Star Wars: The Old Republic Goes F2P

[Savok]

Originally Posted by Ink Asylum

There's millions of people willing to visit the theme park, Blizzard just built the first one that caught on. MMOs are time sinks, most people don't play more than one. If WoW vanished tomorrow the audiences for other theme park MMOs would jump.



No it wouldn't have, because most people don't want a living, breathing world in video games, as if such a thing were possible yet.

A world without scripted, structured content takes more effort to enjoy than the profitable masses of casual gamers are willing to invest.

You deny that there is a large audience for theme park MMOs even as well over ten million people play them. Yet you believe there's a large audience for world-based MMOs even though none of the ones that currently exist have more than a million players, and most have far less.



They failed to make it work as a subscription model, because that model is outdated, and big publishers are just now figuring that out. It remains to be seen how successful and profitable they'll be as a F2P game.

I've yet to see WoW players play anything in WoW numbers. I don't completely deny they would, simply doubt. A lot of them are casual enough that if they stop playing they'll just go do something outside of gaming altogether. WoW being their hobby rather then gaming itself.

Living breathing worlds are easy, they're called MMOs. That's the whole point of the Massive part, otherwise you may as well just use a lobby system like PSO or oh look the dungeon finders on the theme parks.

I think there's a big audience for a proper Star Wars MMO that's actually good. Sadly we'll probably never know. Other then that I see them sitting around the same levels as most current MMOs, only growing rather then shrinking. Second Life was at 800k last count, having plateaued after a long period of growth. Better then TOR's currently doing.

And we're going with the subscriptions are outdated excuse, ok then.

[Spigot]

Looping back around, TOR is a fun game but it really would have been nicer as KOTOR 3. Or if they'd done each character arc as an episodic download rather than as an MMO.

[Savok]

Well that part'll be free soon. Making TOR into even more of a single player game hosted on their equipment you can play for free, that's going to turn out well financially. Well, unless they have other plans.

[Ink Asylum]

Originally Posted by Savok

I've yet to see WoW players play anything in WoW numbers. I don't completely deny they would, simply doubt. A lot of them are casual enough that if they stop playing they'll just go do something outside of gaming altogether. WoW being their hobby rather then gaming itself.

Because most of them are still playing WoW. They'll probably never coalesce into one game again for a long time, and some of them may give up MMOs altogether, but enough will still be interested in the genre to make for a bigger audience than there is for world-based MMOs.

Living breathing worlds are easy, they're called MMOs. That's the whole point of the Massive part, otherwise you may as well just use a lobby system like PSO or oh look the dungeon finders on the theme parks.

If they're that easy then why hasn't there been one that's broken even 1 million subscribers? Because the audience for them isn't that big.

Second Life was at 800k last count, having plateaued after a long period of growth. Better then TOR's currently doing.

Even 800K isn't that attractive to a big publisher. Like I've said before, world-based MMOs can work, but they won't come out of big publishers until one of them starts attracting millions of paying customers.

And we're going with the subscriptions are outdated excuse, ok then.

They're definitely making it harder for subscription-based games to compete. Do you honestly believe that having F2P MMOs competing for a limited amount of player attention hasn't affected the marketplace.

[Savok]

Speaking of theme parks this is a fucking merry-go-round. Hasn't been tested in modern conditions, sandbox games are popular, blah blah blah got better things to do.

Originally Posted by Ink Asylum

Even 800K isn't that attractive to a big publisher. Like I've said before, world-based MMOs can work, but they won't come out of big publishers until one of them starts attracting millions of paying customers.

I will say this though. The word entitled gets misused a lot these days, starting to wonder if that misuse extends to who it gets aimed at as well.

[Ink Asylum]

Originally Posted by Savok

I will say this though. The word entitled gets misused a lot these days, starting to wonder if that misuse extends to who it gets aimed at as well.

Well, that's a weird non-sequiter. I'm not even sure what you're implying, as I didn't use the word "entitled" at all.

I'll be happy to be proven wrong, as I want to see world-based MMOs evolve and succeed more than I want to be right. I'm willing to accept, though, that a lot of game types I enjoy aren't popular enough to attract big publisher funding and support. It can be hard to realize that you're part of a niche audience, sometimes.

[Savok]

If a major publisher isn't happy with 800k people giving them $15 a month they wouldn't otherwise be getting they should fuck right off. Industry deserves to crash at this point.

There's more of an audience for certain things then publishers think, this is why Kickstarter went nuts.

[Narradisall]

I still think a large element of why WoW players aren't shifting to another game is because the communities built. Unless the WoW guild/community shift to the 'new game' there's always that element of "I wonder what xxxxx is doing?" and them going back to play with people they've built up a rapport with.

This is why I think Titan will probably have a good chance. I can bet good money on Blizzard giving lots of incentive for a large part of their community to shift over to the 'new thing'. They know they have to bury WoW at some point, it just making sure they keep all those people, and pull in the leavers/new people when they launch it.

[rein]

I what you are saying Narradisall but I think there is more to it than just that. I think WoW has built a comfort level in MMO's that appeals to casual gamers. Also, WoW requires little resources compared to most games. It will be interesting to see what the required specs are for Titan and if it will impact the transition of WoW players to a new game. Sony sort of blew it with EQII and it ran like crap on min to med specc'd PC's. Also, trying to run both EQ and EQII really put them in a bind and split their user base significantly. Throw in WoW and a lot of frustrated gamers moved on. I have faith that Blizzard can be successful with another MMO but I do not think it will be as simple as some believe.

[Narradisall]

Oh, there's a lot more elements to it, but I think one of the reasons people find breaking the 'Wow group' away from WoW is because they are all comfy there and the community is well established.

I imagine Titan will run well, Blizzard have a good track record in making their games playable across a lot of specs, but then most MMO seem to run ok on lower end specs. Yeah EQ2 was a good example of one that ran a bit crappy on low end stuff.

[bgizle]

Looks like SWTOR is finally on sale for 15.00. I don't think they have implemented the F2P feature yet.

Here's a link to the Official Site and Amazon