User blog:Bane7670/Clone Wars Adventures: What Went Wrong

Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures was a simplistically fun online game on which this wiki was founded and based on the critically acclaimed television series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It had a lifespan of not quite four years that told even more of the adventures (geddit?) of The Clone Wars. The game was run by LucasArts and Sony Online Entertainment... neither of which exist anymore, interestingly. While its life was relatively brief, it fostered a community of awesome people and a wholesome Star Wars experience like no other. But sadly, it came to an end before it could reach its full potential. It's been on my mind for a while now since we just passed the four-year anniversary of its shutdown. Now that I'm done with school and have entirely too much time on my hands, I thought I'd do a quick case study on why this amazing but rather flawed MMO came to such an abrupt end.

So please, join me on this journey as we carefully examine the rights and wrongs, the true motivations for this histor... ah screw the academic-y voice. No one's actually going to read this. I'll just lay out the biggest factors for the rise and fall of CWA.

Let's start with a basic timeline of CWA's health:


 * August 2010: Beta is underway and nets quite a few players who enjoy the experience so far
 * September 2010: Global release; the game receives 1 million registered players within the first week, most of them enjoying the style and content of the game to keep coming back for more
 * October-November 2010: The game's free-to-play model works well enough to give all players a taste of the fun mini-games and locations, while adding incentive to purchase memberships for the full experience; weekly updates related to recent TCW episodes keep players engaged, employing the tagline "See it in the show! Wear it in the game!"
 * December 2010: First story-based expansion, the "Geonosis Saga," is released; the appeal of progression-like features and new applications of existing mini-games greatly improves player retention
 * March 2011: Next mini-game story expansion is released, "Biggest Battles: Ryloth," though only available through a Hasbro promotion, much to the discontent of many players
 * July 2011: New mini-game expansion, "Mission on Iceberg Three," that ties in with upcoming season of TCW and features new story content for the first time; met with widespread acclaim from players
 * December 2011: Combat system, jumping, and mounts introduced with the first combat zone, "Battle of Umbara," released in conjunction with the launch of The Old Republic; players' approval and retention rate at all-time highs
 * Spring 2012: New items begin to lose uniqueness as show-based items and mini-games slow down; player discontent grows with lack of new content since the Battle of Umbara
 * August 2012: New combat zone, "Skirmish on Carlac," gives hope for new and returning players that more mini-game and story-based content will be added
 * September 2012: Battle Classes introduced, giving the game a whole new progression system that tries to keep players engaged with the promise of improved combat abilities and exclusive gear
 * January 2013: Crafting is added to a mostly positive response, though player retention waivers as there have been virtually no updates/additions to popular mini-games (the game's core experience) in recent months
 * February/March 2013: Growing player disapproval with game's direction as SOE devs announce that the game will move away from mini-games and missions in favor of world-based combat; greater disconnect felt between player base and SOE
 * April 2013: New combat zone of Felucia is added, though with a new difficulty tier that unbalances combat and features few new activities
 * Summer 2013: Updates introduce fewer and fewer items per week and eventually become monthly; appeal of Felucia quickly wears off; player retention in steady decline
 * January 2014: SOE decides to shut down Clone Wars Adventures

Wow, that timeline took forever. If the rest of this seems incomplete, it's because I got bored writing it. I'll come back later.

Revenue
The main and official reason behind Clone Wars Adventures's shutdown was money. Like most MMOs at their twilight, CWA was chosen for the chopping block simply because it wasn't making enough money. Not enough players were buying Station Cash and even fewer were buying memberships, and why should they? Content was slowing down, activities were growing stale, and there weren't enough new items in the store to justify spending actual money. For the last third of CWA's time, it seemed like none of the player suggestions were making it into the game. There was a really big disconnect between players and SOE in general. As a result, player retention dropped substantially towards the end of 2012 (as shown above). On top of that, there just wasn't enough to do.

As CWA struggled to compete with BioWare's The Old Republic, the devs rushed to make the game more like a traditional MMORPG. In doing so, they left out most of what made the game such a big hit in the first place: mini-games. While most players would view mini-games simply as a side activity, the major ones such as "Starfighter" and "Republic Defender" were central to CWA's "See it in the show, play it in the game!" experience. These games were CWA's core, but were ultimately left to rot because what few developers remained on the CWA team decided that the game's focus should shift to combat like the other games were doing. Don't get me wrong, the combat system introduced in the "Battle of Umbara" expansion was one of the best updates we ever saw. But it balanced the other mechanics of outfit cosmetics, housing customization, and mini-game immersion that the game was built on. By the time Felucia came around, those features were all but forgotten in favor of a cookie-cutter boss-filled battle arena.

Failure of Felucia
Part of the reason that CWA wasn't making enough money was tied to its last major expansion: the Felucia combat zone. For all the work that went into it, Felucia just didn't bring in the revenue it was supposed to. Granted, by the time it rolled around, player discontent had been stewing for a while. Players weren't seeing the items they wanted; mostly repeats of what they already had. December 2012 didn't really have the big, ground-breaking update that players were used to from Christmas time (unless you count the addition of PvP) and most players were growing bored with the lack of story-based content and good outfits. Felucia became what all MMOs should never face: the make-or-break update.

Hype was rising on the forums for this new combat zone that supposedly had new and unique features that would keep players coming back for more. Its release was morbidly underwhelming--a few daily activities with little replay value--except that its new difficulty tier wildly imbalanced the combat system. For many players, this was the final nail in the coffin.

Store Quality
While items were continually added to the Store, their quality differed as time went on. In fact, "quality" was eventually decided by how unique the gear even was. If it was an outfit seen on the show that players wanted to use, high quality. If it was a recolored version of an existing outfit (known as "repaints"), low quality. More on this later.