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

Just because a game supports an internet connection; does not mean it is an MMO

By that logic, Modern Warfare 3 is an MMO

I keep trying to beat this into people's head, but they refuse to listen. IF you can exist with a lot of other players in a persistent world, you are playing an MMO. It has nothing to do with grouping, or questing, or raids, or doing the hully gully. It is when players can all exist in the same persistent world (period). It doesn't mean I have to associate with you. Those where constructs by developers.

If a developer wants to make a persistent world in which everyone does their own thing, it is no less an MMO. The market will decide if that is a good model, or a bad model. Right now, it's looking like the market has dictated that it is a good model. I know that may be a hard pill for you MMO 'purists' i.e. entrenched in an old paradigm, but that is the way it is. Sorry.

I will take a 15 second loading screen over a 15 minute griffon ride....ANY DAY

People have some really strange ideas of what an MMO is, clearly only based upon playing WoW.

The jumpgates in EVE would no doubt drive them nuts. Particularly if jumping into a busy sector.

And no game has successfully ever done that without massive lag, both latency & GPU to the extent of it being a slide show. EVE, WoW, LOTRO, all of them when you get more than about 100-150 people in the exact same area, they all drop off dramatically in actual playability. Go ask the fleet players in EVE, the only MMO where you can PvP in the thousands, about their experiences.

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.