SWTOR is proof subscription MMOs have peaked, says Pachter

BiH115 said:
They could have done so much with SWTOR, SO much. Think about it, they had an ENORMOUS budget, yet they made a single playthrough story, that ends abruptly and leaves the player not having anything else to do. There wasn't even a social aspect at all, which is THE #1 point of an MMO. You don't play it to play it alone, at least that's my opinion anyway. They could have done meaningless things like housing, buying cosmetic things, pretty much stuff that doesn't really affect much, but people would have jumped all over it. World events, varied missions, just in general, THINGS TO DO. They didn't do anything new, and they didn't even become aware of it, if at all. How is that even possible?
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Well you have to question Bioware's involvement. Who among this Bioware team is associated with their past successes? What is their past experience and track record with MMOs, or even just multiplayer games? While the article mentions that "made by Bioware" should count for something I don't agree in this case.

An example is one of the highlights of SWTOR I believe is the voice acting which is a rather pricey but impressive accomplishment for a MMO. But in terms of the actual appeal of this feature to the end customer was it really worth it for the cost spent or en lieu of what else the development resources could have gone towards?
 
Johnked6 said:
MMO's were a niche market before WOW came onto the scene. Your average MMO had between 50k-200k subscribers and were doing well for themselves.

WOW entered the market and blew all previous competition out of the water gaining millions of subscribers in the first year. The rest is history, no other MMO has been able to achieve the success that WOW has.

Companies trying to replicate the WOW success have come to realize that it is all but impossible, the market is just not large enough for several 10+ million subscription based MMO's.

That's not to say that people will not pay a subscription for quality. Times have changed though, for a company to justify a $60 price tag + $15 a month requires offering an extraordinary experience. Maybe next gen MMO's with unique ideas and gameplay will be able to fulfill that promise. The only possible MMO I can think of on the horizon is Blizzard's Titan.
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I agree with you, and I also would like to take your post a step further and say it's always been a mistake to consider WoW the de facto new MMO standard. I've said it before, but an MMO does NOT need to achieve WoW's numbers or dethrone WoW to achieve commercial success. It's not like I can play with 10 million people all at once. All that matters to me as a player is, is there a server I can play on that is decently populated (enough so that I can still get a group formed when I need one.)
 
Release shitty clone of WoW - Check
Have playerbase nosedive when they realize it's just another poorly done McMMO - Check
Blame sub model for your own mediocrity - Check

The only thing they're missing is blaming piracy, but thankfully they can't do that since this is a service and not just a box sale.
 
Ruoh said:
Commmmonnnn Elder Scrolls based MMO.
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It's coming, but you probably don't want it.

"At this point in the evolution of MMOs, every MMO has tried something at one point or another that you're going to do in your game. There aren't any more truly innovative features."
-Matt Firor, Director of The Elder Scrolls Online​
 
I think these big publishing companies will eventually realize that the games industry isn't sustainable in a generic corporate "widget" scheme. Game content, support and art (storyline included) is actually valuable to gamers, and is generally not a tick list that you can itemize and put a price tag on. If this realisation does come to fruition, it will be a great day for gaming, as eventually gaming will resurface in the form that we all want it to, a focus on quality game creation, like art.
 
DarkStryke said:
Release shitty clone of WoW - Check
Have playerbase nosedive when they realize it's just another poorly done McMMO - Check
Blame sub model for your own mediocrity - Check

The only thing they're missing is blaming piracy, but thankfully they can't do that since this is a service and not just a box sale.
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If they could, I bet they would. No emulators available for TOR as far as I know though so no way to pull that excuse.
 
Theres plenty of room in the market right now. You just have to make a game that is good enough to pull people away from their wow subscription. In order to do that, you need to make a game that either is *better* than wow, or brings something new to the table that people want to pay to play.

Not a single MMO so far has been better than WOW and nobody will take the time or money to invest into something new and exciting.
 
lloose said:
Theres plenty of room in the market right now. You just have to make a game that is good enough to pull people away from their wow subscription. In order to do that, you need to make a game that either is *better* than wow, or brings something new to the table that people want to pay to play.

Not a single MMO so far has been better than WOW and nobody will take the time or money to invest into something new and exciting.
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Subjective. There are several MMO's I'd rather play than WoW. Better? Hard to say. Financial success isn't a good indicator of quality in every situation.
 
lloose said:
Theres plenty of room in the market right now. You just have to make a game that is good enough to pull people away from their wow subscription. In order to do that, you need to make a game that either is *better* than wow, or brings something new to the table that people want to pay to play.

Not a single MMO so far has been better than WOW and nobody will take the time or money to invest into something new and exciting.
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I don't agree at all. I think EQ2 was/is far better than WoW and it has significantly more content than WoW, but just wasn't as popular. And when new games come out, if they don't have a feature that WoW has, like a dungeon finder, people complain. If they add one in, people complain about adding it in. If its too much like WoW, they call it a WoW clone just different skins. If its too far from WoW, they say it should be more like WoW. I personally think the MMO boom is closing down. I don't think there are enough people to support the plethora of MMO games out there, plus the behemoth WoW.
 
lloose said:
Not a single MMO so far has been better than WOW and nobody will take the time or money to invest into something new and exciting.
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Hard to define better really. A lot of people I know back when I played WOW and people who still play today simply play because other people they know play it as well. It's sort of like Facebook and Google+. There wasn't a whole lot of reason to migrate if all of your friends already used Facebook. You might check out Google+ and make an account, but most people ultimately went back to Facebook.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Subjective. There are several MMO's I'd rather play than WoW. Better? Hard to say. Financial success isn't a good indicator of quality in every situation.
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well before the last couple expansions wow was seriously one of my favorite games of all time. i was in a fairly successful guild just absolutely destroying black temple.. there are few memories i have gaming that can express my excitement for illidan! we got to Brutallus in sunwell before they made the changes for wrath which made it clearable by a pug -_-

but you make a good point its garbage now and theres still so many subs!
 
I play it (WoW) on occasion with a few friends, it's fun to knock out some achievements on a warm afternoon where running outside or biking would lead to heat exhaustion. It's really relaxing now, but you'd kind of expect it with an expansion around the corner, not that the game was every hard to begin with.
 
BiH115 said:
I play it (WoW) on occasion with a few friends, it's fun to knock out some achievements on a warm afternoon where running outside or biking would lead to heat exhaustion. It's really relaxing now, but you'd kind of expect it with an expansion around the corner, not that the game was every hard to begin with.
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Classic WoW wasn't EQ difficult but it was still more difficult than current WoW and all of the other clones. It used to feel like an accomplishment when your group made it through Scholo or you took down a same level elite solo. Now you just face roll everything except for a few raids.
 
Bankie said:
Classic WoW wasn't EQ difficult but it was still more difficult than current WoW and all of the other clones. It used to feel like an accomplishment when your group made it through Scholo or you took down a same level elite solo. Now you just face roll everything except for a few raids.
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Meh, accomplishment + games, not my cup of tea. Still like playing it.
 
Oomps said:
It's coming, but you probably don't want it.

"At this point in the evolution of MMOs, every MMO has tried something at one point or another that you're going to do in your game. There aren't any more truly innovative features."
-Matt Firor, Director of The Elder Scrolls Online​
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How about just multiplayer then? I'd love to group up with some of my friends playing this.
 
Oomps said:
It's coming, but you probably don't want it.

"At this point in the evolution of MMOs, every MMO has tried something at one point or another that you're going to do in your game. There aren't any more truly innovative features."
-Matt Firor, Director of The Elder Scrolls Online​
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The problem I have with Elder Scrolls Online is that it's not going to be like an Elder Scrolls game that we've played before. Sure, there will be the Elder Scrolls mythos and background story, but that's it. It's going to be, going by everything I've read since it was announced, another traditional MMORPG.

The developers themselves had so many excuses as to why they couldn't incorporate real time action combat or the same level of graphics as the Elder Scroll series has enjoyed in each release. (The graphics have gotten better over the years in the Elder Scroll series.)

I look at the screenshots in Game Informer magazine and other gaming sites, then I look at ArcheAge and TERA Online and Guild Wars 2. And, I look back at Elder Scrolls Online.

Excuses, excuses.

Tera and ArcheAge have both very good graphics and real time combat. Heck, Guild Wars 2 looks very good at this point of its development before its release. The people behind Elder Scrolls Online says it is not possible given current networking technology and the lag that's introduced when you are a certain distance away from the server, and ping times and so on. Similar excuse with the graphics. They think it wouldn't work with hundreds of characters on screen at the same time.

I'm afraid it's going to be nothing more than a WoW-clone dressed up in Elder Scrolls mythos and story with the same kind of questing and mission system, with added "GvGvG" combat. If it succeeds,then that's great but it, again, lacks variety. To me, it doesn't live up to deserving the Elder Scrolls moniker at all.
 
If it doesn't look like Oblivion/Skryim, in any sense, and doesn't incorporate it's gameplay/theme in any way, they shouldn't bother making it. The world DOESN'T need another WoW-clone. That's why there's WoW already. Unnecessary.
 
octoberasian said:
The problem I have with Elder Scrolls Online is that it's not going to be like an Elder Scrolls game that we've played before. Sure, there will be the Elder Scrolls mythos and background story, but that's it. It's going to be, going by everything I've read since it was announced, another traditional MMORPG.
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It's not being made by Bethesda, so yeah...
 
He's probably right, if you replace "MMO" with "WOW clone".

The gaming industry is filled with idiots who want to the the next X when X is still going strong and has a strong fan base. You will never make a better X than X. You have to do new stuff. Taking risks is better than certain mediocrity.
 
In the business world as investment amount goes up you want greater certainty in ROI, the money that's invested in games like CoD:MW is only thrown at titles with a predictable ROI, no one wants risk when investing a very large mount of money.

Taking risks is usually only done with very small investments or when potential ROI is massive.
 
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