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F2P up until level 15.
The other levels will soon follow.
TOR-tanic confirmed
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Originally Posted by dave is ok
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Originally Posted by Yoshi
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Originally Posted by Opaque
I feel so smug right now.Quote:
Originally Posted by dave is ok
Yoshi couldn't predict the sunrise.
It'll work, the first 20ish levels are THE BEST. They'll sucker people for at least a month.
I'll give the game a go.
A trial and F2P aren't even remotely the same thing, unless WoW has been F2P for years. WTF are you smug about?Quote:
Originally Posted by Opaque
I have no doubt it will work, it's a very clever business model. Hell, even I'm going to play those first 15 levels for free now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chux
"F2P to 15" and "Trail" both mean the same thing. WoW has been half free to play since the first day they allowed you to play to a certain level for free, yes. Eventually both of these games will be fully F2P, but it's gonna hit ToR first and it's gonna hit within the next year.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
BTW they announced this at E3.
I see. So you're smug about moving the goal posts on when the game will go F2P, since you just restated the year mark and reset the clock. Kudos!Quote:
Originally Posted by Opaque
If anyone wants to stat up and have a leveling buddy let me know and jump on the "Canderous Ordo" server. I still haven't played as a few classes and I'd be down to level with anyone.
Also, that server has been pretty well populated since the server transfers started.
I played a few levels of this today. It's certainly an MMO.
I too am giving this game a shot -- I know what to expect though. Is it true that there has been like no new end-game raids since launch?
No
So it turns out there's no autoattack at all in this game? That shit is going to get tedious extremely fast with a smuggler. I guess also there's the problem of your "white DPS" only being as good as your willingness to spam click the right mouse button. Maybe high level rotations don't really leave much room for autoattacking, but it still seems like....it should have been there?
Nope. The basic attack is just there when you don't have the resources to do anything else. That's it.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrialSword
I'm trying to even think of the last major MMO that launched with auto-attack. Maybe Aion? FFXIV eventually patched it in, but didn't have it for a long time.
I've been playing a smuggler since November and I never once thought to myself "man, this game needs an auto attack." In fact, it would probably fuck up more than it would help.
And Mech is right, the basic attack is only for when your energy (for smugglers) drops too low and you need to get it back to at least 60% to fill as fast as it can. So when you're using it you did something wrong (at least at max level).
I'm guessing WoW will pretty much be the only MMO I'll ever really enjoy, if I ever even get back to that. Sorry!
Play an MMO with a better combat system.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrialSword
I think I'd probably want to just play the game I enjoy more! Maybe WoW's combat system is like 7 years old, but I do enough incessant clicking in Diablo 3. I wouldn't get all upset because I don't like your game, they all pretty much suck in one way or another.
Also I laughed because this game is pretty much WoW, but with more clicking.
I'm not mad because you don't like ToR... I hate ToR. I'm just recommending that if you want to enjoy an MMO, find one with an in-depth combat system. They are out there.
Which ones do you like?
As long as server-side lag and no clipping exists, there isn't an MMO with truly dynamic action RPG combat. I'd rather play a game that's more a facsimile of action RPG combat, using a heavier focus strategic timing, positioning and pre-combat math, and executing it well, than trying to be this twitchy, dynamic "real-time" affair like Tera. For all its other flaws, if people could get MMO combat to behave like Amalur, complete with no-lag responsiveness and funky zoning/clipping, I'd love to try that out.
The closest I ever came to seeing that was a game called Vanquish, one of those Korean F2P games that seems like it was built on the source engine. It kind of sucked otherwise though.
EDIT: Game was called Vindictus
Sounds like you haven't played Tera at all.
I mean, it doesn't use percentage numbers to calculate if you win or lose, but player characters all take up actual space so there's no crowding on top of each other and aside from the warrior they all have something of a measured pace to their movements and dodging. It's twitchy to an extent, but the biggest changes it makes to MMO combat are manual aiming and the removal of percentage-based attacks and defense. I'm really not sure how you could want something like Amalur but not want Tera.
I'm not playing any MMO's for awhile.. I played a lot of Age of Conan. Which has advanced a lot since it's release and has a lot still going on. Good combat, lots of options. AoC has some free to play action going on.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
Tera is another game with great, advanced combat for an MMO. It really sets it apart from other stuff. A lot of the balance and raiding, end-game stuff doesn't make sense at this point and the group I play with kind of lost interest.
I hadn't planned on swapping to FFXIV so much, but when I went to start up again I found out there was a special mount that could only be gotten in this current patch which is being removed this month and you just needed to be level 30 to get. So I grinded that out and... just kept going.
How is it? It's $20 with a coupon at Best Buy starting Sunday, and I was sort of thinking about it.Quote:
Originally Posted by MechDeus
It's less than $7 on Steam right now, but your ass needs to stick with FFXI.
It's pretty awesome. I had a review but Nick never posted it. There's a preview up on the site that I did write.
Probably the closest thing I could think to compare it to right now is Amalur, but that's not to say they play exactly the same. Pick it up and when we're done with FFXI we can do some Tera.
I played Age of Conan a few years ago, it is pretty good but I wouldn't want to go through Tortage again.
Yeah I have five level 80 characters on AoC. I never want to see Tortage again. Actually getting to 80 in Conan is kind of rough, but the end game and the faction stuff is really solid.
Tera is kind of the opposite at this point. Leveling up your character and learning how to do everything is super fun, but once you hit max level and get all your T-12 stuff from the group dungeons.... the faction stuff and raiding is pretty bad.
Did you mean Rift, and not Tera? Because Tera doesn't seem to be on Steam at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
...thank god. I searched, didnt see, figured i was doing something wrong. Lol.
Oops. Yep. Tera was really cheap somewhere recently, but obviously it wasn't there.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrialSword
SWTOR getting legit free-to-play option in the fall.
So like, this has to be the biggest bomb in gaming history right?
I gotta say I downloaded the free trial and wasn't arsed to play it a 3rd time. I deleted it the day after the Guild Wars 2 beta weekend ended.
So quicker than my earliest prediction, faster than WoW and still within my latest "for sure within a year" statement.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
But Yoshi was right, this game is the best and will never go free to play.
Nobody cares about your predictions.
I really like what they're calling the new F2P currency: Cartel Coins
Not necessarily. Many MMOs have no real new content in a long time and even afterwards are very spread out in releases, they're basically just content to run the servers and keep the subscription money that is there coming in. EA is probably still looking to get this thing big again and was probably using the free levels as a test to see what kind of response they would get. It was likely overall very positive to the point where they think they can pull in more customers and make more money using a cash shop than they can having subscription fees.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
The potentially worrisome aspect is that p2p to f2p models tend to have hiccups and stupid limiters on them, because the developers don't want to screw over the idiots that bought lifetime subscriptions and some people are still willing to pay $15/month anyway. So it'll probably end up with some stuff locked away like character slots and areas that are available to paying customers.
The details are on news sites. It looks like most end-game content will be locked away unless you pay the currency or a sub fee. Whatever that entails, like PvP arenas and/or raids, is really not specific yet.
http://www.swtor.com/FREE/features
I'm a goddamned Nostradamus.
I care.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
These idiots are putting at $15 a month though. Jesus christ.
What a disaster.
It couldn't happen to a better company. You know when I can only make it six months, they're fucked. SWG remains the best MMO ever and probably always will, as the genre as we know it is all but dead.
Looking at what you don't get access to (or very limited access) I'll stick with my $13 a month. Although I'd recommend at least trying out the class stories if they're free.
Also, all MMO's are going to go to F2P eventually.
I'm not privy to EA's financial details (obviously), but I really see no way that this thing turned out to have a positive ROI. Keep in mind a huge chunk of the money they've gotten has been sent over to Lucas.Quote:
Originally Posted by MechDeus
There was a conference call today. Let me see if they mentioned numbers.
There's a graphic for what you get as a free member versus the sub
Attachment 66535
Operations are raids, yeah? Looks like you're fucked if you wanna raid at all.
Exactly... this was a shock to no one. Jokes (and bets) were made on how quickly the game would go F2P.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timber
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"On the investors conference call, Frank Gibeau (head of Labels) confirmed that The Old Republic's subscription base has indeed fallen beneath 1 million and that the company has been "disappointed" with the game's performance. Gibeau noted that 500,000 is the break-even point, and while the game is still well above that, the numbers are not acceptable, he said."
This conversation isn't interesting enough for one thread, let alone two. Can a mod move all this shit to the game's thread?
edit: Thanks, Mech!
The genre has never done better and has more releases than ever before that are doing much better than ever before. The problem is that WoW's success put a lot of people's expectations at that level of subscribers, instead of the 500k players that MMOs used to and still do live on (in 2004 FFXI and Everquest were the most popular MMOs in the world with around 450-500k subs each, and Ultima Online was like 250k).Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
You're right in that it may not have returned the full amount yet (napkin math looks like they made 100mil from initial sales and assuming they got second month subs from all those, and the report is that it cost 200mil to develop), I'm just saying this looks like a proactive attempt to continue making money instead of letting it slowly crumble while they cut staff to save costs and stop offering new content.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
That's a fair point. I never gave much thought to the number of subscribers, though as development costs increase, the break even point will too, since the sub fees have remained largely flat.Quote:
Originally Posted by MechDeus
Anyone that plays MMOs could see that their weird single-player story focus wasn't going to work. The people who were attracted to it finished the story and left during their trial month. The real MMO faggorts don't care and rush the content to play the end game.
All of us that had been playing these horrible games knew how it'd go from the start.
I will definitely play through the story segment for free and then peace out, that sounds wonderful.
Matrix Online and that space MMO with Lord British were bigger flops than this. Still, spending 200 million even before advertising, and culling the staff twice suggests TOR was pretty floppy.
it's really not...Quote:
Originally Posted by Mzo
Those games didn't cost $200 million to make (although I think Tabula Rasa was pretty expensive).Quote:
Originally Posted by AaronChance
I don't think anything was a bigger flop than this.Quote:
Originally Posted by AaronChance
I'll definitely agree that WoW ramped up expectations to an unrealistic degree for many publishers. There are a lot of games that tried something new, or had a gimmick they wanted to trumpet over WoW, but none of them really understood what was keeping people IN WoW: constant patching, re-balancing, content updates, and very clear, straightforward design philosophy via Dev blogs and forum communication, with a dash of good customer service. They definitely had their reputation bolstering them in the beginning, and WoW launched at a time when competition was light, but they have retained their subscriber base because they actually are dedicated and timely about updates. Too many times a modern MMO comes out, gets consumed utterly by MMO nerds within a month, and a lack of gating or a clear plan for future updates makes them swarm all over another MMO before returning to WoW.
True. I tried the beta shortly before launch it it felt like pre-BC WoW. But not in the awesome we-don't-know-what-we're-doing-let's-plan-a-trip-to-Booty-Bay-during-work way. Shitty quests set in a dead, strangely claustrophobic world.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
I stopped playing because at any given time there were like 9 other players on a planet that I was on. It was B O R I N G.
There's a lot of this. The biggest issue facing a new MMO is that it needs to hit the ground running at launch, as they don't have the luxury time WoW did when building itself up. It's not enough to have an MMO come out with content and a smooth launch, they need to be able to say they will have new dungeons and content in 2-3 months and consistently pull that off. When going up against a game that puts out good content on a tight schedule then you need to prepare like a Big Dogs shirt and go big or go home.Quote:
Originally Posted by TrialSword
They also need to stick to tighter budgets and have 500k subs be a success, aiming for 1.5+ million people to cough up funds monthly for one month is just asking for bad news. Guild Wars did pretty good for itself by designing around no monthly fee, and that game was kind of garbage.
But just on sheer developer interest I'm hoping Sting makes an announcement about their Episode III MMO this year.
I was never on that dead of a server but once the server transfers hit the population on mine more than doubled. There's 200-300 people on the fleet during peak hours and unless I'm on after like 2 am there are always tons of people on the planets (and I'm sure that will go up on the lower level planets once F2P hits).Quote:
Originally Posted by Chux
World of Warcraft launched at a time when the MMO competition was actually pretty strong. In hindsight it seems light, but that's only because of what WoW did. The MMO landscape had a lot of entrenched games (EQ, DAoC, UO, FFXI, SWG, Asheron's Call, CoH) and had some big ones on the horizon. Yes people were seriously wondering if WoW or EverQuest 2 would come out on top.
The issue with TOR is that it's not good enough, but I don't know if any Diku-type game could be good enough for the MMO fanbase these days. WoW has ratcheted up what people expect so much. Developers spend tens of millions of dollars making tons of content and a few hundred poopsockers rush through it all in a week, then hit every gaming board in existence and talk about what a shit job the developers did.
The only way around it is to not design your game like World of Warcraft.
How do you design it then? That's the million dollar question. WoW's model is the only one that appeals to a gigantic audience, it can be super easy to play for anyone, or challenging for the people who want to study and become amazing at the game. At the same time without requiring fighting game reaction times.
By luxury time I was referring to that the content releases didn't need to be so scheduled, things were released at a fairly languished pace back then which is why WoW had years to change its hilariously laughable talent trees and god-awful skill design that was reminiscent of Diablo 2's vomit-out-a-bunch-of-shit-and-pray-some-of-it-works. The game picked and chose what to take from other games and put it all together while, like you said, other companies just try to imitate this one game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff-chan
I remember the biggest difference WoW and EQ/FFXI/SWG was that it gave an immediate sense of power to me by fighting giant wolves and kobolds and other human-sized things that actually seemed like a threat, instead of baby rats and bunnies. Their underlying skills may have been put together by retarded monkeys but they clearly put a ton of thought into the world, how it would all work out, and how to reward the player and keep them coming back. MMOs like Rift that copy WoW and put a tiny spin on it are just destined for middle-of-the-road at best because they aren't looking to see what can be improved on the genre as a whole.By doing their own thing. The goal shouldn't be to take on the biggest challenger there is and topple them, it should be to put out a good game in its own right. It's the same way that Virtua Fighter doesn't replace Street Fighter, or anything else like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thief Silver
How about an MMO that gives an FFXII or FFXIII style of combat, where you control a small group of characters instead of just one and design preset tactics that can be swapped on the fly? I know there's a few MMOs that let you control multiple characters but I don't think they work like that, so it's another aspect that could be investigated. Or maybe even just having something like FFXIII's combat with one character when you can be any class and swap on the fly as needed in each fight. There's still plenty of paths that can be looked into and we're getting some great stuff like PSO2 and Tera.
The issue is that companies that want to try and dump huge amounts of money into an MMO are trying to play it too safe, and that's where they're failing.
There is way, way too much WoW praise in this thread. It's a commercial juggernaut, but its crafting and vendor model is terrible, and it caters to the lowest common denominator. What we need is something besides EVE to go way the other direction. Make it complex and require dedication. Let the dumb fucks and the people who only want to PvP or raid play something else. That's why these games fall apart for me at max level. There's nothing to do if you don't care for arenas (world PvP for life) or scheduled raids.
Very few games get away with being a second life these days. You won't see too many more of them simply because it's so easy to pigeonhole the demographic for such a game as extremely small, though no doubt fanatical. People would rather develop a segmented game tied together with some loose lore affiliation and let those individual elements cater to many different types of gamers.
lol crafting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
I should have also mentioned customizable player housing, cities, etc. I had every collectable anything in SWG on display in my house and played for over three years continuously without getting bored.
I have to give credit to WoW for the achievements though. SWTOR's really paled by comparison.
I think TrialSword hit the nail on the head.
There's praise for WoW because it did the fights better than any other MMO ever. By the time they were done with vanilla Blizzard was developing boss fights that required coordination between all the players combined with actual physical reactionary skill, and until a few years ago every other game in the genre had the fights practically pre-determined by gear and strategy before you even went in. There was some basic LOS mechanics and that was about it. EQ had shit where the healers would literally just stand in a row and time their heals to be in order. That's it. If your group can do that you pretty much win. Shit like Nef was practically revolutionary for the genre and Naxx was just ridiculous at release.
Even up to when I stopped playing in Cata their hard mode fights were the best in the business, and I only quit because of burnout on the game itself and not because of its quality.
Stuff like FFXIV has a good set of ideas buried in there, where crafters and gatherers play a real role in a certain raid. There's a fight that cycles between two phases of either active or preparing, and while in preparation gatherers can submit materials for the upcoming battle in exchange for rewards. When the battle goes active 8-player groups of combat classes and crafters can then enter, and crafters will build things that will bolster the player side while the combat classes do their usual thing against the NPC assault.
Also: you should probably look into the upcoming ArcheAge. Here's some brief Q&A sessions about their player built housing and such.
Yeah, I don't question the quality of the raids. I just don't want to do them.Quote:
Originally Posted by MechDeus
The fundamentally broken thing about the genre is the gear progression. Crafting should determine gear quality, and skill/organization should determine dungeon/raid success. Fuck tiered gear and all that shit. Beating the bosses should be its own reward. If there has to be loot as an incentive, make it trophy like.
Yoshi is so fucking weird. Only wants to play super polished AAA games or arcade/retro classics or grind for gear and other petty bullshit in an MMO by himself. And then be disgustingly critical of others for liking much less offensive things.
It does like no other, that's the weird thing about your complaint. Yeah, there's a baseline gear requirement but it's always pretty easy to hit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
Actually, FFXIV probably does that a little more since I've beaten 3/5 end game fights so far using the shittiest level 50 weapons in the game. I can probably do the other two with little to no problem once I bother joining groups for them.
This is news to no one I would think.Quote:
Originally Posted by FirstBlood
So wait, your dedication to useless, boring grinding should determine your loot as opposed to organizing a raid and beating a complicated boss?
get the fuck outta here.
I think Yoshi assumes that in the best available gear, you can just steamroll over WoW raid bosses - which isn't really true until the next expansion pack and never true in certain cases. I've seen level 80's wipe on level 60 content like C'thun
What useless, boring grinding? We're not talking about garbage WoW crafting here.Quote:
Originally Posted by FirstBlood
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the incentive is all wrong, and it makes crafting, which is already poorly designed, pretty worthless.Quote:
Originally Posted by dave is ok
I'd like to see the exact same gear get you through every raid in a given expansion and only the actual fight complexity and difficulty get harder from raid to raid. Not having everyone look exactly the damn same would also be nice and could be handled through better designed crafting and dismissal of tired gear.
TWIN EMPS LOLOLOLQuote:
Originally Posted by dave is ok
Professions in SWG were mind numbing. The game was just a giant playground with no direction, what actually drew me to WoW was that it felt like a real video game combined with an MMO. I saw the instances and raids as levels, and it gave me goals to work towards.
I'm not real big on making a house, setting up vaporators and mining machines all over to mine for me while I sit at my workbench watching my dude craft shit for years.
Thus where the RP in MMORPG comes in.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mzo
But I think you're right. What I liked about it was that it wasn't like every other game. because MMOs are always going to be bad if you compare them to every other game, because the combat is typically bad, the graphics are bad, etc.
First of all, I don't think WoW's model is what appeals to a gigantic audience. WoW is what appeals to that audience.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thief Silver
That audience wants a game as good as WoW which will never happen. I just don't think it's possible, Blizzard has too much institutional knowledge and knows their audience too well.
Look at Guild Wars 2 - ArenaNet has basically said this is a full real MMO (which it is), but gear and raiding is not the point. The game also encourages multiple play throughs through the same content. There's no way ArenaNet could satisfy the WoW audience better than Blizzard can.
Go play Second Life.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
Minecraft the MMO. Except not as hard as fighting Creepers.
Why not give the player an option to do one, the other, or both?Quote:
Originally Posted by Mzo
hmm..no opinions on the Free to Play option in tor huh? not even a "i told you so". tnl is slippin
Read the thread?
skimmed it lol
Is this game 100% ftp now or what's the deal?
I arbitrarily got the urge to give it a shot until it's boring or not free, so it's downloading now, any advice on early decisions?
The FTP game lets you do everything but it is really gimped. You'll see.
Not a bad game.
It's rather insulting the levels to which they've locked things down if you're not a subscriber. Being a subscriber it's basically exactly as you would imagine, but they have everything from rested experience to the ability to hide your helm as microtransactions for F2P players. However, the space PVP is pretty much unrestricted gameplay for everyone.
If you aren't going to drop cash on it I'd imagine you'll get bored in the late teens somewhere, as they still treat you normally during the intro storyline and then halve your XP gain forever once you're done with that (and the game wasn't designed to handle such a grind).
yep, i got bored of it. half the experience, you dont get all your rewards. and so much bullshit to pay for to have any kind of real experience. im surprised noone has called them out on this. but yes, i stopped playing. no desire. This is honestly the first F2P game i've played, with such a huge pay wall.Quote:
Originally Posted by MechDeus
It's basically every fear of what think F2P games are like come to life. But yeah, I forgot that they offer quest rewards and then tell you that you can't have them if you're a free player when you finish the quest. That shit was infuriating.
Tera did the opposite, which was to leave the base game untouched for free players and then offer additional bonuses beyond normal amounts for subscribers. It's probably the most customer friendly transition I've ever seen.
What sucks is that it is a totally cool game to play. They should've went the GW2 model, considering it's story based a lot of people would pop in once in a while.
Tera's combat is also about 1000 times more interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by MechDeus
I really really hated TOR. Friends I was playing with got into the PVP for a bit. The PVE was the worst.
Tera's combat is so much more interesting. i have a sorc and a war, and they are both way more interesting than just standing there looking at your cooldowns.Quote:
Originally Posted by sedition
And Tera's paywall can almost be ignored. its mainly costumes,mounts(even though they give you one for free), and xp boosts. ToR can fuck off.