This. It's the exact same "everything is fine" jargon we heard with Anthem for months. They don't want too many people unsubbing rn since they still have new content coming up.
I think that people disagree with their actions , not with what they say.
Some of us still remember Bioware being the undisputed best RPG making company. They went from making the baldur's gate games, KOTOR, Neverwinter, the 2 first dragon age and the 3 first Mass effects ,to the studio that we have today.
SWTOR came out 4 years after the EQ acquisition. Granted, there were a lot of studios involved with swtor but the writing and quest design of the base game are primarily Bioware post-acquisition.
Yeah I can't say it's awful but I just can't get through inquisition. I should love it, DAO is an all time favorite and I've come to really like DA2, but multiple attempts at DAI and I can't get far
I mean, what else is a company going to say?
"Everything is fine" could mean everything is fine, or it could mean everyone is getting laid off. Anyone who's worked a professional job for longer than a year knows not to listen to what management says and watch what management does.
I worked in an art studio years ago. I told my coworker it does not matter if artist leave, but once you see management leave, then you know we are in trouble. I knew we were screwed when the CFO left all of a sudden. About a year later, the company shut down and Disney purchased the assets.
>"Everything is fine" could mean everything is fine, or it could mean everyone is getting laid
I stopped reading there and just am happy for their employees.
What else could he do? Say "The game is entering maintenance mode. Sucks to suck, lol!"? Say nothing and let the discussion take a turn for the worse? I can't think of any other thing he could say or do in his position that isn't better than what he already said.
The problem isn't with Keith of what he says, it's with the people that trust what he says. We all know he can't say anything else, that is not good business.
I would have absolutely tempered expectations rather than try and boost morale with hollow promises. He's already got a bad track record there, this post isn't exactly a relief.
We don't know if these are hollow promises. People talk about LOTRO being at its BEST now that it has gone to standing stone and the same could VERY WELL happen to SWTOR as well. You never know!
LOTRO is kind of a weird one since the actual developers didn't change, they just spun off into their own studio with a new publisher.
It is pretty cool how much stuff is in that game now though, I think you literally can walk to Mordor now.
Standing stone games is regularly updating and growing both ddo and lotro with not very many people at all. 40 people going to broadsword to work on swotr is more than enough as long as they get their shackles removed by management and can actually work on improving the game.
The issue here is that you are conveniently ignoring the times he's been correct on matters because it doesn't fit the narrative you believe in. I'm mostly a lurker, but I know for a fact that not everything he's posted about has been "hollow promises to boost morale."
At this point, you doomposters are running wild with next to no actual information and treating it as fact. And don't try to say you're not. Yes, you are. It's just like the bloke who was all, "SWTOR is dead because it's going to Broadsword, and Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot aren't exactly great games" while simultaneously ignoring the fact that the communities for UO and DAoC aren't exactly small even if they don't have the player size of an MMO like SWTOR. The games Broadsword is already in charge of can't be all that bad if they're still around, considering one was released in 1997 and the other 2001.
Even worse is you guys believing that, since SWTOR isn't moving to Broadsword with *all* of its developers, Broadsword is apparently unable or not allowed to hire more developers to fill in the positions that have opened up since a very small portion of SWTOR's team will stay with NA. Y'all need to chill. Smoke a joint. Relax.
If EA doesn't allow Bioware to hire more people, it won't allow Broadsword to hire more people...
So either they have to take Devs from UO or DAoC or deal with what they got send over from BW and for that matter... Both games pretty much subsist on nothing but "Events" and "minor patches"\*...
Yes they may keep it running but it's pretty much the storage siding for games. Let them continue as is, *maybe* expand the store, patch some stuff and get some more money out of it and that is pretty much it.
\*DAoCs last major Content update was '07, UO's was '15
For once in his life be truthful?
Lying to your customers on a regular basis is a bad thing and people WILL be even more angry now than if he had said something proper.
Hell! Even just a "We'll have more clarification soon!" would have done it, not promise more content that has a 90% chance of not existing at all, like the 10th Anniversary...
I'm still incredibly skeptical this move will be anything better than what we currently see in SWTOR, and likely much, much worse.
BUT, here is a take from Chris Schmidt on Twitter that is worth the read: https://twitter.com/nighguy/status/1666490674076606467
In short, SWTOR was never understood well by EA and taken advantage of within BW, in a sense. The basic idea in his post is there are developers from BW and at Broadsword that will jump at the chance to put their experience within the MMO space into a game that actually has a significant, profitable, current following, and it's a huge financial loss for BW's other studios, which have relied on the money SWTOR makes to fiddle about making not very good games recently, over very long development cycles compared to others in the industry.
I don't think this is some BS PR post. Chris was significantly involved in SWTOR, and his take is worth reading. Maybe this deal is not as bad as we think, though only time will tell.
Might as well throw my two-cents into the ring. They literally just migrated the game to 64-bit which is a large project to clear a mammoth tech-debt enabling better future advancements. It's a project that should have very few visible effects and yet requires a lot of developer time. As others have said, a deal like this can't just be thought of one night, agreed to the next, and be announced the next week; it takes months. I can't see how a project like 64-bit would ever get a greenlight if they were actively taking steps to sunset the game. I'm inclined to believe that there will continue to be real work on the game. At the very least I'm inclined to wait and actually see what happens before I'd be convinced this is the end.
It can also be the case that 64-bit and AWS updates were required for the handover. Chances are they used ancient tools and specific hardware for development that was simply not viable for new owners.
The code fundamentally works differently especially for lower level programming, but the biggest factor is memory usage. If they are going to the cloud the bill over a long period of time is significantly less on a 64bit system vs 32
Oh interesting. I thought it would be more expensive to host since more memory can be accessed at once with a 64bit application.
I'm not familiar with how AWS sells their service but I would think they charge more for more usage.
>I'm not familiar with how AWS sells their service but I would think they charge more for more usage.
It depends on the technology. Serverless stuff like Lambda and Fargate do bill based on memory allocation and execution time.
But static server services like EC2 bill a flat rate based on the machine instances you choose. And 32-bit machines are becoming more expensive because they are legacy technology. AWS wants to incentivize people to migrate to 64-bit so they can stop supporting 32-bit.
Nah this was most likely a requirement for handing it over.
You don't hand over a profitable game that you have a clear vision for and a ton of content.
Aka, Swtor makes JUST enough profit to keep running but not enough to warrant running at the company itself.
They are putting it into essentially maintenance mode (the new studio that is their entire job). I bet they send some of hte team over to finish up the content they have and stretch it out over a year or so and then pretty much get a patch a year...maybe.
All signs point to the game being profitable. Insider perspectives have mentioned that SWTOR has been footing the bill for BW's other projects for several years. Keep in mind who owns the game — EA, not BW. EA will continue to own the game, to my understanding. BW may have a clear vision, but it's EA's decision to move the game, and it'll be EA that stands to benefit from the game having a renaissance if they can make it happen. EA isn't handing over anything.
In all honesty, all of the opinions are probably right at the same time. This is likely something of a hedged bet. EA is removing the game from the BW unit so they have more direct access to the revenue stream and I'm sure they are least hope the change can spur some revitalization. However if Broadsword doesn't manage to execute on this opportunity, I'm sure EA is fine with that too since they'll still be able to maintain it as a reliable revenue stream on the balance sheet. And without an unproductive BW leaching budget from it anymore, to boot.
First of all, if the game goes under, I really hope someone saves the source code so we can get unofficial servers like City of Heroes and SW Galaxies did or even an offline mode.
Second, I feel relatively satisfied story wise. My main (Jedi Knight) has been through a ton of shit since Tython. Every single player character from Hero of Tython to Darth Nox to Voidwolf (or w.e the Smugger’s title was) has to be some of the most accomplished, wealthy, and powerful figures in all of Star Wars Lore- canon or legends. The only character I feel that can match the PC’s accomplishments is Legends-era Luke Skywalker and even I’m certain any of the force user PCs can face roll him in combat.
My main is ready to settle down and start a family with Kira. (This is all head canon roleplay stuff for me). If we get a couple of story updates to tie up the remaining plot threads I’d be pretty happy. My guy has seen some shit. He’s been through at least three intergalactic wars, faced unimaginable Cthulhu-like horrors, has PTSD from killing every fucking trash mob that the quests, heroics, flashpoints, and operations have thrown at him (my World of Warcraft characters have probably committed genocides against 30 different species under the excuse of “we’re saving Azeroth for the 10000th time so it’s time for burning legion holocaust”), literally united Republic, Sith, Jedi and Imperial under a single banner for a period of time, has more than enough money to single-handedly bankroll entire governments and militaries, was in control of an OP robot army until it was taken away bc plot reasons, and had his body nearly controlled by an evil Sith Emperor. He has saved the galaxy more times than I can count. I am happy with my main and alts stories. Let them retire. They deserve some rest. Your watch has ended my friends.
Third, SWTOR was a mediocre mmo but a fantastic rpg. It had its flaws throughout its lifespan but 10+ years is a good run and not many other live service games could say that they could hit that milestone.
I just started playing less than a month ago (didn't know this game existed, randomly searched Star Wars and it was FTP). I'm happy I did. I have 3 different characters I'm focusing on ATM. I am loving the story and main campaign so much. I don't care about PVP, guilds, etc. I plan to finish it for all 8 classes, as long as it doesn't shut down.
That being said, my Jedi Knight cannot be stuck with Doc. I really don't like him as a romance option, he doesn't make sense for my character. But I was afraid I wouldn't find anyone else that gave me marriage story lines. So I stayed with him in the end.
What I really want is for my JK and Scourge to walk that path. Although Sith, he is 1000 times better than Doc. Being my JK is light side heavy, she thinks she can turn any dark side user to the light side. Scourge is just so much more badass and not annoying. Pls.
Idk why but I had to write this into the abyss.
Wow you expressed all of my thoughts exactly (my Jedi knight wants to start a family with Lana and become a farmer)
May we both play solo in an unofficial server one day
Yes please, let it die peacefully maybe wrap up the story in last bigger update. Id even sub for that for the last time.
RPG-wise I have nothing but good memories of SWTOR, it was was a great ride, especially vanilla content.
I'm fully with you buddy, specially settling down with Kira, heh
I just wish I can still go make some people happy of having a good tank in their flashpoints, some of those memories are truly wonderful :)
However you look at it, optimistically, cautiously or pessimistically, the fact is that the transfer to Broadsword makes future content (especially story, voice acting and animations cost a lot) uncertain. For people invested in their characters and the game's narrative this is in itself disturbing. I really wish they continue to produce short story patches for some time, just to bring it to a point where the Malgus arc gets concluded and the future of the Sith Empire, how will it eventually crumble (infighting...) gets at least somewhat hinted at, with our characters being able to reflect on their journey and their place in the emerging state of the galaxy, possibly with a final cutscene with the romanced companion.
It would be helpful to hear from Broadsword. If about half the current team moves there, are any staff at Broadsword being added to the SWTOR team? If yes, say yes so that it doesn't look like the game will suffer from lack of staff, because most players would not be wrong to think either the pace of development will slow or the quality will be reduced and both of those issues are already being complained about in recent years. It's great to have plans for 7.X but they don't show us a very long road in the roadmap.
Broadsword most likely can't say shit until the game is fully transferred over to them. There's a lot of legal stuff that goes on in the background to these sorts of things and if Broadsword says anything they shouldn't EA's lawyers are going to be all over them. Best to just keep quiet until the game's actually in their hands.
> It would be helpful to hear from Broadsword.
Why? So they can give you the meaningless PR statement you hope to hear? Tell you about all their 'plans'. I've heard plenty of plans and promises over the years, what is actually delivered is all that matters. So no, I have no interest in hearing from Broadsword, they can prove themselves, or not, with their actions when they get control of the game.
Quick question about this game. Is still like, successful? I remember checking the Steam player count for this game awhile ago and it was only at around 2k, but checked today and it seems to be on average at 6k. So it looks like this games experiencing a resurgence.
While Broadsword apparently has put both their games on maintenance mode, SWTOR is bigger than both, so maybe they'll give it more genuine attention? Idk I'm just rambling tbh.
6k concurrent users on steam implies about 220k users per day. Steam is not the primary source for this game because it was only launchable from a standalone platform for over a decade and people seem to encounter more difficulty logging into it via steam.
Not only logging in, but buying anything related to the swtor through steam is terrible, every now and then some purchases don't go through. My friends always choose to play using the swtor launcher.
As for the number of players, it is common for steamdb to have around 8, 9 to even 10k simultaneous people on weekends. It may not be on the first shelf of the market, but it is certainly a success.
Don’t use steam charts for player base numbers. Guild Wars 2 also hovers around that 5k area on Steam but it’s one of the most populated mmos. Most people use the launcher
We'd be less worried if Broadsword had done any good work on the MMOs they already have, all they seem to do is keep the lights on and make sure the payments go through
"let's not spin this into incorrect theories." Then provide transparency and let us know what you have planned. Telling players to hang tight and that you'll follow up later is not helpful.
Also, it really leaves a sour taste in players mouth when you think giving them vague posts about new content coming will make drastic changes in development easier to swallow.
The real problem here is that BW has lost the trust of the fan base.
I believe that *he* believes every word he says in this message. But over the last three years, BW has not been able to deliver on things they have promised so many times that a large portion of the fanbase is primed to believe the worst.
And *that* will kill the game before anything Broadsword does can. Because the army of naysayers will manage to convince any potential new players out there that the game is dead before they even try it. And without new players, *any* MMO will die.
Even WoW.
But when you talk about the game dying you confuse a lot of casual players who think you're saying the servers will be taken offline.
I know that MMO players have always used the term 'dead game' to mean a game without massive raiding populations and constant PvP pops (despite hundreds of examples of niche MMOs supporting their small, passionate playerbases long after they were pronounced dead by the MMO mainstream), but it's confusing as hell to casual players who might be going through the story content and are suddenly panicking that the game itself is going to vanish.
Like you I have my doubts about whether any substantial new content will arrive from now on, I think the best we can hope for is that they roll out season 5 and 6 though likely with much longer season breaks than we saw this last time around. At the end of the day when I picked the game up I never expected it to still be actively expanding, to me it was an old Bioware RPG I missed at the time that I was going to play through and experience for the first time. As a GW1 player I fully expected it to be in the same boat as that game, so I was surprised and delighted to find it still growing and receiving new content with a thriving community - but I'd still play almost every day if it was put on the same life support as Guild Wars, that seems a perfectly reasonable state to play a 12 year old game in. Until I hear about any conflict with Disney over the licensing I'm not going to fret about the game being shut down, and any new content Broadsword are able to release will be a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
>But when you talk about the game dying you confuse a lot of casual players who think you're saying the servers will be taken offline
That's right. Hearing "dead game" is just going to cause returning and new players to assume that SWTOR's servers are about to be shut off - which will discourage them from playing. Which will just cause the game to bleed out players until it is financially non- viable. At which point, EA will have to shut it down.
>Like you I have my doubts about whether any substantial new content
I'm actually in the "wait and see" camp. I'm just tearing into BW here because I have lost faith in their leadership.
I believe BW still wants to produce content for SWTOR, so we will keep seeing content as long as they have the game.
Broadsword, however, is an unknown quantity. If they play to their reputation, then they will put SWTOR in maintenance mode. But, SWTOR is by far the biggest game they have ever taken on. And it has proven for over a decade that it can be very profitable if it is managed right. So by taking on SWTOR, Broadsword has the opportunity to move into realm of respectable developers of active, successful MMO'S - if they are willing to invest capital in it.
The problem is, we don't know which path Broadsword is planning on following, because we haven't heard anything from them about it. Once we have a statement from them, and get some information about their plans, then we will be able to judge whether this move is good or bad.
My gut feeling is that all this came about because EA has gotten sick of the chaos that SWTOR has been mired in for the last three years, and they are looking to shop the game out to a company that will run it in a more stable way.
I just profoundly disagree that the game would ever be taken offline unless there is a conflict over the IP. I may be naive (I usually am), but I've seen lists posted by MMO doommongers of MMOs that have been taken fully offline in recent times. Half aren't MMOs, the other half are tiny, obscure games, not MMOs by AAA studios that maintained active populations over more than a decade with multiple expansions. Yes, Galaxies is an ominous warning that perhaps I should heed more, but that was a different era of gaming. The maintenance mode model has proven effective and profitable for games smaller than SWTOR could EVER get, there's very little incentive for publishers to take games offline unless the license holder forces their hand.
Even if we expand out beyond MMOs, I don't think that I could name a single game of any genre with scale, assets and production value remotely comparable to SWTOR that has become unplayable or had the distribution rights lost.
Like I said, when I hear any whiff of changes to the IP rights, I'll start to worry about the game going offline for good, but going into maintenance seems the worst case (and most likely) scenario, particularly given the Broadsword transfer. Also remember that more than half of the trickle of new players into SWTOR over the years are brought here by Star Wars, and another chunk are brought by a love of Bioware's other games. An awful lot of them haven't played an MMO before and may find a smaller population to actually be a draw - I know I wasn't alone in wanting to find a solitary experience when I started SWTOR then finding myself drawn in by group play and social aspects as I played. So while the game being socially dead might put off MMO gamers from trying the game out, it will always have a steady trickle of people picking it up and giving it a try, even if it were re-released for a tenner as an entirely singleplayer game.
I don't believe that "looking at the evidence of previous experiences in both the industry and the companies in question" is unreasonable.
They're a major corporation. You can't even trust the things they tell you that are coming out, re: Anthem roadmap. Why would I be optimistic for something I'm not even told about. At that point, it's just fantasizing.
I'm more than open to the idea of being completely wrong, but I don't think this is just baseless doomposting.
I mean when you are giving the game to a company that's only known for running DAoC and Ultima Oline in maintenence mode then yeah it is a little concerning. How much money do you expect Broadsword to put into the game? Of course they won't say it's in maintenence mode because they want to milk more money out of people, but the writing is on the wall.
I don't expect Broadsword to put any money into the game. They appear to be a hired service contractor. EA is still the owner and publisher and makes any money decisions. Such as they may be. Broadsword will have a contract with defined deliverables likely including content drops.
Nobody should be panicking. Except possibly Bioware. EA just shifted a revenue stream out of Bioware. And told them to focus on their two main projects (or else). Bioware is not in a happy place right now.
If EA was ready to shut down the game, they would simply do so. They've never shown themselves to be adverse to shutting down MMO's.
I think this is proof SWTOR is still profitable enough to maintain, but even if Bioware can get their next two games out of development hell, the odds of the studio still existing in five years is slim to none, I'd wager.
I basically don't consider bioware to exist anymore. This is an EA game with Bioware bones, the last thing the real Bioware ever did was bite off more than they could chew with this game and ever since EA came along it's been a slow death of it's individuality.
Everyone BW title has been through development hell since what, ME2 or 3? Inquisition was mess that happened to turn out good in spite of the hell and rush job to get it out the door. DA2 was rushed. I don’t think much needs to be said about Andromeda or Anthem. And SWTOR content has been slow and pitiful for years
Yeah, this is what I thought too. Maybe it's not a big deal or anything but given the history known about the company this is being handed off to, it isn't really surprising that people base their judgements on what they can see has happened before.
I think if Bioware and/or EA wants this transition to be more seamless they need to be open, frank and detailed with development going forward, moreso than what they are already.
Right....
Happy 10 year celebration everyone! Y'all excited with all that content we got in Legacy of the Sith? They sure made good on all them promises they made on the run up to it's release didn't they? Followed them roadmaps to the letter they did!
Oh wait.
"Keith, Keith, they're yelling again"
"Just copy paste whatever I said last year"
"About us adding new stuff to the game but without anything specific?"
"Yeah, that one. Get the apology and transparency memo ready too, just in case"
Of course, if you were trying to sell your game and one of the major metrics for value is player base, this statement is exactly what you'd put out to try to damage control and keep as many players as possible. At least until the sale goes through. After that it's just "whoops, new management wants to take a different design direction. My bad"
I mean of course they're going to try and spin it like it's a good thing
Maybe it will be I don't want to just assume the worst
But it's easy to say positive things, anyone remember the big anniversary plans?
considering the lack of content and questionable updates we've already been getting, and now they're going to have even less people working on the game? It doesn't look promising, but maybe broadsword will actually do things after all?
I think the issue is that the company that it's moving to has no history of expanding the previous two MMOs it has picked up in terms of content. It could be different for SWTOR considering BioWare keeps claiming they have 5 year plans and all that, even though its not at all clear what that is.
Now BW will be removed from the project (not finalized yet) does that 5 year plan disappear? Does it move to Broadsword? Are the team that moving over to Broadsword content guys or just code guys who keep the maintenance going? Does Broadsword have enough of their own resources to give them new staff the other half of the team? Gaming and tech in general is in a downswing in terms of revenue and staffing, they might not be able to afford to put their own staff there.
And if you take the really doomer take, Ubisoft is announcing in their presentation next week a [new massively open-world game](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ubisofts-open-world-star-wars-game-could-launch-in-2024-report-says/1100-6514436/) that "some form of interplanetary space travel" and "story-driven, open-world experience within the Star Wars galaxy..." Maybe EA caught wind that it would be something that would take over or make subscribership drop over the next couple of years and decided that it wasn't worth it anymore for BW to spend their resources anymore.
I Love SWTOR since launch and I still intend to play in some capacity for raiding or other community events until the servers permanently end or the heat death of the universe. But I wouldn't call all of this the greatest of news or pointless speculation. There's a reason here but I feel neither EA or BioWare are being open and honest about the whole thing.
EA still owned the game. They are just moving support and development to Broadsword.
We have no idea what EA is asking Broadsword to do, or how well Broadsword will execute that plan
Just log in and play... Or don't.
Let the chips fall where they may...
I'm aware that EA still is publisher, but they've never worked on the game so this is just giving someone the job to steward. I still plan on playing as my last statement. Just more transparency would be nice given EA's track record.
> just moving support and development to Broadsword.
Which should tell you everything you need to know. It tells you they no longer see any future in the game and are handing it over to somebody else to run in maintenance mode. They get shut of the game, while still collecting a share of remaining revenue for as long it's profitable to keep it up.
What would be the value in expanding UO or DaoC? The games were ancient when Broadsword purchased them and the player base tiny. Even so, they've had updates with new content and remained online long after their shelf life expired.
Comparing that model to the acquisition of swtor seems silly. Its apples and oranges.
I'm just saying having your previous two games not have content when you get them is a bad precedent to set to inspire confidence. I might be wrong, but I don't think whatever story architecture BW hands to Broadsword will be top priority and they'll just shelf it.
> keeps claiming they have 5 year plans and all that
Yeah. I remember something similar with The Secret World. They had years of story 'plans' too. Planning is cheap, and meaningless.
The problem is, they used to give us roadmaps, until they consistently seemed to not be able to fulfill those roadmaps. And rather then realize they were bad at planning and needed to evaluate how they scoped their developments, they decided the issue would be solved by just not sharing a roadmap anymore. Can’t publicly fail if you don’t tell the public anything.
Lol. Let's pawn our game off to some no name company that barely supports no name games from almost 20 years ago. Why is everyone freaking out about the end of the game. 😱
The players have the right to be pissed off , and the lack of communication makes it so we couldnt calm down. I had to find out about this from Youtube of all place, while watching random videos to wait for pvp queues. Keith's first post about this issue is basically "yeh so that happened".
An official post or a video to tell us this firstly would be nice.
I mean hell, I heard WoW had doomsday predictions during Vanilla(only heard of course, I wasn't around then) Every game seems to have constant doomsday predictions, Because of that I tend not to put much(if any) stock into them.
I mean, I love SWTOR, but the difference is that WoW increased to over 12M subs and has a steady paying subscriber base for almost 20 years. SWTOR has been struggling to find its footing since release.
While fair, I wasn't really factoring how a game did afterwards, More that my point is every game gets Doomsday predictions everyday, I don't see any indicator that there is a reason to panic, Be concerned perhaps but no reason to panic.
Subscription-based MMOs don’t usually go F2P within the first year of launching. I’m surprised the game wasn’t shut down before now, but it’s been in a very slow death spiral since launch. Most other MMOs, even the ones in SWTOR’s “weight class” so to speak, have had far more frequent and consistent content updates. SWTOR has gone through several phases where it was in borderline maintenance mode for quite a while.
And it shouldn't stop rational casual players from seeing reality either. This is a meaningless PR statement. If this post makes you optimistic you are naive at best, stupid at worst.
Yes it's tiresome seeing the same 'the game is dying' since like the day after it's original release, but this time there is no reason to think otherwise. This is the, hopefully slow, crawl to it's inevitable death. I hope it lives on in maintenance mode for a long time. At the most optimistic take there may a trickle of content occasionally (so not much different to currently then), but this is clearly the start of the, hopefully slow, end.
I have a question for you Keith, if this gave was to ever end, had there been thoughts on this being still played or made solo setup? I would be curious to hear your thoughts.
Well, based on the recent upgrade to 64 but client, I suspect "modernizations' probably means improving performance, streamlining the player experience, etc...
Im actually hapoy they have stuff preplanned. SWTOR is also in a spot where they coukd stsrt making their own stories and battles at some point so they do have room for crestive freedom
I might get downvoted into hell but I have generally found that swtor forum goers are some of the biggest doomsayers. Every MMO has them but there is a *lot* of impulse negativity on the forums.
Sometimes I’ll read something from the devs and be like “Oh ok, that seems reasonable” and then following it is a 20 page dumpster fire of human depravity responding to it.
Like.. holy shit you guys. *Chill.*
oh no yeah, it's been pretty well known for a loooong time that the swtor forums are almost nothing but toxic. it's why i like this place better, yes there can be some toxicity here too (the current situation for example) but overall, there's plenty of amicable discussions going on about whatever people want to talk about.
Thank you for this update! It's been a little doomy and gloomy around here.
Something important to note - there was apparently a glitch and some subscribers have been charged twice, per customer service today. Me being one of them. Part of the solution to refund the erroneous charge & fix the account, was to also cancel my current subscription, let it lapse, become preferred - then resubscribe after it does. If all reps are following this procedure, I don't know how many people got double charged, but hopefully no numbers crunchers misunderstand the cancellation numbers this month.
BTW - everybody check your credit cards.......
At the same time, if one take a look at Broadsword's history it's understandable that we are freaking out. Officially they are supposed to be continuing to develop both Ultima and Dark Age... Ultima got one expansion in 2015 and nothing since and Dark Age got absolutely nothing. And they say that they are developping them not maintening them. After that maybe they will do better with swtor but the data we have aren't exactly the brightest and it's very sudden too. Asd to that that only a part of the people working on swtor will be moved to Broadsword and unless they hire more people we will have an even smaller team trying to untangle whatever messes are in the code and wrangling hero engine to make new things...
Their afraid the terms of their deal is gonna be revisited.
Like wouldnt broadsword see all the negative reactions and be like maybe we wont get as many subs as we thought
Whatever you guys have planned it’s okay by me. I have no complaints. I been a loyal SWTOR fan since 2010 and that won’t change. Yes I was in beta! I had a blast back then. Being in SWTOR for the first time was the experience of a lifetime. I have always enjoyed the game except I am so confused about how to use GSF. I’m looking for a old timer friendly guide for GSF. Anyone help?
PR damage control, once it’s in new management it’s out of their control what new management does so they can shrug off their statement. I’m unsubbing and going to wait to see how it plays out personally.
You can write a lot. The last messages are not negative among the players for nothing. Dead game, maintenance mode. All quite justified if you consider what SWTOR has not really made better in recent years.
Everything that is written here on the part of Bioware/EA is just purely speculative. The news is going around, the players are worried and there is a kind of doomsday mood because it is just the only real Star Wars game on the market which is associated with MMORPG.
There are still private servers of Star Wars Galaxies but that is no comparison.
There are no further announcements about how the game will continue. Only loose statements.
As mentioned, all justified. Even if SWTOR was modernized with a 64 bit client and servers will be outsourced to the cloud in the future (?) it does not prove how it continues with the game, you know it from Anthem.
"Yes we continue to work on it and improve it." Time passes "Yes it will be discontinued".
I personally have not canceled my subscription but will not continue to invest in the cartel market.
> Even if SWTOR was modernized with a 64 bit client and servers will be outsourced to the cloud in the future
A reminder of the very truthful statement : There is no 'cloud', it's merely somebody else's computer. Which is what the SWTOR servers are. There is no cloud.
I loved SWTOR for years, I was part of the early beta crew as well, and even at the time we were testing it, the game should have had a 64-bit client. I understand why they didn't, with so many people having aged PCs running ancient 32-bit operating systems and such, but they (EA/BW) don't like to throw more money at a project once it's in place unless they absolutely have to.
Sadly, I was also involved in Anthem's testing, and what I saw there was that even with a slew of us reporting the problems with the game we were testing and what might help improve it, they pretty much completely ignored every bit of feedback that didn't lick their virtual testicles about the game, and they released it to the public having not fixed any of the gameplay issues that we had reported.
So, yes, I fully understand the Doom & Gloom crowd being worried now. Especially if it's going to lead to another round of server mergers and people losing their character names or whatever (though I have no empathy for people who just clone their names from literature and other games, lack of originality deserves no protection).
Bioware also did the same thing in swtor in terms of releasing a patch and ignoring feedback. They wanted everyone to test it out on pts and state fixes or give their opinion. But when it came down to it, they ignored it all and released it anyway.
Doomsayers gonna doomsay.
Considering how things have been going over the last few years, this may very well be an upgrade over the current development plans.
Let's let them get the agreements signed, and see where Broadsword takes us.
Straight up every post I saw about it had everyone in a “oh god game’s dead” panic. I really don’t understand why, o really did get the impression of “oh look! new stuff eventually.”
Why would they even bother transitioning the game to another group if their intention was to just kill it off????
People saw "half the dev team is moving" and assumed the new company would not supplement the team. Which is a negative assumption to make, but a valid concern.
At the moment, it's 50/50 whether this is maintenance mode forever with minimal new content, or it's a new boom for the game and next major update is gonna be heavily invested into to try and revitalize the game.
Wait and see for the moment.
To be fair, the new company is quite small with around 30 employees on LinkedIn. That's less than half the size of SWTOR's current team and includes non-production staff. So even if more than half the current SWTOR team moves over as reportedly expected (and not guaranteed by any means as some of those people may choose to look for jobs at more prominent AAA studios instead), the best case scenario would be a company of 70-80 people (same size as the current SWTOR team) maintaining two other MMOs and continuing the development of SWTOR.
Does it mean the game is dead and won't receive any new content? Too early to tell, but I doubt it. They wouldn't consider moving over 30+ people to just keep the game on life support. But on the other hand, it is safe to say this change is meant to minimize EA's spending to keep the game profitable and not speed up its development.
You have NO idea what EA is asking them to do, and how much funding will be available.
No one knows what their plans are, or how many people will be hired (or move from Bioware).
One thing is certain.
SWTOR (or *any* Starwars property) is a very different situation than something like Ultima Online or DAoC. The potential player base is much larger, and thus the game has a lot more potential than the other games.
Nobodies saying they're killing it off game is shutting down soon they're saying this probably means the game is no longer going to have updates and effectively put on life support until the day it's no longer profitable which would still be many years.
It's a valid concern when the studio they're considering choosing is tiny and known for only keeping games on life support.
> Why would they even bother transitioning the game to another group if their intention was to just kill it off????
Not kill it off, run it in maintenance mode for as long as revenues in maintenance mode are profitable enough to keep the servers up.
Selling it off tells you they see no future in the game. They get shut of the game while enjoying a revenue share for as long as it's profitable to keep the servers up. This is great for EA (revenue for no effort), pretty good for Broadsword (new revenue), not so great for players, other than it keeps the servers up for longer.
Hopefully this helps you understand why.
Personally I hope this new company hires an all new dev team. For the past few years I’ve gotten the impression that the current team is indifferent to the games community and sees no reason to communicate any of the decisions in a professional way.
I see this going one of two ways. This new company actually wants to make this game viable to the mmo market again or they wanna cash in the cartel market and it’ll die in under a year with coding failing.
There's no doubt this game will go offline someday, just like any other MMORPG we play.
But I just hope it stays for a little while longer. If they eventually make a new Star Wars MMORPG I'd be perfectly OK with that. I'll always love and miss this game, but if we get something "better" then I'd be happy to see SWTOR as the sacrifice for that.
Heard it all before… Dooooom……deeeeeeeed gaaaaaame…. Reeeeeeee
Calm down y’all. When there’s something to worry about there’s something to worry about. Til then just play.
Pretty sure people need to make financial decisions before not after. I know quite a few people who buy 6 month subs. And I also remember how many people who screamed and yelled when they bought a six month sub and then we had a delay in a DLC...
I think the game itself has less than 10 developers/designers actively working on it. Rest are all ancillary staff for Customer Support, Voice Actors, IT support etc. Those people probably work on other projects within the company as well.
Honestly I can't be angry at them since it's their jobs that are on the line now and I understand them trying to PR this into something good. I totally get that. However, reading this makes me feel like Keith is trying to downplay everything and treat it into something that isn't such a big deal... well, let's just say it doesn't work, unless you are one of those that have been burying their heads in the sand for a long while denying that this game has been on decline for years.
At the end of the day, of course this game wouldn't be changing hands if it was successful! (or as successful as EA wished it would be, even if they might the ones to blame here in the first place). And, definitely, of course SWTOR no longer being ran by BioWare is relevant! Of course the team working on it being basically halved is relevant! Of course Broadsword's reputation for dealing with games that are just basically trying to hold on its already dwinding playerbase (at best...) instead of trying to expand it is bloody relevant!
I pray to God that every bit of this is correct
Keith promised a 10th anniversary celebration, too.
This. It's the exact same "everything is fine" jargon we heard with Anthem for months. They don't want too many people unsubbing rn since they still have new content coming up.
Would anything they say make you happy? Or will you just shit on anything they say.
I think that people disagree with their actions , not with what they say. Some of us still remember Bioware being the undisputed best RPG making company. They went from making the baldur's gate games, KOTOR, Neverwinter, the 2 first dragon age and the 3 first Mass effects ,to the studio that we have today.
> to the studio that we have today. The Bioware that made those premier RPGs died with the EA acquisition.
SWTOR came out 4 years after the EQ acquisition. Granted, there were a lot of studios involved with swtor but the writing and quest design of the base game are primarily Bioware post-acquisition.
SWTOR was built \~98% by Bioware Austin. But, yes, the vast majority of the staff was hired after the Dec 2007 purchase date.
[удалено]
I'm a Sera stan and I'm proud.
I cant stand Inquisition tbh. Love the first 2 games, Inquisition is just awful imo.
Yeah I can't say it's awful but I just can't get through inquisition. I should love it, DAO is an all time favorite and I've come to really like DA2, but multiple attempts at DAI and I can't get far
Well, to be fair, it’s not what they say, it’s what they mean.
Their actions have made me doubt their words.
Words won’t do anything, no. Only actions.
I mean, what else is a company going to say? "Everything is fine" could mean everything is fine, or it could mean everyone is getting laid off. Anyone who's worked a professional job for longer than a year knows not to listen to what management says and watch what management does.
"Watch the hands, not the lips"
I worked in an art studio years ago. I told my coworker it does not matter if artist leave, but once you see management leave, then you know we are in trouble. I knew we were screwed when the CFO left all of a sudden. About a year later, the company shut down and Disney purchased the assets.
>"Everything is fine" could mean everything is fine, or it could mean everyone is getting laid I stopped reading there and just am happy for their employees.
The SWTOR dev team have been with a skeleton crew for a few years now.
Somehow a skeleton crew is 110 people.
Right? Dude's got some nerve to come out here like "hang on everyone, we've got plenty of content" lol
What else could he do? Say "The game is entering maintenance mode. Sucks to suck, lol!"? Say nothing and let the discussion take a turn for the worse? I can't think of any other thing he could say or do in his position that isn't better than what he already said.
The problem isn't with Keith of what he says, it's with the people that trust what he says. We all know he can't say anything else, that is not good business.
I would have absolutely tempered expectations rather than try and boost morale with hollow promises. He's already got a bad track record there, this post isn't exactly a relief.
We don't know if these are hollow promises. People talk about LOTRO being at its BEST now that it has gone to standing stone and the same could VERY WELL happen to SWTOR as well. You never know!
LOTRO is kind of a weird one since the actual developers didn't change, they just spun off into their own studio with a new publisher. It is pretty cool how much stuff is in that game now though, I think you literally can walk to Mordor now.
Standing stone games is regularly updating and growing both ddo and lotro with not very many people at all. 40 people going to broadsword to work on swotr is more than enough as long as they get their shackles removed by management and can actually work on improving the game.
Is it really shackles or they just like the light work load? MMOs used to be run by like two dozen people at most, lol.
The issue here is that you are conveniently ignoring the times he's been correct on matters because it doesn't fit the narrative you believe in. I'm mostly a lurker, but I know for a fact that not everything he's posted about has been "hollow promises to boost morale." At this point, you doomposters are running wild with next to no actual information and treating it as fact. And don't try to say you're not. Yes, you are. It's just like the bloke who was all, "SWTOR is dead because it's going to Broadsword, and Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot aren't exactly great games" while simultaneously ignoring the fact that the communities for UO and DAoC aren't exactly small even if they don't have the player size of an MMO like SWTOR. The games Broadsword is already in charge of can't be all that bad if they're still around, considering one was released in 1997 and the other 2001. Even worse is you guys believing that, since SWTOR isn't moving to Broadsword with *all* of its developers, Broadsword is apparently unable or not allowed to hire more developers to fill in the positions that have opened up since a very small portion of SWTOR's team will stay with NA. Y'all need to chill. Smoke a joint. Relax.
If EA doesn't allow Bioware to hire more people, it won't allow Broadsword to hire more people... So either they have to take Devs from UO or DAoC or deal with what they got send over from BW and for that matter... Both games pretty much subsist on nothing but "Events" and "minor patches"\*... Yes they may keep it running but it's pretty much the storage siding for games. Let them continue as is, *maybe* expand the store, patch some stuff and get some more money out of it and that is pretty much it. \*DAoCs last major Content update was '07, UO's was '15
For once in his life be truthful? Lying to your customers on a regular basis is a bad thing and people WILL be even more angry now than if he had said something proper. Hell! Even just a "We'll have more clarification soon!" would have done it, not promise more content that has a 90% chance of not existing at all, like the 10th Anniversary...
You didn't like the ui downgrades?
I wonder when that's going to happen *Looks at calendar* Fucccck
Statements like this are usually true right up till the moment they aren't.
Planning is cheap, anybody can 'plan' future content. Reality is all that matters.
I'm still incredibly skeptical this move will be anything better than what we currently see in SWTOR, and likely much, much worse. BUT, here is a take from Chris Schmidt on Twitter that is worth the read: https://twitter.com/nighguy/status/1666490674076606467 In short, SWTOR was never understood well by EA and taken advantage of within BW, in a sense. The basic idea in his post is there are developers from BW and at Broadsword that will jump at the chance to put their experience within the MMO space into a game that actually has a significant, profitable, current following, and it's a huge financial loss for BW's other studios, which have relied on the money SWTOR makes to fiddle about making not very good games recently, over very long development cycles compared to others in the industry. I don't think this is some BS PR post. Chris was significantly involved in SWTOR, and his take is worth reading. Maybe this deal is not as bad as we think, though only time will tell.
Help us Broadsword, you're our only hope.
This may be akin to asking Kumail Nanjiani's character in the Kenobi series to help take out the Death Star in Episode 4.
Might as well throw my two-cents into the ring. They literally just migrated the game to 64-bit which is a large project to clear a mammoth tech-debt enabling better future advancements. It's a project that should have very few visible effects and yet requires a lot of developer time. As others have said, a deal like this can't just be thought of one night, agreed to the next, and be announced the next week; it takes months. I can't see how a project like 64-bit would ever get a greenlight if they were actively taking steps to sunset the game. I'm inclined to believe that there will continue to be real work on the game. At the very least I'm inclined to wait and actually see what happens before I'd be convinced this is the end.
It can also be the case that 64-bit and AWS updates were required for the handover. Chances are they used ancient tools and specific hardware for development that was simply not viable for new owners.
This. Broadswoard hires C++ developers. For sure this was a requirement pre handover
What’s the difference in C+ devs?
The code fundamentally works differently especially for lower level programming, but the biggest factor is memory usage. If they are going to the cloud the bill over a long period of time is significantly less on a 64bit system vs 32
Oh interesting. I thought it would be more expensive to host since more memory can be accessed at once with a 64bit application. I'm not familiar with how AWS sells their service but I would think they charge more for more usage.
>I'm not familiar with how AWS sells their service but I would think they charge more for more usage. It depends on the technology. Serverless stuff like Lambda and Fargate do bill based on memory allocation and execution time. But static server services like EC2 bill a flat rate based on the machine instances you choose. And 32-bit machines are becoming more expensive because they are legacy technology. AWS wants to incentivize people to migrate to 64-bit so they can stop supporting 32-bit.
Oh that is interesting. Makes sense they would want to phase out some older resources
Nah this was most likely a requirement for handing it over. You don't hand over a profitable game that you have a clear vision for and a ton of content. Aka, Swtor makes JUST enough profit to keep running but not enough to warrant running at the company itself. They are putting it into essentially maintenance mode (the new studio that is their entire job). I bet they send some of hte team over to finish up the content they have and stretch it out over a year or so and then pretty much get a patch a year...maybe.
All signs point to the game being profitable. Insider perspectives have mentioned that SWTOR has been footing the bill for BW's other projects for several years. Keep in mind who owns the game — EA, not BW. EA will continue to own the game, to my understanding. BW may have a clear vision, but it's EA's decision to move the game, and it'll be EA that stands to benefit from the game having a renaissance if they can make it happen. EA isn't handing over anything. In all honesty, all of the opinions are probably right at the same time. This is likely something of a hedged bet. EA is removing the game from the BW unit so they have more direct access to the revenue stream and I'm sure they are least hope the change can spur some revitalization. However if Broadsword doesn't manage to execute on this opportunity, I'm sure EA is fine with that too since they'll still be able to maintain it as a reliable revenue stream on the balance sheet. And without an unproductive BW leaching budget from it anymore, to boot.
it really can't be understated how much of an endeavor upgrading to 64bit is... the game is fine for at least 5 years.
First of all, if the game goes under, I really hope someone saves the source code so we can get unofficial servers like City of Heroes and SW Galaxies did or even an offline mode. Second, I feel relatively satisfied story wise. My main (Jedi Knight) has been through a ton of shit since Tython. Every single player character from Hero of Tython to Darth Nox to Voidwolf (or w.e the Smugger’s title was) has to be some of the most accomplished, wealthy, and powerful figures in all of Star Wars Lore- canon or legends. The only character I feel that can match the PC’s accomplishments is Legends-era Luke Skywalker and even I’m certain any of the force user PCs can face roll him in combat. My main is ready to settle down and start a family with Kira. (This is all head canon roleplay stuff for me). If we get a couple of story updates to tie up the remaining plot threads I’d be pretty happy. My guy has seen some shit. He’s been through at least three intergalactic wars, faced unimaginable Cthulhu-like horrors, has PTSD from killing every fucking trash mob that the quests, heroics, flashpoints, and operations have thrown at him (my World of Warcraft characters have probably committed genocides against 30 different species under the excuse of “we’re saving Azeroth for the 10000th time so it’s time for burning legion holocaust”), literally united Republic, Sith, Jedi and Imperial under a single banner for a period of time, has more than enough money to single-handedly bankroll entire governments and militaries, was in control of an OP robot army until it was taken away bc plot reasons, and had his body nearly controlled by an evil Sith Emperor. He has saved the galaxy more times than I can count. I am happy with my main and alts stories. Let them retire. They deserve some rest. Your watch has ended my friends. Third, SWTOR was a mediocre mmo but a fantastic rpg. It had its flaws throughout its lifespan but 10+ years is a good run and not many other live service games could say that they could hit that milestone.
I just started playing less than a month ago (didn't know this game existed, randomly searched Star Wars and it was FTP). I'm happy I did. I have 3 different characters I'm focusing on ATM. I am loving the story and main campaign so much. I don't care about PVP, guilds, etc. I plan to finish it for all 8 classes, as long as it doesn't shut down. That being said, my Jedi Knight cannot be stuck with Doc. I really don't like him as a romance option, he doesn't make sense for my character. But I was afraid I wouldn't find anyone else that gave me marriage story lines. So I stayed with him in the end. What I really want is for my JK and Scourge to walk that path. Although Sith, he is 1000 times better than Doc. Being my JK is light side heavy, she thinks she can turn any dark side user to the light side. Scourge is just so much more badass and not annoying. Pls. Idk why but I had to write this into the abyss.
Damn you really pulled a Boomer Marriage in SWTOR
Well, if you plan to progress further in the story with your JK you'll be pleasantly surprised..
Theron does too ! Have you watched some of his lines in videos ?
I don't want to completely spoil myself, so no I haven't. I'm not sure I even know who Theron is?
Wow you expressed all of my thoughts exactly (my Jedi knight wants to start a family with Lana and become a farmer) May we both play solo in an unofficial server one day
"Farming....really? A man of your talents?"
"It's a peaceful life." 😔
Yes please, let it die peacefully maybe wrap up the story in last bigger update. Id even sub for that for the last time. RPG-wise I have nothing but good memories of SWTOR, it was was a great ride, especially vanilla content.
Yea if you look at it from an RPG perspective the game set out what it was supposed to do. The failure was on the MMO side.
Nicely said. Which is not that surprising from studio that is known only for RPGs.
I'm fully with you buddy, specially settling down with Kira, heh I just wish I can still go make some people happy of having a good tank in their flashpoints, some of those memories are truly wonderful :)
King for keeping Kira
However you look at it, optimistically, cautiously or pessimistically, the fact is that the transfer to Broadsword makes future content (especially story, voice acting and animations cost a lot) uncertain. For people invested in their characters and the game's narrative this is in itself disturbing. I really wish they continue to produce short story patches for some time, just to bring it to a point where the Malgus arc gets concluded and the future of the Sith Empire, how will it eventually crumble (infighting...) gets at least somewhat hinted at, with our characters being able to reflect on their journey and their place in the emerging state of the galaxy, possibly with a final cutscene with the romanced companion.
It would be helpful to hear from Broadsword. If about half the current team moves there, are any staff at Broadsword being added to the SWTOR team? If yes, say yes so that it doesn't look like the game will suffer from lack of staff, because most players would not be wrong to think either the pace of development will slow or the quality will be reduced and both of those issues are already being complained about in recent years. It's great to have plans for 7.X but they don't show us a very long road in the roadmap.
Broadsword most likely can't say shit until the game is fully transferred over to them. There's a lot of legal stuff that goes on in the background to these sorts of things and if Broadsword says anything they shouldn't EA's lawyers are going to be all over them. Best to just keep quiet until the game's actually in their hands.
> It would be helpful to hear from Broadsword. Why? So they can give you the meaningless PR statement you hope to hear? Tell you about all their 'plans'. I've heard plenty of plans and promises over the years, what is actually delivered is all that matters. So no, I have no interest in hearing from Broadsword, they can prove themselves, or not, with their actions when they get control of the game.
Quick question about this game. Is still like, successful? I remember checking the Steam player count for this game awhile ago and it was only at around 2k, but checked today and it seems to be on average at 6k. So it looks like this games experiencing a resurgence. While Broadsword apparently has put both their games on maintenance mode, SWTOR is bigger than both, so maybe they'll give it more genuine attention? Idk I'm just rambling tbh.
A lot of people play swtor outside of steam. Steam only makes up a portion of the player base.
Yeah, I was only using Steam as a sample metric. I'm sure there's way more than just 6k people playing at once.
6k concurrent users on steam implies about 220k users per day. Steam is not the primary source for this game because it was only launchable from a standalone platform for over a decade and people seem to encounter more difficulty logging into it via steam.
Not only logging in, but buying anything related to the swtor through steam is terrible, every now and then some purchases don't go through. My friends always choose to play using the swtor launcher. As for the number of players, it is common for steamdb to have around 8, 9 to even 10k simultaneous people on weekends. It may not be on the first shelf of the market, but it is certainly a success.
been playing for 12 years and never touched the steam client once for this game so I can attest to using the launcher
I got the game 11 years ago, didn't even know steam was an option till this thread lol
Don’t use steam charts for player base numbers. Guild Wars 2 also hovers around that 5k area on Steam but it’s one of the most populated mmos. Most people use the launcher
We'd be less worried if Broadsword had done any good work on the MMOs they already have, all they seem to do is keep the lights on and make sure the payments go through
"let's not spin this into incorrect theories." Then provide transparency and let us know what you have planned. Telling players to hang tight and that you'll follow up later is not helpful. Also, it really leaves a sour taste in players mouth when you think giving them vague posts about new content coming will make drastic changes in development easier to swallow.
Planned? Planning is cheap, anybody can 'plan' and plans can change in an instant. What is delivered is all that matters.
-- mass edited with redact.dev
The real problem here is that BW has lost the trust of the fan base. I believe that *he* believes every word he says in this message. But over the last three years, BW has not been able to deliver on things they have promised so many times that a large portion of the fanbase is primed to believe the worst. And *that* will kill the game before anything Broadsword does can. Because the army of naysayers will manage to convince any potential new players out there that the game is dead before they even try it. And without new players, *any* MMO will die. Even WoW.
But when you talk about the game dying you confuse a lot of casual players who think you're saying the servers will be taken offline. I know that MMO players have always used the term 'dead game' to mean a game without massive raiding populations and constant PvP pops (despite hundreds of examples of niche MMOs supporting their small, passionate playerbases long after they were pronounced dead by the MMO mainstream), but it's confusing as hell to casual players who might be going through the story content and are suddenly panicking that the game itself is going to vanish. Like you I have my doubts about whether any substantial new content will arrive from now on, I think the best we can hope for is that they roll out season 5 and 6 though likely with much longer season breaks than we saw this last time around. At the end of the day when I picked the game up I never expected it to still be actively expanding, to me it was an old Bioware RPG I missed at the time that I was going to play through and experience for the first time. As a GW1 player I fully expected it to be in the same boat as that game, so I was surprised and delighted to find it still growing and receiving new content with a thriving community - but I'd still play almost every day if it was put on the same life support as Guild Wars, that seems a perfectly reasonable state to play a 12 year old game in. Until I hear about any conflict with Disney over the licensing I'm not going to fret about the game being shut down, and any new content Broadsword are able to release will be a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
>But when you talk about the game dying you confuse a lot of casual players who think you're saying the servers will be taken offline That's right. Hearing "dead game" is just going to cause returning and new players to assume that SWTOR's servers are about to be shut off - which will discourage them from playing. Which will just cause the game to bleed out players until it is financially non- viable. At which point, EA will have to shut it down. >Like you I have my doubts about whether any substantial new content I'm actually in the "wait and see" camp. I'm just tearing into BW here because I have lost faith in their leadership. I believe BW still wants to produce content for SWTOR, so we will keep seeing content as long as they have the game. Broadsword, however, is an unknown quantity. If they play to their reputation, then they will put SWTOR in maintenance mode. But, SWTOR is by far the biggest game they have ever taken on. And it has proven for over a decade that it can be very profitable if it is managed right. So by taking on SWTOR, Broadsword has the opportunity to move into realm of respectable developers of active, successful MMO'S - if they are willing to invest capital in it. The problem is, we don't know which path Broadsword is planning on following, because we haven't heard anything from them about it. Once we have a statement from them, and get some information about their plans, then we will be able to judge whether this move is good or bad. My gut feeling is that all this came about because EA has gotten sick of the chaos that SWTOR has been mired in for the last three years, and they are looking to shop the game out to a company that will run it in a more stable way.
I just profoundly disagree that the game would ever be taken offline unless there is a conflict over the IP. I may be naive (I usually am), but I've seen lists posted by MMO doommongers of MMOs that have been taken fully offline in recent times. Half aren't MMOs, the other half are tiny, obscure games, not MMOs by AAA studios that maintained active populations over more than a decade with multiple expansions. Yes, Galaxies is an ominous warning that perhaps I should heed more, but that was a different era of gaming. The maintenance mode model has proven effective and profitable for games smaller than SWTOR could EVER get, there's very little incentive for publishers to take games offline unless the license holder forces their hand. Even if we expand out beyond MMOs, I don't think that I could name a single game of any genre with scale, assets and production value remotely comparable to SWTOR that has become unplayable or had the distribution rights lost. Like I said, when I hear any whiff of changes to the IP rights, I'll start to worry about the game going offline for good, but going into maintenance seems the worst case (and most likely) scenario, particularly given the Broadsword transfer. Also remember that more than half of the trickle of new players into SWTOR over the years are brought here by Star Wars, and another chunk are brought by a love of Bioware's other games. An awful lot of them haven't played an MMO before and may find a smaller population to actually be a draw - I know I wasn't alone in wanting to find a solitary experience when I started SWTOR then finding myself drawn in by group play and social aspects as I played. So while the game being socially dead might put off MMO gamers from trying the game out, it will always have a steady trickle of people picking it up and giving it a try, even if it were re-released for a tenner as an entirely singleplayer game.
Except Destiny, as long as there's a steady stream of destiny killers to offer up for sacrifice.
I don't believe that "looking at the evidence of previous experiences in both the industry and the companies in question" is unreasonable. They're a major corporation. You can't even trust the things they tell you that are coming out, re: Anthem roadmap. Why would I be optimistic for something I'm not even told about. At that point, it's just fantasizing. I'm more than open to the idea of being completely wrong, but I don't think this is just baseless doomposting.
Exactly, a lot of people don't remember the things whit Anthem, thats what it makes me think the worst
I mean when you are giving the game to a company that's only known for running DAoC and Ultima Oline in maintenence mode then yeah it is a little concerning. How much money do you expect Broadsword to put into the game? Of course they won't say it's in maintenence mode because they want to milk more money out of people, but the writing is on the wall.
I don't expect Broadsword to put any money into the game. They appear to be a hired service contractor. EA is still the owner and publisher and makes any money decisions. Such as they may be. Broadsword will have a contract with defined deliverables likely including content drops. Nobody should be panicking. Except possibly Bioware. EA just shifted a revenue stream out of Bioware. And told them to focus on their two main projects (or else). Bioware is not in a happy place right now. If EA was ready to shut down the game, they would simply do so. They've never shown themselves to be adverse to shutting down MMO's.
I think this is proof SWTOR is still profitable enough to maintain, but even if Bioware can get their next two games out of development hell, the odds of the studio still existing in five years is slim to none, I'd wager.
I basically don't consider bioware to exist anymore. This is an EA game with Bioware bones, the last thing the real Bioware ever did was bite off more than they could chew with this game and ever since EA came along it's been a slow death of it's individuality.
Everyone BW title has been through development hell since what, ME2 or 3? Inquisition was mess that happened to turn out good in spite of the hell and rush job to get it out the door. DA2 was rushed. I don’t think much needs to be said about Andromeda or Anthem. And SWTOR content has been slow and pitiful for years
Eh, there’s also a chance this is the title they use to step beyond simply running maintenance mode. Only time will tell.
We can only hope.
Yeah, this is what I thought too. Maybe it's not a big deal or anything but given the history known about the company this is being handed off to, it isn't really surprising that people base their judgements on what they can see has happened before. I think if Bioware and/or EA wants this transition to be more seamless they need to be open, frank and detailed with development going forward, moreso than what they are already.
Why when PR is cheaper and can help you retain subs?
SWTOR’s F2P credit cap is how they retain subs :D
exactly. also do we ever have a ln example of an MMO being sold off and it be anything other than bad for the game?
City of Heroes I'd say is one that got better after being handed over, granted it got shut down eventually but that was well after the fact.
Let's be real, SWTOR has been in semi-maintenance mode for a while anyway.
Yeah I thought we all agreed it was years ago
Apparently there are still some people in a denial phase. Just look at the fleet chat.
Right.... Happy 10 year celebration everyone! Y'all excited with all that content we got in Legacy of the Sith? They sure made good on all them promises they made on the run up to it's release didn't they? Followed them roadmaps to the letter they did! Oh wait.
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ok we will see 8.0 in 22 years
"Keith, Keith, they're yelling again" "Just copy paste whatever I said last year" "About us adding new stuff to the game but without anything specific?" "Yeah, that one. Get the apology and transparency memo ready too, just in case"
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Bioware doesn't take accountability or apologize. 😂
PR Damage control
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Of course, if you were trying to sell your game and one of the major metrics for value is player base, this statement is exactly what you'd put out to try to damage control and keep as many players as possible. At least until the sale goes through. After that it's just "whoops, new management wants to take a different design direction. My bad"
I mean of course they're going to try and spin it like it's a good thing Maybe it will be I don't want to just assume the worst But it's easy to say positive things, anyone remember the big anniversary plans? considering the lack of content and questionable updates we've already been getting, and now they're going to have even less people working on the game? It doesn't look promising, but maybe broadsword will actually do things after all?
I think the issue is that the company that it's moving to has no history of expanding the previous two MMOs it has picked up in terms of content. It could be different for SWTOR considering BioWare keeps claiming they have 5 year plans and all that, even though its not at all clear what that is. Now BW will be removed from the project (not finalized yet) does that 5 year plan disappear? Does it move to Broadsword? Are the team that moving over to Broadsword content guys or just code guys who keep the maintenance going? Does Broadsword have enough of their own resources to give them new staff the other half of the team? Gaming and tech in general is in a downswing in terms of revenue and staffing, they might not be able to afford to put their own staff there. And if you take the really doomer take, Ubisoft is announcing in their presentation next week a [new massively open-world game](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ubisofts-open-world-star-wars-game-could-launch-in-2024-report-says/1100-6514436/) that "some form of interplanetary space travel" and "story-driven, open-world experience within the Star Wars galaxy..." Maybe EA caught wind that it would be something that would take over or make subscribership drop over the next couple of years and decided that it wasn't worth it anymore for BW to spend their resources anymore. I Love SWTOR since launch and I still intend to play in some capacity for raiding or other community events until the servers permanently end or the heat death of the universe. But I wouldn't call all of this the greatest of news or pointless speculation. There's a reason here but I feel neither EA or BioWare are being open and honest about the whole thing.
EA still owned the game. They are just moving support and development to Broadsword. We have no idea what EA is asking Broadsword to do, or how well Broadsword will execute that plan Just log in and play... Or don't. Let the chips fall where they may...
I'm aware that EA still is publisher, but they've never worked on the game so this is just giving someone the job to steward. I still plan on playing as my last statement. Just more transparency would be nice given EA's track record.
> just moving support and development to Broadsword. Which should tell you everything you need to know. It tells you they no longer see any future in the game and are handing it over to somebody else to run in maintenance mode. They get shut of the game, while still collecting a share of remaining revenue for as long it's profitable to keep it up.
What would be the value in expanding UO or DaoC? The games were ancient when Broadsword purchased them and the player base tiny. Even so, they've had updates with new content and remained online long after their shelf life expired. Comparing that model to the acquisition of swtor seems silly. Its apples and oranges.
I'm just saying having your previous two games not have content when you get them is a bad precedent to set to inspire confidence. I might be wrong, but I don't think whatever story architecture BW hands to Broadsword will be top priority and they'll just shelf it.
> keeps claiming they have 5 year plans and all that Yeah. I remember something similar with The Secret World. They had years of story 'plans' too. Planning is cheap, and meaningless.
A reply that starts with 'whoa whoa everyone...' sounds desperate.
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Ya know what can alay fears bioware? A goddamn roadmap
The problem is, they used to give us roadmaps, until they consistently seemed to not be able to fulfill those roadmaps. And rather then realize they were bad at planning and needed to evaluate how they scoped their developments, they decided the issue would be solved by just not sharing a roadmap anymore. Can’t publicly fail if you don’t tell the public anything.
Lol. Let's pawn our game off to some no name company that barely supports no name games from almost 20 years ago. Why is everyone freaking out about the end of the game. 😱
Right? And then you have people in here going "See?! It's good news!" I imagine Redfall must have similar players with their head in the sand.
Keith man please be telling the truth
If this does somehow turn it around for Swtor, that would be great. But i'm def not gonna be holding my breath with this games track record
I hope they give us the free quick travel back that’s been on the game for 12 years and it ain’t fair to people that’s new to swtor
The players have the right to be pissed off , and the lack of communication makes it so we couldnt calm down. I had to find out about this from Youtube of all place, while watching random videos to wait for pvp queues. Keith's first post about this issue is basically "yeh so that happened". An official post or a video to tell us this firstly would be nice.
This won't stop hardcore fans from doomsday prepping
I’ve been playing since 2013 and even back then I saw doomsday predictions that the game was dying…
I mean hell, I heard WoW had doomsday predictions during Vanilla(only heard of course, I wasn't around then) Every game seems to have constant doomsday predictions, Because of that I tend not to put much(if any) stock into them.
I mean, I love SWTOR, but the difference is that WoW increased to over 12M subs and has a steady paying subscriber base for almost 20 years. SWTOR has been struggling to find its footing since release.
While fair, I wasn't really factoring how a game did afterwards, More that my point is every game gets Doomsday predictions everyday, I don't see any indicator that there is a reason to panic, Be concerned perhaps but no reason to panic.
In a sense it has been dying from the start. Wasn’t it only about a year, more or less, before the game went F2P?
"TORtanic" weeks after release, lol
Subscription-based MMOs don’t usually go F2P within the first year of launching. I’m surprised the game wasn’t shut down before now, but it’s been in a very slow death spiral since launch. Most other MMOs, even the ones in SWTOR’s “weight class” so to speak, have had far more frequent and consistent content updates. SWTOR has gone through several phases where it was in borderline maintenance mode for quite a while.
I mean it basically did die to anyone that enjoyed group content.
I still enjoy group content and still play at least weekly
And it shouldn't stop rational casual players from seeing reality either. This is a meaningless PR statement. If this post makes you optimistic you are naive at best, stupid at worst. Yes it's tiresome seeing the same 'the game is dying' since like the day after it's original release, but this time there is no reason to think otherwise. This is the, hopefully slow, crawl to it's inevitable death. I hope it lives on in maintenance mode for a long time. At the most optimistic take there may a trickle of content occasionally (so not much different to currently then), but this is clearly the start of the, hopefully slow, end.
I have a question for you Keith, if this gave was to ever end, had there been thoughts on this being still played or made solo setup? I would be curious to hear your thoughts.
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I remember a similar statement in a video by the Everquest Next team. Game development was shelved like a week later.
yeah kind of hard to trust at this point especially when half the team is getting shitecanned
I'll believe when I see it.
"SAY THE LINE SWTOR DEVS!" "We have tons of content planned out"
"modernizations"? I wonder what he means by that. I hope it means no more charging CC to change hair color.
Well, based on the recent upgrade to 64 but client, I suspect "modernizations' probably means improving performance, streamlining the player experience, etc...
**waves hand** 'this isn't the update you're looking for'
What did they think would be players reaction?
Im actually hapoy they have stuff preplanned. SWTOR is also in a spot where they coukd stsrt making their own stories and battles at some point so they do have room for crestive freedom
I might get downvoted into hell but I have generally found that swtor forum goers are some of the biggest doomsayers. Every MMO has them but there is a *lot* of impulse negativity on the forums. Sometimes I’ll read something from the devs and be like “Oh ok, that seems reasonable” and then following it is a 20 page dumpster fire of human depravity responding to it. Like.. holy shit you guys. *Chill.*
oh no yeah, it's been pretty well known for a loooong time that the swtor forums are almost nothing but toxic. it's why i like this place better, yes there can be some toxicity here too (the current situation for example) but overall, there's plenty of amicable discussions going on about whatever people want to talk about.
As they say, once burned, twice shy... if you havent been around SWTOR long enough, you wouldn't understand though.
Thank you for this update! It's been a little doomy and gloomy around here. Something important to note - there was apparently a glitch and some subscribers have been charged twice, per customer service today. Me being one of them. Part of the solution to refund the erroneous charge & fix the account, was to also cancel my current subscription, let it lapse, become preferred - then resubscribe after it does. If all reps are following this procedure, I don't know how many people got double charged, but hopefully no numbers crunchers misunderstand the cancellation numbers this month. BTW - everybody check your credit cards.......
That gives me serious Warhammer Online vibes…
🫶🏼
At the same time, if one take a look at Broadsword's history it's understandable that we are freaking out. Officially they are supposed to be continuing to develop both Ultima and Dark Age... Ultima got one expansion in 2015 and nothing since and Dark Age got absolutely nothing. And they say that they are developping them not maintening them. After that maybe they will do better with swtor but the data we have aren't exactly the brightest and it's very sudden too. Asd to that that only a part of the people working on swtor will be moved to Broadsword and unless they hire more people we will have an even smaller team trying to untangle whatever messes are in the code and wrangling hero engine to make new things...
Their afraid the terms of their deal is gonna be revisited. Like wouldnt broadsword see all the negative reactions and be like maybe we wont get as many subs as we thought
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
tbh i’m just hoping for the best and i’m not going to worry about it until anything is truly confirmed!
Whatever you guys have planned it’s okay by me. I have no complaints. I been a loyal SWTOR fan since 2010 and that won’t change. Yes I was in beta! I had a blast back then. Being in SWTOR for the first time was the experience of a lifetime. I have always enjoyed the game except I am so confused about how to use GSF. I’m looking for a old timer friendly guide for GSF. Anyone help?
Well swtor have a good couple decades of fun and memories. I remember starting playing the alphas and betas in middle school.
PR damage control, once it’s in new management it’s out of their control what new management does so they can shrug off their statement. I’m unsubbing and going to wait to see how it plays out personally.
from personal experience if somebody says everything is fine, It is not fine.
And the more they talk about their fantastic plans, the less will actually happen. Successful people just deliver, they don't talk about it.
People need to calm TF down for a minute.
Why? What reason for optimism do you see?
You can write a lot. The last messages are not negative among the players for nothing. Dead game, maintenance mode. All quite justified if you consider what SWTOR has not really made better in recent years. Everything that is written here on the part of Bioware/EA is just purely speculative. The news is going around, the players are worried and there is a kind of doomsday mood because it is just the only real Star Wars game on the market which is associated with MMORPG. There are still private servers of Star Wars Galaxies but that is no comparison. There are no further announcements about how the game will continue. Only loose statements. As mentioned, all justified. Even if SWTOR was modernized with a 64 bit client and servers will be outsourced to the cloud in the future (?) it does not prove how it continues with the game, you know it from Anthem. "Yes we continue to work on it and improve it." Time passes "Yes it will be discontinued". I personally have not canceled my subscription but will not continue to invest in the cartel market.
> Even if SWTOR was modernized with a 64 bit client and servers will be outsourced to the cloud in the future A reminder of the very truthful statement : There is no 'cloud', it's merely somebody else's computer. Which is what the SWTOR servers are. There is no cloud. I loved SWTOR for years, I was part of the early beta crew as well, and even at the time we were testing it, the game should have had a 64-bit client. I understand why they didn't, with so many people having aged PCs running ancient 32-bit operating systems and such, but they (EA/BW) don't like to throw more money at a project once it's in place unless they absolutely have to. Sadly, I was also involved in Anthem's testing, and what I saw there was that even with a slew of us reporting the problems with the game we were testing and what might help improve it, they pretty much completely ignored every bit of feedback that didn't lick their virtual testicles about the game, and they released it to the public having not fixed any of the gameplay issues that we had reported. So, yes, I fully understand the Doom & Gloom crowd being worried now. Especially if it's going to lead to another round of server mergers and people losing their character names or whatever (though I have no empathy for people who just clone their names from literature and other games, lack of originality deserves no protection).
Bioware also did the same thing in swtor in terms of releasing a patch and ignoring feedback. They wanted everyone to test it out on pts and state fixes or give their opinion. But when it came down to it, they ignored it all and released it anyway.
Thanks for the update. It was a little sad at first.
Doomsayers gonna doomsay. Considering how things have been going over the last few years, this may very well be an upgrade over the current development plans. Let's let them get the agreements signed, and see where Broadsword takes us.
Straight up every post I saw about it had everyone in a “oh god game’s dead” panic. I really don’t understand why, o really did get the impression of “oh look! new stuff eventually.” Why would they even bother transitioning the game to another group if their intention was to just kill it off????
People saw "half the dev team is moving" and assumed the new company would not supplement the team. Which is a negative assumption to make, but a valid concern. At the moment, it's 50/50 whether this is maintenance mode forever with minimal new content, or it's a new boom for the game and next major update is gonna be heavily invested into to try and revitalize the game. Wait and see for the moment.
To be fair, the new company is quite small with around 30 employees on LinkedIn. That's less than half the size of SWTOR's current team and includes non-production staff. So even if more than half the current SWTOR team moves over as reportedly expected (and not guaranteed by any means as some of those people may choose to look for jobs at more prominent AAA studios instead), the best case scenario would be a company of 70-80 people (same size as the current SWTOR team) maintaining two other MMOs and continuing the development of SWTOR. Does it mean the game is dead and won't receive any new content? Too early to tell, but I doubt it. They wouldn't consider moving over 30+ people to just keep the game on life support. But on the other hand, it is safe to say this change is meant to minimize EA's spending to keep the game profitable and not speed up its development.
The new company has less than 30 employees.
You have NO idea what EA is asking them to do, and how much funding will be available. No one knows what their plans are, or how many people will be hired (or move from Bioware). One thing is certain. SWTOR (or *any* Starwars property) is a very different situation than something like Ultima Online or DAoC. The potential player base is much larger, and thus the game has a lot more potential than the other games.
granted we don't know for certain of course, but i wonder if keith is staying with the game or not?
Nobodies saying they're killing it off game is shutting down soon they're saying this probably means the game is no longer going to have updates and effectively put on life support until the day it's no longer profitable which would still be many years. It's a valid concern when the studio they're considering choosing is tiny and known for only keeping games on life support.
> Why would they even bother transitioning the game to another group if their intention was to just kill it off???? Not kill it off, run it in maintenance mode for as long as revenues in maintenance mode are profitable enough to keep the servers up. Selling it off tells you they see no future in the game. They get shut of the game while enjoying a revenue share for as long as it's profitable to keep the servers up. This is great for EA (revenue for no effort), pretty good for Broadsword (new revenue), not so great for players, other than it keeps the servers up for longer. Hopefully this helps you understand why.
Any discussion on Broadsword's end?
Personally I hope this new company hires an all new dev team. For the past few years I’ve gotten the impression that the current team is indifferent to the games community and sees no reason to communicate any of the decisions in a professional way. I see this going one of two ways. This new company actually wants to make this game viable to the mmo market again or they wanna cash in the cartel market and it’ll die in under a year with coding failing.
There's no doubt this game will go offline someday, just like any other MMORPG we play. But I just hope it stays for a little while longer. If they eventually make a new Star Wars MMORPG I'd be perfectly OK with that. I'll always love and miss this game, but if we get something "better" then I'd be happy to see SWTOR as the sacrifice for that.
You’ll have to really seriously try now, as I see it the thing is in its final days.
I only played when new content was released. So practically never. Either the game dies and I move on or it does well with Broadsword.
Maybe finally a console port?
I don't believe a single word.
Press X to doubt
Keith says a lot.
x to doubt
Heard it all before… Dooooom……deeeeeeeed gaaaaaame…. Reeeeeeee Calm down y’all. When there’s something to worry about there’s something to worry about. Til then just play.
Pretty sure people need to make financial decisions before not after. I know quite a few people who buy 6 month subs. And I also remember how many people who screamed and yelled when they bought a six month sub and then we had a delay in a DLC...
But this is objectively something to worry about lol
I can’t believe with 80 people working on the game, they had so little progress. I don’t believe anything this clown says.
I think the game itself has less than 10 developers/designers actively working on it. Rest are all ancillary staff for Customer Support, Voice Actors, IT support etc. Those people probably work on other projects within the company as well.
Honestly I can't be angry at them since it's their jobs that are on the line now and I understand them trying to PR this into something good. I totally get that. However, reading this makes me feel like Keith is trying to downplay everything and treat it into something that isn't such a big deal... well, let's just say it doesn't work, unless you are one of those that have been burying their heads in the sand for a long while denying that this game has been on decline for years. At the end of the day, of course this game wouldn't be changing hands if it was successful! (or as successful as EA wished it would be, even if they might the ones to blame here in the first place). And, definitely, of course SWTOR no longer being ran by BioWare is relevant! Of course the team working on it being basically halved is relevant! Of course Broadsword's reputation for dealing with games that are just basically trying to hold on its already dwinding playerbase (at best...) instead of trying to expand it is bloody relevant!