Success? Maybe that is the point.
There are many ways to define success, to be sure. UO is a success because it is still alive, still supposedly profitable, and manned by a small team, keeping costs low. EA didn't think it would get anywhere at all, thereby exceeding all expectations because there really were none.
Well, look, was UO a success? Sure. No question about it. It really did usher in a new era of MMOs. It certainly wasn't the first online multiplayer game, but you can look back to UO and see that pivotal moment when things began to change in online persistent gaming. However, as you say, there's different varieties of success. As a financial success, UO's seen better days. As a gaming success, UO has
also seen better days. None of that means that it isn't currently a success in either form, but compared to other successes, it is clearly not successful. I'd say the size of the development team working on UO and the number of expansions in the pipeline are also signs of where UO's current "success" is.
SWTOR may have over half a million subscribers. Compared to UO, that's a big number, and it doesn't take WoW numbers to be considered successful. Any MMO that makes enough to keep running and people enjoy can be considered a success.
Very true. My point about SW:TOR's numbers is simply that it is the
press and other people who are inflating the value of the TOR subscriber base,
not EA. In interviews and expectations for the product, numbers as low as 500,000 from launch were sustainable, but that they hoped to get a couple of million. They met these numbers. From EA's standpoint, that's successful. The whole F2P aspect that they're presently rolling out certainly is to attract new players, and no, I wouldn't say it's the best sign for TOR, but on the other hand, EVERY MMO has a rough first year. Even World of Warcraft's first year wasn't what anyone observing from the industry would have called a slam dunk. It's the nature of the beast -- you have to bring in customers and then you have to give them a reason to stay, and on top of that, your systems, which you hope and pray were designed well most likely weren't, and so there's a massive adjustment period as you try to bring your game expectations in line with whatever it is you're trying to accomplish. That Ultima Online survived its first year (hell, that it survived its first six months) is a testament not only to the developers but to the game itself. TOR offers an interesting experience that if polished will survive. It won't be a WoW-killer, but it will survive.
Why I, and a few others in this thread, think SWTOR was UNSUCCESSFUL is why I'm still discussing it. It had a massive budget, all the support of EA behind it, marketing up the wazoo, and a world renowned IP. It was supposed to be the next big thing.
No. It wasn't. See, that's the thing. I keep seeing people quoting SW:TOR as being designed to be "the next big thing." No one over at EA ever thought it was going to be that. It's a unique MMO experience in certain aspects, and it's the heir to the MMO-verse for Star Wars at the moment. A day will come when the license outweighs the profit and it too will close and go on to be something else. People always seem to overshoot the power of the Star Wars license when it comes to MMOs. Star Wars Galaxies was definitely successful (at least until the NGE), and even after perhaps THE BIGGEST BLUNDER IN MMOR HISTORY, SWG went on for what another 6, 8 years or something like that. This weird expectation that TOR was ever going to be the next big thing, particularly in an ever increasingly saturated marketplace, was fanboy and press nonsense and not based in any sense of reality, nor on anything that anyone over at EA was ever expecting to have happen.
It wasn't. It's gone free to play. It's dev team got axed in a significant way. It may or may not have even made it's development costs back.
All conjecture from the sidelines. Yeah, the development team got cut. Blizzard's fired some people too, and WoW is down to 9.1 million subscribers. Quick, WoW may have been killed while we weren't looking. A lot of this is again the nature of the beast that has become the MMO industry. Whether or not it made back its development costs... well, we can all conjecture on that, but I suspect EA is quite happy with TOR's initial performance. It's getting it beyond that initial year that's going to be rough. And let's be honest here, neither EA nor Bioware have any experience in that at all. EA never paid any attention to UO when it was important to do so, and so have lost to time immemorial all of the important lessons that could have been learned. Whatever could have been learned from Warhammer was sacrificed when they pushed it out the door too early. TOR, for all of the issues that it had and has was, at least, a title ready to go gold. Could it have used some more polish? Sure. But not so much that it wasn't worth releasing when they did. It's still a fantastic experience. The problem is, Bioware made a very nice massively multiplayer SINGLE PLAYER GAME. They need to go back and look at a lot of things. Whether or not they will is all in question, sure, but their development stream hasn't slowed, and there's a lot of stuff moving forward, so we'll just have to wait and see.
Thing is, when you discuss TOR from the context in which it exists, EA has at least finally given an MMO the room it needs to grow, and by going F2P to help bring in players, they're at least working to help sustain the title's place in the market. Because here's the thing. Everyone knows that F2P doesn't mean "You don't make money." F2P doesn't even mean FREE. It's all marketing smoke and mirrors, and the hope by going F2P is to get people interested in a title they may not have checked out yet and convince them that something in the game is worth paying for. But think about EA's long line of failures: Motor City Online, Earth Above and Beyond, whatever that mystery game was that called you up in the middle of the night, The Sims Online/EA World, Warhammer, and on and on and on... As someone who has watched the development of TOR, EA has at least learned a handful of lessons that apply, and they aren't just choking the life out of TOR as they move on (which, by the way, has been a very historical way of EA treating their MMOs... just ask UO/UO2/OWOWOWOWOWOW/UXO).
I believe it is UNSUCCESSFUL because it didn't do what they WANTED it to do. It's not about JUST the numbers, but the whole picture: The consolidations, downsizing, the decrease of subscriptions it DID have, and completely altering their revenue model are indicative that it did not make the mark they were aiming for. When you don't achieve the objective they were clearly setting out to reach, that's the definition of failure. No matter how fun it is, or what subscribers it has, or how long it lives, or how much success it may have in the future, it still failed to achieve it's initial goals.
Again... this is not true. What you're basing your beliefs on in this case is not factual information as actually quoted from reliable EA representative or Bioware representatives, but instead fanboy nonsense as spat all over the internet in the form of "news." Let's be honest... the writers at IGN, Kotaku, Gamespot, or your choice of "reliable news" aren't even as good at pretending to provide unbiased news as are the mainstream media sources. EA NEVER EXPECTED SW:TOR TO BE THE NEXT BIG THING. They have said repeatedly that they would be happy with a small corner of the MMO marketplace. And they're working to secure that. I don't see how that makes the game unsuccessful. Will TOR still be around in four, five years? Well, hell... Warhammer's still around. If they can keep Warhammer going, they sure as hell will keep TOR going.
WoW is NOT a failure because despite losing over a MILLION subscriptions, it still has way more than anything out there. It still has all those things around it that no other MMO out there has (Esports, card game, etc.). And despite losing so many, it's not changing the way you pay for it. Why would EA switch SWTOR to a F2P model after losing a faction of what WoW loses, but WoW stays firm in it's revenue model?
WoW is not a failure for a great many reasons -- most of which the typical UO fanboi would argue with so I won't bother rambling on about it -- but um, not to put to fine a point on it, even WoW has a limited F2P model to it. It's not as extensive because let's face it... Blizzard doesn't need to attract more players to the game. At this point, if you don't know what WoW is, a friend of yours will tell you all about it in some form or another. Will there ever be a WoW killer? Sure. Even WoW will someday have its day. But I suspect WoW will remain strong for another 5 years or so, another couple of expansions, and then the game will peter out quickly. I say quickly because unlike UO, there's nothing to keep people coming back like housing (at least not yet). But it's still got life.
As, I suspect, TOR does. What EA does is going to secure or break it, but look, announcing F2P, while not the most spectacular thing, isn't exactly a death knell either. Was it bad for Warhammer? Sure. But that's because Warhammer was already beyond hope. TOR isn't beyond help... but it is having its share of first year woes. Let's see where the game is in December, and what their plan is for the next six months to a year before we start tolling the bell on a game that's still thriving in many respects. Like I say... even WoW wasn't a surefire success in its first year, and it did have a lot of subscribers.
Why keep talking about it? Maybe I just have a something stuck in my craw because they put all this money into a FAILURE, but we can't get a high-res update that was already well on it's way for FRACTIONS of pennies on the dollar for what they have and will continue to invest in SWTOR. Something that could have ACTUALLY helped draw in more players to make a game that is (in their OWN WORDS) profitable even MORE profitable.
Thing is, TOR isn't failing. And maybe it's the jaded viewpoint of "Why should TOR get any money when UO isn't getting any?!?!?!" If you want to point fingers, point them instead at the poor decisions makers of the past. UO has proven one thing time and time again: Give us money and we will spend it inappropriately. They already funded new clients for Ultima Online. Their biggest mistake was cancelling the 3D client and moving onto the WoW-inspired KR garbage that they did. Few people know that by its death, the 3D client was actually in fairly decent shape -- they don't know that because like most UO clients, the UO Dev Team bungled along with it for YEARS. I mean, come on, how long has the EC been in beta, and it STILL has massive issues (of which I know someone will come piping in with, "But it's much better if you use Pinco's UI for it." Sure, it may be, but you shouldn't have to download someone else's bug fix for the stupid thing to make it usable). Don't blame EA for not wasting more money on a game that has repeatedly misspent what money it was given. Aside from a banana tree, the KR graphics update was a huge misstep (not saying reverting back to 2D graphics was an acceptable answer either, but whatever) that actually shows part and parcel some of the problematic symptoms that have come from those in charge of UO. I have it on very good authority that the KR graphics were basically taken the way they were because they were reviewed far too late in the production process, and it was either take them or piss the money away. Obviously they took them, and still ended up pissing the money away.
Now... as for UO's future... someone needs to be able to show that UO is worth continuing to spend money on, to build a solid plan, and to execute things in a way that shows EA the money will be well spent. While people may see the departure of Grimm as another nail in the coffin, that the art lead position has been moved to VA is probably one of the better signs out of UO's dev team in recent years. Time will certainly tell, but I'd have to say that from where I sit, making that call, which I'm sure came as part of the new management of UO (ie: Mesanna being the new producer), was a good thing. We'll have to see how it turns out, but faulting EA for doing anything with TOR and not spending money on the moneypit that is UO... *shrugs* Understanding a bit about the development process and how companies look at money spent on projects... it's hard to get worked up about.
As my grandmother would say, "I guess I'm just in a pissy mood is all."
Nothing wrong with being pissy about stuff... just make sure to keep it in the appropriate context.
