The Elder Scrolls Online Catch-All

ruhk wrote:

Come to think of it, Bioware was a bit cocky with SWTOR, but I think my point still stands. :P

People tried to assign SWTOR as a WoW killer, but Bioware from the start stated that wasnt their intentions.

And they certainly met their intentions ;).

I don't think the producer of any MMO has claimed a "wow killer" and it's a title thrust upon them by fans and press, but I don't think they ever do much to say that's not what they want to get known for as there's a whole 'don't acknowledge the competition' side, and I'm sure their marketing department don't mind the 'next big thing' buzz.

At least that's my impression of how it goes down. They might not claim it, but they don't disclaim it either.

While it's not always explicit, the way developers talk about their games as they're in development implies that everything they're doing is new and innovative and way better than all those other big games currently out there, and that's why you should play this instead of whatever it is you're playing right now.\

So, yea, they like to say they're developing in a vacuum, and they're not trying to compete, just make a new game, but at the same time, they're not exactly going about that in what I would consider the proper way, which would be to talk about your game and what makes it awesome, not what makes it better than everything else already on the market.

AnimeJ wrote:
Vargen wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

edit: I also think the fatal flaw with people trying to duplicate WoW's success is that they forget that WoW wasn't built in a day. It was grown over years. Anyone that tries to jumpstart that is going to lose a lot of money.

The problem is a new MMO isn't competing with WoW as it was at launch, it's competing with WoW as it is today. WoW may have had the luxury of growing over time, but a new MMO has to have a comparable feature set right out of the gate.

This is a big reason why nobody has dethroned WoW yet. It's just plain got an unfair advantage.

Again, this isn't happening. WoW's numbers are an anomaly, and not realistic, either short term or long term. Plan for less than a million subs. Budget to that. Hell, budget to half a million. But there's no competing with WoW on any level. Even back when it was new, it was freakish.

The fact is that recent games spent a metric crap ton of Dev dollars and marketing dollars developing games that don't even have 500K subscribers. So while its easy for you to toss that around the reality is that publishers are seeing very little ROI currently on subscription based MMOG's.

I'm not arguing against that; in fact, the argument I'm making is that it's foolish to keep doing what people are doing what you are saying; throwing millions if not hundreds of millions at games which are almost certainly not going to give an ROI. If TOR had been made as a single player game for a tenth of what they reportedly spent on it, how much would they have made by now? Far, far more I would wager.

But to keep spending astronomical sums in pursuit of subscription fee revenues on the order of what blizzard gets is ludicrous. Hell, to spend a fraction of that and destroy, or risk destroying a solid single player IP is even crazier.

AnimeJ wrote:

throwing millions if not hundreds of millions at games which are almost certainly not going to give an ROI. If TOR had been made as a single player game for a tenth of what they reportedly spent on it, how much would they have made by now? Far, far more I would wager.

I know what you're thinking, and I've said the same myself. What I've come to think now is that when you're a company the size of EA you're playing with a different rule-book, or in a different league. They could go for a zillion smaller projects but they've set up the company around fewer larger projects (sidenote: and from what I can gather, managing the projects is more of a problem at EA's size). It's not that they couldn't do 100 projects a year with 20% profit (random numbers plucked from the air), but that they'd rather a smaller amount of projects with 20% profit if there's the chance that if one goes big, it's spectacularly big.

I'm thinking of Minecraft a bit, now I don't think anyone will deny that's a big indie game, but it's still small-fry in absolute scale for a company EA sized, and with that size you need a certain size of profit to keep the big machine fueled. It's not so much that it's inevitable with a profit-seeking business (what business isn't), or short term decisions on a project to project basis, but the fabric of the company, and that takes time to change if they ever wanted to change it.

Yea, we're on the same page on this one. I'm just still out there tilting at windmills.

I'm watching the video, and everything I'm hearing described just seems like they're making a good solid base MMO, but not really anything that grabs me. Flavour and personality are words that come to mind for what's lacking. I just don't get a sense for why I should care about anything in the Tamriel they're presenting, and they presumably want me to live in for a few years.

Scratched wrote:

I'm watching the video, and everything I'm hearing described just seems like they're making a good solid base MMO, but not really anything that grabs me. Flavour and personality are words that come to mind for what's lacking. I just don't get a sense for why I should care about anything in the Tamriel they're presenting, and they presumably want me to live in for a few years.

That seems to be a weird sentiment because they didnt do that for the RPG either yet people flock to it anyway.

I thouight the environment in that video looked great. Very inviting, like in Skyrim. The vistas, to me, were one thing that brought me back to that game over and over. it amazed me.

One thing that bothers me is the combat and how everyone is standing still. I assume it was mainly due to this being early pre-alpha footage.
I need movement in my combat, like I get in Guild wars 2.

ranalin wrote:
Scratched wrote:

I'm watching the video, and everything I'm hearing described just seems like they're making a good solid base MMO, but not really anything that grabs me. Flavour and personality are words that come to mind for what's lacking. I just don't get a sense for why I should care about anything in the Tamriel they're presenting, and they presumably want me to live in for a few years.

That seems to be a weird sentiment because they didnt do that for the RPG either yet people flock to it anyway.

Uh, what? Skyrim was dripping with flavor and personality, IMO. It's one of the hallmarks of Elder Scrolls.

Farscry wrote:
ranalin wrote:
Scratched wrote:

I'm watching the video, and everything I'm hearing described just seems like they're making a good solid base MMO, but not really anything that grabs me. Flavour and personality are words that come to mind for what's lacking. I just don't get a sense for why I should care about anything in the Tamriel they're presenting, and they presumably want me to live in for a few years.

That seems to be a weird sentiment because they didnt do that for the RPG either yet people flock to it anyway.

Uh, what? Skyrim was dripping with flavor and personality, IMO. It's one of the hallmarks of Elder Scrolls.

You found that once you went into the game but early promos of any of the elder scroll games didnt show much of anything. They basically showed a massive world and invited everyone to come explore.

Edit: Skyrim did tease with a dragon but those are pretty generic in this genre.

Ah, ok now I gotcha. Point well made

Watching that I think that if they take their 1 server multiple layers idea and make you able to control which layer you're in and do something like friends only, I'd be interested. If I have to explore Tamriel with a million other people bunny hopping around and doing trade shouts I'd rather just wait for the next single player Elder Scrolls installment.

Watching that video though they at least have my attention and I plan on following this much more closely.

I died a little when the one developer said.. and I paraphrase "Once you hit level 50 the game really begins". Sorry this screams another subscription MMORPG failure.

TheGameguru wrote:

I died a little when the one developer said.. and I paraphrase "Once you hit level 50 the game really begins". Sorry this screams another subscription MMORPG failure.

There's a contingent of gamers that are mainly interested in the end game content. The comment could have been to mollify those gamers. With an elder scrolls sized world, I'm not worried about running out of content before lvl 50.

It looks great.

I was getting quite excited when they were introducing their new combat system. It sounded like they had gone all out for something fun and engaging but then basically said, "You attack with the right mouse button. You block with the left," and moved on to other subjects.

Im Interested....but off course I am a complete MMORPG virgin with limited multiplayer exp.
I hope someone will hold my hand;)

In the new trailer I didnt see much Archery action going on, lots of 1h sword and destruction magic.
I hope they add illusion magic to the game, that would be great to have your character be forced to take a swing at your own companion because an enemy mage hit you with fury.
My rough understanding of the world is that the center is one big PvP area, but outside that its exploration zones of player/teams vs bot monsters, is that right ?

If I took "Elder Scrolls Online" out of the pitch and replaced it with "Everquest 2" it would still mostly fit. Bad sign. This has to be free to play or it'll make The Old Republic looks like a blockbuster by comparison.

Yup. If BIOWARE Cant keep STAR WARS as a subscription based model what hope does "zenimax studios" have of TES !?

It depends on what they plan to do for the long term. If they have a valid, interesting, sustainable end game that isnt rote then they'll do better than SWTOR. If not then they'll end up the same way.

i'll still argue with people who say SWTOR wasnt successful. If by successful you mean long lasting and numbers like WoW then that may not happen again except possibly by Titan. If you mean making a profit then it was gang busters. They greatly surpassed the numbers they needed to make a profit. They made their money. Doesnt mean it was good for the long run of their product or the customer, but when it comes to money it's rare to find a company that takes that into consideration.

If anything it proved that there's still money to be made. Doesnt help us with the way we want to consume our games though.

I don't think it necessarily has to be F2P but I highly doubt a subscription model would be beneficial to them, especially with keeping players playing. GW2 1 time payment style would probably fit best.

Certis wrote:

If I took "Elder Scrolls Online" out of the pitch and replaced it with "Everquest 2" it would still mostly fit. Bad sign. This has to be free to play or it'll make The Old Republic looks like a blockbuster by comparison.

I got the impression that, as ranalin suggests, part of SWTOR's problem is that it wasn't ready for people to level. To me, it was yet another game that wasn't ready to launch.

SWTOR could have survived as a sub based mmo if they had released a space exploration expansion. An end game based on space would have made them more distinct than a stock WoW style raiding mmo with a branching story.

And ground based PvP or RvR is only doing the license half credit. Luke, Han and Darth were badass pilots as well as ground fighters.

And TBH ground only and crafting only based companions are also doing them half justice. Where would Red 5 and the Millenium Falcon be without R2D2?

edit: I am excited about ESO but Skyrim with RvR is not going to be enough.

fangblackbone wrote:

SWTOR could have survived as a sub based mmo if they had released a space exploration expansion. An end game based on space would have made them more distinct than a stock WoW style raiding mmo with a branching story.

Especially with more spaceship missions (even with the Rebel Assault style they used). That would've been awesome.

Brownypoints wrote:

Yup. If BIOWARE Cant keep STAR WARS as a subscription based model what hope does "zenimax studios" have of TES !?

It wasn't the subscription that did in SWTOR, it was because it was a poorly paced rehash of MMO tropes with a Star Wars veneer and a morality system awkwardly bolted on. The game actually starts out quite well, but eventually they begin repetitiously dragging out the story to keep pace with the standard MMO grind and it becomes really hard for to stay interested. Somewhere around level 45ish I just stopped caring that I came so close to my rival only to have him flee to a different planet YET AGAIN.

They greatly surpassed the numbers they needed to make a profit.

Define that in the context of a MMORPG of the scale of TOR. Are you thinking about box sales and enough months of subscription to cover development/marketing/capex? From what is coming out of Bioware/EA it seems like most people are fairly unhappy with the performance of the product. One can only assume that the team has not reached internal hurdle numbers.

Given the size of Live Teams, Dev Teams, and the support teams its not a trivial number to cover ongoing costs of an MMORPG... though I'm sure we'll see the scale drastically ramp down to help alleviate it.

TheGameguru wrote:
They greatly surpassed the numbers they needed to make a profit.

Define that in the context of a MMORPG of the scale of TOR. Are you thinking about box sales and enough months of subscription to cover development/marketing/capex? From what is coming out of Bioware/EA it seems like most people are fairly unhappy with the performance of the product. One can only assume that the team has not reached internal hurdle numbers.

Given the size of Live Teams, Dev Teams, and the support teams its not a trivial number to cover ongoing costs of an MMORPG... though I'm sure we'll see the scale drastically ramp down to help alleviate it.

They had more than double the numbers of box sales than they stated during a investors call that would give them a profit. Doesnt mean they did what they could to continue on keeping those numbers. While they made their initial goal they've failed since then.