Comparisons to the longeivity of WOW and Galaxies are not useful, since when WOW arrived people were bedazzled and unjaded with formulaic kill and collect quests and Galaxies had the courage (at least pre-ballsup) to be a relatively open ended sandbox allowing players to weave a large world in a fashion only limited by their imagination. The fact of the matter is that you need only read half the gaming forums to see that a huge number of the MMO playerbase are jaded and frustrated with games that lead players on a linear grinding progress to level cap where a heavy grind for tiered, purple gear raiding awaits - occasionally shaken up by the release of slightly better gear with bigger shouldpads every few months. This is not out of touch with the playerbase and one look at the relative failure of Rift to take off as the 'wow-killer' it was intended to be will demonstrate. Rift is a very well crafted game, by all rights it should be huge and if it were released 5 years ago it would have been. Failure to properly innovate in business will be punished in the long run. True, people will accept a certain level of mediocrity and repetition in game structure if there are no better options on the table or if they're getting to jump around with lightsabres in their dream IP. However, the market is wide open for a bright spark to come along and develop something that none of us have seen or played before to wipe the floor with conceptually lazy developers who think that introducing a bit of voice-acted yak yak will turn peoples' attention away from the fact that something seems oddly familiar about it all.
The fact of the matter is that you need only read half the gaming forums to see that a huge number of the MMO playerbase are jaded and frustrated with games that lead players on a linear grinding progress to level cap where a heavy grind for tiered, purple gear raiding awaits - occasionally shaken up by the release of slightly better gear with bigger shouldpads every few months. This is not out of touch with the playerbase and one look at the relative failure of Rift to take off as the 'wow-killer' it was intended to be will demonstrate. Rift is a very well crafted game, by all rights it should be huge and if it were released 5 years ago it would have been.
I doubt that game forums like this one are indicative of what the whole MMO player base is feeling and thinking. A good example is WoW, which is hated/despised/disliked by a majority on this forum, for years now. Yet, the reality is that 11 million people are still playing WoW and have been for years, more than 10 times the number of any other MMO, even more, compared with most of the current MMO's it has even 100 times their number in players. So that makes forums like this less representative of reality than people might wish/hope for.
As for Rift, I really, really doubt that there were any people that thought that Rift would be a 'WoW killer'. if so, then less than a handful. Actually, when you consider where Rift is coming from, then it isn't doing bad at all: no popular IP to back it up, a new unknown company developing it, Rift has one of the smallest MMO worlds you'll encounter and its content is very limited (create an alt at the same side and you'll end up doing over 90% of the same content while leveling). Yet, Rift is still hovering around 50% of its initial launch population with approx 400-450k players (rough guessing), which is already doing better than a lot of other MMO's did, and seeing with what it has to do it, it's doing phenomenal.
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."
I doubt that game forums like this one are indicative of what the whole MMO player base is feeling and thinking. A good example is WoW, which is hated/despised/disliked by a majority on this forum, for years now. Yet, the reality is that 11 million people are still playing WoW and have been for years, more than 10 times the number of any other MMO, even more, compared with most of the current MMO's it has even 100 times their number in players. So that makes forums like this less representative of reality than people might wish/hope for.
As for Rift, I really, really doubt that there were any people that thought that Rift would be a 'WoW killer'. if so, then less than a handful. Actually, when you consider where Rift is coming from, then it isn't doing bad at all: no popular IP to back it up, a new unknown company developing it, Rift has one of the smallest MMO worlds you'll encounter and its content is very limited (create an alt at the same side and you'll end up doing over 90% of the same content while leveling). Yet, Rift is still hovering around 50% of its initial launch population with approx 400-450k players (rough guessing), which is already doing better than a lot of other MMO's did, and seeing with what it has to do it, it's doing phenomenal.
I readily concede that it's possible this forum may not be representative of global gamer sentiment, however I find the exact same sentiments expressed when talking to friends and on pretty much every forum I read. Maybe my friends and all forums are not representative but it must be a barometer for the general gaming mood on some level?
Just out of curiousity, where did you see the Rift subscriber numbers? I ask only since they're been fairly cagey about the number of active players. The advertising campaign by Trion pre-launch was extremely wide and well circulated. I can guarantee that the number that started fell dramatically short of what they had hoped to get given the amount of advertising conducted and the number of people that failed to take it up. Sure they're probably making money to a certain extent but one can easily imagine it would have been significantly more successful if the, now tried and tested, forumla had been a novelty. Take a small statistical grouping of all the gamers I know, not one of them stayed playing after the first month - all citing the same reason that they'd seen and done it all before. Now, I read one estimate that there are 2 million Rift accounts. (This is rather like how the Church of Scientology claims there are 10 million scientologists worldwide when their definition of a member is anyone who's ever bought a book or been roped into a 'free personality test' on the street, the number is closer to 20,000 fully fledged dupees). I can't find a figure for active Rift subscriptions, it would be interesting to compare this to the number of actual accounts in which I'm probably included even though Telara and I too parted company in month one.
It's interesting to hear that the WOW population is still high. I don't know anyone still playing it that started playing in the beginning and virtually everyone and their dog played at launch. If this is active subscriptions then it means that there's been a considerable turnover of population. Lets say for arguments sake that it's a 50% turnover, arguing that my friends are only partially representative of MMORPG players, then that still leaves 6 million+ players who are looking for something new and are tired of the old formula. 6 million+ players would not be a bad catch for someone bringing something fresh and decent to the table.
SWTOR is a story MMO, and I think they might have a system like STO in place to have story arcs released after the game is launched.
It obviously works for STO and I think that it would be a great addition to SWTOR.
This could really make it stand out and last more than the normal raid endgame.
Played WOW (5 years), AOC, AO, EQ2,AC2, Horizons, Saga of Ryzom, SWG, CO, STO(Beta),ROM, Allods, and many other F2P titles. Asl been in beta for many of the main titles and played countless SP games. I have been gaming for 15+ years!
SWTOR is a story MMO, and I think they might have a system like STO in place to have story arcs released after the game is launched.
It obviously works for STO and I think that it would be a great addition to SWTOR.
This could really make it stand out and last more than the normal raid endgame.
Truer words, but we'll see if that's their plan because I haven't seen them claim that's the approach they are taking unlike STO which planned that from the unset.
I readily concede that it's possible this forum may not be representative of global gamer sentiment, however I find the exact same sentiments expressed when talking to friends and on pretty much every forum I read. Maybe my friends and all forums are not representative but it must be a barometer for the general gaming mood on some level?
I agree, more and more people are looking around for a fitting game for them to play.
Just out of curiousity, where did you see the Rift subscriber numbers? I ask only since they're been fairly cagey about the number of active players. The advertising campaign by Trion pre-launch was extremely wide and well circulated. I can guarantee that the number that started fell dramatically short of what they had hoped to get given the amount of advertising conducted and the number of people that failed to take it up.
Oh, that was (very) rough guessing. From the player activity monitoring tools (XFire, Raptr, Steam) one can surmise that Rift hovers around 50% of its initial launch player base by monitoring the trends atm. The guessing of subs is even rougher, and is a speculation based upon 99 servers at launch, average server population size at launch of other MMORPG's, comparison between overall player activity numbers of EVE (of which we know the sub number) and Rift, the current 50% of launch numbers and Trion's announcement that they're very close to 1 million accumulative sales. I know, it's very dubious speculating, but that's why I said it's rough guesstimating.
It's interesting to hear that the WOW population is still high. I don't know anyone still playing it that started playing in the beginning and virtually everyone and their dog played at launch. If this is active subscriptions then it means that there's been a considerable turnover of population. Lets say for arguments sake that it's a 50% turnover, arguing that my friends are only partially representative of MMORPG players, then that still leaves 6 million+ players who are looking for something new and are tired of the old formula. 6 million+ players would not be a bad catch for someone bringing something fresh and decent to the table.
I'm as perplexed as you, if I had to guess myself, I'd have thought that WoW's subs would have been less than 10 million years ago. Even more, if I had to give a prediction 3 years ago, I'd have said that WoW would be around 5 million or less in player numbers around this time, for the - to me - obviously logical reason that everyone gets tired of playing the same game for years. Yet, reality is once again more elusive than can be predicted.
I'm guessing that a lot of people are staying purely because of invested time and the friends&family factor: WoW less being just an MMORPG but also a hangout spot where you encounter your friends, guildies and family to catch up or stay in contact with. Sort of a home where you always return to. Until the majority of your friends and guildies find another MMO home of course that has as much staying power and appeal to draw most of your friends in to.
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."
Impossible to say at this point. It's a star wars game, so people will buy it. It all depends on how Bioware handles the launch of the game. Also, if endgame is strong, they will retain players. I think people will stay with it for a few months before there's any significant drop off in players, just because there's tons of content and story before endgame.
5 hour Raids? Occasionally upgraded purpley bits and a lightsabre with a new funky handle?
Occasional expansion with extra levels and new planets where the grind continues?
Grinding tradeskills till they're all maxed out and you can make anything in any colour/size/shape/smell to spam the trade channels accumulating credits in the bank till you have more money than anything concievably costs?
Or can someone think of something new that isn't like everything we've seen before and what kind of content would keep your average primate interested/included/sane/subscribed?
I think it will make it for some time but think the first big drop will come about 3 months in. I think the journey to max will be short like Rift and nothing will really be waiting except the gear grind for end game.
I'd say 3 months before the first major drop seems accurate. Unless we have been brainwashed and the story content on each class is way smaller than what some of us suppose it to be.
Without the story par:t 2 months at best, especially as it's a cartoonish Wow with glowing sticks and more or less mandatory pets classes in solo mode.
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."
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?"
I can only speak to my best possible conclusion of how long it will last for me. As such I put 6 months. Right now even the best games keep me interested about 2 months if I'm lucky. SWTOR has too much going for it, and I'll want to toy around with all the stories and new builds, as well as playing with all my friends that are joining up with me. Even if they quit 2 months down the line I still see myself playing each class story all the way through, and then sampling the end game with my favorite classes.
Comments
Comparisons to the longeivity of WOW and Galaxies are not useful, since when WOW arrived people were bedazzled and unjaded with formulaic kill and collect quests and Galaxies had the courage (at least pre-ballsup) to be a relatively open ended sandbox allowing players to weave a large world in a fashion only limited by their imagination. The fact of the matter is that you need only read half the gaming forums to see that a huge number of the MMO playerbase are jaded and frustrated with games that lead players on a linear grinding progress to level cap where a heavy grind for tiered, purple gear raiding awaits - occasionally shaken up by the release of slightly better gear with bigger shouldpads every few months. This is not out of touch with the playerbase and one look at the relative failure of Rift to take off as the 'wow-killer' it was intended to be will demonstrate. Rift is a very well crafted game, by all rights it should be huge and if it were released 5 years ago it would have been. Failure to properly innovate in business will be punished in the long run. True, people will accept a certain level of mediocrity and repetition in game structure if there are no better options on the table or if they're getting to jump around with lightsabres in their dream IP. However, the market is wide open for a bright spark to come along and develop something that none of us have seen or played before to wipe the floor with conceptually lazy developers who think that introducing a bit of voice-acted yak yak will turn peoples' attention away from the fact that something seems oddly familiar about it all.
I doubt that game forums like this one are indicative of what the whole MMO player base is feeling and thinking. A good example is WoW, which is hated/despised/disliked by a majority on this forum, for years now. Yet, the reality is that 11 million people are still playing WoW and have been for years, more than 10 times the number of any other MMO, even more, compared with most of the current MMO's it has even 100 times their number in players. So that makes forums like this less representative of reality than people might wish/hope for.
As for Rift, I really, really doubt that there were any people that thought that Rift would be a 'WoW killer'. if so, then less than a handful. Actually, when you consider where Rift is coming from, then it isn't doing bad at all: no popular IP to back it up, a new unknown company developing it, Rift has one of the smallest MMO worlds you'll encounter and its content is very limited (create an alt at the same side and you'll end up doing over 90% of the same content while leveling). Yet, Rift is still hovering around 50% of its initial launch population with approx 400-450k players (rough guessing), which is already doing better than a lot of other MMO's did, and seeing with what it has to do it, it's doing phenomenal.
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."
I readily concede that it's possible this forum may not be representative of global gamer sentiment, however I find the exact same sentiments expressed when talking to friends and on pretty much every forum I read. Maybe my friends and all forums are not representative but it must be a barometer for the general gaming mood on some level?
Just out of curiousity, where did you see the Rift subscriber numbers? I ask only since they're been fairly cagey about the number of active players. The advertising campaign by Trion pre-launch was extremely wide and well circulated. I can guarantee that the number that started fell dramatically short of what they had hoped to get given the amount of advertising conducted and the number of people that failed to take it up. Sure they're probably making money to a certain extent but one can easily imagine it would have been significantly more successful if the, now tried and tested, forumla had been a novelty. Take a small statistical grouping of all the gamers I know, not one of them stayed playing after the first month - all citing the same reason that they'd seen and done it all before. Now, I read one estimate that there are 2 million Rift accounts. (This is rather like how the Church of Scientology claims there are 10 million scientologists worldwide when their definition of a member is anyone who's ever bought a book or been roped into a 'free personality test' on the street, the number is closer to 20,000 fully fledged dupees). I can't find a figure for active Rift subscriptions, it would be interesting to compare this to the number of actual accounts in which I'm probably included even though Telara and I too parted company in month one.
It's interesting to hear that the WOW population is still high. I don't know anyone still playing it that started playing in the beginning and virtually everyone and their dog played at launch. If this is active subscriptions then it means that there's been a considerable turnover of population. Lets say for arguments sake that it's a 50% turnover, arguing that my friends are only partially representative of MMORPG players, then that still leaves 6 million+ players who are looking for something new and are tired of the old formula. 6 million+ players would not be a bad catch for someone bringing something fresh and decent to the table.
6-months to a year before it falls into the "Raid" cycle.
This is not a game.
SWTOR is a story MMO, and I think they might have a system like STO in place to have story arcs released after the game is launched.
It obviously works for STO and I think that it would be a great addition to SWTOR.
This could really make it stand out and last more than the normal raid endgame.
Played WOW (5 years), AOC, AO, EQ2,AC2, Horizons, Saga of Ryzom, SWG, CO, STO(Beta),ROM, Allods, and many other F2P titles. Asl been in beta for many of the main titles and played countless SP games. I have been gaming for 15+ years!
Truer words, but we'll see if that's their plan because I haven't seen them claim that's the approach they are taking unlike STO which planned that from the unset.
This is not a game.
I'm as perplexed as you, if I had to guess myself, I'd have thought that WoW's subs would have been less than 10 million years ago. Even more, if I had to give a prediction 3 years ago, I'd have said that WoW would be around 5 million or less in player numbers around this time, for the - to me - obviously logical reason that everyone gets tired of playing the same game for years. Yet, reality is once again more elusive than can be predicted.
I'm guessing that a lot of people are staying purely because of invested time and the friends&family factor: WoW less being just an MMORPG but also a hangout spot where you encounter your friends, guildies and family to catch up or stay in contact with. Sort of a home where you always return to. Until the majority of your friends and guildies find another MMO home of course that has as much staying power and appeal to draw most of your friends in to.
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."
how long is a piece of string
OMG these topics make me soooo tired...get original will ya!!!
OT: 30 cm
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
Edgar Allan Poe
Easy. It'll last as long as it's fun, and not much longer than that.
if i judge from SWG, toro will last many many many years
there are so many star wars fans out there that will play it only cuz its star wars
Impossible to say at this point. It's a star wars game, so people will buy it. It all depends on how Bioware handles the launch of the game. Also, if endgame is strong, they will retain players. I think people will stay with it for a few months before there's any significant drop off in players, just because there's tons of content and story before endgame.
To sum things up:
1) Strong launch
2) Ongoing patches / bug fixing / balancing (both PvE and PvP)
3) Strong endgame
will keep this game going for a very long time. We'll just have to wait and see if Bioware delivers.
I'll stay with it as long as I find it fun.
We'll start to see subscription drop offs around 12 parsecs.
What's a strong endgame?
5 hour Raids? Occasionally upgraded purpley bits and a lightsabre with a new funky handle?
Occasional expansion with extra levels and new planets where the grind continues?
Grinding tradeskills till they're all maxed out and you can make anything in any colour/size/shape/smell to spam the trade channels accumulating credits in the bank till you have more money than anything concievably costs?
Or can someone think of something new that isn't like everything we've seen before and what kind of content would keep your average primate interested/included/sane/subscribed?
I'd say 3 months before the first major drop seems accurate. Unless we have been brainwashed and the story content on each class is way smaller than what some of us suppose it to be.
Without the story par:t 2 months at best, especially as it's a cartoonish Wow with glowing sticks and more or less mandatory pets classes in solo mode.
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."
Hellgate only lasted 2 parsecs.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
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?"
I can only speak to my best possible conclusion of how long it will last for me. As such I put 6 months. Right now even the best games keep me interested about 2 months if I'm lucky. SWTOR has too much going for it, and I'll want to toy around with all the stories and new builds, as well as playing with all my friends that are joining up with me. Even if they quit 2 months down the line I still see myself playing each class story all the way through, and then sampling the end game with my favorite classes.