Story-based themepark MMO can only fail

No joke! I agree with "Get rid of the levels"!

Eve and UO where successful with out it and I don't know why every game insists on them... ok I understand why... reward....but Levels are a lazy why to make players feel the achieved something.

It doesn't work on the MMO level. But this game is more of a single player Bioware game than a MMO. I dont think you realize just how many people are fans of Bioware games. I buy every one of them, you are almost always getting a superior product. There are lots of people who have no serious interest in the MMO aspects of this game. They want to play each class and some of them will play the same class different gender.

I will say that this game is inferior to the Mass Effect series in terms of the cinematic qualities but it's better than the Dragon Age series. If you approach the game from the mindset of the single person RPG player, this game can last a long time. These players do not play the game like the MMO hardcore players.

When you look at the game from the prospective of a traditional MMO player, it does not have as much impact. It's a pretty bland MMO and lacks a lot of the basic functions the successful level/raid MMOs have.

This game has attracted a lot single player market. You can question the design of the game, I sure do, from a MMO player's point of view but as a fan of Bioware games I enjoy this game.

There is one big, legitimate question you can ask. Can Bioware keep up the demand for NEW content and still maintain the level of voice overs (16 class voice overs plus all the NPC voice overs) to keep people interested in the game down the road?

There will come a point where the single RPG players have played all the original classes they want to play and will be looking for new stuff. I think at that point the serious MMO gamers will have already left the game, but there still will be a lot of hangers on and that large single player audience.

If they can put out QUALITY expansions or additions or whatever you want to call it in less than a year's time (like SOE, who have mastered the art of marketing a MMO expansion wise) they will be fine.

What is the worse that can happen? People stop playing and cancel their subscription and come back in 7 months or so to check things out. Isn't that how everyone already plays this genre anyways? I know I have about 7 accounts on various MMOs that I keep resubbing and canceling in little chunks to just play for a while. Those games are all still going strong, no reason this game cannot.

That being said....heh, I will probably cancel when my free month is up. I am looking for more of a MMO than a single person RPG with lite MMO stuff to the side.

It fails on a fundamental level because meaningful story cannot be generated by developers faster than users consume it.

The thing is, WOW dripfeeds you skills in a way that teaches you how to play their game. By the time you're finished the first planet, you've got most of the skills you're ever going to use in TOR, certainly all the ones that actually fit on your toolbar.

By the end of the second, you've even got a ship. The game should take the leash off then and just let players go where they want. With a level-less system, the Galaxy could be your oyster. Exploring on Illum. Prospecting on Tattooine. Bounty Hunting on Nar Shadda. All of the above, with friends, forever.

But they just can't bring themselves to disengage the levelling treadmill because they don't know how to create content that rewards in and of itself, rather than offering an in-game reward.

What's really needed is a way to empower the players to create the universe.

I played KOTOR three times, and KOTOR 2 nine times, I'm sure I can play this game a dozen times playing different characters for the next couple of years with out them even adding in new content.

It fails on a fundamental level because meaningful story cannot be generated by developers faster than users consume it.

What goes into a good story? Plot. Memorable characters. Conflict. Change. Interesting environments. Realistic dialogue. I shudder to think of the army of people that it took to give us such 8 wonderful, moving class stories in SWTOR.

1-49 had all this. I loved it, every minute of it.

Level 50 has none of this. My companions won't interject dialogue anymore. My character doesn't grow anymore. When I log in these days, I wonder, "Why am I doing this?" And I don't want that answer to be, "because the best-in-slot gear is this way". That is the losing answer, because of this other game on the market that will provide more than the good people at Bioware ever can in that particular arena.

Your executive and design meetings should turn its efforts on turning SWTOR into a sandbox game. Let players write their own stories. You've shown me where my character comes from -- now give me the tools to play out the rest of his career.

And for heaven sakes, don't ask me to roll an alt. Your mission worked, Bioware. Your story connected me with my character. I made the choices that defined him. I want to play him, not some new random person who happens to share a last name. Don't make me turn him into some mindless raider or pvp commendation grinder.

Sun Tzu wrote, "You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended." Raiding bosses, dungeon finder, daily quests, commendation vendors, and all that jazz -- those are the enemy's heavily defended bastions. I beg you Bioware. Do not waste your resources assaulting those positions. You cannot hope to win.

SWG had all of the things needed for the players to go out and explore the galaxy, you created your character, choosed the starting city and was given a very basic set of gear. Where you went or what you did from there was 100% up to you as a player. You could do quests from the terminals, you could take your rifle and explore Tattoine and shoot ata few womp rats at the same time. As you grew stronger you went to different planets as you wanted harder resistance and different stuff to do. Nothing was handed to you on a silverplate, no one held your hand and told you were to go, what to shoot at. You were basicly free to explore the world as you wanted too, and not only free but you had to do it your way as no one would tell you to go to this planet next.

In theme park MMO's the rewards are given to the players and players expect to get a reward for doing this and that. In sandbox MMO's and specially in games like DFO the reward from a Chaos chest can be either small or quite large. Due to the nature of the game you can loose the reward quite quick, so it gives a whole new meaning to exploring and trying to get resources. You can spend hours on hours chopping wood or mining stone, and never loose it. other times you can win a PvP match and get your hands on some really nice armor pieces just to realize that you loose it 10 minutes later by someone beating you. The risk vs reward concept is in many ways more satisfying then anything else, as some days you loose all your stuff, and other days you can get your hands on the most valuble stuff existing in the game.

The only way to get players to explore is to "force"them into going and looking. In a game where they can level to a certain level before being sent to next area you never really learn to appreciate the value exploring can have. In SWG 1/3 of the exploring was to find places to go for you to quest, 1/3 was to go for specific resources or mobs to fight and the last 1/3 was to simply discover locations you had heard about. Places like the sarlacc pit and other places on various planets was things you actually wanted to find after hearing and seeing other players finding it. In the beginning these wasn't listed on your datapad either so finding them was seen as a bit of an achivement. They didn't give you any bonuses, but they added value to your character in the form of you as a player actually finding it. However this simply doesn't work very well in a theme park MMO as majority of the players expect that the game tells them where to go and what to do. In a sandbox MMO the feeling is usually changed as the game from the start tells you quite harshly that you are on your own and need to figure out of things yourself. And this triggers the urge to explore the urge to actually go out and find the places you want and need before others find it.