As posted on GamerTechTV, an anonymous Bioware Austin employee has lashed out against Star Wars fans blaming them for the failure of Star Wars: The Old Republic. The employee also confirms that SWTOR is being converted to free-to-play and confirms that Star Wars Galaxies was shut-down for no other reason then to remove it as a competitor for SWTOR. The BioWare employee states:
EA blames us and to some extent they’re right to. but it was fan feedback from the day we opened the forums that encouraged us to design it for the fans the way it is and that included making it more like Kotor then an MMO like Wow. Also from what I have heard in the halls, Starwars Galaxies was shut down due to the fact are talks with LA, EA suits ecouraged the new guy at LA to increase the licensing fee at renewal time. it was a move to remove any direct competiton to TOR.
I don’t want anyone to be upset by this. but many of these changes had been in the “planning stages” for many months since the sharp drop in subscribers. many parts of the game will cost money to access. for example you can unlock the new “cathar” race in your legacy. but buying the unlock, it will cost 10$ US
As far as I’m concerned fans cannot be blamed for the failure of SWTOR, only Bioware and EA. If you don’t have a vision for what your game is supposed to be, maybe you shouldn’t be spending hundreds of millions of dollars making it. If you do decide to listen to fans, pick one person, hire them, and make them the project leader for that game. Maybe they have a real vision for what the game should be.
Fan feedback is important, but creating a game shouldn’t be based on it. The developer needs to be the visionary behind the game and create what they believe would be a fun game. I can tell you right now, no great game has ever been created based on fan feedback because most fans, despite what they say, don’t even know what they like.
BioWare, feel free to email me if you need someone to create your next MMO game because you guys have no clue.
and me! I actually have a post going up tomorrow!
The game was just released one year too early, and things needed to be thought out a little better, like how to space out content. Or how to design the graphics engine.
lol Big words from a guy who hasnt made his own MMO.
Crazy news.
“BioWare, feel free to email me if you need someone to create your next MMO game because you guys have no clue.”
Hahah! Love ya Mike:)
“And Bioware? Don’t make me laugh. They’ve spent more money making the Old Republic than James Cameron spent on Avatar. Shit you not. More than $ 300 million! Can you believe that?
And you know what they’re most proud of? This is the kicker. They are most proud of the sound. No seriously. Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work. That’s the best they have. The rest of the game is a joke. EA knows it and so does George Lucas,they’re panicking , and so most of Mythic has already been cannibalized to work in Austin on it because they can’t keep pushing back launch.
Old Republic will be one of the greatest failures in the history of MMOs from EA. Probably at the level of the Sims Online. We all know it too ……”
This is from EA Mythic employee that knew whats goin down before the game launch :)
You didn’t had to be rocket scientist, or an experienced game designer to see this from beta. Imagine what “talented” people you can find at EA these days….
So the fans are responsible for choosing a bad engine (and making it even worse), making the worst PvP in game history, copying starfox for the space missions (starfox is better in that domain tho) and making the game a grind fest?
Yeah… Don’t blame fans because you (Bioware) bent over to EA and chose to make all the worst decisions that all MMO’s made in their early stages years ago. You only had 2 simple choices on the beginning of this adventure (failed adventure actually): Make the same good decisions as other MMOs and improve or make all the worse decisions ever made by MMOs. Right from the start you couldn’t choose the right path.
Don’t blame it on your fans, who actually tried to back you up knowing you where making all the bad decisions, blame it on yourself. We can’t actually blame EA as it was you (Bioware) who bent over.
Well,
i guess if they really would have listened to fan feedback… they would just have made a KOTOR 3 or Jade Empire 2. ;-)
I just found this on twitter! not sure if it’s real? but it seems interesting. https://twitter.com/anon_be
Why not blame the fans. Not accepting responsibility is the norm these days. Very few companies /people take responsibility for their actions anymore. It would be a nice change of pace if they did.
“but it was fan feedback from the day we opened the forums that encouraged us to design it for the fans the way it is”
I may not have spent 24/7 on star wars forums, but I’ve been on them enough to know the fans didn’t ask for an MMO. In fact, fans have been asking, if not demanding for a new Jedi Knight game, battlefront, x-wing/tie fighter and kotor for near of a decade. Why aren’t those games, which WILL make them successful financially being made? Just google the games I listed above and you’ll find hundreds, if not thousands of posts of fans asking.
They’re just pissed because they thought they were going down some golden direction and were expecting to get millions of subscribers and many wards like the original kotor got. Fans aren’t to blame here, it’s their own pride and greed.
This is sickening. I beta tested your fucking piece of shit, Bioware. I know whose fault it is for releasing it the way it did. You listened to the apologists who said the game was in good enough condition to move on, without realistically considering the minority of the ACTUAL beta testers who reported hundreds of bugs and glitches and expressed concerns with CORE gameplay designs from the very onset months before the release. This was compounded by the fact that you basically told all the whiners to fuck off and insisted that things were not going to change just because we didn’t like it. I understand EA might have been rushing you to completion, but that should have been a forseeable consequence of following the publishers who killed Warhammer Online. If you weren’t going to stand up for yourselves when they put the pressure on you, why did you pick the most shortsighted and profit-focused publishing house?
You have no one to blame but yourselves.
Yeah I hope you choke on it too.If it were the fans that made this game fail maybe it was because they didn’t want their game Star Wars Galaxies shut down to play a fucking clone of WOW with the Star Wars name pasted to it.Back ally politics of getting a once percetly made game before SOE raped it that is….and having it shut down so there would be no fall back subs to the game they love.So I hope it hurts mother fuckers.RIP SWG fuck SWTOR I hope you fall to rock bottom with the overly scripted BS of a game sandbox games will always win over the true mmoer and for the Star Wars fans that had the game stolen I feel your pain brothers im sure you can tell hahaha.Oh yeah one more thing I forgot to say….FUCK YOU BIOWARE.
The game is good and i enjoy the old school touch. The guy is right, its the KOTOR 3 we were all waiting for.
3 problems :
1. The middle class is dead so is the MMO monthly sub model.
2. The new brainwashed kids generation that get bored about everything in a week.
3. A full time open PvP Warzones instead of these mini-games. And more importantly an OPEN SPACE game X-Wing vs T-fighter style, not a tunnel console shooter crap. Half Star Wars universe should be played in a vast OPEN WORLD SPACE, including PvP.
The sicken thing is they got rid of a good game to get rid of competion when they could have gone side by side. If the best part of the game is the sound and the best feature is the animated story then they dont know the point of a game and what use of a good sound set up if your deff someone needs to rethink there job chose and do one. SWG should be re-released right now because of this and The Old Republic should be cut looses to sink or swim I just hope that Disney can see this and give Sony Online a deal for this or even a deal to make Star Wars Galaxies 2
That’s just like BioWare to think nothing is their fault and that they are the greatest developers in the world when in face NO GAME they have made has ever had gripping combat. MMOs are about combat and gameplay and THEY decided to focus on sound. I was on the forums since day one they opened and I never read anywhere people requesting they blow their budget on voice overs and acting. In fact, the community constantly mocked them for focusing on “story” so much.
Nevertheless, GET THIS. A group of beta testers including myself were paid $100 cash to goto Manhattan and give specific feedback about the game with that company they used for the surveys. EVERY ONE OF US stated the game was a 5/10 and that Rift was better. We went through a plethora of problems and mechanics that needed to be changed and fixed or the game would fail. NOT ONE PF THEM were changed. It was like we didn’t even give feedback.
This further proves their pompous attitude and why they deserve the failure they received. Everything down to the amount of replies from developers on the forums was critiqued and they continued to blow smoke.
But I’m not mad. BioWare has inherited the nickname BioFail for a reason and they deserve every minute.
Gotta love the love that SWG is getting here and while I knew that SWTOR was the reason SWG was cancelled deep down in my gut… it’s still a knife in the stomach to have this fact actually confirmed by the devs. I invested 7 years into SWG…… Not 1,2,3,4,5,6…. but 7 god damn years. I played SWTOR for 1 month. It was an outstanding single player game…. an MMO it was not.
SWG was the most fun I have ever had in a game. There was nothing else like it and there may never be again. Bounty Hunting was the greatest video game experience of my life….. I will miss it.
The turds of SWTOR forgot about end game….. no one realized that you have to have MORE stuff to do after you hit max level. Running ops, warzones, and instances until my eyes bled was not my idea of fun. They screwed that pooch…. then killed…. then screwed it some more. May it die a bloody, painful death…. tis the only way that we will see a newer, more adult, more sophisticated Star Wars MMO.
If bioware would have listened to me they would have never made a dam mmo. I wanted Kotor 3 not this shit. I dont see why they wouldn’t do it. If they made kotor 3 there isn’t as much a risk because it most likely wouldn’t cost as much, and ur pretty much guaranteed to sell to all the kotor 1 and kotor 2 fans.
Reasons why SWToR is failing, and failing hard. And why I left:
1) The crap they called ” space combat”. As flawed as SW Galaxies space combat was, I really liked it. SW ToR took all ship customization away, and only provided class specific ships. My Consolars ship was exactly like every other Consolars ship. The rail shooter was a joke. Rail shooters were great in the 80s and 90s, but it doesn’t fly in a multi-million dollar MMO.
SW Galaxies as flawed as it was, it was however on the right path with space combat. Endless ship customization, a plethora of choices in ships to build, buy, or obtain through quests, and no rails.
2) SW ToR did not crate means to have players develop a strong community. It seemed like I was playing a single player game like SW KotOR than a MMO. Every city was a dead zone, even the busiest city/station only had a max of 10 people in them, and this was upon launch on the busiest server.
SW Galaxies pre-NGE had the strongest community I have ever experienced in any MMO to date. Player made cities were always teaming with players, cities were always crowded. Not to mention player made homes that can be decorated in any way shape and fashion.
3) Crafting in SW ToR is a joke. One or two professions are actually viable, or can make the player profit. The other professions are worthless mainly due to better gear or items easily obtained through quests or running instances.
Hate to keep comparing SW ToR to SW Galaxies, but SW Galaxies crafting professions was way Superior than SW ToR. Every profession was viable, and 99% of every crafted item can make a profit for the crafter. How ? Mainly because SW Galaxies had a decay system for items and gear, 100% decorated able houses and ships, and a player based economy made every item worth something.
4) SW ToR is a theme park style MMO, which means you follow a narrow guided path to your next goal, little room for actual exploration. SW ToR made me feel claustrophobic, everything was packed tight into the small areas you can actually go.
Personally I like sandbox MMOs, I want to go explore whats behind that mountain, or go see whats dwelling on top of it. One of the many reasons why games like WoW and the likes were so successful is because they gave the player a sense of actually being in a real living, breathing, world by letting you go anywhere, at any time, and to explore that world.
5) SW ToR did not have a healthy balance of story vs content. I can tell where Bioware spent most of their money, on voice overs. Don’t get me wrong, it was cool the first 2 times listening to the voices and viewing the cutscenes, after that it got old.
Did Bioware fail because of it’s player base? No
Did Bioware actually listen to it’s potential player base a year or so before launch? No.
How many threads did SW ToR had on topics such as ” taking the space combat off the rails” or on the topics of player housing, Sandbox vs Themepark, player based economy, content, etc? Hundreds if not thousands. Bioware ignored its potential player base and pretty much gave them the finger. And now Bioware and EB Games are taking it where the sun don’t shine, and they have no one else to blame but themselves.
Nothing …I mean nothing…..is worse than SWTOR. Nothing….Nothing is worse. Very depressing atmosphere to be stuck 4k years before Darth Talon or Princess leia are even born.
It would be more intersting to go back in time on this planet 4k years that the SW universe. The World War 2 period music has nothing to do with Star Wars. Very Depressing atmosphere.
No long harstyles for females. None. Most of the hairstyles are extremely aweful (what is that Moe bowl cut, with tassles about??).
The clothing is bag lady atrocious, even the clothing you don’t loot off of corpses, the crafted clothing is not good at all, either. No in-game character customization. It takes an hour to go thru voice over cut scenes to complete one 150 point mission.
The sniper, …oh…the sniper…….with the 150 shots it takes to bring an opponent down to 80% health…..This game is like a 2 year old girl shitting in her bowl of spagetti, dumping it on her head and calling it art. The double digit I.Q.’s that came up with this cash grab failed worse that any other venture in Human History.
And you closed SWG , so there would be no competition. Yeah, If I ever get one of you in a room with me for 15 seconds, I will change your life forever too. The most pathetic attempt at trying to take peoples money in history, aside from the Angolan Prince who you sent 4k$ to, failed.
How could someone possibly come out with this piece of shit, and call it a game? $300 mil, for a stupid excuse for a game. Right about now, SWG would be gearing up for the christmas/Life Day festivities….And I would be in my town (thats right MY TOWN) decorating.
This game isn’t really Star Wars – it’s a lame use of the license, thats all. Nothing is worse than SWTOR. Nothing.
One more thing (maybe 2): I must explain, The people who made this are a product of American schools – let’s break that down for a minute(angry rant spoiler):
They probably made good grades in school, wait…one …minute….there…
If they were ‘given’ good grades, that means they were in the bottom of the class, intellectually. As any teacher would tell you, the high aptitude scoring children are made to barely pass, or fail by the teachers, as to make it look like their course was challenging to the students – the same teachers would have given good grades to the dumb children, to make it look like their course helped the children(how did you fare, on this scale?).
This is the” business” behind schools in America. Very few actual “Americans” are given the actual ‘grades’ they deserve, at least in the passed 40 years. School is not for good looking geniuses to go to M.I.T. on a full Academic Scholarship, it is to make drone workers, who do not mind getting up at 5 am and going to work for 60 years.
So there you have it, folks: American Education at it’s best, made knuckle heads who produced this flaming sack of dog shit. I’m sure their resume’s all looked good ‘on paper’, and these, themselves, aren’t even the numb nuts who are in charge of this country.
If only I didn’t graduate from Highschool in 4th grade, forced to stay in grade school by my teachers, and watch me get F’s on my papers, homework and tests, simply because my name was on it(yes some of the teachers went under review and got fired, but some did not, and some are coaches, some are science teachers, some never lose their jobs, even after one tried to black-mail me for sex).
If only that didn’t happen every school year from 1-12, and if I didn’t aquire a lover/college teacher to tell me this money making stradegy in our schools…I would have never known what is really going on. Ignorance is bliss – knowledge is infuriating. (this is happening in Nashville, TN, public/private/grade school/ middle school/ high school/ collage and other “boot camp” campuses around the U.S.)
I hope that you see my point in bringing this up – this game stinks of pocketed money, kids tuition, brand new Ferrari Californias, 4th homes, and no $300 mil worth of intelligent gamework. Or Idiocy.
Tried it out for free and I would have to say that it wouldn’t be that bad of a game if I could actually play it for 10 minutes without getting disconnected from the damn server!!! I don’t know why they haven’t shutdown SWTOR!! Seems they’ve had huge problems since they released SWTOR. Most reply’s from Bioware on the forums are like this: “Our programmers are currentlly working hard to fix the issue and we hope to find a solution soon” or something like that.
– Terrible Customer Service
-Way too many errors and glitches
Oh and the biggest problem is like some others have said is that SWTOR is a clone of WOW and a theme park. It wouldn’t really matter though if Bioware actually made sure that this wasn’t going to have so many problems. I’ve stopped playing the SWTOR because it’s pointless to just hope that you don’t get disconnected from their servers in the middle of combat. I’m gonna get back to the SWG emu its free and it barely has any problems.
I tried installing free to play on my laptop but instalation fails everytime all i wanna do is play forfree n try it out
So despite the fact that Bioware and EA actually MADE this shoddy piece of crap, this employee of theirs actually publicly states that the blame lies not with the company, but the fans?
Stop the fucking presses.
(That was sarcastic, by the way.)
The problem was that Bioware took a hugely popular brand (KOTOR) and tried to increase their income by making the third an MMO. In reality, it would have worked just fine, if not better, as a simple single player RPG. This is something that the vast majority of fans are STILL hanging out for, and the companies continue to turn a deaf ear, instead trying to salvage what dignity they have left, since their plan to make lots of money totally went balls-up.
I still hope that one day, somebody will come along and create a TRUE KOTOR III, which will bring some credibility back to this brand and give the awesome characters of Revan, Bastila, Carth and so on the respect they deserve.
Unfortunately, since the MMO buggered it all up and Bioware is still trying to iron out all of its creases (unsuccessfully, by the way), the chances of that happening are rather slim. Still, one can hope, right?
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More like WOW? LOL!! How insulting.
Actually a lot of former swg servers old and new players were grouping together on websites thinking TOR would be similar but better then swg. But the fact it was closer to WOW pushed then away. WOW people gave it a try for something new and it was to much like WOW. So why spend time starting over..when u can return to your old characters already in beast mode. I believed if they mixed more of a newer style of Swg they would have hit the jackpot. Because u bring back old and new swg players. And u keep Wow player’s because its new. To bad
@Jorius
SWTOR opened it’s gates with enough subscribers to NEVER hit a F2P model.
The disloyal subscribers (Founders) that whined, didnt get what they wanted instantly, and went back to WoW, put the game in this position to be F2P.
Gamer entitlement is way out of control and is what is killing the genre altogether. Your 14.99 cannot and will not change the world to your liking.
Tunnel vision lackey PVPers will always complain about PVP being bad when they have to do objectives or anything that requires thought.
MMOs today are trying so hard NOT to be WoW that they dont even log the years of errors and mistakes it has made in its past.
Well I give this game so much chances! SO MUCH! After 1 year and half all my old buddies from SWG left. Except 3-4 who still playing. I have disappointed a lot. And I am going mad they close SWG for this ? Still I am shocked. 6 years in galaxies and never go bored. It would be proper just Bioware create a sequel to old kotor series than this. And now after this fall the results was LA finally take what deserves!
I play swgemu from time to time but the problem is as community we all became ‘old’. No doubt, plus the game still is far from 1.0 version. Problems with the old code, they re-programming the code from the start again and this will take a long time until finished. The devs there do awesome job but many go tired for a title who still is on alpha phase 8 years now. And terrible latency for European players since servers are on USA making the game unplayable many times….
As for Bioware …isn’t the bioware who create legends like Baldur’s Gate series or KOTOR or Neverwinter Nights etc. The old devs most of them already have fired .They split, some they work on Ossian studios, others create the Overhaul Games. Accept it all ,the old ‘good’ Bioware doesn’t exist anymore! That’s why I had my doubts about SWTOR.
The only hope I have is Disney. To have some new contract with SOE to bring back SWG or even better a new one SWG2.And yes I want ONLY SOE for the next star wars mmo.I don’t trust other companies. Bad example the Neverwinter. After 2 good games ,Atari give the rights to Cryptic. What I see is a completely failed game. PVP is a joke ,very cartoon style and have nothing to do with Forgotten Realms or DnD rules.Where the heck is druid,paladin,ranger,sorceror,? Or some pre-classes? This game isn’t DnD for sure…
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Swg failed and SWTOR failed. what is needed is a new business model and thinking that can satisfy the money hungry suites and the fans that will pay almost anything for a decent game. The Star Wars franchise has generally failed completely to deliver an even playable game, let alone a game deserving of the franchise tag. i giggle every time i see my daughter play disney infinity. but, i do wonder if there is a dev on this whole planet that is good enough to do an MMORPG worthy of the star wars title. I am thinking no, as no one has ever come come close and it has been a very long time.