Star Wars the Old Republic had a lot of hype building up to its
launch. It sold over 1.5 million copies and had one of the smoothest
launches of any MMO in the last several years. After that, things took a
turn. Bad press, bugs and perceived lack of end game led to
hemorrhaging subscription numbers. From 1.7 million to 1.3 million and
now somewhere between 500 thousand and a million. Why did this happen?
What drove the MMO player base to turn their back on this product? There
were several reasons, all of them had a significant impact.
At
launch, more than 100 servers were created in an attempt to keep the
launch smooth. This successfully avoided any negative press during the
head start and official game launch, months later this decision created a
problem. Populations shrunk by 25% which left many servers
underpopulated. This problem magnified itself as bored players flocked
to active servers to create alternate characters or took a break waiting
for new content. Underpopulated servers became virtual ghost towns.
A
major part of the player retention strategy was the assumption that
most players would want to see all eight personal stories. When you
consider Bioware's trademark branching morality based approach to story
telling it was easy to assume that many players may even want to try
out different options in each of the stories. In practice this is not
what happened, for a couple of reasons. Primarily lack of depth. This is
true in the personal story as well as the world arcs that all classes
experience. While you can make light side or dark side decisions there
is no nuance, no interplay between quests. Furthermore very little
changes from your actions. You can choose to kill someone, they die. You
can choose to let them live. they leave and are never seen or spoken of
again. They may as well be dead. Even the dialog lacks depth. For the
most part most NPC's only react to the way you treat them in the
following audio clip, after that everything is forgotten. These factors
make replaying the same story unsatisfying. It doesn't take long to
realize that choices don't really matter. There is no impact outside of
the final cut scene on the planet. No one on this planet will be seen
again regardless of what you do. This doesn't even address the large
portion of MMO players who only care about End Game. This is a culture
that has been built over the last decade and the SWTOR team should have
been prepared for it.
For End Game SWTOR launched with
3 Warzones for instanced PVP, 6 Hard Mode Flashpoints for challenging
small group play, 1 and a half Operations for challenging large group
play, and two daily mission hubs for solo and small group play. They
also had an Open PVP area. On paper this all seems pretty reasonable.
There were things for most players to do. Unfortunately not enough
thought was put into player behavior and most of these systems started
to fall apart. The ratio of Empire to Republic players on most servers
was greater than 2 to 1. This destroyed the open world PVP area, and
also vastly diminished the enjoyment of Warzones. One of the three
Warzones allowed for same faction combat, resulting in a much higher
occurrence of this Warzone for the majority of players. Huttball went
from being the greatest instanced PVP map ever designed to being that
game you were tired of playing. Hard Mode Flashpoints were hard for the
average player, enrage timers required solid performance out of every
group member. With no group finder, finding a group could take up to an
hour of shouting in general chat on the fleet, and no guarantee of
success. This lead to frustration for casual players. Organized players
were more interested in Operations. In addition to the second Operation
not being complete at launch, both were far too easy. For most groups
the only challenge came from unintended bugs in the boss encounters.
As
time passed the development team worked to correct many of these
issues. Server populations have been corrected by a merge that not only
increased the active user base at all times of the day but also fixed
the faction imbalance on most servers. The addition of a robust group
finder allows for the average player to successfully participate in Hard
Mode Flashpoints. A third Operation was added that was significantly
more challenging than the first two. All Warzones now allow same faction
play, resulting in a much more diverse play experience. Unfortunately
problems continue to arise.
Layoffs in the community
team have left the players feeling cut off from the development team.
Information about where the game is going comes infrequently and often
with little detail.
A major combat overhaul with
massive class balancing occurred in 1.2. This, combined with delays in
the ranked PVP system, has left the PVP community unsatisfied.
The
developers have promised a rework on Nightmare mode Operations that
will create the intense difficulty hard core guilds seek. It has been
months since 1.3 was released and this promise has not been realized.
Earlier
this year, at the Guild Summit, players were told new class story would
be coming later this year. Most recently when Makeb was announced the
community was told that it would not include the progression of class
stories and to expect that sometime next year.
Star Wars: The Old Republic put all of their eggs in one basket -- Story. More specifically the ownership of your own personal
Star Wars story. That basket has two giant holes in it. Truthfully,
your choices don't matter, once you realize that some of the magic is
gone. More importantly, at 50 your story stops. Much effort was put in
place to attempt to address the fragmented community and their
individual desires, this shotgun approach has resulted in overall
improvements in all areas, but has failed to place SWTOR ahead of its
competition in any one area. Meanwhile the most front facing feature
languishes.
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