Ex EA Dev:”Old Republic will be one of the greatest failures in the history of MMOs”

13OCT

So you linked to a blog, linking to another blog?

You should've just posted the original blog!  It's one hell of a read.  The idea that Bioware's The Old Republic has a budget surpassing $300 million is absolutely astounding.  And the guy continues providing further details on the whole Mythic situation in the comments section. 

Another EA employee posted in the comments as well:

"Hey EA Louse

As a current (for now) employee of EA myself, I feel you.

I heard about the lay offs a month ago (% worldwide) and I am bummed out.
I know what divisions that will be cut, and I see people who I KNOW FOR SURE will be cut everyday, multiple times a day, and it just breaks my heart.

Heck, I don’t know if I’ll still have a job come this November. It will be 5 years come this November too (For all you out there, 5 years in the games industry is like dog years)."

lol I'll add a link to the original blog in the OP too!

Isn't 300 Million normal for a MMO?

I heard WOW was 500 Million from people on N4g!

And wow their not scared of talking about EA like that online!!?!

WoW's initial budget was only $100 million.  I'm sure it ballooned to over $300 million given al the expansions, server maintenance, etc., but those costs are covered by subscription fees, assuming the MMO is moderately successful.

A $300 million budget prior to launch is incredible.  As the guy said, it surpasses even Avatar, the most expensive movie ever made.

That being said, I don't see much evidence in his post that implies TOR will be a failure, aside from the monumental budget, and that's assuming that figure is even accurate.  His complaints about EA's handling of Mythic and Warhammer are valid and significant, but it seems as if he's just assuming the guys at Bioware are facing similar management issues.

Do you think they'll ever make that $300 Million back? And who knows how much higher it will go now.

But why is it even that costly, I don't understand the graphics are nothing to go home about, is it the amount of content they have in the game? Or the number of years spent on it? I mean they don't even have server costs yet apart from the beta.

wow i forgot they even announced Old Republic MMO, i barely care about it to be honest >_>;

Well, they guy specifically mentions audio work, something to the tune of 20gbs.  Apparently every single line in the game is spoken, which is a hell of a lot of voice work for an MMO.  On top of that, two of the CGI videos in the game cost around $50 million a piece, according to some guys on gaf.  Not sure how accurate that is.

That being said, $300 million isn't impossible to overcome, at least for an MMO.  A decent subscription base can have that back in a few years.  Of course, at that point you're adding in service costs, expansion costs (to keep that playerbase around), etc.  $300 million swells to $400 million, then to $500 million, and so on.

At $15 a month, you'd need over a million and a half players to subscribe for at least a year to pull in $300 million.

I haven't followed TOR much, but if the only thing that really makes it stand out is the story and it comes with much the same gameplay we know from WoW and the like, then I think it will be a failure. Although its worst enemy is probably Guild Wars 2, depending on when the two games end up launching. If they launch around the same time, TOR is gonna lose out on a lot of users to GW2 for sure.

It costs a lot for several reasons I should think.

1st as with all MMOS its huge. Regarless of the graphics quality it will cost a lot due to its sheer size.

2nd its entirely voiced. Which is looking to be INCREDIBLE

3rd its star wars. Its probably got a hefty licensing fee attached?

4th seetting up a backend for something like this will be expensive.

The list goes on. But its Bioware, it should be a very good game. It may lose some people to GW2 but it will gain people who are fans of their single player RPGS. The multiplayer dialogue system, the star wars setting, the bioware name etc should bring in some people that might generally not play MMO's.

But then again, who knows?

no really?

guys there's a benchmark for SW MMOs.... SWG. If i recall it did pretty decently for a while.

Considering WoW is 5 years old and although they have the cataclism expansion, ToR should syphon a bit of the crowd, and you can bet your ass off that their'll be a core SW fanbase that comes in just to wield lightsabers and stay to have an avatar in the SW universe. Heck I have about 0 time on my hands and I do consider getting this. A huge story with many activities and voice acting may also draw in players that are not so much into MMOs but into SW. It's Bioware, so you can basically expect a dragonage that's just 20 times longer :p ( dragon age is basically wow already...with pause to handle your team.)

oh and GW has it's own crowd... the one that hates paying monthly fees... so you could almost consider this 2 different genres... they do crossover, but they are still separate crowds.