SW:TOR down 400,000 subscribers

[Bronze_D]

While a lot of it is like that, there certainly are different outcomes for many of the choices you can make. I'm running a 2nd knight on Taris at the moment and have already come across a few new/different sub-quests by following the opposite path in dialogue. A lot of them also make quests easier or harder to complete.

Not to mention one very important choice at the end of chapter 1 with the Knight story involving one of your companions.

I'm starting to think that most people saying this haven't even tried playing both sides...

Sure not everything has a different outcome (imagine the development costs if they did) but you can't honestly say there is no difference.

Yeah that's true, though to be honest... both sides force users choices were not exactly good... well maybe that's just my disposition towards the way they portray force users in the game.

The problem is that they marketed it heavily with that as one of their main key point.

Then ppl play it and find that it wasn't quite as big as their advertisement was and that naturally kills off some of the appeal.

The real problem of course is that when that didn't work out to be as big of an influence, they didn't have much else to fallback to since the rest weren't exactly hot unless you are a SW fanatic.

[Syncourt]

The problem is that they marketed it heavily with that as one of their main key point.

Then ppl play it and find that it wasn't quite as big as their advertisement was and that naturally kills off some of the appeal.

I guess that's the difference between myself and a lot of others. I only take advertisements with a grain of salt. Mostly thanks to the fact that I cannot count the amount of times I have seen the words "Ground breaking new AI" slapped onto games and then watch the AI run around like a bunch of headless chickens.

I mean, most advertisements will always try to make things sound a lot better than what they are.

Though I was never actually intending to buy SW:ToR and therefore never got involved in any of the hype, but my friend asked if he bought it for me would I play it with him. I said I would, at least.. until GW2 comes out then we'll see what happens from there. But now I play it a lot more than what he does.

[CJGordon]

The problem is that they marketed it heavily with that as one of their main key point.

Then ppl play it and find that it wasn't quite as big as their advertisement was and that naturally kills off some of the appeal.

I guess that's the difference between myself and a lot of others. I only take advertisements with a grain of salt. Mostly thanks to the fact that I cannot count the amount of times I have seen the words "Ground breaking new AI" slapped onto games and then watch the AI run around like a bunch of headless chickens.

I mean, most advertisements will always try to make things sound a lot better than what they are.

Though I was never actually intending to buy SW:ToR and therefore never got involved in any of the hype, but my friend asked if he bought it for me would I play it with him. I said I would, at least.. until GW2 comes out then we'll see what happens from there. But now I play it a lot more than what he does.

Yea I never saw anything to do with SWTOR before its release, I saw a little bit and decided that it was a Star Wars mmo and I must play it, after that I never worried about it. I enjoy the game, dislike the jedi/ sith classes only because I didn't want to do the generic thing pretty much everyone else was going to do so I went with agent, and its great.

Too much marketing and the seemingly increasing amount of *this mmo is going to be the best ever, its going to blow wow out of the water* kill the game before it even releases.

[Bronze_D]

The marketing and hype is just half the problem,

the other half is on the experience that the game itself gave beyond what the voice acting and illusion of choice provided.

That's the most crucial problem, beneath the previous layer the underlying material is the same essentially with any contemporary MMO, and less in other respect.

This pose a problem because if the voice acting and pseudo choice fails to capture the attention of the players, then what's left essentially are no different than existing MMO and as such the transient MMO players will likely leave shortly.

[Krogan]

Color me not even the slightest bit surprised and this is really tip of the iceberg. Once GW2 releases guild wars will struggle too keep more the 500k subs.

I do agree that part of their problem is that there are a lot of MMO players that always jump on the latest bandwagon but SWTOR has much MUCH bigger problems then that. I enjoyed the game for about a month but as much fun as shallow waters can be for a little bit it gets boring pretty quickly and once you realize the entire pool is just shallows... it's time to get out.

After playing the GW2 beta weekend event I felt something for an MMO that I haven't felt since EQ1 community and many things that I don't think I have felt from an MMO before.

[ViperShadow]

Sorry guys I just saw this image and felt it was slightly relevant to the thread.

Disclaimer: I'm not paying out SWTOR, I did play it and I quite enjoyed it for a while.

[TRB]

Not that i think the game is out for the count but its not a particularly fun game to play and i don't see how these little content packs are going to revive it. Granted i burned through 2 and a bit class quests rather quick, there isn't that much to do.

This.
once the shiny voice acting wears off the game itself is just pretty plain and boring.

[DeathMist]

It isn't a cookie cutter of WoW unless you're blind and simpleminded. And voicework for the entirety of an MMO and the indepth story involved isn't exactly playing it safe, is it?

--Voice work is a nice thing but when they reuse voice clips a lot (Sith Inq)
it gets old rather fast.

--Not going to lie, there was no in-depth story. To be quite honest the story was shallow and utterly boring. (Jedi consular/Sith Inq)
(It was a cookie cut of, go there talk to him, go there talk to her, rinse and repeat for 4 planets)

As for it being a cookie cutter:

--Have you reached level cap? If you have I assume you know what I mean by dailies grind.

http://scm-l3.technorati.com/12/01/29/6 ... 0129101052

http://scm-l3.technorati.com/12/01/29/6 ... 0129101147

That is just a small example, you can pair up every other class in SWTOR and their respective talents to something in WoW/Other generic WoW clone.

Although I guess there is a major difference. SWTOR isn't Open world its pretty much instances of everything.

That all being said. When I played SWTOR I didn't mind it and I REALLY enjoyed PVP but they didn't even try to cover the fact that everything they did was WoW but with light sabers and voice acting. (If anyone brings up legacy I'm going to laugh at you because it still isn't there. As in, "Coming Soon". Also it was suppose to be there at launch)

[Nekosan]

After about 15 minutes of play the first thing I wondered was "what are they going to do for weapons in expansions?", being 100% confined to one weapon type when playing most of the classes is just a **** design, at least when i played by hunter in WoW i had the choice of bow/gun/crossbow.

You also have to wonder how many random lightsaber colours they can come up with, there's something really uninteresting about everyone just being able to use any colour crystal no matter what their alignment is.

People who think it isn't a direct WoW clone with shittier designed maps are deluding themselves, 15 minutes after you start the game you've stopped giving a **** about the voice acting and the whole thing just screams of a cash grab, certainly wasn't worth 300 million dollars of production.

[Seakas]

Something that I think will attract a lot (I'm just going off personal experience here) of people to GW2 over something like WoW or SW:TOR is not the setting/mechanics, but the lack of subscription.

I for one have never really had the time to play a subscription based MMO, as much as I would probably enjoy myself, I just don't have the time and would be wasting my money. The alternative of course is Free to Play MMOs, which often feel gimped in comparison. The only ones I have felt worked were previously subscription but converted to F2P (I touched onto D&DO for a bit, using cash shop for extra quests and what not).

I know that me and my friends, who all have full time work and have never really had the time for subscriptions, have all preordered Guild Wars 2 simply for the fact that it is a once off purchase, but doesn't feel like its lacking compared to its subscription-based competition.

[Nekosan]

Something that I think will attract a lot (I'm just going off personal experience here) of people to GW2 over something like WoW or SW:TOR is not the setting/mechanics, but the lack of subscription.

I for one have never really had the time to play a subscription based MMO, as much as I would probably enjoy myself, I just don't have the time and would be wasting my money. The alternative of course is Free to Play MMOs, which often feel gimped in comparison. The only ones I have felt worked were previously subscription but converted to F2P (I touched onto D&DO for a bit, using cash shop for extra quests and what not).

I know that me and my friends, who all have full time work and have never really had the time for subscriptions, have all preordered Guild Wars 2 simply for the fact that it is a once off purchase, but doesn't feel like its lacking compared to its subscription-based competition.

I've never understood what sort of time/value people expect from an MMO, If you play for an hour a week the you're still getting better value than if you had gone to see 2 movies (and cheaper). If someone doesn't have the $20 then that's fine but a lot of people make it sound like you need to play 30 hours a week for it to be worth it.

[Marius]

I tend to feel sub-based games suffer from a pandering to the majority feeling.

Because everyone is paying the same, they have to offer generic content in an effort to keep as many subs as possible.

Generally, the only games that offer significant cosmetic character customization and stuff are those with some form of cash shop. Otherwise, the dollar numbers aren't there to make it viable.

[IvanTSR]

For me, whenever I played this game despite being a die hard Star Wars fan, I would log in, play and instantly compare my experience with SW:TOR and SW:G. SW:TOR fell sooo far short it's not funny.

I love my MMO's and I'm one of those transition players that floats between MMOs. When I came across SW:G I stayed there through thick and thin, didn't swap, didn't change even through the NGE catastrophe. Since then no MMO will do, they're all rubbish in my opinion.

SW:G did that to me too. Nothing will ever live up to that game in it's original form unfortunately.

[Nekosan]

I tend to feel sub-based games suffer from a pandering to the majority feeling.

Because everyone is paying the same, they have to offer generic content in an effort to keep as many subs as possible.

I have to agree somewhat, the sub based games always seem to listen to the vocal idiots who just endlessly complain on their forums. What we need is a private company with a few hundred million dollars and a vision , no shareholders to please.

[Seakas]

I've never understood what sort of time/value people expect from an MMO, If you play for an hour a week the you're still getting better value than if you had gone to see 2 movies (and cheaper). If someone doesn't have the $20 then that's fine but a lot of people make it sound like you need to play 30 hours a week for it to be worth it.

I get where you are coming from, and on my budget I usually can put about $30 a month towards games so I could afford a subscription. From the way I see it however, paying a one off price of $60 will save me some money after about 3 months. Money I could potentially spend on another title later on down the track. That was my reasoning behind what I said.