flyinpiranha
Member
For those in the beta, how's the music in the game? Are we talking epic score or added tavern band song?
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Star Wars: The Old Republic [Releasing Date: Dec 20 NA/EU - NDA Lifted]
- Thread starter Blackface
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There was a update about the music a while ago. It's pretty nice I think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYw_alO99G8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYw_alO99G8
Mister_Bubbles
Member
Woorloog said:
It would be great to get some focus on it, but as the music is one of the most iconic parts of Star Wars, I'm guessing they'll save that as a big hype moment close to launch.
Prove me wrong, Friday Update! 
TheRagnCajun
Member
Fonds said:
The thing is, even poor MMOs sell pretty well. I expect SW:TOR to sell 2 million easily in the first couple months. How many of those purchasers turn into subscribers largely depends on the quality of the game, but still, 2 million units sold. I think that should cover the investment. A MMO only needs 100-150k subscribers to be 'healthy'. I'm expecting SW:TOR to do better, but it doesn't have to be WOW. If it can retain 350k subscribers I would consider it a success.
I watched the video... i can't remember watching it before. I liked it a lot. Some new pieces certainly sounded Star Wars. Like KOTOR's music did.
Oh and any idea how long TOR's been under development? 3 years from announcement to launch, roughly, i guess it's been under development at least a couple of years before that. So 5+years?
Oh and any idea how long TOR's been under development? 3 years from announcement to launch, roughly, i guess it's been under development at least a couple of years before that. So 5+years?
TheRagnCajun said:
I'm not thinking it will be WoW either. I do however think that TOR will do pretty good and top 500k subscribers after a year.
The thing with poor MMO's it that they pull players in and can't keep them in. The sales figures from those games don't represent the succes of the product. The only thing that shows if an mmo did good or not, is if it's still around a few years down the line with more than 1 server up.
The MMO is a relatively young genry in the gaming industry. When WoW came out it became the first commercial and wellknown MMO. Sure we had EQ and others before that but it wasn't played by a hundreth of the players that played WoW eventually.
With WoW growing as huge as it did, it also attracted a lot of people to the MMO genre and acquainted them with the subscription model. As paying for a game you already bought was unheard of before that for most gamers.
I think that as the genre matures there will be room for more publishers on the market. People are going to want different things from MMO's, just like people want different things from shooters. Some people like gears, other people like Halo. Some like Counter strike and others want Team Fortress.
The MMO community just needed WoW to get kickstarted. It's just a matter of time before other MMOs will get a firm grab on the market. That market will be more evenly spread though, I don't think we'll see another behemoth like WoW again.
With games like TOR, Guildwars 2, TERA, and Archeage coming out I hope we're going in the right direction with that shift.
-Will report back in a year or 2 and hope I was right
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
Well once they launch Cata thats another 10% subscriber loss right there.Garryk said:
500k? If thats all it can muster after 1 year it will be shut down. They need 1 million subs to just break even.Fonds said:
syoaran said:
Would EA like this game to kill WoW? Yes. Do they expect it to kill WoW? No. Anyone who has a clue about MMO's knows WoW was an anomaly. It appealed to all markets, and became huge for both being casual friendly, and because of word of mouth. There will not be another subscription based MMO to grab 12 million concurrent players. At least not until a hyper-casual, social networking integrated style MMO hits the market.
You also have to understand how those 11.5 million subscribers were counted. They counted double accounts, inactive accounts people kept paying for, and lumped all types of pricing models together, and called them all "subscribers".
What the above poster said about Asia is correct (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24657). Half of WoW's subscribers are from Asia, but their pricing model is much different. They buy game time cards and pay almost one third that of Americans, and still get labeled as subscribers. Even though they are not technically subscribed to anything.
Another reason SWTOR won't hit WoW numbers is because of the localization. For each country they decide to launch the game in that doesn't speak English, they need 16 new voice actors. They need to pay for studio time, sound engineering and all the various things that cost boatloads of money. So, naturally, at least at first, SWTOR won't be in as many countries.
I think SWTOR will probably hold over a million subscribers for quite a while. Whether it goes up or down after the first year is anyone's guess. It all comes down to end-game, and even beta testers have not experienced that yet.
syoaran said:
This is not true.
http://www.aionsource.com/topic/122345-aion-official-numbers/?
current active players in Aion is 2.5 million, and that is not SUBSCRIBERS. That is simply people who have played the game and made an account. Virtually all of those now being Korean/Asian, using different types of monetary models.
This is my main "concern" as well. It still puzzles me, why they left out a Spanish/Portuguese launch version. EA are already in with both legs, so the potential market they could reach with another localization, seems economically attractive. They must have done some market surveys and measured the effects of the Star Wars brand.Blackface said:
Blackface said:
Your right, I misread the Korean article. 4.5million is the total sub's they have had to date (paying), not continous. And thanks for the link, it makes sense as to revenue/subs that any loss in the US market would be dire.
As for localisation, thats a valid concern. But I hope Bioware and EA recognise this and at the very least, a heavy subtitle package is being rolled out across EFIGS at launch. I presumed with community moderators of various european languages being hired, that localised translations at launch was a given.
Yaska
Member
I doubt it'll have 1 million subs during first year constantly. These "needs 1 million" numbers usually aren't accurate anw. But lets take a look. The game's developing was around 100 million, righty? Lets say the game would have 1 million subs. Around 600k in NA and 400k in EU.water_wendi said:
A Monthly revenue from US would be around $9 million and from EU it would be 7,264 million dollars ( counted the 15% VAT in this.). So we have just from subscriptions 16,264 million USD a month. So in 12 months with these amounts they would get around 195 millions. So they wouldn't "just break even". So with just 500k subscriptions they would easily break even in one year. Add to that possible collector's edition and retail version boxsales and Origin sales (where all the profit goes to EA instead just part), and they will do just fine with around 400k-500k subscribers.
Sure I would like to see this game have 1 million players, because that would mean more funding for the add-ons. Just trying to point out that the 1 million players count much more than one would think.
BattleMonkey
Member
Blackface said:
All MMOs are long term investments, obviously the 500k number is for continual development.
Lot of the games development is going to be recouped with initial sales, especially this game should do several million no problem when lower key franchises like Warhammer and Conan were able to do 1+ million sales in the first couple months. Games like RIFT supposedly cost more than 50 mil to develop and they are around 600k subs apparently and they are saying they are doing great, and the game hasn't even sold 1 mil copies yet.
Return on investment should not be hard to achieve, the biggest factor the subber base will have is on the games continual and future support which is what are always cut to keep a game profitable. Game is not also going to just die off even if it doesn't meet expectations somehow, the investment they put in wont let them just give up on it.
TheRagnCajun
Member
Fonds said:I'm not thinking it will be WoW either. I do however think that TOR will do pretty good and top 500k subscribers after a year.
The thing with poor MMO's it that they pull players in and can't keep them in. The sales figures from those games don't represent the succes of the product. The only thing that shows if an mmo did good or not, is if it's still around a few years down the line with more than 1 server up.
Sales figures do count when you're charging full price for the game. Remember that 2 million units sold is a good number by any other standard, it just depends on how much the game costed I suppose. I wouldn't have thought it would be much more than 100mill including marketing.
flyinpiranha
Member
That music information is great! Thanks!
One thing that has me wondering is what impact the voice acting will have on future content. I mean, Blizzard seems happy pumping out 2-3 significant content patches a year. If Bioware were to to try to match that, they'd need to create new Flashpoints, quests, etc, and a chunk of that content will require newly scripted and recorded VA work.
If I'm not wrong, if each class and gender have their own special VA, that means that for a cross-faction quest/Flashpoint they'd need to record dialogue with up to 16 actors, not including the requisite NPCs. That's a lot of work for content that players will likely burn through in no time.
I really wonder if they will be able keep up with the demand for new content (then again, who can?) or if the majority of new content will be held back for the inevitable yearly expansions?
If I'm not wrong, if each class and gender have their own special VA, that means that for a cross-faction quest/Flashpoint they'd need to record dialogue with up to 16 actors, not including the requisite NPCs. That's a lot of work for content that players will likely burn through in no time.
I really wonder if they will be able keep up with the demand for new content (then again, who can?) or if the majority of new content will be held back for the inevitable yearly expansions?
Giolon
Member
Mahoubuta said:
I have to imagine that adding new classes to the game will be prohibitively expensive for just that reason. Not just for the VA for the classes themselves, but the class quests, the class's companions and all quest givers who say something related to the player's class.
Even though they've got only "4" classes, the Advanced Classes make it more like 8 in actuality. I'm not sure what additional classes beyond those they would add.
BattleMonkey
Member
Mahoubuta said:
They could do it, but it's all going to come down to how successful the game is to be able to support such things. It's not just VA work, but having to craft cutscenes for all the content along with stuff for the various different classes and potentially companions who would potentially need new dialogue.
I could imagine they would do like other MMOs have done and already have lot of extra content already recorded and in the works for post launch content updates.
MadraptorMan
Member
How do companions work when you play with other players who have the same companion(s)? Do their companions turn generic or change to a different name or something just on your screen?
BattleMonkey said:
Well, they could just pull a blizzard and make their new class a 'hero' class and start him at level 50 or whatever. That would save a ton of money because you wouldnt have to create 200 hours worth of previous content and probably fiddle with all of your existing cutscenes and dialogue to include that class.
Well, a way to do it that might make more sense story wise is that they introduce a new class/new race in the next expansion that you meet for the first time on a newly introduced world. So it would make sense storywise for you to have to play your class up to that point to see that world/race/class. After you get there, youd have access to it. It wouldnt be a 'hero' class, just a newly discovered one.
Rapture
Member
Moaradin said:
the people who make music for games always astound me. They look at a picture and from that have to make music, when my head works completely opposite, the best work i do only appears in my head when i am listening to music. i can't even comprehend trying to do it backwards.
also: all this financial talk about (X)subscribers+(Y)initial purchasers-(Z)development costs is making my head hurt!
StalkerUKCG
Banned
Keiician said:
That looked good, i still cant help but think these set pieces would play better offline, Instead of that epic moment with the player character walking up some steps, building the first lightsaber in solitary and then using the newly built creation to battle, your going to have the area flooded with people dancing, running around like prats. sitting all over the place and constant "£5 for 500 credits" "get your spacebux here" ect
Maybe not having played the beta is tinting my view but honestly i think an experience with this much emphasis on story cant be fully realised in a mmo environment.
BattleMonkey
Member
Darklord said:
There was one in the Clone Wars that was twice that size
TheRagnCajun
Member
CzarTim said:
Agreed.
As for adding content, there's deffinately a dilemma there. Its going to be a lot of work just to add one class. It really depends on how many subscribers they get. Ideally, what I'd like to see is have all the classes branch off once more, with an extended level cap. It would be a paid expansion and you would need probably 1million+ subscribers to do it.
If the money isn't there, perhaps they'll do a hero class type thing.
MaddenNFL64
Member
They uhh, did good work on that twilek slave didn't they.
There wasn't really an actual backlash in WoW, more of a perceived one.Woorloog said:
Blizzard essentially got one complaint like 5 years after the game came out and upped moderation for about a week. This made news and Blizzard looked like a good guy or something so they walked away and everyone went back to /sitting on each others faces in Goldshire.
Ignis Fatuus
Banned
Naw.PaNaMa said:
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