Continued Shakeups on The Old Republic Team

Its a shame. I still play occaisionally. Its the best MMO out there at the moment. But thats not enough. And any additional story content will be so expensive to produce .... Real trap.

Yeah and Guild Wars 2 will change nothing. I do not see it revolutionize the formula and people are still burned out on the fantasy stuff.

Pay to play games are dead its free to play from here on out Blizzard will come out with a free to play, micro transaction game and the rest will be history.

I'm still loving it.

@Corvak said:

Regardless of how well an MMO is doing (I am still surprised that the internet cares so much about the financial affairs of SWTOR, I kinda get the feeling that theres a general want around the internet for the game to fail...)

This time I think EA is right, it just doesn't take as much staff to produce content for an MMO as it does to produce the game to begin with.

People that play MMOs get highly invested in them, nobody wants to get attached to something that could fall apart so these players pay particular attention to the health of the game and those that run it.

And when an MMO for a popular license goes bad, people just want it to go away so the next game can be made.

I don't know how long TOR was in development but it was fully staffed development wise since 2008; it took them at least 3 years to create what little content the game has now, do you think the current playerbase is going to wait 3 years for more content? If anything they should be hiring more people if the game was healthly, not laying people off.

Regardless of how well an MMO is doing (I am still surprised that the internet cares so much about the financial affairs of SWTOR, I kinda get the feeling that theres a general want around the internet for the game to fail...)

This time I think EA is right, it just doesn't take as much staff to produce content for an MMO as it does to produce the game to begin with.

@Brodehouse said:

Of course, Patrick must be happier than a pig in shit.

Classy.

EA having financial group e is kind of awesome. I don't like the way the go about business and it would be cool to see them out of business.

@EXTomar said:

The issue isn't that SWTOR has quests that seem like time sinks but that they seem built with an old design. Both Guild Wars 2 and WoW still have these "Kill X things" but they definitely present them in ways that aren't so wrote. Part of this is due to GW2 and WoW being more "recent" but especially with WoW Cata they were already trying to avoid these which resulted in the sensation that if you left WoW to play SWTOR it was like traveling back in time.

Guild Wars doesn't have any quests that are simply "kill X things" unless you're simply defending an area from an attack, in which case you're just having to clear out the area, you never specifically have to kill a certain amount of dudes before you're allowed to move on. A random quest that asks you to kill bandits or whatever always has alternative objectives to complete as well, so you can break things up if you don't want to do nothing but combat or you can avoid it altogether. There's definitely an element of just masking some of the tedium, but I think they've eliminated the problem for the most part. It doesn't just feel like a huge grind in the way that TOR does.

I get the feeling that these shake-ups are just further proof that they're moving towards a F2P model, which I think will be good for the game. A lot of the early design decisions for the game were just plain bad, in my opinion, but if they allow me to play through the character stories for free, I'll at least come back and give the game another shot.

I still enjoy this game, so there.

The issue isn't that SWTOR has quests that seem like time sinks but that they seem built with an old design. Both Guild Wars 2 and WoW still have these "Kill X things" but they definitely present them in ways that aren't so wrote. Part of this is due to GW2 and WoW being more "recent" but especially with WoW Cata they were already trying to avoid these which resulted in the sensation that if you left WoW to play SWTOR it was like traveling back in time.

All abandon the TORtanic!

Hi Everyone.

Ant one tell me whats going on here now ??

@HumanoidTyphoon: Absolutely, if I had been paying for it the last 6 months. I got my free month and paid for an additional one. Was well worth it. Tons of fun, saved my January. And then Amalur and Syndicate came out and I played those.

@Brodehouse said:

I had a lot of fun with the game. I feel as strongly about the adventure of Major Catherine Huxley as I did Commander Shepard, or Rebekah Hawke, or Elissa Cousland. I gallavanted across the galaxy, I defeated the cunning General Rakton, I turned the tide of war in Corellia and I main tanked Grand Moff Kilran and Darth Malgus, the False Emperor. I even did a tiny bit of raiding for the first time in any MMO. The idea that liking a video game means you're going to play it for years and years is bananas to me. I loved Dead Space 2, but I didn't keep playing it for 8 months. Of course, Patrick must be happier than a pig in shit. Whenever an MMO is being made he's always there to shit all over it. Stop Having Fun, Guys. That goes for the trolls in here too. It matters what other people play on their own time.

Sure, but different genres have different expectations. MMORPGs are known time sinks. I doubt anyone goes into a single player game like Dead Space 2 expecting to be entertained for months. It's a silly comparison. It's an MMORPG that you're paying a monthly fee for, it's natural that you'd want some longevity to justify the cost.

@ajamafalous said:

@Rohok said:

@ajamafalous said:

@Rohok said:

Maybe if they stopped putting out shitty video games EA wouldn't be in such a rough spot. Also TOR was awful. My friend and I played it to level 15 in the free to play thing and holy shit was it basic and full of MMO stereotypes. I don't understand how anyone thought it was good at all. Most of it was grinding and fetch quests, and the dialogue that was there was all indicative of singleplayer- IE, "/I/ will handle this, sir." "/I/ can stop him." "/I/ am the only one who can do this." Where was the WE the entire game? Not to mention Jedi Knight was portrayed as the main character regardless of what class you chose.

Terrible Star Wars game, terrible MMO, terrible Bioware game.

I'm no TOR apologist or defense force member but can't help but point out that much of what you said is wrong.

You obviously haven't played it then with a Jedi Knight in your party. They're always center screen and if you play trooper you get all the dumb grunt lines. It was pathetic. Why didn't they just give us KOTOR 3 with coop? They're literally making us pay 15 dollars a month just to see hundreds of other people running around doing the same tasks and missions we are and calling themselves the saviors of the republic.

My question is why do people think that's good? A coop KOTOR 3 game with a multiplayer versus mode where you can use your singleplayer character could've done the same thing as TOR, without the monthly fee and on consoles too for people who like that. What does TOR bring to the table that a coop KOTOR 3 doesn't? Absolutely nothing.

Not to mention I'm pretty sure the max group size is 4 players. Where is the MMO in that? I guess I'm the only one who sees the stupidity in this game.

I have played both as a Jedi Knight and with a Jedi Knight in my party while not being one. The "front and center" character is chosen based on who starts the conversation with the NPC. Trooper has the dumb grunt lines because that's the characterization and storyline they gave the trooper (and really, Jedi Consular has much worse lines). I'm not going to reply to the rest of your post because all it is is you being bitter that they made an MMO instead of another KOTOR. If you feel that way, that's fine, but you're not doing yourself any favors by bashing the game form an uninformed position.

I was just about to reply and say the same thing. It's whoever started the conversation that is front and center in the scene. I applaud your responses ajamafalous they're so even handed and intelligent which is a rare pleasure in any forums/comments these days.

So chances are the Knights of the Old Republic series will never be touched again and anyone who survived this will be shuffled off to work on more Mass Effect DLC?

@Joeybagad0nutz said:

Should have just done KOTOR 3 instead of mmorpg bullshit.....

Everything I have said since the very beginning of this stupid MMO endeavor of EA's from the moment it was announced. I wish that companies would just give us the RPG experience instead of destroying it like this. Worst part of all is that instead of giving us a world of choice, all the decisions are made -- our past experiences mean nothing to the game, everyone who we were interested in is dead, and if we want to learn what happened, we have to join an MMO that will inevitably crumble.

Wonderful.

People will defend EA until their blue in the face, that doesn't change the fact that is a terrible Wal-mart of a company that couldn't give a penny what you think of them or their terrible business strategies.

Sad man, just sad. I really enjoyed this game but after I maxed one character I just didn't feel compelled to play anymore, especially for $15 a month. Hopefully they'll go free-to-play and the membership numbers will surge back up a bit and remain steady. I'd probably jump back in now and again if it was free.

I had a lot of fun with the game. I feel as strongly about the adventure of Major Catherine Huxley as I did Commander Shepard, or Rebekah Hawke, or Elissa Cousland. I gallavanted across the galaxy, I defeated the cunning General Rakton, I turned the tide of war in Corellia and I main tanked Grand Moff Kilran and Darth Malgus, the False Emperor. I even did a tiny bit of raiding for the first time in any MMO.

The idea that liking a video game means you're going to play it for years and years is bananas to me. I loved Dead Space 2, but I didn't keep playing it for 8 months.

Of course, Patrick must be happier than a pig in shit. Whenever an MMO is being made he's always there to shit all over it. Stop Having Fun, Guys. That goes for the trolls in here too. It matters what other people play on their own time.

It is sad that they lost their jobs. I just don't understand the hate for TOR. Its a solid as any other MMO so I guess I just don't get it. The game isn't perfect but I think the game is good and they keep pumping features and content into it. I enjoy it and continue to play a couple days a week.

It's too bad if this is really due to some commercial failing rather than part of their plan. The latest update to SWTOR actually looks pretty cool, and I like what they're doing with it, even if I haven't played in a few months.

The coverage of this game is weird.

I always expected it to bomb bigtime, not just because it looked horrible every time they showed it and did nothing to deliver the KotOR 3-9 (or whatever it was) experience they were promising, but because it has been obvious for many years now that investing hundreds of millions in an MMO not called WoW is a bad idea. I gave the free trial a shot and quit in disgust before even leveling up. It simply had that wallpaper taste to me. To me, I was right all along, but to be fair, I find most MMOs to be absurdly uninteresting...

Anyway, my point here is that though the coverage from the press before the release, and for a while after, was all hype and positivity, it has changed to doom and gloom in the last few months. Everybody is talking like I was right and the game actually bombed and sucked. The truth is that I was wrong though - if EA/Bioware are to be believed the game ended up being profitable (and the reviews were pretty good too - 85% on Metacritic), even if it isn't competition for WoW. So why is the press jumping on every single story about falling subscription numbers and layoffs? If you aren't Blizzard, then that seems to be the natural progression for an MMO. Subscription numbers drop pretty fast a few months after release and many people who bought the game never sign up for the monthly payments. You lay people off as the numbers fall and the game transitions from development into support. ToR had a pretty huge dev. staff and initially sold big time. Things have changed since then.

In other news, deck chairs on Titanic being rearranged

@coakroach said:

How could they not see this from miles away?

This is always an interesting question. The game was planned out 2006~ when at the time it seemed to make sense that Bioware could make a game that was much more popular than Star Wars Galaxy. Time marches on and the environment changes and the tech changes and the market changes. At 2010 they have sunk too much into the game to throw it away or delay it further.

Plenty of people probably did see it coming a mile away but they frankly had no choice but to delay and ask for money on a project that is overdue and cost a metric crapton of money or release it.

As for the future, the most popular is that SWTOR goes Free To Play but I wonder if they just sell off what is left of the whole unit to some one else. A real indicator will be what much attention and improvement they have for their first real expansion.

The funny part is that there was much more fan support for Star Wars Galaxies pre-Rage of the Wookie. Then SOE went and fucked it up. The real rub is that SWTOR is the antithesis of that game at the height of its popularity. Makes you think...

The whole MMO market changed and was severely skewed thanks to the runaway success of WoW.

I remember when 1 million subs was a rousing hit - now it spells nothing but gloom and doom.

http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png

It has its flaws but i still really enjoy playing this game, started a new character last night with a friend so will be rejoining the GB guild just shortly after the whole server move thing. Its a little sad when last year you couldnt move for bumping into someone and now its a bit like a ghost town at some points. I really hope the game dosent collapse in on itself, there is still a lot they could do to make this more exciting for new players, im not sure that free to play would help them considering how much they have already spent and then theres the question of how they fund further content.

Regardless, happy jumping between this, PSO2, DCUO and STO for the time being, kinda hedging my bets a little so that if one does die i have somewhere else to get my fix.

@Paul_Is_Drunk said:

@smcn EA has also bought then cannabalized Westwood Studios, Maxis, Bullfrog, Origin Studios (then named their online service after them), and others I can't think of off the top of my head. They've been doing this a long time.

I tried to stick with recent history. Obviously they screwed the pooch with Westwood. Maxis was going under when EA bought them, now The Sims is a money making machine and the new SimCity looks very promising. As for Origin, EA using the name for an online service is silly, but using it as a bullet against EA is just as silly, and Ultima Online was a huge success in its day.

And BioWare is definitely in trouble. Their last big game is still Dragon Age: Origins. Mass Effect gets the talk, but the sales are just barely enough.

I hate talking numbers, mostly because getting accurate numbers is nigh impossible, but also because DLC is a huge factor. Nothing I can find indicates that Dragon Age: Origins "significantly" outsold Mass Effect 2. Reported first-month sales of Mass Effect 3 doubled that of ME2, which in turn outdid DA:O. But really, if we're talking about earnings, DLC is where it's at. DA:O had an atrocious DLC model compared to ME2. It wouldn't surprise me if Lair of the Shadow Broker and Overlord alone outsold all of DA:O's DLC offerings combined. ME3's multiplayer packs are surely making a mint, or at least enough to offset the detour of putting together Extended Cut instead of proper paid single-player DLC.

So far, everything out of BioWare proper has been immensely profitable, even the much maligned Dragon Age 2. You can believe EA when they say that these layoffs at BioWare Austin are part of the plan for The Old Republic or not. But to use these layoffs -- layoffs at a splinter studio which was created for the sole purpose of developing and maintaining a single game -- as a sign of the end-times for BioWare as a whole is simply ludicrous.

I can't speak for all the game as I only played one class to level 50, but I somewhat enjoyed myself. Lots of obvious flaws to the game but I can't justify why there would be so much hate around it.

The first two acts of my imperial agent story kept me quite hooked.

There is just nothing compelling about the game. The classes are dull and while the voice over was a nice touch it becomes overkill when you have every quest giver doing it. I thought I would like a fully voiced game but honestly it would have been better if only the class quests and flashpoints were voiced. Everything else seems unnecessary.

I think the biggest failure of the team that made this game is that they didn't test the market enough before they started working on the game. They didn't seem to really know what their target audience wanted and still don't. They definitely put effort into it but it just seemed like the effort was coming from what they felt made a good MMO and not what their players felt. That kind of design philosophy works on a single player game which is what Bioware has been good at but doesn't work for a MMO.

At this point I'd welcome a really good sandbox MMO.

Should have just done KOTOR 3 instead of mmorpg bullshit.....

Remember when this was going to kill WoW? And people swore up and down it was going to be the greatest MMO ever. That was great.

It's sad what BioWare has become. Everything they put out as of late just reeks of mediocrity. A far cry from their heyday as one of the greatest RPG developers in the business.

@connerthekewlkid said:

@iAmJohn Sp it looks like that so called defense force never came, too bad

It turns out no one has posted in Good Luck Have Bothans in almost two weeks. :X

@ahaisthisourchance said:

@smcn

Bioware is already doomed. It'll go the same was a the other companies EA has cannibalized. A damn shame, really.

What are you basing this off of, exactly? As far as I can tell, Pandemic (which they acquired alongside BioWare as part of a larger holding group) is the only recent studio that was bought and then closed after Mercenaries 2 and The Saboteur did poorly. The only other "big name" studio hit by layoffs recently was Visceral which still went off to release Dead Space 2. Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins were both "post-acquisition" releases from BioWare and also critically acclaimed.

As much pull as the BioWare name has, I think everyone can agree that TOR was in development for far too long and released with an antiquated business model. It was more or less doomed from the start, and that is what these layoffs reflect; certainly not the "end of BioWare."

"we didnt test our game realistically before releasing, so we're doing some dark shit in the background and want you to please for gods sake play our game so we can make money."

@smcn

Bioware is already doomed. It'll go the same way the other companies EA has cannibalized. A damn shame, really.

I feel I should point out, to the knee-jerkers in general and @thefriend and@ahaisthisourchance in particular: BioWare Austin was created in 2006 specifically for The Old Republic. This will have no effect on BioWare's other properties. Really, this should have been mentioned in the story itself.

There you go, folks. The Old Republic was such a black hole that it's dragging the local economy down with it.
 
The above statement was intended to be humorous, and is not representative of the political, economic, or religious views of the CBSi corporation or its subsidiaries.

How could they not see this from miles away?

@CrossTheAtlantic said:

@SagaciousJones said:

Who will create those 500 worlds now if they lay off all of the staff?

The craziest part about that is that they expect the game to run past 2025. Clearly, someone was assuming this thing would be beyond huge.

That's the first time I heard either of those claims. I mean...what the hell?

Good luck to everyone who lost their jobs, I hope they can all find work somewhere soon. EA bet big on SWTOR, but the market had shifted past the $15 monthly model MMO's were used to. If I was the Elder Scrolls MMO team, I'd take a hard look at the SWTOR situation and think about the business model they plan to launch with.

I've been playing the game since February and love it! Fantastic storylines and combat. PvP Warzones are always fun. I was beginning to get frustrated the last few months with low server pop, but the transfers fixed all that, and then some. It reminds me of the fun I had playing the original TOR, except on a gigantically larger scale.

Maybe I'm just easy to please, but since I started playing, it's taken up about 90%-95% of all my gameing time.

@DrDarkStryfe said:

You cannot release an MMO that can compete with WoW. People expect that amount of content and support from day one, or else the new game just becomes the flavor of the month.

My guess is that TOR becomes a free to play title at the one year anniversary of its release.

One would hope, but like some MMO's they just don't go free to play. Rift still hasn't neither has Warhammer.

@DFSVegas said:

I'm confused. These are clearly layoffs that were going to happen regardless of this game's success.

Why the somber tone in the comments?

Because, if there's one game everyone likes to shit on, it's this one.

I bought Old Republic a month ago for $20 and I like it a lot. I at least want to get 3 or 4 characters to level 50. Shame about these layoffs.

EA is draining the life out of every game company is picks up. Bioware is it's current host. It's sad, but tbh it's true. RIP bioware. Go to hell EA.