Design decisions and why the game engine hurts TOR

The MMO community is very vocal and it's clear what the community as a whole wants and doesn't want. Too many developers ignore these "requirements" for the sake 'of the greater good' and to preserve the false notion of server communities and stuff.

The insentive to continue to play sub-par games is dwindling more and more as time passes. When you literally have a juggernaut MMO on the market that covers a HUGE range of the gaming population from casual to "hardcore", as a developer, you absolutely have no excuse to ignore the popular features that the fanbase absolutely loves.

For one example:
There's a reason why various tools were created and it wasn't so Blizzard could troll WoW players. It was because there was a clear and focused calling for them.

For Bioware to state during developement that they have no intentions of adding those tools because of "server community" then, a month after release say they're adding them - well, that simply shows they had no clue what they were doing, and they had no clue what the MMO market was actually like.

People want to be able to play on their own time, they want to be able to experience more than just quests. They want to run "dungeons", a lot want to "raid" they want to pvp whenever they log in, etc... Blind developers like Bioware fail to understand that, and they get bit for it.

Sure there is. Just look at the numbers.

2+ million games sold

In general and customer service there a total of about 100k threads and 1.2m total posts.

Even if every thread was started by a different user, that is still 5% of the number of boxes sold. We all know each thread was not started by a unique user so the percentage is well below that.

If you use general alone, about less than 3% of the buyer have started a thread here.

If you look at total posts there are less than 1m in general so again we have not even reached 50% of the box sales if each post was by someone different. Now factor all the people with more than 100 posts and see how quickly that percentage diminishes.

I'm not convinced any MMO will out-WoW WoW........ I'm not convinced WoW 2 will even (and I suspect Blizzard isn't either - hence them trying to do anything but make WoW 2).

I'm pretty convinced that if any (western) MMO beats WoW for maximum subs it will be something different to WoW though.

The "MMO community" is irrelevant in this instance, because BW are obviously not interested in a quixotic crusade to entertain a a bunch of bored people who are jaded with MMOs and basically will never be happy.

They're interested in getting new players who don't have many preconceptions, and who couldn't give a toss what the famous "MMO community" thinks, because the famous "MMO community" isn't even on their radar.

Sory but i just rofled. The early part of this game is too simplyfied for a singleplayer and not enough mmo to be paid for. Perfected is the last word i would use.

How about an alternative theory: BioWare refuses to learn from previous MMOs, and insists on re-inventing the wheel over and over again for basic mechanics, UIs, engine choices, etc.

I do agree with this, personally. But many of the issues raised, definitively not all, but many, are very real issues that shouldn't have made it out of development in the first place.



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While I do not, by any means, speak for anyone else, I have to say that I have played plenty of games that "tickle all my funny bones". As a Star Wars example, KoTOR I and II, as well as Battlefront come to mind.

On the contrary, I think the OP made some very good points about bugs in Operations and some big issues in PvP. Plenty of other posters have done the same, before being buried by trolls, people defending the game with their own opinions, and topic de-railers.

I think it belittles what I read as a well-thought out post, despite being mostly opinions, to refer to it as "panties in a wad". And, if you look through some of the comments, you'll see many people unequivocally agreeing with the OP.

And I would agree with you in turn.


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Maybe, but you can't say for sure. When I played WoW, I saw many of the same individuals posting the same crap over and over. That is not the case here. And since I can't always play the game, for various reasons, but I can almost always access the forums, so I spend an inordinate amount of time here.


That's true, but the loud, obnoxious complainers do get attention to issues. Someone silently suffering through Ilium, Warzone exploits, random disconnects, and other things is not doing their part to improve this game.



I know plenty of people personally, as well as online, that have tried hard to love this game. I'm among them. But many people can't justify a monthly fee for a product that isn't personally enjoyable.

And although I can't find the link, I saw a TORhead link the other day that showed the net change in Server populations. And they were decreasing, except for a few PvE servers.


That caused me to take a step back and really think about this game. Combined with taking the weekend off from playing SWTOR, I just can't bring myself to play anymore. It's just not fun and quite a pain in the *** to play.


A week ago I would have been fully on your side, but, as I stated above, my mind has changed. I can't justify the fee versus the amount of fun I have playing.

That's the theory that the great "MMO community" is already proposing, as exemplified in the OP. I'm the one who's proposing an alternative theory

The famous and wonderful "MMO community" will never be happy with any MMO, ever. Which happens to make the opinion of the oh-so-great "MMO community" utterly worthless and off the mark for this game, because most of the people who are going to be playing it won't have known about the previous "wheels" that have already been "invented".

Just watch what happens to Tera after a few months. Even the great GW2 will not pass entirely unscathed, although I think it will probably quieten the "MMO community" down for at least a couple of months. And pity poor TSW.

The almighty "MMO community" has far too high an opinion of itself and its importance, even in the MMO world, far less the wider gaming community, from which most of SWTOR's players is likely to be drawn.

Here's the truth: the already established "MMO community" and its pompous opinions has been relevant to some previous games that have attempted to muscle in on WoW, but it is irrelevant to SWTOR, which is not trying to muscle in on WoW. And besides, the only "MMO community" that has any real teeth is EVE Online's, and that only for EVE Online itself, and because of its nature as a true (and great) sandbox.

I couldn't agree more about the game engine, this is the worst performing mmo I have ever played with the longest loading times ever.

I have an i5 overclocked to 4.6ghz with 8gb memory and not the latest gtx 460 and the game runs so poorly with 10-20+ ppl on the screen at the same time. All other mmo I have played incl Tera just fly on my rig.

Sad but true, it's going to be another few more weeks or couple of months at most when masses will leave the game. Not to mention any new mmo like Tera in May or GW2 and people will not hesitate to switch.

If you look at the massive list of things removed since beta you'll see that more often than not, the culprit is engine limitations.