SWTOR Trainwreck continues...F2P by end of year

[Warborn]

I played this game because I am dumb. Played for about a month. I made an Agent. The story was cool. Everything else was hilariously bad. How stupid do they have to be to not have a group finder at release? Did they never play WoW? Do these obtuse people purposefully avoid doing things that were dramatic hits in the most popular MMO of all time out of spite or something?

Anyway, bad game. Inshallah, this will be the last game with tanks and healers and DPS classes I ever am stupid enough to play. Good god is that gameplay paradigm ever played out. It was boring and shitty in EverQuest 1, and it's boring and shitty in SWTOR.

[ChipMHazard]

This probably signifies the end of AAA mmo's with a monthly subscription, or at the very least is going to make such understakings more far more unlikely.

Can't say that I agree that it's a terrible game. It was launched too soon, it should have launched with the 1.2 patch content. Far too many important features missing at launch. It also couldn't compete with WoW and it's years of content, why pay the same for less?
Also focusing so much on story obviously wasn't a great idea when taking into account you have to make more content after release.

Also there's no proof that they spent $500 million, just speculation.

[SeanNewBoy]

Actually f2p is the new upcoming standard, you make more money. It's the same reason checkout aisles of supermarkets have all that small stuff. So far all the subscription games that were doing ok and went f2p correctly increased revenue by large margins.F2p does not = failure. Planetside 2 is gonna make way more money than if they had gone subscription.

Basically all games in the future will use the hybrid model, subscriptions for those that want the perks and f2p for the rest. Which is what SWTOR is going to do. Its a win/win.

[DirtyBird]

Should have been F2P from the get go.
I played it as long as possible and that was only a few months.
Just ran out of stuff to do.

[Canaris]

Most of the BW shot caller dev's lived in an Ivory tower when it came to TOR, I got sick of being told that everything that was broken in the game was "Working as intended"

That would make a fine Epitaph for it

Here Lies Star Wars The Old Republic
"Working as Intended"

[Graywolves]

Most expensive single player game I've ever touched.

[Sunrock]

Originally Posted by ziegler

So yeah, SWTOR is to go down in the history books are one of the most expensive to make and quickest to fail. I'm sure it wasnt easy making a 500 million dollar debacle, but EA/BW came through with like the champs they are.

SWTOR did cost under 100 million. At least that what they sad at the EA conference call when the game was released. It did not cost 300 like that fired employee sad and defiantly not 500 million.

And SWTOR had 970k subscribers when they made the desition to go F2P. The major reason is that 40% of those that quit playing stated that they would come back if the game went F2P.

But dropping from 1.7 million to just under a million show that they had a really hard time keeping players.

I think SWTOR was a really good game when it came to the lv 1-50 content. But post end game content was very shallow. After you hit lv 50, that in it self does not take many days, you can easily go and get all the best PvE equipment in a 3-4 weeks. The same amount of time with PvP too depending how good you are.

So after 3 months of playing you can easily have 2-3 lv 50 characters with the best gear in the game. So it's not a chock that after 6 months many have quit the game out of boredom.

Originally Posted by Warborn

I played this game because I am dumb. Played for about a month. I made an Agent. The story was cool. Everything else was hilariously bad. How stupid do they have to be to not have a group finder at release? Did they never play WoW? Do these obtuse people purposefully avoid doing things that were dramatic hits in the most popular MMO of all time out of spite or something?

Anyway, bad game. Inshallah, this will be the last game with tanks and healers and DPS classes I ever am stupid enough to play. Good god is that gameplay paradigm ever played out. It was boring and shitty in EverQuest 1, and it's boring and shitty in SWTOR.

I have played MMORPGs for 13 years and never played a game with a group finder, jet I have never had any problem what so ever to find a group for anything.

I have usually quit the game and started to play a new MMO before they introduced a group finder.

[Warborn]

Originally Posted by Sunrock

I have played MMORPGs for 13 years and never played a game with a group finder, jet I have never had any problem what so ever to find a group for anything.

I have usually quit the game and started to play a new MMO before they introduced a group finder.

So maybe you should play an MMORPG with a group finder so that you can understand why it is so fucking stupid for an MMO to come out these days without such a system already in place.

[raw]

who cares

you also enable those games by talking about them

[Sunrock]

Originally Posted by Warborn

So maybe you should play an MMORPG with a group finder so that you can understand why it is so fucking stupid for an MMO to come out these days without such a system already in place.

TBH I only see group finders as a handicap tool for socially handicapped players that can't make friends. Or maybe for casual players that don't know anyone else that playing the game, as they "don't have time" to make friends in the game.

[Warborn]

Originally Posted by Sunrock

TBH I only see group finders as a handicap tool for socially handicapped players that can't make friends. Or maybe for casual players that don't know anyone else that playing the game, as they "don't have time" to make friends in the game.

And so you always have so many friends in every game you play that you can do whatever group content you want without ever having to find people outside your group of friends? Well, for the rest of us who don't belong to a professional South Korean MMORPG team, being able to have a UI function to look across the entire game for people also searching for the content you are and match you up automatically is a dream come true.

[wormywyrm]

Warning I am an SWG vet

I called this would go F2P within 6-12months after release 6months before it was released. It was so obvious this game was made for such a life cycle. EA is more interested in getting fast returns than having a game with longevity. They chose to go with features in SWTOR that reflect this... A lot of single player-ish content, PvE, 'story', voice overs, etc. Very little community building, economy, player created content, and the other things that make MMORPGs life-suckingly immersive and retain players long-term.

It was their strategy from the start so I would not even say the game failed, but it certainly is a terrible game IMO.

Maybe after SWTOR gets shut down someone at SOE will grow the balls to leak the SWG server code

[ziegler]

Originally Posted by Sunrock

SWTOR did cost under 100 million. At least that what they sad at the EA conference call when the game was released. It did not cost 300 like that fired employee sad and defiantly not 500 million.

And SWTOR had 970k subscribers when they made the desition to go F2P. The major reason is that 40% of those that quit playing stated that they would come back if the game went F2P.

But dropping from 1.7 million to just under a million show that they had a really hard time keeping players.

I think SWTOR was a really good game when it came to the lv 1-50 content. But post end game content was very shallow. After you hit lv 50, that in it self does not take many days, you can easily go and get all the best PvE equipment in a 3-4 weeks. The same amount of time with PvP too depending how good you are.

So after 3 months of playing you can easily have 2-3 lv 50 characters with the best gear in the game. So it's not a chock that after 6 months many have quit the game out of boredom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wa...e_Old_Republic

Officially between 150 and 200 million and since I know how underhanded EA can be and how far down the scale BW has slid with DA and now SWTOR.

No lie, I had alredy canceled my account and was waiting for the sub to expire, when I got an email that they were extending my sub 30 days.......then low and behold...they announce how many "active" subscriptions they had to the shareholders meeting, and I am sure they were counting mine as one of those even though I hadnt logged for over a month.

As to total cost, we'll never know for sure, as they wont tell us, but I wager it's closer to 300 million or 500 even considering I couldnt hardly go anywhere on the net without seeing a banner advert for SWTOR or even change channel on the TV without seeing it once or twice an evening.

Bioware set in an ivory tower and illicited very little input from the community on what they wanted to see in a starwars MMO. I knew it wasnt going to be good when someone brought up in the first couple of days of the forums going live and asking about Bounty Hunters or Crafting and mentioned SWG and the Dev response was pretty much...if you want anything like SWG you're in the wrong place. At least he was right about that. As I can bet there wont be anybody looking to crack the SWTOR server code 10 years after it launched.

Also, I cant say that this wasnt actually wanted or planned by EA/BW since one of their Execs gave a GDC speech in 2010? about F2P and it being such a great thing and it's the model they wanted to follow....and of course the following shitstorm on the SWTOR forums about it and them saying...Oh NO!!!...we didnt mean SWTOR, it's always going to be a sub based game.....yeah.....right.

Face it, if there was a evil emperor of Game companies, EA would be it.