SWTOR

[Lucas]

Finally, damnit! 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/05/04/swtor-testing-begins-in-europe/

You live in Europe and (like me) you haven't received any mail? Don't panic! :P

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6296113#edit6296113

[Malakili]

  I want games to be good enough to make me want to stay involved with them.

This is how i feel as well, with games in general, but especially MMOs.  Stay involved is a good way to put it too.  For example: Even during those times I haven't been subbed to WoW over the years, I've kept up with it (this is partly due to the people also of course).  Longevity matters to me.

[Paelos]

Yeah, this is a silly argument that comes up again and again. If you invest money in something, the measure of success is simply this - have I got a return on my investment, and have I got a return which is as good or better than if I had invested it elsewhere? (Which doesn't have to mean an alternative MMO, just any other place you could realistically have put your money).

To put it another way, if I buy shares then I judge whether my investment was a success based on whether I've made a profit and whether I've made more of a profit than if I'd bought different shares. I don't judge it based on a fantasy world where I go back in time and buy a share of Google in 1998, or, indeed, in Blizzard when they began work on WoW around 2001.

Pretty much. You look at your porfolio and see if it outpaced the total market. That goes for both gains and losses though.

[DLRiley]

Of Murgos half a dozen only Guild Wars reached its potential market wise.

Keep moving the goal posts.

A profit is a profit.  You don't have to make a billion a year to be successful.

I'm not moving the goal post the cost of software development is.

[Amaron]

They might feel that way, but will it actually hold their attention? 

Is a few months holding attention?   I was just suggesting a very great amount of people will pick it up and suck up all the release content for 2~3 months specifically because it's got pew pew lasers instead of elves.   It's a great hook and that's worth remembering when trying to guess how well the game will do.   Nothing breeds contempt like familiarity.

[Lantyssa]

Any MMO with semi-decent production values and marketing will do that, though.

[Amaron]

Any MMO with semi-decent production values and marketing will do that, though.

Hogwash.   People get in those games and decide they don't like them in a matter of hours or even minutes if there's no good hook to keep them playing.

[Tannhauser]

Rift has me fairly hooked.  But I'm not 50 yet.  I'm fairly invested in crafting, artifact hunting, and tinkering with souls.  Also some faction grinding which is more appealing to me than in WoW, where I avoided it.

I THINK SWTOR might have some stickiness for me due to the different storylines.  I just can't get excited about it though, I think SWG has prejudiced me against it.  Or am I getting tired of SW in general?

[Venkman]

Of Murgos half a dozen only Guild Wars reached its potential market wise.

Keep moving the goal posts.

A profit is a profit.  You don't have to make a billion a year to be successful.

If this was <generic fantasy IP> from <otherwise unknown developer> published by <just formed to publish an MMO>, yea. The major elements of this title (studio, budget, IP) were not aligned for for "we're doing fine and don't compare ourselves to anyone". They're shooting for #1, and that means way more than a billion a year in eventual profit.

[UnSub]

TOR only has to sell 2 million copies. While that sounds massive, given the Bioware stamp and the IP, as well as the polish level likely to be applied, I have a hard time seeing Rift outselling TOR, yeah?

Retention and its impact is another story, but I don't think the massive development costs will bite Bioware on this one. I mean, who here is not planning on buying TOR because the game should easily deliver enough content to be worth the box purchase? Even mediocre modern mmos have been doing that.

2 million sales for what? Cataclysm sells 5 million copies in the first month, while Mass Effect 2 sold about 2 million in the first month as well. I've got no doubt that SWOR can sell 2 - 3 million at launch (with probably 3 different collector's editions and launch day DLC), but for a MMO to be successful (from a development viewpoint) retention is the key.

Also, here is the wrong place to ask if people are going to buy SWOR. The true market for SWOR isn't old and jaded MMO players - it's the 6 million or so Western players who play WoW, and the group of people who haven't yet played a MMO before.

As for profit, there is a massive difference between 'made a profit' and 'made the target profit that means we don't have to start firing people to claw back costs'. As the story goes, Vanguard makes a profit, but it does so by having no development work and only a few servers.

[Lakov_Sanite]

There's a difference between being hooked on a game and a game having a hook. Being hooked could be anyone who just wants something to do in their offtime, like artifact collecting and the game suits that particular need for the moment.

A hook is stickiness, it's what makes you identify with a game and really like it. Any good game you can be hooked on but great games all have a hook.

[Lantyssa]

Any MMO with semi-decent production values and marketing will do that, though.

Hogwash.   People get in those games and decide they don't like them in a matter of hours or even minutes if there's no good hook to keep them playing.

WAR.  AoC.  RIFT.  WoW (expansion 1, 2, 3).

The lowest seller in that list was 800k in the first month.  Populations were fine in all of them for a short while.  Long term they each will tell a different story, but it's not hogwash in any shape or form.  And the production values in two of those were utter shite.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Any MMO with semi-decent production values and marketing will do that, though.

Hogwash.   People get in those games and decide they don't like them in a matter of hours or even minutes if there's no good hook to keep them playing.

WAR.  AoC.  RIFT.  WoW (expansion 1, 2, 3).

The lowest seller in that list was 800k in the first month.  Populations were fine in all of them for a short while.  Long term they each will tell a different story, but it's not hogwash in any shape or form.  And the production values in two of those were utter shite.

When you get a game with a free month, you want to get your money's worth but his statement is pretty accurate, you'll know very soon if you're going to resub or not.

[Sky]

2 million sales for what?

Sorry, derp moment. I was thinking 2M x $50. Woops. Still, I think the box prices plus initial retention should put Bioware in a good place.

[Furiously]

2 million sales for what?

Sorry, derp moment. I was thinking 2M x $50. Woops. Still, I think the box prices plus initial retention should put Bioware in a good place.

I dunno... I think people are more reluctant currently to just buy on day one. With social media so widespread, there is no reason to take the risk. Just wait for a facebook friend to say it sucks.

[Amaron]

Any MMO with semi-decent production values and marketing will do that, though.

....

WAR.  AoC.  RIFT.  WoW (expansion 1, 2, 3).

I wasn't thinking along those lines when you said semi-decent.   You seem to be talking about initial box sales though.   In which case I'll just readily agree with your argument as I wasn't talking about box sales at all.

[Murgos]

If this was <generic fantasy IP> from <otherwise unknown developer> published by <just formed to publish an MMO>, yea. The major elements of this title (studio, budget, IP) were not aligned for for "we're doing fine and don't compare ourselves to anyone". They're shooting for #1, and that means way more than a billion a year in eventual profit.

This makes no sense.  If SW:TOR is profitable then they will be happy.

Saying that someone has to make 3 or 4x their initial investment PER YEAR over and above operating costs to be simply satisfied is pretty much asinine.

[DLRiley]

Someone give you there multi-billion dollar IP that is part of the geek lexicon of most of the civilized world and you resort to savagely reducing your post development team in order to see a profit and see how long you keep your job.

[Typhon]

I don't know where you get this shit from.  Look at it from Lucas' perspective, and perform an honest business analysis on the MMO market. 

IP: The IP is just sitting on the shelf, it needs to be developed to stay relevant.  It's going to be in some game, they went with Bioware and story-driven this time around.  Whatever, the devil is in the implementation.

MMO market: WoW is the only subscription game with large numbers in the US (where the money is).  By this point any non-stupid business person should be looking at WoW as an anomoly.  I think they are probably looking at AoC - it was a great game and had great retention for the first 20 levels.  Make a game that is like AoC for all it's levels and you'll do well.  Pay no attention to the operating and continuing development costs of such a game.

If TOR sells 2M and has 20% retention for a year they'll be happy.

[UnSub]

If TOR sells 2M and has 20% retention for a year they'll be happy.

No, EA won't. Their shareholders won't. This is EA's biggest project ever. It has a huge budget and will likely have a marketing budget that is going to be massive as well. If it kinda sort limps along, a lot of blame is going to be thrown around. A big problem is that the 20% retention rate (so: 400k players) arguably catapults SWOR into the #2 spot in the Western subscription market, but still not be enough to hit EA's expectations or pay back the development budget.

This is EA's best shot at taking on WoW, which is exactly what the motivation is behind SWOR. EA wants a huge MMO that earns them something like US$1b a year and has well over 1m players. They are spending too much money on it for EA not to expect massive returns.

And how can you "pay no attention to the operating and continuing development costs" of a MMO? If they wanted to do that, they should have made SWOR a single player title. Also, if you consider WoW the anomaly, you'd be looking at a hell of a lot of crash-and-burned wrecks of recent MMOs and decide that it probably isn't worth developing a AAA subscription-based MMO, then look at building a cheap F2P title.

From a player point of view, all SWOR needs to be is fun. From a business point of view, it's got to make fat cash and lots of it for years to come.

[Amaron]

If this was <generic fantasy IP> from <otherwise unknown developer> published by <just formed to publish an MMO>, yea. The major elements of this title (studio, budget, IP) were not aligned for for "we're doing fine and don't compare ourselves to anyone". They're shooting for #1, and that means way more than a billion a year in eventual profit.

It's pretty obvious they're shooting for making fat sacks of cash.   Not sure where you got some crazy idea that they care about anything but that.    

Also WoW barely clears 1 billion revenue (not profit) according to Activision financial reports.   That means to be #1 they don't even have to get near a billion because getting to #1 would mean stealing a substantial amount of WoW's customers.

[Lakov_Sanite]

By this point any non-stupid business person should be looking at WoW as an anomoly.

And this is exactly why so many mmo's fall short lately. Wow Isn't an anomaly, it's just a well made game that was great fun...so far we've had maybe one mmo that was well made?  It's not really rocket science, if you make an mmo as god as wow, it'll do very well but so far no one really has.  Now if you mean it an anomaly in that no one else seems capable of making a product to that standard, then maybe you're right.

[Cadaverine]

If there's any anomaly surrounding WoW, it's the way that the game has brought in the non-MMO crowd, which is something none of MMO's to come out after WoW have been able to replicate.  Certainly not to any noticeable level.

[Sky]

.so far we've had maybe one mmo that was well made?  It's not really rocket science, if you make an mmo as god as wow, it'll do very well but so far no one really has.  Now if you mean it an anomaly in that no one else seems capable of making a product to that standard, then maybe you're right.

I completely disagree with this. The only thing WoW has done better than other titles is deliver a polished product with shitty graphics that will run on Aunt May's laptop.

EQ2 was in many ways a superior mmo...if you had the pc to run it. And folks seem to like GW, which is f2p. Why didn't that dominate the market? Because WoW is an anomaly, you can't account for it or plan for it. Period. You can only make a solid game that can recoup the investment and generate enough ongoing revenue to fund further development. Look at the sheer amount of content, most of it decent, that EQ2 released vs WoW's three. If anything, Blizzard has squandered the success of WoW by not improving it enough or putting much into content, comparatively.

[Malakili]

There are definitely a few well made MMOs out there.  Granted, well made doesn't immediately mean WoW-like popular.    The problem is being well made isn't enough by itself.  Its necessary, but not enough.  It needs to be well made, have a good bug-free/stable launch that doesn't drive people away (this is more important than it used to, because there are other viable things that work well NOW, and people aren't generally going to stick around until you get it right like they used to ), you need to get enough of a population that the friends/relationships in the game keep people going through the times when they are burnt out/bored (arguably poorly defined by me here), things like robust guild systems, friends lists, etc help this along as well as the possibility of doing stuff with your friends when you want to. 

Its possible that SWTOR will do these things, but it doesn't strike me as having a particularly better chance at it than say, WAR, Aion or Rift.

[Sky]

You left out 'able to run on Aunt May's laptop'. Because that's really a big part of it.

It's particularly frustrating for me to watch each new promising mmo move to ape WoW, since I don't like WoW.

[Rendakor]

Even EQ2 moved heavily to mimic WoW post-launch.

[Nebu]

It's particularly frustrating for me to watch each new promising mmo move to ape WoW, since I don't like WoW.

I'm with you 100%  I also don't see this changing any time soon.  MMO's have become online amusement park rides.  I always preferred more of a sandbox, which is probably why I am continually disappointed by new MMOs.  Still, I seem to enjoy them more than single player games. 

[Simond]

By this point any non-stupid business person should be looking at WoW as an anomoly.

And this is exactly why so many mmo's fall short lately. Wow Isn't an anomaly, it's just a well made game that was great fun...so far we've had maybe one mmo that was well made?  It's not really rocket science, if you make an mmo as god as wow, it'll do very well but so far no one really has.  Now if you mean it an anomaly in that no one else seems capable of making a product to that standard, then maybe you're right.

Rift.

Oh look, your argument is invalid.

[Malakili]

By this point any non-stupid business person should be looking at WoW as an anomoly.

And this is exactly why so many mmo's fall short lately. Wow Isn't an anomaly, it's just a well made game that was great fun...so far we've had maybe one mmo that was well made?  It's not really rocket science, if you make an mmo as god as wow, it'll do very well but so far no one really has.  Now if you mean it an anomaly in that no one else seems capable of making a product to that standard, then maybe you're right.

Rift.

Oh look, your argument is invalid.

Yes and No.  I think the problem is that being *as good* as WoW isn't enough to beat WoW.  WoW took the market by storm because it was a LOT better than everything else out there, at least as far as most people were concerned.  Now that people are so well established in WoW, you aren't going to get them to quit by just being as good.  I'm not sure what a new MMO that was as better compared to WoW, as WoW was to EQ or something else of that era would look like. (Yes, I know lots of people will say, oh EQ heyday of MMOs, whatever, not the argument I want to have).  In this sense, wow is sort of an anomaly, but not neither was it JUST a random occurence.

Twisting this back to SWTOR, I feel like they are going to have to more than just give people WoW with lightsabers, and the story may or may not provide that for most people.   It seems that story is going to make or beak it, since its really their only unique feature as near as I can tell.  Longevity is what concerns me insofar as making it a successful MMO.  It might be a successful/good game, and if so, thats probably good enough to justify a lot of us buying it for a least the month out of the box.  Even if that makes us happy, it obviously isn't what Bioware is shooting for.

[Outlawedprod]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/05/05/hands-on-star-wars-the-old-republic-pvp/

[Malakili]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/05/05/hands-on-star-wars-the-old-republic-pvp/

A couple things stuck out to me:

When playing The Old Republic it’s often hard to shake the feeling that it’s an MMO against its own will.

Maybe this has been beaten to death in the last 100 pages of this thread, but I can't help but get the same impression by just looking at the game.   Point to my bit about longevity 2 posts up.

The major issue for me is how awkwardly it fits into a game that was obviously intended to focus on PvE. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the feeling that anything that deviates from BioWare’s vision of a story-led MMO has been focus-tested into existence. They’re making a game that’s about Y, but their testers were expecting it to have X, like every other MMO. Instead of sticking to their guns and saying, “Actually, we think you’re going to love Y if you stay with it,” what we’re getting instead is all the potential of Y interrupted by the inevitability of X. An attempt to keep everyone happy.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.  On the one hand, I really feel like that unless they do add in a lot of options to keep people happy, they are in a bad spot.  But I also feel like forcing in "traditional" MMO types of things into a game that wasn't conceived of them will probably lead to a mediocre experience as well.  I suppose this game is forging some new ground in that respect though.  Its challenging, on some level, exactly what an MMO has to be, and it could pay off if most people (unlike me and some others around here) don't have any real interest in the bigger world MMO model (even as represented in something like a WoW theme park MMO).

What they are talking about reminds me as much of Brink as anything else I've seen lately.  The Brink developers are touting that you can create your character, bring it into the single player game and play through that, take the same character into a co-op mode v. AI, or player multiplayer PvP matches.  Thats a 50 dollar first person shooter out of the box with no monthly fee, but it sounds as MMO-Like as SWTOR to me.

[Paelos]

Hey, WoW shoehorned pvp into their game. That's been a romping success.

[Outlawedprod]

Wow successfully shoehorned it since there is a thriving community around it. Will be interesting to see if these guys can.

Personally I think the most important factor to SWTOR retaining subscribers will be the timeframe Diablo 3 launches at.  If it comes out within 1-2 months of SWTOR it could really put a hurt on the game.

[Lantyssa]

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/05/05/hands-on-star-wars-the-old-republic-pvp/

At least it let me know I could have a purple lightsaber...