"SWTOR is a single player RPG" is not an opinion. It's just plain incorrect. The poster who said that the single player content may have been more memorable is on the right track to a decent rebuttal to this article, but to say that SWTOR has an abnormally lower amount of group content than WoW or Rift is just factually incorrect.
All of you SWTOR haters just need to get over it and move on to hyping GW2 and then subsequently saying it sucks when it doesn't live up to your manufactured and unrealistic expectations.
Where SWToR messed up IMO is the scaling of the story. Sure you can bring friends but the content does not reflect that. GW2 got it right, the more people you bring the harder the content becomes and the rewards scale as well. Also the story does not scale to your level. Why there is no level down system is a dumb move. I would give BioWare a 7 out of 10 just because they didnt take that last step they should have. My wife and I played level 1-50 on every mission and personal story and it was all a cake walk, so a yawn fest.
I've never seen a game that is more linear or less open for exploration like SWTOR. I dont care whether its labelled SP RPG or not (it is), but its linear and offers no sense of wonder or exploration. Most other MMOs have it but TOR doesnt. For a budget it had, it turned out to be trillion times worse than every other MMO, and for sure worse than SWG which was the last great sandbox MMO to come out.
I have to disagree with Mike for the most part. I used to be a staunch defender of SWTOR, but the facts are the facts. It is KOTOR 3, with group content added.
There is absolutly no reason to group, unless you want to run flashpoints, or operations. Honestly this game would have been better as an offline game with a co-op added to it like left for dead.
Yes there is group content, over half the operations are currently bugged, there is so much that can go wrong with them, same with the flashpoints.
The real problem is that most folks solo there way, then when they get to running flash-points and or operations, they have no idea of what their roll really is in a group.
Sorry but the folks at bioware missed the mark with this one. It really does feel like an rpg single player game. I know I never ran groups until I had 4 50's and wanted to do something other than run repeatable, and there is no reason to run them if your not grouping in the first place.
I will say politely as I can to Mike B, who I do respect very much. We will just have to disagree about how we think about the game. You have valid points, but I think the folks have very valid criticisms about the game. I have chosen just not to play the game any more, ea/bioware not getting any more of my cash, and that decision was based on the game being weak, boring, and lifeless, not to mention no since of community in the game.
I found most of the grouping opportunites were in doing the heroic missions and the personal story missions that were a bit difficult.
Every planet had heroic missions so I constantly found myself in these groups.
And I never looked for groups for these things, someone was always aksing in chat or I would run into someone trying to solo them, I'd ask if he/she wanted a group and before you knew it, we made an evening out of it.
So sure, if people were forgoing this content then I can easily see them saying the game was a "solo game".
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
SWToR didn't seem any more or less group oriented than the other Theme Park MMORPG I've played. Rift seemed to bring groups together better with the world events, but that's really the only exception I can think of.
So the game is solo oriented, but not exceptionally so. *shrug*
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
As someone who intends on cancelling their ToR account today and hasn't been playing it for the past two months (I know I gave away free money...idiotic of me) I can fully agree with the article. The whole 'single-player' argument is very flawed in my opinion. I had more groups questing in ToR than I did in WoW because it was never needed. Heck, other than dungeon runs I was always el-solo because there was absolutely no reason to group. Everything was faster by yourself.
None of these games are really different in this aspect. So saying it is a single-player MMO is just a stretch. There are many things to be thrown at ToR for falling short but saying it isn't a MMO is not one of them unless you want to call all the other AAA MMO's that as well.
Still playing SWTOR and still grouping for every quest. The group quest conversations is one of a kind in MMO's and makes every quest feel like a group quest. I think some people on this site just hate to see something succeed.
Mike Bitton, nice to see this discussed in a mature way. Apity that your efforts will be wasted on the worst elements of the readership/commentatorship here because they operate without reason & operate solely on their biases, they are too blind to even recognise in themselves so whilst there will be people that see the sense of your words, it'll mostly fall on deaf ears
Yep. Facts never get in the way of a good flogging. Not in these parts.
I love how folks are backtracking with their "I never meant it to be taken literal" BS. If you can't be taken at face value for the words that come out of your mouth than why should you be taken seriously by others? Just admit that you hate the game and will say whatever fits your narrative in order to bash it, regardless of facts.
Moving around the world was a series of loading screens and corridors
In all fairness though, even if I enjoy both games, GW2 has loading screens and is plenty instanced as well from my experience in the latest Beta weekend. Yet no one seems to complain there. Granted, I guess the zones aren't as... corridored.. Which I agree with is a major problem in TOR.
Going from planet to planet was horrid though, run to shuttle, get on shuttle, get to station, run to hangar, enter ship, fly to planet, exit to docking station, run down empty corridor, hit door, enter planet. That's too many loading screens for me, sure travelling can be used as a time sink in MMO's but when that time sink is 60% or more of watching a loading screen it's being done wrong. In GW2 I can run to most places ( it will take ages ) or I can use portals which will involve 1 or two loading screens but the majority of my travel time will be by foot.
Add in the fact that the larger planets on SWTOR took a ridiculous time to load and you just have a miserable experience.
I have to disagree with Mike for the most part. I used to be a staunch defender of SWTOR, but the facts are the facts. It is KOTOR 3, with group content added.
There is absolutly no reason to group, unless you want to run flashpoints, or operations. Honestly this game would have been better as an offline game with a co-op added to it like left for dead.
Yes there is group content, over half the operations are currently bugged, there is so much that can go wrong with them, same with the flashpoints.
The real problem is that most folks solo there way, then when they get to running flash-points and or operations, they have no idea of what their roll really is in a group.
Sorry but the folks at bioware missed the mark with this one. It really does feel like an rpg single player game. I know I never ran groups until I had 4 50's and wanted to do something other than run repeatable, and there is no reason to run them if your not grouping in the first place.
I will say politely as I can to Mike B, who I do respect very much. We will just have to disagree about how we think about the game. You have valid points, but I think the folks have very valid criticisms about the game. I have chosen just not to play the game any more, ea/bioware not getting any more of my cash, and that decision was based on the game being weak, boring, and lifeless, not to mention no since of community in the game.
Good post, that's how I felt playing SWTOR. It felt like Kotr with a chatbox to me, and the worlds were so lifeless and dull, it made it even worse in making it feel like a single player console game for me.
Originally posted by ShadinGoing from planet to planet was horrid though, run to shuttle, get on shuttle, get to station, run to hangar, enter ship, fly to planet, exit to docking station, run down empty corridor, hit door, enter planet. That's too many loading screens for me, sure travelling can be used as a time sink in MMO's but when that time sink is 60% or more of watching a loading screen it's being done wrong. In GW2 I can run to most places ( it will take ages ) or I can use portals which will involve 1 or two loading screens but the majority of my travel time will be by foot.
Add in the fact that the larger planets on SWTOR took a ridiculous time to load and you just have a miserable experience.
Too bad they didn't listen to the testers in beta when we told brought up the time it took to travel. They simply would not listen in beta unless you were bum kissing.
The traveling in corridor, even the guided/ linearcy path in tatooine, player on a pvp server yet seeing an opposite faction is like seeing a rare spawn , only 4 to 5 players ever pass by me in each zone, yet i have queue on the server " The Swiftsure".
The lack of meaning crafting, other things to do apart from pve and pvp.
I have to disagree with Mike for the most part. I used to be a staunch defender of SWTOR, but the facts are the facts. It is KOTOR 3, with group content added.
There is absolutly no reason to group, unless you want to run flashpoints, or operations. Honestly this game would have been better as an offline game with a co-op added to it like left for dead.
Yes there is group content, over half the operations are currently bugged, there is so much that can go wrong with them, same with the flashpoints.
The real problem is that most folks solo there way, then when they get to running flash-points and or operations, they have no idea of what their roll really is in a group.
Sorry but the folks at bioware missed the mark with this one. It really does feel like an rpg single player game. I know I never ran groups until I had 4 50's and wanted to do something other than run repeatable, and there is no reason to run them if your not grouping in the first place.
I will say politely as I can to Mike B, who I do respect very much. We will just have to disagree about how we think about the game. You have valid points, but I think the folks have very valid criticisms about the game. I have chosen just not to play the game any more, ea/bioware not getting any more of my cash, and that decision was based on the game being weak, boring, and lifeless, not to mention no since of community in the game.
I found most of the grouping opportunites were in doing the heroic missions and the personal story missions that were a bit difficult.
Every planet had heroic missions so I constantly found myself in these groups.
And I never looked for groups for these things, someone was always aksing in chat or I would run into someone trying to solo them, I'd ask if he/she wanted a group and before you knew it, we made an evening out of it.
So sure, if people were forgoing this content then I can easily see them saying the game was a "solo game".
Exactly the point. People did forgo that content, there was no real reason to encourage them to run it outside of personal curiousity.
The gear that came out of it wasn't inherently superior, apparently was sellable on the marketplace, because I bought all my gear as I leveled up, and I had no issues.
You have to provide strong encouragement/rewards to get people to group up regularly, and the design has to be set up so you can really socially interact. As I said, grouping does not equal social interaction which is what MMORPG's are really all about at their core. (even though a large segment of the market has largely forgotten/rejected this).
WOW actually had timesinks when it first launched, and you spent some time recovering your health and mana after a fight, and I used to actually communicate regularly with my fellow groupmates. (My friends list was miles long).
So yes, grouping was available, just wasn't enough of a good reason to run it for most people.
edit (besides, I know you favor playing tanks in MMO's, skews your perpective)
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I only joined groups for flashpoints. if i came up to a 2+ 3+ or 5player or flashpoint i could just stand thier for like 5 min at launch and some random would invite me and we would beat it. I had no reason to lvl with somone else, it was actually less experience for me to go trew the questing areas as a team. At the end of reaching lvl 50 it was just about grinding gear. I gave up after i got my champion set. I had no intrest to grin fleet gear, since there was no real good explination of which I started at first or how to get good enough gear by grinding daileys solo to get the world medals to get the gear. Sorry but untill you can fleet or when if at all you want a flashpoint which is not necessary it is a single player mmo with multiplayer optional.
No, it is not single player at all. You are just unhappy that it isn't a forced grouping game. [mod edit]
I only just started playing , with a friend, pretty fun from my perspective. It does have a lot of flaws don't get me wrong, but duoing with a friend and actually watching the storylines has been a lot of fun for us. We are both avid pvpers too, just filling the gap until gw2. They really should have went with the WAR style pvp lakes, that would have been a blast, how can you have Star Wars without the conflict between the republic and empire being right in your face? Quests can only go so far. Either way, not a game for everyone but if you love a good story and hours upon hours of it, it's at least worth a play through with the amount of crap on the market right now.
Still playing SWTOR and still grouping for every quest. The group quest conversations is one of a kind in MMO's and makes every quest feel like a group quest. I think some people on this site just hate to see something succeed.
With who, your wife? No way are you grouping for every quest with random strangers, if so you are the real exception, and not the rule.
Realize, most people play MMO's the most efficient way possible, if you are doing what you say, other than the wife scenario you are definitely not doing so.
As to SWTOR's success, the people on this site are apparently quite typical in this scenario considering how fast subs are bleeding out in the game.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
What a useless article. We all know that SWTOR technically is a MMORPG, the point is that it is bad designed and people play instinctively the game as Single Player, because the MMO part is not interesting enough, in fact it is pretty boring. So people play the Storylines and once they finish the exciting bit, they are left with the MMO part which people find too boring to play. Don't compare WOW with SWTOR, the first is still a MMO (not the best I admit), the second is a MMO by name but a Single Player game by fact. No amount of wall of text can deny that, since the drop in subscription is a better judging measure than any word.
Bioware is my favorite developer by far and I love the voiced-story aspect of SWToR, but I just can't get into the Star Wars setting for some reason. After taking a break due to a heavy homework load, I found myself drifting back to Rift.
Currently playing: Rift Played: SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot World of Warcraft, AoC
This article is a load of nonsense. Kotor3 isn't referred to as a Single Player RPG because you CAN solo to max level without ever encountering anyone.
It is called Kotor3 because you can be on say Alderaan and see a grand total of 3-5 players on the same planet and NEVER run into them. It is one thing to choose solo play, it another to quest for a few hours and not run into a single other player. And this was just a short while after launch.
Granted, it varied, but places like Quesh were always deserted. Just as deserted as some planets in SWG even before the CU.
The author names the 15 flashpoints, only one of them had any story, as evidence of plenty of group content. With a max of 4 players and just 15 of them, all fairly short... it just isn't very Massive or Multiplayer is it?
SWTOR also missed essential RP elements, you can't sit on chairs, there are no natural hangouts. Other MMO's have hubs where you go to sell loot, meet up and do something else between grinding mobs and quests.
SWTOR isn't the solo RPG, it is the SmallSomeplayerOnlineStatPlayingGame.
It isn't bad by itself but needed far better writing, social hubs, better space craft and a better design where you did not feel Bioware were doing their usual of endlessly copying dungeons and for that matter plots and characters.
I was always Bioware was able to pull off something of this size. It just felt like they made Kotor3 and then stretched it beyond breaking point.
I'm not a powergamer like the WoW gamers, I mean raiding, gearing, score on the armory etc. isnt my goal and thats bored me a lot...
SWTOR has many good points for ''casual'' and more than casual gamers, questing, storyline, flashpoint, pvp etc.
You can easy play solo and with a group. Everytime when I was on a planet, I saw someone who asking in the general chat to join a group for a heroic quest, and everytime he found some peeps easily.
Anyway, is my main game since the day one and the game is better after each update, I really like it.
Mike is just a bit upset because he's a SWTOR fan and hates to see his game slammed so much even when people are leaving the title in droves for not only this complaint, but many others as well.
TLDR: MMORPG's are about the stories player make interacting between each other (even in a good theme park, see DAOC, circa 2003) and not about the stories the Developers set before them. Those clearly belong in the single player game space.
Don't have time to respond to all your points here at the moment (maybe later), but please don't put words in my mouth here. I'm not upset because people are "slamming my game". Please. I couldn't care less what other people think of something I enjoy, whether it's music, a film, or a videogame.
I simply wanted to use this article to blow up a hyperbolic and ridiculous label that I've seen flying around for some time now and use it as a jump off point to discuss the larger issue here: people are really upset that MMOs like SWTOR don't foster the same social interaction found in MMOs of the past, which is what in large part made this genre great at all. Despite the vast differences in theme, gameplay, mechanics, or even subgenres, it's the potential for social interaction and community that makes MMOs what they are. The problem is we can't ever discuss this in a meaningful way if we're tossing around stupid labels and other hyperbole.
I get where it comes from. I'd just love to see the hyperbole fall out of style so we can discuss the real issue in a constructive and intelligent manner.
It is an easy way to get the fans of the game riled so those that like to jump on band wagons use it. Is it right? Of course not but it has the desired effect those using it are looking for.
Damn dude, you sure make a lot of topics about this game.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I have'nt got hit with the SWTOR bug to come back yet, but my beef with the game is still this
1. To much instancing as bad as Age of Conan when that game was released, breaks my immersion
2. Not drawn to my character like I was in SWG no matter what class or race
3. I dont get that Star Wars feel, especially on that planet Nar Shadda which I simply detest
4. Where are the animal mounts, we have way to many speeder types
5. Space combat is great if your into 3D Galaga, this game needs Open Space with PvP combat
These are the only 5 things that come to my mind and still is the reason I have'nt jumped back into SWTOR
I guess I just can't relate to this time period in Star Wars since I grew up loving Chapters 4, 5 and 6 and probably why Star Wars Galaxies will be missed by me.
Comments
All of you SWTOR haters just need to get over it and move on to hyping GW2 and then subsequently saying it sucks when it doesn't live up to your manufactured and unrealistic expectations.
Where SWToR messed up IMO is the scaling of the story. Sure you can bring friends but the content does not reflect that. GW2 got it right, the more people you bring the harder the content becomes and the rewards scale as well. Also the story does not scale to your level. Why there is no level down system is a dumb move. I would give BioWare a 7 out of 10 just because they didnt take that last step they should have. My wife and I played level 1-50 on every mission and personal story and it was all a cake walk, so a yawn fest.
I've never seen a game that is more linear or less open for exploration like SWTOR. I dont care whether its labelled SP RPG or not (it is), but its linear and offers no sense of wonder or exploration. Most other MMOs have it but TOR doesnt. For a budget it had, it turned out to be trillion times worse than every other MMO, and for sure worse than SWG which was the last great sandbox MMO to come out.
I found most of the grouping opportunites were in doing the heroic missions and the personal story missions that were a bit difficult.
Every planet had heroic missions so I constantly found myself in these groups.
And I never looked for groups for these things, someone was always aksing in chat or I would run into someone trying to solo them, I'd ask if he/she wanted a group and before you knew it, we made an evening out of it.
So sure, if people were forgoing this content then I can easily see them saying the game was a "solo game".
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
SWToR didn't seem any more or less group oriented than the other Theme Park MMORPG I've played. Rift seemed to bring groups together better with the world events, but that's really the only exception I can think of.
So the game is solo oriented, but not exceptionally so. *shrug*
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
As someone who intends on cancelling their ToR account today and hasn't been playing it for the past two months (I know I gave away free money...idiotic of me) I can fully agree with the article. The whole 'single-player' argument is very flawed in my opinion. I had more groups questing in ToR than I did in WoW because it was never needed. Heck, other than dungeon runs I was always el-solo because there was absolutely no reason to group. Everything was faster by yourself.
None of these games are really different in this aspect. So saying it is a single-player MMO is just a stretch. There are many things to be thrown at ToR for falling short but saying it isn't a MMO is not one of them unless you want to call all the other AAA MMO's that as well.
Still playing SWTOR and still grouping for every quest. The group quest conversations is one of a kind in MMO's and makes every quest feel like a group quest. I think some people on this site just hate to see something succeed.
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Going from planet to planet was horrid though, run to shuttle, get on shuttle, get to station, run to hangar, enter ship, fly to planet, exit to docking station, run down empty corridor, hit door, enter planet. That's too many loading screens for me, sure travelling can be used as a time sink in MMO's but when that time sink is 60% or more of watching a loading screen it's being done wrong. In GW2 I can run to most places ( it will take ages ) or I can use portals which will involve 1 or two loading screens but the majority of my travel time will be by foot.
Add in the fact that the larger planets on SWTOR took a ridiculous time to load and you just have a miserable experience.
Good post, that's how I felt playing SWTOR. It felt like Kotr with a chatbox to me, and the worlds were so lifeless and dull, it made it even worse in making it feel like a single player console game for me.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Too bad they didn't listen to the testers in beta when we told brought up the time it took to travel. They simply would not listen in beta unless you were bum kissing.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
It is hard for MMORPG.com to defend what is an MMO after it listed D3 as an MMO.
What makes the game singleplayer IMO is the focus on the single player as the central player of the game's storyline.
Because of the huge amounts of group quests I grouped tonnes more in SWTOR than I did in most other MMOs while leveling up.
The traveling in corridor, even the guided/ linearcy path in tatooine, player on a pvp server yet seeing an opposite faction is like seeing a rare spawn , only 4 to 5 players ever pass by me in each zone, yet i have queue on the server " The Swiftsure".
The lack of meaning crafting, other things to do apart from pve and pvp.
It dosent get anymore single player than this....
RIP Orc Choppa
Exactly the point. People did forgo that content, there was no real reason to encourage them to run it outside of personal curiousity.
The gear that came out of it wasn't inherently superior, apparently was sellable on the marketplace, because I bought all my gear as I leveled up, and I had no issues.
You have to provide strong encouragement/rewards to get people to group up regularly, and the design has to be set up so you can really socially interact. As I said, grouping does not equal social interaction which is what MMORPG's are really all about at their core. (even though a large segment of the market has largely forgotten/rejected this).
WOW actually had timesinks when it first launched, and you spent some time recovering your health and mana after a fight, and I used to actually communicate regularly with my fellow groupmates. (My friends list was miles long).
So yes, grouping was available, just wasn't enough of a good reason to run it for most people.
edit (besides, I know you favor playing tanks in MMO's, skews your perpective)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
No, it is not single player at all. You are just unhappy that it isn't a forced grouping game. [mod edit]
I only just started playing , with a friend, pretty fun from my perspective. It does have a lot of flaws don't get me wrong, but duoing with a friend and actually watching the storylines has been a lot of fun for us. We are both avid pvpers too, just filling the gap until gw2. They really should have went with the WAR style pvp lakes, that would have been a blast, how can you have Star Wars without the conflict between the republic and empire being right in your face? Quests can only go so far. Either way, not a game for everyone but if you love a good story and hours upon hours of it, it's at least worth a play through with the amount of crap on the market right now.
With who, your wife? No way are you grouping for every quest with random strangers, if so you are the real exception, and not the rule.
Realize, most people play MMO's the most efficient way possible, if you are doing what you say, other than the wife scenario you are definitely not doing so.
As to SWTOR's success, the people on this site are apparently quite typical in this scenario considering how fast subs are bleeding out in the game.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
We all know that SWTOR technically is a MMORPG, the point is that it is bad designed and people play instinctively the game as Single Player, because the MMO part is not interesting enough, in fact it is pretty boring.
So people play the Storylines and once they finish the exciting bit, they are left with the MMO part which people find too boring to play.
Don't compare WOW with SWTOR, the first is still a MMO (not the best I admit), the second is a MMO by name but a Single Player game by fact.
No amount of wall of text can deny that, since the drop in subscription is a better judging measure than any word.
Bioware is my favorite developer by far and I love the voiced-story aspect of SWToR, but I just can't get into the Star Wars setting for some reason. After taking a break due to a heavy homework load, I found myself drifting back to Rift.
Currently playing:
Rift
Played:
SWToR, Aion,EQ, Dark Age of Camelot
World of Warcraft, AoC
This article is a load of nonsense. Kotor3 isn't referred to as a Single Player RPG because you CAN solo to max level without ever encountering anyone.
It is called Kotor3 because you can be on say Alderaan and see a grand total of 3-5 players on the same planet and NEVER run into them. It is one thing to choose solo play, it another to quest for a few hours and not run into a single other player. And this was just a short while after launch.
Granted, it varied, but places like Quesh were always deserted. Just as deserted as some planets in SWG even before the CU.
The author names the 15 flashpoints, only one of them had any story, as evidence of plenty of group content. With a max of 4 players and just 15 of them, all fairly short... it just isn't very Massive or Multiplayer is it?
SWTOR also missed essential RP elements, you can't sit on chairs, there are no natural hangouts. Other MMO's have hubs where you go to sell loot, meet up and do something else between grinding mobs and quests.
SWTOR isn't the solo RPG, it is the SmallSomeplayerOnlineStatPlayingGame.
It isn't bad by itself but needed far better writing, social hubs, better space craft and a better design where you did not feel Bioware were doing their usual of endlessly copying dungeons and for that matter plots and characters.
I was always Bioware was able to pull off something of this size. It just felt like they made Kotor3 and then stretched it beyond breaking point.
I'm not a powergamer like the WoW gamers, I mean raiding, gearing, score on the armory etc. isnt my goal and thats bored me a lot...
SWTOR has many good points for ''casual'' and more than casual gamers, questing, storyline, flashpoint, pvp etc.
You can easy play solo and with a group. Everytime when I was on a planet, I saw someone who asking in the general chat to join a group for a heroic quest, and everytime he found some peeps easily.
Anyway, is my main game since the day one and the game is better after each update, I really like it.
JEDI MASTER SOTANAX
SWG PRE-CU
Don't have time to respond to all your points here at the moment (maybe later), but please don't put words in my mouth here. I'm not upset because people are "slamming my game". Please. I couldn't care less what other people think of something I enjoy, whether it's music, a film, or a videogame.
I simply wanted to use this article to blow up a hyperbolic and ridiculous label that I've seen flying around for some time now and use it as a jump off point to discuss the larger issue here: people are really upset that MMOs like SWTOR don't foster the same social interaction found in MMOs of the past, which is what in large part made this genre great at all. Despite the vast differences in theme, gameplay, mechanics, or even subgenres, it's the potential for social interaction and community that makes MMOs what they are. The problem is we can't ever discuss this in a meaningful way if we're tossing around stupid labels and other hyperbole.
I get where it comes from. I'd just love to see the hyperbole fall out of style so we can discuss the real issue in a constructive and intelligent manner.
It is an easy way to get the fans of the game riled so those that like to jump on band wagons use it. Is it right? Of course not but it has the desired effect those using it are looking for.
Damn dude, you sure make a lot of topics about this game.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I have'nt got hit with the SWTOR bug to come back yet, but my beef with the game is still this
1. To much instancing as bad as Age of Conan when that game was released, breaks my immersion
2. Not drawn to my character like I was in SWG no matter what class or race
3. I dont get that Star Wars feel, especially on that planet Nar Shadda which I simply detest
4. Where are the animal mounts, we have way to many speeder types
5. Space combat is great if your into 3D Galaga, this game needs Open Space with PvP combat
These are the only 5 things that come to my mind and still is the reason I have'nt jumped back into SWTOR
I guess I just can't relate to this time period in Star Wars since I grew up loving Chapters 4, 5 and 6 and probably why Star Wars Galaxies will be missed by me.