
Lol exactly – the short comings are so obvious to any gamer…
No-one is going to miss if EA disappear from the game world. Get over it.
The funniest thing is that most of the real gamers can fairly easily see what SWTOR is lacking and why it is failing in a short amount of time. Why these issues weren’t addressed before launch is the problem. It’s not that investors won’t invest in MMOs, maybe they just won’t invest in EA. EA’s problem is their chronic habit of releasing games early and unpolished. Look at Valve and EA, people will wait for value when it’s ready. This could have been a blockbuster if it came out polished. There’s still a chance if they fix it soon enough. I personally hope so but seeing the track record to this point I am not counting on it.
Quade above me got it right.
EA needs to go away, period. Investors need to stop investing in THEM, not in future MMOs. People aren’t stupid and gamers know the difference between good and bad just like all other consumers when it comes to a bad product you bought. To me, SWTOR deserves every bad piece of publicity it gets because the game really is a scam. They charged top-dollar for the box at $59.95 for even the regular digital download edition as well as the $14.99 monthly. What they gave in return was a single player game – at best.
Trion Worlds recently got a $100 million dollar investment from a venture capitalist firm. Why? Because good investors invest in good people. Look at what Trion did with Rift at just around $50 million? Look at what BlueHole Studios is doing with TERA that was under $50 million? Both of these games have an immense amount of polish, style, and beauty that are hard to find in other AAA MMOs outside of WOW’s great success.
Good people with strong work ethic will always find ways to create and innovate. What happened with Bioware is not Bioware’s fault, it is EA’s – remember that.
SWTOR deserves to fail. It represents everything that is currently wrong with the gaming industry. Bioware cut so many corners and outsourced so many different parts of the project to foreign countries(art went to China, code to Russia and India, customer service to India) and the end result is just hideous.
Just take a look at these videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3Rrk6lgi24
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9_hqGsnpp8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUdZn5v5sEU
Look at this one where they copy/paste the same exact NPC over 20 times in like a 40 foot radius.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJIsdl4BL2Q
All the environments are completely linear, every ‘planet’ is a hallway. Mobs just stand or sit there lifelessly waiting for you to kill them. There are barely any critters and the few there are don’t even move but just sit there painted into the landscape. There’s no swimming, no sitting in chairs, no chat bubbles, barely any emotes, no combat log, raids are completely bugged and some bosses don’t even drop loot, PvP is broken and wins in some warzones don’t even count, the UI has ability delay where you can continuously press to use a spell and it doesn’t respond at all, every race uses the same exact body and most of the same facial features, I mean the problems just go on and on…
Investors should be financing innovative games, not cookie-cutter outsourced garbage. SWTOR is an abject disaster that should not be tolerated by any self-respecting gamer.
Actually it DOES make sense for the mmo community to wish for SWTOR to fail. SWTOR failing is probably the BEST thing that could happen to the genre. It will demonstrate that even throwing a ton of money and a huge IP into the same tired formula isnt what the genre needs and isnt what makes an MMO successful.
SWTOR is a seriously bad game even though I know SW fans and apologists that love the IP do everything they can to try and make excuses for it.(its just came out give it time, WoW didnt have that at launch. blah blah blah they arent competing with WoW in 2004 they are competing with WoW in 2012 I dont understand why fanbois cant understand this)
But, comparatively it was a serious regression for the genre when it was supposed to be progressive. Not only that but Bioware used PR and spin to try and make it seem like they did the backwards things they did on purpose, when in actuality the game is just bad and they know it. Which is why they pretty much ignored all the feedback from testers during the beta. No point in feedback when we cant fix most of the mechanical issues anyway. Its fairly obvious BW was in over their heads and being unable to really produce quality with the tools they were forcibly giving (hero engine, outsourced labor) they just shoved SWTOR out the door for the money grab like they were instructed to by EA(“hey it says Star Wars all the nerds will buy and love it no matter how bad it is”) so they could continue on with their real projects like ME3.
Have you played the ME3 MP demo? Compare the quality of that product to SWTOR and tell me with a straight face you dont see a difference.
If SWTOR fails, maybe developers will stop being allowed to produce half-baked, terribly coded WoW clones over and over. Maybe they will actually be forced to bring some innovation to the genre?
Probably not since SWTOR is just another in list of clones trying to out-WoW WoW and failed miserably.
If SWToR failing causes MMOs to fail then… maybe they should fail. I love MMOs, they are my favorite genre, but they can’t just keep spilling out the same formula and expecting people to buy it. If SWToR doesn’t fail then I think the genre has failed, whether it continues being profitable or not.
Nah, i really hope that SWTOR will fail.
Is it going to affect the game industry ? Sure !!!
It will show to anyone that famous settings+ a lot of advertising + a ocean of hype is not equal to good game.
As if we remove the hype and the “Star Wars” part, we will receive poorly coded, unbalanced pvp wise and plain boring pve wise, based in space WoW cloning.
So yeah, yet again, if SWTOR fails ( sadly, it won’t ) it will do a great favor to the whole gaming industry.
i agree wwith rezil.
the game is crap,… wishing and hoping isnt going ot make it better,…
the only way to show them that the hype and tootiing of their own horns doesnt make a mmo is to not pay for it.
I normally skip reading reply’s to posts, but I just wanted to say that this is the most respectful set of comments/replies and that I’ve ever read on a game website – AND they contain good, valid points and information.
Cheers to you all,
whether in SWTOR still or not,
The force will be with you, always
***at least the earlier comments, faith in the internet vanishes again
I disagree completely with your article.
If SWTOR fails, it will be good for the genre. Investors will stop backing MMOs that primarily target the casual demographic.
SWTOR being a mass success would only lead people to believe that the only way to be successful is to focus on Story and leveling as opposed to game-play and challenge.
There are enough successful MMOs out there like Rift and that prove the genre can be successful even with WoW around.
I, for one, hope SWTOR fails for this reason. Yes, I understand the need for competition but SWTOR is not really competition for WoW even if it was successful given the different type of player it reaches out to. SWTOR focuses on casual Star Wars fans and is becoming a niche product. It belongs as such since it is a piece of shit and letting a garbage pompous developer like BioWare prevail but dumping shit into the genre causes nothing but an unneeded change in development goals.
SWTOR should fail and it should fail hard. Again, it is another Star Wars product riding hard on the success of the movies. I spent US$ 200 on this game. I bought the Collector’s Edition. Had it flown half way around the globe. To have my install disks fail – I had to do un-archive files using own initiative. No friends to copy from. Then, I log on. Or at least try to. What was not apparent is that the files were being updated – this information display was only added weeks later. 16 GB update!! Took 5 evenings. Not for lack of speed on part of my connection – no a max of 155 kB/s off their servers. I complained because I am a whiner. I have spent close on a week trying to get your game to work – refund me at least one day playing time! “Sorry – fuck off – not our policy”.
Finally we enter the game. Tadaa, classic Star Wars intro. Then the suck begins. I started with a Jedi Guardian. Slow as shit covering map space (other classes get faster movement instantly), a story line as thin as sugar glass, repeat use of the the environment, predictable solo combat (3-4 enemies nearly always), no support in running instances cause the server is empty (had average level of people when I joined most which left soon after), game play which apparently only starts at lvl 50, the Guardian the worst PvP class in the game – making a joke of the entire history of the Jedi order, unbalanced PvP teams, lack of crafting materials and a weak crafting system, piss poor item drops – u see a blue item once in a year you throw a party, repetitive item drops – how many pairs of useless boots you want – etc. etc. etc.
The point is this: you sell me a piece of shit car, I will not buy another from you. You sell me a piece of shit toaster, I will not buy another from you. Sony fucked up Star Wars Online Mk1. Did they learn from Sony’s mistakes? No. Game-play comes second to voice acting. Now, Jedi and Sith are outclassed by other non-force using classes. Every class has a type of stun and repel, making Force Use a joke. The poorest tank in the game is the Jedi Guardian. *But remember, it is a team game – u need a dedicated healer attached to you!* Oh! Really. Well, in 1.2 they just nerved the healers to fuck and gone so much so that they struggle to keep themselves alive!
The point is this: you can shine a turd. Inside its still a turd.