Will SWTOR outdo WoW?

GarethBah

What are your opinions on this guys, i personally think it won't take out WoW but will take a section of WoW's subs, also including the fact that Swifty(and his entire guild) are switching to SWTOR, it might bring swifty fanboys.

I think there is room for both of these games to do well do IMHO

VinLieger

Wish people would stop doing this its hardly a new question and im sure if you searched even just in this forum you would find numerous topics already on the subject, not too mention the millions on other sites that are out there.
Its getting pretty tiresome

Sonics2k

It won't "beat" WoW, but it may be competition.

Frankly, we know so little about SWTOR right now to say whether or not it will be a game to finally take WoW down.

Unlike the previous big MMO releases, SWTOR isn't designed to beat WoW, and that's the best thing they can do.

Jelle1880

No.

I can't see any MMORPG's coming out any time soon that will 'outdo' WoW.
WoW is there to stay as the biggest one for many years to come.

As for Swifty: Did he quit WoW all together then ?

Nody

Not a chance; it will have lots of people flooding it for a month or three ala AO, WHO, AOC etc. and once they reach the end game and realize it is not there they will quit. I'll be surprised if the game has more then a million paying subscribers after 6 months from go live.

Kiith

No MMO will ever 'beat' Warcraft. I don't think we'll ever see a single MMO with the userbase that Warcraft has had. As it's popularity diminishes, people will spread across several different games.

As for The Old Republic, it will have a very popular first 1-3 months, and i'd say it will stick around the 2 million mark after that. People will play it on it's name alone (like they did with Warcraft).

Nody

Kiith wrote: »

No MMO will ever 'beat' Warcraft. I don't think we'll ever see a single MMO with the userbase that Warcraft has had. As it's popularity diminishes, people will spread across several different games.

A SC2 MMO would have all of South Korea playing it (but I agree that nothing short of a Blizzard MMO will ever "beat" WoW for a forseeable future) :pac:

Dohnny Jepp

I dunno, I've a friend who works for EA and he has given it some serious high praise. Obviously I'm sure he is bias but he wouldnt try to "sell" me the game with exagerations. Apparantly they are putting huge emphasis on the plot and quest lines.

Another advantage it might have is the possibility of taking some of the EVE playerbase. Many people seem disillusioned with EVE and TOR wil be newest flashiest sci fi mmo out.

Also the many many star wars fans will buy it out of love for the franchise.

There hasnt been a great MMO out for awhile (rift didnt really do as well as it could have) and I can imagine people are itching for a change of mmo.

Above I listed how and why I believe TOR will be able to pull in a lot of players but as someone else said, in order to keep them they are gonna want to have a polished end game.

Lets hope they dont do what most other mmo's have done in recent years and release before the game is ready. I'd rather wait another 6 months then have a game thats more a beta than a full release.

If any game can beat WOW it is this, that doesnt mean it will though!

TheDoc

As said above the question is to simple and answers itself.

We have all been here long enough to see the " OMG here comes a wow killer" and I for one havnt been on that bandwagon.

I've been around here since the WoW forum started and saw the

"Warhammer is a wow killer"
"Age of conan is better then wow"
"Aion will dominate wow"
"City of ehros is where its at"
"Lord of the rings is the new wow"
"Rift is going to kill wow"

This is called flavour of the month. Of the above I've pretty much picked up most of them and stopped after the free month, as did most people.

I avoided Rift to see what the game would develop into after two months, when people hit endgame, and it doesnt seem to be much.

Sotor has a few things going in its advantage.

Succeeding where others have failed
Bioware have clearly looked at the games that have sucked, and looked at woW. They have amde a game that has the unique star wars feel with what looks to be a good mmo setup.

Actually having endgame
Endgame PVE content makes or breaks an MMO. I'm sorry, it is not PVP, its PVE. PvP is a fraction of any MMO, its an alternative for a small fraction of the playerbase. Whilst Sotor looks to have catered nicely in probably the greatest altercation in fictional history, Sith vs Jedi. It also has put alot of time into endgame pve raiding content and the raids look sensational.

Experience, we were here before WoW
Lets not forget that Bioware have MASSIVE EXPERIENCE making groundbreaking, enthralling enveloping RPG's.

Neverwinter nights and mass effect only scratch the surface, Knights of the old republic is without doubt the greatest star wars gmae in the franchise. And Kotor was out long before we heard of a world of warcraft.

Star Wars is going to get a mass influx at launch, and of course a large portion of the playerbase of WoW will run it for a month.

But the first 90 days of an mmo are critical. Players have to be entised to keep coming back and playing.

The Leveling experience needs to be fresh and interesting and well paced. There is nothing worse then levelling another new character, nevermind in a new game.

The endgame needs to be accessible. There needs to be raids, there needs to be a set path to get into those raids with gear etc. There needs to be a system or infrastructure for people to organise raids.


If the two of these tick boxes I'm sure I'll hang around Sotor for some time, I've every faith this will be a great MMO, in its own right. But nothing, and I mean nothing can be set in stone until you hit the endgame.

When your character is max level, what is bringing you back to log on and keep going.

WoW has dungeons, heroic dungeons, hardcore raids, accesible casual raids, Auction house play.

Sotor needs in my view five man dungeon style content, another harder tier of five man contnet and then raid content. A stepping stone and path for people to progress through to get to raid ready status, and then hit raids

Kiith

I wonder will the emphasis on story bring in more people, or scare more people away. Personally, it's the main attraction for me, as i've never been interested in raiding. But as TheDoc said above, end game is where most MMO's are made or broken. If the story ends at max level, will the content in the game be enough for players to keep going?

GarethBah

Kiith wrote: »

I wonder will the emphasis on story bring in more people, or scare more people away. Personally, it's the main attraction for me, as i've never been interested in raiding. But as TheDoc said above, end game is where most MMO's are made or broken. If the story ends at max level, will the content in the game be enough for players to keep going?

Hopefully , if the keep bringing out new raids that should do the trick

Methionine

TheDoc wrote: »

Sotor needs in my view five man dungeon style content, another harder tier of five man contnet and then raid content. A stepping stone and path for people to progress through to get to raid ready status, and then hit raids

WOW is pretty much unkillable, it has sevens years worth of content and ~10 million subscribers. TOR 'might' put a dent (a million or two) in it but I wouldn't really expect much more.

TOR groups are only 4 man, raids will be a multiple of that. I.e. 8, 16 etc. Though I don't think raid sizes have been confirmed yet.

Levelling Alts should be a lot more interesting than in other MMOs due to each class having it's own unique story. Sure, you'll be repeating shared content as well, but there will be a lot more variation in levelling than you get in other MMOs.

As for endgame, we know the game has Heroic Flashpoints(dungeons) with multiple levels of difficulty, at least 1 endgame raid confirmed (Eternity Vault), at least 3 warfronts(battlegrounds), exploration for Holocrons, crafting and Bioware are hinting at additional stuff.

ZeitgeistGlee

Not right away, but if marketed and developed probably I can see TOR chipping away at WoW's base and eventually replacing it as a market leader.

Doc's definitely lined up a lot of the important bases that EA/BioWare have to cover with TOR (and the admission that only one Operation/Raid is ready for launch is quite disconcerting) but there's also financial decisions to be taken into account. While BioWare have confirmed their subscription price will be comparable to their competitors I've stated for some time that BioWare realistically need to be beating WoW's sub for value if they intend to peel away at the latter's playerbase right from the very beginning. The fact SWTOR's release price is significantly higher than most other MMOs, particularly their CE, does not help in this regard.

After that we come to where EA and Mythic failed miserably with WAR (which as my first major MMO I will always defend vigorously as a game which should've been great and was not allowed): Post-release management and development. BioWare absolutely cannot be lax, not for a moment after release. Classes which are overpowered (BW), or underpowered (SW) need to be addressed proactively rather than retroactively after a torrent of forum QQs. Server maintenance as well needs to be very near the top of priorities as well, lag, crashes, any other server technical problems need to be dealt with straight away. If BioWare should find themselves with server populations skewing, or declining sharply they also need to offer transfers proactively, before the server dies and players begin to leave the game.

Finally, and realistically probably the most important: Communication. For the love of God BioWare do not make Mythic's mistake and attempt to BS or deceive the community as to the status of the game. We're playing it, we know what things are like. Having some dev who might, maybe, play an hour of the game once in a blue moon tell us you're "working on it" is not communication. Outline every week/fortnight/month what you're working on, state exactly which problems you're aware of and what you're doing to fix them. If you receive feedback from the community on a particular issue that we feel is not right/working/helpful, particularly test servers then for God's sake don't ignore it and pretend you know better than we do, because chances are you don't. Likewise in-game, get some decent CSRs/GMs as opposed to the brainless macro-spewing monkeys we had.

One of the things I have to give Blizzard in this regard is their blue-names are always active on the forums and it gives a great sense of there actually being customer support available to players in difficulty. It really shouldn't be down to players to help other players when a company wants to make themselves known for their quality of service. Currently on the TOR boards, yellow-names are restricted pretty much to straight moderator duty with the occasional post from Daniel or Stephen. That definitely needs to change once the NDR/shroud of secrecy around TOR drops.

Obviously regular MCPs and expansions are another major factor to keep the community into it, and in-game calender events and such. If BioWare can do all that, then I have absolutely no doubt TOR given enough time could topple WoW, it just won't happen overnight.

Venom

As others have said WoW is just to big to be killed by any one new MMO. Blizzard have invested years of content, design and polish into WoW but have also not been afraid to try new ideas along the way as well and have pushed the MMO medium forward. The WoW dev team post on the forums and most of all understand there customerbase.

But most important of all they release expansions and new content patches when there ready.

AoC could of been huge but a rushed out buggy and unfinished pile of crap was released with a dev team than just wasn't up to the task.

Warhammer should of been an awesome MMO with the amount of lore the franchise had but way to much hype and a very badly designed game was rushed out the door.

Lotro was a really good MMO, had one of the best launches and hit every feature checkbox except the one that was endgame content. With nothing to do at max level the customerbase moved onto other games.

MMO's get one chance to hook in a customer. Those first 30 days need to entertain the player enough to get them to subscribe for the first month and the one after that and the one after that. A bad launch, to many game breaking bugs, broken classes or lack of content make spending that €15 for another month of play seem like a bad idea and once you lose that player its a huge job getting them back.

Only time will tell if TOR has done enough to stand out as a quality product. The Star Wars franchise is probley the biggest in the world and Bioware have a excellent reputation for making great games but it all boils down to the dev team not screwing the pooch.

Stev_o

The game that is killing WoW isn't even a traditional MMO. It's called League of Legends.

TheDoc

Stev_o wrote: »

The game that is killing WoW isn't even a traditional MMO. It's called League of Legends.

Debateable thats its killing woW tbh, most people I know that play WoW play it alongside WoW, and put more hours into WoW : /

HowyeLads

I'm not sure if it will.I can see people sticking with wow because they have put so much time into their characters,but on the other hand the people who've been playing for 5+ years are bored and are looking for something new.I'm hoping it does replace them as the Number 1 MMO if only to give Activision-Blizzard a wake up call.

TheDoc

HowyeLads wrote: »

if only to give Activision-Blizzard a wake up call.

I dont think they need one. They have always pushed new boundaries and ideas in their content patches and expansions. Realisticly there is only so much you can do with a MMO endgame, and I think Blizzard have been fantastically creative to keep a playerbase so large interested for so long.

When I try think of a game I've played for 6 years that was fresh, fun, exciting and worth the time, effort and money, I can think of none ....

Starcraft 2 may perhaps hit that down the line..funny enough.. a Blizzard game...

Dohnny Jepp

TheDoc wrote: »

When I try think of a game I've played for 6 years that was fresh, fun, exciting and worth the time, effort and money, I can think of none ....

Starcraft 2 may perhaps hit that down the line..funny enough.. a Blizzard game...

Counter strike :P

Skerries

WoW is the Concorde of MMO's
it was something new and exciting and has held it's own because of this
but nothing will ever happen like this again, nothing will reach those figures again as other things take centre stage to a lesser degree
it's like TV, where there were only a few channels taking up most of the viewing public but now that has become filtered to such a degree where only big events can bring it close to those original numbers

TheDoc

Dohnny Jepp wrote: »

Counter strike :P

Whilst I played CS for a long period I cannot truely say I enjoyed it, let alone the community involved with it : /

Sephiroth_dude

I really hope it does,not a fan wow at all.

Nody

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

I really hope it does,not a fan wow at all.

I'd not count on it; all other strong IP based MMOs trying to sell on the IP has failed (LoTR, AOC, WAR etc.) and considering how close to go live it is and the NDA is still enforced + lack of anything special beyond IP...

Kiith

Nody wrote: »

I'd not count on it; all other strong IP based MMOs trying to sell on the IP has failed (LoTR, AOC, WAR etc.) and considering how close to go live it is and the NDA is still enforced + lack of anything special beyond IP...

You can't really say it has nothing special beyond the IP. Apart from the fact that it's got probably the biggest IP ever, it has a huge amount of stuff in it, and that's only what we've seen so far (as you say, the NDA is still up). I know i sound like a broken record, but the story alone makes this game worth the purchase.

I agree that it won't 'beat' Warcraft, but to say it's got nothing other then it's IP is a tad unfair.

TheDoc

I would say though it has every chance, as with any MMO, that it will be ****ing rubbish.

And kiith if I'm not mistaken youve gone onboard with about every rotten MMO known to man haha

Kiith

TheDoc wrote: »

And kiith if I'm not mistaken youve gone onboard with about every rotten MMO known to man haha

No...not every MMO. I didn't get...eh, yeah actually, i got them all

What can i say...i'm an optimist. I pretty sure i'll love this though, because of the story. As someone who has never been into raids and endgame (played Warcraft for 6 years and all i've ever done was Kara), the focus on the story is really exciting me. It won't be up to KotOR standards, but even if it comes close i'll be happy.

KorranGast

I am hoping it puts a large dent into WOWs players, It would be great to see 3 to 4 million playing the game. Also a community like EVEs would be nice aswell, very into story and battles between clans/guilds.

uncle_sam_ie

KorranGast wrote: »

I am hoping it puts a large dent into WOWs players, It would be great to see 3 to 4 million playing the game. Also a community like EVEs would be nice aswell, very into story and battles between clans/guilds.

I can't see EVE players coming over to a theme park type game.

Venom

KorranGast wrote: »

I am hoping it puts a large dent into WOWs players, It would be great to see 3 to 4 million playing the game. Also a community like EVEs would be nice aswell, very into story and battles between clans/guilds.

Its been reported that pre-orders are already over the 2 million mark.

IQDENIED

TheDoc wrote: »

I've been around here since the WoW forum started and saw the

"Warhammer is a wow killer"
"Age of conan is better then wow"
"Aion will dominate wow"
"City of ehros is where its at"
"Lord of the rings is the new wow"
"Rift is going to kill wow"
...blah..blah.. all failed to do so

We must read from the same book. I've played some of teh above, WAR, AoC, tried RIFT briefly and DDO. I understad most of them had some background noise to them, books, films, etc. some good features & uniqueness to them but lack finesse compared to WoW IMHO, although wow is not perfect, it ticks alot of boxes.

Vanilla wow had 12 patches iirc, but I am almost positive there was nothing on the same level at the time of wow's release (could be mistaken), but other MMO's coming out feel its ok to release a buggy game and patch it later, just like wow did, fail tactics you must agree when wow is pretty damn polished now in comparison.

Alas there lies a difference with the Star Wars MMO, as a franchise its had what 6 films dozens or so games over its 25+ year history? and probably bigger fanbase than some of the other MMO's that are out (dunno compared to wow) and George Lucas (pretty sure he is a billionaire at this stage from smart contract negotiaion on toy sales etc) to throw money at it if he has any involvement..

Might not play SWTOR, but I have seen trailers it looks nice, I must admit, this has a good chance of gaining #1 spot for real this time with the fall of player subs (not counting asian market where its free2play) after cata and the release of this game (its in beta aint it? so soon enough), doesn't kill WoW (which will probably due to blizz too btw), I don't know if anything will bar blizz's next MMO, (which is in future plans btw), Still waiting for Diablo III!:pac:

Methionine

Venom wrote: »

Its been reported that pre-orders are already over the 2 million mark.

Pretty sure that number is bogus. EA have stated that it was exceeding all it's other games in terms of the rate of pre-orders, that is all. It is doing very well, but not 2 million well