It hasnt hit the asian market yet which will absolutely lap swtor up.
If it can get a feeling that its an MMO rather than a crpg then it stands a chance but its fighting a strange battle as it doesnt quite meet either the accesibility of a crpg or the MM of a MMO.
It also absolutely must get open world PVP right the next time they have a crack at Ilum.
Unlike most MMO's I can't say I will NEVER play SWTOR again heck I still have a sub and do still play a few days a month if it got some things right then those 3 days could turn to 30 with ease.
Didn't it release in Asia back in March? Think they have 2 servers now?
It's already flopped in Asia far more than it has in NA and EU.
As far as making a comeback, I don't see it. The very foundation is sunk. Only thing I see to do but impossibly expensive and time consuming is the entire game as is right now will have to be called a starter area. They will have to build an entire new game behind it with a hell of a lot of sandboxy features and a complete engine overhawl. It will never happen so IMHO the game is sunk.
If BW can hire some producers that give a darn and arent totally incompentant? Listen to players? Maybe start a new campaign showing TOR has been given a "tune-up" or "revised" of its content and features? Possibly gaining a few lost subs and stay at or above 500k?
OR will TOR just keep sliding slowly more and then finally stabliize at around 200k?
No. It is designed from the ground up to be a scripted singleplayer game. No amount of "listening to the players" is going to change that. And without that being changed, people are going to get tired, and leave. People don't play linear singleplayer games forever. They won't play SWTOR forever. They'd need to hire an entirely different developer and start over as a more sandbox oriented game that has ANY social elements at all.
True. Also, the reconceptualization of SWTOR, if not a ground up effort, would be risky and costly. Very few mmos have reinstituted a completely different experience within an existing game design structure. Even fewer have been successful at it. In the end, SWTOR will not change drastically enough. The current development path is to expand on what already exists, as is pretty standard with mmos.
I don't even think a "fair" F2P structure would lead to a growing playerbase, though EA might get one more BOOM out of it.
It possibly could for me, but it would take a boat-load of work to get it there. Maybe even an end-game NGE of sorts.
Social classes, designated crafter classes that make ALL end game gear, housing with complete deco possibiltys, JTL type space game, open worlds, open world PVP, engine upgrades out the wazzoo, take those 4 tool bars of specials that only work in PVP or only work in PVE and condense them down to where it's all managable and make everything work everywhere, Add class heals to EVERY class (no more poorly done WoW Warriors), etc etc etc. Give me something to do besides only WoWified raids at end game. (I don't mind the raids but as all there is they just get old fast and then once your done, your done, = unsub)
Basicly a SW world I can live in rather than a SW game that is completly theirs, and you just rent to play in. Doubt that's going to happen before Elder Scrolls.
What a complete and utter waist of potential. Leveling is really done well except for some of the utterly stupid difficulty on some class quest bosses/Voss et al, and the never ending NERF cycle. There is just NOTHING after leveling and BioWare Devs knew it going in. "Re-roll", they said.
It sold many boxes after insane marketting + having extremly well known IP.
Still game DESIGN is faulty. That's the problem.
Very heavy story + single player elements + mmorpg = not good mix.
Many people have treated it like Bioware 'cinematic' single player game. Finished story = finished playing.
Raiders and other who like dungeon crawls and doing isntances over and over have came back to other games.
Don't think anything can save it. Even f2p. Sure it will get INSANE number of people if it go f2p / freemium initially, but I doubt they will stick for very long.
As much hope as I had for TOR, MMO's in general do not make turn-arounds. Some could argue F2P helped LoTRO and AoC, but I honestly do not feel that it saves games. All it does is brings volatile members into the game rather than a stable community.
SW:TOR has a lot to be improve including, but not limited to:
End Game Operations. People are tired of the same ole' crap (ala WoW). They should have brought their story into Operations sticking to "choice matters". Another words bringing non-boring replayability into Operations instead of the same ole shit reskinned. I've written several post on the TOR site (before my account expired) about scenarios they could do implementing all of their systems including space into end game operations with their current technology.
Guilds. Sure they added banks, but lets face it.. Games these days should have all of the fundamental features of Guilds now including: Banks, Leveling system, etc.
Open World PvP. While I am not a PvP player there should be a balanced and dynamic planet devoted to the galaxtic turmoil that surrounds SW's.
Faction Balance. There is not much BioWare can do about this other than locking down factions and anyone that played AION will know that did not work out well for them especially when you refer a friend to play the game and they cannot create the same faction character. However, BioWare can offer incentives from both a PvE and PvP standpoint to try and help convenice players to switch to tthe other side. Hell they could even go as far as offering free or discount subscriptions for players that play "majority" of the time on the opposing side.
Crafting & Economy. I was a HUGE fan of SWG's crafting system and I would have liked them to take elements from it. Perhaps not the extreme of moisture evaporators, but the complexity of the SWG system was nice and it opens up the game to a whole new audience of gamers from SWG.
I do not think SWToR will get anywhere close to their original subscribers when the game launched. There's not any real reason to expect that either. I think they could make the game a great game, if they played to their strengths, instead of what is apparently their weaknesses. Even if they did, I don't think it would get 2 million subscribers. That would be a long shot even if it was a great game from the start.
They did have a good story with the personal story lines. They had a good thing with the personal ships for each character and the companions added something to the game. Outside of that though, the game really was just WoW with different graphics. You ran into a quest hub, gathered up as many quests as you could carry, then you would run out in the world and do as many quests as you could to gather as much XP as you could. Then you would move to the next quest hub and do the same thing again.
I think it might have been better if you could have made the combat a lot simpler, minimizing the repetition of the combat. In fact, make the ground combat a lot like the ship combat; simple and fast. Get rid of most of the talent trees because they're useless anyway. Crafting is almost a total waste, so get rid of it. Let the game focus on what it was good at.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Well, whatever Bioware does to make a comeback, they have to do it fast. If SWTOR shuts down soon, then we can probably kiss the possibility of them ever making a Mass Effect MMO goodbye.
SWTOR isn't that bad. But neither that exceptional.
The resource systems (resources to activate and use abilities) for each class are interesting. The companion system is good (although some more tactical options / scripting for combat situations would be good).
The space comabt is fun a few times but then gets boring fast (space on rails). The only reason to go on space missions would be for the rewards (ship modifications and pilot gear).
Even Kotor1 or Kotor2 seemed more living than the planets in SWTOR (despite the first two being single player games). In Kotor1 you start on Taris and see all those NPCs walking around. You can speak to NPCs and there will be more interesting NPC dialogs. In SWTOR you can only speak with questgivers and that's it. Occasionally you overhear some NPCs talking by your side.
PvP gets repetitious after some time. How often can you do the same old instanced pvp zones? The flashpoints (dungeons) were overwhelming at first but enemies in there are so predictable (they are in general very predictable).
SWTOR feels so linear and I'm no fan of this rigid class system (each class is restricted to certain weapon types / armor types). Kotor gave you more freedom in building your toon.
Concerning future perspectives? Almsot 90% of servers are empty. Since the free transfers only a dozen european and a dozen american servers seem to be significantly populated. Aussies and Kiwis were given 3 servers. Dunno how the situation is down under. If you started out on a servers and got a few toons to level 50 you unlocked the heritage stuff. If you reroll (because in the mean time the server is dead) you have to do it all again or wait until Bioware offers some paid / free server transfers. it can be a bit frustrating if you chose the wrong server.
I definitely won't come back to SWTOR. Not even if it turned f2p. If Bioware / EA wants to keep things going there will be no other choice as to go f2p or offer more trial periods for newcomers. Probably they will even do the same that Blizzard did. Expand into new markets (chinese localisation, spanish/portuguese localisation for south america, russion localisation, etc.) and mooch off new customers.
After this whole bioware debacle I have gained a new respect for SOE. When SOE did err, it was often on the side of trying to make their MMO too complex and too immersive. Which is quite different from the insult that bioware perpetrated.
Actually, they could save the game with some clever decisions. Give us Tatooine and Nar Shadaa arena with same level gear for every lvl 50. Then Alterac Valley style warzone 24 vs.24. Make Ilum 3 faction WvW by getting players of both factions employed by 3 Hut lords. There are options. The question is, can BW make it happen.
i had to laugh the other day'''i transferred all my chars to another server because they gave me a 7 day freebie,no sooner had i transfered the chars i logged out of my account and said to myself wtf have i just done..then proceeded to uninstall the game..dont understand why i even transferred the chars but i do not think for a second it can make its way back..i maybe wrong and hope i am only for the peeps still playing.
I do hope the game improves but for me i guess there is no way back,but good luck to all those guys that want to keep playing.
If BW can hire some producers that give a darn and arent totally incompentant? Listen to players? Maybe start a new campaign showing TOR has been given a "tune-up" or "revised" of its content and features? Possibly gaining a few lost subs and stay at or above 500k?
OR will TOR just keep sliding slowly more and then finally stabliize at around 200k?
SWTOR is not an MMO, that is kinda where the story begins & ends. Its a single player game with co-op and VS play and thats about as good as it gets. There is nothing Massively Multiplayer about the game & as a result most players balk at paying a subscription for something that is simply not an MMO.
The game was designed with this flaw in its foundations and I think it will continue to bleed subs until it eventually goes F2P with Microtransactions or buy to play, sadly the latter is the model SWTOR should probably have followed from day one.
SW:TOR is only a single player game with co-op if you consider WoW, TSW, LotRO, WAR, AoC, EQ2, and rift to be singleplayer as well. It's beyond asinine that people like you can make such statements without being warned for trolling because there is zero evidence to back up what you're saying. On my server, there are regularly 250 people in the fleet center at prime time. People are shilling wares, forming flashpoints, organizating operations, and just chatting with one another. On every planet there's anywhere from 20-100 people adventuring and forming groups for heroic quests. Who the heck cares that you can't see all 100 nondescript strangers running around you killing your quest mobs when you're not even working together with them? If the phasing is the only evidence you have to claim SW:TOR is a single player game, that's an absolutely foolish reason.
SW:TOR has just as much, if not more group content than even World of Warcraft. People regularly group for heroic missions and world bosses in addition to standard MMO dungeon grinding and PvP matches. I don't understand why it seems any time an MMORPG implements story-based content, there's such a large contingent of players that whine on and on about it being a singleplayer game. It's a baseless acusation that a few haters came up with even before the game went into beta that somehow became popular.
I don't think they can. They have next to nothing for communication with the community. They botched Illum. The loading screens and travel time to get from place to place is way too long and annoying, and was brought up in beta. Features were left out for released and finally given 4-6 months down the road, when it was brought up in beta, should have been in release.
They don't even test the patches they put in that end up breaking stuff, and don't get fixed. The game is like a single player game with a chatbox, it doesn't feel like an mmorpg at all. I can go on and on with the problems SWTOR has. They simply don't seem to care about the people they have managed to hang onto. People just aren't willing to put up with mediocrity these days, and certainly not willing to put up with poorly done WoW clones. If they wanted to play WoW, they'd play WoW.
....Do you know what you're talking about? Tbh, it doesn't sound like you do....
They have a test server, the test server fills up with each content update for weeks and the last couple of major updates have been almost flawless
They do periodic bug fixes and optimizations to the game both with major updates and afterwords, 1.3 and the update a few days ago is a testament to how well they're handling this game now, literally huge fixes and optimizations have been made just in the last few weeks and it's been a continued effort.
The chat box is like any other game, except you can have it at the top of your screen or the bottom and it's a really popular feature with the players, you can completely customize your UI ever since update 1.2, and I mean completely except for reskinning it, and it's a very clean UI so not much demand for changing it.
Open World PvP is never done right in any MMO to date, Blizzard failed at it miserably, in theory Ilum should have worked fine, but it didn't they acknowledged this and people have sense moved on. With recent updates more people are participating in OWPVP, though.
Loading screens move fast if you have a decent internet connection, I've never really even seen this complaint before but I do agree that traveling can feel a little disjointed, they remedied a lot of that though in 1.2 when they made going to and from your ship a faster process.
Lastly, their communication and interactivity with the players and community has probably been the best I've ever seen in an MMO service, outside of testing with GW2/ArenaNet. They do Q&A's, they do back and forth feedback on the forums, twitter, facebook, etc getting player feedback and just goofing around sometimes, they even get involved in the debates and discussions going on in the community and they have listened to players on many counts. I feel like you haven't truly paid attention to what's been going on with this game post-launch and you really should with any game if you're going to involve yourself in topics about said games so that you know what you're talking about and can therefor make accurate comments and assesments toward each title. This goes for everyone on this website, tbh. I see far too many posts like this.
Totally disagree with point 6. Their communication with the player base it one of the worts I expericenced MMO wide.
If BW can hire some producers that give a darn and arent totally incompentant? Listen to players? Maybe start a new campaign showing TOR has been given a "tune-up" or "revised" of its content and features? Possibly gaining a few lost subs and stay at or above 500k?
OR will TOR just keep sliding slowly more and then finally stabliize at around 200k?
SWTOR is not an MMO, that is kinda where the story begins & ends. Its a single player game with co-op and VS play and thats about as good as it gets. There is nothing Massively Multiplayer about the game & as a result most players balk at paying a subscription for something that is simply not an MMO.
The game was designed with this flaw in its foundations and I think it will continue to bleed subs until it eventually goes F2P with Microtransactions or buy to play, sadly the latter is the model SWTOR should probably have followed from day one.
SW:TOR is only a single player game with co-op if you consider WoW, TSW, LotRO, WAR, AoC, EQ2, and rift to be singleplayer as well. It's beyond asinine that people like you can make such statements without being warned for trolling because there is zero evidence to back up what you're saying. On my server, there are regularly 250 people in the fleet center at prime time. People are shilling wares, forming flashpoints, organizating operations, and just chatting with one another. On every planet there's anywhere from 20-100 people adventuring and forming groups for heroic quests. Who the heck cares that you can't see all 100 nondescript strangers running around you killing your quest mobs when you're not even working together with them? If the phasing is the only evidence you have to claim SW:TOR is a single player game, that's an absolutely foolish reason.
SW:TOR has just as much, if not more group content than even World of Warcraft. People regularly group for heroic missions and world bosses in addition to standard MMO dungeon grinding and PvP matches. I don't understand why it seems any time an MMORPG implements story-based content, there's such a large contingent of players that whine on and on about it being a singleplayer game. It's a baseless acusation that a few haters came up with even before the game went into beta that somehow became popular.
So the only reason to group is to do some combat something? Are there any social activities that are usually a given in anything claiming to be massively multiplayer? Are there chat bubbles so you can actually follow a conversation without needing to be a speed reading expert? Does TOR allow you to go in the direction you want to go to get anywhere or is everything a corridored illusion? Does the group content have any variables at all that keep it from being exactly the same as the last time you played it? Are you able to distinguish your characters from anyone else's? Does TOR have anything that can't be found in Call of Duty? Is Call of Duty a MMO? What is TOR closer to, a multi-player combat game or a MMO? What do you consider only being multi-player or MMO?
If BW can hire some producers that give a darn and arent totally incompentant? Listen to players? Maybe start a new campaign showing TOR has been given a "tune-up" or "revised" of its content and features? Possibly gaining a few lost subs and stay at or above 500k?
OR will TOR just keep sliding slowly more and then finally stabliize at around 200k?
SWTOR is not an MMO, that is kinda where the story begins & ends. Its a single player game with co-op and VS play and thats about as good as it gets. There is nothing Massively Multiplayer about the game & as a result most players balk at paying a subscription for something that is simply not an MMO.
The game was designed with this flaw in its foundations and I think it will continue to bleed subs until it eventually goes F2P with Microtransactions or buy to play, sadly the latter is the model SWTOR should probably have followed from day one.
SW:TOR is only a single player game with co-op if you consider WoW, TSW, LotRO, WAR, AoC, EQ2, and rift to be singleplayer as well. It's beyond asinine that people like you can make such statements without being warned for trolling because there is zero evidence to back up what you're saying. On my server, there are regularly 250 people in the fleet center at prime time. People are shilling wares, forming flashpoints, organizating operations, and just chatting with one another. On every planet there's anywhere from 20-100 people adventuring and forming groups for heroic quests. Who the heck cares that you can't see all 100 nondescript strangers running around you killing your quest mobs when you're not even working together with them? If the phasing is the only evidence you have to claim SW:TOR is a single player game, that's an absolutely foolish reason.
SW:TOR has just as much, if not more group content than even World of Warcraft. People regularly group for heroic missions and world bosses in addition to standard MMO dungeon grinding and PvP matches. I don't understand why it seems any time an MMORPG implements story-based content, there's such a large contingent of players that whine on and on about it being a singleplayer game. It's a baseless acusation that a few haters came up with even before the game went into beta that somehow became popular.
So the only reason to group is to do some combat something? Are there any social activities that are usually a given in anything claiming to be massively multiplayer? Are there chat bubbles so you can actually follow a conversation without needing to be a speed reading expert? Does TOR allow you to go in the direction you want to go to get anywhere or is everything a corridored illusion? Does the group content have any variables at all that keep it from being exactly the same as the last time you played it? Are you able to distinguish your characters from anyone else's? Does TOR have anything that can't be found in Call of Duty? Is Call of Duty a MMO? What is TOR closer to, a multi-player combat game or a MMO? What do you consider only being multi-player or MMO?
This post just makes me...umm...well ok listen
I would have no problems with people saying SW:TOR is not an MMORPG if that same standard applied to WoW, LotRO, RIft, AoC, EQ2, WAR, or any othr modern themepark that I'm leaving off the list. The fact of the mater is, even people who are vehemently protesting that SW:TOR is not an MMORPG are not going into forums for other games protesting the same thing when the same thing could be said about all of them. It's ignorant.
Are their chat bubbles in EverQuest? Is it not an MMORPG?
What social actitivites are there in WoW?
ToR allows you to go everywhere you want within the confines of the zone just like every MMO. The problem is that the planets are too big for players to be able to explore all of them in their entirety. They could have provided drastically scaled down versions of entire planets similar to SWG, but they would probably have been even more generic looking than they already are. Nonetheless, BioWare designed their planets a certain way and there's nothing we can do about it. You can argue that SW:TOR doesn't feel like a living galaxy because of this, but it has nothing to do with whether or not it's a true MMORPG.
What variables does group content in any other themepark MMO have that keeps it unique every time you play?
How do I distinguish my toon in WoW from other toons?
The Call of Duty example is a whole other can of worms. My first response is that Call of Duty simply isn't a persistant virtual world that you can log into at any time. Even if SW:TOR's universe doesn't feel as imersive as Azeroth or Norrath, it's still a virtual plane where I can log into a character and go about my business. I'm not just sitting in a chat room waiting for a game to start. I'm actively controlling a virtual avatar alongside thousands of other people who can adventure together any time they chose. Yet again, even if you think it's still similar, SW:TOR is no more similar to CoD than is WoW.
"Open World PvP is never done right in any MMO to date, Blizzard failed at it miserably, in theory Ilum should have worked fine, but it didn't they acknowledged this and people have sense moved on. With recent updates more people are participating in OWPVP, though.
speak for yourself on open world pvp has never been done right in any mmo to date.ive yet to find an mmo that has did pvp better then Lineage 2,and your talking to someone who played the game(and still does)for years.i do have to warn you though,its a korean mmo.so your average wow casual probably wouldnt last a day in it
oh and unlike good old blizzard,the company that makes Lineage 2 probably would ignore you if you cried on forums about stuff
I think the game was so reduced in the year before its launch - in order to staunch its haemmorhaging costs - that its structure is too limited and restricted for the developers to add the kind of rich features that would make the game interesting to play.
"Open World PvP is never done right in any MMO to date, Blizzard failed at it miserably, in theory Ilum should have worked fine, but it didn't they acknowledged this and people have sense moved on. With recent updates more people are participating in OWPVP, though.
speak for yourself on open world pvp has never been done right in any mmo to date.ive yet to find an mmo that has did pvp better then Lineage 2,and your talking to someone who played the game(and still does)for years.i do have to warn you though,its a korean mmo.so your average wow casual probably wouldnt last a day in it
oh and unlike good old blizzard,the company that makes Lineage 2 probably would ignore you if you cried on forums about stuff
I personalluy believe that SWG's open world PVP was done well - though the actual combat system needed work.
"Open World PvP is never done right in any MMO to date, Blizzard failed at it miserably, in theory Ilum should have worked fine, but it didn't they acknowledged this and people have sense moved on. With recent updates more people are participating in OWPVP, though.
speak for yourself on open world pvp has never been done right in any mmo to date.ive yet to find an mmo that has did pvp better then Lineage 2,and your talking to someone who played the game(and still does)for years.i do have to warn you though,its a korean mmo.so your average wow casual probably wouldnt last a day in it
oh and unlike good old blizzard,the company that makes Lineage 2 probably would ignore you if you cried on forums about stuff
I personalluy believe that SWG's open world PVP was done well - though the actual combat system needed work.
Darkfall did it well. Dark Age of Camelot did it well. Eve did it well.
And to one of the above posters, yes I do accuse games like WoW, LotRO and other "themeparks (WoW clones) of not being MMORPGs. Its just SWTOR takes the instancing farther than any of the rest, and give you NPC companions.
"Open World PvP is never done right in any MMO to date, Blizzard failed at it miserably, in theory Ilum should have worked fine, but it didn't they acknowledged this and people have sense moved on. With recent updates more people are participating in OWPVP, though.
speak for yourself on open world pvp has never been done right in any mmo to date.ive yet to find an mmo that has did pvp better then Lineage 2,and your talking to someone who played the game(and still does)for years.i do have to warn you though,its a korean mmo.so your average wow casual probably wouldnt last a day in it
oh and unlike good old blizzard,the company that makes Lineage 2 probably would ignore you if you cried on forums about stuff
I personalluy believe that SWG's open world PVP was done well - though the actual combat system needed work.
Darkfall did it well. Dark Age of Camelot did it well. Eve did it well.
And to one of the above posters, yes I do accuse games like WoW, LotRO and other "themeparks (WoW clones) of not being MMORPGs. Its just SWTOR takes the instancing farther than any of the rest, and give you NPC companions.
Vanilla WoW nearly tanked before TBC came. People were enraged at space aliens and alternate dimensions in a medieval game. That said, TBC solidified the game's status as a top seller. It's a good point of reference.
SWTOR is a young game, and if Xfire can be believed (highly debatable) it is holding the #2 spot behind WoW... So it is possible that the game is actually doing well, even in spite of the last two patches sucking and driving massive chunks of people away.
Can the game be saved? Sure. Will it be saved? That depends on a lot of things, but the biggest factors will be their decisions regarding their first paid expansion and the FTP or B2P payment models.
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Comments
Didn't it release in Asia back in March? Think they have 2 servers now?
It's already flopped in Asia far more than it has in NA and EU.
As far as making a comeback, I don't see it. The very foundation is sunk. Only thing I see to do but impossibly expensive and time consuming is the entire game as is right now will have to be called a starter area. They will have to build an entire new game behind it with a hell of a lot of sandboxy features and a complete engine overhawl. It will never happen so IMHO the game is sunk.
True. Also, the reconceptualization of SWTOR, if not a ground up effort, would be risky and costly. Very few mmos have reinstituted a completely different experience within an existing game design structure. Even fewer have been successful at it. In the end, SWTOR will not change drastically enough. The current development path is to expand on what already exists, as is pretty standard with mmos.
I don't even think a "fair" F2P structure would lead to a growing playerbase, though EA might get one more BOOM out of it.
It possibly could for me, but it would take a boat-load of work to get it there. Maybe even an end-game NGE of sorts.
Social classes, designated crafter classes that make ALL end game gear, housing with complete deco possibiltys, JTL type space game, open worlds, open world PVP, engine upgrades out the wazzoo, take those 4 tool bars of specials that only work in PVP or only work in PVE and condense them down to where it's all managable and make everything work everywhere, Add class heals to EVERY class (no more poorly done WoW Warriors), etc etc etc. Give me something to do besides only WoWified raids at end game. (I don't mind the raids but as all there is they just get old fast and then once your done, your done, = unsub)
Basicly a SW world I can live in rather than a SW game that is completly theirs, and you just rent to play in. Doubt that's going to happen before Elder Scrolls.
What a complete and utter waist of potential. Leveling is really done well except for some of the utterly stupid difficulty on some class quest bosses/Voss et al, and the never ending NERF cycle. There is just NOTHING after leveling and BioWare Devs knew it going in. "Re-roll", they said.
There is nothing to 'come back' to tbh.
It sold many boxes after insane marketting + having extremly well known IP.
Still game DESIGN is faulty. That's the problem.
Very heavy story + single player elements + mmorpg = not good mix.
Many people have treated it like Bioware 'cinematic' single player game. Finished story = finished playing.
Raiders and other who like dungeon crawls and doing isntances over and over have came back to other games.
Don't think anything can save it. Even f2p. Sure it will get INSANE number of people if it go f2p / freemium initially, but I doubt they will stick for very long.
As much hope as I had for TOR, MMO's in general do not make turn-arounds. Some could argue F2P helped LoTRO and AoC, but I honestly do not feel that it saves games. All it does is brings volatile members into the game rather than a stable community.
SW:TOR has a lot to be improve including, but not limited to:
End Game Operations. People are tired of the same ole' crap (ala WoW). They should have brought their story into Operations sticking to "choice matters". Another words bringing non-boring replayability into Operations instead of the same ole shit reskinned. I've written several post on the TOR site (before my account expired) about scenarios they could do implementing all of their systems including space into end game operations with their current technology.
Guilds. Sure they added banks, but lets face it.. Games these days should have all of the fundamental features of Guilds now including: Banks, Leveling system, etc.
Open World PvP. While I am not a PvP player there should be a balanced and dynamic planet devoted to the galaxtic turmoil that surrounds SW's.
Faction Balance. There is not much BioWare can do about this other than locking down factions and anyone that played AION will know that did not work out well for them especially when you refer a friend to play the game and they cannot create the same faction character. However, BioWare can offer incentives from both a PvE and PvP standpoint to try and help convenice players to switch to tthe other side. Hell they could even go as far as offering free or discount subscriptions for players that play "majority" of the time on the opposing side.
Crafting & Economy. I was a HUGE fan of SWG's crafting system and I would have liked them to take elements from it. Perhaps not the extreme of moisture evaporators, but the complexity of the SWG system was nice and it opens up the game to a whole new audience of gamers from SWG.
I do not think SWToR will get anywhere close to their original subscribers when the game launched. There's not any real reason to expect that either. I think they could make the game a great game, if they played to their strengths, instead of what is apparently their weaknesses. Even if they did, I don't think it would get 2 million subscribers. That would be a long shot even if it was a great game from the start.
They did have a good story with the personal story lines. They had a good thing with the personal ships for each character and the companions added something to the game. Outside of that though, the game really was just WoW with different graphics. You ran into a quest hub, gathered up as many quests as you could carry, then you would run out in the world and do as many quests as you could to gather as much XP as you could. Then you would move to the next quest hub and do the same thing again.
I think it might have been better if you could have made the combat a lot simpler, minimizing the repetition of the combat. In fact, make the ground combat a lot like the ship combat; simple and fast. Get rid of most of the talent trees because they're useless anyway. Crafting is almost a total waste, so get rid of it. Let the game focus on what it was good at.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
No.
Well, whatever Bioware does to make a comeback, they have to do it fast. If SWTOR shuts down soon, then we can probably kiss the possibility of them ever making a Mass Effect MMO goodbye.
Since when is Tuesday a direction?
SWTOR isn't that bad. But neither that exceptional.
The resource systems (resources to activate and use abilities) for each class are interesting. The companion system is good (although some more tactical options / scripting for combat situations would be good).
The space comabt is fun a few times but then gets boring fast (space on rails). The only reason to go on space missions would be for the rewards (ship modifications and pilot gear).
Even Kotor1 or Kotor2 seemed more living than the planets in SWTOR (despite the first two being single player games). In Kotor1 you start on Taris and see all those NPCs walking around. You can speak to NPCs and there will be more interesting NPC dialogs. In SWTOR you can only speak with questgivers and that's it. Occasionally you overhear some NPCs talking by your side.
PvP gets repetitious after some time. How often can you do the same old instanced pvp zones? The flashpoints (dungeons) were overwhelming at first but enemies in there are so predictable (they are in general very predictable).
SWTOR feels so linear and I'm no fan of this rigid class system (each class is restricted to certain weapon types / armor types). Kotor gave you more freedom in building your toon.
Concerning future perspectives? Almsot 90% of servers are empty. Since the free transfers only a dozen european and a dozen american servers seem to be significantly populated. Aussies and Kiwis were given 3 servers. Dunno how the situation is down under. If you started out on a servers and got a few toons to level 50 you unlocked the heritage stuff. If you reroll (because in the mean time the server is dead) you have to do it all again or wait until Bioware offers some paid / free server transfers. it can be a bit frustrating if you chose the wrong server.
I definitely won't come back to SWTOR. Not even if it turned f2p. If Bioware / EA wants to keep things going there will be no other choice as to go f2p or offer more trial periods for newcomers. Probably they will even do the same that Blizzard did. Expand into new markets (chinese localisation, spanish/portuguese localisation for south america, russion localisation, etc.) and mooch off new customers.
After this whole bioware debacle I have gained a new respect for SOE. When SOE did err, it was often on the side of trying to make their MMO too complex and too immersive. Which is quite different from the insult that bioware perpetrated.
http://wyrdblogging.blogspot.com/
i had to laugh the other day'''i transferred all my chars to another server because they gave me a 7 day freebie,no sooner had i transfered the chars i logged out of my account and said to myself wtf have i just done..then proceeded to uninstall the game..dont understand why i even transferred the chars but i do not think for a second it can make its way back..i maybe wrong and hope i am only for the peeps still playing.
I do hope the game improves but for me i guess there is no way back,but good luck to all those guys that want to keep playing.
SW:TOR is only a single player game with co-op if you consider WoW, TSW, LotRO, WAR, AoC, EQ2, and rift to be singleplayer as well. It's beyond asinine that people like you can make such statements without being warned for trolling because there is zero evidence to back up what you're saying. On my server, there are regularly 250 people in the fleet center at prime time. People are shilling wares, forming flashpoints, organizating operations, and just chatting with one another. On every planet there's anywhere from 20-100 people adventuring and forming groups for heroic quests. Who the heck cares that you can't see all 100 nondescript strangers running around you killing your quest mobs when you're not even working together with them? If the phasing is the only evidence you have to claim SW:TOR is a single player game, that's an absolutely foolish reason.
SW:TOR has just as much, if not more group content than even World of Warcraft. People regularly group for heroic missions and world bosses in addition to standard MMO dungeon grinding and PvP matches. I don't understand why it seems any time an MMORPG implements story-based content, there's such a large contingent of players that whine on and on about it being a singleplayer game. It's a baseless acusation that a few haters came up with even before the game went into beta that somehow became popular.
Totally disagree with point 6. Their communication with the player base it one of the worts I expericenced MMO wide.
I put it along SWG one.
They are speaking but saying nothing at all.
So the only reason to group is to do some combat something? Are there any social activities that are usually a given in anything claiming to be massively multiplayer? Are there chat bubbles so you can actually follow a conversation without needing to be a speed reading expert? Does TOR allow you to go in the direction you want to go to get anywhere or is everything a corridored illusion? Does the group content have any variables at all that keep it from being exactly the same as the last time you played it? Are you able to distinguish your characters from anyone else's? Does TOR have anything that can't be found in Call of Duty? Is Call of Duty a MMO? What is TOR closer to, a multi-player combat game or a MMO? What do you consider only being multi-player or MMO?
"Listen to players?"
im sure if they wanted the game to tank faster then it already is,thats probably the best idea.listen to there players
This post just makes me...umm...well ok listen
I would have no problems with people saying SW:TOR is not an MMORPG if that same standard applied to WoW, LotRO, RIft, AoC, EQ2, WAR, or any othr modern themepark that I'm leaving off the list. The fact of the mater is, even people who are vehemently protesting that SW:TOR is not an MMORPG are not going into forums for other games protesting the same thing when the same thing could be said about all of them. It's ignorant.
Are their chat bubbles in EverQuest? Is it not an MMORPG?
What social actitivites are there in WoW?
ToR allows you to go everywhere you want within the confines of the zone just like every MMO. The problem is that the planets are too big for players to be able to explore all of them in their entirety. They could have provided drastically scaled down versions of entire planets similar to SWG, but they would probably have been even more generic looking than they already are. Nonetheless, BioWare designed their planets a certain way and there's nothing we can do about it. You can argue that SW:TOR doesn't feel like a living galaxy because of this, but it has nothing to do with whether or not it's a true MMORPG.
What variables does group content in any other themepark MMO have that keeps it unique every time you play?
How do I distinguish my toon in WoW from other toons?
The Call of Duty example is a whole other can of worms. My first response is that Call of Duty simply isn't a persistant virtual world that you can log into at any time. Even if SW:TOR's universe doesn't feel as imersive as Azeroth or Norrath, it's still a virtual plane where I can log into a character and go about my business. I'm not just sitting in a chat room waiting for a game to start. I'm actively controlling a virtual avatar alongside thousands of other people who can adventure together any time they chose. Yet again, even if you think it's still similar, SW:TOR is no more similar to CoD than is WoW.
"Open World PvP is never done right in any MMO to date, Blizzard failed at it miserably, in theory Ilum should have worked fine, but it didn't they acknowledged this and people have sense moved on. With recent updates more people are participating in OWPVP, though.
http://www.lineage2.com/en/
speak for yourself on open world pvp has never been done right in any mmo to date.ive yet to find an mmo that has did pvp better then Lineage 2,and your talking to someone who played the game(and still does)for years.i do have to warn you though,its a korean mmo.so your average wow casual probably wouldnt last a day in it
oh and unlike good old blizzard,the company that makes Lineage 2 probably would ignore you if you cried on forums about stuff
I think the game was so reduced in the year before its launch - in order to staunch its haemmorhaging costs - that its structure is too limited and restricted for the developers to add the kind of rich features that would make the game interesting to play.
I personalluy believe that SWG's open world PVP was done well - though the actual combat system needed work.
Three little words will save SWOTOR from certain doom.
Free to play.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
Darkfall did it well. Dark Age of Camelot did it well. Eve did it well.
And to one of the above posters, yes I do accuse games like WoW, LotRO and other "themeparks (WoW clones) of not being MMORPGs. Its just SWTOR takes the instancing farther than any of the rest, and give you NPC companions.
Fallen Earth too.
It might save it from doom - but not from living death.
SWTOR is a young game, and if Xfire can be believed (highly debatable) it is holding the #2 spot behind WoW... So it is possible that the game is actually doing well, even in spite of the last two patches sucking and driving massive chunks of people away.
Can the game be saved? Sure. Will it be saved? That depends on a lot of things, but the biggest factors will be their decisions regarding their first paid expansion and the FTP or B2P payment models.
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