Review Yahtzee: DA2 takes it cues from Mass Effect

[Xor]

Lord of the Rings Online is now actually making a profit, after they went F2P. Age of Conan is also making a profit AFAIK. But of course it's not known whether EA bosses will accept "making a small profit" instead of "making WoW-profit".

LOTRO had a (relatively) small budget, so it's pretty easy for that game to pay for itself. It never tried to compete with WoW, and that's why it's doing well. Age of Conan has a stable number of subscriptions, but I doubt it's paid for itself.

I can explain exactly why SWTOR will fail. According to one source EA has invested $300 million into the game at this point. That's an astonishingly high amount of money for a video game. Even if they get 5 million subscribers at lauch, all 5 million would still have to play for around 4 months for the game to pay for itself. That's not including costs for server maintainence, bandwidth, support, content development, etc. The game will not sell 5 million units at launch. It will be lucky to hit 2 million in the first month, in which case those gamers would need to stay on for over a year to make the game profitable, again discounting all the costs of keeping the MMO running.

The thing is, the average gamer doesn't want to play an MMO. For example, WoW has an incredibly bad stigma to it; the stereotype is an unemployed obese person who does nothing but play the game 24/7. That stereotype is even popular among people who play WoW. That stigma is born from the negative view gamers have toward MMOs.

People who aren't gamers won't play SWTOR. And because of the stigma against MMOs, Star Wars fans who are also gamers are not guaranteed to pick it up either. Especially if you consider how shitty recent Star Wars games have been. Or how shitty the last Star Wars MMO turned out.

Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. We'll see when the game finally comes out. I don't expect it will be pushed back again. A sure sign of success or failure will be the subscriber count after 2 months, and whether it increases or decreases from the initial sales.

 

[grdja]

Just a small point, WOWs server maintenance costs for its millions of users are less than $100 mill per year. A smaller game like SWTOR will be could go with only 10 or 20 mil per year.

 

[Gragt]

Both the stigma of an MMO gamer and a Star Wars fan in one place. Nice.

 

[Excidium]

Both the stigma of an MMO gamer and a Star Wars fan in one place. Nice.

Add Bioware fan to that too.

Best community ever.

 

[Volourn]

"I can explain exactly why SWTOR will fail. According to one source EA has invested $300 million into the game at this point. That's an astonishingly high amount of money for a video game. Even if they get 5 million subscribers at lauch, all 5 million would still have to play for around 4 months for the game to pay for itself. That's not including costs for server maintainence, bandwidth, support, content development, etc. The game will not sell 5 million units at launch. It will be lucky to hit 2 million in the first month, in which case those gamers would need to stay on for over a year to make the game profitable, again discounting all the costs of keeping the MMO running."

If EA is to be believed, the MMo needs 500k subscribers to be profitable, and 1mil to be filthy reich.

NEWSFLASH: A MMO does NOt need WOW numbers to be successful!

P.S. Not that I care since I'm not interested in a KOTOR MMO.

 

[Lesifoere]

Both the stigma of an MMO gamer and a Star Wars fan in one place. Nice.

Add Bioware fan to that too.

Best community ever.

It's like the loserhood trifecta. Perfect.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Both the stigma of an MMO gamer and a Star Wars fan in one place. Nice.

Add Bioware fan to that too.

Best community ever.

It's like the loserhood trifecta. Perfect.

But of the three, who would be at the bottom of the totem pole of suckdom? Star Wars fans may have an edge in that they go outside to conventions, dress up like Jedis, and wave glowing sticks at each other, MMO fans can beat their chest at the mighty poopsock incident of '04, be in a forever game of oneupmanship at how they were at X raid at level Y, and name drop obscure and long forgotten realm/server personalities, BioWare fans, well, they can breathe heavily on everyone, make Tali love dolls, and irrationally defend the constant streamlining and dumbing down (Perfect for an MMO world, where welcoming is the name of the game).

I suppose however, they will all be tarred with SW:ToR Fandom, and can wear that badge/brand/pariah around their neck with pride.

 

[Achilles]

It's like the loserhood trifecta. Perfect.

As opposed to us, the old-school turn-based RPG cool gang? Aren't we being a bit hypocritic here by calling Star Wars fans and MMO fans losers?

 

[Azrael the cat]

Lord of the Rings Online is now actually making a profit, after they went F2P. Age of Conan is also making a profit AFAIK. But of course it's not known whether EA bosses will accept "making a small profit" instead of "making WoW-profit".

LOTRO had a (relatively) small budget, so it's pretty easy for that game to pay for itself. It never tried to compete with WoW, and that's why it's doing well. Age of Conan has a stable number of subscriptions, but I doubt it's paid for itself.

I can explain exactly why SWTOR will fail. According to one source EA has invested $300 million into the game at this point. That's an astonishingly high amount of money for a video game. Even if they get 5 million subscribers at lauch, all 5 million would still have to play for around 4 months for the game to pay for itself. That's not including costs for server maintainence, bandwidth, support, content development, etc. The game will not sell 5 million units at launch. It will be lucky to hit 2 million in the first month, in which case those gamers would need to stay on for over a year to make the game profitable, again discounting all the costs of keeping the MMO running.

The thing is, the average gamer doesn't want to play an MMO. For example, WoW has an incredibly bad stigma to it; the stereotype is an unemployed obese person who does nothing but play the game 24/7. That stereotype is even popular among people who play WoW. That stigma is born from the negative view gamers have toward MMOs.

People who aren't gamers won't play SWTOR. And because of the stigma against MMOs, Star Wars fans who are also gamers are not guaranteed to pick it up either. Especially if you consider how shitty recent Star Wars games have been. Or how shitty the last Star Wars MMO turned out.

Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. We'll see when the game finally comes out. I don't expect it will be pushed back again. A sure sign of success or failure will be the subscriber count after 2 months, and whether it increases or decreases from the initial sales.

I think it's simpler than that - good ol plain incompatible markets. For a WoW-level mmorpg you need to tap the main mmorpg market, not just flirt with the edges of it. And the ongoing customers that make a mmorpg a megahit have no interest in Bioware-type games - they want 20/40-man raids, grinding content, PvP arenas, player-contributed economies w/ auction houses and black-market gold buying (numerous major guilds have admitted that they couldn't operate without buying gold through ebay etc).

And conversely, the kind of folks who are Bioware fans and make Bioware games megahits have no interest in mmorpgs. They'll hate it when content and story gets locked behind 20-man raids - heck, even having to wait for a group to access story content is going to annoy some. But you can't design a mmorpg with enough content to last unless you put a fair chunk behind raid-zones, otherwise too many people blow through the content too quickly. So that's going to mean a whole lot of ultra-disappointed Bioware fans.

So you'll either get mmorpg fans ignoring it in favour of a 'real' mmorpg, or Bioware fans incredibly pissed off at being given a mmorpg.

Don't get me wrong - I'll be fascinated if they do find a way of combining the two. If Bioware can make a mmorpg that lasts and that doesn't lock off its content behind raid-zones and 2nd-job-style-grinding, they might actually incline the mmorpg genre. That would be truly interesting stuff. I just don't see how it can be done - I'd love to be proved wrong, but I just don't see how they can do it.

 

[villain of the story]

Both the stigma of an MMO gamer and a Star Wars fan in one place. Nice.

Add Bioware fan to that too.

Best community ever.

It's like the loserhood trifecta. Perfect.

But of the three, who would be at the bottom of the totem pole of suckdom?

Only a loser beta would care to ponder this.

 

[Xor]

I think it's simpler than that - good ol plain incompatible markets. For a WoW-level mmorpg you need to tap the main mmorpg market, not just flirt with the edges of it. And the ongoing customers that make a mmorpg a megahit have no interest in Bioware-type games - they want 20/40-man raids, grinding content, PvP arenas, player-contributed economies w/ auction houses and black-market gold buying (numerous major guilds have admitted that they couldn't operate without buying gold through ebay etc).

And conversely, the kind of folks who are Bioware fans and make Bioware games megahits have no interest in mmorpgs. They'll hate it when content and story gets locked behind 20-man raids - heck, even having to wait for a group to access story content is going to annoy some. But you can't design a mmorpg with enough content to last unless you put a fair chunk behind raid-zones, otherwise too many people blow through the content too quickly. So that's going to mean a whole lot of ultra-disappointed Bioware fans.

So you'll either get mmorpg fans ignoring it in favour of a 'real' mmorpg, or Bioware fans incredibly pissed off at being given a mmorpg.

Don't get me wrong - I'll be fascinated if they do find a way of combining the two. If Bioware can make a mmorpg that lasts and that doesn't lock off its content behind raid-zones and 2nd-job-style-grinding, they might actually incline the mmorpg genre. That would be truly interesting stuff. I just don't see how it can be done - I'd love to be proved wrong, but I just don't see how they can do it.

That's another good point. WoW worked because it drew in the then fairly small MMO crowd but also grew the market by being more accessible (I hate that word, but there it is) than previous games. Back when I used to play WoW, several of my guildmates were MMO veterans, but we also had several people who had never played an MMO before. It didn't hurt that Blizzard has one of the best reputations in the industry.

What Blizzard didn't try to do is build WoW into an RTS or diablo-style hack&slash. It was clearly designed to appeal to the MMO crowd; it built on the established mechanics of the genre but improved the formula at the same time.

From what I've heard of SWTOR from testers, it fails to do that, and it doesn't pick a side between Bioware-style RPG and MMORPG. There are extensive dialog trees, but the quests are either courier or collection, and the dungeons have standard trash mobs and boss designs. I seriously doubt it will work.

I'd be interested in trying the game, actually, just because that would give me certainty about whether it will succeed or fail. I'll never pay money for it, though.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Don't get me wrong - I'll be fascinated if they do find a way of combining the two. If Bioware can make a mmorpg that lasts and that doesn't lock off its content behind raid-zones and 2nd-job-style-grinding, they might actually incline the mmorpg genre. That would be truly interesting stuff. I just don't see how it can be done - I'd love to be proved wrong, but I just don't see how they can do it.

Its hard to have any faith that Bioware can build the better MMORPG when they cant even design a basic dungeon.

 

[Jaesun]

Bioware Edmonton is not making the MMOG.

 

[Volourn]

"I'd be interested in trying the game, actually, just because that would give me certainty about whether it will succeed or fail. I'll never pay money for it, though."

There's bound to be a free month trial. Pretty much every MMO has that.

Jaesun: No shit, which is why it's laughable when people claim EA will close the real BIo down if the MMO fail. If it fails, goodbye to Texas.

 

[Xor]

EA Edmonton is not making the MMOG.

Fixed

 

[Stalin]

This thread is now about Yahtzee

 

[sser]

Two more things: A lot of MMO money comes from foreign markets (particularly China). I honestly have no idea how much Star Wars appeals to foreign markets... And there is a lot of viable competition within the MMO community these days that are pretty legit (aka, not getting instantly steamrolled by WoW).

Yahtzee!

 

[Rhalle]

It's not a game, it's "a holding pattern" for Dragon Age 3.

As Mass Effect 2 was for Mass Effect 3.

As Mass Effect 3 will be for mountains of DLC; as it will be for spinoffs; as it will be for other Mass Effect products in the "revenue stream"; as it will be for all Mass Effect anything that BiowEAr wrings out of its dessicated corpse.