Is Old Republic the Most Expensive Video Game Ever?

I don't see EA losing money, just maybe not make as much as they were hoping for. They could have done a LOT more with their $200M budget.

I enjoy playing MMO's more than other game types, but the Beta turned me off this one. And hearing they turned down the graphics quality in the final version isn't helping me to be curious about it again.
 
For 200 million, EA got a real dog.

Three things have completely dissuaded me from ever trying this game:

1) Using the "Old Republic" IP. There are so many things wrong with this IP I'll not even get started.
2) No meaningful space combat or much to do with space at all. This is supposed to be Star Wars, wtf?
3) PvP & its reward system is complete garbage in this game
4) You can only be a handful of humanoid races - where are the jawas, wookiees, etc... this game lacks pretty much all of the Star Wars character. To me it feels nothing like Star Wars.

Really hate this game, because of how it stole such a good opportunity and that $200 million, 6-year long investment. Think of what we COULD of had.

LOOK at this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7eREddMjt4&feature=related

Why not give that guy the 200 million to develop a Star Wars game? Frankly, BioWare is incompetent and should just stick to the singleplayer games.
 
I think some people just lack perspective, SWTOR basically can't "fail" at this point.

Sure, it could fail to meet expectations, it may never achieve the the kind of numbers that WoW has, but even at a cost of 200million dollars, it needs to sell maybe 4 or 5 million copies to break even, maybe a little more, and that's before factoring in ongoing subscriptions and any merch or paid services they add (and of course factoring out the ongoing costs of running the game).

Basically the thing will be in profit in a few months no matter what. Hell it could already be in profit depending on how the first month went for all I know.
 
Filter said:
I think investor and people forget wow didnt get that big overnight it took a coupke years. For those that think swtor was going to top wow werent thinking. The majority of wow players are overseas in china. Im pretty sure starwars isnt very big in china
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The chinese market pays very poorly anyways (less than $1.00 per person including the 'hardcore') and the Star Wars fanbase in non-asian countries is outrageous.

____

They should have put a lot more money into the client/server communication and the client itself.

The client loads very slowly.
The visuals are generations behind.
The frame rate is very low considering the image quality.
The client often has issues when many players are present in the same zone, despite their phasing tech.
If you've participated in the world PvP (Illum) the server lags up whenever the objectives are completed.
DX9 only, no DX11 option.
No customizable UI (I'm okay with a stock UI if it is done well, they failed - hard)
To elaborate on the UI issue, no scaling, no bag sorting, the filtering system at NPCs often doesn't work. Auction house filtering doesn't work properly. Inconsistencies, such as alderan warzone timers.
All easily solved by allowing user created UI. Again, I am perfectly fine with a stock UI if it is done well.

Big bugs such as companion spam in Operation groups,
Warzone bug (forcing to character screen)
Warzone completion bugs on daily.
Bosses dropping no loot, incorrect loot (level 30 gear instead of 50 gear)
Bosses often don't function correctly, feels like a majority.
Mouse bug1: flings your camera (not mouse related)
Mouse bug2: can't click on anything until UI reload or other some other shoddy workaround

Customer service seems more interested in inhibiting than improving things.
Charging customers extra money to pre order a game, lol.


Pros; if you like the star wars universe you'll enjoy this game regardless of its many flaws. The servers have never crashed in my experience even on a high pop server.

Cons: Illusion of choice (bioware story development nonsense) You are constantly given choices, if you choose wrong they rephrase the question with answers that are all yes based. If you do actually get the choice it is to something that has no impact, with the exception of - at the end of a story arc you do usually get to make an actual choice.

Quantity over quality for voice acting, they do have some good voice acting here and there but they flooded you with voice acting and most people skip the side story stuff anyways.
 
"Our first part comes out right away, our second part comes in the future, that's how epic this story is"

Is that fancy double speak for saying we have a whole game we just want to be able to squeeze multiple sales out of it just like Blizzard has done with Starcraft 2"
 
I think Bioware took the wrong ways to make this game...

They basically took Mass Effect... tossed in a starwars.. released it with minimum PVP...

Not at all Surprised that it's not really doing to well. I like Final Fantasy XIV.. yea It maybe a broken game however not even as broken as EA does with a track record of not really backing their games for long to support maturity. Having a MMO.. it leads me to believe they wont support the game past it's infancy. We'll see thou..
 
If I buy a game, I am not paying a subscription to play it.

If I pay a subscription to play it, I am not buying the game.

Period.

Change your business model first EA, as there are plenty of other fun games for me to play.
 
I think it is much better than WOW. The graphics on wow are so outdated and game play for us is better on SWTOR. I hope it makes it because we are not going back to wow.
 
Its already been stated that even if it only had 1,000,000 active subscribers it would remain profitable. Its only been out a little over a month.

WoW didn't sell 13-14 million copies in a little over a month. I think the media is a bit bored and is looking to press an issue that doesn't exist.
 
gplracer said:
I think it is much better than WOW. The graphics on wow are so outdated and game play for us is better on SWTOR. I hope it makes it because we are not going back to wow.
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MMO business models are different. EA would have to try REAL HARD to have a failure here, even at 200M to recoup. Once the initial rush is over, at 15$ a month, I'd guess they probably need under 10K, subscriptions to break even. or 15K at $10...etc... Peanuts to maintain servers, bandwidth, CR team, and expension DEV team.

If they go F2P, maybe in a couple years, multiply the subsciptions needed by 3 at 30K for people spending way less, maybe $5 a month on average.

The numbers may be off, but you get the idea...
 
Husanak said:
I think people forget just how much of a cash cow these things are.... they don't need for the game to last years just too break even or something. lol

They brought in a gross of 70 mil on game copies almost in the first week... even if they are only operating on a 50% margin. That's 35 Mil in the first week recouped.

Now assume the game Bombs by everyone's standards.... which means they hold on too 500,000 subs for 1 year, at an average of $14 a month with again a 50% margin. (You can assume the real margin numbers are higher then that)... that's 3.5 Mil a month in profit... or 42 Mil a Year one in PROFIT. That's if it Seriously under performs and only holds 500 thousand subs for 1 year. Not counting any new copy sales... the inevitable 10 mil kick in the pants when they blow copies out at $19.99.

If year two they hold onto half of the year one subs... that's another 21 Mil in PROFIT.

Point is even if they have the WORST margin rates in the industry... and they can't hold on too 1/4 of the pop they have now... they will still turn a profit after turning the servers off 2-3 years after launch. Even Failed MMOs in general turn a profit. This one does need to hold a few more people too hit that ouch mark... but something tells me they will be in the green even if the game is a failure. $200 mil isn't that crazy of a budget... for a game built on a subscription business model.
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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...und-35-percent-of-old-republic-revenue-report
 
Also MMO's are a LONG term investment , you don't make your money back on box/retail/digital sales. You make it based on monthly subs , if the sub base continues to grow (which it will) then it becomes more and more profitable.

Do you all also think Hollywood doesn't make money off a movie if it does poorly domestic wise? Of course not , International box office and home video sales can easy recoup any kind of major loss. Don't think EA just thought "HEY GUYS lets invest $200 million in this MMO with a company we just bought out because spending that kind of money and risking losing a massive amount of it in sales is a good game plan".

Judging based on the pre-orders for SWTOR (which were extremely high) and the fact that no one seems to be factoring in digital copies sold (big surprise there , everyone loves to leave that out) I'm sure SWTOR is well on its way to earning back its $200 million investment. SWTOR based on reactions of fans and not whiners in this thread has been well received and critics also are enjoying it.

I remember all the hype from people before its launch and that one idiot that drew up a blog claiming it was already DOA and how it would end up being the biggest failure in MMO history. Its fine if you don't like the game but turning and claiming that because you don't like it , it'll fail is just plain dumb.
 
Husanak said:
Nice link. :)

Man Lucas needs his own tax bracket doesn't he? lol
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He sure couldn't fit inside the bracket *rimshot*

If there is one thing Lucas does well (because it isn't prequels or anything recent) its making fucking BANK off his franchise.
 
Galvin said:
I read this somewhere the scifi mmo's don't bring in as many people as fantasy.
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That's probably because the bog-standard MMO tropes are just dumb when applied to SciFi settings (specifically - SciFi weapons).

In a 'fantasy' setting, having a character run up to a MOB and hit it with an sword...well, no, that won't always kill it. Swords are not that hard to deflect for a skilled fighter, and plenty of creatures even in reality can take even a solid sword hit and keep fighting. Heck, even humans when wearing armor can. MANY hits.

So the action queue of repeated attacks until the MOB falls over dead...doesn't seem ridiculous. Even ranged magic attacks that don't kill at one hit...that's cool, I mean, it's "magic", so who knows how it would work.

But for SciFi? Different ballgame entirely. We've seen a LOT of 'Star Wars' on TV and movies...light sabers cut *right through things*. Like BUTTER. Blasters fry things - you take a blaster hit, you are *down* (even if just grazed). Seeing things in the game take hit after hit, while your character stands there stupidly looking into space and shooting (or swinging) over and over...

...it just feels wrong.

STO had the exact same issue. The only creatures in Star Trek that ever took a phaser hit and kept on coming were usually the super-powered deities (or Borg). In STO...EVERYTHING takes many, many hits to take down. It feels ridiculous - basically, it feels like you are using medieval and/or fantasy weapons, anyway, just with a vaguely SciFi skin on them.

So why not just play a fantasy game, where at least the lethality level of the equipment makes sense for the setting?

Game designers really need to re-evaluate what their setting is when doing something as massive as this, and design gameplay that fits the setting...not just copy an existing model and re-skin it.
 
dderidex said:
That's probably because the bog-standard MMO tropes are just dumb when applied to SciFi settings (specifically - SciFi weapons).

But for SciFi? Different ballgame entirely. We've seen a LOT of 'Star Wars' on TV and movies...light sabers cut *right through things*. Like BUTTER. Blasters fry things - you take a blaster hit, you are *down* (even if just grazed). Seeing things in the game take hit after hit, while your character stands there stupidly looking into space and shooting (or swinging) over and over...

...it just feels wrong
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and
dderidex said:
Game designers really need to re-evaluate what their setting is when doing something as massive as this, and design gameplay that fits the setting...not just copy an existing model and re-skin it.
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My thoughts exactly!
 
If they open up the UI API and fix the combat log i'll resubscribe.
 
... and if it fails, those losses get passed into other EA games, which raises prices. Hence you've just been schooled on the problem with the PC and gaming industry in general; Huge budgets.
 
dderidex said:
That's probably because the bog-standard MMO tropes are just dumb when applied to SciFi settings (specifically - SciFi weapons).

In a 'fantasy' setting, having a character run up to a MOB and hit it with an sword...well, no, that won't always kill it. Swords are not that hard to deflect for a skilled fighter, and plenty of creatures even in reality can take even a solid sword hit and keep fighting. Heck, even humans when wearing armor can. MANY hits.

So the action queue of repeated attacks until the MOB falls over dead...doesn't seem ridiculous. Even ranged magic attacks that don't kill at one hit...that's cool, I mean, it's "magic", so who knows how it would work.

But for SciFi? Different ballgame entirely. We've seen a LOT of 'Star Wars' on TV and movies...light sabers cut *right through things*. Like BUTTER. Blasters fry things - you take a blaster hit, you are *down* (even if just grazed). Seeing things in the game take hit after hit, while your character stands there stupidly looking into space and shooting (or swinging) over and over...

...it just feels wrong.

STO had the exact same issue. The only creatures in Star Trek that ever took a phaser hit and kept on coming were usually the super-powered deities (or Borg). In STO...EVERYTHING takes many, many hits to take down. It feels ridiculous - basically, it feels like you are using medieval and/or fantasy weapons, anyway, just with a vaguely SciFi skin on them.

So why not just play a fantasy game, where at least the lethality level of the equipment makes sense for the setting?

Game designers really need to re-evaluate what their setting is when doing something as massive as this, and design gameplay that fits the setting...not just copy an existing model and re-skin it.
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Because hitting something with 7 lightning bolts before it dies in a fantasy mmo makes more sense?
 
Dump Origin, put this (and other games on Steam) watch sales explode....But EA executives are to mentally challenged to see this. I should really run EA, I have more business sense in my pinky then their entire board.
 
ocellaris said:
Because hitting something with 7 lightning bolts before it dies in a fantasy mmo makes more sense?
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Since you are obviously not hitting them with 'lightning from the sky' lightning, whatever you are using is doing damage through pretty low voltage or 'magic' (it doesn't, after all, damage the caster who is usually shooting it from his unprotected fingers, right?)

What rules does 'magic' follow? Who knows - apparently, that it takes a few hits to take something down, because that is what we usually see.

And that's the problem, here - not that the physics are faulty (which given these are all fictional settings is a silly rabbit hole to go down), but that they are not internally consistent with the setting. We see wizards shoot lightning on TV and in movies, and the damage done appears roughly like it does in the games. We see warriors swinging swords and shooting arrows on TV and movies, and the damage done appears roughly like it does in the game. We see Jedi swinging light sabers or Klingons shooting phasers...and the effect is nothing at all, in any, even vaguely like the effect in the games.

That's a pretty big deal breaker!
 
mashie said:
It's absolutely no reason to charge both for the install and then have a subscription on top. EVE-Online for example is monthly subscription only and every expansion is free.
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When Eve-Online first launched (in 2003) you had to buy it first for about $40 (although it came with a month or two of free subscription IIRC)
 
Rauelius said:
Dump Origin, put this (and other games on Steam) watch sales explode....But EA executives are to mentally challenged to see this. I should really run EA, I have more business sense in my pinky then their entire board.
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Uh... PC sales were the minority.. the majority of the sales are on consoles. You really think out of that PC minority slice that putting it on Steam would make any impact at all? Do you also realize that the reason EA doesn't put its games on Steam is because Valve wants a cut of the profit. How large we don't know, but it was large enough to make EA say fuck you and build their own entire service? You think building Origin was free? Obviously Steam was very cost-ineffective for them. It's not a free for a publisher to sell their game there. You Steam fanboys should read what you write so you know how asinine you are.
 
heatlesssun said:
I want to support this game because it's a PC exclusive but it's just not my kind of game plus I don't do pay to play subscription games.
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This and
bpmurrGT said:
Something doesn't seem right about having to buy a game that you then pay monthly for. Just make the game free to install and charge the monthly fee. Isn't the residual income where the money is made anyways?
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and this is why I'll never play this game. Whether it's good or bad doesn't matter to me. I'll be damned before I shell out $60 for the game then pay you $15/month. You can go fuck yourself EA for all I care. And you will most definitely NOT be getting my money for that type of game --even if it was the best game ever made.
 
Galvin said:
I don't even think the hobbit has a budget of 200mil. And that's a movie that will probably make over a billion dollars.

I read this somewhere the scifi mmo's don't bring in as many people as fantasy. But blizzard needs some real competition. No competition is bad for the consumer.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(2012_film)

The Hobbit has a total budget of $500 million. $250M for each film. Not really disagreeing with anything you've said, just had seent hat figure before so i thought I'd share.
 
World of Warcraft took 3 years to Develop. Starcraft, 7 years and Diablo 11 years, so 4-5 years and $200M isn't that surprising. It takes YEARS to develop a good MMO and millions of dollars. All the game companies know this. The FPS games that last a year or 2 that a ton of companies push out nowdays are a complete joke. They use modded engines that are already on the market and offer nothing in the way of new content and very little support.

I used to be big into FPS games and I once said the exact same thing, "I'll never pay someone $15 a month to play a game". The thing you don't realize is, for that $60 and $15 a month, you get constant and ongoing support for the game. With each new expansion that Blizzard releases for WOW, you get 3-5 CONTENT patches, as well as bug fixes and game patches. WoW is so big now that my wow folder alone is over 30gb. Most people that have never played an MMO or played a GOOD MMO, don't realize the amount of game you get for your $15 a month. You could literally WOW 8 hours a day for a good month and not see all the content it has to offer, let alone explore the entire world. You say you won't spend $15 a month, but you'll be happy to pay $50-70 several times a year to play another FPS game, which offers a few maps, that can be seen in 1 afternoon, then play the same thing over and over again until the next FPS game comes out. To keep subscribers, companies that make MMO's CONSTANTLY have to release new content to keep the masses happy or that never ending well of cash would dry up quickly. Blizzard has obviously figured out how to do it or WOW would have died years ago with the hundred other MMOs that came down the wire.
 
I agree with some others that said something similar to, "It's not going to fail; it just might not make as much money as expected."

Having said that, I and six other friends pre-ordered TOR. All of us have already quit.
 
Just waiting for Guild Wars 2. That game's release is what EA really needs to be worried about.
 
Pitbully said:
World of Warcraft took 3 years to Develop. Starcraft, 7 years and Diablo 11 years, so 4-5 years and $200M isn't that surprising. It takes YEARS to develop a good MMO and millions of dollars. All the game companies know this. The FPS games that last a year or 2 that a ton of companies push out nowdays are a complete joke. They use modded engines that are already on the market and offer nothing in the way of new content and very little support.

I used to be big into FPS games and I once said the exact same thing, "I'll never pay someone $15 a month to play a game". The thing you don't realize is, for that $60 and $15 a month, you get constant and ongoing support for the game. With each new expansion that Blizzard releases for WOW, you get 3-5 CONTENT patches, as well as bug fixes and game patches. WoW is so big now that my wow folder alone is over 30gb. Most people that have never played an MMO or played a GOOD MMO, don't realize the amount of game you get for your $15 a month. You could literally WOW 8 hours a day for a good month and not see all the content it has to offer, let alone explore the entire world. You say you won't spend $15 a month, but you'll be happy to pay $50-70 several times a year to play another FPS game, which offers a few maps, that can be seen in 1 afternoon, then play the same thing over and over again until the next FPS game comes out. To keep subscribers, companies that make MMO's CONSTANTLY have to release new content to keep the masses happy or that never ending well of cash would dry up quickly. Blizzard has obviously figured out how to do it or WOW would have died years ago with the hundred other MMOs that came down the wire.
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While sure the content and patches are great, it's just too bad the game isn't very good to begin with (obviously my opinion). I was given WoW for free, and a friend, who paid the $15 monthly fee, said I could make an account under his name. After a few hours, I was so unimpressed that I never played it again. I quite honestly don't see the allure of the game. The Graphics suck, the controls suck, and the quests are boring (my opinion again). While sure many will say that I didn't give it enough time to REALLY experience the game, but IMO, I gave it a fair shake and didn't like it --at all.
Now DiabloII on the other hand was much more interesting to me. I played the crap out of that game (had 7 accounts with all level 70+ characters). The game had a great storyline, great cinematics, and was overall just more fun. Not to mention, since I already paid for the game once, I didn't have to constantly keep paying for it over and over again.

As for the FPS that are 50-70, well, I almost never pay that much for any game. In the last 5 years I can think of only 2 games that I bought on release, BF2142 and Mass Effect 2.
Yes, I'm a cheapass when it comes to that.
 
heatlesssun said:
I want to support this game because it's a PC exclusive but it's just not my kind of game plus I don't do pay to play subscription games.
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Agreed.

If they come out with another stand-alone Star Wars game though, I'm all ears.
 
MiriV said:
It failed because its a MMO. Enough said.
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Yeah, I kind of thing people are starting to get sick of MMO cash cows. When you can see games like FO:NV and Skyrim (or even the Mass Effect series) that offer a good RPG in a massive world, it doesn't make a ton of sense to pay $15/mo for an MMO. My opinion, anyway.
 
With all the things that are done half-assed in the game, I'm wondering where that 200 million went?

Granted, the class storylines are pretty top notch, but there's so much lacking in so many other areas.

It just wasn't ready to go live yet imho.
 
OmegaSupreme said:
While sure the content and patches are great, it's just too bad the game isn't very good to begin with (obviously my opinion). I was given WoW for free, and a friend, who paid the $15 monthly fee, said I could make an account under his name. After a few hours, I was so unimpressed that I never played it again. I quite honestly don't see the allure of the game. The Graphics suck, the controls suck, and the quests are boring (my opinion again). While sure many will say that I didn't give it enough time to REALLY experience the game, but IMO, I gave it a fair shake and didn't like it --at all.
Now DiabloII on the other hand was much more interesting to me. I played the crap out of that game (had 7 accounts with all level 70+ characters). The game had a great storyline, great cinematics, and was overall just more fun. Not to mention, since I already paid for the game once, I didn't have to constantly keep paying for it over and over again.

As for the FPS that are 50-70, well, I almost never pay that much for any game. In the last 5 years I can think of only 2 games that I bought on release, BF2142 and Mass Effect 2.
Yes, I'm a cheapass when it comes to that.
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MMO's obviously arnt' for everyone or everyone would be playing them. While you did give WOW a chance unfortunately you really didn't see any of the content, (unless you lvled a toon to 85). The game really starts at lvl 85 IMO. That being said, MMO's are not for everyone, just as FPS games are not for everyone.
 
I want SWTOR to fail, spectacularly.

I was cheated.... I absolutely will NEVER pay a subscription to play a game, especially not one that I had to pay to buy first. But I love adventure games such a KOTOR, BG, NWN, Jade Empire, etc. And I played and played KOTOR and KOTOR 2 (talk about being cheated... a great first half of a game, then a totally unfinished mess of a second half). They left that story unfinished, with at least one more game needed to finish the tale.... and instead they abandoned us, the loyal players, to chase WOW.

Yeah, I was cheated and they thought I would roll over.... so I hope if fails HUGE.
 
SixFootDuo said:
I wanted to interact with Darthvader. Luke, R2D2 etc etc. But it not that.
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It's the "Old Republic", stated far before release by the developers, that the game takes place after Kotor 2, and about 3000 years before the first movies. Expecting any of the above just means that you ignored all the information prior to release.

Many of the things you listed (custom UI, etc.) are 'coming' (as per the video showed actually), granted I feel it should've been in for release, but at least it'll come.

The game isn't perfect, and it's not going to be everyone's cup-of-tea, but I'm having fun with it. Pvp to me, is more fun that Wow's pvp ever was (although the old tarren mill vs SS raids were fun back in vanilla), I've experienced some open world pvp as well as the warzones, and while again, not perfect, it's fun. Specially since I'm normally not a pvp fan.

I don't think the game is "failing" or is "dead" or dying, it doesn't need to be the "wow" killer every claims it to be, as long as they keep a steady flow of content (which they are so far) and keep on working on bug fixes, and listening to the community, it'll continue to thrive in it's own niche.
 
Kueller said:
As a big Star Wars fan SWG ruined MMOs for me. Swore I'd never play another one, and TOR isn't good enough to even tempt me.
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Ditto. It is just a clone with a duped WoW combat interface and $200M of advertising.

When are they going to bring an MMO out with a realistic combat system? The points based crap does nothing for me. You grind out your character to be able to afford gear that will allow you to enjoy lackluster combat.
 
EA and Dice made a mess of BF3 also. Whats new? EA will not get any more of my money that's what is new!
 
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