For the millionth time, why so many players here say this is a single player game

From the original WOW back in 2004 and until now with every patch and every expansion, the maps have always been open to anyone to go almost anywhere and at any level. Whether you ran, walked, swam, or flew over a map, you almost always had freedom to move in any direction and approach your destination from multiple directions. From the first expansion onwards you could also fly over the map - there were no tricks/invisible barriers/phases - nothing. Just one big huge map where all players will mingle. Your travels, whether for questing or for visiting another area, felt completely smooth, fluid. Sometimes you had to enter a cave or follow a narrow track to cross a mountain range - but for the most the maps are completely open.

In contrast SWTOR has all those transitions and so many loading screens and all those areas where I am alone, and even on planets I have to follow narrow, pre-determined tracks to go somewhere and spend 95% of my time inside "dungeon like" structures. A lot of marked paths on the planets with natural obstacles and huge walls on either side no more than 50 yards away. It always feels like I am running through corridors from Tython, to Coruscant, to Taris to Nar Shadda. I never cross players travelling in some other direction other than the path I am on.

To give you a simple example of fluidity/continuity.

WOW: You want to travel to another continent (like another planel). You ran, fly to the docks. No loading screens. You board a ship. No loading screens. Other players also ther with you getting on or off the ship. The ship starts to move. No loading screens. You can fly, run, jump out of the ship as it is moving if you have changed your mind. No loading screens. Lots of other players on the same ship. Ship crosses the sea - one and only loading screen. Ship approaches destination (say new planet), you can see the land coming closer. You can again get off the ship by jumping off, swiming, flying. Other players doing the same. Or you may wait until it docks and walk down the ramp. Whatever. No loading screens. At the docks you can run to any direction to any place on the map. No loading screens.

SWTOR: you click on one or two elevators to get to YOUR hangar to board YOUR ship, no other players and a few loading screens. Inside your ship: just you. You click to your destination. A loading screen. You arrive and exit the ship. A loading screen. You run through another hangar - no other players, just you. You click on an elevator - another loading screen.

How about questing?

In WOW there are no quests that require prerequisites set from level 1. Most quest lines are short and can be obtained once you reach a required level. That gives you the freedom to quest/grind mobs/dungeons as you please, where you please. There are always more than 2 areas to quest at any level, many times more than 2. For example if you are alliance level 1 you can level near Stormwind, Ironforge, Dolanaar or Exodar and I probably am forgetting a few more. Freedom to travel means you can actually visit those areas and freedom of questing means you can completely delete your quest log and start somewhere else.

In SWTOR you must level until 10 at your spawn planet, with no option to either leave or skip a predetermined line of questing. At 10 you simply HAVE to go to Coruscant and again you HAVE to do a line of questing until you get your ship. Tehn you still HAVE to go to Tython or Taris (I forget) and then at Nar Shaddaa. All those maps feeling like a single player game. If you roll another character you will have to endure all of it again.


These are not little things that can be patched in a whim. Other problems I agree can be ironed out but these ones are simply single player game design with multi player elements.

Thanks for going to the effort to explain this to people; I've become too dissolusioned with this game's "community" to attempt it myself

Anyway, I agree that most of the Single Player aspects of SWTOR aren't things that can be fixed with patch 1.1, or 1.2, or anything else in the near future. To fix all of them would require a complete overhaul of many things in the game, amounting to pretty much an entire expansion just to turn the game into an MMO

That's why I think SWTOR should be free to play

Stopped there

When you want to actually discuss relevant issues pretaining to MMOs Ill read it

As for your original WOW, no such thing.
There was nothing original about WOW when it released or any time after it so to speak like it set the genre regarding anything but marketting is like a McDonalds Fry cook trying to discuss a 5 star hotels 1000 person Banquet menu.

PS: MMORPGs started in 1991

Reading comprehension is important.

When he says Original wow he means the first version, classic.

He's not saying WoW was original.

So what you're saying is that this game isn't WoW?

If you prefer playing like you can do in World of Warcraft - then play World of Warcraft.

Good thing you didn't waste the effort. His statements aren't...hmmm....universal.

I paid for a story-driven game, being a fan of the KOTOR series, I paid for what you might call "KOTOR III: Online".

If I wanted WoW, I would be playing WoW.

Bioware has been going in the wrong direction for a while with this.

Take Mass Effect 1 vs Mass Effect 2. In ME1, people where complaining about an elevator ride that was quite long..... but the world where nice, big and immersive. In ME2 the elevators had been replaced by horrendously long load screens (as if that would be better) and the worlds where small, constrained, and consisted mostly of corridors.

I don't think the worlds here are all that bad, but I do agree that the load screens are annoying and break the immersion. Also, I really dislike the teleporting elevators. These things really break the immersion of being in a living breathnig world, yet there are so many of them.

Here's hoping they'll fix it. I'm still enjoying the game, and will keep playing as long as the story element holds up.

WoW - you don't need to go into outter space to move around the world. I hop on my chicken and I fly or run from city to city.

SWTOR - you have to go into outter space to move from planet to planet. I have to board a space ship which is docked in a hanger and then fly into outter space and fly to my next planet. While in my ship I may have to battle some crafty alien who can fly space ships too. Or I may have to speak with the big bosses on the holo. Or...

Really in the original wow I could fly over the map?

I can pretty much go to any planet now as soon as I get my ship, just like in wow I can go to any area in the earliest levels. What do you expect to do when the boars are level 40 and you are level 10, you can't kill them can you?

I was level 15 when I explored both my first time, got killed by a level 37 wampa. Just saying.