EQ was an outstanding game because EQ was the only game you could play with UO and M59 before and then AC.

Today you have a lot of choice, you can play almost all MMO at once since most are F2P so you can move from one to another without following any of them.

Now if you look closer into your souvenirs you will remember how EQ was boring, camping that place holder for this rare boss to loot that rare drop 10+ hours in a row with the fear to be KS (a real pain as a warrior in EQ), camping the same old place in the same dungeon with the same players, those leading and opening the road to 60 on your server (Karana)like in Cazic thule, avoiding trains again and again. being obliterated by dorn or flattened by a roaming sand giant while killing crocs, being burned, rapped, zone crashed with 50 more players while trying to kill Nagafen, dying again and again from lvl 50 back to lvl 48 for no reward.. waiting for HOURS to regenerate from your wounds as a warrior!!! no thanks. ;-)

I still have 2 wonder games, UO and SWG(first year only)

 

Assassin's Creed is an example of an incredible game of this generation.

I reckon you could make a great mmo using the asn creed naval warfare as a foundation.Remember thinking when i played that for the first time, how great it'd be with those graphics and sounds and effects,ports and ship upgrading,vast open seas and dynamic weather,keeping the basic control scheme camera view point and UI at sea.

Piracy or trading,players choosing between several facs(fledgling USA,the brits etc)boarding crippled players ships...i could go on and on,i live in hope that they see the potential in their naval engine.

The problem I see it is the hand-holding and instant gratification that MMO's need to cater to these days to keep players in a now highly competitive market.

I agree and disagree on this Dark

If your going after the WOW market then yes you need hand holding and instant gratification.

However as ive tried to point out to other posters (who keep falsely claiming prior to WOW was a niche market), almost all the pre WOW games supported themselves subscription wise with larger sub numbers then you find currently in the post WOW clone games.

So if you stop chasing the WOW "non gamer" crowd market and focus on the gamer market. You could do away with most (not all) of the hand holding and instant gratification.

Problem is developers post WOW refuse to design for 1-2 million subs and rather try for the 5+ million subs and ALWAYS end up with under 400k subs for their efforts. Which in turn results in Cash Shops and Buy to Win mentality. As is happening in TOR.

But its not ALL the developers fault if we being honest.

Look through this very thread and you will see countless people asking for a PROVEN failed design (the complete sandbox that was SWG/UO).

Others keep saying sandbox with out even understanding what Sandbox is (EQ was NEVER classified as a Sandbox game and was heavily critizied by Sandbox gamers of the time)

So is it any wonder some devs cant figure out what players want??

The message sometimes is very conflicted and messed up

Some things I loved about EQ1:

 

No quest markers - You found quests yourself, you read the quest description yourself, you worked out how to do the quest yourself, you found the mobs yourself and you traveled there yourself. If people couldn't be bothered, they could grind. All quest markers do is make people lazy, which in turn makes them watch tv/do something else while trying to play. This completely kills the immersion.

yeah this would never fly again. The completely no marker

But at same time they dont need to be so dumbed down with it

Take TOR for example

If they did away with specific location marker and just utilized the radius marker to show area, the game would be much improved IMO.

Give a name a a radius that shows say "this area of map"

Good example would be

on Tython you need to find that kid that was taken

Well what should show on map is a radius indication of THIS PORTION OF MAP only

not his exact location

So you know who your looking for and what corner of Tython map, everything else up to you

But that also means that whole areas shouldn't open up when you walk into them, it should be the more standard unmapping of the fogs where only where you go has the black of map removed, to promote exploring each little corner

 

No auto map - You explored the world YOURSELF. MMO's don't seem big when you can press M, open the map and see exactly where the boundaries are. When you are exploring randomly, with no idea where you are you can actually get LOST and immerse yourself. When you are exploring a dungeon and all you have is a paper map you have printed out you get to actually feel like you are exploring, not just running to the exact spot you need to be for your quest.

Well this not a issue if they went back to the sytle I speak of above.

Only opening up the specific area your in and not that whole zone of that area when you enter.

Slow leveling - Leveling took months, it was an effort and it weeded out the terribad's. You got to actually feel like you accomplished something by max leveling. In every MMO I have played since Everquest I have hit max level within a few days and gone "great, now the gear grind starts". How can you immerse yourself in a world when you only see the majority of it for a few days before sitting in the endgame town/fleet/capital waiting for raids and hard mode dungeons.

EQ1 xp rate will never work again. Even EQ1 players will not put themselves in that slow of a XP gain again.

But the middle ground of EQ1 and TOR seems very reasonable to me.

EQ would take 9-18 months (depending on play time) to hit your first 50 (as normal all others after that seemed faster as you knew the game and fights). Tor takes 2 week.

So based on a 30 hour a week play time (again middle ground between casuals and hard cores), 5-6 months seems reasonable to me to max out your first character.

I know a number of us begged and pleaded with EA in closed beta of TOR to SLOW DOWN XP GAIN.

Instead they sped it up.

I honestly and truely beleive the fast 2 weeks to 50 is one of the major issues that started the sub loss in this game. In RIFT, and other post WOW games.

MMORPGs has always been about chasing the virtual carrot and leveling to max was always one of the most obvious chases.

By giving away the carrot cart they had players bored who wanted more content at a rate no one could match.

More content was never the answer here

Longer periods using content was.

XP loss on death - This ties in with above, but an actual punishment for death made leveling slower and increased the skill cap of the community. People who caused deaths were quickly shunned, and even quicker they quit because they couldn't progress. High end groups you could almost always guarantee were going to be full of people who knew what they were doing. It made for a much better end game because you didn't resent half your party because they were terrible but you were stuck with them because you have to get this dungeon run done.

XP lose on death is the EASIEST WAY to ensure your game fails and will NEVER be accepted back into main stream MMORPGs.

But that doesnt mean you cant have stuff like DAoC had with equipment wear and tear and eventual breaking because of deaths and such.

I been around for over 21 years in this genre

Know more people then I can count

and dont know a single person that would willingly go back to XP loss on death system in a new MMORPG

Heck I got friends that still play original EQ and even they wont accept it in a new MMORPG.

XP lose will not work but there are other death penalties that will

Heck you look at DAoC and their death system actually promotes crafting and virtual economy so is helpful that way

And if you stand a chance at eventually losing that special drop item, you start playing smarter to avoid having it take unneeded wear and tear (IE: You start to play smarter).

All that said, there are also things about Everquest that I didn't like that newer MMO's are catering to:

Instances are fantastic - no more fighting over bosses between guilds etc. Solo content is great for those who don't necessarily have time to find a group.

 

TL;DR - MMO's will never be the same as they were because the market now is hugely competitive and has evolved to be a mainstream part of the gaming community. They therefore need to cater to the greater masses and provide reasons to stay like hand-outs and instant gratification. This comes at the cost of immersion which it seems todays gamers aren't even interested in anyway. All they want is to be better than everyone else.

Truth of matter is there is a ton of stuff any competent Developer could and should take from the PRE WOW MMORPG genre and its always baffled me why they didnt.

Thankfully if you look at upcoming games like ESO and Camelot Unchained, it seems that question is finally being recognized and acted upon.

Some staples from other MMORPGs I personally think should be mandatory for any new MMORPG (and a few single player RPG)

1) Slower XP gain (I use DAoC as a example as it seems to be the comfortable middle ground)

2) Mentoring system from EQ2

3) RVR ala DAoC (but need to lessen amount of CC and twink some cool downs)

4) Housing (and house decorating) ala EQ2

5) Public Grouping ala RIFT (their rifts were and are amazing)

6) Item wear and tear ala DAoC

7) Companions ala SW:TOR (but with DA:O tactics system and KotOR2 affection system)

8) Exploration ala RIFT (best Ive ever seen and the acheivement titles were insanely awsome, just game needed to be bigger, much bigger)

9) Class storyline ala SW:TOR

10) Voice over ala SW:TOR

11) Ingame community development ala NWN on AOL (circa 1991-97) (they were the first and NO ONE has ever done it better then them at promoting community interaction. They simply were on a level all their own)

12) Guild structure ala EQ2 and DAoC (EQ2 had PVE guild structure down pat and was amazing. DAoC however had Guild RVR structure also down pat and added a whole new element to game)

Thats 12 off top of head but thats just a fast go over.

There is stuff you could take from UO/SWG (not crafting tho, that was going to far hardcore and has limited appeal because of it. Contrary to those that did like it statements), AC, AO, heck even DDO had a few good idea.

LOTS of idea and lessons to be learned when you look at all the things that have come out!

I always find it funny Devs copy WOW so much because of all the games over the 21+ year history of MMORPGs, no game was more void of new concepts and ideas then WOW.

Yet its the one devs focus on.

This has been a truly interesting thread to read and I would very like to thank the OP for getting this rolling, there has been many good, bad, amazing and terrible comments/suggestions made here. But hey aren't you all allowed to express our very own thoughts and feelings without the feeling that they are "wrong"? I agree that one hand you wind up with the feeling that you are chasing the dragon when moving into a new MMO, for that matter most games in general; but let's stay on point here.

To me the overarching issue is the simple fact that games are no longer typically designed or marketed for gamers anymore, not that this is ultimately a "bad" thing (it can be and has proven to be the case more and more.), they are marketed at the general consumer. Now I don't want to get too far up on my metaphorical high horse (and no it is not made of stars...) but I am sure that is bound to happen at various points through out this post, consider yourselves warned.

Another thing is the cookie cutter, or mass production mindset that has come to gaming in general over the years wherein you get people that are creating projects that they are not truly passionate about in the slightest (pardon the over generalization here I know there are devs in the industry that do love what they do) but are more so doing for the paycheck and to maintain employment at "insert big gamer company here". As well there is the issue that the consumers (not the choice of word) don't really know what it is that they want out their own gaming experience. You get the issues when game Y comes out after game X where people didn't like the crafting (just for examples sake) so game Y desides to completely change it (and for this example not at all in a good way) then the consumer (again choice of wording) goes "huh maybe the old system from game X just needed a little tweaking..." In some ways you do not always know what you have until it's too far gone to get it back. Good ol' hind sight being so crystal clear.

Now on that point if you spend too much time looking into the future of gaming you will miss what can, will and should be taking place to get one that bright shining well rendered future. This path needs to be carefully balanced in order to maintain a good degree of focus, so as to not lose sight of the present, past and future. WIth that I feel that in many ways we as a culture (anymore) almost refuse to learn from the past and pushing too far and too fast forward. (But that is more an overwhelming social issue and needs not be delved into any further on a gaming forum)

For myself I don't like to play the comparison game when I am playing an MMO or any other game for that matter, I like to take what I am playing for what it is and what it is trying to do with itself. In that manner I want to be sure that the game is consistant with itself; do bears look they should be in the woods (and yes there are many games I have played where this is not the case but I will not call them out), is the water rendered the same everywhere, are weapons swung differently, to the genders look and feel very much different from eachother, the list goes on and on of course, but I think the point has been made. When those things do not happen is where I start to take issue and am left with the thought of "how did anyone miss this?". Myself not being a game programmer in any compacity but being more a visual person I tend to focus more on the animations and readability of the gamer as whole and not so much on the true background of it, I have other friends to handle that aspect.

So far as what I feel MMO's and just games in general need is an actual sense of accomplishment (again), consequences for one actions, and feeling of responsiblity towards my character and the world around them. I don't want to be spoonfed anything in the game I want to feel like I worked and battled my way towards the ultimate outcome, just to realize that there is in fact so much to the game. Not this grind to max level, do raids, do harder dungeons, rinse repeat ad nauseum (I can feel my contempt and bile rising just thinking about that.) I used to consider myself a "casual" when it came to MMO's but I have realized over the years that I am not, nor am I a "hardcore" player, I am something in between that has yet to have big ugly title stamped on it. But I do miss the days of yore when leveling was tough and when you made to certain benchmarks you felt awesome and accomplished, getting to a certain level for a mount, for a class defining ability, things like that. Not just speaking of getting to max level then raiding till your eyes bleed. Having no real compunction towards the invest of one character gives way to my viciouse altoholism which was never the case in the past, but with leveling been made so much more stream lined getting 4-5 characters to max level in a month or two is common place.

XP lose on death is the EASIEST WAY to ensure your game fails and will NEVER be accepted back into main stream MMORPGs.

Some people like "higher price of failure" though. This is a feature in EVE, for example, and makes the game thrilling to many.

But not to the majority, and it's fine. I think many different niche games targeting minorities of players is the way to go. If you can profile players and build a game that addresses particular needs of particular type of people really well, they will be that much happier than any generic game could ever make them. It would be nice if large franchises with rich worlds produced different games for different people - and some do! Like EVE's new FPS project.

I think Nancy McIntyre's comment from the NGE says it all for why we have the MMO's that we have now. This really conveys the feelings of developers nowadays of what they think the MMO players of today want.

"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base ... There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game ... We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."

Back in the day when MMOs were still pretty new, I got into Everquest and it seemed amazing. The world was huge and had tons of places to explore. There were endless things to do. When you got to endgame, you actually felt powerful, like you had accomplished something. I would print out spell lists and maps and had them organized in a big folder super-geeky style. I took that game as srs bsns.

 

This thread is not to bag on SWToR or how to talk about how other games are better. I am here to ask you guys what you think is missing. I know that there are a lot of you who were blown away by Everquest or (insert your first big MMO here). What did they have that brought that sense of amazement?

 

Was it that we were new to it? Are we just burned out and jaded? Maybe even OLD and jaded? Is there anything that could be brought to SWToR to being a sense of wow (no pun intended) and amazement?

Yes. They could of looked at all the MMOs out there, seen what made them popular and incorporated those features from the beginning.

Voice acting is all nice and good, but it now limits everything they can add to the game! Something that would have been a better investment (imo of course) is better character customization! Body Type 1-4? *Sigh* How about just full body sliders!

I think Nancy McIntyre's comment from the NGE says it all for why we have the MMO's that we have now. This really conveys the feelings of developers nowadays of what they think the MMO players of today want.

 

"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base ... There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game ... We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."

I played through the NGE but have never seen that quote. That is horrible.

I played through the NGE but have never seen that quote. That is horrible.

Yep. She made that statement when the NGE was pushed forward to explain why they did the NGE. And that was just part of it. It also went on to say that people didn't want to be the Uncle Owen nobody and that they wanted to be the Luke Skywalker hero. Well. At least speaking for myself and the people I was in guild with, we were happy being the Uncle Owen nobody making our way through the galaxy. If I wanted to be the special, one of a kind saves the world hero who catches bullets with his teeth, I would have played KOTOR instead of SWG.

And you know what's funny? This game is all about making you that "special" hero/villian. But look at how many people walk around with the Barsenthor title. Or the Bounty Hunter "Republics Most Wanted" title. Everybody is supposed to be the special snowflake here, yet nobody is because we all have the same story/backgorund.

off topic a bit, but I remember the first time I played Civilization....couldn't get enough of it, would fall asleep and have dreams about different units and strategies and all kinds of craziness.

I still have a floppy disk of a game save that has the entire globe terraformed and railroaded and a trade network of caravans bringing in billions of gold every turn.

mmo that captured my attention and wonder for a bit was SWG. Played beta and up to NGE with a group of rl friends.

Was into computer science when that game was out and had lots of fun creating complicated macros and chat threads for my toons and vendors.

If I wanted to be the special, one of a kind saves the world hero who catches bullets with his teeth, I would have played KOTOR instead of SWG.

LoL! I WANTED to play Kotor 3, but they wouldn't sell it to me; they sold me this instead. So here I am.

EDIT: I guess what happened was that BW/EA wanted to make a game that would draw in the numbers of KotoR fans, but get us to pay the $15/month of the MMO crowd so they could financially compete with ActiBlizzard. Instead, they got this...situation.

Man, this thread brings back some memories. I played EQ for a while and that was such an amazing experience. It seemed like there was so much to explore. I would wander through all the different zones trying to see what they looked like, sometimes just trying to survive until the next zone! It was awesome. I had to keep a pad with coordinates and reminders written down. There was plenty to do and I really didn't feel like I had to rush to end game to enjoy every bit that I was doing. Corpse runs got the adrenaline pumping and XP penalty was maddening if you were just about to ding and mobbed by a train that someone accidentally pulled. Running for the border when you got in trouble was such a rush, too.

I also played SWG when it first came out and I played for about 6-8 months. That was fun and different because it was Star Wars and I could build a house and put useless stuff in it. I could go to a mission terminal and pick up whatever I wanted. It was great, but I stopped playing before JTL, so don't know how much better it really got. One thing I did appreciate was waypoints, though.

The thing about both games was the sense of wonder. The mystery. The ability to go exploring. Those were the things that I appreciated. The unknown is underrated anymore. I like the surprises. I also like that every character was different in what they had and what they did.

Good times.

Man, this thread brings back some memories. I played EQ for a while and that was such an amazing experience. It seemed like there was so much to explore. I would wander through all the different zones trying to see what they looked like, sometimes just trying to survive until the next zone! It was awesome. I had to keep a pad with coordinates and reminders written down. There was plenty to do and I really didn't feel like I had to rush to end game to enjoy every bit that I was doing. Corpse runs got the adrenaline pumping and XP penalty was maddening if you were just about to ding and mobbed by a train that someone accidentally pulled. Running for the border when you got in trouble was such a rush, too.

 

I also played SWG when it first came out and I played for about 6-8 months. That was fun and different because it was Star Wars and I could build a house and put useless stuff in it. I could go to a mission terminal and pick up whatever I wanted. It was great, but I stopped playing before JTL, so don't know how much better it really got. One thing I did appreciate was waypoints, though.

 

The thing about both games was the sense of wonder. The mystery. The ability to go exploring. Those were the things that I appreciated. The unknown is underrated anymore. I like the surprises. I also like that every character was different in what they had and what they did.

 

Good times.

You really missed an amazing thing.

Image an X-Wing Alliance 2.0 ...amazing battles and near the end of SWG's run introduced low-atmospheric flight. Restuss had ground troops are dog fights above...miss that so much.

You really missed an amazing thing.

 

Image an X-Wing Alliance 2.0 ...amazing battles and near the end of SWG's run introduced low-atmospheric flight. Restuss had ground troops are dog fights above...miss that so much.

Yeah, I'll regret that just a little bit. At least we have TOR now. And that's really not a bad thing.

I did not have time to read this entire thred (stupid job!), so i apologize in advance if i repeat something.

Our first exposure to MMO's was something that we had never seen. Massive world that was open ended and multi-player was something that we could only immagine about before that.

I have wondered what the future of the genre will be because i do agree that you will never capture the same initial amazement that we had 10-15years ago in just another MMO. Ive started to think that the future may be something like MUDs but in a 3D world. Users pay a small fee to support servers and "testers", but for the most part the content is entirely user created.

Most of us from the initial MMO's are growing up, getting older, and learning skills that could seriously be beneficial to this genre.

I think Nancy McIntyre's comment from the NGE says it all for why we have the MMO's that we have now. This really conveys the feelings of developers nowadays of what they think the MMO players of today want.

 

"We really just needed to make the game a lot more accessible to a much broader player base ... There was lots of reading, much too much, in the game ... We wanted more instant gratification: kill, get treasure, repeat. We needed to give people more of an opportunity to be a part of what they have seen in the movies rather than something they had created themselves."

Thanks for that info. She worked for Lucas Arts not SOE if anybody wants to know. SOE says the NGE was the worst mistake they ever made, and it looks like they had little choice in the matter. For people who did not play SWG, 60% of subscribers cancelled their account when NGE was forced on them.

As far as the "niche product" argument goes...

MMO's are a niche product!

They always have been and probably always will be. The pandering to the mainstream audience is the root of all that ails the MMO industry. They keep watering down the product for an audience that has no interest in it, or at best, a fleeting interest. They have trivialized the hardore MMO fan to the point where there aren't a whole lot of hardcore MMO fans left. This would not be a terrible thing (for developers) if that hardcore audience had been replaced by another audience, but it hasn't.

What developers today are doing is destroying their proven market for the slim chance at reaching a mass market audience. Even WoW, with its grossly over-inflated subscriber numbers, has a tiny tiny fraction of the gaming market. Gaming is pretty niche to begin with, and MMO's are one of the smallest sub-categories of the industry. Fact is, if WoW were a TV show, it would be quickly cancelled with the audience it has and WoW has a much bigger audience than any other MMO. The only thing that saves the MMO industry from complete irrelevance is the continued revenue stream that subscriptions provide, and now they are throwing that out the window as well. Subscription-based gaming is becoming obsolete not because people don't want to pay a subscription, but because the product they are selling is inferior in quality and quantity to what we were used to paying for. Well, the quality of the production is very good, but the quality of the games are weak. They are pale imitations of 20 year old games with shiney new wrapping but otherwise, none come close to matching the ambition or scope of the first/second generation MMO's. The "quantity" of playtime offered by modern MMO's is even inferior to most solo RPG's.

Yep. She made that statement when the NGE was pushed forward to explain why they did the NGE. And that was just part of it. It also went on to say that people didn't want to be the Uncle Owen nobody and that they wanted to be the Luke Skywalker hero. Well. At least speaking for myself and the people I was in guild with, we were happy being the Uncle Owen nobody making our way through the galaxy. If I wanted to be the special, one of a kind saves the world hero who catches bullets with his teeth, I would have played KOTOR instead of SWG.

 

And you know what's funny? This game is all about making you that "special" hero/villian. But look at how many people walk around with the Barsenthor title. Or the Bounty Hunter "Republics Most Wanted" title. Everybody is supposed to be the special snowflake here, yet nobody is because we all have the same story/backgorund.

My favorite roles to play when I RP are the Average Joes. My favorite character in SWG was my Rodian. He ran a refurbished ship part shop on Tatooine. He was nothing spectacular. I played him a salvage expert. He would sell raw loot as well as pre-RE'd ship parts. He never even took part in the GCW.

I think that might be what is missing for me here. I don't want to be another hero. I just want to play my role. I am not interested in being a venerable Jedi Master or the best Trooper the galaxy has seen. I just want to be a trader and/or courier.

I guess I am more of in a need for a sandbox. This game could add some sandbox to it and it would be incredible.

Look through this very thread and you will see countless people asking for a PROVEN failed design (the complete sandbox that was SWG/UO).

Stopped reading your post the moment I saw this drivel.

Really SWG design is a "PROVEN" failure?

See I have the advantage of actually having played the game before the CU and NGE hit. So I know the real reason a lot of players kept on leaving was because of the WoWifying of the game and the bugs they never bothered to fix. SWG players, being a game where you have to talk to other people, were nearly all saying the same thing.

One such bug is the spawning in Tuskens in Fort Tusken. Had they bothered to fix bugs like that and made more content that players can do, as in Geo cave, Death Watch bunker, Corvette, etc. The game would still be around today.

Unless you want to deny that EVE Online exists?

You know the game that is 10 years old and yet has a higher sub count then ever before? Not even WoW can claim that as it's sub numbers are now dropping.

If BioWare was smart they would have made TOR just like SWG in the Pre-CU. They didn't. And now the game is losing subs faster then ever. Really everyone I've seen WANTS a game like the Pre-CU back. Go onto any game and go into the general chat and just ask about SWG and you'll have that whole chat talking about how great SWG was.

32+ Professions that could be mixed and matched, unlockable Jedi, players having to work with one another rather then go off and solo. PvP that was so much better then what we have today. TOR is just a very poor game, SWG was an experience.

If BioWare was smart they would have made TOR just like SWG in the Pre-CU. They didn't. And now the game is losing subs faster then ever. Really everyone I've seen WANTS a game like the Pre-CU back. Go onto any game and go into the general chat and just ask about SWG and you'll have that whole chat talking about how great SWG was.

 

32+ Professions that could be mixed and matched, unlockable Jedi, players having to work with one another rather then go off and solo. PvP that was so much better then what we have today. TOR is just a very poor game, SWG was an experience.

So false

SWG (all 30k of them remaining at end) Want pre CU back

Truth is SWG lost subs just as fast as TOR does

The two games run very simular sub loss patterns and time lines actually

The good news for you is you get that game from all reports in Arch Age and guess we find out a year after its release how popular your Sandbox really is (If all the failed sandbox designs thus far havent convinced you)

Im not saying SW:TOR great btw.

Its not and im about done with game.

This event pushed me over the limit of my patience in waiting for things to get done right

But there IS a reason SWG did so many game change designs and it WASNT just to be like WOW (as the vocal few like to claim)

They had mass sub loss issues from the get go as well and were trying to patch the leaky ship

All these now rose colored glasses reviews you read here do NOT accurately describe the truth of SWG and the plethora of issues the game encountered and the constantly shrinking subscription pool of players.

TOR right now has ALLOT MORE subs then SWG had after its first year (But TOR drawing from a much bigger pool so thats not really the compliment it sounds like)

Fact is were still waiting for the Star wars MMORPG that captures STAR WARS FRANCHISE

TOR is WOW with a Star Wars shell

SWG was UO with a Star Wars shell

now if only a developer would make STAR WARS with a Star Wars shell

LOL, if SWG was even as remotely popular and profitable as you all claim

It would still be open and running and Lucas Arts would have scoffed at idea of closing it to make room for TOR

I would never play swtor if i have read forums before I buy it. I played it on beta to try it then I bought it.

Internet is full of comments which dont even have scrap of logic.

These comments were written by people hired by companies to start a flame then you see people just copy paste them and spread them without thinking on it.

One of them ( and the most hilarious and common one of them ) is "swtor is a wow."

This is simply like saying "mercedes is a bmw" or saying "Call of Duty is a Doom clone"

Swtor and wow is same genre ( mmo-RPG ) . There were games just like wow before wow released and yes some of them were MMO-RPG.

Being same genre doesnt make them equal.

Swtor has totaly different class , level design , totaly different environment , story. Different approaches on leveling , pvp , pve ... If you cant realize them - just forget the small details which makes the swtor wonderful - you dont really have an idea about RPG genre.

Swtor makes me wonderous.

It has beatiful environment design , small details. It makes me wonderous from npcs that having conversation instead of npcs standing still like a log to feeling of exploring a datacrone.