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How long will TOR last?
Drakxii
Member Posts: 594
With all the doom threads about, I was wondering just how long people thought TOR would last before the Sub drop off hits.
I think it will last about 6 months. I believe that bioware will have alot of content at the start but leveling with be fast. Also with the crap DLC that bioware makes, I just don't think they will be able to add enough quailty fast enough to keep themeparkers happy.
Edit: This isn't a poll about how long it will stay running. I fully expect EA to beat this horse till it's long dead, like SOE does with it's games. I know that SWG is still running, but it's sub numbers are a shadow it former numbers. This poll is about how long TOR will keep large number of subs and be one of the top western MMOs.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
Comments
You will get a drop at the end of the free month.
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Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
5 years + , if it has the RPG as deep as Dragon Age Origin .
yeah, people here tends to believe that it could last some months...
that's sort of an improvement...
"Tanking is like mathematics...healing is like an art" Kimi (ex TOROcast Member)
Didn't vote. The game won't get past beta.
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As I said in another thread, the drop off for people who frequent sites like this will be fast. Just look at many of the critique posts here, people for whatever reason will still buy TOR even though they hate the very foundation that the game stands on. I guess people don't understand the concept of voting with their wallet.
Casuals it's hard to say, until they run out of content I'd assume, which I can't give an estimated time of. As I have no real clue how long it will take an average player to reach that point.
As for DLC =/= their content development for TOR, I'm not sure how one jumps to such a conclusion. I'm sure the dev's working on TOR who have worked in this industry since the beginning (meridian 59) might have something to say about that. Very few members of this Dev team come from titles such as ME or DA, as those teams are still working on those franchises.
They may "borrow" devs from time to time, but those devs hardly have any control over the day to day development of TOR.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I think the game will sell really well (1 million easy) with subs dropping like a rock roughly 4-6 months after launch.
SWG is at 7 years so I can't see it doing any worse than SWG did.
I can feel your anger. This game is defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike this game down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards towards the Dark Side will be complete.
+1
"Tanking is like mathematics...healing is like an art" Kimi (ex TOROcast Member)
Considering how much focus is on story, it depends on how long Bioware can pump out interesting new content to keep players interested. Players have a nasty habit of blowing through content though...
We can only hope not long so another company can get the Star Wars Ip and make a game that will do it justice. But, STO is still going so the future doesn't look bright for Star Wars fans.
I also agree with the above. Especially with the population issues I'm currently seeing in Rift I see no reason at all to try SWTOR until at least 4 months after release.
Considering they've got 10 years of content mapped out and in full development as we speak, I believe it will last at least 10 years :P, but it will peak somewhere in it's first 5 years as long as they handle the game properly.
12 years
What population issues? Cause right now I'm logging on and there are 4 full servers, 6 High servers and the rest are medium. And each week for the last month a new server goes from medium to high on peak hours sooo I'm really not seeing the population issue unless you rolled on an imbalanced server (factionally speaking), on the wrong side of that situation.
I'm not sure the hype in this respect really can be tied to the hype of past games. The hype here is on Bioware/Star Wars not a lie of the finest steak to ever see it's way to a plate.
They've been straight forward with their aims with this game (a themepark game with cinematic story elements). They've been shooting down hopes of something more since the beginning, which is why there's so much pre-release controversy. In the end what do those who don't like that sort of direction, or who have grown completely sick of it have to complain about post release, especially if they buy it anyway?
I think it's safe to assume we all know what to expect from TOR at this point. Story based leveling similar to AOC's tortage. A stream-lined approach to character development similar to other Bioware titles. Gear Progression at later stages of the game. Raid like scenarios for end game. PVP battlegrounds from lvl 1-cap. Something similar to WARs pvp lakes. Certain planets being linear certain planets being more open.
A bot based crafting experience, a certain level of craftable goods, tokens and rewards for grouping up. Typcial MMO combat, Typcial MMO animations, typcial MMO UI etc..
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
I give it 3 months. TOR and Rift will be smoked by other games.
I've bookmarked the thread, will be interesting to revisit in the future.
You'll have some drop off after the first free month, because you'll have people who discover that SWTOR isn't to their liking, just as you see with other MMO launches.
After that it can go 2 ways, either we see a WoW effect for whatever reason happen. I'm saying 'for whatever reason' because I still cannot fully understand how it is that WoW managed to draw in 10+ million people and got them playing for 6 years off and on, I myself get tired of playing the same game after a while. So it's hard to pinpoint what I'd call the 'gravity effect', is the object large enough in mass, then it starts pulling in other mass making it bigger with an increased gravity effect and so on.
The other effect is the also oberved 'content consumption' effect. where people consume the dev content, and if there's little of it left or they've grown tired of it, they start to leave.
The 2nd one depends upon how fast people are with consuming the content. See in this post below for my own guesses.
I differ from this opinion. The journey towards level cap in Rift was on average 125-150 hours pure leveling time. The journey towards level cap and finishing a class story (which doesn't necessarily end immediately after reaching level cap) rates around 200-300 hours on average, based upon their CB tester metrics.
After that, in contrast to Rift the leveling of alts has been made more appealing by making the journey, the leveling experience, also for alts unique and different.
I'd say that that content alone should be entertaining enough for the average gamer to provide entertainment value for 6-9 months. For people who're going for more than 2-3 alts even more than 9 months, purely to be entertained on that content alone, class story and leveling.
The rest is where it gets interesting: most features are what we've seen in other themepark MMO's, so it depends how many MMO gamers have grown tired of that, and how BW has executed it. The crafting sounds interesting and could be a different path of occupation, especially since the crafted items are on par with raid gear, the best of crafted items are on par with the very highest tiered of raid items.
As for the PvP Warzones, the exploration, the economy game, the dungeons and raids, and the open world PVP and any possible surprises that can be found in there, it all depends. Matter of fact is that 6-9 months after launch, just like WoW, Rift and the other MMO's around, SWTOR will face the competition of the other upcoming MMO's.
There's only so many subs and amount of playtime that an MMO gamer can afford.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Ha!
All of you fail to forget that it has Star Wars in the name, as well as Bioware and EA backing it.
So just let that sink in...
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Galaxies has held on for nearly eight years despite it's lack of content and movement away from canon.
I'd say TOR will provide people with the very least a solid year of fun gameplay, and depending on what content is released during that timeframe possibly a few more years tacked on that number.
Personally, I won't be playing any other mmos once TOR releases. It has enough right now to tide me over, as a Star Wars/Bioware fan, for at least a few years.
Lets be honest guys, this forum would have predicted WoW failing as well because the average user here is completely out of touch with what the general MMO player wants from a game. You see posters on here saying theme parks are dead, that WoW and it's companions are awful games and nobody wants to play them now yet there are millions more than happy to pay a monthly fee to play them.
Why do I think it will succeed? simply because the people involved in making it know that if they put out a quality product and keep the content rolling in it will be a golden goose for years to come. It's clear a lot of money has been spent on this and that Bioware are getting the time needed to finish the game not to mention the fact that it's Star Wars.
One thing the release of titles like WAR and AOC have shown is that there's a lot of people willing to try new MMOs when they are released, the problem has been keeping players interested but it's also true that WAR and co were deeply flawed and launched in a bit of a mess, SWTOR will not make the same mistake.
Reports from BETA suggest the leveling speed is the similar to vanilla WoW but they already have 3 Warzones, a raid and lots of other content in place for people not to mention that this game will be a reroller's paradise.
I predict it will have the biggest launch of any MMO yet, there will be the natural drop off after the free month but perhaps not as big as people think. Once it's been out for a couple of months and word has has gotten out about what kind of game it is and Bioware start adding new conetent then the subs will rise again and keep rising and more people come to join friends etc.
Again people, Bioware, EA and Lucas will know what it takes for this game to succeed, they will have ton a crap load of market research and you can bet your ass they have post release content plan in place. the devs have stated time and again in interview that they realise how critical the release of new content is to the survival of the game. They won't mess it up as the profit potential is absolutely huge with this game.
66 months.
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I could live with that, because if I am in the same game non stop for more than 5 1/2 years there is something seriously wrong with the software developers field lol. I want a good solid 5 years :-).
There Is Always Hope!
I am thinking this game may very well go in the opposite direction of drop-offs and rather find a growing subscribed base for a good long while. I actually think it may reach a 3-5 million base within it's 1st few years as long as they stay on top of pumping out quality content for the game.
They are not over-hyping it,which is wise,and as long as they deliver big on what they have promised I see tor as being very attractive to a large segment of mmo-gamers. This is all just my opinion pf course,based primarily on a gut-feeling as well as on what I have seen/read thus far. Bioware has done some excellent rpg's before and it is well within their ability to hit a home-run with Tor.
Honestly, if anything is likely to hurt them (in retaining customers that consume content quickly) it is the high production quality of the content they put out. Writing a good storyline, adding solid decision archs, pushing in appreciable cinematic sequences, doing all the voiceover work, etc... and on top of that, all the regular stuff that goes along w/ developing new content (ie artwork, locales, mechanics, etc). That's a lot of extra work that the competitors don't deal with.
It is going to take them longer to produce new content than any other like-sized developer, and we all know how fast the MMO community already consumes content. For that reason, I can see "hardcore" interest sharply declining every few months after a new release, and then sharping increasing every time new content is produced. However, I also think the storyline plots will be far more conducive to keeping casual gamers interested, and so I think overall we will see a very steady population in SWTOR for the years to come.
I think the real question is will the game be successful enough initially that they can inflate (or maintain) their staff to a large enough number that they can handle the extra workload that a gamestyle of this nature demands in order to produce content at a pace quick enough to satisfy the majority of their consumers.
It would be funny as hell if this game actually becomes sucessful and lasts for 10 years with a few million subs considering the amount of hate its receiving (mostly from people who haven't played it lol). As of now according to this board and insecured MMORPG fan (pick your favorite game) that this game is bound to be a failure lol. Don't ever change mmorpg.com lol.
Currently Playing: SSFIV AE, SFxTekken, SWTOR, WoW. Waiting for: GW2, Resident Evil 6.
Agreed except for a couple things. 1 - They have stated that they have teams working six to nine months after launch already, including having a large VO library to work with. Very good sign there. 2 - I don't think you are taking into account that the worlds are already created, so only when entirely new content is needed will a lot of "hardcore" work have to be done. My guess is you are talking about paid expansions for that.
It is true though that alot of what happens to this game in the future for this game will depend on what kind of personell they can keep around after launch.
"If half of what you tell me is a lie, how can I believe any of it?"