[massively] Analysts "concerned" about swtor, EA's stock falls

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DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
I'm looking forward to this going Free2Play. I'm not at all convinced that it's viable as a subscription based MMO on a long term basis, and from what I've heard, it's a really great single player game marred by grindy, boring MMO elements. I want to see the story, and would gladly pay $60 for a single player version of the game to see that stuff, but I have zero interest in paying $15/month for it.

I haven't found it to be that way up through level 40. If you sit in an area and grind like you need to do in many console JRPGs, you'll end up over-leveled for the main quest.

Just doing your class storyline quest and most (not even all) of the side quests is enough to keep you on or a little above the recommended level. That's skipping most of the co-op heroics and flashpoints, and ignoring PVP and the space rail shooter entirely.

Many quests have optional bonuses for killing x (bad things) but you often get 90% of the way to that just by clearing your way to the main goal and you're free to ignore that part and do something else instead -- another side quest, help someone with their own quest, do a heroic, etc.
 

Dumac

Diamond Member
Dec 31, 2005
9,391
1
0
I'll never understand why people like Dumac feel that if they don't like a game it's a huge failure and needs to be shut down.

Point out where I said that.

you can't, because I didn't

I do think the game is a failure, mainly because it isn't a good game in my eyes. I think TOR's subscribers will run out over time on its own.
 

Dumac

Diamond Member
Dec 31, 2005
9,391
1
0
The game has a ton of problems, both technical and design wise. If it survives, I have little doubt it will live up to its potential but were talking years of patches and improvements to get there.

The engine they bought, the Hero Engine, is horribly unoptimized. If you are solo questing or just in a small group it's fine, but try PVPing on Ilum or even just riding around the fleet. It crawls at 15-20fps on the rig in my signature. Comparitively WoW stays at 60fps in large 40vs40 battles or 25 man raids. Also blizzards currently beta testing a 64bit client for WoW which wll be out soon to further keep up with modern rigs.

Design wise, where to begin? Let's just say I have spent maybe 1/4 the time PVPing as this other guy in my guild yet I have more Champion gear then him because I have had more RNG luck with the reward bags. That seems horribly unfair. The entire PVP reward system is a convoluted mess.

Well, when they bought the engine, it wasn't even complete. It was a prototype. Bioware thought they could fix it up and get it running at full speed, but it doesn't perform well at all.

I was hoping anandtech would be more open criticism about TOR (especially since it isn't even in the main TOR thread), but just like folks on the Bioware forums, they result to name-calling, deflecting any arguments, or weirdly talking about WoW at launch (which is irrelevant).

kind of like this
 
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darkewaffle

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2005
8,152
1
81
Well, when they bought the engine, it wasn't even complete. It was a prototype. Bioware thought they could fix it up and get it running at full speed, but it doesn't perform well at all.

I was hoping anandtech would be more open criticism about TOR (especially since it isn't even in the main TOR thread), but just like folks on the Bioware forums, they result to name-calling, deflecting any arguments, or weirdly talking about WoW at launch (which is irrelevant).

Truly, the underlying problem here is everyone is a brutish Bioware zombie. They must be brainwashed if they're posting their experiences as though they're actually having fun, thank god you're here to correct them. Were but my tastes as refined as yours so that I might truly enjoy a video game!
 

Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,414
1,574
126
Truly, the underlying problem here is everyone is a brutish Bioware zombie. They must be brainwashed if they're posting their experiences as though they're actually having fun, thank god you're here to correct them. Were but my tastes as refined as yours so that I might truly enjoy a video game!

Yeah I'm having more fun at L26 with TOR than I did at L39 in WoW. Somehow killing 16 mandalorian rebels is less aggravating than collecting 15 murloc fins.
 

JoshGuru7

Golden Member
Aug 18, 2001
1,020
0
0
No, of course not I will stand by my opinion that TOR is a bad game, but I won't begrudge someone for enjoying something. It does sound like my opinion of TOR bothers you, however.
No more so than my opinion on farmville bothers the people who play that. Of course I don't spend my time posting in farmville threads about why I think the game is a failure either, and if I did i would look silly because it is clearly successful despite my personal lack of interest.

I can get why you would be disappointed that ToR isn't for you, but the cause here seems like you had incorrect expectations in the first place. ToR is exactly what most people thought it would be, and those of us who enjoy it appreciate exactly that about it.

DrunkenSano said:
Just too many fan boys who can't take criticism about a game they probably overpaid for.
One of the benefits of PC gaming is the huge variety of titles and game play. I think being derogatory about other people's preferences is more suited for the console gaming forum or someplace that still uses "fan boy" as a recognized adjective.
 
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Mem

Lifer
Apr 23, 2000
21,476
13
81
Yeah I'm having more fun at L26 with TOR than I did at L39 in WoW. Somehow killing 16 mandalorian rebels is less aggravating than collecting 15 murloc fins.

Funny saying that since I'm having more fun in Rift then I ever did in TOR,even had more fun in space combat in Star TreK Online then what TOR space combat crappy system offers,each to their own ,however I've a friend who plays TOR still and he was saying how bad the imbalance is between Imps and Rebs when both sides are supposed to be mirrors of each other.


End of the day plenty of MMORPGs out there so you are bound to find one you like or hate .
 
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Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,414
1,574
126
Funny saying that since I'm having more fun in Rift then I ever did in TOR,even had more fun in space combat in Star TreK Online then what TOR space combat crappy system offers,each to their own ,however I've a friend who plays TOR still and he was saying how bad the imbalance is between Imps and Rebs when both sides are supposed to be mirrors of each other.


End of the day plenty of MMORPGs out there so you are bound to find one you like or hate .

maybe its cuz i'm in the 10-49 bracket but it's been pretty 50/50 in warzones for me
 

JoshGuru7

Golden Member
Aug 18, 2001
1,020
0
0
Funny saying that since I'm having more fun in Rift then I ever did in TOR,even had more fun in space combat in Star TreK Online then what TOR space combat crappy system offers,each to their own ,however
I liked Rift a lot too. Having four roles to swap between really let you focus on a single character and still get most of the benefits of playing alts.

I've a friend who plays TOR still and he was saying how bad the imbalance is between Imps and Rebs when both sides are supposed to be mirrors of each other.
A lot of people complain about differences between imperials and republic when they find out about some of the minor differences that are not mirrored and that they do not have. It's mostly "grass is greener" syndrome and after playing on both sides I think the classes are pretty fairly mirrored. The forums are full of misinformation as the first instinct for some people when they die in PvP is to run the forums to complain about the opposing class.

Recent examples of this are complaints about the "permanent" sage/sorc shields, complaints about smuggler imbalance due to having blasters instead of a rifle, and even today the idea that the powertech has an edge over the vanguard due to differences in crit. Most of these complaints would go away if people actually tried the classes they would complain about and understood for themselves how things worked.

NS1 said:
maybe its cuz i'm in the 10-49 bracket but it's been pretty 50/50 in warzones for me
Most people are really loving the warzones on lower characters since the exclusion of the 50's - myself included. Evidence of this is the popularity of the request to disable leveling so people could sit at level 49 instead of progressing into the 50 bracket. While I am a bit bummed that PvP will be slow for my 50 main for probably at least another month or two, the fun I've had on alts has convinced me that they made the right decision here. Now they are going to have to figure out how to get around the expertise issue when it comes to endgame.
 

Ns1

No Lifer
Jun 17, 2001
55,414
1,574
126
Most people are really loving the warzones on lower characters since the exclusion of the 50's - myself included. Evidence of this is the popularity of the request to disable leveling so people could sit at level 49 instead of progressing into the 50 bracket. While I am a bit bummed that PvP will be slow for my 50 main for probably at least another month or two, the fun I've had on alts has convinced me that they made the right decision here. Now they are going to have to figure out how to get around the expertise issue when it comes to endgame.

Yeah I would probably stop PvP'ing after 49 cuz I don't want to deal with the PvP gear grind...would rather just start an alt.
 

AznAnarchy99

Lifer
Dec 6, 2004
14,705
117
106
Whoever designed these planets suck ass. I spend 2-3 minutes getting to the quest with my 100% mount running though bland areas.
 
Mar 10, 2005
14,647
2
0
Whoever designed these planets suck ass. I spend 2-3 minutes getting to the quest with my 100% mount running though bland areas.

only 2-3 minutes? i'm pretty sure i spent "many" minutes which felt like forever. and then i got to corellia, which is just f'ing abusively crappy.

way way too many time-killers in this game.
 

Dumac

Diamond Member
Dec 31, 2005
9,391
1
0
Truly, the underlying problem here is everyone is a brutish Bioware zombie. They must be brainwashed if they're posting their experiences as though they're actually having fun, thank god you're here to correct them. Were but my tastes as refined as yours so that I might truly enjoy a video game!

You are missing the point. I don't care that you enjoy the game. However, you could at least argue for it, explain why you like it, or take a participation in the criticisms against it, rather than just "Oh you hate TOR? Well that means you suck." while ignoring the tens of valid criticisms levied against the game.

No more so than my opinion on farmville bothers the people who play that. Of course I don't spend my time posting in farmville threads about why I think the game is a failure either

You are implying that I am crashing the main TOR thread with complaints, which I am not. This thread is meant for complaints about the game.

And what kind of sad totalitarian world you live in where nobody is allowed to post any criticisms of anything.

and if I did i would look silly because it is clearly successful despite my personal lack of interest.

TOR isn't a clearly a success at all. It isn't even a financial success yet (call me when the project goes in the black), yet alone a success at creating a quality game.

I can get why you would be disappointed that ToR isn't for you, but the cause here seems like you had incorrect expectations in the first place.

All I was expecting was a solid, functional MMO. What I got was a half-baked co-op RPG with barely any end-game content and no reason to be an MMO.

ToR is exactly what most people thought it would be, and those of us who enjoy it appreciate exactly that about it.

No it isn't, hence the large backlash against the game and the large decrease in playerbase.
 

AyashiKaibutsu

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2004
9,306
3
81
Well, when they bought the engine, it wasn't even complete. It was a prototype. Bioware thought they could fix it up and get it running at full speed, but it doesn't perform well at all.

I was hoping anandtech would be more open criticism about TOR (especially since it isn't even in the main TOR thread), but just like folks on the Bioware forums, they result to name-calling, deflecting any arguments, or weirdly talking about WoW at launch (which is irrelevant).

kind of like this

WoW was pretty good at launch if you played on a server that wasn't Illidan or Archimonde (or any of the couple of other ultra-high pop servers). I played on Azgalor (would just barely have queues at peak times) and barely had issues. Compared to just about any other online game it had an amazing launch and they had way more users than they could have possible imagined having to deal with at the time (millions instead of hundreds of thousands)...
 

DrunkenSano

Diamond Member
Aug 8, 2008
3,892
490
126
You are missing the point. I don't care that you enjoy the game. However, you could at least argue for it, explain why you like it, or take a participation in the criticisms against it, rather than just "Oh you hate TOR? Well that means you suck." while ignoring the tens of valid criticisms levied against the game.

This is why I call certain posters fan boys, they have nothing to say to counter the criticisms or give no backup to why they enjoy the game. They just say 'This game is awesome, you think it sucks so you suck.' That is, by definition, a fan boy.

Some people desire more out of their money, if the game was just a $60 buy, then the expectations would have been a little lower. But it isn't, it is heralded as an epic MMO, up front payment, monthly sub fee, for a MMO that by 2012 standards, is not good at all.

It certainly had the benefits of multiple failed MMOs in the past to learn from. People don't want WoW clones anymore, slapping on voice acting just makes it shiny. Most of the WoW clones had an explosion of players on release, then it dwindles fast because the games had no sustainability.

Rift is a perfect example, I found it a lot more fun than TOR, but once I hit level cap, it was just another boring grind fest with severe imbalances. The graphics I feel are much better in Rift than in TOR or WoW.

Eve is a success because the developers think outside of the box, that is why the game is continuing to grow. Success in a game isn't just $$$ in my opinion, to be successful, you need to increase player base after release for a long duration. Personally, at its current state, I do not see it happening once people finished playing the story lines.
 

TheUnk

Golden Member
Jun 24, 2005
1,810
0
71
Whoever designed these planets suck ass. I spend 2-3 minutes getting to the quest with my 100% mount running though bland areas.

While I agree that some planets had far too much traveling in between areas, I also have to say that it did make those planets feel like... planets.

If you cut out 50% of the traveling those planets would have felt so tiny.
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
WoW was pretty good at launch if you played on a server that wasn't Illidan or Archimonde (or any of the couple of other ultra-high pop servers). I played on Azgalor (would just barely have queues at peak times) and barely had issues. Compared to just about any other online game it had an amazing launch and they had way more users than they could have possible imagined having to deal with at the time (millions instead of hundreds of thousands)...

Having played at launch of a half dozen or so of the mmos that would fall under the above statement, you are having delusions of grandeur when remembering wow.
 

darkewaffle

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2005
8,152
1
81
You are missing the point. I don't care that you enjoy the game. However, you could at least argue for it, explain why you like it, or take a participation in the criticisms against it, rather than just "Oh you hate TOR? Well that means you suck." while ignoring the tens of valid criticisms levied against the game.

Explain? You've done little but hurl what may as well be baseless complaints because you treat them like foregone conclusions with such vast implicit evidence that you wouldn't possibly need to produce any actual argument whatsoever.

"because the Multiplayer aspect is what is important here, and that is where TOR fails big time."

"TOR is a mediocre single player game, and a poor multiplayer game."

"TOR does neither, as it takes no skill and barely any time investment. There isn't really much to do."

"What is the point in playing TOR when it basically just does what WoW does, only with less quality and in a sloppy way?"

"I will stand by my opinion that TOR is a bad game"

Very well argued I must say. All the while your legitimate complaints, of which there are at least a couple, have pretty much come down to voice acting, end game, and that it isn't "MMO"ey enough.

No endgame content? It has two complete raids (with 8 and 16 man versions both available in three difficulty modes) and half a dozen full heroics and three unique warzones. Not to mention worldbosses, datacrons, and probably even more to discover (a la the magenta crystals). And this is just, what, after thirty days and one patch? I think that's quite respectable and most press indicates there's going to be a lot more coming through content patches as time goes on.

Poor voice acting? Matter of opinion, I was never bothered by it and I think it'd be just as non-immersive if every NPC sounded beautiful; how real is that? Further with subtitles available and the ability to skip any cutscene you want, it's completely optional. Personally I think the female sith inquisitor sounds outstanding, though some of the more generic responses do get reused a bit much.

As for the third, it's what you make of it. While levelling, I played solo for most of the planets and powered my way to 50 pretty quick. On the other hand, some of my friends grouped up to obsessively complete every heroic quest, every flash point, every bonus series. And now at 50 we've started raiding and do warzones together most days, run around Ilum together, take down the Belsavis world boss when we can to get our artificer some patterns. You can play it whatever way appeals to you.

TOR isn't a clearly a success at all. It isn't even a financial success yet (call me when the project goes in the black), yet alone a success at creating a quality game.

SWTOR will begin turning a profit at around the same time everyone with any sense at all thinks it will; in a few years. There's no such thing as a profitable MMO right off the bat, the startup costs are simply too high. It's a long term investment, not a day trade.


All I was expecting was a solid, functional MMO. What I got was a half-baked co-op RPG with barely any end-game content and no reason to be an MMO.

Another threadbare blanket statement.


No it isn't, hence the large backlash against the game and the large decrease in playerbase.

Backlash? From individuals, sure; it's unavoidable. As an aggregate? There's no evidence for it. And decrease in player base? No evidence for that either.

Can I make guesses on overall subscription count based on these graphs?
No you shouldn't be relying on them to make so guesses. These graph purely relies on instantaneous server population values provided by Bioware, nothing more.

Further, those 'numbers' are simply values relative to what load the server is under at a given time, we have no way of knowing how populated those servers actually are, or the delta for server resources or server efficiency now vs release.

When I first started playing (Christmas) I would have server queues during peak hours, but I havent seen one since about the first week of play. I think server load has lightened because they finally have live, diverse player data to optimize and allocate resources with; but again, there's really not evidence for either scenario. I simply think it's more likely than an 'exodus'.
 

Gothgar

Lifer
Sep 1, 2004
13,463
1
0
It's really amazing the amount of hate this game has generated... kinda funny actually
 

crownjules

Diamond Member
Jul 7, 2005
4,858
0
76
It's really amazing the amount of hate this game has generated... kinda funny actually

I don't think it's amazing. Of course it will get lots of attention, both good and bad. It's got a tremendous amount of appeal being able to leverage the Star Wars franchise as well as being developed by one of the perceived powerhouse developers in the industry. Of anyone out there, they're one of the best situated to deviate from the formula. There's a growing number of MMO players that have been playing since the early 200x years that are just getting fed up of the same old. SWTOR doesn't do anything to really distinguish itself from the rest of the pack. Just like every other MMO released in the last 4-5 years, it's trying to be successful based on the appeal of its franchise and a few gimmicks (100% voice acted!) thrown on top of the traditional level and grind formula.
 

AznAnarchy99

Lifer
Dec 6, 2004
14,705
117
106
only 2-3 minutes? i'm pretty sure i spent "many" minutes which felt like forever. and then i got to corellia, which is just f'ing abusively crappy.

way way too many time-killers in this game.

Im guessing but it feels like a long ass time. Im on Corellia right now. I wouldnt have a problem if there was something to see, but long winding roads with sporadic enemies blowing up your speeder? I get to the quest, finish all those in the area and hope to god quick travel is up.
 

RiDE

Platinum Member
Jul 8, 2004
2,139
0
76
It's really amazing the amount of hate this game has generated... kinda funny actually

Heh, just the usual fallout for a game that has a big name. Some people like it, some people don't and they let everybody know about it repeatedly. Same thing happened to BF3... now the only people left in the BF3 thread are the people that actually play the game. No big deal.
 
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