Old Republic will be the greatest failure in MMO or EA history

[Russwinters]

Except the guy in charge of TOR has Baldur's Gate, BG2, and KOTOR on his resume.

It's hilarious how many people see this non-news as a chance to confirm their own biases. You may be right, but this rant isn't evidence.

It was already said, but just because someone knows single player RPG does not make them in any way credible in multiplayer/mmo.

in fact I would say that someone who has only made single player rpg will actually hinder the project with their views because they are going to focus too hard on the solo experience.


All in all, it will probably be fun, but the end game will be the biggest load of garbage, and the game will ultimately fail because it won't be able to hold the interest of the player base.

But as long as they make the level up experience good enough then they will milk people for the cost of the game + sub fees for 3 months, and probably still at least break even on that 300m budget. Which is all they care about anyways.

This is old, but this is the type of "mentality" I like to see for a development team, and that is why I feel GW2 may actually do well.

http://www.guildwars.com/events/tradeshows/gc2007/gcspeech.php

 

[darkewaffle]

All in all, it will probably be fun, but the end game will be the biggest load of garbage, and the game will ultimately fail because it won't be able to hold the interest of the player base.

It hasn't stopped WoW.

In fact, endgame really probably holds very little draw to a very, very large portion of the customers for both games. As long as there's other little stuff to keep people entertained, they'll be happily hooked. Endgame does not a game make, as the people it's important to are probably quite the minority. A lot of people never even make it through the journey and are quite content with it.

 

[lord_emperor]

Can't be worst than Galaxies.

 

[smackababy]

Can't be worst than Galaxies.

I was thinking the same thing. I, and countless others, played that game for far too long waiting for it to get good. From what the developers have said, it will be an MMO with heavy focus on single player end game and small group interaction.

I hardly believe this game will be a WoW killer, but I will be purchasing it on release day and probably playing several patches before I finally give up.

 

[Golgatha]

Further proof EA is the anti-Midas.

Also good evidence PC gaming has been headed in the wrong direction for so long that its neck deep in shit.
Maybe my dream will come true. The whole system will burn down and a glorious Phoenix will rise from the ashes.

Nope. Blizzard is too successful for all of PC gaming to die.

Oh, if anyone can ruin the love PC gamers have for Blizzard, it would have to be Activision.

 

[Russwinters]

It hasn't stopped WoW.

In fact, endgame really probably holds very little draw to a very, very large portion of the customers for both games. As long as there's other little stuff to keep people entertained, they'll be happily hooked. Endgame does not a game make, as the people it's important to are probably quite the minority. A lot of people never even make it through the journey and are quite content with it.

I am not sure what you mean, but WoW has more endgame then any other MMO before it..

and trust me, I am far from a WoW fanboi, but I can't argue the fact that WoW has endgame. It has a huge abundance of content to wade through.

It has an arena system that if you play enough could even make you some money if you really wanted it to (of course it doesn't really return enough to merit the time investment, but hey if thats your thing more power to you)

The thing is that with WoW when you get to the max lvl, there is still things to strive for.

With all the past failed mmo there really wasn't anything.



WoW has a huge culture behind it now, so many people decided they like it that it isn't just a game now, it is a lifestyle. It's pretty scary.

There is WSG and MLG that host WoW tournaments, as well as the official blizzard ones. That alone feeds the population of wow, and gives people something to push for; similar to how people grow up wanting to be a professional athlete, people are growing up wanting to be professional gamers; it is a form of entertainment for many to watch WoW arena matches, speculate on class balancing, strategy, etc.


The original guild wars was successful for a similar, but not as pronounced reason; first off it had no monthly subscription which is what brings people in to try it out; then they had a ranked arena system before WoW did, which allowed people to compete against each other in a more tangible way then just "My guild is better then your because I said so".

Now it is "My guild/team is better then yours because we have a ranking system that proves it is".

For the majority of gamers they are looking for some competition; humans naturally want to compete and try to be better then one another, that is how we have developed into our modern society.


And you may be thinking, well that only explains why people would play for PVP, but that is far from true.

For the same reason people compete for "world firsts" or "server firsts" with PVE content. There is no officially moderated blizzard rankings for PVE, but you can find a ton of sites monitoring all of the major guilds and their RAID progression. Of course it has stagnated now since there hasn't been any new RAID content for WoW other then Ruby sanctum in a while, which wasn't even a progression instance it was just extra filler.



Basically, if a MMO developer can successfully give people something to constantly push for, and compete against each other which, then the game has a good chance of being successful.

Of course that doesn't mean because you have done this it will be instantly successful. You need to cover the basics first, like.... is the combat system enjoyable? Does it work for PVP? Does it work for PVE? Is it balanced?

Age of Conan failed a several of those. In additional to having almost 0 content past the lvl 40 mark.

WAR was fundamentally flawed from the start because they tried to hard to make it like WoW, and failed miserably. The combat system was clunky and laggy, and just generally made you feel like "OK, so the combat is supposed to play like wow, but it feels like WoW combat programmed by a junior level programmer"

The whole "you can do scenarios from the start and pvp to level if you want" and "public quest system" was genius though, but it didn't save them from the fact that, if the combat system sucks, the game sucks.


Aion had a great combat system, but the combat system failed once you got into PVP because the use of flying.

Also the keep system for aion failed because the combat system did not really take into account zerg combat, which is what aion keep taking was.

 

[Nintendesert]

Most people in WoW aren't raiders. Having enough to do and experience is what holds players. Having those little things as previously mentioned is what keeps people playing.

The addition of player ships is going to be huge for this game. There are tons of people that played UO and SWG long after the game was fun just to play house. Depending on how customizable player ships are this could be one of the huge hooks that keep people paying and running around killing and collecting items/furniture/components.

If TOR adds more of those little things or has them and hasn't let us know yet, that's what's going to keep people around. Not grindy unfun raids that promise loot. Real end game is giving players things to do when they aren't leveling and doing the story. It doesn't need to be raiding.

 

[jonks]

All I can say is while the cinematic trailers kick ass, the gameplay videos I've seen look booooring. That aint good.

 

[Russwinters]

All I can say is while the cinematic trailers kick ass, the gameplay videos I've seen look booooring. That aint good.

That to me is the #1 thing that should be on a devs list.


Mission #1: Is the combat system fun? Since this is at least 50% of the game.

 

[darkewaffle]

I am not sure what you mean, but WoW has more endgame then any other MMO before it..

and trust me, I am far from a WoW fanboi, but I can't argue the fact that WoW has endgame. It has a huge abundance of content to wade through.

It has an arena system that if you play enough could even make you some money if you really wanted it to (of course it doesn't really return enough to merit the time investment, but hey if thats your thing more power to you)

The thing is that with WoW when you get to the max lvl, there is still things to strive for.

With all the past failed mmo there really wasn't anything.

Far from it, I think WoW's endgame is very hollow. As far as gameplay goes, your goal is to get more gear in order to kill bigger monsters to get more gear, ad nauseum. I played hard for a year and a half and that's about all there is to it. The crafting system holds no interest because you can max out in a matter of hours, and don't even start me on achievements lol. When you hit the max level and have done your raid(s) for the week, theres little point to logging in. I guess there's always some kind of farming/collecting to be done, but that's really just faux content playing off people's desire to have or do everything, much like achievements. And you find that in every game anyway.

PvP is subjective, you can call it content, but it just mixes so terribly with the PvM balancing and is so poorly thought out in principal that I think it's dismissable.

If endgame was what made a game successful, everyone would be playing FFXI There's just an absurd amount of relevant (eg: Rewards from zone X aren't immediatedly outdone by gear from zone Y) endgame content and still quite a lot about that game that's 'unknown' or unconquered.

 

[CVSiN]

WoW has enough of an challenging end game to keep me playing longer than any other MMO since UO.

Been playing since Alpha and still have 2 active accounts.

 

[smackababy]

WoW has enough of an challenging end game to keep me playing longer than any other MMO since UO.

Been playing since Alpha and still have 2 active accounts.

UO was a game done right. I played that game for 8 years. I even paid for two vacations selling gold.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

More updates on this dudes blog.

And also regarding TOR, from a long time guildmate who went to PAX:
"I played it at PAX and wasn't especially impressed. It is basically WoW in space, like he said. I don't see anything innovative about it except maybe the voice acting. They really are selling that aspect hard and I just don't really care about it all that much. I'd rather have them spending resources on gameplay innovations."

Seriously, if you guys didn't see this coming loooong before all this EALouse stuff you are absurdly blind. If you enjoy WoW but wish your night elf had light sabers, well, have fun I guess.

 

[Russwinters]

As a hardcore PVP oriented gamer I would like to see a game like UO flourish, but unfortunately the "masses" are not really interested in that type of game anymore, and myself, and my guild as a whole have accepted that those days are gone and past, and while a hardcore game may present itself, it will never gain any kind of mass appeal.


Personally, I actually agree that WoW feels "hollow" to me.


But I have spoken to many more casual gamers who play, and tried to see things from their perspective, and I can see that to most people wow is far from hollow. I mean, look at the amount of people enjoying simple things such as "collecting mounts and pets" and then there are people who simply enjoy playing the auction house.


I am the type of gamer who wants to represent my guild, hold a fortress and take others, and hold more then anyone else.

I want to compete in tournaments, and play against the best players in the world, and defeat them.

That is the type of player that I am, there are many "types" of players so having one single game that can cater to each type of player WELL is extremely difficult.

World of Warcraft has incorporated something for almost every type of gamer the best.

Yes most of it's core system are "borrowed" from past games, but Blizzard took the "if it isn't broken, don't try to fix it" route in those areas.

Most of the "failed" mmos have tried to break the formula; weither their new formula was bad, or the masses are so used to doing things the "WoW way, which of course isn't the wow way at all but the way of all the mmos WoW borrowed from". is a totally seperate discussion on it's own.



So it all comes down to:


Can a new developer break the formula, and reinvent it, while appealing to all of the types of gamers who are interested in MMOs for their various reasons, while keeping the game friendly enough to ease people away from the old way of doing things that everyone has gotten far to comfortable with.

Remember, for the "masses" WoW is their first mmo. Before WoW the WHOLE mmo population was less then HALF of WoW alone.

So most of the population has never even played UO,EQ,DAOC, and all of the other MMOs that pioneered the system that people have come to enjoy in WoW. Of course the systems have been modified and tweaked to be more in tune with what the masses would like, but essentially what people are playing when they are playing wow is the accumulation of ideas from all of the pioneering MMO games before it.


I believe that people genuinly WANT something new, but the problem is they are expecting a MMO that has the content level of WoW, which simply won't happen at launch, or even 6 months after launch for ANY mmo. EVEN a blizzard made one.

People need to realize that comparing a launch mmo to WoW in it's current for is of course an unfair comparison.

Sure you can compare basic systems that can't be fundamentally changed, but comparing overall content is just not fair.


If you where to compare a launch MMO to WoW (and lets be realistic, almost EVERYONE is going to compare a new MMO to WoW) then you would need to compare it to WoW AT LAUNCH.

If you compare any "failed" MMO to WoW at launch, you would see that content wise the games where really not that far from what WoW could offer at launch.

The only things holding the new MMOs back is that the basic systems like combat, etc are just not enjoyable enough to continue playing.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I wasn't really looking forward to Star Wars, this tells me to not give a shit even more.

If it's good, it will stand out within a few months, if not ... add it to the crap table of the fails MMO's that have come out recently.

I am sure the voice work will be great, but I think only the real Star Wars fans will play it.


Great post Russwinters, pretty much sums up MMO's in the past few years. I too am a huge PvPer, love to help out the guild/team, etc.

 

[zerocool84]

As we know, MMO players are very fickle and won't stay with something for long if it`s not good. WoW has obviously given most MMO players what they want in the long run or else it wouldn't be so successful. We still don't know many details for TOR and just because someone makes a good singleplayer RPG doesn't mean they know how to make an MMO especially with EA controlling everything in the end. None of us will know how good it is until it`s released and people get get to play it for an extended time.

 

[Wreckem]

...

 

[frozentundra123456]

I doubt that the game will be a failure. Just look at Modern Warfare 2 to see what enough advertising can do for a mediocre(at best) game.
That said, what I am really disappointed about is that they abandoned the KOTOR single player franchise and turned the game into an MMO. KOTOR 1 and the Mass Effect games are probably my favorite games ever. And despite what Bioware says about the great content and single player story in TOR, i cant imagine that it could have a coherent and conclusive story line like a single player RPG; if there was a concluding storyline, how would they keep you paying the montly subscription? And it definitely cannot conclude the KOTOR storyline because it is set in a different time period. Basically I guess EA and Bioware thought they could make more money from an MMO and did not want to draw attention away from it by making a KOTOR single player game. Instead they made 2 Force Unleashed games. Why?????

 

[BenSkywalker]

i've been playing lotro for over 2 years now and barely have 1000 hours into the game.

24 months, roughly 40ish hours per month or 10 hours per week- that is rather heavily on the casual side. Not knocking that at all mind you, gives you a much better chance to keep balance with all sorts of other things. That said, you aren't the type of player that is going to carry a MMO. That isn't a slam towards you in any way whatsoever, I am also not the type of player that is going to carry a MMO, but the guys handling all the strat guides, macros, and mods that keep the MMO community so active are the guys that put in 40-80 hours a week. Maybe it isn't healthy, but Blizzard and any other successful MMO relies on those types of people.

If endgame was what made a game successful, everyone would be playing FFXI

Square killed FFXI by forcing people to group to do *anything* within a few hours of starting the game. Force people into a group setting before they understand the basics of the combat system? Bad idea. Honestly I think they may have been able to be as big as WoW if they hadn't alienated so many players out of the gate. Sure, if you were there for launch it wasn't too bad, if you started even a few months after it was a huge PITA to get anything done. Crafting, leveling and end game content were wonderfully done, but if you make those elements clearly unreachable to people after they spend a minimal amount of time with the game then you are going to have problems. With all of that said, FFXI has certainly been a decent MMO making Squenix a considerable amount of coin along the way.

I believe that people genuinly WANT something new, but the problem is they are expecting a MMO that has the content level of WoW, which simply won't happen at launch, or even 6 months after launch for ANY mmo. EVEN a blizzard made one.

If we are talking about relevant content they could face competition. I'm not saying they will, but they will be hitting shortly after Cataclysm launches. Within the first few months of Lich King we had Naxx and heroics and that was it for end game content. While you can argue people could always go do MC again, most people playing WoW now don't even know what MC is Hell, for those people running Naxx at 60 Wrath offered no real raid content at 80 for months. Yes, Blizzard continues to add considerable amounts of content via patches on a regular basis, but their end game is a moving target and close to an expansion launch, that target isn't a hard one to match.