Continued Shakeups on The Old Republic Team

Killed by an MMO. RiP. Bioware.

Sure, I know what you mean EA

"EA says BioWare Austin layoffs are part of the plan and our ACTUAL plan is to make as much money out of BioWare till the well runs dry. Basically, Bioware, just like all the other companies we acquired, are expandable"

Fully F2P within one year of today. That's my prediction. Frankly, I feel like the single biggest error they made was going for a subscription model in the first place. Lucasarts in particular have a lot to answer for, they should have known better. They tried that once before and achieved only limited success for a limited period. There really wasn't any reasonable reason to expect the same strategy to work better now.

They should have followed the (Original) Phantasy Star Online/Guild Wars model of MMO. That would have done much better. There are too many subscription fees demanding consumers' money each month these days. They're not just competing against WoW for subscribers, people have limited entertainment budgets and ever-increasing options for how to spend it. They're competing against WoW, Xbox LIVE, PlayStation Network Plus, Netflix, Spotify, Hulu Plus and many others.

Frankly, with all those multi-platform and multi-game subscription fees, it's a miracle even World of Warcraft isn't hemorrhaging users left and right. I'm pretty sure the only reason it's not is that it's been around long enough that people are essentially tied to it (Even if they've let subscriptions lapse and gone back to it, it's longevity protects it). There is certainly no significant number of new WoW subscribers to speak of.

Edit: They could go Episodic, that would work. Ditch the monthly fee and instead sell regular additional content for $10-$20 a time every 3-6 months. It's a story-driven MMO anyway. People would buy it.

My sympathies to those affected by the job cuts.

It'a almost like releasing a 2005 MMO in 2011 wasn't a very smart idea.

they'll go free to play, mimmick the F2P model many other successful MMOs are using and make way more money than they are, now. I have no idea why this game didn't launch as F2P. The license alone will bring people running to try it and hiding some of the fun behind the pay wall will steal their money.

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?

Bioware did beat the drum really hard about how story matters a lot in MMOs. They also said that the "1-2-3 key" combat wasn't exciting. Look what happened instead.

@Grimluck343 said:

@Pinworm45 said:

@Grimluck343 said:

Remember how this game was supposed to kill WoW?

No? No one ever said it would. The only thing people ever said was "lol there's no way this game will kill WoW" because they wanted to feel superior to group of people that doesn't actually exist. No one, anywhere, ever thought this game would "kill WoW". Ever.

Seriously. Even google searching "swtor will kill wow" just brings up people being sarcastic and making fun of this non existent group of people.

Guess I struck a little too close to home.

No?

Wonder if my ex-coworker is there still, got hired recently by Bioware & might have been affected by this. As much as I want to work at Bioware (as I feel they've always been quite solid on the art styles of their games), glad I wasn't around for this as it'd have sucked to started work there only to be let go. Best of luck to all those people hit by this.

@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.

Well, I still think it's a good game at least. :(

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

@theimmortalbum said:

I feel like this is not going to end well for SWTOR. Which is somewhat of a shame - I liked the story hooks but I'm beyond tired of typical MMO gameplay.

But is it really the gameplay? A fair number of modern day RPGs use the same sort of hotkey combat. The problem was the really mundane quest design. It was literally just a collection of 'kill X/20' and 'collect Y/6.' While the story hooks were a little refreshing, they simply could not maintain my personal interest when the end result was some dated-as-fuck objectives.

I think a good supporter of my point is The Secret World. I mean, that game has a significantly more clunky combat system, but the narrative is so interlinked with some of the best quest design I've seen in the MMO genre that it makes the whole leveling experience a joy--even if killing stuff isn't nearly as interesting.

I'm at the point where I sort of wish they released this game as a cooperative open world RPG with a lot of those mundane quests cut entirely from the experience. It would have made for a really solid seller. They could even throw in a cash shop for maintenance akin to the original Guild Wars.

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.

@Pinworm45 said:

@Grimluck343 said:

Remember how this game was supposed to kill WoW?

No? No one ever said it would. The only thing people ever said was "lol there's no way this game will kill WoW" because they wanted to feel superior to group of people that doesn't actually exist. No one, anywhere, ever thought this game would "kill WoW". Ever.

Seriously. Even google searching "swtor will kill wow" just brings up people being sarcastic and making fun of this non existent group of people.

Guess I struck a little too close to home.

For all my bombers and gamers who are skeptics, this game has gotten some major and significant updates from 1.3 back. Recently they put in a bunch of "needs" in order to make it competitive with other games in the genre. I know it probably left a bad taste it it's wake at release, but PvP and PvE have both been overhauled and balanced. Servers have been merged and the community/economy is solid on them now.

I really enjoy the game, but I can probably recommend it to my own friends at this point and I wouldn't have before. Hopefully it starts to grow, because it's not a bad game at all. MMO's always get better.

My two cents ;)

I would honestly play SWTOR so much more if there was a native Mac client. I run os x as my primary os so that I can do iPhone dev (and because the tasty unix core makes nearly all development more straightforward). The reboot in to windows is a big barrier. I would probably bounce in and out once a week at least, but as it is I haven't logged in for months. Blizzard's approach of cross-platform games right from the beginning, and somewhat less aggressive technical requirements means I have bought and enjoyed every Blizzard release since Diablo -- with Warcraft II I borrowed one of the disks from a friend... and Warcraft, I ZModem'd from another friend. (For off-site back up purposes, of course.)

At this point in my life I play and stick with the games that are convenient for me to play but I still enjoy "hardcore" games like Starcraft II, Diablo III or Civ V. Maybe even TF now and then. Games that are windows-only and demanding on hardware aren't convenient. If SWTOR was more convenient to play, I would play it more often.

I am still a subscriber, so they'll lose my money if they go free to play. Since I won't be playing often, I won't be buying often either.

well i've loved this game from the start and it sucks to see the dev. team go down hill.

@Curious_George: I played SWG for almost 2 years, I agree that they did put the onus on the players to make their own fun, but there wasn't enough there to keep the game going for 8 years and a lot of the most interesting things about SWG (the economy, pvp) died with the population, I have no idea how swg lasted as long as it did, but I can see ToR lasting just as long on the Star Wars name alone (people are still buying KOTOR on Steam), it just won't be the same people playing, it will be more like a constant churn of people starting, having fun with the various classes for 2-3 months and then moving on.

@iAmJohn The thing that is different about SWTOR is the license and the amount of money they spent in development. For another game that didn't have an expensive IP license or spent way less money going Free To Play is an easy decision but for SWTOR I suspect that although Bioware could make a strong game going free with paid goodies, they would have to take a huge "write down" switching away from subscriptions as well as have this giant overhead charge for years.

@Kidavenger said:

@Smokey_Earhole said:

So...The Old Republic still being around a year or two from now? What's everyone's prediction?

Galaxies lasted 8 years; most of that time having less than 100k subscribers; while this game failed to live up to it's potential, it will be around a very long time and it will most likely eventually recoup that initial investment, just don't expect to see much more content created unless something drastically changes for the better; which is highly unlikely.

But Galaxies was also very sandbox focused in design. Once players had the tools there was a lot of entertainment they could create without needing tons of new content from the devs. SWTOR is about the polar opposite of that, in that it's very linear and absolutely dependent on new content. People have stuck around with WoW all these years because Blizzard has constantly injected the game with fresh content. If they do not do the same in SWTOR I believe the game will see an end much sooner than SWG did.

“As with the launch of any MMO, the size and skillset of the teams needed to maintain the game is different than the ones that built it,” said the company in an emailed statement this afternoon.

I'm sure the people working on SWTOR all that time were hoping that their years of time and effort working on the game would lead to them not having a job.

@Smokey_Earhole said:

So...The Old Republic still being around a year or two from now? What's everyone's prediction?

If Lord of the Rings Online is still going as a free-to-play thing, why wouldn't this be?

@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.

@Smokey_Earhole said:

So...The Old Republic still being around a year or two from now? What's everyone's prediction?

Galaxies lasted 8 years; most of that time having less than 100k subscribers; while this game failed to live up to it's potential, it will be around a very long time and it will most likely eventually recoup that initial investment, just don't expect to see much more content created unless something drastically changes for the better; which is highly unlikely.

@Grimluck343 said:

Remember how this game was supposed to kill WoW?

No? No one ever said it would. The only thing people ever said was "lol there's no way this game will kill WoW" because they wanted to feel superior to group of people that doesn't actually exist. No one, anywhere, ever thought this game would "kill WoW". Ever.

Seriously. Even google searching "swtor will kill wow" just brings up people being sarcastic and making fun of this non existent group of people.

Remember how this game was supposed to kill WoW?

So...The Old Republic still being around a year or two from now? What's everyone's prediction?

I said it would be free to play by the end of the year back in May. Everything points to that being true.

There's some decent stuff in TOR, the Imperial Agent story is enjoyable and I consider it to be one of the best stories written in a game this year. I like the game enough to still have a subscription but yeah the content is trickling in at a snails pace and i just can't see them fixing that if they are reducing the size of their team in general.

@SomeJerk said:

@nickux said:

You can't take 5+ years to make a game based on an aging business model and expect it to magically work.

I've already poured Elder Scrolls Online a 40. Hopefully they haven't spent more than a tenth of the SWTOR budget on it.

Bethesda might make some stupid decisions, but they're smart enough to not over budget a game like EA does.

It's sad when anyone loses their job, but I believe them when they say the number of people needed to build and launch an MMO are not the same as the number of people required to maintain that MMO. You might need 30 or 40 licensed professionals to build a house, but keeping it looking nice and functioning can be done by 1 or 2 on average.

@Silock said:

Its part of your plan? Blizzard must run a very different plan, as all they seem to do is hire people to help them with their MMO ; )

In short? Give it up EA, your desire to conquer every vessel of the gaming market is futile, you are nothing but a mere blight in the gaming world and need to die a quick death. Let us chant, No more EA, No more EA, No more EA!!!!

lol

The problem is that TOR is even more WoW than WoW is right now. A Star Wars themed MMO isn't a terrible idea. The terrible idea was copying 2009 WoW but with a lot of talking in quests.

Guild Wars 2 launch is soon and WoW Mists is going to announce their date very soon too. Those two games are the most progressive and on the bleeding edge of MMO design and put TOR to shame. In particular the "MMOs lack story" schick that TOR was trying to play up have been addressed in multiple ways in both of these games which leaves TOR with little left to trumpet. You've got to be a very big, die hard fan of TOR to continue to pay for a sub now.

Welp.

@SomeJerk said:

@nickux said:

You can't take 5+ years to make a game based on an aging business model and expect it to magically work.

I've already poured Elder Scrolls Online a 40. Hopefully they haven't spent more than a tenth of the SWTOR budget on it.

You're right I forgot about that too. And I don't mean to sound unsympathetic to the people affected. I just think MMO devs need to stop what they're doing right now and adjust their thinking or risk ending up like this.

I saw this coming.

@Cincaid said:

Always sad to see people lose their jobs, even if it's from a game I have no interest in.

Also, it seems this is the inevitable route for all MMOs. Only 7 months ago people were fired up and ready for this thing to launch, and today more layoffs (among them a veteran Executive Producer) give me the foreboding feeling that within the next 6 months the game will fully go F2P, and shut down within a year or two. I'd love to be proven wrong by the way, I'm not saying this to be rude.

I can't help to see similar reactions today towards upcoming MMOs, such as Guild Wars 2. People are fired up, saying "this time it will be different!", and admittedly it will probably go better considering GW2 has no monthly subscription (even if I'm confident that's not what keeps the MMO veterans away in the end). Nonetheless, it will be damn interesting to see what shape Guild Wars 2 is in around christmas.

I haven't played a MMO since the Wrath of the Lich King expansion to WoW, so I'm mostly a curious bystander nowadays. Is the MMO market milked dry? Will anything topple the WoW-mountain (that some claim is already crumbling down)? What if Blizzard's next MMO, Titan, sees itself in these circumstances within months after its release?

An interesting genre, to say the least.

@Cincaid: I think it's a problem with how these games are designed more so than pricing. It took 7 years to release this game, probably in response to WoW success. Someone at EA said: "We better get on that train!" Unfortunately for them, 7 years is a very long time, a lot has changed in the MMO space. You can't create a WoW clone, do one thing kinda different (in this case full voice acting and dialogue trees) that is sorta cool, but ultimately doesn't actually change any core mechanics. You're still grinding levels, you're still fetching X number of something, and you're still clicking on skills and waiting for cooldowns. People as a whole don't want that kind of gameplay anymore, and if they do, they can just play WoW which has 8 years of content. At this point the people who are working on The Elder Scrolls Online should be saving their money, because that game is definitely not going to rise above it's already lukewarm reception.

The Homogenization of the gameplay in MMOs doesn't help either, MMO shouldn't be a genre, it should be an idea. You simply can not take WoW and slap on a new license property and expect it has 8 million subscriptions.

@Silock said:

Its part of your plan? Blizzard must run a very different plan, as all they seem to do is hire people to help them with their MMO ; )

In short? Give it up EA, your desire to conquer every vessel of the gaming market is futile, you are nothing but a mere blight in the gaming world and need to die a quick death. Let us chant, No more EA, No more EA, No more EA!!!!

You need to relax.

Its part of your plan? Blizzard must run a very different plan, as all they seem to do is hire people to help them with their MMO ; )

In short? Give it up EA, your desire to conquer every vessel of the gaming market is futile, you are nothing but a mere blight in the gaming world and need to die a quick death. Let us chant, No more EA, No more EA, No more EA!!!!

You can't take 5+ years to make a game based on an aging business model and expect it to magically work.

Sad to see this game going the way it is. I enjoyed the main story quest stuff, but the side quest just killed the game for me.

This is expected; the team was so huge for initial development that there's no way they could keep it that large for maintenance/expansion, especially since the subscriber base isn't growing.

I really enjoyed my month and a half or so with SW:ToR, though even I have canceled my account now. I just ran out of steam and have a billion other games I want time to play, on top of having a big-boy job now. I actually really do enjoy the pleasantly mindless mechanics of MMOs on occasion, especially when they let me zone out and listen to music or a podcast. SW:ToR actually wasn't as good for that, in my opinion, because the story and voice acting was much more prevalent and well done, so I wanted to experience that, taking me out of my boar-killing trance.

Unfortunate for those out of work now; there's a massive development scene in Austin, and I hope they land on their feet. Hopefully their skill sets aren't strictly for making large-scale subscription MMOs, though...

I wish somebody could go to Bioware and EA could ask some of the higher-ups, how did everyone not see this coming? So sad. 38 Studios is another example of companies not making the best business decisions when it comes to creating an MMO. You can't take 5+ years to make a game based on an aging business model and expect it to magically work.

Common MMO practices really. You need a hell of a lot of people to build a MMO and once it's out you can trim things down. It's a shame to see people lose jobs.

I bet those developers who got TOR tattoos feel a little...shameful now.

I wonder just how bad Bioware is floundering because of this. don't think EA has touted their numbers since March (for obvious reasons). I would really like to see an estimate. Anyone have any idea what kind user base The Old Republic has now?