BioWare says subscription MMO audience 'limited'
Star Wars: The Old Republic game director James Ohlen talks about how the team responded to the general trend of MMOs switching to F2P during the game's development, and how he thinks the game can coexist alongside World of Warcraft and Rift.
Star Wars: The Old Republic is a commercial hit, but it also has plenty of investment to make up for. The game uses a standard subscription model, and doesn't seem to be planning to change that anytime soon. Game director James Ohlen admits that the audience for subscription MMOs is "limited," and most players only take on one at a time. Still, he suggests that more than one MMO can find success.
"Obviously, there can only be a few subscription-based games," Ohlen told IGN. "There is a limited MMO audience and not a ton of that audience is playing more than one MMO, but I still think there's room for more than just one really successful online game. I think Star Wars: The Old Republic can coexist with World of Warcraft and other successful games like Rift. You can have multiple MMOs with a subscription being successful as long as those games fulfill the requirements of high quality, good polish, lots of content, and continuing to do high value updates on a regular basis."
Despite more MMOs moving to a free-to-play model in the waning months of The Old Republic's development, he says it "didn't really impact us." He reiterated earlier comments that the size and scope of the game makes it a different tier than F2P titles. "The quality, the polish has to be very, very high, and then you need to have a plan to continue to deliver free content on a regular basis. If you do those things, I think you can succeed as a subscription-based game."
Ohlen has previously said that the team is focused on a subscription model "right now." For the time being, though, BioWare seems to be sticking to its guns on the traditional model.
-
Shacknews
replySteve Watts posted a new article, BioWare says subscription MMO audience 'limited'.
Star Wars: The Old Republic game director James Ohlen talks about how the team responded to the general trend of MMOs switching to F2P during the game's development, and how he thinks the game can coexist alongside World of Warcraft and Rift.-
If the subscriptions were cheaper than $15 a month you might see more people trying others. Just a thought. They could offer more variety in the pricing system instead of $15 or F2P.
-
Is $15 a month really that much, assuming you have a higher then minimum wage job?
I mean, its the same price as going to a restaurant once a month.-
-
Pricy? Compared to what? $60 will buy you a a 9-12 hour game. Games like Skyrim are not the norm, and certainly outliers compared to all releases.
$15 also buys you a ticket to see a 90m-3hr movie.
The $60 up front cost will probably give you at least 20 hours in the first month. The $15 a month will probably give you another 20 hours per month.
Cost per hour that's not a lot compared to other games, or other sources of entertainment.-
Apples and oranges. Games offer replayability which is why people play them so long. Movies can be replayed too, going to the movies each time and paying for attending - but people usually don't do that. Your (crap and drama-queenish) comparasion would be equal to watching a movie several times at the movies.
-
-
-
-
-
At max level the only grindey thing are the dailies and that's if you want to get the bis item for 3 slots. Even then, compared to other mmo's it's not terribly much (doing all of the dailies for ~2 weeks), and certainly isn't required to have more fun later.
Crew skills are basically on auto-pilot. Money is abundant (especially if you're doing the dailies). Normal mode raids are pretty easy (difficulty is between WoW's raid finder & normal mode), and hard-mode flashpoints get pretty quick once you get through them.
I think the longest level took, what? Four hours of questing?
-
I'm like 5k xp shy of 40, and I've been overlevelled most of the game, and haven't had to grind anything.
-
At max level you have to grind your ass off doing dailies to get your PvP gear since not each bag is guaranteed. I've been 50 for like 5 weeks and haven't gotten all my Champion gear doing my dailies/weeklies every day.
Then after that you need to grind to Valour rank 60 to get access to the next tier of PvP gear, then grind daillies for the gear itself.
And since the 1.1 changes, if you play Republic, you will get significantly less valour then the Empire side and you may not always be able to complete your Illium daily (depending on your server faction populations).-
The statement was, you have to work (in-game) to buy fun. This implies either grinding out the levels, or grinding out gear/consumables (work) to get into instances & raids (fun).
Yes, PvP's a grind, but the end goal of pvp is more of the same pvp. If you don't find pvp to be fun (as in, it's more on the "work" side), then don't do pvp.
-
-
-
-
-
-
$60 is only if you're buying games at launch. I got Skyrim during the recent Steam sale for $40, and I've already put in over 65 hours.
I pre-ordered Battlefield 3 for $42 and I've put in about 110 hours.
While these are slightly anomalous, it's not like I had to work really hard to get this much value. All you have to do is just accept not buying every game at launch and wait a little bit before you buy.
Also, just to make it clear, I'm in no way saying that an MMO subscription isn't worth it or that it is expensive in absolute terms, just that compared a lot of other games, unless you're really into the MMO and play it a lot you're paying relatively more for the game.
-
-
-
Depends on the target audience. I figure MMOs are usually directed towards teenagers & college kids as their main consumers who also tend to not have a large disposable income, if any at all. Working adults on the other hand probably won't feel it's a good value since they tend to lack the time to actually play up to the amount they feel will justify the extra $15/mo fee.
Also, where can I go for $15 restaurant dinners?! That value seems way too low. -
For one MMO NO but if you want to encourage people to try other subscription services it certainly is.
-
-
It'd be interesting to see if any major MMO ever goes to a tiered subscription system.
Maybe something like $15/mo for unlimited, current standard, but then a $10/5 tier where you only got say, 40/20 hours per month.
It'd be a nice step above the F2P model which usually locks players out of content without shelling out certain amounts of money (or optionally continuing to subscribe at the same price as before), and definitely better than say, a trial account where you can only get to level 10/20/whatever.
There's definitely room for more than one MMO in the market, and I'd say there's room for more than one per player, depending on interest level...but at the $15/mo price, I doubt there's many people willing to subscribe to more than one because it just feels like wasting money (having done it before myself) when you're not playing the game you have to pay for regularly.
Obviously the issue of player dedication is an issue as well. We invest not merely hours, but *days*, and depending on the game, maybe a week or more of actual playtime merely in getting characters to the maximum level. For people that continue playing at that level, there's obviously characters with weeks or even months of total playtime. That kind of investment is hard to let go of and just switch to another MMO.-
I think the real limit has been that most of these games have converted from a content and feature set that weren't designed for f2p. So, it's been harder to build an incremental or tiered system. Oddly, SWTOR actually would work for the single fact that you could buy gear with real money for a certain look for your toon, and then cram your mods into it for the stats. BW makes various styles, looks, seasonal stuff, or TF like hats heh, and doesn't break the game because it's all cosmetic. hmmmm
-
All that cosmetic stuff is predicated on players being heavily invested in their characters though, which doesn't promote playing more than one game.
-
-
-
-
I'm sorry, but I just don't find this game worth a subscription. It's a good game for the most part, but I just can't find enough to like about it to justify $15 a month. Then again, I used to be a die-hard WoW player but it too has fallen far from what I loved about it and I no longer feel it is worth a subscription fee either. And that is saying a lot for me. While I wish them nothing but success, I just don't feel that ToR is strong enough to hold a subscription based model for very long.
-
While I have zero interest in this game since I left beta, I find it somewhat humorous at those that complain about a measly $15.00 sub fee. Heck, back in the day when we dialed into BBS systems or early AOL to play DnD, we paid $10.00-$12.00 an hour to game. $15.00 for unlimited hours of game time is cheaper than going to a movie and ordering a small popcorn. I just can't help but find the analogy amusing. If you cannot afford it and leave beyond your means as is, perhaps it isn't the hobby for you?
-
and *live* beyond your means....
-
Come on, dude. 45$ for 3 months when you've just bought a 50-60$ game? That's a lot of dough, particularly for an experience that you're locked out of the moment you stop paying. Is it that surprising that people say 'fuck it, I'll play Diablo/Guild Wars' when presented with that kind of barrier?
-
when you compare it to all the other trivial and useless things you spend your money on you cannot help but think its humorous.
-
-
How much of that $8 is necessity of eating vs. the convenience of not having to make your own lunch and carrying it around with you? Not having to make, transport, and store my own lunch is definitely worth a few dollars in my opinion, maybe not $5 out of an $8 lunch necessarily, but you can't really compare food costs to a MMO sub.
-
If a cup of ramen is still $0.99, then that is how much of the $8 is necessity. Just because you can't eat your MMO subscription to live doesn't mean the comparison between it and buying food is invalid. Any money spent on food and drink above and beyond starvation and dehydration is fair game for comparison.
I don't even get why you're taking this line of thought anyway. It isn't like any of us are stuck choosing between an MMO and the damn soup line. -
-
-
-
I suppose next he'll say $60 for a game is too little and we should all be paying something closer to $200 a game!
-
Intelligence is a highly sought after character nowadays....
-
-
It isn't a problem that one or a few games are worth any amount of money but the precedence it sets. In the past there were a handful of $60 Retail PC games but the vast majority were around the $39-45 mark. At least until major publishers decided that every game has to be $60 instead of priced on quality and merit. There are indie games I have purchased around $5-10 that I would gladly paying more and $60 blockbusters I have regretted full price.
Without real demos it becomes harder to know what games will be worth the asking price. You also are dealing with people that stick with knowns rather than taking a risk because of the pricing barriers.
-
-
-
In the 80s, NES games could go for $60-80 apiece. I had to bust my ass during summers to afford my new-game habit.
-
-
While I agree that $15 a month doesn't really sound like that much, (and I used to feel the same way for WoW) this game just doesn't have that type of value to me. For me, it does not feel like an MMO, it doesn't have that EQ or WoW feel to it. I just don't feel it has enough to justify the monthly price. And Bioware can promise all they want, but I just don't see content coming fast enough to keep this game going. Sure, the voice acting is great and adds a lot to the overall "story telling" but it just isn't enough to push it past the typical MMO play model. Personally, I feel that Bioware took the easy way out and just copied what has proven to work in the past, but failed to push this genre forward in any way. Hell, the character creation alone is pretty pathetic if you ask me. This is Star Wars for crying out loud! Why are we forced to only be able to choose humans or humans with very little variation? To me, that is one of their biggest failures. But again, for those that are enjoying it I hope that Bioware can continue to deliver content.
-
Blame the gamers for the lack of genre pushing features. Nobody wants something new, and the data proves it. Thats why Blizzard re-did all the orignal content in WoW, everyone wants small areas with really easy stuff to do and then they want something else. That's where the money is, and that's where they are going to put their products. Bioware just took that concept one step further, and improved the way it was presented to the player.
-
-
it's not the money but rather the perception of value, most people will automatically ask "for what?" when you tell them MMOs have a subscription fee. and they really dont care about costs to run the servers etc; that's the company's problem not the consumers. ie if I subscribe to netflix it's with the understanding that I will get value out of my monthly fee in the form of new content etc. but in mmos most people dont see new content on a weekly basis; it comes in trickles
-
I'm going against the norm and going to agree with you for the most part. MMOs are extremely affordable, although the initial bite is a little jarring. If you're someone who sticks with the game for some time and forgoes buying other games, you come out way ahead in cost per hours of gameplay.
-
-
I recently started playing it and I have to say it's totally worth $15 a month. It's a great game, the storylines for each class (the ones I've played so far) have been really intriguing. Also, the idea that I can share the experience with friends is a huge bonus. Battling with the rolls to see who's choice will win out on the conversation is a ton of fun.
Another bonus, they have the voice of female shepard (Jennifer Hale) as the female trooper on republic side! For me at least, I get the "Mass Effect" feel of the game.
I just wish they had more battleground levels to pvp on except the main three. :( -
having never played an MMO aside from trying WoW and really disliking it (I was supised how much I didnt like ti) this game is totally worth it to me. I was hesitant to get it to all, always frowned on MMOs and subs in general, but told my friends i would and now I'm hooked.
there are 8 stories, its like 8 bioware games. I DO wish there was some deeper interaction with companions and the like but its pretty awesome. no doubt.
-
