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

[Duelle]

I just love how it's not AS MUCH as a spamfest as SWTOR and other MMO's are. Your current action has to complete and you can't just stop it mid action. I am one of the few that likes the way we are planted to the ground when we select an action (except for self buffs and whatnot). It just makes battle flow and look more beautiful. In other mmo's, I never pay attention to my character. In XIV, I do a lot of the time just to watch the animations. I want SE to build up on that. I don't want them to do what all the other MMO's have done already and I'm afraid that's what they are going to do.

I'm the opposite, because I enjoy encounters where I have to move around and watch out for things in the environment. I found XI's battle engine and fights very boring for the most part, and at the same time understand that type of design severely limits how you can design bosses; the only thing that attempted to make them seem difficult was the amount of damage flying around and steep resource limits on mages. You couldn't do a Loatheb-type encounter in FFXI, for example. Doubt you could do one in this game yet, as healing hasn't quite gotten there.

[Alokin1988]

MMOs will go the way of MUDS...truly it's a fad that is beginning to wane.

We all knew SWOTOR would fail...said it so before it launched...it's like watching a movie you can only watch it so many times.

It's the same reason why LOTRO wasn't very successful either.

Fan boys/girls only cling to the fad for so long and grow out of it...or find a new fad to get into.

The reason why Final Fantasy is long staying is because it's first and foremost Final Fantasy...not a fad.

MMO's are not a fad, they're a genre. The problem is they've not been involving since WoW came out until this point.

We knew SWTOR would fail not because of it being an MMO or the Star Wars franchise but because it was a bad game. Same thing with LOTRO. If anything the fact that their basted on Star Wars and Lord of the Rings is probably the main reason why they're still going. As a matter of fact LOTRO is still doing very well, they're even getting an expansion this/next year.

Fan boys/girls don't cling to fads, the cling to whatever they're fans of. A Star Wars fanboy will never abandon Star Wars for the next big thing, they're going to stay with Star Wars. That's what a fanboy is, that's what a fanboy does.

Final Fantasy is no different from the other two. The only reason why all 3 have not been terminated completely is because of their name.

[Pandastirfry]

The reason why Final Fantasy is long staying is because it's first and foremost Final Fantasy...not a fad.

I can't let this go by without comment...
How exactly do you justify the statement that "Star Wars", a franchise that debuted in 1977 and still enjoys broad market appeal and new additions to it 35 years later, is "just a fad" while "Final Fantasy" which released in 1987 and enjoys comparatively narrower market appeal but still is a continuously updated franchise is not a fad but a cultural touchstone?



And as to MUDs dying off... You do know what killed them right? MMORPGs, why play text only when Everquest has actual characters. What will kill the MMORPG will be it's replacement not some new fad but genuine innovation to the genre, like full immersion VR or some such nonsense

[Astorlok]

I can't let this go by without comment...
How exactly do you justify the statement that "Star Wars", a franchise that debuted in 1977 and still enjoys broad market appeal and new additions to it 35 years later, is "just a fad" while "Final Fantasy" which released in 1987 and enjoys comparatively narrower market appeal but still is a continuously updated franchise is not a fad but a cultural touchstone?

And as to MUDs dying off... You do know what killed them right? MMORPGs, why play text only when Everquest has actual characters. What will kill the MMORPG will be it's replacement not some new fad but genuine innovation to the genre, like full immersion VR or some such nonsense

I don't think VR is going to make any appearances any time soon. Considering the way tech is developing, I would expect AR games to appear in our future. Hell some of them have already appeared, just look at some of the stuff on the 3DS and PSP Vita. I think it would be pretty killer to come home from work, pick up a stick-like peripheral and head out into my local woods or into my backyard and quest for a bit.

[Alokin1988]

SWTOR failed for many reasons. To sit here and list them would take quiet a while. SE I think has a good idea on why it tanked so badly. If they don't, then we are in deep trouble.

That said I want to point out 1 thing about FFXIV currently that turns me off from the game. It's a little too Tedious. For example; the grand company quest's. Instead of being able to just look up the information online, talking to npcs, or doing a few quest to get an idea of who I want to join. I'm forced to do a series of quest for all 3 which boil down to "go to this faraway zone to talk to one person and have one easy battle." It's just too tedious. Often I find myself accepting a new quest, seeing where it is on the map, and then saying to myself "I'll do this tomorrow." This isn't exactly fun, its just tedious.

[Neptune]

Dude, SW:TOR had more subscribers than FFXI ever had. It is a success where FFXI failed. And right now, it still has more than FFXI ever had. So you don't have any ground to stand on, but bitch ground.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

Dude, SW:TOR had more subscribers than FFXI ever had. It is a success where FFXI failed. And right now, it still has more than FFXI ever had. So you don't have any ground to stand on, but bitch ground.

oh, we have plenty instead. Just because something have more subscribers than another, don't mean they're doing good.

[Kinseykinz]

Star-wars is falling for many reasons... but most of them can lead back to this. Star Wars is an Iconic Story and a big part of modern culture. Your grandma might not play video games, but she knows who Darth Vader is. When you are working with such a beloved storyline with characters everyone knows, it is hard to invent new quests, storylines etc. that keep people interested without them saying 'Hey, that would NEVER happen!' Because of this, the MMO will always be limited and it will sooner or later become stale to all but the most diehard of players. Storyline is what keeps people going, and well...we ALL know what should basically happen in a Star Wars MMO. MMO's work best for games that can be open-ended and/or pick up different themes ideas etc.

[yukikaze_yanagi]

Star-wars is falling for many reasons... but most of them can lead back to this. Star Wars is an Iconic Story and a big part of modern culture. Your grandma might not play video games, but she knows who Darth Vader is. When you are working with such a beloved storyline with characters everyone knows, it is hard to invent new quests, storylines etc. that keep people interested without them saying 'Hey, that would NEVER happen!' Because of this, the MMO will always be limited and it will sooner or later become stale to all but the most diehard of players. Storyline is what keeps people going, and well...we ALL know what should basically happen in a Star Wars MMO. MMO's work best for games that can be open-ended and/or pick up different themes ideas etc.

Well, they could come up with "Long time ago, in a far far alternative galaxy..." where darth vader would conquer the universe with ponies and the emperor in reality is a pop singer :P
with modern lucasarts, all is possible

[Nix]

When SW:TOR first came out, I had a blast, it was pretty fun but I soon found out that there was so much wrong with the game;

Quests revolved around "Kill 20 of this, kill 10 of this, now go kill 60 of this. Stage 3 of the quest? ok, go kill 40 of that same mob" and it was like that from 1-50. There would be the occasional "Go click on the blue highlighted object" but that's about as varied as it'd get.

If you levelled a 2nd character on the same faction (repub/empire) there was only a small handful of quests that were different -- the class specific ones. For a game that revolved around mainly questing for levels, this made it very monotonous, very boring especially with the "Go kill x amount of these" over and over and over again. (Thinking of Taris still makes me want to punch somone, way too many rakghouls!)

The customer service was BY FAR the worst I've ever encountered. I know some people will say "Well square's sucks!" But waiting 3 weeks for a reply to a GM ticket only to be given a copy/paste response that had nothing to do with your original problem is pretty silly.

Only a handful of content once you'd reached 50, which was suprisingly not that much different from content offered throughout the game beforehand. I think the only really unique stuff was Ops since the 'hard mode' FPs were exactly the same as the regular ones but with amped up difficulty for some extra rewards, there wasn't really anything fresh about it.

I could go on and on about the downside of SWTOR, that being said I don't see FFXIV going that way, especially not with Yoshi at the helm. People can say that it was because SW:TOR was so solo friendly that it is dying, this isn't the case -- It's a compounded mix of a lot of things but the game is very instant gratification (Max craft level in a day, high % loot droprate etc), even worse than XIV is I think. That being said, it's possible to make a game solo friendly and still be a challenge in some ways.
Here you can xp solo in leves if you like, it's more rewarding in a party but still viable in a solo setting. This I find is a nice addition to the game, I'm not saying the whole game should be solo friendly, but there should be the option to enjoy that kind of content if you want to, you know?

Wow I'm kinda rambling . . .

TL;DR -- SW:TOR messed up what could have been a great game, and it wasn't just that it was so 'solo friendly' that caused the problems.

Have a good day everyone!