Why SW:TOR is a big bad deal

Posted on December 16, 2011 by SynCaine

Note: If you read blogs in absolutes, this post is not going to work for you.

The discussion around SW costing 300m or not, whether selling 4m box copies puts it in the black, or why anyone should care, is pretty complex. Actually it’s impossible for anyone to cover fully, and that includes BioWare, given the amount of unknown or yet-to-be-seen factors. But the day facts stop me from blogging is the day this site shuts down and I return to WoW atop a sparklepony to become the world’s greatest Panda. So here we go.

Why 300m matters: If you love SW content, then you now know what it costs to make it happen. Whether it’s actually 300m, less/more, it’s a lot of money. You can’t make an indy version of SW and have it resemble anything close to the current game. EA/BioWare are playing with a very serious risk/reward ratio here. If they don’t hit it out of the park, SW is not going to be a small footnote on the balance sheet. SW is either a smash hit and hits the mark, or it’s ANYTHING BUT a smash hit and fails. The farther from a smash hit it is, the greater the impact of that failure. This is not only significant for EA, but for the genre as a whole.

And that big number, 300m or something close, is further complicated by two other very important factors.

Factor one: Voice acting does not get cheaper the longer you do it. You don’t build a voice acting engine, and all content after is easier/faster because the engine is already in place. Voice acting is pretty close to a fixed cost (depending on who does the voice, of course), and unless BioWare moves away from it, all new content is going to include that cost. What this means is that unless SW is a smash hit, BioWare can’t keep throwing money into a hole by producing more voiced content. No new content in a themepark MMO is one short step away from shutting the game down.

Another important aspect to voice acting is that it takes time. How much varies, but it takes time. And listening to voiced content is a hell of a lot quicker than producing it. For most players, they will listen once and hit spacebar the next time. That’s all well and good for most games, but is killer for a game expecting to keep you entertained long-term.

Factor two: The game uses the SW IP. This further cuts into profits, and significantly, compared to something like WoW. Blizzard is only paying Blizzard for the rights to use the Warcraft IP, while BioWare has to give George his cut. This again factors into the decision to make new content, or to even keep the game up. History is very quick to point out that when an IP-based MMO is not performing, it gets the axe rather than the out-to-pasture treatment. Again, if the game is a SMASH HIT, George is happy, Bioware is happy, and blasters-to-the-face rolls on. The moment the whole equation stops working, bad things happen, and quickly.

Why you should care: If you like SW, you should want more of it. And the only way you are going to get more of it is if you and a million or so other people stay subbed.  And stay subbed for a long time.

I love Skyrim, best single player game out in years, but whether I play Skyrim for a week, a month, or ten years, so long as I bought it Bethesda sees my “more of this please” vote and is one customer closer to producing more stuff I want.

BioWare seeing your $60 is not enough. BioWare entertaining you for 3 months is not enough. They need you to pay that $15 a month for a long ass time to make SW ‘worth it’. So if your attitude is “I know SW is not going to keep me for a long time, but it’s going to be a fun month”, know that you are basically making my point. I’ve never said SW won’t be fun-enough for some. I’ve never said the entire game is a giant pile of fail (at least not in any seriousness). What I have said, and again, what you state to support me, is that SW is a horrible pile of fail when it comes to being an MMO, and that exact reason is people playing it just for that one month of fun.

One month of fun would be bad enough for a regular MMO. SW is not a regular MMO. It’s the most expensive MMO ever, and it’s tied to a very pricey IP. It’s also potentially the make-or-break title for the ultra-pricey themepark model. If SW fails, you might not see another game of its kind.

And that last bit is why I’m rooting so hard against it. I want the AAA themepark model to die. It’s a complete waste of dev time, it teaches gamers horrible habits for MMOs, and it makes some devs (Mythic, Trion) do some incredibly stupid stuff instead of producing stuff I want (DAOC2, beta-Rift).

The above paragraph is of course all personal, but the stuff above that is not. Fact is, SW absolutely HAS TO BE A HIT, and not just by selling 4m boxes, but by keeping at least a sizable chunk of that base paying for MONTHS after release. If SW dips in popularity after 6 months, it won’t just get a slightly smaller dev staff and keep on keeping on. Nor will the genre as a whole. If you like AAA themeparks, SW might be your only hope.

Should be a fun 3-6 months, in-game or otherwise.

 

Posted in MMO design, Rant, SW:TOR, World of Warcraft | 32 Comments

EVE: Incursion preview

Posted on December 16, 2011 by SynCaine

Great stuff right here.

Of the many long-term goals I have right now in EVE, getting into an Incursion fleet might be at the top of the list.

Posted in EVE Online | 7 Comments

A whole two days!?!?

Posted on December 15, 2011 by SynCaine

BioWare gives SW players a two day grace period.

Game costs 300m+ to make. Probably another 300m+ spent in marketing hype. Another $30 or so spend on soon-to-be-regrettable tattoos (Hey cool tattoo, what is it? Oh this, it’s the logo from the biggest financial disaster from 2012. Yea drove the biggest publisher in the world to bankruptcy, and ruined the once-stellar name of the developer. Looks cool though right? Hello…?) And now TWO FREE DAYS? How can EA afford all of this madness?

Seems kinda odd too right? Like SW:TOR is an MMO (bhahaha) that’s going to be played for years and years by its player base (bhahahahahahaha), so why stress people out initially by going with no grace period, and now announce a pathetic two days?

It’s almost like BioWare is afraid people might only stick around for a few weeks or something, and want to make sure they squeeze every last day/cent out of people before the voice acting ends and the game-over screen rolls. Kind of a strange approach for the world hottest ‘MMO’ with thousands of hours of content…

Posted in SW:TOR | 49 Comments

PoxNora on Steam, yay. SOE owns PoxNora, boo.

Posted on December 15, 2011 by SynCaine

The good news, PoxNora is on Steam.

Why is this important?

Because SOE owns PoxNora now, which would suggest you need to use their launcher to play the game. For those of you living under a rock, SOE + launcher = fail. It’s a scientific fact. To be fair, SOE is new to this whole online thing, so let’s give them some time. 1999 is like yesterday in Internet years, right?

So anyway, hopefully Steam means you dodge that bullet. I’ll find out at home tonight.

Ah, but already SOE has screwed me, and I’ve yet to download the game!

See back in the day I played PoxNora. It was actually my first RMT game, if memory serves me correctly. And I spend a decent amount of cash on it too. Pay-to-win baby! I was a monster at the game back in the day. Just wallet-crushing people left and right.

So of course when I login to my account at the PoxNora website, what do I see? Level 1 account without a dime spent. Awesome.

Now perhaps, when SOE bought the game, they dumped all existing accounts into the trash and started everyone fresh. That sounds absolutely crazy, but we are talking SOE here, so it might be possible. But even at SOE-level stupidity, I think this is a long-shot.

The next thought is maybe SOE is confusing my general Station account (back from when I tried EQ2 *shudder*) with my PoxNora account. Maybe. Problem is, my PoxNora login ID is/was the same as my Station ID, and the option to merge accounts is no longer possible (but of course SOE still has the button on the website, and it’s only once you click it that it says it’s no longer an option. Typical SOE ‘polish’). So how does one login to an account that uses the same login ID as an existing account? Do tell SOE.

And let’s see if they do. I’ve submitted a ticket. Over/under that it takes them a week to respond? And anyone want to bet the end result is not “account fully restored, enjoy your hundreds of dollars-worth of purchases”?

How long is one company going to keep itself alive from its one hit back in 1999? Unreal.

Posted in PvP, Random, Rant, RMT | 9 Comments

That whole “EVE shutting down” thing is looking pretty solid

Posted on December 15, 2011 by SynCaine

Sorry about the lack of a post yesterday, I got distracted by this old-school indy title called SW:TOR. Have you heard of it? It’s kinda cute. Very linear, short, and looks pretty dated, but not the worse way to burn a few hours. Just don’t go in expecting anything major and you should be good. See if you can pick it up for $5 on a Steam sale, good value buy then. Does wear out your spacebar though…

But given that this is mostly an MMO blog, let’s get back to talking MMOs.

CCP has released some stats about the game a week after Crucible launched. The short summary is that the new Battlecruisers were produced, used, and blown up, and that more people are playing EVE now than pre-Crucible.

That last bit is both “well duh, expansions = interest” and “but Crucible was just for vets” pondering.

The biggest criticism around Crucible was that it did not contain a real ‘seller’ feature that would make headlines and draw in new players. The lack of Pandas, many suggested, is only going to retain existing players, rather than bring in those oh-so-important newbies.

Now certainly one week of data, especially the week right after an expansion, is not a clear indicator that Crucible ‘worked’ and that EVE is back to its growing ways. On the other hand, how many ‘dying’ MMOs return to near-peak levels in their time, expansion or not? Come panda-time, is WoW going to hit 12m+ ‘subscribers’? (better question, will WoW have half that pre-Pandas?). When EQ2 releases an update, do they, even in the first week, return to peak levels? The answer is, of course, no.

As for bringing in new players with a panda-like gimmick, I don’t believe EVE needs that right now. There are plenty of under-developed systems already in the game. ‘Fixing’ factional warfare would do more for the game than adding another half-baked system on top. Hell, even fleshing out what Incarna started, while not of high importance to bittervets, would be a better move at this point than something totally brand new.

Which is not to suggest that CCP should be done adding stuff to EVE. Hell no. New ships, new game systems, new PvE and PvP ventures; all of that is good stuff, especially in EVE given how the game just expands rather than shifts. It’s just that at this moment, and for the expansion after Crucible, I believe more good would come of fixing what is there than leaving it be and adding on something new.

While fixes might not make headlines on news sites, they do make players happy, and happy players attract other players looking to join in. And once there, they, and those who brought them, end up sticking around for a while. Some a very, very long while.

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design, Patch Notes, SW:TOR, World of Warcraft | 14 Comments

If a stock’s IPO is zero, does the IPO really happen?

Posted on December 13, 2011 by SynCaine

Remember when I bought Zynga using some of my Darkfall Community Publisher cash a few days ago?

Not looking like a great move…

Maybe Dr. Lord Richard British A. Garriott de Cayeux Spaceman Jones the Ninth can give me some advice. He did invent Diablo before it was called Diablo after all.

Posted in Diablo 3, Mass Media, Random, Rant, RMT | 3 Comments

EVE: Behind every great deal is a knife to the back

Posted on December 13, 2011 by SynCaine

Yesterday I talked a little about my recent marketing ventures, but I left out one aspect of doing business in EVE: the ever-present possibility and haunting feeling of walking into a trap.

Unlike most (all?) MMOs, the economy in EVE is, in many ways, a well-oiled machine. There are countless pilots with YEARS of marketing experience who are all competing to make the most ISK possible, and they are very good at what they do. And given the depth and breadth of the economy and what’s possible, I fully believe the truly great MMO economic minds match wits in EVE. To borrow a sports analogy, EVE is the big leagues, and only the truly great make it here. So if there is a massive profit to be made, they are the ones making it, and have the knowledge and ISK to make sure that they are the ones pulling in the biggest gains.

At the same time, there are also pilots with YEARS of experience pulling of complex scams. The best con-artists in EVE make Bernie Madoff look like an amateur, and the extent of some of the social engineering that goes into these things is pretty crazy. You simply won’t find people spending months, let alone years, infiltrating a corp or setting up a long-con in other MMOs. If something looks too good to be true, odds are it’s someone setting you up in New Eden.

Combine the above with the fact that EVE itself can be a somewhat complex place, and anytime I come across something that I can make some ISK in, my suspicions always rise and I wonder why no one else has done this before. After all, EVE has been out for 7 years now, has 400k+ pilots, and all of them play on one server. The odds that I’ve found some magical source of ISK that no one else has before is pretty slim, right?

Well no. Most of the time the answer is not nearly as complex or insidious.

If I can buy something at location A and sell it for a 10% gain at location B, but the volume is limited to hundreds of thousands of ISK, the reason that opportunity is out there is because the big fish can’t be bothered by something so insignificant. If I come across what looks like a 100m+ profit for minimal work, the odds of THAT being a scam are pretty good, or would require an investment of a few billion ISK up front.

And while all those pilots are all playing in the same universe, this does not mean they are evenly spread or ‘fighting’ in one global server auction house. Finding profitable deals in low population regions is far more likely than pulling off something great in Jita or another major trade hub. The volume will be lower, and the profits will come in at a slower pace, but that might be just what you are looking for when getting started.

At least that’s what the scammers want you to think.

Posted in EVE Online, MMO design | 7 Comments

EVE: What to implant…?

Posted on December 12, 2011 by SynCaine

CCP manages to make even the act of giving out gifts an interesting gameplay decision. Other studios should take note.

Along with a long list of ‘stuff’ to select, CCP has also given out two implants recently, both of them a +3 boost to a stat along with a 1.5% bonus to CPU and Capacitor. If you plug in both implants you get a set bonus.

Now +3 to a stat is decent-enough, but it is a significant step down from the top-end +5 implants. Of course those don’t give the other bonuses, which then raises the question: would you rather have more CPU/Cap, or train skills faster?

For me this is a tough one. On the one hand, at 27m and 21m SP on my two pilots, I have plenty of needed training left. On the other, my CNR could really use more CPU, and more Capacitor is always a good thing. Because I play daily, the option to have a training clone (all +5 implants) and a combat/whatever clone won’t work for me.

I’m leaning towards the +3 implants. Any bittervets have some thoughts?

Note: The reason my CNR is having CPU issues is because I use an XL shield booster, rather than a medium booster like I often see in other fits. I’m also still using T2 ballistic units rather than faction ones (that whole not-enough-ISK thing). I like the XL booster because it provides a great “oh shit” fallback if you need to pop a few scramming frigs and get out of a mission. I’m sure that once I finish up some training, and get some more faction mods into it, that will become less of an issue, but for now the XL stays.

Posted in EVE Online | 9 Comments

EVE market regions and more Skyrim praise

Posted on December 12, 2011 by SynCaine

One of my favorite ‘features’ in EVE is how markets are broken up into regions, at least in terms of averages and being able to see what is listed and where from any given station. I enjoy this because prices can, and often do, vary wildly from region to region, even in stations that are just one jump from a region border.

Over the weekend I did a fair bit of hauling and trading between my region and one just four jumps away. It was very profitable, and a lot of fun. As I was doing this, I started working on the break-even point for items if I was to buy and reprocess them into minerals. I believe there is so money to be made in that field, especially now that my Indy pilot is so close to perfect refining. Of course such an activity being profitable, and being profitable-enough to be worthwhile is always the question one has to ask when doing anything in EVE (although I also factor in that silly concept called ‘fun’ into the equation as well, but I’m weird like that).

Now if I could only stop spending ISK as soon as I get it. I’m no closer to the Rattlesnake, Orca, Charon, or any other ‘big’ purchases I want to make at some point. Hey, just more goals to work towards.

On the Skyrim front, the game’s depth continues to impress me. I’m now level 27 on my second playthrough, having ‘finished’ three towns, the mages guild, and some of the rebellion chain.

Some observations:

As you level up, so does the world and its loot. It’s not as drastic as in Oblivion, but it happens. One cool thing I’ve seen is that as potions get more powerful, they get bigger. This makes searching random caves/forts easier, since if I see a big red bottle on a shelf, I know it’s a worthwhile item. Same goes for gear; it’s easy it quickly glance at a weapon rack or table and see it’s full of iron/steal gear, or that there is a nice glass or ebony piece.

Similar to the above, you know the chest next to the alchemy table is going to have alchemic ingredients, just like you can expect the chest next to the forge to contain gear or metal bars. While the occasion ‘random’ chest will contain something of nice value thanks to the random itemizer, you can usually easily predict where and what the real treasure is going to be, like at the end of a cave, the ‘boss’ mobs chest, or from a quest.

Speaking of leveling up, I like how Skyrim mixes up who you face. In one fort I was exploring this weekend, the majority of the enemy mages were apprentices, who were not all that difficult. Occasionally I would face a mage one ‘tier’ higher (forget the name now), which presented a bigger challenge but was still very doable. However, one area had a larger collection of enemies, and among them was a third ‘tier’ mage, who hit like a truck. The first time I went into that room my corpse went flying before I even knew what hit me, and it took me a good five or six attempts before I finally succeeded. A very rewarding experience, and a great job by the game to mix in a little challenge into what is normally a fairly easy game (in terms of how often you die anyway).

The more I play, the more Skyrim hammers home the fact that it really is one of the better games, let along RPGs, to come out in recent years. That I am actively looking forward to the DLC confirms this for me even more so.

Posted in EVE Online, Random | 7 Comments

EVE: It’s only 22b bro, no big deal

Posted on December 9, 2011 by SynCaine

For anyone arguing against ganking in high-sec, I give you this.

Hat-tip to Jester’s Trek.

Posted in EVE Online, PvP | 15 Comments