The elephant in the room

Pretty much, yes. Not every MMO, but a large number of them are considered dead in the grand scheme of things.

Wow may have seemed "Hardcore" to someone whos first mmo was wow, but for people who have been around alot longer wow was just another step towards "Ez mode" mmos even when it released.

It's strange, but the MMO I had the most complete MMO experience in was Anarchy Online, which I think peaked at like 20k subscribers.

Ultimately, I've always felt the only thing that matters is:

1) The server(s) have healthy populations. In AO's case, they only had two at the time.
2) The subscription fees bring in enough money to keep the servers running and a dedicated team going with content and bug-fixes. If I was developing an MMO, I'd make sure the projected box sales paid for the actual initial development.

From that standpoint, I have a hard time understanding why games need hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of subscribers to be successful.

But, I am, admittedly, not a game developer myself, so I'm sure I'm missing something.

Yeah. I scratch my head at people who say WoW was ever hardcore or challenging. Compare Molten Core or even Naxx40/60 to Sleeper's Tomb and the difference in difficulty is night and day.



Oh there's nothing wrong with your understanding. It's just how the industry and the media attached to it works. AO might still be operational, but you never hear anything about it. Never see adverts for it. It's also how individuals respond to these games. WAR, AoC, for instance, are also still operational but people say that the games are dead. Media also never speaks of them and adverts rarely if ever get made for them.

Finally, on the other point. This industry has shifted away from games for fun to games for profit. Enough is never enough when you put corporations, like EA, in charge of video games.

I was actually being sarcastic. I'm not missing anything at all.

I'm well aware that in the pursuit of the largest profits these companies can envision, games suffer, when the very same games would likely have been great successes if the publisher was alright with a more modest profit.

Seeing as the devs behind Witcher 2 self-published (I believe), and the digital age that we are in, you'd think developers would self-publish rather than throw themselves at the mercy of publishers like EA who only think about how much profit they can make.

I wish. It would make this whole industry so much better. I was sad to hear that Bioware saddled themselves with EA to make TOR. I knew from the start when the EA logo was attached to it that this game was doomed to be another soulless consumer product.

Bioware selling out to EA will always stand in my mind as one of the saddest moments of gaming history. I guess, even the best creative minds find themselves unable to resist the lure of lots of money.

My reasons why the game failed (in no particular order):
1. The class story lacked real choices (didn't go through all of them but the stories I did see lacked any meaningful choice)
2. Class story on republic side was boring (I wanted to play a Jedi Knight but couldn't stand the story)
3. Lack of exploration (some of the planets like Coruscant or Nar Shadaa are just hallways)
4. The planets are very static with no weather, no day/night cycles, and the mobs just stand there waiting to die
5.The music is good, for the small amount of time it plays, but on every planet I have to listen to the sound of my speeder for just about the whole time I am there.
6. OPs are easy, when you don't hit bugs, and gear from them is way too easy to get
7. I can't level alts, after leveling a character on each faction, without having to replay the same story in the same order. Yes there are class quests, but they are far and few between.
8. PVP is gear based without it you get slaughtered. Didn't mind 1-49, though it got tedious playing the same warzones again and again. It is also unbalanced, not that I expected it to be as it is a difficult thing to do.
9. World PVP happened to me exactly once while leveling.
10. cant swim all the water features are shallow
11. No x-server LFG
12. Extreme population problems and lack of action to correct it
13. The game runs terribly and graphics aren't that good
14. Combat is not very fluid and there are ability delays
15. The game copies heavily from WoW
16. No same gender romance options
17. Lack of in game combat logs
18. Lack of addons. Some people hate them but for people with disabilities it can be very beneficial and allow them a much better gameplay experience. I'm not disabled I just saw a post about this and it made me realize how it could allow much better access to the game and content for some people.
19. No alien species, I mean seriously they are all pretty much recolored humans. Would have liked to see Togruta, Cathar, or Trandoshans as playable.
20. Character customization is seriously lacking; a lot of clones.
21. No way of character customization changes after creation; ie changing hairstyles or adding scars.
22. Nothing to in end-game that is non-combat like pazaak, swoop racing, or pod racing
23. No chat bubbles
24. Can't sit in chairs
25. Space Combat is unintuitive and on rails
26.Crafting is almost useless and is going to be even worse in next patch
27. Lack of intuitive guild features
28. The amount of bugs and the time it is taking to fix them
29. Gear design was terrible (I liked the gear I got in the beginning better then tier gear)
30. Can't have my companions in my legacy tree; this is a very bad oversight.
31. Social points were a good idea but they are poorly implemented.
32. No reputation grinds; it adds to re-playability and can give cool non-combat rewards
33. Can't customize my ship
34. Too many loading screens
35.The fleet was poorly done all the vendors on the fleet should be on Dromund Kaas and Coruscant. Also the Republic fleet looks terrible.
36. The GTN
37.No non-combat macros
38. Customer service; they had closed many of my tickets without resolving them. Also the Hoth incident accusing player of being liars and fraudulent.

My reasons why the game failed (in no particular order):
1. The class story lacked real choices (didn't go through all of them but the stories I did see lacked any meaningful choice)
2. Class story on republic side was boring (I wanted to play a Jedi Knight but couldn't stand the story)
3. Lack of exploration (some of the planets like Coruscant or Nar Shadaa are just hallways)
4. The planets are very static with no weather, no day/night cycles, and the mobs just stand there waiting to die
5.The music is good, for the small amount of time it plays, but on every planet I have to listen to the sound of my speeder for just about the whole time I am there.
6. OPs are easy, when you don't hit bugs, and gear from them is way too easy to get
7. I can't level alts, after leveling a character on each faction, without having to replay the same story in the same order. Yes there are class quests, but they are far and few between.
8. PVP is gear based without it you get slaughtered. Didn't mind 1-49, though it got tedious playing the same warzones again and again. It is also unbalanced, not that I expected it to be as it is a difficult thing to do.
9. World PVP happened to me exactly once while leveling.
10. cant swim all the water features are shallow
11. No x-server LFG
12. Extreme population problems and lack of action to correct it
13. The game runs terribly and graphics aren't that good
14. Combat is not very fluid and there are ability delays
15. The game copies heavily from WoW
16. No same gender romance options
17. Lack of in game combat logs
18. Lack of addons. Some people hate them but for people with disabilities it can be very beneficial and allow them a much better gameplay experience. I'm not disabled I just saw a post about this and it made me realize how it could allow much better access to the game and content for some people.
19. No alien species, I mean seriously they are all pretty much recolored humans. Would have liked to see Togruta, Cathar, or Trandoshans as playable.
20. Character customization is seriously lacking; a lot of clones.
21. No way of character customization changes after creation; ie changing hairstyles or adding scars.
22. Nothing to in end-game that is non-combat like pazaak, swoop racing, or pod racing
23. No chat bubbles
24. Can't sit in chairs
25. Space Combat is unintuitive and on rails
26.Crafting is almost useless and is going to be even worse in next patch
27. Lack of intuitive guild features
28. The amount of bugs and the time it is taking to fix them
29. Gear design was terrible (I liked the gear I got in the beginning better then tier gear)
30. Can't have my companions in my legacy tree; this is a very bad oversight.
31. Social points were a good idea but they are poorly implemented.
32. No reputation grinds; it adds to re-playability and can give cool non-combat rewards
33. Can't customize my ship
34. Too many loading screens
35.The fleet was poorly done all the vendors on the fleet should be on Dromund Kaas and Coruscant. Also the Republic fleet looks terrible.
36. The GTN
37.No non-combat macros
38. Customer service; they had closed many of my tickets without resolving them. Also the Hoth incident accusing player of being liars and fraudulent.

1.3 mil includes the free month given out. We really have no clue how many people are actually playing.