Also, I think it is fair to point out that development for Guild Wars 2 was started back in 2007.
Had that much really changed between 2006 when BW started TOR and 2007 when Anet started GW2?
Completely different design philosophy - Anet sought to reinvent and question convention as early as 2007 before it became "the thing to do" to try and differential yourself from WoW.
They can't predict the future of course, but it just so happens they ended up being right that 5-6 years down the road people wouldn't want to be playing World of Warcraft in a different setting anymore.
GW2 in my mind is the peak of lazy development. They utterly homogenized everything and took away all indivisuality. Healing is too hard to balance, so let give every some silly AoE thing. Raiding is to hard to do so lets remove it and call 5 man instances our end game.
There is no gear chase at all, so how do you advance and feel stronger and get better. YOU DON'T. WvWvW is just Aions abyss with 3 servers in a instance. It will end up in the exact same zerg in GW2 as it did in Aion.
You guys are seriously putting way to much in GW2. It is not some amazing thing. I do not get the same feeling looking at GW2 as I do from Archage.
I LOVE LOVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE How ArenaNET is just some amazing developer all of a sudden. The last 6 years they could not even figure out how to make characters jump in that CORPG they made and now they will just revolutionize everything. Good luck when the hackers and bugs hit and you looks for help.
I agree with the OP, SWTOR feels old, compared to the mmos due in the next 2 years...
It lacks innovation in combat that we see in TERA, GW2, and the fps mmos such as PS2
It sticks with the 2 factions system which everyone knows doesnt work, while TERA and GW2 do without factions, focusing on GvG or WvW PVP and TSW and PS2 give us 3 factions for better balance and variety.
Its classes are restricted, unlike the skill wheel of TSW, wep= skill of GW2 or hybrid system of AA.
Its crafting is less innovative compared to TSW or any other mmo in development except TERA.
And then there are the many innovations due in Wildstar and other projects.
Not the mention the return to old school table top features in World of Darkness, Pathfinder, and the many indie mmos in development.
I think as the years go bye SWTOR will look more and more out of place, and harder to defend when people see the advantages to many of these forward (or backward) thinking, but in either case braver features. The mmo-verse is still going to be mostly themepark for years to come, but at least they wont all be the same, and there is a sense of momentum again.
Short answer - they started making the game in 2006 and by the time the "trends" in MMORPG's actually started changing (maybe late 2008 early 2009) they had already invested too much in the design to up and completely change it?
They said in 2008 when announced that they had something like 12 full time writers working on the game since 2006, which tells me the plan/design for the game was pretty much finalized by then.
Can you provide any data on this MMO trend. I would like to see it.
They can't predict the future of course, but it just so happens they ended up being right that 5-6 years down the road people wouldn't want to be playing World of Warcraft in a different setting anymore.
ANet might have had a bit of forsight. Though as for SWTOR I dont know how BW/EA, or any Game Dev company couldnt forsee that people wouldnt want to play WoW in a different setting after all these years.
People like variety. Thats a no-brainer in business
These Themeparks are like the standard fastfood burger joints
I see MMORPGS as having two eras according to game play:
1. The UO sandbox era (1997-1999).
2. The EQ, two faction, theme park era (2000-2011).
Yeah, you old UO players seems to forget that MMOs started in 1996 with Meridian 59 and The Realm, 1 1/2 year before UO. We played MMOs before UO, no matter if garriot coin the term for it or not.
And there are plenty of games that doesn´t really fit in your classifications, like AC, Lineage and DaoC.
It is true that TOR have taken a lot from Wow but not so much from 2004, to me it seems closer to later versions of Wow.
MMOs need to move forward, not backward and it need to create a new and more social experience with a bit of the best features that it had during the years, both from the early and later games.
Both UO and Wow have been done, time to get us something new.
An interesting post. I only played SWToR in beta, and knew in a week I didn't want to play it.
To me, ToR is behind DAOC in features. I played DAOC at launch, and kept on for some years. The whole idea of RvR was brilliant, far far better than any PvP ToR might have.
Crafting in DAOC was also great, unlike the bland and pointless "crafting" ToR has. The number of classes is much greater in DAOC too, and many of these classes have varying "spec lines" that are also more complicated that ToR.
Even DAOC's world is more interesting. Both DAOC and ToR have "dead" worlds, meaning no wind, no seasons, no day/night cycle. But at least in DAOC you could explore and have fun.
To me, the OP is right: SWToR is an old game. And to me, inferior to DAOC, a game 11 years old.,
Again and Again I read threads by console FPS fans how they hate MMORPGs ( Tab Targeting ). Once again nothing new was stated or brought to the table. Stop writing these posts, the game you want has existed since '03. It's called Planetside. A Three Faction, Open World PvP, with FPS mechanics and Sandbox character development. If you stretch the definition some may even say RPG elements. When I played to level 22 my role was that of a Combat Medic / Combat Engineer. The only thing it is lack is crafting. Heck, They are even improving the graphics with Planetside 2. So STFU, and subscribe to PS1, it is the game you have been waiting for, and play!
Oh BTW, I am not bought or paid for by SOE.
Pardon any spelling errors
Konfess your cyns and some maybe forgiven Boy: Why can't I talk to Him? Mom: We don't talk to Priests. As if it could exist, without being payed for. F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing. Even telemarketers wouldn't think that. It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Again and Again I read threads by console FPS fans how they hate MMORPGs ( Tab Targeting ). Once again nothing new was stated or brought to the table. Stop writing these posts, the game you want has existed since '03. It's called Planetside. A Three Faction, Open World PvP, with FPS mechanics and Sandbox character development. If you stretch the definition some may even say RPG elements. When I played to level 22 my role was that of a Combat Medic / Combat Engineer. The only thing it is lack is crafting. Heck, They are even improving the graphics with Planetside 2. So STFU, and subscribe to PS1, it is the game you have been waiting for, and play!
Oh BTW, I am not bought or paid for by SOE.
Darkfall Online, Mortal Online, TERA, GW2, Archage, Firefall, Shadowbane, etc. etc. etc.
I hate console games, peroid. Mouse + keyboard is much more efficient.
While the game is a good effort by Bioware, ToR is unique out of all MMOs I know of for one reason: Its reach actually exceeds its vision. Most of the time a company will promise much but lack the capability to deliver. Bioware could have delivered on so much more but kept its eyes gazing firmly toward the mud.
What I mean is that Bioware is a gaming powerhouse, like them or hate them. The sheer amount of money and staff they threw at the project was staggering. It is down to a complete misdirection by producers and directors that their creative vision looked no further down the road than the present example of their main competition. Bioware is in space and travelling at lightspeed. To them, they're steaming along but by the time they get there, everyone has aged except them. Meanwhile the competition are going straight to warp.
Now take this in mind. Everyone brings up the $200mil budget, but nobody looks at the actual economics. After the payroll, equipment costs, licensing, insurance, pizza parties, new cars for execs, etc., etc., etc.... What you have is maybe a $60mil game if you're lucky when it's all said and done, even less when EA gets involved.
I'm just going by what they promises vs what they delivered.
They promised innovation (i have the dev interview where they did) they didn't deliver
They promised epic combat (where a bunch of little guys aren't tab targetting a large boss and hitting buttons over and over) they didn't deliver.
Whatever your personal issues with the game, devs who don't deliver on their promises should not receive $$
Oh and to the monsters-under-the-bridge in this thread, go somewhere else and spread misinformation about GW2, it's as old as SWTOR's 2004 design. k.thx.bye
The original points remains though: it is 2012; SWTOR is an old, outdated, WOW clone.
Old and outdated sold 2 million boxes and, at last count, had 1.7million people paying to play.
Seriously, before declaring the death of the WoW model shouldn't people wait to actually see one of these games die -- last I checked WoW still had more subs than pretty much everything else combined, Rift was doing well enough, and ToR is chugging along despite the endless vitriol hurled at it around here -- or maybe one of these "new wave" MMOs to do something other than make a big arsed crater in the market?
Just a thought.
Nah, why do that when you can declare WoW dead and ToR going FtP any minute now?
Seriously, I don't even like the damn game, would you people stop vomiting up so much stupid that basic fairness requires defending it?
Actually the OP has a number of good points and overall a really solid post in my opinion.
As I've said when the MMO's on the horizon are released I simply don't see ToR surviving. The only players who will stick around are roleplayers and the family gamers. That's fine, more power to them - but in the long haul ToR played it safe, too safe.
The original points remains though: it is 2012; SWTOR is an old, outdated, WOW clone.
Old and outdated sold 2 million boxes and, at last count, had 1.7million people paying to play.
Let's just point out that the "count" that you pointed out was the exact same figure as the beginning of February, they just got a new guy to tell everyone in a press release because the financial director quit right after stating that number in the beginning of Feb. Second, is the fact that the number didn't change a single bit, which is impossible. It's impossible that this number didn't go UP or DOWN in two months time. So until the reveal the real numbers, i wouldn't bank on a clear propaganda technique used to help investors feel safe.
People seem to forget how buggy and terrible WoW was when it forst came out. WoW was a buggy EQ when it started, and SWTOR is a buggy WoW now. The reason these MMOs are so similar is because the developers take what they know works and improves on it. So STFU and talk to me when SWTOR is in it's 5th or 6th year. Guaranteed it will be a completely different game from what it is now.
The original points remains though: it is 2012; SWTOR is an old, outdated, WOW clone.
Old and outdated sold 2 million boxes and, at last count, had 1.7million people paying to play.
Seriously, before declaring the death of the WoW model shouldn't people wait to actually see one of these games die -- last I checked WoW still had more subs than pretty much everything else combined, Rift was doing well enough, and ToR is chugging along despite the endless vitriol hurled at it around here -- or maybe one of these "new wave" MMOs to do something other than make a big arsed crater in the market?
Just a thought.
Nah, why do that when you can declare WoW dead and ToR going FtP any minute now?
Seriously, I don't even like the damn game, would you people stop vomiting up so much stupid that basic fairness requires defending it?
I keep seeing this "1.7" million subs thrown around and I find it very, very, very, very hard to believe this number is still anywhere near accurate. I believe that number was pushed out by Bioware early on after release when everyone was trying the game out.
Box sales mean little to any seasoned mmo veteran who has seen number games sell tons of pre-orders only to be down to 3 servers a year later.
Tor won't go F2P because Bioware and the investors won't allow it. No way, not for a year at least. ToR will limp on throughout the summer and into fall with a consistently falling population base, Despite this the fanbase will continue to claim a 1.7 million sub base, which I just don't see - Last time I logged in my account was roughly a month ago and that number would be a huge stretch at that time even.
People seem to forget how buggy and terrible WoW was when it forst came out. WoW was a buggy EQ when it started, and SWTOR is a buggy WoW now. The reason these MMOs are so similar is because the developers take what they know works and improves on it. So STFU and talk to me when SWTOR is in it's 5th or 6th year. Guaranteed it will be a completely different game from what it is now.
that's actually just an excuse for EA/BW not learning a SINGLE thing about mmo developement or design history before releasing this game. At this point in time. and as a seasoned game developer they should have had a more streamlined approach compared to Blizzard which had never really developed a game this size before.
I never liked the hero engine or the art work for this game at all. It certainly looks like a game from the year 2004. They just messed up big time but fortunately for them they used the Star Wars ip to get subscriptions. They should have just waited and worked on a Mass Effect mmo right from the start.
Short answer - they started making the game in 2006 and by the time the "trends" in MMORPG's actually started changing (maybe late 2008 early 2009) they had already invested too much in the design to up and completely change it?
They said in 2008 when announced that they had something like 12 full time writers working on the game since 2006, which tells me the plan/design for the game was pretty much finalized by then.
This is true, but I don't really think it excuses anything. Fighting "yesterday's war" is a terrible strategy in almost any endeavor. Game devs know that it's going to take years to come up with a game, so they really have to plan for that.
When it's 2006, you can't start development of a game that every player in 2006 is going to love...that's dumb, because hen your game comes out it may be 2011 . Instead, you have to think ahead, that's what most successful games do. WoW was successful because it offered something different and superior to just about every game out there. Yes, I know WoW took features from lots of different games, but the point is that there was NEVER one single game out before WoW that offered EVERYTHING that WoW does.
If WoW had just completely cloned EQ, AO, or DAoC...then it would not have been nearly as succesful. You can't design your game for the year that you start development. You have to design your game for the year that you finish development.
The original points remains though: it is 2012; SWTOR is an old, outdated, WOW clone.
Old and outdated sold 2 million boxes and, at last count, had 1.7million people paying to play.
Seriously, before declaring the death of the WoW model shouldn't people wait to actually see one of these games die -- last I checked WoW still had more subs than pretty much everything else combined, Rift was doing well enough, and ToR is chugging along despite the endless vitriol hurled at it around here -- or maybe one of these "new wave" MMOs to do something other than make a big arsed crater in the market?
Just a thought.
Nah, why do that when you can declare WoW dead and ToR going FtP any minute now?
Seriously, I don't even like the damn game, would you people stop vomiting up so much stupid that basic fairness requires defending it?
at least some people seem to have a little common sense. I barely come here and post on these forums cause its just a terrible community of people who cant stick with a game and just bash games endlessly while proclaiming the next mmo thats coming out to be the "gamechanger" (GW2 being the unfortunate one claiming this title now). A month after that game comes out this site will be filled with hate posts about how "fail" GW2 is.
The reality is SWTOR is doing pretty well, GW2 willl do pretty well. If you constantly have to come here and predict or say a game is fail, it must be because you need to reassure yourself of it. Peace out
Comments
GW2 in my mind is the peak of lazy development. They utterly homogenized everything and took away all indivisuality. Healing is too hard to balance, so let give every some silly AoE thing. Raiding is to hard to do so lets remove it and call 5 man instances our end game.
There is no gear chase at all, so how do you advance and feel stronger and get better. YOU DON'T. WvWvW is just Aions abyss with 3 servers in a instance. It will end up in the exact same zerg in GW2 as it did in Aion.
You guys are seriously putting way to much in GW2. It is not some amazing thing. I do not get the same feeling looking at GW2 as I do from Archage.
I LOVE LOVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE How ArenaNET is just some amazing developer all of a sudden. The last 6 years they could not even figure out how to make characters jump in that CORPG they made and now they will just revolutionize everything. Good luck when the hackers and bugs hit and you looks for help.
I agree with the OP, SWTOR feels old, compared to the mmos due in the next 2 years...
It lacks innovation in combat that we see in TERA, GW2, and the fps mmos such as PS2
It sticks with the 2 factions system which everyone knows doesnt work, while TERA and GW2 do without factions, focusing on GvG or WvW PVP and TSW and PS2 give us 3 factions for better balance and variety.
Its classes are restricted, unlike the skill wheel of TSW, wep= skill of GW2 or hybrid system of AA.
Its crafting is less innovative compared to TSW or any other mmo in development except TERA.
And then there are the many innovations due in Wildstar and other projects.
Not the mention the return to old school table top features in World of Darkness, Pathfinder, and the many indie mmos in development.
I think as the years go bye SWTOR will look more and more out of place, and harder to defend when people see the advantages to many of these forward (or backward) thinking, but in either case braver features. The mmo-verse is still going to be mostly themepark for years to come, but at least they wont all be the same, and there is a sense of momentum again.
Can you provide any data on this MMO trend. I would like to see it.
The Gaming Community Can Kiss My Arse
Have to agree with this. Being the "most expensive" mmo yet to be developed, it seems that something must have gone awry somewhere.
It might have just been a case of very bad management, which this article seems to suggest:
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/03/08/behind-the-scenes-of-star-wars-the-old-republic-throwing-people-at-the-problem/
And now I'm just hungry.
Yeah, you old UO players seems to forget that MMOs started in 1996 with Meridian 59 and The Realm, 1 1/2 year before UO. We played MMOs before UO, no matter if garriot coin the term for it or not.
And there are plenty of games that doesn´t really fit in your classifications, like AC, Lineage and DaoC.
It is true that TOR have taken a lot from Wow but not so much from 2004, to me it seems closer to later versions of Wow.
MMOs need to move forward, not backward and it need to create a new and more social experience with a bit of the best features that it had during the years, both from the early and later games.
Both UO and Wow have been done, time to get us something new.
An interesting post. I only played SWToR in beta, and knew in a week I didn't want to play it.
To me, ToR is behind DAOC in features. I played DAOC at launch, and kept on for some years. The whole idea of RvR was brilliant, far far better than any PvP ToR might have.
Crafting in DAOC was also great, unlike the bland and pointless "crafting" ToR has. The number of classes is much greater in DAOC too, and many of these classes have varying "spec lines" that are also more complicated that ToR.
Even DAOC's world is more interesting. Both DAOC and ToR have "dead" worlds, meaning no wind, no seasons, no day/night cycle. But at least in DAOC you could explore and have fun.
To me, the OP is right: SWToR is an old game. And to me, inferior to DAOC, a game 11 years old.,
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
Again and Again I read threads by console FPS fans how they hate MMORPGs ( Tab Targeting ). Once again nothing new was stated or brought to the table. Stop writing these posts, the game you want has existed since '03. It's called Planetside. A Three Faction, Open World PvP, with FPS mechanics and Sandbox character development. If you stretch the definition some may even say RPG elements. When I played to level 22 my role was that of a Combat Medic / Combat Engineer. The only thing it is lack is crafting. Heck, They are even improving the graphics with Planetside 2. So STFU, and subscribe to PS1, it is the game you have been waiting for, and play!
Oh BTW, I am not bought or paid for by SOE.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.
Thank you to everyone who cleared up the various factual errors I made in my original post.
The original points remains though: it is 2012; SWTOR is an old, outdated, WOW clone.
Darkfall Online, Mortal Online, TERA, GW2, Archage, Firefall, Shadowbane, etc. etc. etc.
I hate console games, peroid. Mouse + keyboard is much more efficient.
Now take this in mind. Everyone brings up the $200mil budget, but nobody looks at the actual economics. After the payroll, equipment costs, licensing, insurance, pizza parties, new cars for execs, etc., etc., etc.... What you have is maybe a $60mil game if you're lucky when it's all said and done, even less when EA gets involved.
With the amount of time, money, and investment put into SWTOR, it failed. Btw, 2004 is 8 years ago. 8. Years. 2 years away from 10 (a decade).
Because Lucas is mad, and wants a game change!
OP failed
I'm just going by what they promises vs what they delivered.
They promised innovation (i have the dev interview where they did) they didn't deliver
They promised epic combat (where a bunch of little guys aren't tab targetting a large boss and hitting buttons over and over) they didn't deliver.
Whatever your personal issues with the game, devs who don't deliver on their promises should not receive $$
Oh and to the monsters-under-the-bridge in this thread, go somewhere else and spread misinformation about GW2, it's as old as SWTOR's 2004 design. k.thx.bye
Old and outdated sold 2 million boxes and, at last count, had 1.7million people paying to play.
Seriously, before declaring the death of the WoW model shouldn't people wait to actually see one of these games die -- last I checked WoW still had more subs than pretty much everything else combined, Rift was doing well enough, and ToR is chugging along despite the endless vitriol hurled at it around here -- or maybe one of these "new wave" MMOs to do something other than make a big arsed crater in the market?
Just a thought.
Nah, why do that when you can declare WoW dead and ToR going FtP any minute now?
Seriously, I don't even like the damn game, would you people stop vomiting up so much stupid that basic fairness requires defending it?
Actually the OP has a number of good points and overall a really solid post in my opinion.
As I've said when the MMO's on the horizon are released I simply don't see ToR surviving. The only players who will stick around are roleplayers and the family gamers. That's fine, more power to them - but in the long haul ToR played it safe, too safe.
Let's just point out that the "count" that you pointed out was the exact same figure as the beginning of February, they just got a new guy to tell everyone in a press release because the financial director quit right after stating that number in the beginning of Feb. Second, is the fact that the number didn't change a single bit, which is impossible. It's impossible that this number didn't go UP or DOWN in two months time. So until the reveal the real numbers, i wouldn't bank on a clear propaganda technique used to help investors feel safe.
People seem to forget how buggy and terrible WoW was when it forst came out. WoW was a buggy EQ when it started, and SWTOR is a buggy WoW now. The reason these MMOs are so similar is because the developers take what they know works and improves on it. So STFU and talk to me when SWTOR is in it's 5th or 6th year. Guaranteed it will be a completely different game from what it is now.
I keep seeing this "1.7" million subs thrown around and I find it very, very, very, very hard to believe this number is still anywhere near accurate. I believe that number was pushed out by Bioware early on after release when everyone was trying the game out.
Box sales mean little to any seasoned mmo veteran who has seen number games sell tons of pre-orders only to be down to 3 servers a year later.
Tor won't go F2P because Bioware and the investors won't allow it. No way, not for a year at least. ToR will limp on throughout the summer and into fall with a consistently falling population base, Despite this the fanbase will continue to claim a 1.7 million sub base, which I just don't see - Last time I logged in my account was roughly a month ago and that number would be a huge stretch at that time even.
that's actually just an excuse for EA/BW not learning a SINGLE thing about mmo developement or design history before releasing this game. At this point in time. and as a seasoned game developer they should have had a more streamlined approach compared to Blizzard which had never really developed a game this size before.
I never liked the hero engine or the art work for this game at all. It certainly looks like a game from the year 2004. They just messed up big time but fortunately for them they used the Star Wars ip to get subscriptions. They should have just waited and worked on a Mass Effect mmo right from the start.
Grim Dawn, the next great action rpg!
http://www.grimdawn.com/
This is true, but I don't really think it excuses anything. Fighting "yesterday's war" is a terrible strategy in almost any endeavor. Game devs know that it's going to take years to come up with a game, so they really have to plan for that.
When it's 2006, you can't start development of a game that every player in 2006 is going to love...that's dumb, because hen your game comes out it may be 2011
. Instead, you have to think ahead, that's what most successful games do. WoW was successful because it offered something different and superior to just about every game out there. Yes, I know WoW took features from lots of different games, but the point is that there was NEVER one single game out before WoW that offered EVERYTHING that WoW does.
If WoW had just completely cloned EQ, AO, or DAoC...then it would not have been nearly as succesful. You can't design your game for the year that you start development. You have to design your game for the year that you finish development.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
at least some people seem to have a little common sense. I barely come here and post on these forums cause its just a terrible community of people who cant stick with a game and just bash games endlessly while proclaiming the next mmo thats coming out to be the "gamechanger" (GW2 being the unfortunate one claiming this title now). A month after that game comes out this site will be filled with hate posts about how "fail" GW2 is.
The reality is SWTOR is doing pretty well, GW2 willl do pretty well. If you constantly have to come here and predict or say a game is fail, it must be because you need to reassure yourself of it. Peace out