This game lacks epeen

ePeen is essentially a direct result of progress driven content in any MMO. It is essential because in order to keep subscribers, the game must offer varying player types incentives to keep playing. TOR is catered specifically to it's largest user-base, or the casual gamer. The problem, as I see it, is that even casuals can EASILY consume the end game content that has been given to them.

What generally happens when a person beats a games content? That's right, the vast majority move on to the next best game, and they most certainly don't pay to play through it again.

This would be a valid argument if we, as consumers, weren't paying a monthly fee to play a game that they've mentioned numerous times is FOR US. We expect our money to provide us with incentives to keep playing.

As nice as that sounds, that type of game just doesn't fit the vision of what Bioware hopes to accomplish--making money. Unfortunately, a side effect of an increased incentive/reward system is that it truly brings out the worst in people. It just really can't be helped. If Bioware wants the game to stay progression based (keeping profit in mind), it may have to cave in to some demands that may sacrifice the overall 'goodness' of the community.

Money

I think this is working as intended per Bioware.

Perhaps Bioware should be asking themselves that question. OP is pretty correct, IMO. Compared to Rift, my previous MMO, and WoW-clone, just like this, I don't think that things are progressing smoothly at all. I'm here becaues it's Star Wars, but I hate to say it, Rift is better. Nevertheless, I hope that Bioware sees the warning signs, because I think this can all be fixed and TOR can be the better game, I just doubt that the hardcore players are going to wait around to find out. Some have said that TOR's community would be better off without the hardcore, but I strongly disagree, and I doubt Bioware wants to lose any of its subscribers. Besides, the hardcore are the primary ones who will stick with a game for years and keep an open sub for that long too. Can't deny them.

A fair question.

Even after completing all WOW content, we just felt a stronger desire to keep farming it and keep playing. It was a bit more challenging, and the gear is harder to obtain, the pace seems alot better.

There is also the draw of achievements for us and the glory meta achievement mounts as well as the mounts that drop off the last heroic boss of a tier that we liked to farm.

So the gear progression seemed harder and more rewarding, along with achievement goals and mount farming, and titles.

Here, the 2 hour clear titles and the mounts just feel pretty lame.

As far as pvp, that is easy, there is no competitive feeling here. In WOW I played in the 2400's for rated battlegrounds, and the 2300's for arena. Not world class, but by no means a slouch. Games were intense, no pugs, your team was a full premade. PVP was never about gear, always had all the gear, but played long after that for the competition and the rivalries.

Here you can only bring 4 in your premade, nothing is rated, its a simple grind, and there is no feeling of competition. We are hoping 1.2 can change that.

We stopped playing WOW just because we wanted to try something new, we were excited for this game, and we love star wars. Something is missing here though, I think it is epeen, and I hope they add it soon.......

Show me facts based on that. You can't. It's over-simplification with a premature conclusion. If you're claiming that hardcore subscribers won't stick around for long because of this trivial lack of "epeen", then you can't claim that hardcore subscribers will be the ones keeping TOR alive. You're mixing hardcore subscribers with loyal subscribers, when the two classifications are completely separate.

They need to at least try. They have to.

Destroying the community, in order to pander to Alpha Male posturing, could be an even worse business decision in the long run.

SW:TOR will loose what makes it unique among MMOs.

I always thought that hardcore meant truely loyal. I always thought loyalty meant you stuck behind something no matter what. Perhaps I'm confused and hardcore actually means someone that wants everything perfect yesterday and is never satisfied with what they currently have.

I'm so glad i'm loyal and not hardcore.

Nope. When defined in the scope of gaming, it's a type of gameplay mixed with a frequency of that gameplay. But don't trust me alone for that: http://www.urbandictionary.com/defin...rdcore%20gamer

It's a good thing then that "epeen" has never been something that I've needed in my MMORPGs...

The OP has a point if we're discussing games little boys play with eachother in elementary school bathrooms. In the context of a AAA MMO with millions of players and a fixed standard that's off the charts on storytelling?

Are you out of your cotton-pickin' MIND?!

We need more of that kind of prestige like we need someone to go and set the servers on fire. That is -not- the right kind of prestige to foster, unless we're deliberately looking at totally recreating World of Warcraft's 'community' wherein which -it's actually beneficial to go and pay some gold farmer for that which has a prestigious basis attached to it-.

I'd say it isn't rocket science, but it kind've embarasses rocket science in terms of complexity and I wish it were as clean to format as pure math, but ponder upon this if you will.

What -kind- of prestige should the game foster pursuing?

How should that prestige be framed?


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You affix it to stats on gear and say hello to WoW:TOR, because that is exactly what sort of social environment that fosters. Blizzard did a lot of things right with WoW, including capitalizing on the prestige draw, but where they eff'd up so hard that their monumental failure -should- be as historical as their success is in the context they created for their community formation.

Tribal. Fricken. Warfare. You need other people, but you can't trust other people; you need other people to get the best shinies...but they want the shinies too. And not everyone will get shinies for doing a thing together.

Not everyone in the tribe gets to eat even if they all contributed to taking down the mammoth. Welcome to waging war more against social proximities and all that comes with them than the game content itself.

Tack on a need/greed system and lots of fake prestige to hats and shoulders and...huh.

Guilds have never imploded because the warlock rolled on the tank shoulders, right?

Nobody ever ninja loots stuff because they had the opportunity and felt like it, right?

Guilds never lockstep around their core raiders and wind up excluding anyone that can't fit into their schedules out of necessity to get them shinies efficiently, right?

Nobody's ever bought RMT gold or hacked accounts or BoE gear before, right?

It's just fricken bad, is what it is. It's bad, wrong, stupid and, at this stage in MMO history, practically genuflecting at the feet of sheer stupidity to recreate the environment of what might possibly be the single most vitriolic and socially toxic MMO community on the face of planet earth.

The terms of glorification need, and I absolutely insist that NEED is too -weak- a term to describe the severity of the matter, remove the prestige from stats on gear.

To remove it entirely from the tools. Sure, make the tools a fun little adventure to acquire; make awesome gear the product of the fricken class quests and make it look boring compared to what you can get out of hardcore content.

Because that's the right kind of prestige to focus on; the vanity ego, not the utilitarian ego.



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Reason 1: You don't -NEED- to look cool. ...But there's a good chance you'll want to eventually. Absolutely nothing stopping you from looking kinda boring or mismatched if you're happy with that; no force here at all. But oh good gods, look at that full set of glossy black, silver trimmed with flowing violet particle effects Nightmare Mode Armor.

Did you know you can right click it and select the color of the particle effects -AND- what sort of armor appearance it'll display between Light, Medium and Heavy? AND it's fully moddable? AAAAND you can choose, on the helmet slot, to throw the hood up or down, display a mask or not -AND- have the hood and mask on at the same time?

Do you NEED it to FUNCTION? Dear me no. Do you need ALL of it? Well, that's kind've up to you, innit? ...Do you want it? Here's how you can get it.




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Reason 2: You're not forced to deal with people if you don't want to. Funny thing about humans is that we're prone to rejecting something when we feel forced...sometimes even if that finds us rejecting something that, rationally, would make sense.

Don't force people to do anything to function. Give 'em the stats, let them roll around feeling like champs for as long as they're happy looking kinda boring, and also like every single other person of their class.

Will some be dead-to-rights happy with that and whatever appearance options crafting can bring their way? ...Who said crafting couldn't be part of this? Maybe the Silver Eternity set with the helmet that makes your eyes glow in accordance with whatever your LS/DS rating is can only come from crafters.

Maybe the saber and blaster crystals that change the type of damage you're dealing or add status effects can only come from crafters.

Maybe that four-person cruiser vehicle with the 220% speed increase can only be crafted.

Maybe the mutagen therapy consumables that let you augment yourself with different aesthetic features available by no other means can only be crafted.

Good heavens. What might it take to craft such awesome things? ...What if you could only, as a crafter, gain access to some of these things on a given character?

What if you had to ultimately pick between Czerka, Aratech, HeebleWeeble and Flimflam for Galactic-grade crafting projects requiring the resources and background-facilities of megacorporations to even think about using such recipes?

Good heavens. Oh stars and garters. What kind of cooperative environment might come of such things requiring hundreds of several types of common materials and other, rarer materials had to be refined out of common materials in processes that could take days per project?


Suddenly...you might find entire guilds springing up to provide services and materially support their service providing crafters. You might find whole groups of people regularly banding up to help eachother complete qualifying quests for this or that, unlock this and that and whatnot.



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Reason 3: You don't want to waste peoples' time. The best timesinks are those people want to engage in, not those they're forced to tolerate. Right now, we've got a whole lot of idiotic time-waste that, even if you're totally adapted to it, is being tolerated.

Never. Waste. Peoples'. Time. There's really just no negotiation to be had on that; you just flat-out don't do it. It's beyond rude; it's reprehensible, and nobody goes to the carnival because they enjoy standing in line for three hours.

Nobody, even amongst those willing to tolerate it, enjoys that. Period.



And that, as they say, is that.