"This game is new" isnt an accept excuse for the games problems

I'm reminded of an interview I read recently with one of the developers behind Zelda and he was commenting on how he was looking forward to moving on to another franchise. The reason was production on franchise games tend to involve making sure everything that made the game great in the previous entry had to still be present while only later opening up for innovation. Problem being that time runs out as costs run up. This was about franchise games in general, not just Zelda.

MMOG's are almost of a franchise than a genre. They all cater to the exact same crowd and need to have everything all the others had before it on the plate to be considered a success.

It seems reasonable to say that SWTOR should have all the features that WoW has as of 2011 rather than it did in 2004. But both had a development time to work with and and it's simply unrealistic to say that SWTOR should launch with that amount of content, and all the features that came with it. There has to be a significant amount of time put into making the game stand apart, and while Bioware's focus on story content isn't for everyone it's certainly done it's share to consume development time.

No MMOG is ever going to be released that has all that WoW has. To expect as much is going to leave you eternally unhappy with MMOG's. With every new title comes that long period of time waiting for new patches and new content and some will stick to it while others don't. How well SWTOR will fare will be determined by how quickly and reliably they can get that content out the door. As of yet I'm not impressed.

Small patches so far and little information on what's to come (yes I mean the sticky) has me more concerned than any missing features from launch.

No. Stop trying to make standards where there are none.

What is the best? To play the game as soon as it is good enough to be released or to wait two more years for all the features to be fully implemented?

Usually, and I don't know if it's the case here, companies want to release the game as soon as posible to make the money needed to be able to continue the developement. Who would like to invest millions and pass 10 years to develop a game without any profit nor any proof that the game will be a succes at it launch? The mmo business is too risky to take such a faithful decision and i wouldn't.

But.... I don't want them to wait 10 years anyway... I want to play it as soon as it is playable. I don't care to play 15$ a month to play it... I pre-ordered it because I wanted to try it as soon as possible even if it was not completed yet. On the next months I will be happy for every bugs they will fix and for every features they will add. That's how I want to play an mmo... I want it to evolve as long as I play and i don't expect it to be finished when it is released cuz i was the guy screaming and crying on their forums for this game to be released as soon as possible.

This said, Those who complaint that this game isn't finished aren't sane... would you play a finished mmo? Nope... because you want it to evolve and "finished" mean it won't evolve anymore else you wouldn't want to pay 15$ a month for this.

There's bugs... yes... plenty of them... but who broke your arm to buy this game as soon as it was released? Most of us know how the mmo business work and we knew it was going to be this way. I bought it anyway and I think you did too...

DO NOT BUY A MMO AT IT'S RELEASE IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO WAIT.

Yes, you can consider yourself screwed because this game isn't exactly what you expected to be.

But, you can also consider yourself warned because, when the next mmo will come in stores, it is going to be the exact same thing. So wait a couples of years before you buy the game if you want to play something that looks more finished.

ok so i bought the Madden series for 7 years and then comes along an new game in the same genre Backbreaker(who lacked features and gameplay was not up to par with the comp(Madden). I should just keep playing the Backbreaker series till it has time to catch up to madden right? guess what Backbreaker isn't ever gonna catch up cause it wasn't profitable enough to "come on they are just starting out" or "its new give them some time". they don't have time when a single game dominates the market share like madden or wow does. people will compare the 2 and choose the most complete one unless they provide something new and TOR only has VO and that ends at lvl 50.

Now let me say that I love the game and will continue to play it but they either need to allow mods for most of these features or put them out asap. the reason WoW now has the features it does is because of the mods they allow. they get to take the most popular ones and incorporate them directly into the game.

MMORPG genre vs crappy madden game

Good comparison yo.

the comparison isnt mmo vs madden its mmo vs mmo and football vs football, and how people look at similar products. Madden is the king of Football and Backbreaker tried take people away from Madden and failed. even though people bash madden as much as WoW is bashed. WoW is the king of MMORPGs and SWTOR is after the same thing as Backbreaker.

First of all. The way in which MMOs work isn't even remotely the same as a console game such as madden. You can make a comparison on competition, sure, but you can't make a comparison on completeness. There is not a single MMO that has been released as in the same manner as a madden game.

Madden may be the king of console football and WoW may be the king of MMORPGs but after that neither have much to do with each other. To compete with Madden is not the same as to compete with WoW.

For one thing, Madden IS ALL ABOUT ITS FEATURES. It's realism to real football, its teams, its physics, etc. It's all about making it feel like you're playing/coaching a football season.

MMORPGs on the other hand are about _many_ different things. Gameplay. PVP. Story. Features from one MMO to the other are almost trivial.

Second, I daresay if Backbreaker made a game with the exact same features and everything as the latest Madden, they might actually be a success.

But time and time again, MMOs that are as polished and having the same features as WoW fail to make any headway. Rift Failed. Aion Failed. You know whats going to kill WoW? WoW itself. Nothing else will do the trick. What killed EQ? CLUE: it wasn't WoW.

Finally, SWTOR is not after WoW players. It's after Star Wars lovers, however many that may be. So far, its a huge success.

Will SWTOR be a success in 6 months to a year? I don't know and neither does anyone else. What I do know is that I wont be going back to WoW because I never played that crap game for more than 3 months.

This ^

Agree with the OP 100%. If you want to beat an established rival, you have to be better than them in more than just one way - even if it's a big way (see: voice acting/story). You have to be smarter, faster, and prettier. You have to be willing to do everything your rivals do (see: "standardized" features) and then more (see: innovation).

And you have to do it yesterday. Every minute that you spend developing is a minute your rivals are ALSO spending on development. And if they're already ahead of you...?

I just don't see how anybody could argue against these simple ideas.

I really want this game to succeed, but I'm not going to keep shoveling cash at it in a naive hope that it will.

People can blither about how the game is only a week old, but that's not really true. Most of us downloaded the launch client back in November, and it didn't really change THAT much even from the build before it. The largest patch so far has been - what, like 40 MB? Patching means improvements. It means additions. Not patching means...not improving, and not adding.

IMHO, whether anyone likes it or not, the developers have very little time (another month, maybe two?) to start rolling out some stuff with real substance before people start leaving in droves.

Personally, I'm gonna give it until my birthday in February.

madden has a yearly release where they upgrade a small amount of content and add a new feature or two, sounds just like a WoW patch to me.

WoW has better Gameplay and PvP at the moment since TOR has the ability delay bug and the fact that i cant stay connected to the server for more than 15 minutes.

EQ got stale to many and WoW was refreshing it was both WoW and EQ. WoW came out at the right time.

Backbreaker had the feature that most of the naysayers were pushing to get(real physics), but it only had that feature the gameplay was its best feature, the reason they are still making the minigames but the secondary features were not there and it failed. Im not saying taht this game will fail and I dont want it to. Most of those failed because their IP stood no chance to WoWs. If they would have had lore to back them up along with the features they would have made a real dent in WoW's sub base.



They are after the WoW player and the Starwars fan and the bioware singleplayer fan.