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SWTOR Is No Longer Supported By Most Sites


LibertySol

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its not supported by most sites....hmmmm...i wonder why.....its defenity because the game is fine.........(sarcasm off)

 

they have to pull the plug...no one wants to support a ghost town..

 

Here's the thing though, even in the beginning these fan sites were terrible: the datamining was never updated, even in 1.15 and half it was wrong.

 

The shear amount of false info these sites posted makes me glad to see them go.

Edited by AshlaBoga
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Look, just because you have no standards doesn't mean the game is good.

 

SWTOR isn't a bad game. It's just... amateurish. It's poorly balanced, missing a ton of standard features, and half-asses nearly everything else. Beyond that, it's clear that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing 90% of the time.

 

If you want to dink around and press some buttons to watch things flash on the screen, SWTOR is perfectly capable of providing that experience. But let's not pretend that this game has anywhere near the level of polish needed to do much more than that.

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Look, just because you have no standards doesn't mean the game is good.

 

SWTOR isn't a bad game. It's just... amateurish. It's poorly balanced, missing a ton of standard features, and half-asses nearly everything else. Beyond that, it's clear that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing 90% of the time.

 

If you want to dink around and press some buttons to watch things flash on the screen, SWTOR is perfectly capable of providing that experience. But let's not pretend that this game has anywhere near the level of polish needed to do much more than that.

 

Yep. It's a perfectly good game, but it's not great. It's not even close to great. The voiced storylines are fantastic, but it's been almost a year now without any update to them. Everything else is taken from WoW and implemented with less polish. Even little quality-of-life things like the camera and micro-stutter need more work. And don't give me "WoW has been out for 7 years" nonsense. Why don't you go release a brand new phone on the market with features equivalent to a phone from 2005 and see if the "Apple has had products on the market for longer" argument flies. People pay for a service, and they will want to pay for the best one. Compete properly, or don't compete at all.

 

BUT

 

F2P is about to go into effect, and we all know how LOTRO famously tripled its revenue when it introduced the F2P model. And to add to that, Episode VII has been announced. Holy hell people. The folks at EA probably screamed so loudly in excitement at that announcement that every window in their central office shattered.

 

F2P should increase revenue, and EA should invest more cash into this game in preparation for the huge influx of players in a year's time when hype for the next film starts to really build. If they can iron out all these creases, implement some unique new content (please do something with space!) and transform the game into something truly great instead of merely 'good', then we have nothing to worry about.

 

So yes, you've got to be in denial if you think this game has done particularly well over the last year. But you've also got to be in denial if you think the future doesn't look a heck of a lot brighter for SWTOR.

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Yep. It's a perfectly good game, but it's not great. It's not even close to great. The voiced storylines are fantastic, but it's been almost a year now without any update to them. Everything else is taken from WoW and implemented with less polish. Even little quality-of-life things like the camera and micro-stutter need more work. And don't give me "WoW has been out for 7 years" nonsense. Why don't you go release a brand new phone on the market with features equivalent to a phone from 2005 and see if the "Apple has had products on the market for longer" argument flies. People pay for a service, and they will want to pay for the best one. Compete properly, or don't compete at all.

 

BUT

 

F2P is about to go into effect, and we all know how LOTRO famously tripled its revenue when it introduced the F2P model. And to add to that, Episode VII has been announced. Holy hell people. The folks at EA probably screamed so loudly in excitement at that announcement that every window in their central office shattered.

 

F2P should increase revenue, and EA should invest more cash into this game in preparation for the huge influx of players in a year's time when hype for the next film starts to really build. If they can iron out all these creases, implement some unique new content (please do something with space!) and transform the game into something truly great instead of merely 'good', then we have nothing to worry about.

 

So yes, you've got to be in denial if you think this game has done particularly well over the last year. But you've also got to be in denial if you think the future doesn't look a heck of a lot brighter for SWTOR.

 

Too bad many key staff members left, including the story writers.:confused:

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Yep. It's a perfectly good game, but it's not great. It's not even close to great. The voiced storylines are fantastic, but it's been almost a year now without any update to them. Everything else is taken from WoW and implemented with less polish. Even little quality-of-life things like the camera and micro-stutter need more work. And don't give me "WoW has been out for 7 years" nonsense. Why don't you go release a brand new phone on the market with features equivalent to a phone from 2005 and see if the "Apple has had products on the market for longer" argument flies. People pay for a service, and they will want to pay for the best one. Compete properly, or don't compete at all...........

 

I'll be happy to give you the "WoW has been out of 7 years" nonsense.

 

You are comparing two very different things.

The amount of time that went into building the features of our phones 10 years ago might even be more than the time they spend on building the ones we have now. None of this matters, all that matters is that stuff requires TIME.

We would have all those "basic features" (that only exist in WoW and Rift) if there were no voice acted quests etc, but I'd choose those anytime.

If a company is not making back their investment they can't just go "oh yeaaa lets sit back and make some new content".

This will only help them keep some of the current subscribers, BUT they must focus on bringing in more players and just hope that the current ones wont leave before they can actually work on new content.

They just need to fix the population problem FIRST(which imo is the actual "basic" thing we need) and once they see things are going as they should they can spend ALL their time on new stuff.

 

They can't invest that much MORE time and money into this game before the population grows.

 

All of you who are so mad about SWTOR failing are actually the cause, if I had not already tried SWTOR I would of come on these forums and read all the negative crap and think "Oh ok this game is ****/dead, NEXT"

and this is what happens a lot. Stop with all the "SWTOR sucks" crap because it's easily better than 99% of all MMOs.

I'm pretty sure most people here have only played the most known MMOs like WoW, Rift, GW, but there are actually hundreds more.

All the MMOs I've played so far have some kind of problem that makes me quit, but only real problem I see with SWTOR is the crappy engine they used which makes FPS you get based on luck.

 

Something that most of you will find funny is that there was also a reason why I quit WoW and that was TOO MUCH CONTENT.

I don't want to LIVE in a game and there was seriously too much to do and I just can't compete without spending all my time there. Games should not be like a second job that requires even more time than your actual one.

 

 

 

 

For the record I re-subscribed a bit earlier than planned just to reply.

Edited by disent
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Stop with all the "SWTOR sucks" crap because it's easily better than 99% of all MMOs.

Hehe. Well that's all down to personal opinion, but if that was the popular opinion then SWTOR wouldn't be struggling to even maintain half a million subs. It's a game with some fantastic potential, but come on man, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see how unpolished the game is compared to its more popular competitors. Micro-stutter, camera issues, ability delay, etc, all contribute to give the game a "feel" of being average in quality. Try switching between WoW, GW2, and SWTOR, and you'll notice these little performance issues.

 

And before you say it's my PC, I run on a SSD with an i7, 16GB RAM, and two GTX 560 Ti's in SLI, and although the framerate stays at 60fps almost constantly, I still get regular micro-stutter. The camera issues affect everyone regardless of hardware.

 

And as to saying the "WoW has been out 7 years so isn't a fair comparison" argument is perfectly valid, you're missing the point completely. It's a stupid argument, because consumers don't think that way. The consumer will think "Where will I get the most for my money? Should I spend my subscription on WoW with all of its content, polish, and regular updates? Or should I spend it on SWTOR which has less content, slower updates, and performance issues?"

 

If you're going to release ANY product that is competing with others, you can't get away with making it inferior and expecting a free pass just because your product is newer. If anything, people expect newer products to be better.

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And as to saying the "WoW has been out 7 years so isn't a fair comparison" argument is perfectly valid, you're missing the point completely. It's a stupid argument, because consumers don't think that way. The consumer will think "Where will I get the most for my money? Should I spend my subscription on WoW with all of its content, polish, and regular updates? Or should I spend it on SWTOR which has less content, slower updates, and performance issues?"

 

I have one question for you: How many NEW players do you think WoW gets these days?

 

WoW is literally dying as a breed from a business sense because getting into the game is such a huge time investment, most of the experience getting to end game being exteremely bland and horribly boring, that barely any new customers go to that game anymore.

 

As soon as a product, any product, cannot attract new people anymore, it will eventually shrivel and die. Yes, it will take many, many years for all the millions of customers WoW has to leave the game. But they will, and they already are/have. Most of the MMO player market is filled with ex-WoW players. Many of which will never want to go back to that game again. And TOR is on a lot more radars than many here seem to think.

 

So to go with your point: "Where will I get the most for my money?"

From tomorrow, TOR. Because you get a full levelling experience without paying a single dollar. What you do after that, is the consumer's own decision again. But new customers will not go to WoW because it is too much to get into these days, and then they will choose between GW2 (which is also doing far worse than many here claim) and spend 60 bucks to get in and then nothing anymore for a rather bland experience, or they will pay nothing for TOR, get a nice levelling experience and then either stick around or head over to another game.

 

Gamers these days are NOT the brand loyal creatures they were 10 years ago. The rise and fall of every MMO launched in the last 5 years shows this. And the numbers shown for MMO's are very similar to that of any online game really. Millions of people buy it, everyone plays it for a few weeks, then Millions of people leave and a few thousand are left in the online community. Same goes for offline games even.. many people play 1 playthrough of offline games, many don't even finish that. Some stick around and look for that famed 'replayability' as their key factor.

 

Facts: TOR is still the second or third most popular MMO at this time (It is hard to compare it with GW2 as GW2 does not have equal comparitive tools). It has had very stable activity over all servers except Asia Pacific for the last 3 months (just check torstatus). It will go to a hybrid model tomorrow, which will add new players to the mix. It will possibly also add new features every 6 weeks as promised and, so far since the promise is made, has delivered (your point on slower updates really is hilariously wrong there).

And the final, and most important fact is this: Gamers can still come to this game and be ready for endgame in a few weeks time while having a good experience getting there, not a horrible grind from 1 to 90. And this last detail is why of all competitors, TOR has the better chance in the current state of the market.

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So to go with your point: "Where will I get the most for my money?"

From tomorrow, TOR. Because you get a full levelling experience without paying a single dollar. What you do after that, is the consumer's own decision again. But new customers will not go to WoW because it is too much to get into these days, and then they will choose between GW2 (which is also doing far worse than many here claim) and spend 60 bucks to get in and then nothing anymore for a rather bland experience, or they will pay nothing for TOR, get a nice levelling experience and then either stick around or head over to another game.

 

Yeah, more or less, though WoW isn't any harder to get into than SWTOR (it's pretty much the same mechanics)! I'm not saying SWTOR is going to fail. My post on the last page was almost entirely about the potential F2P holds for the game, and how bright the future is! The poster above just decided to quote me on calling the "WoW has a seven year advantage" argument rubbish. Which I still firmly believe is rubbish, because that's not how competition works. Consumers will, usually, pay for whatever gives them the most for their money. For some, the Star Wars universe or the voice acting is enough to make SWTOR stand out as the best. But for most, it isn't.

 

As for your claim that few people are starting WoW these days, my girlfriend started WoW when Cataclysm launched and still plays Mists of Pandaria today. I haven't played MoP myself, but the game looks incredibly polished for an MMO. Sadly, you're right, and most ex-WoW players want something now. We don't want to go back to the same game we've been playing for so long.

 

And that is exactly why I want EA to reinvest in SWTOR, and for Bioware to implement some drastic new content with something unique. Because SWTOR is just too damn similar to WoW. Especially when you compare some of its mechanics like each class having dozens of skills and items filling up three or four hotbars; mobs that "tag" to each player; quest items that aren't unique to players, leading to competition for items and theft (when you're killing a group of mobs guarding a quest item, and another player waltzes in and steals the quest item while you're in combat); standard linear quest mechanics without any real decisions (though Flashpoints have some great decisions sometimes - why isn't that approach used in single player quests?); Warzones being exactly the same as Battlegrounds; etc.

 

Those mechanics have all been revolutionized by GW2 to create a far more entertaining play experience, that encourages players to work together and help each other without any drawbacks. In SWTOR I see other players from my faction as competition - vying for the same mobs and quest items as I am. In GW2 I see them as allies. If I see someone fighting a group of mobs in SWTOR or WoW I think "better not interfere, I don't want to leech", whereas in GW2 I think "better help him out!" Playing GW2 makes you realize how dated and senseless some of these common mechanics are.

 

I love SWTOR for its strengths, since the storylines are fantastic. And I really do want F2P to work out. But for the exact reasons you pointed out that WoW isn't getting many new players, SWTOR faces the same issues. It's too much of the same, with absolutely nothing unique past the voice acting. And even that is being done in other MMOs now. I really hope Bioware cleans the game up, solves the remaining performance issues, overhauls the core mechanics regarding mob tagging and quest items, and implements some decent content that is genuinely unique (like open space, so far only EVE does it, and that's not a game for a casual crowd).

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I never disagreed with the performance issues part and it's exactly the same problem with Rift because they use the same engine.

WoW is so smooth because it's very low poly and I haven't seen another MMO that looks as good and runs that nicely.

Girls can get into games because they are more likely to not care about "being the best" etc. but WoW is way too old for most new gamers to get into, almost everyone prefers a newer game where there are less "experts" in.

Edited by disent
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Girls can get into games because they are more likely to not care about "being the best" etc.

Trust me, that's not even close to true :p

 

I have two close female friends who play MMOs, one being my girlfriend, and they are both obsessed with being the best.

 

And I still think the biggest issue with SWTOR is in how similar to WoW it is, so it doesn't feel like a new game or evolution for MMO players. Nothing to do with "experts" at all, since we all know each WoW expansion resets the leaderboards, as it were. You trade all your epics for greens.

Edited by -Silver-
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As for your claim that few people are starting WoW these days, my girlfriend started WoW when Cataclysm launched and still plays Mists of Pandaria today.

 

I think you misunderstood my point there really. As actually, I think Cataclysm was a great time to start playing WoW (with new quests all over, a reinvigorated world and a lot of players rolling new alts because of it).

As WoW is, at this time in it's life. Starting anew from scratch, what a new player does, is a daunting and very lonely task. The world you go through before you hit endgame is literally HUGE. And not many people are there as the more experienced players also feel less and less inclined to roll new alts. Heck, most die hards already have full slots of 90s, and the lesser die hards stick with the same 2 or 3 characters they have had for a while now.

 

Yes, you'll see a panda here and there, or someone rolling a Monk. But that is about it. Azeroth is huge, and Azeroth is extremely empty untill you reach endgame at this time. Even levelling dungeon queues take a long time. And this even ignored how horrible most of the questing experience is. This fact becomes very clear once you go from Azeroth to Outlands while levelling.. the new quests in Cataclysm are relatively fun, but then TBC and Wrath quests are, by comparison, a horrible grind compared to today's standards.

 

TOR, especially since server mergers, is the complete opposite. The game is done quickly enough to endgame, and the trip to 50, especially the first time, is very enjoyable. Also, at least on my server, the levelling worlds are pretty full and I hardly ever am the only one doing a quest when levelling one of my alts in any level range. It doesn't take me much effort to find the people for group quests, and if I queue for a levelling Flashpoint, even as DPS, I don't have to wait more than 30 mins to an hour on my playing hours.

 

For a new player, TOR is by far the more enjoyable experience to get to endgame. And seeing that it is now free, I see a lot more new players coming to TOR than WoW over the coming months, maybe even years.

Edited by Devlonir
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And seeing that it is now free, I see a lot more new players coming to TOR than WoW over the coming months, maybe even years.

 

I completely agree with this part. And I really hope it works out for them. F2P has a lot of potential that I feel some players are too keen to dismiss. But as for the rest of your post, there's two things you may have missed:

 

1) "For a new player, TOR is by far the more enjoyable experience to get to endgame." - Like you said, Cataclysm overhauled 1-60 and modernized it. It's an incredibly fun and easy-going leveling experience. For new players, experiencing the game for the first time, I'm sure WoW is just as much fun as SWTOR. I agree BC, and even Northrend to an extent, need overhauling as well, but for a player to get that far they will usually see things through to 80 where the content picks up again. And MoP's content looks amazing from what I've seen of it.

 

2) Regarding empty zones - I'm guessing you aren't aware of the zone merge technology Blizzard introduced a few months back. It isn't working in all the zones yet, but certainly is in most of them - especially the starter zones. Players are merged into zones regardless of server (so long as they are the same type of server: PVP, PVE, etc) so that empty areas are rarely an issue these days. It doesn't solve all of the low-pop server issues, but it's a great way of repopulating the zones. I used to meet a lot of players leveling while I was performing Archeology with my main.

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But the current fashion in MMORPGs is that a vocal minority of gamers who love to guild up and raid -- let's call them the Piranhas -- dominate the social media metagame of the online world of MMOs. They spend all their free time that they are not gaming on Twitter, in comment streams, filing scathing reviews on Metacritic, you name it. Their hobby is to be gaming hipsters, essentially -- to see how snarkily and cuttingly they can shred a game to show off how sophisticated a gamer they are among their leet peers.

 

These are the armchair generals of MMOs.

 

 

This ^^ (emphasis added). Lots of comment sites (and even these forums) can be worse than political talk shows. It's a game, and a damn good one. Game trolls that refuse to let other people have fun are ruining the online gaming community.

 

These "Piranhas" keep people from wanting to swim.

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I love how the SWTOR-life site has a big "Visit our new Website: Guild Wars 2 Life" message as the background image. lol

 

Front page:

 

Now that it was announced that Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk are retiring from Bioware I see no reason to continue running SWTOR Life. If a man that ran the creation of the game for 5 years and has a tattoo of its logo on his arm is now gone to make beer, I see no reason whatsoever to be spending my time on writing or talking about the game the way I did in the past 2+ years.

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Say what? Do you mean the same players, used as a general term, that thrown tantrums back in the days of Modern Warfare 2`s days and lack of dedicated servers, only to buy ALL OTHER new iterations of the game and make it THE best selling game around? Those players?

 

Or EA that has given Bioware pretty much complete freedom? AND a huge check?

 

No, sir, you can`t put this onto the player`s or Publisher`s shoulders...

 

EA Games is a lousy (I use much choicer words to describe them :rolleyes: but don't want a ban) company that has killed many franchises and many MANY successful developing houses through their buyouts and subsequent ****** of said franchise/developer.

Did this happen in this case? I can't say for sure, but EA DID force release before the game was ready.

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The reason why most sites have/are giving up is simple. Its bad, real bad, Community Management on Biowares part.

 

Communities and the many fansites are the life blood of any MMO. If you fail to support them, you fail to gain support as is the case with SWTOR. From the early days when Sean was the so called Senior Manager to Stephen Reid, the community team failed to help support fansites.

 

Sure, we had a couple of 'guild summits' but I am talking about giving exclusive screenshots, interviews, live developer chats through out the pre launch build up and general 'community love'. I did run a site for the game early on, mostly down to my connections with LucasArts at that time and those of you who played Galactic Battlegrounds, Empire At War and SWGalaxies etc will know me from there.

 

So I would arrange all my community stuff directly through them. Then once EA took over everything - it changed. I was told a so called person whose name is that of a popular Sega fishing game, NOT to attend any media events in the UK any more, make no requests for live chats and that there wont be any kind of support going forward.

 

Personally, I was stunned. A member of the community team telling me that there wont be any community support. SO I said 'stuff it' and pulled all my plans and ideas to support the game and looking at whats going on around, so is everyone else.

 

That's the main reason and even still today, the Bioware community team still just don't get what community management is about - its more than just a forum, or a pointless tweet.

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This is just a game, so no street riots yet; but the principles are the same when dealing with corporations and the corporate world in general. They are nasty animals! I was very reluctant to try this game out. Despite the exciting SW theme, a large galaxy to explore and the story element.. i always have this image in my head, that behind all this glitter and sparkling promises of adventure and fun, lies a huge monster controlling everything. We can't see it, but when you think about it, you kind of lose passion for gaming. It's all business and a big money scheme.

 

Talented and passionate game designers put a lot of work into creating a good product; then you have the greedy corporate megalomaniacs - with no other talents than making money - siphoning credits from customers.

 

It's no doubt that customers are disposable to a certain degree. A Corporation is like an organism and it feeds on individuals, it's a cunning predator. Like the flowers that lures their prey all the way in, then suddenly the leaves shut. The problem is that nothing will change until people stand up and say: "We don't accept this".

 

As Admiral Ackbar would say: "It's a trap!" :mon_frown:

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EA Games is a lousy (I use much choicer words to describe them :rolleyes: but don't want a ban) company that has killed many franchises and many MANY successful developing houses through their buyouts and subsequent ****** of said franchise/developer.

Did this happen in this case? I can't say for sure, but EA DID force release before the game was ready.

 

One case where EA has basically killed the game is Warhammer. I loved that game I have a collectors copy EA (through Mythic) is still trying to get a sub from players. They have a FTP to lvl 10 or something but because I payed for the game I can't access it on my collectors account.

 

Also as happy as I was to get SWTOR I do think EA forced them to release early. It should have come out about the time Mass Effect 3 started to wear off. I have never unsubbed to this game and I don't plan to anytime soon. I don't play every day but when I do play I really enjoy this game. So thank you Bioware for all the work you have put into It and please don't pay to much attention to the rage quitting trolls.

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Bioware did this to themselves. Although I cant think of any successful MMO's out there that Lucas arts has been involved in. They refuse to listen to customers. There are bugs still in the game that have been since beta. They have failed in every place that they needed to succeed in.
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People haven't given up on the game, but advertisements might have been switched out, and so on, but I see a lot of advertisements on sites for SWTOR now, "SWTOR GOING FREE TO PLAY" and so on. The developers are still working hard on the game, and reviews of the latest version are coming out quickly, guides on how to level up quickly are being made once more, to show to the new influx of players. The developers that worked on free to play were working on it while the devs were working on releasing new content, which they DID, with the updates that came with FTP.

 

There's so many of the posters that complain that take it way too far. "DERP; THE GAME IS DED IN -X- AMOUNT OF DEYS ANYWAY." and "IM GUNNA QUIT COS I LOST THE LOTTERY." My tip to you, read this and play for as long as you enjoy the game, and you'll see that new content, be it cartel items or new features, are on the way.

Edited by Jorgoman
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