BioWare Discusses Future of Star Wars: The Old Republic
Is there hope left for Star Wars: The Old Republic?
Two weeks ago, EA and BioWare announced unsurprisingly a shift to a free-to-play model for it's Star Wars: The Old Republic. Originally a highly anticipated title, The Old Republic reached a high point of 1.7 million subscribers shortly after its release.
Unfortunately, the numbers tumbled downhill after that, losing well over 700,000 subscribers. Despite the loss, BioWare takes to the stage at this year's Gamescom with enthusiasm for the game's future.
“The market is clearly becoming a free-to-play market in the MMO space. It appears that’s the direction the whole industry is going," states Matthew Bromberg, BioWare Austin's general manager.
"Our own research told us that a significant percentage of the folks who have left the game, left because of the commitment to the subscription model. It’s not that surprising if you think about it because the dynamic in an MMO is essentially one in which you subscribe and then you’re waiting for new content, and people don’t feel good about waiting.”
In addition to the change in subscription model, the company promises to bring along more frequent content updates. Bromberg states the updates will be free for those who remain subscribed, while free-to-play players will have to purchase them for an undisclosed fee. These updates will push for more social interaction with additional group content, operations, warzones, flashpoints, and social events.
For the players who do like the cinematic story-driven solo content, Bromberg promises more of that is on the way as well, along with an increased level cap and additional quests on the planet of Makeb. Despite losing a staggering number of subscribers, BioWare seems to be confident in the title's potential to live up to its expectations. Will the shift in subscription model and upcoming content updates be enough to bring you back to the game?
2. Pay to get special content is ok. (not core content)
3. Pay to win is sucks model. Do this u will fail hard as well.
So if EA/bioware do 1 & 2 it should be ok.
It was, and never will be a "WoW Killer," leave that to the next gen MMOs.
Honestly, Buy to Play (B2P) is the best model. Needing to buy ANY game play content, special or not, is not good. And what is special content? All the big bosses?
Mounts, pets, costumes, fine. I can even see extra storage space for a non sub game, perhaps even remote AH access, although that shouldn't be in a sub game. But no content, or stat armor and weapons, should be on a cash shop.
There are 7 billion people on the planet of which only 65% are between the ages of 15 and 64. That leaves only 4.5 billion people in the target age range. Most of these people live in Asia and play games targeted to their culture.
UYeah.. THAT'S that bad thing!!
The problem with SWTOR wasn't that it isn't fun, the problem was there is not enough to do in the game.
PVP:
If you pvp you had to be in it from the beginning otherwise your going in against people with a zillion expertise and you had virtually No way to ever kill them. So unless your in it from the beginning expect to be murdered for a good solid 2 weeks or more.
PvE:
Once you beat the content there is zero to do, gear is pretty easily obtained in a raiding guild and content is either way to easy or way to hard with virtually no different ways to beat the content, especially with all the bugs that are in the game. Bioware also alienated the PvE crowd by holding set bonuses back on Black Hole gear and not holding back the set bonuses on PvP gear. Some classes such as merc rely on those bonuses to be effective and competitive. PvE gear is much more difficult to obtain then PvP gear and the amount of stat upgrades is laughable from first raid content to end game content, some are not even upgrades at all.
And approx 50% of the population is female. And we all know girls / women don't play video games.
Oh ffs, you ignored the beta testers and you are now even ignoring the people who leave.
No people are leaving because SW:TOR only has story as something unique.
LOL, one look at OS market shares shows nearly all subscribers will be on windows. This is a fact.
I also think the content just wasn't there for SWTOR. The battlegrounds from the start were just unbalanced. I mean any lvl could que up and even though your lvl 10 you could be put up against a lvl 50 or so. Yes your stats are beefed up but not your gear your wearing which would most likely be better on a high lvl with better types of stats, but also your skill tree with better skillz.
Also I think that the game was too suited for Role Players and not your casual player that didn't really care about the story lines. I was in the beta for a long time and friends would ask me what I thought and kinda just like Final Fantasy, if your a Fan you'll love it but if your a person that doesn't care about the background or the stories it's just a time being wasted with all the little movies they have. It's bad when your in a grp doing the grp quests on the station and you have sit there and wait for others to finish with there video.
The Space Combat was fun for awhile but it got old cause once you figure it out it's just a piece of cake but it's the same thing over and over.
I wonder if people that played Galaxies are now pissed off cause you know they shut down all of Galaxies just cause of SWTOR. I think it was Lucas Arts that had them shut it down or maybe Sony decided to do it since it would be pointless to have 2 of them and there's was rather old.
I bet you that when Blizzard makes there new MMO which will be a pay to play deal that alot of people will hop on the train and ride it for along time. Unless they follow the path that Blizzard has been walking since D3 and Cata. As far as Cata I think what started downhill for that was they were making it too simple and they broke alot of there own rules that for so long since the very start they said they would never allow. Of course they were trying to attract new blood is the reason why they made these changes but now it's kinda all back fired on em.
To have a great MMO you have to be better then what WoW was. If you can't do that then you'll never make it.
I think there's also just a overflow of MMO's. They saw Blizzard and even Everquest make all that money and they all decided to try it out. Soon we'll see The Secret World in F2P as well cause that won't last long at all.