BioWare: Old Republic players reached end-game at "lightning speed"

Excellent way to explain falling audience... Our game is just too good.

I haven't actually played an MMO for a while now so couldn't give a worthwhile opinion on whether this is fair or not. Sounds like a cop out though. Even if it's true it possibly means the game direction was incorrect and the game hasn't benefited from the social connections that keep a lot of folk playing together on these type of titles. Hopefully some players will comment.

Posted:11 months ago

Maybe MMOs are starting to suffer the same problem as singleplayer games - namely that there's just too many of them. These days to play every game I want to I have to belt through them at near light speed before the next one drops and I still have a pile next to the television and a matching one next to the PC. And as more and more gamers get families and other timesinks, time available to play videogames is only going to get scarcer. I know I have a lot less spare time than I had five years ago.

Sooner or later MMOs are going to become singleplayer games with always-on DRM and 14-year-olds shouting obscenities in your ear.

And socially players have WOW. A clan or group of friends may try another MMO for a while, but they'll always go back to WOW once they've exhausted the content of the new game. It's like trying to prise people away from Facebook or Twitter, and look at how successful attempts to do that have been.

Edited 3 times. Last edit by Sam Brown on 6th June 2012 11:06am

Posted:11 months ago

"Sooner or later MMOs are going to become singleplayer games with always-on DRM and 14-year-olds shouting obscenities in your ear."

They have been for a while.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Russell Watson on 6th June 2012 12:11pm

Posted:11 months ago

I wonder if...
"We launched a game that was better than we expected, that's why we couldn't keep up!"
Is a better excuse than:
"We launched a game without being done, that's why we couldn't keep up!"

Anyway, it still points to the same mistake.

Posted:11 months ago

The answer to this problem is the one Eve:Online took. Make real world time a limiting factor.

In Eve:Online, and it's constant fanbase training is measured in real world time and carries on when you aren't playing. Why another MMO can't ditch the dated 'Class' system and make a player train this way is beyond me. It would take over 9 years to train every skill in Eve, and every week you play a little more is added to your game by this skill system. Sure there's no instant gratification, but isn't that the problem with games atm?

Posted:11 months ago

pure. 100%. bullshit.

they released an unfinished product, plain and simple. I am guilty of having purchased 3 CE's and 3 standard editions anticipating this game. this game doesn't hook you, its a boring grind fest beyond any i have ever played, and uses old and dated mechanics to boot. absolutely lacks of any innovation to the genre, and having been an avid follower of BioWare for many years, i find myself disgusted at the mediocre product they put out with this game.

and Erickson... he makes the hair on my neck crawl with his extreme arrogance. 6 hour sessions is far from record breaking, but go ahead and find ways to spin this sad sad attempt at reskinning WoW with a Star Wars skin. /disgusted.

Posted:11 months ago

"Sure there's no instant gratification, but isn't that the problem with games atm?"

I think that's more a problem with the gamers.

So, sooner or later gamers are going to get sick of being burnt on pre-order day-one purchases of bug-ridden unfinished games, what do we do then? What's our next evil plan?

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Sam Brown on 6th June 2012 9:33pm

Posted:11 months ago

Water fluoridation? :p

I would've thought it obvious that sooner of later gamers would get fed up with empty promises and pre-order bonuses, but apparently they still haven't risen up in anger about them. Perhaps core gamers are just innured to bug-ridden expensive games that don't last more than a couple of weeks?

Posted:11 months ago

How much did EA spend on this? I hear rumours of a billion dollars. That can't be right, surely?

EA are guilty of trying to do everything in gaming instead of trying to do what they are best at in order to make a profit, like Activision and Zynga do.

Posted:11 months ago

@ Bruce

Last I heard, which was a little before TOR's release, the budget had swung up to about $150 million. Everything I've read has been just rumours, but that figure seems more likely than a billion, even if it's definitely gone up from there what with post-launch support.

Posted:11 months ago

They are having the standard MMO problem... that the users consume content faster than desired, and in doing so, they look for content elsewhere.

The question that needs to be asked is this: Why didn't they realize that users will consume the content as fast as the systems allow? This is an issue that has been around for years, and is the most common complaint for all MMO's.

I am not buying the 'our game is so good' excuse. Your game may be good, but your lack of foresight is your real problem. Learn from the mistake, and make an expansion with enough content to last for a year.

Posted:11 months ago

This is why i dont belive online games are the future. much of the content can be fully aquired in a reasonable amount of time like a single player RPG. And then money has to be invested not only on further developing new content, but server maintenance and support personal. And this is the same for every MMO game. And in only a hand full of years servers go down and your left with a game you cant play. And for gamers, they have to pay for monthly access or new content when it gets updated or if its a free to play model. You get to a certain point and have to pay more to keep playing.... bleh... I love my single player games.

Posted:11 months ago

@Andrew Ihegbu - not sure using Eves aproach would be all that great. In fact that was one of the things I disliked about it. "Your skill will be learned in 2 days". So for two days no matter what I cant fly that big ship I wanted to fly. Dont forget, as a gamer you want your gratification NOW.

Posted:11 months ago