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Originally Posted by Chyll
(Frankly, as an MMO it has been solid and normal in terms of the overall industry. They just had over zealous expectations of reaching WoW heights - and that frankly was unrealistic from the start - and rushed the product.)
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And spent way too much money on annoying voice acting instead of developing features and content customers would enjoy.
Yeah, they sent me an email about the new cartel coins once f2p goes live and if you read the Dev tracker and the PT server forum on the swtor boards they talk about it going live with 1.5 update.
Currently Playing:
Rage King - SS/Regen Brute (50+3)
Soulfire Darkness - Dark/Fire Tank (50+2)
Deaths Final Embrace - Kat/Dark Brute (50+3)
ULTIMATE REGEN GUIDE I22
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Thank you. I appreciate the info.
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Originally Posted by planet_J
Yeah, they sent me an email about the new cartel coins once f2p goes live and if you read the Dec tracker and the PT server forum on the Astor boards they talk about it going live with 1.5
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swtor had a huge issue with initial patches that allowed the imps to get amazing gear in level 50 pvp dailys - so much so that when it was finally fixed the reps were so behind the curve it made for zero fun. It was awesome to try to do dailies and get crushed by equal level imps geared out - or to have 6 level 50s camp out the lower level bases and not let anyone out to even do missions. They lost a lot of subs because they were slow to even acknowledge it, as well as the large differences in imps vs rep in powers. So fun being perma stunned with an escape power that does not linger and recharges on a 10 min timer.
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To be fair (at least in the level 1-15 content), the voice acting in SWTOR is fine. It's SO much better than it is in CO: they hired professionals instead of the guy in the next cubicle, they recorded the audio in a studio instead of the next cubicle, and the character's mouths actually conform to the words spoken rather than looking like a parody of lip-synched kung fu movies. All in all, the cut scenes in SWTOR are the best ones among the games I've seen recently, though Secret World's are a close second (though TSW's struck me as being WAY too time-consuming).|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
And spent way too much money on annoying voice acting instead of developing features and content customers would enjoy.
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But I concur with your concerns about the cost, and have my own concerns about the inconsistency and inflexibility of using voice actors. Adding voice drastically increases the cost and the production time for missions. If the devs want to be consistent, they have to use the same actors to voice our characters' responses, which means that they can have scheduling problems if the actors aren't in-house. If they aren't consistent, then your character can wind up being silent half the time (like the annoying gaps in spoken NPC dialog in CO), or worse, your character sounds like a multi-personality schizoid. And then there's the maintenance problem of having to rerecord dialog when the text of the dialog has to be changed for bug fixes.
And in the long run, I don't think it's really worth it: I find that I just skip through the audio with space bar anyway to speed things up (especially when I've already run the same mission four times with alts).
Spoken dialog a cute idea, and it's fun for a while. But I don't see how it can be sustained cost effectively for 50 levels over hundreds of missions for five different character classes, which all require different variations for their particular circumstances. It's an interesting programming problem, but in the long run it just seems like a maintenance nightmare.
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I agree the quality of the voice acting is great, there's just too much of it. I don't need cutscenes for every single bloody contact. Using it in the main story arc is fine, but having to go thu it with every tom, dick, and harry is too much. Just give me the damn mission.|
Originally Posted by Rodion
All in all, the cut scenes in SWTOR are the best ones among the games I've seen recently, though Secret World's are a close second (though TSW's struck me as being WAY too time-consuming).
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TSW's might seem a little long but they only use it for the main story arc.
And my personal pet peeve. If you are going to make a player choose what his character says by offering 3 written choices, then it gorram better match what the voice actor says. It really bugs the hell out of me when the voice acting says something completely different than what I selected for him to say.
But again that's a pet peeve that I have to learn to deal with.
Gear differences are no longer a concern, and all powers are mirrors, and thusly balanced.
Also, edited original post for Empire contact information. The guild will be forming soon on the Empire side.
Currently Playing:
Rage King - SS/Regen Brute (50+3)
Soulfire Darkness - Dark/Fire Tank (50+2)
Deaths Final Embrace - Kat/Dark Brute (50+3)
ULTIMATE REGEN GUIDE I22
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Originally Posted by Rodion
And in the long run, I don't think it's really worth it: I find that I just skip through the audio with space bar anyway to speed things up (especially when I've already run the same mission four times with alts).
Spoken dialog a cute idea, and it's fun for a while. But I don't see how it can be sustained cost effectively for 50 levels over hundreds of missions for five different character classes, which all require different variations for their particular circumstances. It's an interesting programming problem, but in the long run it just seems like a maintenance nightmare. |
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Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
I agree the quality of the voice acting is great, there's just too much of it. I don't need cutscenes for every single bloody contact. Using it in the main story arc is fine, but having to go thu it with every tom, dick, and harry is too much. Just give me the damn mission.
TSW's might seem a little long but they only use it for the main story arc. |
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And my personal pet peeve. If you are going to make a player choose what his character says by offering 3 written choices, then it gorram better match what the voice actor says. It really bugs the hell out of me when the voice acting says something completely different than what I selected for him to say. But again that's a pet peeve that I have to learn to deal with. |
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
I will look you guys up when it goes F2P. I promised my brother-in-law that I'd give it a shot with him (he's a huuuge Star Wars fan and has played off-and-on since launch, depending on his workload and such) so I'll be around in there from time to time.
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I just started playing the game myself, on Shadowlands. Rolled a Jedi Guardian who just hit 32. Shaanre is the name. I'm on mostly on the weekends if anyone in the guild wants to shoot me an invite. Been enjoying it so far. Most folks seem to be pretty helpful in General chat when I've asked newbie questions.
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Originally Posted by Cosmic_Herald
Chyll,
There is a "Paragon Refugees" Guild on Shadowlands if you're interested. |
Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.
Someone should research all the games that went f2p from a subscription model and see how much longer it extended their lifespan. I give swtor a year tops until it folds after going f2p. I might play a little just to check out what changed since last time I played in February, too bad I can't even remember the server I played on though(I had a trooper in the reddit republic iirc).
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It doesn't matter what server you had it on. All characters were transfered to new "improved" servers several months ago.|
Originally Posted by Solo_One
Someone should research all the games that went f2p from a subscription model and see how much longer it extended their lifespan. I give swtor a year tops until it folds after going f2p. I might play a little just to check out what changed since last time I played in February, too bad I can't even remember the server I played on though(I had a trooper in the reddit republic iirc).
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For some reason they decided to confuse people by reusing some of the old server names instead of using brand new names for the new servers. This has led to some people thinking they weren't transfered to a new server and getting upset when they lost a character name to another player who had it longer on another server.
Of course anytime someone loses a character name it's almost always going to result in one party getting pissed off.
I've been playing on and off since launch. I lost my Legacy name with the first merger, but got it back with the second one.
@bpphantom
The Defenders of Paragon
KGB Special Section 8
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I don't know about every one of course, but LotRO and DDO are both still fairly healthy, and LotRO has seen a very marked increase (by some accounts nearly doubling) in profits since going with a "freemium" system much like TOR's (though not quite as restrictive to F2P accounts). From what I've heard, the same applies to DDO, albeit not as big a change. By all accounts our own beloved City was doing fairly well since the changeover as well of course.|
Originally Posted by Solo_One
Someone should research all the games that went f2p from a subscription model and see how much longer it extended their lifespan. I give swtor a year tops until it folds after going f2p. I might play a little just to check out what changed since last time I played in February, too bad I can't even remember the server I played on though(I had a trooper in the reddit republic iirc).
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Not sure offhand about any other "big name" MMO's that switched from pay-to-play to F2P or freemium. Either way, just because a game switches its subscription model doesn't necessarily translate into the beginning of a funeral dirge. It remains to be seen if it helps ToR any.
Edit to add that if you do choose to check out your old character(s), just login, go to the server select screen and look for where you've been moved to. There is a column at that screen displaying how many characters your account has on any given server.
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I believe that Age Of Conan going F2P helped Funcom a little bit linkage
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Originally Posted by Pyber
I don't know about every one of course, but LotRO and DDO are both still fairly healthy, and LotRO has seen a very marked increase (by some accounts nearly doubling) in profits since going with a "freemium" system much like TOR's (though not quite as restrictive to F2P accounts). From what I've heard, the same applies to DDO, albeit not as big a change. By all accounts our own beloved City was doing fairly well since the changeover as well of course.
Not sure offhand about any other "big name" MMO's that switched from pay-to-play to F2P or freemium. Either way, just because a game switches its subscription model doesn't necessarily translate into the beginning of a funeral dirge. It remains to be seen if it helps ToR any. Edit to add that if you do choose to check out your old character(s), just login, go to the server select screen and look for where you've been moved to. There is a column at that screen displaying how many characters your account has on any given server. |
Swtor is currently second in subscriptions to WoW. Given that information from mmo data, I think it is safe to say it isn't going anywhere for a while.
Currently Playing:
Rage King - SS/Regen Brute (50+3)
Soulfire Darkness - Dark/Fire Tank (50+2)
Deaths Final Embrace - Kat/Dark Brute (50+3)
ULTIMATE REGEN GUIDE I22
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The last official numbers I've seen from EA/BW reported SWTOR's subs dropped to 700k and Bioware stated they needed 500k to break even. |
Originally Posted by planet_J
Swtor is currently second in subscriptions to WoW. Given that information from mmo data, I think it is safe to say it isn't going anywhere for a while.
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And while I don't want to see any game get shut down, let's not delude ourselves here. Any MMO that was designed to be sub based and decides to switch to F2P 6 months after launch is in serious trouble.
This change in the business model is a desperate attempt to save the game, and I wish them the best of luck with it.
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Ooh, that 700k number is interesting, where have you seen that? Only official statement i've seen was a vague below 1mil but well above 500k comment in their conference call.|
Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
The last official numbers I've seen from EA/BW reported SWTOR's subs dropped to 700k and Bioware stated they needed 500k to break even.
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The 500k break-even point, i have seen but that statement was made at least a year before their "restructuring" so their new break-even point is not yet known but likely to be less than 500k.
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Thanks for asking that. I went back to check the articles when they announced the switch to F2P and I see that I misread what was said. For some reason the 700,000 stuck in my mind. Probably because it was written as a number instead of spelled out.|
Originally Posted by Pebblebrook
Ooh, that 700k number is interesting, where have you seen that? Only official statement i've seen was a vague below 1mil but well above 500k comment in their conference call.
The 500k break-even point, i have seen but that statement was made at least a year before their "restructuring" so their new break-even point is not yet known but likely to be less than 500k. |
"EA has revealed Star Wars: The Old Republic subscriptions have dipped below 1 million, a drop off of about 700,000. According to the BioWare, in order to break even, SWTOR needs 500,000 subscribers."
And back in July when the F2P EA's Frank Gibeau confirmed to interviewers that the goal of the F2P initiative is to get lapsed players back into the game.
Heh no prob...and disappointing. Was hoping there was a specific number out there instead of more vagueness.
Yeah, they said back in the july call that 40% of those who left were "turned off" by a monthly sub and many of those indicate they'd come back with an F2P option.
Guess we'll find out soon.
Whatever the subs dropped to it was close enough to their break even number to scare them into implementing the F2P business model.
I can understand why they chose to be vague about the actual numbers. Fear that it might cause even more people to cancel their subs because they might think closure is imminent.
http://www.swtor.com/blog/star-wars-...%93-state-game
they just released their state of the game address today to and it looks like they are just starting to get around postings State of addresses.
@Eternal Twilight
Friends don't let friends buy an NCSoft controlled project.
Save Paragon one more time!
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index....ic,4877.0.html
Petition to end shutting down CoH:
http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
ive been been sub since launch on SWTOR and play now and then when im not playing Coh, WoW, or Rift. ive enjoyed it when i have played it. ill go months and play one game and then switch to another and so on just to keep it fresh.
just started messing around with TSW and have enjoyed that one too.
im looking forward to trying CoS this month when it goes into CB.
@Eternal Twilight
Friends don't let friends buy an NCSoft controlled project.
Save Paragon one more time!
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index....ic,4877.0.html
Petition to end shutting down CoH:
http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
I'll likely be heading to TOR at some point. Perhaps when it goes F2P, perhaps sooner. Either way, I need to finish my Jedi Knight story, and I wouldn't mind rolling some new toons.
I'll look you up when that happens. I wouldn't mind playing with some former CoH'ers. Part of the problem last time was not really knowing a lot of people and not really being willing to seek out people on (what was at the time) a dying server.
Rumors and whatnot.
Odds are everything is contingent on on how healthy F2P is financially, so far away from any reasonable shutdown intentions.
(Frankly, as an MMO it has been solid and normal in terms of the overall industry. They just had over zealous expectations of reaching WoW heights - and that frankly was unrealistic from the start - and rushed the product.)