What can SE learn from Bioware's failing Star Wars MMO?

[DarthTaru]

You would think the Star Wars universe would provide an ideal setting for an MMO. It has everything, from `wizards` to swordplay to epic duels to guys with blaster rifles. It has this planet, that planet, a rich and well established lore, depth, and so on and so forth. Despite this, it looks like Bioware and Lucas Arts have just released one huge dud on the MMO market. Rumors are circulating that Bioware is now exploring the F2P model and just completed a wave of free server transfers to accommodate people playing on empty servers. While advocates of F2P might argue otherwise... this to me sounds like the last gasps of an MMO in serious trouble. If this is true, considering the alleged investment in development and the fact that they had all of the Star Wars universe at their disposal, this can, should and will be considered a monumental failure.

Correct me if I'm wrong (sincerely!), but wasn't SW:TOR designed as a "casual friendly" WoW clone that's soloable? It definitely wasn't designed as an unforgiving, challenging `hardcore` struggle, that is for sure. It wasn't a game world that was designed and existed despite the player rather than one that existed for them (to use a `world-centric` game design definition i've read on this forum and liked).

I see a lot of people claim that the moron-friendly philosophy is the future of MMOs. That games like FFXI and Everquest are remnants of the past (that challenge is a remnant of the past) and that games that cater to people who don't have the time to play them, or that aren't very good at them, etc, is the wave of the future.

And yet... here we are, watching an MMO based in the Star Wars universe (which should translate into huge success by itself), backed by Lucas, EA and designed by Bioware, fall flat on its face six months after its release.

Now I'm not at all opposed to an MMO providing a good experience for casual players.
But to cater to them almost exclusively... IMO, you simply cannot cater to people who will barely play your game over the people who will and expect that to be the formula for success. WoW captured lightning in a bottle. That is my opinion. Everything came together for Blizzard and it came together for them at the right time.
I don't think, moving forward, that the secret to an MMO's success is in trying to clone that experience and game developers that believe that run a high risk of suffering SW:TOR's fate. This game had a rumored budget to be somewhere between 150 and 200 million dollars (is this correct?) as well as having the advantage of being Star Wars. It should have been the MMO of MMO's. Instead it's pathetic.

While this will no doubt be met with plenty of disagreement, I have always believed that FFXI could have done much better than it did (and it did pretty good) if (aside from actually advertising!) 99% of the content in the game wasn't designed for level 75's. It had, IMO, an endgame that any competitor would be hard pressed to rival, but little leading up to that.
When new players, RL friends or otherwise, asked me what they should do, the only answer I could give was "Get to 75."

I suspect the vast majority of players who tried XI and quit XI did so before even reaching the Dunes, when they found themselves lost, killing rabbits outside their starting city with no idea how to proceed or what awaited them if they had.
Most of the players SE lost, I imagine, were lost before ever reaching level 20, before they had the chance to become goal oriented, and that was, IMO, FFXI's biggest failing - not the challenges or the dangers presented by Vana'diel. That, I believe, is what ultimately played a large role hooking everyone.

So what does SW:TOR's lackluster success and seemingly dismal future say about what actually is the future of the genre and what should SE take away from this as it moves forward with 2.0?

[TheVedis]

dont clone games, thats what ya gotta take away

[leomike35]

I think SE need only look at its own past mistakes and stay the current course. 2.0 will be the game ffxiv fans and devs should have released and after it does 1.0 will become a vague memory.

[Molly_Millions]

I haven't seen a WoW clone truly succeed. I'm glad SE has not tried to clone WoW.

[Azurymber]

SWTOR failed for one simple reason. they easy-moded -everything- and had no world. Even a casual could end up with amazing epic gear, and there wasn't anything overly special about the end-game instances that made them worth doing. PVP was really screwed up and a waste of time as well (although instanced pvp was fun).

The game was great.
The lack of "incentives" and the "easy mode" was not.

A good game catches your attention with the grind to max level. It's supposed to be a journey, and not a repetitive grind. SW TOR was more like a single player game made up of instances as opposed to an immersive game with a world.

An MMO needs 3 things for success
1. An immersive world
2. It has to feel like a journey
3. It has to have long-term goals with progression. Not random chances.

At the moment FFXIV's world is lacking in the immersiveness. FFXI pulled it off perfectly however. New zones should have no instant teleports (or only a few), and getting places should require avoiding aggro mobs. There should be "cool" things hidden all over the place, lots of alternative places to gather or fish, and a variety of different places to exp. Also exp spots should change every 3-6 levels.

FFXIV is too disorganized to feel like a journey. However I have a feeling they will fix this with 2.0.

FFXIV has progression for some things like luminary stuff, but has too much reliance on random stuff for equipment drops. FFXI's "once a week" thing worked really well as it forced linkshells to set a fixed time where they can bring all members along. This beats out the current system of lots of pick up parties or having to sit people out due to 8 ppl limits.

[Otaku]

dont clone games, thats what ya gotta take away

This

Taking elements from a game is one thing but pretty much re-skinning one is another
I won't mind if XIV takes elements that work in say WoW, XI, GW2 or even DAOC but if a game is too close to the original game you might as well just play the original game.
I will say one thing that has kept me coming back to the FFMMO series is the "one character" model, I played SWTOR for about 3 months and got 2 characters to 50, whenever I wanted to switch roles (ie we need a tank not a healer) I had to log out and log back with my other character, something I think SE has actually done right.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

other than the point listed above, the "amazing" full voice acting, the "amazing" feature would blow up immersion like we know it, revealed to be a weak spot. Flying over skipped dialogues because they're annoying, voicing every line of text considerably slowed developing process, delaying every patch by a considerable time. Maybe next time they'll think better on what a mmo should priority

[Platinumstorm]

SWTOR's fault stems from its relatively lackluster quality. Their design is mostly tried and true to the WoW formula, but it lacks the immense polish of World of Warcraft; particularly with its combat system. It's also one of the most linear MMOs I can remember, which was its most off-putting feature to me during beta. Players do like some structure, but they also want freedom.

SWTOR also suffered from boring storylines. The stories were trite and only furthered classical Star Wars stereotypes. The voice acting was great, but it lacks the presentation Bioware emphasized as they tried to hide gameplay through cinematic presentation for years.

It simply isn't a matter of "casual vs old style," as you try to argue. It would be a mistake to go back to the "FFXI" design philosophy.

I would also caution against calling it a failure. If SW sold 3 million copies at $50 each.. then that's 150 million dollars. Anything on top of that is their profit. It might be best to phrase it as not living up to its Warcraft-level expectations.

[Taika]

Personally, I hugely dislike the talk about "modern day MMOs" with "dynamic worlds" which are "accessible". I feel like they're taking the magic out of the MMOs. They're not worlds you can explore at your own pace, slowly progressing to face the bigger adventures. They're just lobbies that teleport you from one content to another, one group to another, taking you by the hand and spoon feeding you rewards. People say this is the future and "old schoolers" will just have to live with it, but we're seeing one clone failing after another and it has to mean something. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind there being casual games that don't require any commitment or any "work" from the player, but why do all MMORPGs have to be identical?

Here's an interesting article recently published about the issue, I warmly recommend it if you're interested in this subject.

[DarthTaru]

I just think this deals a serious blow to the people who say the future of MMO's is in creating online single player games based on instances and easily accessible everythings. If it didn't work with the Star Wars label it certainly won't with Final Fantasy. The future of any genre is in the next great game, not the last successful one. The future of First-Person-Shooters is not in creating Halo clones and the future of MMO's, obviously, is not in creating WoW clones.

I suspect if Bioware instead used its astronomical budget to make an incredible world-centric MMO, full of danger, that gave its players a sense of peril and made people alert to their surroundings and required focus, etc, it would have been a giant success - the WoW killer people were claiming it would be. That is, after all, Star Wars. The Star Wars universe is as darwinistic, as kill or be killed, as it gets, and the game should have tried to reflect that.

Instead it went the other route, the route of the so called "future of the genre," like FFXIV 1.0 did, and, like 1.0, fell far short of expectations.