what I have heard in the halls, Starwars Galaxies was shut down due to the fact are talks with LA,EA suits ecouraged the new guy at LA to increase the licensing fee at renewal time. it was a move to remove any direct competiton to TOR.
Sorry guys gotta go but be good to each other."
What about that bit there? Do you think its true?
That may be the most factual thing he said. Only thing is SOE lost the license 6 months before it expired and the same week TOR went live so there was more to it but I don't doubt a word of this guy on this part.
There are so many grammatical errors in that post I simply refuse to believe he is who he claims. I'm not looking for perfection, but basic professionalism.
Let's face it. Saying it's going to be free to play isn't information I need from inside the BIO/EA. I know it to be true standing out here in the cold with everyone else.
yawnnn first of all if you do work at bioware I feel for you after Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 you guys are going downhill not to mention the failure that is SWTOR nobody cares...gotta go ...getting some sleep to play the Guild wars 2 beta weekend...and prepare for the August launch laters SWTOR.
what I have heard in the halls, Starwars Galaxies was shut down due to the fact are talks with LA,EA suits ecouraged the new guy at LA to increase the licensing fee at renewal time. it was a move to remove any direct competiton to TOR.
Sorry guys gotta go but be good to each other."
What about that bit there? Do you think its true?
That may be the most factual thing he said. Only thing is SOE lost the license 6 months before it expired and the same week TOR went live so there was more to it but I don't doubt a word of this guy on this part.
For someone who believed in BS of EAlouse ofcourse you would believe this guy too. You would believe anyone who spews negative BS about SWTOR.
By the way Repopulation is a clone of SWG. So it is not exactly a clone free enviornment.
what I have heard in the halls, Starwars Galaxies was shut down due to the fact are talks with LA,EA suits ecouraged the new guy at LA to increase the licensing fee at renewal time. it was a move to remove any direct competiton to TOR.
Sorry guys gotta go but be good to each other."
What about that bit there? Do you think its true?
That may be the most factual thing he said. Only thing is SOE lost the license 6 months before it expired and the same week TOR went live so there was more to it but I don't doubt a word of this guy on this part.
How can you just selectively pick one part to believe? Either the source is legit and it is all true (which looks unlikely), or the source is bullshit and it is all bullshit he's making up/guessing at.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Actually, it does not really matter if source is legit, because majority of his statements are either publicly known or are expected to happen.
What really interests me is whether the subscription model will be replaced by cash shop, which would make the game B2P with cash shop. If yes, then kudos to BW, beacuse it should have been this way from the very beginning and will make the game appealing to a lot of people.
I think it will end up with the F2P model that lets you play for free some content, but not all of it. Something along the lines of being able to do the solo stuff, but no participate in PVP,Operations, or Space Combat without subbing. In fact I could see them going all the way where you can't really interact with people at all unless you sub. Would work for me though as I really enjoy the stories but couldn't justify monthly sub just for that.
I think it will end up with the F2P model that lets you play for free some content, but not all of it. Something along the lines of being able to do the solo stuff, but no participate in PVP,Operations, or Space Combat without subbing. In fact I could see them going all the way where you can't really interact with people at all unless you sub. Would work for me though as I really enjoy the stories but couldn't justify monthly sub just for that.
True. If they let me finish the stories of all the classes without paying the sub fee, I might even throw them a few $ to their cash shop.
The scariest part is that they have folks working there that can't type at a 6th grade level. I'm no grammar police, but come on man. Learn to grammar. No one is going to read that much bad grammar let alone believe the person who wrote it.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
There are so many grammatical errors in that post I simply refuse to believe he is who he claims. I'm not looking for perfection, but basic professionalism.
If I was going to post something like this, I'd want to make sure that no-one who knew my writing style would know it was me.
I work with a tech guy, knows servers inside out, smart as a button - can't string a sentence together in an email without making a bunch of typos.
I'm not saying it's what it purports to be, but dismissing it on it's use of language is pretty short-sighted.
Originally posted by Teilo Originally posted by xr00t3dx There are so many grammatical errors in that post I simply refuse to believe he is who he claims. I'm not looking for perfection, but basic professionalism.
If I was going to post something like this, I'd want to make sure that no-one who knew my writing style would know it was me.
I work with a tech guy, knows servers inside out, smart as a button - can't string a sentence together in an email without making a bunch of typos.
I'm not saying it's what it purports to be, but dismissing it on it's use of language is pretty short-sighted.
ok so its late and im just arguing ... but honestly, if you cannot communicate with other people, you are not "smart as a button".
see. horrible grammar, but you can still easily understand it. typos, a couple of double negatives ... these things are fine. sentences that make as much sense as a pile of spaghetti = someone who shouldn't be working on a complex team based project.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity. I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Whether the post is by a Bioware person or not it is clear, from what Bioware has previoulsy posted, that f2p will have been / is being considered as an option. Does this mean the game will be going f2p? No. EA will have considered a whole range of options: increasing the monthly sub; decreasing the monthly sub; paid for DLC; reducing the number of servers to 1; closing the game and paying LA whatever they have to; porting the game to mobile phones; annual lsubscriptions; lifetime subscriptions ..... anything and everything will be on the table whether the game is making money or not.
Doesn't mean anything will happen.
The way the post is written? Well if it is from a Bioware employee then this may well be deliberate.
The legacy system is hard so that it can be made an cash shop item - well that was obvious. Pretty sure it was discussed here; was certainly discussed on the VN forums.
The fact remains however that f2p - to work - requires people; and not just anybody but people who spend money. EA will have their own data but to put things in perspective the data Zynga have released can be used:
- last quarter Zynga reported that average revenue doubled to an average of 33 cents for the quarter
- previoulsy Zynga have said that most revenue comes from 5% of the playerbase - the other 95% paying nothing.
EA said SWTOR needed 500k monthly subs to break even - say $7.5M/30 days or about $23M/quarter. (Sure it is less now.)
Using the Zynga numbers - and this is just to put things into perspective (a bit if fun):
- SWTOR will need 69M "subs" per quarter each paying an average of 33 cents to break even.
69 million!
Or if they only have 500k subs they need to be about 140 times better than Zynga at generating revenue via micro-transactions. Every month. And deal with the inbuilt churn that f2p games have.
EA will have done these type of calcs - they will have used their own data and a whole range of sub numbers, average revenue numbers, bronze/silver/gold type sub memberships. And got some scary answers I suspect - probably why nothing has happened so far - or rather why the focus is on getting the number of subs needed to break even down. If they get it to 200k or whatever then f2p will probably never arrive.
what I have heard in the halls, Starwars Galaxies was shut down due to the fact are talks with LA,EA suits ecouraged the new guy at LA to increase the licensing fee at renewal time. it was a move to remove any direct competiton to TOR.
Sorry guys gotta go but be good to each other."
What about that bit there? Do you think its true?
That may be the most factual thing he said. Only thing is SOE lost the license 6 months before it expired and the same week TOR went live so there was more to it but I don't doubt a word of this guy on this part.
How can you just selectively pick one part to believe? Either the source is legit and it is all true (which looks unlikely), or the source is bullshit and it is all bullshit he's making up/guessing at.
I do not know what to think. At first I thought it seemed genuine, as it all fits, but after reading it a few times and thinking about it, most of it is just information that has been said about the forums and the internet, and opinions, which is why it fits and seems true.
That bit about SWG was posted countless times on the official SWG forums (and no doubt other forums), so the OP could have just taken that info from forums etc. I believe it to be true but it is not hard fact, (unless the OP is actually from Bioware! But even then, when you are at the company but not at top level, it it can still be a misconception. I doubt people in the know would go leaking stuff on the internet, only the underlings who like to gossip!).
I've seen better predictions or forecasts from posters on these boards. Written a hell of a lot better too. Doubt that is legit.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I have doubts about this solely because if there was one thing Bioware did not do it was listen to people giving feedback. I was in the long-term closed Beta, and the continual complaint was that they were not listening to feedback.
___________________________ Have flask; will travel.
The interesting thing i am finding is that the thread about this on the TOR forums have not been bitch slapped into oblivion yet, hmmm why not im wondering, cant be because its been overlooked.
If some of it was not true would they have not torn it down by now?
SW:TOR is not a bad game, just no worth the 13/month sub. I've wanted to play it, but waitied for fully F2P. Looks like time is drawing near to start downloading & install it
Originally posted by Aethaerynisn't the grammar too bad? It reminds me of those. . Ur account is froz. . log in to save it or kittenz die. At least I don't think he was in any inner circle.
ROFL - Best post of the thread! Though I do agree with you about the legitimacy of the OP, I think it does hold some truth.
"but it was fan feedback from the day we opened the forums that encouraged us to design it for the fans the way it is and that included making it more like Kotor then an MMO like Wow."
That line annoyed me... either a huge majority of beta testers were saying the exact opposite things that I was saying, or the above is just bs...
Yeah I have no idea what "fans' were telling them to make the game like KOTOR. And really, since the VO part of the game is essentially what makes it like KOTOR, and VO is far and above the most major part of this game...I don't think it would even be possible for "fan feedback" to have changed the direction of the game. It clearly meant to be more KOTOR-like from the start.
From what I recall, yes, the majority of fans were telling them to make it more like KOTOR than WOW...
Only, they didn't exactly listen.
The progression and combat systems are a lot more like your standard MMO (yeah, like WOW) than they're like KOTOR. Granted, the game being story-focused within the TOR world of course brings in that KOTOR feel, but to me, that's not enough. The dark/light alignment is pretty much meaningless. The only "roles" you perform here turn out to be the MMO roles. Also, MMO tropes like "battlezones" in a Star Wars world like this makes no sense at all. It cheapens the experience.
They should have just built up on their progression and combat systems in KOTOR, rather than sticking to "what's been proven to work in the MMO genre" and putting Star Wars names onto that, in my opinion.
"but it was fan feedback from the day we opened the forums that encouraged us to design it for the fans the way it is and that included making it more like Kotor then an MMO like Wow."
That line annoyed me... either a huge majority of beta testers were saying the exact opposite things that I was saying, or the above is just bs...
Not necessarily, everyone was screaming KOTOR3 and Bioware was set on a MMO so going by the end product we got KOTOR 3 and WOW both. Well sorta, they just screwed up how to do it. Once a game goes into testing, all the foundations are set. All the complaints from testers were mute not only from arragance from the overlords but also because by then it was too late to build a new game. They were stuck on the core of the game but that's still no excuse my many other things didn't get done.
I don't know. This is also the part that made me frown while reading, because both on the formums and during beta test players asked for more MMO and especially sandbox elements.
Ok they asked for Pazaak and Pod Racing but that's almost it.
Comments
That may be the most factual thing he said. Only thing is SOE lost the license 6 months before it expired and the same week TOR went live so there was more to it but I don't doubt a word of this guy on this part.
There are so many grammatical errors in that post I simply refuse to believe he is who he claims. I'm not looking for perfection, but basic professionalism.
Let's face it. Saying it's going to be free to play isn't information I need from inside the BIO/EA. I know it to be true standing out here in the cold with everyone else.
yawnnn first of all if you do work at bioware I feel for you after Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 you guys are going downhill not to mention the failure that is SWTOR nobody cares...gotta go ...getting some sleep to play the Guild wars 2 beta weekend...and prepare for the August launch laters SWTOR.
For someone who believed in BS of EAlouse ofcourse you would believe this guy too. You would believe anyone who spews negative BS about SWTOR.
By the way Repopulation is a clone of SWG. So it is not exactly a clone free enviornment.
How can you just selectively pick one part to believe? Either the source is legit and it is all true (which looks unlikely), or the source is bullshit and it is all bullshit he's making up/guessing at.
"Come and have a look at what you could have won."
Actually, it does not really matter if source is legit, because majority of his statements are either publicly known or are expected to happen.
What really interests me is whether the subscription model will be replaced by cash shop, which would make the game B2P with cash shop. If yes, then kudos to BW, beacuse it should have been this way from the very beginning and will make the game appealing to a lot of people.
I think it will end up with the F2P model that lets you play for free some content, but not all of it. Something along the lines of being able to do the solo stuff, but no participate in PVP,Operations, or Space Combat without subbing. In fact I could see them going all the way where you can't really interact with people at all unless you sub. Would work for me though as I really enjoy the stories but couldn't justify monthly sub just for that.
The Social Aspect- Bringing Social Back to Online Games.
True. If they let me finish the stories of all the classes without paying the sub fee, I might even throw them a few $ to their cash shop.
The scariest part is that they have folks working there that can't type at a 6th grade level. I'm no grammar police, but come on man. Learn to grammar. No one is going to read that much bad grammar let alone believe the person who wrote it.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
If I was going to post something like this, I'd want to make sure that no-one who knew my writing style would know it was me.
I work with a tech guy, knows servers inside out, smart as a button - can't string a sentence together in an email without making a bunch of typos.
I'm not saying it's what it purports to be, but dismissing it on it's use of language is pretty short-sighted.
I work with a tech guy, knows servers inside out, smart as a button - can't string a sentence together in an email without making a bunch of typos.
I'm not saying it's what it purports to be, but dismissing it on it's use of language is pretty short-sighted.
ok so its late and im just arguing ... but honestly, if you cannot communicate with other people, you are not "smart as a button".
see. horrible grammar, but you can still easily understand it. typos, a couple of double negatives ... these things are fine. sentences that make as much sense as a pile of spaghetti = someone who shouldn't be working on a complex team based project.
LFD tools are great for cramming people into content, but quality > quantity.
I am, usually on the sandbox .. more "hardcore" side of things, but I also do just want to have fun. So lighten up already
Sounds like a mad SWG vet.
I fully expect that SWTOR will go F2P, but that post is obviously not from a Bioware employee.
Whether the post is by a Bioware person or not it is clear, from what Bioware has previoulsy posted, that f2p will have been / is being considered as an option. Does this mean the game will be going f2p? No. EA will have considered a whole range of options: increasing the monthly sub; decreasing the monthly sub; paid for DLC; reducing the number of servers to 1; closing the game and paying LA whatever they have to; porting the game to mobile phones; annual lsubscriptions; lifetime subscriptions ..... anything and everything will be on the table whether the game is making money or not.
Doesn't mean anything will happen.
The way the post is written? Well if it is from a Bioware employee then this may well be deliberate.
The legacy system is hard so that it can be made an cash shop item - well that was obvious. Pretty sure it was discussed here; was certainly discussed on the VN forums.
The fact remains however that f2p - to work - requires people; and not just anybody but people who spend money. EA will have their own data but to put things in perspective the data Zynga have released can be used:
- last quarter Zynga reported that average revenue doubled to an average of 33 cents for the quarter
- previoulsy Zynga have said that most revenue comes from 5% of the playerbase - the other 95% paying nothing.
EA said SWTOR needed 500k monthly subs to break even - say $7.5M/30 days or about $23M/quarter. (Sure it is less now.)
Using the Zynga numbers - and this is just to put things into perspective (a bit if fun):
- SWTOR will need 69M "subs" per quarter each paying an average of 33 cents to break even.
69 million!
Or if they only have 500k subs they need to be about 140 times better than Zynga at generating revenue via micro-transactions. Every month. And deal with the inbuilt churn that f2p games have.
EA will have done these type of calcs - they will have used their own data and a whole range of sub numbers, average revenue numbers, bronze/silver/gold type sub memberships. And got some scary answers I suspect - probably why nothing has happened so far - or rather why the focus is on getting the number of subs needed to break even down. If they get it to 200k or whatever then f2p will probably never arrive.
if TOR does go f2p (which I doubt)
then hopefully EA will convert their older titles to f2p : Ultima Online, DAOC, Warhammer
EQ2 fan sites
The OP reads like it's fake. Way to much info for a "leak".
I do not know what to think. At first I thought it seemed genuine, as it all fits, but after reading it a few times and thinking about it, most of it is just information that has been said about the forums and the internet, and opinions, which is why it fits and seems true.
That bit about SWG was posted countless times on the official SWG forums (and no doubt other forums), so the OP could have just taken that info from forums etc. I believe it to be true but it is not hard fact, (unless the OP is actually from Bioware! But even then, when you are at the company but not at top level, it it can still be a misconception. I doubt people in the know would go leaking stuff on the internet, only the underlings who like to gossip!).
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
I've seen better predictions or forecasts from posters on these boards. Written a hell of a lot better too. Doubt that is legit.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I believe it's either July 31 or August 2
I have doubts about this solely because if there was one thing Bioware did not do it was listen to people giving feedback. I was in the long-term closed Beta, and the continual complaint was that they were not listening to feedback.
___________________________
Have flask; will travel.
The interesting thing i am finding is that the thread about this on the TOR forums have not been bitch slapped into oblivion yet, hmmm why not im wondering, cant be because its been overlooked.
If some of it was not true would they have not torn it down by now?
Star Wars Galaxies relaunch by December 2012
SW:TOR is not a bad game, just no worth the 13/month sub. I've wanted to play it, but waitied for fully F2P. Looks like time is drawing near to start downloading & install it
ROFL - Best post of the thread! Though I do agree with you about the legitimacy of the OP, I think it does hold some truth.
From what I recall, yes, the majority of fans were telling them to make it more like KOTOR than WOW...
Only, they didn't exactly listen.
The progression and combat systems are a lot more like your standard MMO (yeah, like WOW) than they're like KOTOR. Granted, the game being story-focused within the TOR world of course brings in that KOTOR feel, but to me, that's not enough. The dark/light alignment is pretty much meaningless. The only "roles" you perform here turn out to be the MMO roles. Also, MMO tropes like "battlezones" in a Star Wars world like this makes no sense at all. It cheapens the experience.
They should have just built up on their progression and combat systems in KOTOR, rather than sticking to "what's been proven to work in the MMO genre" and putting Star Wars names onto that, in my opinion.
Also, on the OP: I'm not buying that.
SWTOR WILL go F2P, devs has been talking about it, it's not a rumor.
I don't know. This is also the part that made me frown while reading, because both on the formums and during beta test players asked for more MMO and especially sandbox elements.
Ok they asked for Pazaak and Pod Racing but that's almost it.