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SWTOR will finally be the death of WoW clones
sekira
Member UncommonPosts: 76
It should be pretty apparent by now that SWTOR aka WOWTOR is not doing as well as Bioware or their fans had hoped. The game is already being discounted by $10 on origin, they are already offering multiple free weekends for the game, and one of the most replied to posts on the official forums is titled "Server population is dropping...". Yes it looks like it is the beginning of the end for this game.
When a company spends $200 million on a new game and instead of growth, the total population starts to decline (or stabilizies) as individual server populations drop noticeably, its an obvious sign that customers are not satisfied. The game also has a small number of subscribers relative to the total number of potential customers, compared to WoW 7 years ago which had an equal or possibly greater number of subscribers the same length of time after its' release, back when MMO's were not as mainstream as today.
This should speak volumes that gamers are not looking for games that are "similar to WoW" anymore and do not want games that fit the bill of a linear theme park. If WOWTOR monumentally collapses or does not experience great success (profit), I would expect more developers, if they haven't already, will begin to distance themselves from SWTOR/WOW as they realize now that advertising a game as a WoW clone should not be considered a selling point to get people interested in their MMO anymore.
I for one will not be playing another MMO until it is very innovative and different than a MMO I have played in the past, in particular, WoW. Developers should stop worrying about making a viable competitor in the MMO market that is nearly identical to WoW in order to appeal to that playerbase. Instead they really should be making it completely unlike WoW in order to compete with Titan, which I guarantee will probably be vastly different than WoW.
I suspect SWTOR will probably be the last wow clone we will see. Overall I think this is very good news for the genre, even at the expense of a game that had such a massive budget for a company eyeing major success.
RIP SWTOR "Tortanic"
Comments
I don’t know exactly what gamer demographic I would be in other than ‘core gamer who is not the most of hard core but is very ripe to spend a large amount of money for games and willing to commit to it’
Here is a list of MMOs I haven’t spent a single dime on:
WoW
Rift
Aion
LoTR
SWTOR
Soon to be on that list: Secret World and Guild Wars
Why? because they either look like a cartoon to me or they appear to have less depth that the community made mods in NeverWinter Nights (and I am not talking about in game stories)
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
This thread will be the death of "SWTOR will be the death of WoW clones" clone threads.
we can only hope........that style of MMORPG is dead and is dated......
Yep...10 million+ at WoW and 1.7 million at SWTOR...it will go down in flames. o.O
We can only hope. The only WoW clone that should prosper is WOW.
edit- that was a wish, not a prediction
It took WoW over a year to get to 1 million subscribers
But the strong point of WoW is that not many subscribers cancelled in those early days.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
I doubt it. WoW will still generate cash and other developpers will say to themselves "we will just make it less buggy than SWTOR was and we'll be fine."
People tend to forget failures over time it seems and they do not learn their lessons in this industry.
1.7 mill of subs and is dying, Interesting. Lot of poeple is just waiting for the 1.2 update, even to play or level alts, is just better to wait till the next update, is even pointless to grind for the battlemaster gear, champion etc. SWTOR is an huge success, 4 months after launch and they still have 1.7 mill of subs and like it or not, the population will grow after the 1.2 update. Im sorry but you are just wrong.
Exactly. Lord Bachus nailed it.
It's obvious the OP didn't play WoW at launch, and has no idea what MMOs were like before his first MMO: WOW BC.
MMO gamers werent as fickle and overly dramatic as they are now.
The original OP's "fact" on WoW subs at launch are completely false and discredits his entire post. Safe to assume this is a troll post, the title alone says it all.
Lets not forget rift. In many ways the antithesis of TOR. Polished, devs engagaed with the community, reponsive etc. But it does share much with WOW (and TOR). Taken together one has to hope that developers are thinking hmmm that cow is milked dry.
I have been playing on West coast server, and I get warzone going by 7 am EST and west coast is behind 3 hours so their timing is 4 AM. After this PVP ques are consistent throughout the day until well over a good part of the morning, meaning after 12AM EST.
That is simply marketing.
That thread means very little, we see those kinds of threads here too.
This is your opinion, as I feel differently, I think the game is doing decent at the time.
Guild Wars 2's 50 minutes game play video:
http://n4g.com/news/592585/guild-wars-2-50-minutes-of-pure-gameplay
Everything We Know about GW2:
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/287180/page/1
Lets hope this thread is the death of WoW clones threads because it proves you know little to nothing about mmo's. WoW was a CRAPPPYYYYYYYYYYYYYY EQ clone when it launched and was buggy as all hell. It took them close to a year to make the game playable.
Now they hand you three patches a years and then tell you to pay $60 for more content they owe you for free. People are such sheep. TOR could be the shittiest WoW clone ever, but it is not run by Blizzard and get partial support from me for that fact alone.
Someone needs to come along and put you WoW fans in check. Obviously TOR and Rift gutting 2million of your fans was not enough.
however if you wana talk about developers will stop producing themepark mmo because tor didn't achieve 5mil subs, than Im afraid to tell you, it won't happen.
every developers believe that the feature they bring in will be successful, war - rvr, aoc, Tera -combat system, rift -rift, tor -stories, gw2 - dynamic events ....
they will continue to have themeparks mmo because every developers believe their game will offer just that enough different and yet familiar formular that players that's tired of wow and other game will come over and make their game their new home. Couple with other new players to mmo they.will always believe they will have millions of subs. Themepark mmo will never disappear as long as wow continue to command millions of subs. It will only die when wow dies ...
RIP Orc Choppa
Afaik its the second biggest mmorpg success next to wow. And everyone know there is not a game in the world that has the chance to get bigger than wow. That is just impossible.
If their goal was to be bigger than wow, well its just dumb and unrealistic. And should nevertheless not be considered an failure just because of unrealistic goals. But I'm pretty sure they did not expect that.
WoW clones are NOT going to die until gamers stop paying for them.
They design these games for quick box sales people, anything else is just gravy.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
It's also clear that neither you or Lord Bachus has no clue how big WoW was in launch. Here eat this.
http://www.pvcmuseum.com/games/charts/world-of-warcraft-sales.htm
SWTOR didn't fail because it was a linear themepark. It failed because it brought absolutely nothing new to the actual gameplay except for a frankenstein approach to class design. Unfortunately, I had no real desire to play a simplified discipline priest/restoration druid hybrid. The only really valid debate one can have about SWTOR's gameplay is if it's actually more like Warhammer or World of Warcraft.
I'm not trying to defend the decision of making the game a linear themepark, but people would have happily forgiven that aspect of the game if the rest of it was more innovative and fun.
I think it is more so considered failing due to it's drastically depleting subscription numbers, also no SW:TOR is the third biggest MMO I believe, Aion is still much bigger.
Doubtful only because someone will always believe and convince investors that they can do it better. So long as a game like SWTOR can pay back investors new investors will line up to fund the next game.
I think most people are tired of WoW clones. I think the past WoW clones pretty much point that out quite nicely. I'm playing SWTOR and while it's better then WoW I don't expect to stick with it. I'm looking forward to Guild Wars 2 because it's something different.
Banegrivm
Leader of the 1st Fist of Light
www.1stfistoflight.com
Until gamer junkies stop paying for them, it means nothing. I think the vast majority of gamers don't understand this concept. Words mean nothing and until gamers stop paying for this crap, that's exactly what we're going to get. And do you really think gamer junkies aren't going to buy the next over-hype? Uh huh...
*twitch twitch*
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
We are just now getting games like Archage. Gw2 honestly does not ahve shit on that game to be truthful. GW2 looks highly scripted and not dynamic at all while Archage is where I think the genre really needs to head. It falls on the devs and the players.
I mean watch when GW2 launches and see what the playerbase request and tell me if it is not a crap ton of features you see from WoW. Are there even rated Arenas in GW2? This is supposed to be the greatest pvp mmorpg ever made and I only ehar people talk about WvWvW?
I would have to not agree with this. For the last decade they have been making WOW clones that 90% fail in the first 6mos and no one seems to care. Most just keep buying they games believing the hype only to find out it is just a two week game after you just grind the same content.
If we as gamers don't start to demand a true MMO experience and we keep throwing our money at the machine they will take it and not only that find ways to take even more of it at a faster pace.
I can already think of two games coming out that are the same as SWTOR as far as your MMO experience goes and people are going to buy them and make those companies record profits (Tera and GW2). Neither game is of any interest to me because it is nothing different.
1 million in one year is false -- but i agree with your point
WOW had 5 million after one year (as announced Dec 2005)
http://www.1up.com/news/wow-passes-5-million
after 5 months, March 2005, WOW claimed 1.5 mill
http://www.gamershell.com/companies/blizzard_entertainment/219363.html
8 months later, July 2005, had 3.5 mill
WOW claimed 1.5 mill in Asia contrast to 2mill US/EU
Blizzard's China Success Spawns 3.5 Million WoW Userbase July 21, 2005
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=5989
EQ2 fan sites