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Star Wars: The Old Republic [Releasing Date: Dec 20 NA/EU - NDA Lifted]
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RaySpencer
Member
You can barely tell the difference between night and day in WoW, I dont really feel like its a big deal. Hopefully with them not having it, it means the differences on planets will be much more drastic.
It's apparent the lack of a day/night cycle is a let down for a lot of you guys. Just keep in mind that something like that could and I would imagine probably will be added into the game later on.
Who knows? I personally would not give a shit if they had the most impressive sun set any game has ever seen or lack therre of as long as the story is enjoyable and the gameplay lives up to my expectations of a spiritual successor to KoTOR.
Who knows? I personally would not give a shit if they had the most impressive sun set any game has ever seen or lack therre of as long as the story is enjoyable and the gameplay lives up to my expectations of a spiritual successor to KoTOR.
Mr. Luchador
Member
Still waiting and hoping the monthly fee won't be a above 'industry' standard for an MMO. Please, EA, don't be Evil.
Speaking of subscription prices, I found this and it's more proof of how stupid Michael Patcher is:
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6312400/star-wars-the-old-republic-has-cost-ea-80-million-analyst
Patcher has no clue what is involved with running a MMO. He should read this:
http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/busmodels.shtml
$5 per user is suicide for keeping a MMO up and running. Why do you think Blizzard charges $25 for server transfers, $10 for name changes, $15 for appearance changes, $35 for race changes, $25 for special mounts, and $10 for vanity pets?
http://www.gamespot.com/news/6312400/star-wars-the-old-republic-has-cost-ea-80-million-analyst
Patcher has no clue what is involved with running a MMO. He should read this:
http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/busmodels.shtml
Playing an MMO is probably one of the most bandwidth intensive things you do on a regular basis. It's like downloading a large file, the entire time that you are playing. The key here is that the bandwidth is sustained bandwidth, not "bursty" the way that most things you do on the Net are, like web browsing. ISPs don't like sustained bandwidth, because it means they can support fewer people. They rely on the burstiness to squeeze more people onto the limited capacity of the wires.
Why does this matter to us? Well, simple logic. Let's say that you at your end are using 1k of bandwidth every second while playing our game. That means that we at our end are also using 1k a second receiving what you are doing and sending back what you see. But for you, that's $20 and you're worried about one guy. For us, it's a lot less than $20 a head, but we have to pay for the bandwidth usage of everyone playing the game.
That right there wipes out a significant fraction of your monthly fee.
Then there are hardware issues. You have to pay someone--actually, many someones--(and these guys don't come cheap) to make sure that the network stays running. Do backups, monitor things, fix whatever goes wrong. These poor guys wear pagers and are on call 24/7. Plus, depending on your setup, these boxes may not be at your office. They may be at co-location facilities. And that means you're paying monthly fees for rack space and for guys there who sit at that facility and make sure all the blinky lights stay on.
That's only a small drop in the bucket of the people costs though. There's an expectation of customer service too. I'll be up front and say that as an industry, we're still figuring that part out. But we already know that it's really really expensive! After all, you can't just go hire a bunch of kids fresh from flipping burgers, train 'em in the game and the customer service tools, and pay them minimum wage. They'll be lousy customer service reps. real customer service people have a multitude of skills, and cost a lot more than minimum wage. You can train people to be real customer service people, of course, but then you have to pay them real money, too.So support eats up another huge portion of the monthly fee...
What else? Ongoing development. There's a development team that stays on the game after it finishes. They fix bugs that crop up, and they also add new content. This is an ongoing thing, and it can be quite a large amount of people--not as many as it took to make the game in the first place, but a significant fraction.
[[By the way, just to address the issue--some companies have promised to never charge for an add-on or expansion. We are not making that promise, and I'll tell you why. Making large content additions can require extra team members, which incurs extra cost, of course. But also, having a new box on the shelf means that new people join the game. It's very hard to keep a year-old game on the shelf in this industry (in fact, it only happens for fairly rare hits) but it's an absolute necessity for an online game, whose lifespan is measured in multiple years. It's hard to afford ongoing marketing out of the monthly fee, and it's almost impossible to get press (which drives awareness for drawing in new people) or media attention without a new box. So you make a new box because it comes with these things--which cost money, of course, but then the new box sales help pay for it.]]
There are other miscellaneous costs going in there. Consider the fact that if you call a support guy in-game once and keep him tied up for an hour, you just burned up all the monthly profit we make off of your subscription fee. Actually, you probably burned up quite a bit more than that. We have a direct incentive to reduce the amount of bugs and make the game as easy and trouble-free as possible, because the more you need to call, the more it costs us, and the less money we make...
When all is said and done, if there's no ongoing costs, there's no massively multiplayer game. If you decided not to have a monthly fee, you would lose money before you even launched the game, and never make it back.
Yes, there are online games that have tried other revenue streams. Some matchmaker services have used ad revenue to support the cost. Of course, being matchmakers means that they don't actually run the game--they just pair you and your opponents up, so they don't have servers, customer support people, or bandwidth cost (except for the lobby). But notice that even most of the matchmaker services are gone now...
When all is said and done, the subscription fee is a necessity for this type of game. However, it didn't have to be a flat monthly fee. It could have been hourly, the way that it was for a decade and a half of online gaming. But fortunately, that all changed a few years back. It used to be that online gamers regularly paid hundreds of dollars a month to play their favorite MMOs.
Personally, I think we're lucky to pay what we do these days.
I don't know when we'll announce the subscription fee for SWG (probably not for a very long time) but I'm sure it'll be reasonable. Look at it this way--last movie I went to see in the theater, with the popcorn & soft drink, cost me lots more than the typical monthly fee. And it only lasted two hours. And it sucked.
$5 per user is suicide for keeping a MMO up and running. Why do you think Blizzard charges $25 for server transfers, $10 for name changes, $15 for appearance changes, $35 for race changes, $25 for special mounts, and $10 for vanity pets?
If EA/Bioware are correct in their claims that TOR is breaking pre-order numbers, I don't see anything wrong with his estimate. Unless your MMO is underperforming, all $15 won't be needed to keep the game running. It's a business after all and if they couldn't pull a profit from $15/month they would be charging more.Morn said:
Because they like money? Are you implying they weren't turning a huge profit before they offered these services?
Rizzo said:
The more people you bring in, the more infrastructure and support you need to support those players. When WoW was launching and they had to do emergency deployment of more server hardware to handle the players; that cost money.
Blizzard, in just the US, has more than 2,000 GMs making between $12 and $15 per hour working out of Austin, TX. That's JUST in-game support, and doesn't count the Account Support, Technical Support, QA, Server techs, development team, etc.
Yes they're turning a profit, but the profit isn't coming entirely from the monthly fee.
Edit: And you better believe there is going to be similar premium features in TOR. They've already alluded to it in past interviews.
Rizzo said:
They would be charging more. I have a good friend who is a coder on an upcoming MMO that most people on GAF are dying for, and he's told me multiple times that in order to truly cover all of the costs of running a MMO from just the subscription fee a company would really need to charge anywhere from $25 to $40 depending on the size of the game.
The problem is that there's a mental barrier where people won't go past the $14.99 monthly fee for a MMO, that's why premium services and microtransations are now so common in the genre; they have to find pull in money from ways outside the monthly fee to not only find a profit, but also keep the game running.
When UO and EQ launched, $9.99 was a lot. Over the years leading up to WoW, the EQ subscription price went from $9.99, to $12.99, and eventually to $14.99.
Costs to run these type of games go up over time. And when you're dealing with a game like TOR, which is licensed where Lucasarts takes a 33% cut of the subscription numbers, the $14.99 a month is not nearly enough to pay for every aspect of running the game.
TOR, like WoW, will have economies of scale on it's side. The cost per user for hardware/bandwidth/support goes down the more subscribers you have. That's how WoW can be extremely profitable at $15 a month. Bioware will almost certainly try to make extra money with fluff like name changes and server transfers, but it would near suicidal to charge more than WoW for monthly subscriptions.
I would also not expect LA to get a straight percentage of subscription revenue either, but a share of profits.
I would also not expect LA to get a straight percentage of subscription revenue either, but a share of profits.
HarryDemeanor
Member
Lil' Salacious pets.
Billychu said:
That's true, the boxed copies sold will help pay for the development of the game and the large number of people willing to try your game increases your chances at retaining an adequate number of subs (assuming your game isn't a pile of shit).
Now back to the costs of running a successful MMO... Here's an article from 2008. Okay, so $200 million over 45ish months (for the biggest? MMO at the time).
Anyway, WoW was making ridiculous money off of subs alone. If they weren't we probably wouldn't be getting TOR.
wonderdung
Member
Cystm said:
Would surprise me, day/night cycle affects a lot of things and usually it's something you want to plan for from the start.
randomlyrossy
Member
I always hated the day/night cycle in WoW. Cause I generally played at the same times of day (usually at night) so it was always just night to me anyway. I don't get why it's such a big deal for some of you guys.
Alex
Member
I'm fine with the static environmental effects and lighting, actually I kind of prefer it as I dislike the mediocre night cycles in most games. I guess it depends what you're wanting out of though, personally, I'm not looking for a full blown, living, breathing world, that doesn't seem to be what they're making.
Although, to be honest, barely anyone even tries for that anymore anyhow, it's usually just bad wallpaper. The only time I was ever really convinced in a living world type deal was 90's Ultima Online. Was remarkably ahead of it's time, and it's somewhat a shame we went down the Everquest fork instead.
But there are at least some decent weather and time of day cycling, and at least some bits that don't solely exist to prop up their questing systems. LOTRO and, believe it or not, Final Fantasy XI (though it's certainly the strong point of that game) actually were rather nice in that regard especially.
Although, to be honest, barely anyone even tries for that anymore anyhow, it's usually just bad wallpaper. The only time I was ever really convinced in a living world type deal was 90's Ultima Online. Was remarkably ahead of it's time, and it's somewhat a shame we went down the Everquest fork instead.
But there are at least some decent weather and time of day cycling, and at least some bits that don't solely exist to prop up their questing systems. LOTRO and, believe it or not, Final Fantasy XI (though it's certainly the strong point of that game) actually were rather nice in that regard especially.
LowParry
Member
I couldn't help but notice something rather spectacular TB caught.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp6E_aP7NKY&feature=relmfu
Damn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp6E_aP7NKY&feature=relmfu
Damn.
EhrgeizVII
Member
I wonder.. If Guild Wars 2 proves to be immensely succesful without the monthly fee, if people are ever willing to pay a subscription fee for MMO's ever again. It might become the industry standard if they're able to pull it off.
EhrgeizVII
Member
But they will still give you the choice to not purchase. You'll miss content that way, but it's nice they're not forcing anything on you.
Hawk269
Member
water_wendi said:
I would assume that they would have at least 1 arena for every other planet...ideally, there should be one on every major (non-starter) planet. If it is just one arena, then yeah, epic fail..on the level of sitting in chairs etc...lol
Anyone else think that a well balanced team using football strategies could do really well with this?
LowParry
Member
Billychu said:
I have my doubts. If anything is going to make a game changer, it's going to be Diablo 3 with its money system. There's nothing really "ground breaking" that I see that makes GW2 stand out from the rest. Not right now at least. Game isn't out till next year. So who knows. Besides, GW2 is targeting a different audience compared to what SW:TOR is targeting.
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