Predictions: 1m+ players 3 days out; how about in January 2013?

[Lantyssa]

Lot of writing and voice work on the hopes that you're using that particular companion in any given conversation/arc. I didn't get a mission from any companion other than Mako, because it just didn't make any sense to have anyone but Mako along with me.

I mean big arcs specifically involving those companions.  (Maybe it changes?  So far I've had a handful of tiny little 30-second dialogs with crew members.)  Balance the arcs to take into consideration that it might be a non-optimal pairing.

More ME2 loyalty quests is the best example I can think of right now.  It's their arc, so their dialog will be used.

[Merusk]

Not just big arcs, but even class story arcs.  On your ship you'll /occasionally/ gather everyone around for a holoterminal or intercom conversation.  Even there the majority of comps only get one-liners or riffs.    No reason there couldn't be more dialogue there or import of the comps into cutscenes in class instance areas.   Would certainly make it nicer for +/- companion gains to have them around in those occasions.

[Rendakor]

There are actually quests for the companions, they're just tied to affection levels. After getting Vette to a certain level (around 3000ish) one of her 30s dialog clips ended with offering me a quest, which involved us tracking down some item from her past. I won't go into detail but it seems to be what you guys are looking for; they exist, they're just tied to high affection levels and probably character level or story progress (since quests don't scale in level, you must be this tall before they are offered).

[Hayduke]

I don't think it has much to do with writing that makes the Empire more appealing, it's mostly aesthetics.  They get the better skins for zabraks and twi'leks.  They get chiss and purebloods who are pretty distinctive looking.  Republic gets blind humans, and a race of people who wear baby food.  Plus the armor just looks better on Empire.

Honestly I don't know how the side that's supposed to be all egalitarian and progressive at least in theory got all the dull aliens.  But the side that's run by xenophobic racists got all the cool aliens.

[Fordel]

The Republic has Troopers, therefore they win!

[01101010]

There are actually quests for the companions, they're just tied to affection levels. After getting Vette to a certain level (around 3000ish) one of her 30s dialog clips ended with offering me a quest, which involved us tracking down some item from her past. I won't go into detail but it seems to be what you guys are looking for; they exist, they're just tied to high affection levels and probably character level or story progress (since quests don't scale in level, you must be this tall before they are offered).

I'd like to know who exactly gives these quests. I max'd out Nadia, Qyzen, and Lt.Dan and only Qyzen had a quest that involved me going with him to a place to do something. The other characters, BigZ included, say they need to go do something and I think... sweet, a quest with my companion - only to have the screen go dark and pop back to finish the cut scene with: hey I am back from what I said I had to do and here is how it went. Meh...

Though Qyzen's questline is pretty nice for a companion I am not big on having around anymore.

[Rendakor]

Vette's the only one I've had one for. Quinn has done what you mention where he seems to be about to offer one, then he reports on the details after a fadeout.

[Reg]

They're all attached to your story progress too. As soon as I hit Chapter Two Vette wanted to talk to me like six times in a row after she'd been stubbornly silent for ages.

[rattran]

I leveled bh to 50, finished the class story, and got Blizz to max affection (damn early) Sure, mako gave me a story arc to do, Blizz did a fadeout and came back, same as Quinn and Jaesa, story done! Looks like only your first companion has any kind of fleshing out or finish. I suspect companion side stories are one of those things on the 'to-do' list still. "You want a real Blizz side story, reroll and check the new one!"

[tmp]

Plus the armor just looks better on Empire.

Hey now, some of the armour on Republic gets as good as it gets.

[Mrbloodworth]

What is that under your droid?

[Paelos]

What is that under your droid?

He isn't shipbroken yet.

[Mrbloodworth]

Im going to go with less than a mill.

Because MMO players are self defeatist. They will spread word of mouth like the plague across the Internets regardless of true severity. They are going to "Shut down" a game they likely enjoy.

Wow like numbers will never happen again. Ever.

[Rokal]

I think a game that de-shitifies MMO combat has the potential to get those numbers again. TERA looks aesthetically awful and Korean MMOs aren't exactly known for being friendly, but I'm still pretty excited to check out the game after seeing a video of the combat. Titan, from what little we know, also sounds like it is going to attempt to do an MMO without the boring combat. If SWTOR had the type of combat you see in that video, people would have a good reason to stick around besides the story.

DCUO was a step in the right direction, but that game had a lot of problems keeping it from being a massive success.

[ajax34i]

What is that under your droid?

T7 droids lower that thing from their underbelly periodically, and then spin on it.  It's supposed to be attached to their body, unlike in that screenshot.  I think it's supposed to be a hydraulic jack; the droid's 3 wheels are actually fixed and it can't rotate (or steer).  Not sure whose idea at Bioware it was to have the T7 spin on its droid-part.

[Mrbloodworth]

I think a game that de-shitifies MMO combat has the potential to get those numbers again. TERA looks aesthetically awful and Korean MMOs aren't exactly known for being friendly, but I'm still pretty excited to check out the game after seeing a video of the combat. Titan, from what little we know, also sounds like it is going to attempt to do an MMO without the boring combat. If SWTOR had the type of combat you see in that video, people would have a good reason to stick around besides the story.

DCUO was a step in the right direction, but that game had a lot of problems keeping it from being a massive success.

Nope. I am now convinced MMO players are just shitty people that take more joy in shitting on what they enjoy.

[Simond]

Are you actually playing the game in a guild with other people? I am starting to suspect no.

This game doesn't even have a release date, so no.

So you're another one of those people who didn't play the game at all, but came into a subforum to complain about it?

Out of interest, are you still posting in the WoW subforum?

[Paelos]

Out of interest, are you still posting in the WoW subforum?

Not really. I made a post saying I liked the look of Challenge modes a couple days ago from MMO Champion.

Then again, almost nobody is posting there anymore...

[luckton]

WoW will (maybe) pick up again once more Kung Fu Panda stuff comes out.  New stuff, not just MMO Champ rehashed "because we need something to talk about to keep the site viable" bullshit.

[Rokal]

Why "MMO players" shit all over every MMO that comes out doesn't actually have much to do with whether another MMO will ever reach the subscription highs that WoW reached. As someone pointed out in the old giant SWTOR thread, people were shitting over WoW on these forums when it launched as well. WoW's numbers were high because of how they counted the Asian market as subscribers (where a player paying for 4 hours of subscription time at an internet cafe was counted as a 'monthly subscriber'), and because the game appealed to people that were not already "MMO players".

The next logical step in attracting non-MMO players is making another polished, large-scale MMO (like SWTOR) where the basic gameplay isn't awful. You shouldn't have to overlook the core gameplay to appreciate what everyone defines as the 'good' parts of the game. Nobody is raving about how great the combat is in SWTOR because it's pretty terrible, but it's par for the course for "MMO players". The guy/girl playing Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed? They're not going to bother playing an MMO unless the gameplay improves, or if they're drawn in by friends or the IP they might be willing to overlook it for a couple months. Bioware learned this lesson from ME1 to ME2, but they were too focused on copying WoW's success (without really understanding why WoW was successful in 2004, and why it wouldn't be today) to apply it to SWTOR.

[Paelos]

No MMOG will escalate to the next level until it stops being about buttonmashing combat.

[Sjofn]

Plus the armor just looks better on Empire.

Wow, I could not possibly disagree more. My main issue with the Empire visually is 90% of their armor looks stupid and/or assy.

[Nebu]

Wow, I could not possibly disagree more. My main issue with the Empire visually is 90% of their armor looks stupid and/or assy.

Or as I like to say, it looks like WoW armor.  I'm enjoying my Republic toon far more than Empire.

[Redgiant]

In one year, 150-200k subs.

Losses will be steeper if a good MMO comes along that is style #1 below, and those player types migrate to it.

Steeper yet if that new game is fantasy-based, drawing off the I'll-try-SW-since-its-famous-but-I-normally-play-fantasy-games folks.

------------------------------

1. An MMO where players drive the content builds over time on community and interactions. Every login is different because players aren't static in how they interact (eg DAoC RvR). You need to interact with others a lot to enjoy the full dynamic of the game. Danger, exploration, cooperation are only as intense as the players want to bother making it.

2. An MMO where content drives the players starts shiny and ends in static boredom. Expansions delay but can't stop the inevitable decline. You don't need to interact with anyone and only new content is interesting. Rinse repeat becomes the dominant feeling.


MMOs in recent years have trended to the latter, and hence have had more A.D.D. than the MMOs a decade back. It is easier to leave a game behind when there is no bond or commitment to other players involved, and it's just the pixels staring at you. I'd refer to them as both beautiful and soulless.


SWTOR is the latter for me, and for "new content" they expect to tout the replayable-on-different-classes angle since they sunk so much money into that. It's a single-player RPG with some excursions grouped with strangers you won't talk to again on planets acting like a lobby. I played until 32 and 28, and unless there's something I'm missing about the levels beyond that I'm already bored and not logging in much at all.


I actually like the leveling detail and story aspects, but I don't see anything ressembling the former style that I as a MMO player want to see when leveling is done for long-term capturing of my interest and time. I find myself hitting <space> as fast as I can on dialogs now, and its not like that feeling resets along with your rolling of an alt.

[tmp]

What is that under your droid?

A restraint bolt; i hope.

[Riggswolfe]

In one year, 150-200k subs.

Losses will be steeper if a good MMO comes along that is style #1 below, and those player types migrate to it.

My problem with your prediction is that it seems to be based on pvp/open world mmos are inherently better and more attractive to the playerbase. Assuming I am interpreting #1 correctly. The problem with that is that it's just not reality. If TOR does dip as low as you're saying it'll be for other reasons.

[Lakov_Sanite]

A friend just bought this for me to play with her. Never have I jumped through so many hoops to download a game and seriously....I just gave you $60 and I have to download 25gigs at 30k/second?

[Fabricated]

A friend just bought this for me to play with her. Never have I jumped through so many hoops to download a game and seriously....I just gave you $60 and I have to download 25gigs at 30k/second?

Weird. When I first pre-loaded the game I was getting something like 3MB a second.

[Ingmar]

I patched at something like that speed this morning. Guessing it may have something to do with trying to download on patch night.

[Rendakor]

Today is patch day so there were probably a lot of people hitting the servers. Or, you know, someone exaggerating something on the internet.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Today is patch day so there were probably a lot of people hitting the servers. Or, you know, someone exaggerating something on the internet.

No, staring at it right now. 30-35k a sec.

Edit:I will give it that it maye very well be because of patch day but my comment about registering for the game still stands, it was a pain and a half.

[Venkman]

Lot of writing and voice work on the hopes that you're using that particular companion in any given conversation/arc.

This was not a game they were looking to save voiceacting money on  If by some crazy chance I place this even half as much as UO, I'll not have heard 3/4 of the dialog they recorded. A few extra Story arcs for your companions would be a rounding error.

At the same time, I do count in those story arcs all the dialog with the character before they became your companion. So I don't really see it as an issue.

WoW's numbers were high because of how they counted the Asian market as subscribers (where a player paying for 4 hours of subscription time at an internet cafe was counted as a 'monthly subscriber'), and because the game appealed to people that were not already "MMO players".

No. Even just with US numbers a year after launch, WoW exceeded the global population of everything other MMO that it was compared too (Runescape wasn't really part of that comparison, except in some Powerpoints). EQ1 never got close to 1mm. SWG neither, and that one was the first that some people thought could do it. WoW got to 1mm handily, and that was on a like-by-like subscribers comparison alone. Then their EU numbers grew to the same level. After that, the rest of their global number included "everywhere else". But the markets and sub-license arrangements of questionable equivalency only made up half of the global number, which itself far exceeded the rest.

Otherwise though, you're correct in the intent of the "WoW killer"; however, nobody's going to fund it. WoW got all of the traditional MMO players. The rest of the folks in this umbrella/medium found their niche in some other diku-inspired title like LoTRO or CoX, are on the sidelines waiting for GW2, or are playing something completely different like Eve. There aren't another 12mm gamers out there looking for something just like WoW but aren't playing WoW. They're already off playing other genres, or aren't core gamers at all and giving Zynga all their eyeballs and some money along the way.

tl;dr: SWTOR's audience is WoW.

[FieryBalrog]

1. An MMO where players drive the content builds over time on community and interactions. Every login is different because players aren't static in how they interact (eg DAoC RvR). You need to interact with others a lot to enjoy the full dynamic of the game. Danger, exploration, cooperation are only as intense as the players want to bother making it.

2. An MMO where content drives the players starts shiny and ends in static boredom. Expansions delay but can't stop the inevitable decline. You don't need to interact with anyone and only new content is interesting. Rinse repeat becomes the dominant feeling.

So nice in theory, and yet so completely wrong in reality. People have shied away from dynamic, player driven MMOs in droves because the experience ends up being shit for a large majority of the population. Meanwhile, content driven MMOs have sustained vastly larger playerbases for years and years.

[UnSub]

A dynamic content-based MMO shows clearly to most players that they are insignificant cogs in a much greater wheel.

A static content-based MMO creates the illusion that each individual player is the main show (until they start to PvP that is).

[Merusk]

Heh.. reminds me of Eddie Izzard's bit about invading Russia.