i totally agree with you adjudicated.

Whomever is making the big decisions is out of touch with the mmo gaming community and it really feels like they didnt put much thought into what happens after you get to 50.

3 pvp warzones and illum or a bunch of standard issue raid instances.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm

Off topic, but Anarchy Online is still up and around? Oh my god the horror..... i remember being there for launch... god no....

Here's the deal with innovation.

Running and maintaining an MMO is like holding a box full of wild, rabid wolverines closed.

One hand has to keep the box closed. The other hand can innovate. But you can only reach so far.

The more innovating you do, the more likely the box will slip open and a few of them will get out and start chewing on your furniture and destroy everything in the form of exploits and other nasty things they tend to do.

tl;dr: innovation can ruin a MMO, and they cost far too much to take big risks.

Here's the deal with innovation.

 

Running and maintaining an MMO is like holding a box full of wild, rabid wolverines closed.

 

One hand has to keep the box closed. The other hand can innovate. But you can only reach so far.

 

The more innovating you do, the more likely the box will slip open and a few of them will get out and start chewing on your furniture and destroy everything in the form of exploits and other nasty things they tend to do.

 

tl;dr: innovation can ruin a MMO, and they cost far too much to take big risks.

This was honestly one of the most insane and mind blowingly poor analogies I've ever read in my life. someone please find that Billy Madison speech video on YouTube.

Sorry bro, but innovation is the fuel that drives success. Without it, we'd still be playing pen and paper games. Not that some people still don't play them *looks around suspiciously*

I take it you missed where Ohlen said SWToR is "the crowning achievement on top of the history of innovative MMOs"...

Take a look at this game. They can't even clone WoW correctly do you really think they're about to come up with their own ideas (much less have those ideas actually be enticing)?

this is what business does.

 

it takes potential, chokes it with currency, then follows the path of least resistance to the land of maximum profit.

 

creativity doesn't make it past the drawing board. to be nothing more than mental-masturbatory heresay.

 

it gets sterilized through optimization.

 

gone is the sense of aesthetic grandeur and artisanship.

 

in its place is rectangular sophistry.

GW2 is gonna be big. Why? Because it innovates in many ways and players of this genre are in dire need of innovation. Even looking at their jobs hiring page you can see their company looks like a great place to work, Bioware's page looks horrible they don't even have a greeting message telling you what kind of people they're looking for.

It's the difference between hiring talented employees and outsourcing. Bioware outsources much of their development team, when you don't even know what Star Wars is you're not about to come up with any innovative ideas, and consequently this game deserves to flop. So many stupid design decisions and cut corners in attempt to save money, it's gonna end up costing them big (and not just in opportunity cost although the returns if they'd made this game innovative would have been HUGE).

But, every MMO is released like this. You need to give it time, enjoy PvPing and Raiding. Start to make some Alternate characters while you have the time and enjoy the other stories

That could be true... normally when i get bored by a char i begin a new one... but here you have too few classes and just 2 (for faction) start zones...

I just hope in new contents soon, cuz i really enjoy this game

I agree 100% with this OP.

You expect them to write 24/7 to feed your need for story or something? You already went thru a trilogy already, make that X8....that is ALOT of story to write. Give em time geez.

The endgame will grown and get better. WoW didn't have crap to do in the endgame when it first came out and even leading up to the release of Burning Crusade there really wasn't much to do either. I remember quitting during vanilla WoW and then coming back for WotLK and seeing a HUGE difference there was in the overall experience in the game.

The point is this is probably the most ambitious MMO to ever be developed. The have invested a lot of time and development into the front end of the game...now the next step is to finish polishing the front end of the game and to continue the back end of the game.

All the people being overly critical remind me a lot of myself back during vanilla WoW...and just like I came back, they will come back too. So in the meantime, find a good group of people to hang with, make some alts to play around with, and most importantly HAVE A GOOD TIME!

OP just wanted to say I agree with your post. Also wanted to add that I suspect one of the reasons end game is a carbon copy WoW (and the new content is more of what Blizzard has been doing since 2004-5 - new instance, new pvp battlegrounds) is this games development started 4 years ago (or longer?) I believe that puts it in the realm of WoW's heyday with the The Burning Crusade expansion. Back then Blizzard seemingly had the winning formula and I can see a bunch of suites in 2007(ish) thinking it made sense to ape what was already there, clearly it works.

The years roll by and 200 million dollars later someone maybe says "Hey, I think a significant portion of our target audience might be getting tired of this stuff." (maybe after WoW lost those 600k subs? Which is now up to 2 million lost? ) but its to late and they can't go redesigning what they have spent 4+ years working on.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/243465/world_of_warcraft_loses_2_million_subscribers_in_a_year.html

Mind you this is just a stupid theory and I'm probably wrong, but I can see it happening. Maybe I'm making excuses for what SW:TOR ended up being. Which is a decent MMO & maybe I'll stick around for another month but it's not what I was hoping for.

currently the only fun, great thing about this game is leveling a character, wich sadly most people skips totally and rush as fast as they can to 50. once they get to 50 they find themselves hitting the huge wall of boredom. even lineage 2 mindless mobs grinding is more fun.

I don't know... Operations are fun, PVP is still fun, running dailies, I personally don't care. Do I pass the same amount of time on my 50 than my alts, hell no. But "end-game" says it all no? You have reached the "ceiling", until they raise that "ceiling"(level cap, continued storyline, whatever), there will be less to do. Of course end-game will be more repetitive, it is the LAST stuff you can do right now.

This is the reason I quit World of Warcraft and the reason im already frustrated with this game, I work 10 hours a day 6 days a week in construction, 33yr old married bloke with one little girl.

As nearly all employed gamers know its absolutely impossable to spend 4-6 hours in one sitting doing a "raid", when i could be kicking back with my wife, gardening, having a beer with the boys, entertaining the little one, home repairs... I wont go on, but yeah life comes first, game comes last! Something that WoW / SWTOR do not promote.

I'd buy the raiding gear, i work my butt off to have an expendable income (although the unemployed gamers would have a very graceless meltdown), but why not make a quick bit of cash before everyone jumps ship for the next best thing that isnt a carbon copy of WoW?

currently the only fun, great thing about this game is leveling a character, wich sadly most people skips totally and rush as fast as they can to 50. once they get to 50 they find themselves hitting the huge wall of boredom. even lineage 2 mindless mobs grinding is more fun.

I totally agree with this.

UI flaws, bugs, and other issues aside, the leveling process in this game is enjoyable and refreshing. No, this isn't the first MMO to have a story (that's what is in those little paragraphs of text that most of you disregard), but I did find the quality of the story for the Jedi Knight and Consular to be above average when compared to other titles. Great job!

 

By far my largest problem with the game (other than the missing UI features that are standard in just about any other AAA title) is that it all comes to a screeching halt at level 50. It is almost like I am taken from a galaxy far, far away and tossed back into Azeroth/Telara/Hyboria.

 

Suddenly all I have to do is:

 

• Grind daily quests for commendations.
  
• Grind "PvP" arenas for commendations.
  
• Grind raids for a chance at progressing my character and commendations.
  

 

There is no more story progression. There is no more non item-based character progression. This is where SWTOR becomes a carbon copy of every other loot treadmill out on the market. Why?

 

Why should I stay here and do the exact same crap I can do in all of those other games I quit when I was faced with the same predicament? Why is it that you chose the same shallow excuse for an end game as every other hyped-and-flopped* loot treadmill that has come out in the past eight years? I get the sneaking suspicion that people burn through MMOs because they're looking for something new and innovative rather than the same old stuff that they were doing (and obviously grew tired of) in their previous game of choice. Not only are more and more players growing absolutely sick of this lazy end game design, it takes far more time and effort to develop static, scripted content than it does for players to consume it. You'll never outpace the hardcore and/or the competent mainstream players.

 

You have the Star Wars IP. The game is set during a time of great conflict between the Sith Empire and the Galactic Republic. Numerous other factions are involved that are trying to take advantage of the situation and sew chaos or make a hefty profit. Use this potential for something other than making a World of Riftaionconancraft clone.

 

Why not have entire PvP planets where the sole purpose is to control valuable crafting resource nodes for your faction so that you can craft "raid quality" gear and prevent the opposition from doing so themselves? What if by capturing this planet the entire faction gained a buff that allowed them to gain high amounts of legacy XP, or gave them higher chances to successfully reverse engineer crafted goods, or even gave them massive credit boosts? Why not have player-created fortifications that must be defended/sieged but generate rewards for the faction who built and maintains them such as rare crafting schematics and resources?

 

Why not have entire PvE planets where the mobs (let's say White Maw pirates) have AI and actually assault your faction's bases as your faction struggles to regain control of that sector of the world? Why not have points of interest on this planet that must be captured and held from the AI (that gets progressively more challenging) that give you control of valuable resource nodes or maybe even access to extremely difficult but short dungeons and/or raids.

 

On top of this, why not have an alternate advancement system (or turn the Legacy system into this) that gives even more purpose to playing after the level cap? You could open this up and make the rewards be new abilities (including the ability to equip blasters as Jedi/Sith, etc.) in addition to statistical bonuses and other perks.

 

You can do so much more than be yet another mediocre grind-or-quit MMO, yet you've chosen to go down this road. Your stated goals are to pump out more daily quests, flashpoints, and operations for people to grind. Is that it? Do you really think that will hold a long-term audience when every single game that has attempted to emulate this World of Warcraft style of end game has lost a majority of their subscribers after a short time?

 

I'm very disappointed with this game the level cap. I want this game to succeed, but the lack of wisdom and apparent lethargy on the part of the developers genuinely makes me angry. I'm tired of seeing the genre stagnate with nothing but loot treadmill after loot treadmill being released. It makes me wish I had gone into game design rather than architecture. I honestly expected better from the people that brought us Baldur's Gate, KOTOR, and other great titles. Please say you'll actually do more than ensure this is just another mediocre game in an ocean of mediocre games.

 

*Flopped meaning suffered massive subscription losses shortly after launch. See: Rift, Warhammer, AION (NA), Age of Conan, etc.

 

TL;DR: Please innovate. Don't release nothing but operations and flashpoints. Use the IP to its fullest. Make open-world content for PvE/PvP players that is dynamic, engaging, and not grind-based. The longest-lasting content is player-impacted (dynamic) content, not scripted flashpoints and operations that we blow through in a fraction of the time you spent developing it.

I love how all the things you listed are in EVE but you call them innovation. And then people wonder why it's the only established MMO that's still growing. This cookie cutter crap has to stop, I agree, just don't act like an amazing game such as you describe is fit only for the lands of fantasy in your mind.

Just wanted to post here to say that whilst I do agree with the general view of the OP, I do not believe it is reasonable to expect such innovation at launch or even shortly after launch. As the game improves and matures, I feel that such innovation outside the conventional grind will come, but until then, as horrible as it may feel to some, you will have to be patient.

Ultimately, if you enjoy a game but get bored by a lack of content, take a break, play some other games and come back to it a few months down the line. I can't speak for everyone out there, but I have always got other games I could play or other enjoyable things I could be doing if there's not enough to keep me interested.

I do not believe it is reasonable to expect such innovation at launch or even shortly after launch.

This is where I believe a lot of MMO developers (BW included here) have made a huge mistake. The problem is they looked at WoW and tried to emulate all the good things about it and why it's successful.

What they did NOT do, is look at the players. The players already expect things to be polished. They already expect tons of things to do endgame. They want new and exciting content a hell of a lot quicker than they did even in 2007 when this game went into development. We all of us who have been gaming for that long are better and more efficient players than we were then. If they don't get this, they will feel ripped off plain and simple and leave and go and do something else and not give out their hard earned cash.

I DO believe it is reasonable to expect innovation right away. What have we got, the same tired old healer/tank/dps combo. They do have some interesting things like ranged tanks. However, as with almost every other game I have seen, melee cops the short end of the stick. It's simply easier to not have any except for the tank. and now you don't even need that.

While I enjoy SW:ToR, it really does have nothing end game. Nothing to grind and get fancy rewards for example. There are a few dailies to do, but they get boring the second or third time you do them. If you have nothing to occupy you at level 50, you will not keep playing. Well, I won't.

It's obvious they are working hard to fix all the problems in the game, and they will have AUS servers, so I am willing to stick around for a while. But please make it a bit more interesting and engaging, it's easy to get 50, give us a ton of engaging stuff to do when we get there please BW.

Hopefully something gets done fairly quickly, because I would like to see a new game flourish. I genuinely got that excited feel when levelling and quite enjoyed myself, but hitting 50 is disappointing.