Star Wars: The Old Republic Goes F2P

[Widgetcraft]

Originally Posted by Narradisall

Aren't monthly content patches a bit of a stretch?

Not really, you hire multiple teams to be working constantly on new content, one team's patch comes up, then another team has a patch the next month.

I mean, how can any company push out a quality bit of content each month. I can't think of a single game that's ever done that. Throwing money at something doesn't mean you can do that.

No company ever had the subscriber base that WoW had.

I stopped playing WoW years ago, but I always thought they managed to add stuff on a nice regular basis, much more so than many other games I'd played before.

If you're a raider in WoW, you've been raiding Dragon's Soul since 2011. It is now August 2012, and the next content you can hope to get is from the paid expansion at the end of September. WotLK had a similar content gap. This is unacceptable.

[Blue]

I think the biggest issue for me with WoW was such a focus on raiding to begin with. There would be groups who steamrolled content and then moaned about not having enough to do whereas I only saw the inside of those big dungeons handful of times before new stuff hit. I always felt like I was knee-deep in things to do and thought the spacing of raids was almost too frequent to the point I never caught up.

[Hawkzombie]

It took me 2 days to get geared enough to run the LFR (The new random raid dungeon they have now) on my priest after quitting for 6 months (well before DS came out). It then took me 1 weeks to clear DS in a 10 man group.

I've gotten my gear, I've become a god-like being...and now I'm bored. And being forced to spend 40 bucks because my friends are or have.

[Farsight]

Originally Posted by Widgetcraft

Not really, you hire multiple teams to be working constantly on new content, one team's patch comes up, then another team has a patch the next month.

That's it. You can also limit large-scale code changes to a longer interval (so your "B" teams have to make to with the current systems). And of course, you spend massive amounts of money and time designing systems that are easily expandable.

But to be fair, when 10 million+ people are paying every month to keep re-doing the same tiny morsels of content, where's the incentive?

[Spigot]

Asheron's Call used to do monthly content drops for free and they were almost always quite substantial. Hell, they'd wipe towns off the map and replace them with giant craters from time to time (Arwic, never forget...)

Turbine was the master of this. I'm not sure how their games post-Asheron's Call did with regards to free content on a regular basis, but that constant drip feed of both high and low level content and areas to explore had me hooked back in the day.

[National Kato]

Spigot, I've met about three women who've had relationships destroyed by guys who played MMOs all day and all night. These three women were of different ages. All three named Asheron's Call as the game they despised.

[Spigot]

Originally Posted by National Kato

Spigot, I've met about three women who've had relationships destroyed by guys who played MMOs all day and all night. These three women were of different ages. All three named Asheron's Call as the game they despised.

And to think I started playing it shortly after I got married.

It did have a pretty intense hold on me, and I wasn't even one of those power gamers. I loved my guild and had a blast interacting with them in ways I haven't really recaptured since. Hell, I remember pestering people to get me home from a family function so that I could officiate an in-game wedding.

Yeah, I was one of THOSE kind of people.

[Savok]

AC was a MMO, not a themepark is why.

[Widgetcraft]

Yeah, AC was more a part of the old sandbox MMOs. I miss those. But people chose fucking Everquest over UO and AC... and here we are.

[Narradisall]

Originally Posted by Widgetcraft

Not really, you hire multiple teams to be working constantly on new content, one team's patch comes up, then another team has a patch the next month.

No company ever had the subscriber base that WoW had.

If you're a raider in WoW, you've been raiding Dragon's Soul since 2011. It is now August 2012, and the next content you can hope to get is from the paid expansion at the end of September. WotLK had a similar content gap. This is unacceptable.

As I said though, just "throwing money" at a problem doesn't fix it.

Could they churn out content on a monthly basis, sure. Would it be any good? Probably not. I don't see how people assume because it's making tons of money that's the only required factor in producing content.

I would probably say that money is likely financing 'Titan' at this point.

I dropped off about halfway through Burning Crusade, but back in those days, dungeons or bits were added every couple of months, things like Zul Gurub etc. I'd assumed they kept continuing like that, with big content patches, and smaller dungeons etc added in every few months.

I imagine the well is running pretty dry at this point though. They only had so much to work with in WoW, and I think they've more than stretched the lore and tapped every aspect of the game. I agree, if Dragons Soul has been the last thing added since at least 8 months, it's probably a bit of a drag/

[Narradisall]

Actually AC is a good example of monthly patch stuff.

I think the problem with that, is that, that type of game structure was never utilised in WoW. They've never been a big one for doing crazy outlandish stuff like flooding whole sections of the game to add an underwater city dungeon for a couple of months, then have it go back to the way it was before (more or less).

This was actually one of the reasons I left WoW. As Blizzard has this big hard on for "everyone should be able to do that" at some point, that they were very reluctant to shake up the quests, dungeons or game much in the early days.

Different game structures though.

Heck, that was one of the fun things about Everquest, they loved just throwing up random events, that may only happen on one server (generally GM's) and WoW lacked that spontinaity.

I think it's a bit of an apple and oranges comparison though. I would bet good money if they did do things like AC, people would be whining as to why their favourite dungeon is flooded and no longer accessible, or why the city they liked to camp in had been destroyed.

[Savok]

Originally Posted by Narradisall

Could they churn out content on a monthly basis, sure. Would it be any good? Probably not. I don't see how people assume because it's making tons of money that's the only required factor in producing content.

That's implying the non-monthly content was worth a damn. Every raid is the same, a choreographed dance with idiots, lag and disconnects. And for what? To get a slim chance at gear you want? So you can move onto a different dance where you have to stand on the glowy thing instead of avoid it? Fuck themeparks.

[Ink Asylum]

Originally Posted by Narradisall

This was actually one of the reasons I left WoW. As Blizzard has this big hard on for "everyone should be able to do that" at some point, that they were very reluctant to shake up the quests, dungeons or game much in the early days.

Well, the Cataclysm expansion did fundamentally restructure much of the original game world.

[Widgetcraft]

Originally Posted by Narradisall

As I said though, just "throwing money" at a problem doesn't fix it.

...Yes, yes it does. You hire more developers to develop more content more quickly. It is a money issue. They had plenty of money, and didn't invest enough of it into the game. Now their game is dieing.

[Ink Asylum]

Originally Posted by Widgetcraft

...Yes, yes it does. You hire more developers to develop more content more quickly. It is a money issue. They had plenty of money, and didn't invest enough of it into the game. Now their game is dieing.

Or the reason their numbers are down has nothing to do with the amount of content being released over the past 8 months, and instead is due to people finally starting to lose interest in a 7-year old subscription-based game now that there are increasing numbers of free-to-play titles competing for attention.

Also, "dieing" is a bit premature. They're about to release a new expansion, and even if they continue to lose players they'll probably still be the most populated MMO for years to come. Then once they get nervous about player loss they'll go free-to-play, too, and rejuvenate the game for a few more years.

Did anyone really expect WoW to continue to add millions of players forever? At a certain point nothing they could have done, even adding new content month after month, even week after week, would have kept 12+ million people around. They can, however, easily maintain a few million and have WoW continue to be profitable for a long time, even if it's no longer their primary moneymaker.

[Spigot]

Originally Posted by Widgetcraft

Yeah, AC was more a part of the old sandbox MMOs. I miss those. But people chose fucking Everquest over UO and AC... and here we are.

Tell me about it. I remember trying to play EQ back when I was into AC and it just felt so... wrong... compared to AC.

I think AC is actually still running in some back corner of the web... I should check into it and see if I can find the love again....

Originally Posted by Narradisall

I think it's a bit of an apple and oranges comparison though. I would bet good money if they did do things like AC, people would be whining as to why their favourite dungeon is flooded and no longer accessible, or why the city they liked to camp in had been destroyed.

Yeah. Arwic was a perfect example of this. It was THE trading/grouping hub of the world. If you needed to see how well your connection could fare in the busiest part of the game, you went to Arwic and watched the lag spike.

And then they blew it up. I remember going back and it was a giant smoking hole in the ground... and that was awesome. People whined for a bit, but it forced people to actually go out and find other places to congregate.

Man... I need to stop talking about AC. I'm starting to get the itch again. Damn it. I just looked up the map to see if I could remember the desert location our guild used to hang out at. Yup. Al-Jalima. I can picture that landscape in my head and it has been a good 10 years since I played the game last.

Originally Posted by Ink Asylum

Did anyone really expect WoW to continue to add millions of players forever? At a certain point nothing they could have done, even adding new content month after month, even week after week, would have kept 12+ million people around. They can, however, easily maintain a few million and have WoW continue to be profitable for a long time, even if it's no longer their primary moneymaker.

THIS! I feel the same way when people talk about console sales declining, esp. this late in the cycle. When they started to talk about Wii sales slipping, the only thing I could think was, "Well, duh. You've already sold 2 systems to every household in the world. Do you expect people to buy a third?!"

At some point you hit a saturation point. This doesn't mean that the game or system or whatever is a failure, just that it can't sustain that kind of growth. In WoW's case, it took a LOOONG time for it to hit that point and I'm sure we'll see a decline for a bit, then it will plateau... and the level at which it plateaus will still be enviable for almost any other company.

What were we talking about again?

[Ink Asylum]

I also highly doubt Blizzard's business plan involved ever-increasing numbers of WoW players for all eternity. They're smart people, they know the gravy train wouldn't last forever, and spending increasing amounts of money making new monthly content to keep players around a 7-year old game simply doesn't make sense.

If they thought they could make WoW more popular for another decade they wouldn't be developing "Titan."

[Narradisall]

Originally Posted by Widgetcraft

...Yes, yes it does. You hire more developers to develop more content more quickly. It is a money issue. They had plenty of money, and didn't invest enough of it into the game. Now their game is dieing.

You completely ignored my reasons as to why throwing money at it doesn't work. Just saying yes it does, doesn't make it true.

As others have pointed out, the game 'dying' is silly. SW:TOR has dropped below a million and is declining, WoW is declining, but even at a steady rate of decline would take another good few years to 'die'. Every game dwindles over time, the issue of WoW's decline isn't an investment one. It might be a factor, but not a huge one.

[Savok]

TOR is dying though, thus F2P. EA has constantly misled people on how many subscribers they have, I can only imagine how bad it is if they're admitting to under a million.

Properly spent money would had WoW reach even higher peaks then it did but nothing can save it now, it's a spent force. This is the problem with theme parks, the ride gets old and people want to go home.

Also why EVE's subscriber numbers (PR disasters aside) has consistently risen, even after almost 10 years. What happens when you make a world (or universe in this case).

[Farsight]

Blizzard just announced that WoW lost 1 million subscribers (10%) in the last three months.

I could see WoW being a predominantly Asian game in the next 12 months. If the expansion doesn't hit huge, the game is going to crater.

The Secret World will go the same route as TOR, and after that, anyone making an MMO (including Blizzard) had better be looking at alternative revenue streams to subscriptions, or they're dumb/insane.