SWTOR: Theme-park MMO design. End of the road?

Anyone who claims that sandbox games are dead has zero clue what they are talking about.

EVE Online and Perpetuum Online have had steady growth rates for long time. In fact, year after year they grow while dozens of themeparks dwindle down to FTP status due to lack of interest.

Then you take into account the fact that Minecraft, which isn't technically an MMO, has sold more than twice the copies of SWTOR. It's a sandbox in its purest form and millions of people play it daily.

Minecraft Users and Sales Statistics

Just the opposite is true. Sandbox is the future. Themeparks are going the way of the dodo and SWTOR may be the last final gasp before they die.

Theme-park MMO designs have reached an untenable situation of exponential costs + ever-shorter leveling curves. The theme-park style of MMO has reached a point of oversaturation -- people burn through the leveling content in 5 days /played and expect more within weeks. IMHO the only way forward from here is to mix together elements of the Theme Park, with the Sandbox. Sandbox MMOs alone are too niche to be economically feasible or popular on a large scale. But having sandbox elements in a theme park design, would help subscribers weather the periods between content updates, and give them a reason to keep logging in. It would be the social hub that MMOs have been missing for quite some time.

MMOs in the past featured an extensive grind with few quests. My first character in EQ1 took 50 days /played to hit L50, for example. (18-20 days for WoW) But what current MMOs are missing is the social aspect of MMO gaming from the past -- sure you were grinding, but chatting with groupmates and those in the zone was just as important or moreso than leveling your character. This is one of the largest reasons the Korean market still prefers heavier grinds -- it's for the socializing. I think they need to lengthen out the leveling once more and tap more into the social aspects of MMOs. Social networking is so huge now -- why is it that Massively MULTIPLAYER games are such insular solo content these days?

If Bioware really wants SWTOR to succeed they need to first and foremost, provide more cohesive guidance on how to proceed at L50, but then also add in sandbox elements to give players ways to spend their time between patches. Player housing, a total revamp of the crafting system for a more meaningful meta-game, etc. Heck I think an amazing thing would be an EVE-like space part of the game that you could explore and carve out your own little niche, except far less ruthless than EVE, of course.

(Quality of life and Guidance issues I'll address in a separate thread)

I have an entire MMO locked away in my head with no financing to get it made, and the people who have millions of dollars to make new MMO's keep rehashing the same ideas over and over with different names tacked to them.

But it's okay. Soon enough (hopefully) ArcheAge will be released and us MMO players of olde will finally have something on the market more fitted to our tastes.

But it is Bioware's problem.

It's good that you have 3 characters you are working on at once. I started 3 days before the public launch and focused on a Bounty Hunter from 1-50 before I rolled an Alt. I grew tired of playing Alts and the same content multiple times, simultaneously, years ago. Nowadays I focus on one character at a time.

Now, a bit of information here: I work 55-60 hours a week owning my own RPG publishing company, and also being a full-time novel writer (with a literary agent, books published by companies other than my own)-- so that right there is a ton of non-game time. I also have four children: one just graduated, another is a teenager, one a pre-teen, and one about to hit 2 years old. A lot--- and I mean a lot-- of time there.

So, I don't always play for hours at a time, or even daily.

I finally hit level 50 on the Bounty Hunter. When I did /played, the time was roughly 5 1/2 days. And that is with having never hit spacebar through a quest, and doing each planet all the way through the offered Bonus Series (and going back to planets where the bonus series is a later level, like Alderaan).

My Jedi is already level 22.

And we are 7 weeks from launch, with this player not playing for hours every day--- heck, not even playing every day.

I'm sorry, but you consider GW2 a ORPG and you don't consider TOR a ORPG? TOR is the first MMO I've ever felt like I actually BEAT.

Didn't people say that about Darkfall?
And Dawntide?
And Shadowbane?
And....

I'm not sure about this theme-park vs sandbox argument but the comment about death by a thousand paper cuts is so true.

I'm gonna spend the next 10 minutes listing every single small detail I hate or have no idea why it got implemented

1) JUST IN: White-coloured flashing GCD animation

2) No good place to put my chatbox

3) The "selected" mob graphic is too inconspicuous to see sometimes, make it bigger

4) Tabbing makes no sense at all, it should cycle with priority to mobs closer to you

5) Can't move or resize hotbars

6) Can't resize buff / debuff icons (who the hell thought an icon the size of the mouse cursor was good deserves to be shot)

7) Can't tell which buffs / debuffs are your own

8) Map covers my top-right most 2 buttons

9) Buggy loot system in ops

10) Can't mount in ship docking areas

11) Waaaaay too many loading screens for inter-planetary travel

12) Mounts are slow as hell

13) Looking for people to do FPs is close to impossible for people with no guilds or guilds that don't do FPs

14) Horrendous customer support

15) Buggy backstab range / area

16) Stealth detection is further than non-stealthed range (i.e. if you stand in front of a boss or certain mobs at a certain range unstealthed you won't aggro but stealth and you'll get the red cursor and pull aggro if you don't LOS in like 2-3s)

17) Horrible concept that is Ilum

18) FPS issues (probably due to the choice of the engine)

19) Using an unproven engine that's now proving it's not good enough to even handle 80 people onscreen without ******** on your FPS with a mid-high-range computer

20) Galactic Trade Market is HORRIBLE

21) Can't search on GTN

22) Listing items on the GTN takes way longer than it should take

Feel free to add to the list all the small things you don't like.