I agree with this article. I don't see how grouping is considered difficult or cumbersome in SWTOR. I group all the time. It is not hard. It is not automatic, either. Sometimes you have to accept group requests and sometimes you have to send them. The arguement I see a lot is that the voice-over story quest is the core of the game, so therefore it is clearly a single player game. I find this unconvincing, as well. I think it is another facet to the game that makes it interesting. I get a lot of people are dissappointed by this game and that many consider it to be overhyped. It is clearly not to every one's taste. But, it is also clearly not a single player game.
heh, I remember when so many fans used to defend the game by claiming it was a single player RPG with a monthly fee. I'm sure those claims just stirred more player resentment, for those who would much rather have a single player KOTOR 3
when bioware spent years of development (and $300,000,000) to make the first MMO with the true 'fourth pillar' as they love to call it, I was dumb enough to believe that they were going to actually try to find a way to make story telling work with MMO mechanics. I didn't think they would actually just make world of warcraft with voice acting and a mass effect dialogue wheel.
I grouped most of the time I played because I chose to be in a group. People are so obsessed with end game and getting their quick that they don't really want to group they just want more bodies to hit buttons so they level faster. I kind of miss DAoC and EQ groups where people would at least be social in a group. Group to me means to socialize not just to be your exp bonus bot.
I'm sure this has been said at least 50 times before as I haven't read through every page but honestly if you cannot see the glaring difference between how swtor can be viewed as more of a srpg than a game like wow, rift, tera, ect I honestly don't know what to say. The obviously glaring difference swtor MAIN focus was a fully voiced SINGLE player story all those other games this was part of the game but far from the main focus of the game. Yes you have PLENTY of options to group up in swtor and play with others but that doesn't change the fact it was obvious the most time and effort was put into the srpg story aspect. It's fine if that doesn't bother you or you enjoy the game but to deny that this wasn't the main focus of swtor and how you can't see why people say it can feel more like an srpg than most other MMOs is ridiculous imho.
Except this is both wrong and irrelevant.
I have 33 days played on my main char in the game, I have 3 characters at level 50, I can tell you that at least 3/4th of that time played was done in activities that concerned other players, be it pvp, be it instances and raids, be it planning guild affairs.
Why is it wrong? Because even though the class story is by far the most interesting aspect of the storyline, it is not the biggest, or main part of the game. The world arcs are much more expansive and contain a lot more quests than the class storyline on every world except for the starter planet. Secondly, every quest in the game can be grouped for, class story or not.
Why is it irrelevant? Because in SWG, in EQ2, in WoW, .... people can choose to group up for that content, just as Mike said you could. If you chose not to that is in your hands. I didn't choose to group up for most of the content in those games either, does that make those games single player? NO.
Finally, as the quoted poster said: if you call this game a single player, there is no reason to call any other game released in the past years anything else than a single player, period. This is pure, uncut FACT if you compare gameplay from these games.
[mod edit - please try to be constructive!]
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Originally posted by remyburke Its about as multiplayer as D3, and feels just as...forced.
Care to explain how this game is as multiplayer as D3, when D3 doesn't have the kind of massive online content that SWTOR has?
I'm not disputing that Bioware shit the bed when making this game. I'm not disputing that the game is far too instanced, far too linear, and has a very poor world design that limits interaction and freedom. This is the reason I unsubbed. But as far as massive multiplayer options, you can do every single thing in SWTOR that you can do in any themepark MMO, and more than in games like Guild Wars 1 and DDO.
So do you actually have a reason for comparing it to a single player online game in that respect, or are you just parroting what others say? It's perfectly fine to dislike this game, because Bioware really shit the bed when designing it. But some of the negative comments attributed to it, like yours for example, don't seem to be ones that any actual thought or logic was put into.
Ill agree that the game isnt a single player MMO. But thats not what killed it for me. What killed it for me is how it practicly Railroads you though content much like a singleplayer game. Example
i take Story Quest A. By story quest A they have Side quest A B C and D to be done in the same area Story Quest A is done. when you finish it you go to Story Quest B which has Side quest E F and G by it to be done in Story Quest B's area.
See what i mean by rail roading. you wont find a quest that needs to be done in Story Quest A's area by Story Quest B. sure its convenient to have everything grouped up like that but it makes it.
Even WoW only partly grouped them like that. there were some quests that made you jump zone to zone to finish it off. there is really no need for exploring in this game other than holocrons because you know that when you finish the side quests you wont ever have to go back to that area again.
Because i can. I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out. Logic every gamers worst enemy.
Its not primarily the fact you can solo to cap that is giving it the SPRPG tag. World areas feel dead because they are too heavily instances and there is simply nothing "massively multiplayer" about the SWTOR experience, instead it feels like a SP RPG with co-op & pvp. I had very high hopes for SWTOR but it is simply not an MMO.
The incentives for grouping weren't really effective, but it doesn't magically transform into a single player game because grouping isn't forced. Whatever else you may think of the game, whatever opinion you have about it's mechanics and how they were implemented, as soon as the game allows you to play with at least one other person it ceases to be a single player game.
However you choose to play from that point on is up to you.
For me the big turnoff is the game world: empty, lifelless, static NPCs, it doesn't feel a living virtual world at all...
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I'm sure this has been said at least 50 times before as I haven't read through every page but honestly if you cannot see the glaring difference between how swtor can be viewed as more of a srpg than a game like wow, rift, tera, ect I honestly don't know what to say. The obviously glaring difference swtor MAIN focus was a fully voiced SINGLE player story all those other games this was part of the game but far from the main focus of the game. Yes you have PLENTY of options to group up in swtor and play with others but that doesn't change the fact it was obvious the most time and effort was put into the srpg story aspect. It's fine if that doesn't bother you or you enjoy the game but to deny that this wasn't the main focus of swtor and how you can't see why people say it can feel more like an srpg than most other MMOs is ridiculous imho.
Except this is both wrong and irrelevant.
I have 33 days played on my main char in the game, I have 3 characters at level 50, I can tell you that at least 3/4th of that time played was done in activities that concerned other players, be it pvp, be it instances and raids, be it planning guild affairs.
Why is it wrong? Because even though the class story is by far the most interesting aspect of the storyline, it is not the biggest, or main part of the game. The world arcs are much more expansive and contain a lot more quests than the class storyline on every world except for the starter planet. Secondly, every quest in the game can be grouped for, class story or not.
Why is it irrelevant? Because in SWG, in EQ2, in WoW, .... people can choose to group up for that content, just as Mike said you could. If you chose not to that is in your hands. I didn't choose to group up for most of the content in those games either, does that make those games single player? NO.
Finally, as the quoted poster said: if you call this game a single player, there is no reason to call any other game released in the past years anything else than a single player, period. This is pure, uncut FACT if you compare gameplay from these games.
TOR has many flaws, but stup uttering bullshit about it, especially if you quit the game after a week or so: it's fine to dislike it, but after you've made that clear, don't repeat it endlessly like some demented old grandma.
doesn't matter how many hours you spent grouping/raiding/warzones when I play a MMO and the zone design, general questing, and overall "feel" of the game gives no feeling aside from the fleet of a basic MMO(opinion of course) it's no wonder people call this game more of a lobby game. It's an overall design choice by the developers to design the game this way and just how it plays and feels to many of us doesn't give that basic MMO feel like all those other games you listed. Having played every single large MMO release since UO then a couple dozen F2P asian ones It doesn't take much for me to get the "feel" of the game world and how it was all put together. It's perspective obviously but it's one shared by a lot of people not just me. Obviously game is not a single player game but what the big cmplaint is it has too much focus for many people on the single player elements and the multipler stuff to many of us feels extremly lackluster and much of it tacked on feel which greatly hinders the overall gaming experience to me.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
God there are so many close minded people here who are not even reading what he wrote and just focusing on their own opinion. If you read carefully what he wrote and really think about most of the other games in this genre and compare them you will see that much of what he wrote is correct whether the game disappointed your or not. When I read some of the comments and think about Aion, Warhammer, etc, some of the same argumenets here are even more pronounced than in SWTOR.
Originally posted by ste2000 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.
QFT !!!! Couldnt say better myself.
QFE, I also don't believe I could have said it better myself. A wall of text with an opinion is one thing, but to post it as an article as "fact" is another.
MMO Waltzing again! You guys are practically pros!
QFT all you want, nothing more than subjective!
This a great example of players making the game what it is. You are practically given the same group and social features like other MMO's. This is just plain LAZY on the players part!
The game can ONLY hold your hand for so long, yes, you actually have to make en effort to talk to folks online in the game. The developers can't teach you that.
Not our fault you guys get bored, maybe no one likes to play with you, or you just don't play well with others.
God there are so many close minded people here who are not even reading what he wrote and just focusing on their own opinion. If you read carefully what he wrote and really think about most of the other games in this genre and compare them you will see that much of what he wrote is correct whether the game disappointed your or not. When I read some of the comments and think about Aion, Warhammer, etc, some of the same argumenets here are even more pronounced than in SWTOR.
However, when people have no idea what theya re talking about, when they spread misinformation or just downright lie, when they do not have enough experience with the subject and make bold statements that really don't apply, then there needs to be a discussion to clarify what the issues are.
Amazing how in one part, Bioware is "creating a new kind of MMO"...but when its pointed out that this "new kind of MMO" is not like MMOs...people dont know what they are talking about.
People who dont hold the same ideas as you...never know what they are talking about do they?
Well, reality says most players dont like this new kind of MMO, hence the reason why the game lost so many players. So, sit there with a smile on your face knowing you did your part to stop the flow of information as to WHY it happened just to defend the idiocy of the games creation...one more block in the tomb making sure SWTOR has a very short lifespan. Oh I know I know, there is nothing wrong with the game, people are not leaving, there is nothing to see here....move along, move along...all is well.
Really rdrakken? is that the card you are playing? Draw again.
Most of the people who purchased SWToR would never have continued to play it into the future. Are you really making the assumption that if x million players buy a game then the game is trash because all those players didn't continue playing it? Or perhaps the game should always have had a smaller audience in the first place, regardless of subject matter?
As far as my highlighted portion, that's all about your issues. feel free to go through any of my posts and try to support that claim that I think everyone who doesn't hold my opinion doesn't know what they are talking about. Oh sure, I might assert a point of view and that's what discussion is all about. But playing the victim in a debate/discussion doesn't hold water with me.
Truth is, SWToR, regardless of the money put into it or the idea that "it's star wars therefore it's going to be a blockbuster" was never going to be huge contender because of how they made the game. The game is playable and enjoyed by many. Those were the people who the game was made for. It's a shame that it didnt' have mass appeal for everyone who purchased it but with all the myriad people from all walks of "gaming life/star wars fandom" who bought the game I don't see how everyone could be made happy.
Also, it seems that for the people who did like the game, the real issues were content at end cap. Essentially nothing to do but repeat instances or battleground pvp.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
I played with two friends and my biggest complaint was that I had to skip content to make things relevant or interesting. True, I could have kept playing lower level missions for the story, but they became more tedious than entertaining when playing with friends. In that respect it IS the Single Player RPG.
I am not a hardcore player, but I understand the need for more difficult content. Don't hype up story if you are penalized because you play with a few friends. Make your personal story solo, and ramp up the difficulty on more missions. There was too much solo content. You do that later in life, like WoW. Don't make the majority of content easy from the start.
I'm not bashing WoW, just saying that SWTOR learned the wrong things from WoW -- WoW is what it is now because of a successful life, not because it started out like SWTOR. I can't put it any better than that.
people saying this is a single player rpg more than a mmo have no idea what they are talking about. theres multiple group quests in every zone and the flash points. i had a group all the time for world pvp. maybe everyone complaining was on a pve server? i was not a star wars fan but this game actually turned me into one. im currently not subbed because my computer broke and im such a game of thrones addict i needed a fantasy mmo and went back to rift and wow. once they allow server transfers im ganna try to sub again and finally get to 50. coming from someone who loves mmo's if your thinking about trying this defiantely do it. they got a play to lvl 15 for free thing so look up on the forums for the most populated server and try it out.
the most annoying gamer people are swg and morrowind obsessers
Even if a MMORPG editor explains why it's a ridiculous statement, people will go on "Lalala, I'm not hearing you, lalala, TOR is a singleplayer RPG, lalala."
Heck, I played all 3 beta weekends of GW2 now (+stress tests) and did FAR less grouping and actually chatting to strangers than I did when initially starting out TOR (flame on).
Kettle much? "Lalalala GW2 rewards you for not having to group but still doing things WITH OTHER PEOPLE, LALALALA I'm not listening"
sound familiar? yeah that's what you implied above and you didn't learn a thing from GW2 apparently. Thought i might point out your contradiction to your own argument there. Saying that GW2 is in any way like the solo experience you get in leveling in SWTOR is like saying that the experience you get form the elites in WoW was anywhere near worth while like in EQ2. There's no comparison because they are obviously different. And then you go on the pretend that people who don't NEED to form a group for content in GW2 but get rewarded anyway is somehow the same as the experience in SWTOR. It's not and here's why.
SWTOR WOW both require you to group for dungeons and for raids and make those two things the only way to progress. The content in GW2 is almost all outside the dungeons and with every event, the group forms just by people being there (without pressing a button or asking someone's pernission so you could loot.) yeah it just happens. Top that off with getting your own loot and credit for everything you are doing without someone stealing kills or taking your nodes and you have THE solution for the pve mmo'ers problems we've all seen in the early days of mmos.
It is not the bit ridicilous. The core part of the game, which is the class storyline, are obviously designed to be done solo with little to no point in finding a party to do them. Ergo it is a single player RPG with optional multiplayer component.
exactly, and then you get to the end of the game where the only thing to do is dungeons/raids forcing you to group then. is it really any wonder why people usually end up not knowing the fights in the end especially new players? there is no practice with groups before then really.
Aside from rolling out before servers where optimized to handle larger populations and then making people transfer rather than merging servers. I think where they dropped the ball was in that we were presented with this neat world that was fully voiced and immersive but ultimately non of our choices really mattered in the game. The story quest went on with only one possible out come light and dark level was simply a matter of presences in relics because that’s the only thing it really effected.
So SWTOR is not a single player mmo because there are some quest /flashpoints/warzones you need to group...Then Soulcalibur is not a fighting game because it has a character creation screen.
Ok being fair you are right , SWTOR is a poor MMO thinked to play solo, with a few 2,99$ stories with chat features and some kind of pvp.
I've been keeping tabs on this thread throughout the day, and one thing is clear to me. People have a plethora of reasons for calling SW:TOR a single-player game. For some, it's a lack of group content. Some say it's because the multiplayer aspect of the game was done poorly. For others, it's the amount of instancing or the focus on single-player story.
In nearly every case, I find the arguments rather weak. SW:TOR's group content is on par with virtually every other similar MMORPG on the market today, and the world and story-based quest design have nothing to do with whether or not the game is a true MMORPG. Most MMOs have players soloing to the level cap. I fail to see what's wrong with BioWare at least attempting to make solo questing more interesting.
In addition to that, I find that it is, in fact, most of you who misunderstand, not MikeB. It's ok to feel as if SW:TOR doesn't give players enough opportunities to collaborate and to play together, but SW:TOR is nothing more than a scapegoat for the failings of previous MMORPGs. Instead of lambasting BioWare, we should look at this as a problem with the genre as a whole. Finding ways to encourage people to play together without making players feel as if they have to be conjoined with one another just to have fun has been a major issue in MMO design for years. As the article reads (you all did read it didn't you?), numerous games have looked for ways to tackle this issue, but I may add that most of those ideas failed. If SW:TOR were to have added public quests, I can believe they would be abandoned months after release exactly as they were in Rift and WAR. GW2 is only the latest game in a long line of attempts at finding a better way to fluidly facilitate player interaction. In my experience, the dynamic events system has its ups and downs, but it does lend more to player cooperation which can only be a good thing.
SW:TOR for good or bad, is just a product of its time. Once World of Warcraft released, virtually every mainstream MMO developer on the market tried to copy its formula, hoping for similar success. If we're going to crucify BioWare, we have to do the same to Turbine, Trion, SOE, Mythic, NCSoft, BluHole Studios, and Funcom as all companies share equal blame in the state of current MMORPGs.
Awesome article and 100 percent true and accurate. It's funny to me to hear such criticisms aimed at SWTOR when I have not spent as much time grouping in any mmo since SWG which in many ways forced grouping, or atleast relied on systems designed to seriously encourage grouping.
This type of complaint to me has so much more to do with the attitude of the individual than anything to do wth the game itself, if you enter a game with skepticism and the general attitude we encounter from posters on here it's no wonder some of these folks have such a hard time grouping in games.
With nice little additions like social levels for grouping and plenty of group specific contet from level 8 on as well as the ability to group in any solo content I can safely say that SWTOR stands at least a shouder above just about any other mmo I've ever played.
It is not the bit ridicilous. The core part of the game, which is the class storyline, are obviously designed to be done solo with little to no point in finding a party to do them. Ergo it is a single player RPG with optional multiplayer component.
I don't think that anyone, or at least most people, who call SWTOR an SPRPG means it literally. It's just hyperbole to make a point. We all know that SWTOR is technically an MMORPG.
The problem is that it seems like 80% of the development effort in SWTOR went into stuff that is almost best experienced by a single player. It's no secret that the story, questing, and VO are the main selling points of SWTOR, and where most of the dev effort went. But all these things are kind of a pain to experience cooperatively.
Unless you are at the exact same point in questing as another player, you'll always run into the issue of "Oh, I already did that quest" or "I still have more to do in that quest chain."
Couple this with the extreme instancing and lack of any interesting social hubs, and the game really seems to fall flat in the MMO department. That is why people call it an SPRPG.
Here I have to disagree as most of these people make posts trying to debate the topic and you don't debate hyperbole you just say "well noo literally it is but....." then state your grievances. Well I for one would have been glad to have gotten that response any of the times I found myself foolish enogh to try and debate that silly statement.
Comments
I agree with this article. I don't see how grouping is considered difficult or cumbersome in SWTOR. I group all the time. It is not hard. It is not automatic, either. Sometimes you have to accept group requests and sometimes you have to send them. The arguement I see a lot is that the voice-over story quest is the core of the game, so therefore it is clearly a single player game. I find this unconvincing, as well. I think it is another facet to the game that makes it interesting. I get a lot of people are dissappointed by this game and that many consider it to be overhyped. It is clearly not to every one's taste. But, it is also clearly not a single player game.
heh, I remember when so many fans used to defend the game by claiming it was a single player RPG with a monthly fee. I'm sure those claims just stirred more player resentment, for those who would much rather have a single player KOTOR 3
when bioware spent years of development (and $300,000,000) to make the first MMO with the true 'fourth pillar' as they love to call it, I was dumb enough to believe that they were going to actually try to find a way to make story telling work with MMO mechanics. I didn't think they would actually just make world of warcraft with voice acting and a mass effect dialogue wheel.
I grouped most of the time I played because I chose to be in a group. People are so obsessed with end game and getting their quick that they don't really want to group they just want more bodies to hit buttons so they level faster. I kind of miss DAoC and EQ groups where people would at least be social in a group. Group to me means to socialize not just to be your exp bonus bot.
Except this is both wrong and irrelevant.
I have 33 days played on my main char in the game, I have 3 characters at level 50, I can tell you that at least 3/4th of that time played was done in activities that concerned other players, be it pvp, be it instances and raids, be it planning guild affairs.
Why is it wrong? Because even though the class story is by far the most interesting aspect of the storyline, it is not the biggest, or main part of the game. The world arcs are much more expansive and contain a lot more quests than the class storyline on every world except for the starter planet. Secondly, every quest in the game can be grouped for, class story or not.
Why is it irrelevant? Because in SWG, in EQ2, in WoW, .... people can choose to group up for that content, just as Mike said you could. If you chose not to that is in your hands. I didn't choose to group up for most of the content in those games either, does that make those games single player? NO.
Finally, as the quoted poster said: if you call this game a single player, there is no reason to call any other game released in the past years anything else than a single player, period. This is pure, uncut FACT if you compare gameplay from these games.
[mod edit - please try to be constructive!]
Feel free to use my referral link for SW:TOR if you want to test out the game. You'll get some special unlocks!
Care to explain how this game is as multiplayer as D3, when D3 doesn't have the kind of massive online content that SWTOR has?
I'm not disputing that Bioware shit the bed when making this game. I'm not disputing that the game is far too instanced, far too linear, and has a very poor world design that limits interaction and freedom. This is the reason I unsubbed. But as far as massive multiplayer options, you can do every single thing in SWTOR that you can do in any themepark MMO, and more than in games like Guild Wars 1 and DDO.
So do you actually have a reason for comparing it to a single player online game in that respect, or are you just parroting what others say? It's perfectly fine to dislike this game, because Bioware really shit the bed when designing it. But some of the negative comments attributed to it, like yours for example, don't seem to be ones that any actual thought or logic was put into.
Ill agree that the game isnt a single player MMO. But thats not what killed it for me. What killed it for me is how it practicly Railroads you though content much like a singleplayer game. Example
i take Story Quest A. By story quest A they have Side quest A B C and D to be done in the same area Story Quest A is done. when you finish it you go to Story Quest B which has Side quest E F and G by it to be done in Story Quest B's area.
See what i mean by rail roading. you wont find a quest that needs to be done in Story Quest A's area by Story Quest B. sure its convenient to have everything grouped up like that but it makes it.
Even WoW only partly grouped them like that. there were some quests that made you jump zone to zone to finish it off. there is really no need for exploring in this game other than holocrons because you know that when you finish the side quests you wont ever have to go back to that area again.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
DBL post
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
The incentives for grouping weren't really effective, but it doesn't magically transform into a single player game because grouping isn't forced. Whatever else you may think of the game, whatever opinion you have about it's mechanics and how they were implemented, as soon as the game allows you to play with at least one other person it ceases to be a single player game.
However you choose to play from that point on is up to you.
For me the big turnoff is the game world: empty, lifelless, static NPCs, it doesn't feel a living virtual world at all...
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Step into the amazing world of Eorzea! Use this reference code on a new account and we'll both get goodies for it!
doesn't matter how many hours you spent grouping/raiding/warzones when I play a MMO and the zone design, general questing, and overall "feel" of the game gives no feeling aside from the fleet of a basic MMO(opinion of course) it's no wonder people call this game more of a lobby game. It's an overall design choice by the developers to design the game this way and just how it plays and feels to many of us doesn't give that basic MMO feel like all those other games you listed. Having played every single large MMO release since UO then a couple dozen F2P asian ones It doesn't take much for me to get the "feel" of the game world and how it was all put together. It's perspective obviously but it's one shared by a lot of people not just me. Obviously game is not a single player game but what the big cmplaint is it has too much focus for many people on the single player elements and the multipler stuff to many of us feels extremly lackluster and much of it tacked on feel which greatly hinders the overall gaming experience to me.
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
God there are so many close minded people here who are not even reading what he wrote and just focusing on their own opinion. If you read carefully what he wrote and really think about most of the other games in this genre and compare them you will see that much of what he wrote is correct whether the game disappointed your or not. When I read some of the comments and think about Aion, Warhammer, etc, some of the same argumenets here are even more pronounced than in SWTOR.
There Is Always Hope!
MMO Waltzing again! You guys are practically pros!
QFT all you want, nothing more than subjective!
This a great example of players making the game what it is. You are practically given the same group and social features like other MMO's. This is just plain LAZY on the players part!
The game can ONLY hold your hand for so long, yes, you actually have to make en effort to talk to folks online in the game. The developers can't teach you that.
Not our fault you guys get bored, maybe no one likes to play with you, or you just don't play well with others.
Bravo!
Really rdrakken? is that the card you are playing? Draw again.
Most of the people who purchased SWToR would never have continued to play it into the future. Are you really making the assumption that if x million players buy a game then the game is trash because all those players didn't continue playing it? Or perhaps the game should always have had a smaller audience in the first place, regardless of subject matter?
As far as my highlighted portion, that's all about your issues. feel free to go through any of my posts and try to support that claim that I think everyone who doesn't hold my opinion doesn't know what they are talking about. Oh sure, I might assert a point of view and that's what discussion is all about. But playing the victim in a debate/discussion doesn't hold water with me.
Truth is, SWToR, regardless of the money put into it or the idea that "it's star wars therefore it's going to be a blockbuster" was never going to be huge contender because of how they made the game. The game is playable and enjoyed by many. Those were the people who the game was made for. It's a shame that it didnt' have mass appeal for everyone who purchased it but with all the myriad people from all walks of "gaming life/star wars fandom" who bought the game I don't see how everyone could be made happy.
Also, it seems that for the people who did like the game, the real issues were content at end cap. Essentially nothing to do but repeat instances or battleground pvp.
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
I played with two friends and my biggest complaint was that I had to skip content to make things relevant or interesting. True, I could have kept playing lower level missions for the story, but they became more tedious than entertaining when playing with friends. In that respect it IS the Single Player RPG.
I am not a hardcore player, but I understand the need for more difficult content. Don't hype up story if you are penalized because you play with a few friends. Make your personal story solo, and ramp up the difficulty on more missions. There was too much solo content. You do that later in life, like WoW. Don't make the majority of content easy from the start.
I'm not bashing WoW, just saying that SWTOR learned the wrong things from WoW -- WoW is what it is now because of a successful life, not because it started out like SWTOR. I can't put it any better than that.
people saying this is a single player rpg more than a mmo have no idea what they are talking about. theres multiple group quests in every zone and the flash points. i had a group all the time for world pvp. maybe everyone complaining was on a pve server? i was not a star wars fan but this game actually turned me into one. im currently not subbed because my computer broke and im such a game of thrones addict i needed a fantasy mmo and went back to rift and wow. once they allow server transfers im ganna try to sub again and finally get to 50. coming from someone who loves mmo's if your thinking about trying this defiantely do it. they got a play to lvl 15 for free thing so look up on the forums for the most populated server and try it out.
the most annoying gamer people are swg and morrowind obsessers
Kettle much? "Lalalala GW2 rewards you for not having to group but still doing things WITH OTHER PEOPLE, LALALALA I'm not listening"
sound familiar? yeah that's what you implied above and you didn't learn a thing from GW2 apparently. Thought i might point out your contradiction to your own argument there. Saying that GW2 is in any way like the solo experience you get in leveling in SWTOR is like saying that the experience you get form the elites in WoW was anywhere near worth while like in EQ2. There's no comparison because they are obviously different. And then you go on the pretend that people who don't NEED to form a group for content in GW2 but get rewarded anyway is somehow the same as the experience in SWTOR. It's not and here's why.
SWTOR WOW both require you to group for dungeons and for raids and make those two things the only way to progress. The content in GW2 is almost all outside the dungeons and with every event, the group forms just by people being there (without pressing a button or asking someone's pernission so you could loot.) yeah it just happens. Top that off with getting your own loot and credit for everything you are doing without someone stealing kills or taking your nodes and you have THE solution for the pve mmo'ers problems we've all seen in the early days of mmos.
exactly, and then you get to the end of the game where the only thing to do is dungeons/raids forcing you to group then. is it really any wonder why people usually end up not knowing the fights in the end especially new players? there is no practice with groups before then really.
Aside from rolling out before servers where optimized to handle larger populations and then making people transfer rather than merging servers. I think where they dropped the ball was in that we were presented with this neat world that was fully voiced and immersive but ultimately non of our choices really mattered in the game. The story quest went on with only one possible out come light and dark level was simply a matter of presences in relics because that’s the only thing it really effected.
So SWTOR is not a single player mmo because there are some quest /flashpoints/warzones you need to group...Then Soulcalibur is not a fighting game because it has a character creation screen.
Ok being fair you are right , SWTOR is a poor MMO thinked to play solo, with a few 2,99$ stories with chat features and some kind of pvp.
Nothing to waste 250m$
I've been keeping tabs on this thread throughout the day, and one thing is clear to me. People have a plethora of reasons for calling SW:TOR a single-player game. For some, it's a lack of group content. Some say it's because the multiplayer aspect of the game was done poorly. For others, it's the amount of instancing or the focus on single-player story.
In nearly every case, I find the arguments rather weak. SW:TOR's group content is on par with virtually every other similar MMORPG on the market today, and the world and story-based quest design have nothing to do with whether or not the game is a true MMORPG. Most MMOs have players soloing to the level cap. I fail to see what's wrong with BioWare at least attempting to make solo questing more interesting.
In addition to that, I find that it is, in fact, most of you who misunderstand, not MikeB. It's ok to feel as if SW:TOR doesn't give players enough opportunities to collaborate and to play together, but SW:TOR is nothing more than a scapegoat for the failings of previous MMORPGs. Instead of lambasting BioWare, we should look at this as a problem with the genre as a whole. Finding ways to encourage people to play together without making players feel as if they have to be conjoined with one another just to have fun has been a major issue in MMO design for years. As the article reads (you all did read it didn't you?), numerous games have looked for ways to tackle this issue, but I may add that most of those ideas failed. If SW:TOR were to have added public quests, I can believe they would be abandoned months after release exactly as they were in Rift and WAR. GW2 is only the latest game in a long line of attempts at finding a better way to fluidly facilitate player interaction. In my experience, the dynamic events system has its ups and downs, but it does lend more to player cooperation which can only be a good thing.
SW:TOR for good or bad, is just a product of its time. Once World of Warcraft released, virtually every mainstream MMO developer on the market tried to copy its formula, hoping for similar success. If we're going to crucify BioWare, we have to do the same to Turbine, Trion, SOE, Mythic, NCSoft, BluHole Studios, and Funcom as all companies share equal blame in the state of current MMORPGs.
Awesome article and 100 percent true and accurate. It's funny to me to hear such criticisms aimed at SWTOR when I have not spent as much time grouping in any mmo since SWG which in many ways forced grouping, or atleast relied on systems designed to seriously encourage grouping.
This type of complaint to me has so much more to do with the attitude of the individual than anything to do wth the game itself, if you enter a game with skepticism and the general attitude we encounter from posters on here it's no wonder some of these folks have such a hard time grouping in games.
With nice little additions like social levels for grouping and plenty of group specific contet from level 8 on as well as the ability to group in any solo content I can safely say that SWTOR stands at least a shouder above just about any other mmo I've ever played.
Here I have to disagree as most of these people make posts trying to debate the topic and you don't debate hyperbole you just say "well noo literally it is but....." then state your grievances. Well I for one would have been glad to have gotten that response any of the times I found myself foolish enogh to try and debate that silly statement.