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

[Lakov_Sanite]

"You're stupid for not having fun, I personally find this game awesome" 

My original prediction of 900k subs is seeming a LOT more generous now.

[Nevermore]

"You're stupid for not having fun, I personally find this game awesome" 

My original prediction of 900k subs is seeming a LOT more generous now.

"You're stupid for having fun, I personally find this game terrible" 

Troll.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Never said the game was terrible, never even sad it would be bad. That's kind of my point, any sort of critique is being shut down by the same three-four people. Some complaints may not be valid, some are definitely subjective but the reactions to them are just as subjective. 

[Nevermore]

No, you didn't troll the Q&A thread at all.  The 'critiques' are the same tired complaints being repeated over and over again for months now.  We know you* don't like the game.  Go troll somewhere else now.

*General, all-inclusive 'you'.  As opposed to the specific 'Lakov trolled the Q&A thread' you in the first sentence.

[Sjofn]

My one problem is by the time I hit level 43 on my Op on Belsavis, the story is cool but mobs get harder and it's not as fun especially when I'm full heal.  It's starting to feel like more of a grind and I've been spacebaring the shit out of every quest except my class quest and main planet quest.  The rest is just boring at this point.

Belsavis is just a really shitty planet. Whatever they were going for on that planet just didn't work out right.

Yes, let's put it this way. Until yesterday, I had leveled three people to the low 40's and stalled on Belsavis. The only way I had gotten through it is with Ingmar for company. After several weeks, I have finally clawed my trooper (who I had been leveling really fast prior to that) past that shitty planet. I'd do a handful of quests and then go "fuck this planet" and do something else. It's sort of like Orzammar in DA:O, it just keeps fucking going long past any novelty has worn off.

[Kageru]

Eve 'stories' were created entirely by the players, not by Eve. 

Not entirely. The underlying mechanics of taking and defending space give rise to player driven actions (and stories). Same thing can happen in PvE when there's competition for boss mobs. A similar story will never really happen with illum because it is neutral ground and resets, but this does give a more controllable play experience which big budget games feel they need.

The group who can work out a fun and inclusive gameplay mechanic that ages well will push the MMO genre forward. SWTOR didn't even try, and trying to patch it in later has never worked.

[Nevermore]

Eve 'stories' were created entirely by the players, not by Eve. 

Not entirely. The underlying mechanics of taking and defending space give rise to player driven actions (and stories).

I don't disagree with that, but that's why I used the example of D&D.  It's entirely player-driven.  There's nothing wrong with that of course, but the original statement I took issue with was that Eve tells a better story.  No it doesn't.  Eve tells a terrible story, the worst of any MMO I've ever tried.  That some people have managed to have their own memorable drama within the context of Eve doesn't make Eve itself a great story.

[Ingmar]

Never said the game was terrible, never even sad it would be bad. That's kind of my point, any sort of critique is being shut down by the same three-four people. Some complaints may not be valid, some are definitely subjective but the reactions to them are just as subjective.  

Have an opinion, be prepared to defend it. That's kind of how conversation works. Nobody is "shutting down" anything. We're just disagreeing. That happens on the Internet.

[Kageru]

Maybe it's confusion in how the word is used? A story is a directed experience for most people and by definition, a sequence of events emerging dynamically from human action is something else (and maybe becomes a story later when it is over and written down). It would explain why the "story is not gameplay" argument is so violent and why for many (myself included) reading Eve stories through Kugutsumen is more fun that actually playing the game (though world PvP and Australian timezone also don't mix so well).

To an extent Eve game-play is terrible but meaningful (because you can lose your stuff and your space empire and you care about that) while SWTOR game-play is luxurious but meaningless (because you are largely following a pre-planned path).

That said I hope SWTOR will prove that investing huge amounts of money in levelling content  gives a diminishing return in retention.

[UnSub]

There's communication on the forums, too.  Example of one such communique from today:

The Star Wars: The Old Republic team is looking for skilled SWTOR players in the Austin area to test out brand new content in the BioWare Austin office. We are looking for players that are experienced with endgame Operations, Warzones, and Flashpoints.

At first glance that looks to be the wrong people to be asking for - what BioWare should want are average players who haven't used endgame Operations, Warzones and Flashpoints before.

But it would depend on what they are testing. If they are checking how existing users react to changes, this might be on target (provided they do the non-experienced group as well).

[Nevermore]

Maybe it's confusion in how the word is used? A story is a directed experience for most people and by definition, a sequence of events emerging dynamically from human action is something else (and maybe becomes a story later when it is over and written down). It would explain why the "story is not gameplay" argument is so violent and why for many (myself included) reading Eve stories through Kugutsumen is more fun that actually playing the game (though world PvP and Australian timezone also don't mix so well).

I agree with this.  It's why I don't consider the Giants' run to the Superbowl a 'story' in and of itself.  Once someone goes back and chronicles that run then that could be a story, sure.

To an extent Eve game-play is terrible but meaningful (because you can lose your stuff and your space empire and you care about that) while SWTOR game-play is luxurious but meaningless (because you are largely following a pre-planned path).

Sort of, maybe.  I found the cost of pvping in Eve so prohibitive I could rarely engage in it, which means I could rarely play the 'fun' part of the game since my corp/alliance was relatively poor.  In SWTOR I can engage in pvp whenever I want, as many times as I want, as long as enough people queue.  While that means TOR pvp is 'meaningless' compared to Eve pvp, it also means it's a lot more fun for me since I can actually engage in it.  I also don't think it's a bad thing to provide a good framework for players to experience your game.   While I wouldn't mind more sandbox elements, I was under no illusions about what kind of game TOR would be and it delivers exactly what I expected it to.  It's WoW that tells a better story. /shrug

Edit - Unsub: I just assumed they just wanted people to try to break the content to look for bugs.

[Rokal]

You're also comparing a small number of short EVE stories against 40+ hours of story per class in SWTOR. The EVE stories are all ultimately pretty similar. If you read another 15-20 stories about backstabbing in EVE, would you still find them very entertaining? They're a pretty cool example of player-driven story that could only happen in an MMO, but they don't have the same limitations or variety as the SWTOR stories.

[Kageru]

I did get to play in some big Eve battles and they're generally really boring in terms of gameplay because the interface is so abstracted, the action is at someone else's convenience, tends to be imbalanced (which can be fun if you are on the winning side), is time intensive, is punitive and becomes increasingly newbie unfriendly under the influence of mudflation (*1). The Eve model probably cannot scale up to the sort of numbers EA wanted with SWTOR.

That said it is a shame and missed opportunity for the MMO genre that SWTOR didn't seem to put much / any thought or effort into long term game mechanics.

It's WoW that tells a better story. /shrug

... and does a lot of other things worse. Though I think both of them are ultimately going up the wrong path. Whether it's action set pieces in the game (modern wow) or interactive cinematics (SWTOR) it's still investing increasing effort in expensive levelling content that is rapidly consumed and quickly seen through for the pre-plotted train line it is.

(*1) and listening to DBRB helped break down my faith in humanity and will to live.

[Kageru]

You're also comparing a small number of short EVE stories against 40+ hours of story per class in SWTOR. The EVE stories are all ultimately pretty similar. If you read another 15-20 stories about backstabbing in EVE, would you still find them very entertaining? They're a pretty cool example of player-driven story that could only happen in an MMO, but they don't have the same limitations or variety as the SWTOR stories.

The main difference, in terms of retention, is that one comes to an end, and always the same end, and takes a massive development budget (and is constantly hampered by MMO constraints). The main difference to the player is that their story in Eve, once you can forget the boredom of much of the playing at the time, is something they created.

But yes, the best part of joining the goons was reading all the accumulated history, betrayal and culture they'd built up. And don't forget it builds community in a way that SWTOR has failed to do so. The goon history with other factions goes back years and still echoes in the minds of the veterans, who pass it on to new arrivals. I have a great respect for TCF (a French alliance) even though they largely didn't exist by the time I started playing.

Though I am not championing Eve... it is terrible. But the answer to solving the Diku problem is coming up with mechanics that allows players to invest themselves in something and gives them reusable mechanics to express that. In terms of SWTOR maybe it's set it up as a faction conflict between empire and republic. "Kill 10 womp-rats", raids, instances and PvP battles gain you faction with someone, faction randomly unlocks fully cinematic story quests (some class, some general, all with a group mode and level scaling) that gain you a roll on a deep loot table and points with advanced (and competing) factions depending on your decisions. Those unlock more stories. Any new stories or factions the developers can manage to come up with slot into the system making it deeper and all content is reusable. Not much is lost since the linear story can't really affect the MMO world in a permanent fashion anyway. Even crafting can be something that drives gameplay. If you want to learn to make a light saber you should have to faction to prove yourself, do quests to learn the skills, hunt for the materials.

Instead they spend most of their money on a single player experience that is consumed and done, which even then can't conceal the fact that some of the stories are artificially extended with some grinding and most of the content is generic, then dump them into a half-baked copy of the vanilla WoW end-game and wonder why retention isn't as good as they'd like.

It would have been better if Bioware had put out 3 good single player RPG's.

[apocrypha]

Never said the game was terrible, never even sad it would be bad. That's kind of my point, any sort of critique is being shut down by the same three-four people. Some complaints may not be valid, some are definitely subjective but the reactions to them are just as subjective. 

That is kind of how forums work though. f13 isn't some magical place where normal internet rules don't apply, it just has a lower proportion of actual gibbering retards due to very determined moderation. 

Without actual sub numbers all anyone has to go on atm is conjecture and anecdote. I don't think anyone here can argue from anything except a subjective position. Will be interesting to see if BW release any sub numbers after the 3 month point. If they do then we can have an informed discussion about retention rates.

Until then, here's another subjective anecdotal piece of evidence - I've just cancelled my sub. I suddenly discovered at the middle of last week that I had no desire to log in. Getting to 50 and maxing all the crew skills on alts was what did it. I cba to repeat the leveling on alts, there's nothing of interest to me to do at 50, the crew skills are boring and mostly pointless. I'll consider returning once they patch in a proper LFG tool, dual spec, more content (and not just end-game content - there needs to be alternative leveling paths) and unfuck the bugged Ops & FPs.

[FieryBalrog]

You're also comparing a small number of short EVE stories against 40+ hours of story per class in SWTOR. The EVE stories are all ultimately pretty similar. If you read another 15-20 stories about backstabbing in EVE, would you still find them very entertaining? They're a pretty cool example of player-driven story that could only happen in an MMO, but they don't have the same limitations or variety as the SWTOR stories.

Maybe I'd stop finding the Eve stories to be so entertaining after a while, but at least I found them entertaining in the first place.

Not that the SWTOR class story was bad but it wasn't particularly memorable either and was padded out with a lot of bland filler.

[Ingmar]

It would have been better if Bioware had put out 3 good single player RPG's.

I just can't agree. Sjofn and I couldn't play through those RPGs together the way we can SWTOR. That's tremendously important, to me.

I mean yes, I also want more single-player Bioware RPGs but missing out on those experiences (and the upcoming ones Empire side, and whatever they add later, etc.) would have sucked.

[Sjofn]

D'aww. 

Ahem.

[Margalis]

Never said the game was terrible, never even sad it would be bad.

You should have. Pretty much the best anyone can say about it is that's a mediocre WoW clone with a few bright spots. (Companions and story delivery and...that it?)

I know people who are playing but nobody really seem excited about it. I expect that even most of the staunchest "anything negative is trolling" guys here will be unsubbed or dormant in a few months at most.

[Sjofn]

Does Rasix have to post the hideously embarrassing summary of my DA:O playtime again?


EDIT: Also scoundrels and troopers heal differently enough from anything I've ever healed with before, and they are a fucking hoot as a result. Soooo ... there's something not-story-oriented I enjoy the shit out of, I guess!

[Nebu]

I had a wake up call last night with regard to the game.  Our guild assembles to do an 8 man raid.  People log on at the prescribed time and we run the instance.  Immediately upon completion, all but 2 of in the guild log off immediately following the raid to play other games.  That's it.  Nobody logged on early.  The two of us that stayed just pvp'ed. 

I have to think that my guild isn't atypical. We're also not what I'd consider 'hard core'.  We all play a few hours in the evening and have longer weekend sessions, but nothing crazy.  As of now, everyone has at least 2 level 50 toons, one of which is pretty well geared out.  We're all starting to get bored with the game and ready to move on to something else.  I'm sure that this is as much due to MMO burnout as it is the design of SWTOR.  We lasted quite a while in Rift and most of the guild were long-time WoW players.  Somehow people just aren't finding SWTOR as sticky.  We even chat about the fact in vent and contemplate going back to Rift or WoW as a result. 

My assumption is that story-driven play isn't enough to keep the average MMO enthusiast happy, at least in terms of long-term retention. 

[Bunk]

You got me curious Nebu, because I had a really hard time believing that the "average" player puts in the kind of hours you and your guild do. Did a little searching and found various sorces citing an average weekly playtime of 21 hours for WoW. My faith in humanity abruptly dropped a little.

Upon further digging however, I found this: http://blog.raptr.com/2010/12/17/raptr-world-of-warcraft-cataclysm-report-top-11-of-players-generate-50-of-total-playtime-hours/ - stating that the top 11% of players generate more than 50% of WoW's total playtime hours.

Someone else can run the numbers better than me, but that suggests to me that if you remove the top 11% hardcore types, the average time played per week for the remaining 89% would drop down to something much more sustainable for this game.

*edit: here's my total off the top of my head attempt at the numbers, based on a madeup playerbase of 100 people:
21 hours per week avg x 100 = 2100 hours played
11 players = 50% of the hours played = 1050 hours
89 players = remaining 1050 hours
1050/89 = 11.8

So, wbased on those numbers, the average playtime for the non-hardcore 89% would be 11.8 hours per week. Which sounds about right to me.

[Nebu]

You got me curious Nebu, because I had a really hard time believing that the "average" player puts in the kind of hours you and your guild do. Did a little searching and found various sorces citing an average weekly playtime of 21 hours for WoW. My faith in humanity abruptly dropped a little.

To be fair, I didn't think we were 'average' per se, just that we weren't as hardcore as several other guilds.  I'd say that most of us play 3-4 hours a night and maybe a bit longer on the weekend. 

So, based on those numbers, the average playtime for the non-hardcore 89% would be 11.8 hours per week. Which sounds about right to me.

Would you suggest that WoW has more/less/the same percentage of casual player?.  Given the Bioware fanbase, I'd expect SWTOR to have more single-player game enthusiasts as core subscribers, but WoW did also attract the Diablo crowd. 

[Sky]

Chasing the dragon.

[Rasix]

but WoW did also attract the Diablo crowd. 

[Mosesandstick]

Anecdotal, but I was one of those.

[Malakili]

I have a friend that swears WoW is just Diablo "scaled up."

[Rasix]

I suppose you could generalize to say "Blizzard fans".  What the hell would WoW offer Diablo fans?

I have a friend that swears WoW is just Diablo "scaled up."

Yah, no.  Who the fuck are these people?

[Malakili]

I suppose you could generalize to say "Blizzard fans".  What the hell would WoW offer Diablo fans?

I have a friend that swears WoW is just Diablo "scaled up."

Yah, no.  Who the fuck are these people?

Yea, I've discussed it with him in the past.  As near as I can tell he just looks boils it down to loot farming in both cases.   He thinks the differences in gameplay are less relevant.   I think the fact that they play totally different is a pretty big difference, but I already agree with you.

[Mosesandstick]

I think when you're not familiar with DIKUs and MMORPGs, what Blizz was selling about WoW sounded pretty decent to a D2 fan.

[Nebu]

I think when you're not familiar with DIKUs and MMORPGs, what Blizz was selling about WoW sounded pretty decent to a D2 fan.

This is what I thought as well. 

[Draegan]

My one problem is by the time I hit level 43 on my Op on Belsavis, the story is cool but mobs get harder and it's not as fun especially when I'm full heal.  It's starting to feel like more of a grind and I've been spacebaring the shit out of every quest except my class quest and main planet quest.  The rest is just boring at this point.

Belsavis is just a really shitty planet. Whatever they were going for on that planet just didn't work out right.

Yes, let's put it this way. Until yesterday, I had leveled three people to the low 40's and stalled on Belsavis. The only way I had gotten through it is with Ingmar for company. After several weeks, I have finally clawed my trooper (who I had been leveling really fast prior to that) past that shitty planet. I'd do a handful of quests and then go "fuck this planet" and do something else. It's sort of like Orzammar in DA:O, it just keeps fucking going long past any novelty has worn off.

I guess it's just not me then.  I leveled super fast to 40 then decided that I was more inclined to watch HGTV with my wife for an hour instead.

[LeaveMeAlone]

A lot of retention is about faith. There's a huge difference between "The game is half baked, but Bioware are on top of it and we know fixes / good things are coming" and "The game is failing, people are leaving, Bioware has no clue or plan". In terms of their ability to inspire the community they're definitely encouraging the latter view and that will cost them in subs. The fact they only seem to communicate with their community through tweets is appalling.

I expected the star wars name to grant them a lot more subscribers and "stickyness" than a generic IP, but I'm not even sure that's enough any more. And hopefully this establishes that "story as the fourth pillar of an MMO" is understood to mean spending excessive amounts of money on non-interactive and rapidly consumed content.

I agree with the first paragraph, I don't disagree with the second but don't agree with it either.  Why does everyone (not you specifically, but everyone in general) assume that Star Wars is enough to impart stickiness? Sure, it counts for box sales and how many copies ordered by retailers but I believe it counts for squat in retention.  It didn't help SWG either and that was a far superior game despite all the problems. The theme parks in SWG had better stories too, with cameos by Luke, Vader etc despite not having full voice and glitter and flash. Even NGE was a better experience. Even on this forum (or maybe one of its precursors) before SWG was launched everyone was talking about how they believed it would be the first million sold MMO. And it ended badly.

[Merusk]

My one problem is by the time I hit level 43 on my Op on Belsavis, the story is cool but mobs get harder and it's not as fun especially when I'm full heal.  It's starting to feel like more of a grind and I've been spacebaring the shit out of every quest except my class quest and main planet quest.  The rest is just boring at this point.

Belsavis is just a really shitty planet. Whatever they were going for on that planet just didn't work out right.

Yes, let's put it this way. Until yesterday, I had leveled three people to the low 40's and stalled on Belsavis. The only way I had gotten through it is with Ingmar for company. After several weeks, I have finally clawed my trooper (who I had been leveling really fast prior to that) past that shitty planet. I'd do a handful of quests and then go "fuck this planet" and do something else. It's sort of like Orzammar in DA:O, it just keeps fucking going long past any novelty has worn off.

I guess it's just not me then.  I leveled super fast to 40 then decided that I was more inclined to watch HGTV with my wife for an hour instead.

Belsalv wasn't like this for my BH, but Corellia certainly is.  I've been at 48 for a month with no desire to push-through.   Taris has become that on the Marauder and I don't feel like hopping-in and trying another spec.  I should probably just cancel.

I'm finding WoT and the D3 beta to be a lot more fun.  still want to see the stories but I feel like I should let the game bake on other folk's dime first.

[Sjofn]

Empire Taris is a fucking blight and I'm not sure how I managed to get through it twice. It is easily the shittiest planet I've done.