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Star Wars: The Old Republic [Releasing Date: Dec 20 NA/EU - NDA Lifted]
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Necromanti
Member
I, for one, appreciate any valid and constructive criticism brought up about the game. The only thing I find tiring is endless, gushing praise that, come release, proved to be little more than "fanboy" bullshit. Comparing SW:TOR to other games in the genre, and perhaps the biggest and well-known game within that genre, is perfectly understandable. Mindless bashing of a game isn't helpful to any thread, but I haven't seen that occur to any significant extent here yet, thankfully.Morn said:
I like the Star Wars universe, but I don't "love" it, so I don't have an automatic interest in this game. While I am still intrigued, I cannot say that I will immediately purchase it if it proves to do little to differentiate itself from other MMORPGs, or if it does little to refine or revitalize the formula. It will be interesting to see what is shown once the NDA is lifted, as the gameplay I have seen as of yet doesn't look terribly exciting. Perhaps I'm just growing tired of the general MMO formula that doesn't feel rewarding to me anymore. I'm thankful that Guild Wars 2 doesn't require a subscription, so that makes me less hesitant with trying that out (and all hype aside, what I have seen looks very solid).
Morn said:
Except most of the criticism in this thread is speculation or just plain bullshit. It's perfectly plausible that it won't be the game that many, including myself, long for, but there's no need to take down a game that's in beta and is several months away from launch.
FieryBalrog
Member
You're gonna get that a lot with MMOs (more like every single one). Even the FFXIV beta threads were like 50% positive before it went to open beta. And before that Aion, WAR, AoC, so on.Necromanti said:
That said, if you adjust your expectations to match this reality there's more chance of being pleasantly surprised. It's what I'm doing with TOR.
Hari Seldon
Member
Necromanti said:
Assuming that TOR has a free month, what is the difference between trying out TOR and GW2? You won't pay a subscription fee for either if it turns out to be bad.
BattleMonkey
Member
Hari Seldon said:
You can play forever? With sub based games you have more pressure to feel like you are getting your money worth. People are more picky about their games when a subscription is required
Necromanti
Member
That's a good point I didn't think about. At the very least, I'd get the same value as a normal game. If they don't do this, though... :| After that, though, there is still pressure upon the player (or me, at least) with a subscription, as I feel like I always have to get my money's worth and can't play on and off whenever I want.Hari Seldon said:
I was expecting FFXIV to be my next MMO, and was disappointed when I read all the negative press a few weeks before relase. Guess I'm still a bit burned by that. I kind of want SW:TOR to be the next big and worthy MMO, but part of me is still scared that I just want something that signifies an evolution of the formula, rather than a refinement. If and when an open beta happens, I guess I should get a feel for the game first-hand. Hopefully, they'll show something for me to see at PAX Prime.FieryBalrog said:
BattleMonkey
Member
Einbroch said:
It should have no problem reaching that, once again retaining those subs is the question and not what they are talking about.
FieryBalrog
Member
That's exactly the problem. There are always ex-WoW players looking to pick up a new game for launch. The probem is keeping them around for the whole year.Measley said:
It's exactly what happened to previous AAA MMOs in the past 3-4 years. Huge launch, draws off tons of players from WoW, sub numbers nosedive 3-6 months later.
BattleMonkey
Member
FieryBalrog said:
RIFT has done well so far, probably the most successful MMO's to come out in a while even if it's not tearing it up with millions of subs.
WoW also is going to need some help soon with the way they are losing subs, people are obviously sick of the game, people always looking to leave but come back, but we are now seeing the game actually losing long term subs as well (though its not going away anytime in the next decade lol)
FieryBalrog said:
Many of these so called AAA MMOs had serious issues. Age of Conan was a technical mess, Warhammer Online was just flat out terrible, Aion's is or was an excessive grind.
They've all launched with significant flaws that pulled players away after the launch. WoW's launch wasn't perfect, but it kept people playing.
Morn said:
I give it mid September before we see 4.3 on the PTR, and it'll still take another month on the PTR at least. If it's as big as Blizzard claimed (a new raid and a new five man at least) then it'll probably take longer.
BattleMonkey
Member
Morn said:
TOR *alreadydead.jpg*
Alex
Member
It's pretty early to actually call anything, launch window data for MMOs is useless as well.
It'd be nice to see competition in the genre again, though. Blizzard knows it fucked with Cataclysm and some of the ways it wasted it's time and while EA has historically been anything but nurturing, I think they realize they have something on their hands here and will keep pumping into the live team for once.
The only downside of the situation is that MMO fans are batshit insane and the mere mention of another MMO drives them up a wall. This will make console fandoms look positively brilliant. Though that can be a great deal of fun as well poking it with a stick.
It'd be nice to see competition in the genre again, though. Blizzard knows it fucked with Cataclysm and some of the ways it wasted it's time and while EA has historically been anything but nurturing, I think they realize they have something on their hands here and will keep pumping into the live team for once.
The only downside of the situation is that MMO fans are batshit insane and the mere mention of another MMO drives them up a wall. This will make console fandoms look positively brilliant. Though that can be a great deal of fun as well poking it with a stick.
FieryBalrog
Member
Marrshu said:
I don't know if you remember, but when WAR actually launched people said it was one of the smoothest launches of a large MMO and it got great reviews.
It had huge underlying technical and design failures, yea, which is a different issue.
SUPARSTARX
Member
The draw distance detail looks pretty good. You'll need a video card with good memory to run HD resolution pretty much.
StUnNeR H2K
Member
scoobs said:
No content patch big enough from Blizzard could keep me playing WoW. For me it's just time for change, if I roll back into WoW then so be it, but I will cancel my subscription when SWTOR releases. Can't afford two MMO's a month.
AZRandom_guy
Member
scoobs said:
That makes sense, especially with the amount of time on the PTR required to test the new content. If it's that big of a patch it will be on the PTR for probably 2-3 months before releasing. I would say Blizzard would have to get it out around the first part of November in order to keep a bunch of people from jumping ship to TOR. Blizzard HAS to do something to keep people from migrating. They're bleeding subscribers right now as it is, and from the article that Morn posted, it's predictable they'll lose a lot more to TOR. They'll need to get 4.3 up as quickly as possible to get it out around the time TOR gets released.
Fine Ham Abounds
Member
I think TOR will easily see 3 million initial sales and will retain about 1.5 million for at least 6 months, then probably have a record drop-off to somewhere in the 300k range after the casuals have put in ~400+ hours of story.
Frankly, I see hardcores being gone within 1-3 months.
A solid launch might help stretch the casual numbers a bit.
Frankly, I see hardcores being gone within 1-3 months.
A solid launch might help stretch the casual numbers a bit.
Bigger than rehashed content in 4.1 and one of the smallest major raid dungeons since 2004. What an amazing promise.scoobs said:
Maybe. I've heard that song and dance before, and it means that content is still nowhere near due. Hell we don't even know what it is still. My point more than anything is that there will be one content patch for WoW for the entire rest of the year, and it will probably hit later rather than sooner.Morn said:
BattleMonkey
Member
FieryBalrog said:
Eh yea no, WAR community trashed the shit out of the game for it's multitudes of problems. The underlying technical and design features were wildly apparent after the first week especially when RvR just didn't work. Only idiots were claiming it was a "smooth" launch. And reviews are pretty meaningless with MMO's, they often get high reviews only to crash and burn soon after.
The game didn't explode at launch, maybe thats considered smooth nowadays? But game had tons of technical and huge gaping design flaws, and really the game got a huge KO when Lich King was released several weeks after WAR's launch. Overnight our guild lost close to 70% of members when that was released.
Dinosaur Tamer
Member
Fine Ham Abounds said:
Hardcore raiders maybe, but that is not the only kind of hardcore MMO players in existance. While SWTOR will have a hard time drawing hardcore raiders away from World of Warcraft, they could do better with other kinds. For example, WoW is not really a game to go back to for hardcore PvP players. At least not once someone manages to provide both a smooth experience without input lag or similar woes (WoW) and a superior PvP system. Now we don't rally know enough about PvP/ open PvP in SWTOR to know if it can pull that off, but it is already the first game after WoW to get the first part right and it can hardly do any worse. That is at least somewhat promising.
Anyway, you should not forget hardcore raiders are a extremely small percentage compared to both MMORPG players in general and the hardcore subpopulation.
*Edit*:
BattleMonkey said:
Yeah, you are right. Also, even prior to the NDA being lifted, tons of WAR beta testers continuously pointed out its massive flaws and shortcomings. It's not happening for SWTOR even though testing is getting more attention and an incredibly high number of leaks.
FieryBalrog said:
What AAA MMOs? The massively hyped AAA MMOs didn't fail because of WoW, they failed because they weren't great games to begin with. The only way SW:ToR is going to fall apart is if Bioware puts out a substandard game. All signs point to that not happening.
If this game comes out great, the die-hard SW fans alone will keep this game above the 500k subscription base.
EhrgeizVII
Member
There's new footage of the game on AlterSWTOR, with commentary. Apparently, this guy didn't even know what the game was because he doesn't know shit about it. Why do people like him get in and the people that actually wanna play don't?
I don't understand why you keep emphasizing when it'll be up on the PTR. Nobody plays PTR, and it will take months of testing before the content is actually released. Even if it goes up in September it would take until November or December for the content to actually be released.Morn said:
If TOR releases on schedule this year it has free reign to dominate the otherwise empty MMO market. They have a very big opportunity to establish a large userbase at the end of this year.
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