How could SWTOR feel more like a MMO?

I think swtor needs to feel less like a mmo and more like star wars.

It feels a lot more closed in compared to World of Warcraft. In WoW I could just climb over a mountain and I would be in another zone with an entirely different enviroment. In SW:TOR I need to get on my ship, endure hellish loading screens before im finally on another planet(zone)

1. More ambient music because it is too quiet at times.
2. Server populations are key to enjoying an MMO and the players are now spread too thinly across many servers.
3. Slow down the speed of leveling. People are hitting 50 too easily and its down to how overpowered rested XP is.
4. World content should not be level gated, have each world cater to the full level 10-50 range.
5. Mentoring and Exemplaring, let players play together regardless of level. Scale stats to match their mentor/exemplar.

So basically you want a ninety minute film full of explosions and a lack luster ending that made no sense?

Why don't you just play Mass Effect 3?

BAZINGA!

That probably does define it not being (anymore) then.

Dude, you got me good. ME3 is a horrible. Point taken.

I agree with this, it's exactly what I should have said.

Bingo, nice to see someone gets it

TOR is missing fundamental MMO elements that build socialization, community, interaction

"join a guild" is not a helpful answer to the missing social, community, interaction issues. In fact its part of the problem.

Server merges, LFG, ect. None of those help if the base continues to leave because of the missing elements.

I had to laugh reading anouther thread about subscriptions and how in May its predicted the subscriptions will have stayed the same as subscriptions 3 months earlier. 5 months into release, with free trials, free week ends, free months to return offered and you havent increased your subscription base???? Spin it anyway you want, thats outright failure for a new MMO in its first year. A MMO should be gaining sub numbers, not staying pat after normally unseen promotions so close to release date.

And thats the problem, this game lacks all the social elements that brings players togather as a community.

This game doesnt need more end game stuff, doesnt need more warzones, doesnt need add ons and macros. None of that will keep players playing long term and thus none of that will help the real shortfalls of TOR.

EAoware was told in length during closed beta what they needed to put in to shore up these missing elements. This is NOT a new issue, this was predicted by ALLOT of closed beta testers months and months and months before release.

Till they put in the required socialization and interaction community building concepts (in all aspects of the game), servers will continue to dry up because the game is failling to hold players long term.

Im sorry but if you cant get a 12 month loyalty from 70% of your initial purchases, you have failed as a MMO. MMOs dont make their money on box sales, the real money comes from monthly sub rates, so the longer you can hold onto a subscriptions, the more money you make. EAoware has already admitted that after all the promotions they have run (usually with held for at least 12 months in pre WOW MMOs), their numbers remain the same. Not grown as they should have been. And thats if you beleive their numbers.

Fix your socialization, interaction (not dependant on guilds), and community in each server and you stop the bleeding of subs at such a fast rate. Which helps the server community grow togather. But this all really basic MMO stuff that anyone with any real MMO experience knows. And that makes it all the more worrisome that TOR lacks these concepts and mechanics.

I think this is about right. I never got that with SWG, since it was my first MMO and I didn't really get what was going on for a long time, but having come here from LotRO, it's very clear that this is geared towards "follow quest chain a... now go and follow quest chain b, now switch planets and follow chain c...".

I like LotRO because there's large amounts of wide, open terrain with very few loading screens (except when there's heavy server load). Although there's zone switches for instances, dungeons and interior/exterior switches, the only places I can think of in the main world that have zone boundaries are between Ered Luin / The Shire (since the game map doesn't cover the full distance between them), and Moria / surface world. I can wander right from the south-western most point in The Shire right up to Forochel or the Misty Mountains, and right down to Enedwaith and Rohan without ever seeing a loading screen, and during my wandering I can come across different mob types and various towns and villages. It truly is a vast, expansive world.

I like TOR, but the planets seem almost claustrophbic, to a point. With the possible exception of the Tatooine Dune Sea and the Ilum PvP area, there's no real freedom of movement. They've almost started off where SWG ended up - that went from vast, open planets at launch to relatively confined "follow path x" planets with Kashyyyk and Mustafar with NGE; hopefully, TOR will go the other way and start with the small, restricted planets, then move up to the wider ranging, more free planets, with some variety in levelling paths.

It would be nice if they also added some pan-galactic stories, too, for higher levels, to encourage returning to lower level planets. Perhaps, the "wider ranging, more free" areas could even be on what are currently the starter planets, but for higher levels, so that the existing starter zones are protected areas for new players, with the rest of the planets being "off limits" to low levels.

Something that would really make it feel like an MMO would be the addition of events to draw characters from both factions to the same area. At least on PVP servers, this would mean that you may need to group up to get to the event quests/vendors because the other faction will be there in force as well. Open-world PVP would be almost certain to happen.

If the event came with limited initial information, it would promote discussion among players as the worked out things such as where to go and what to do with their quest rewards. People might group up to work things out together.

If the event came with world bosses, it would also promote ad-hoc groups and provide something else for guilds to do to bring them together.

First.

People must remember that many of the people who designed this game are the same ones that designed Warhammer. Warhammer was made in the same linear, instanced way.

Second.

There is no way to make it feel more like a MMO. It was designed around an instanced map and hub system on the basis that you should be able to do everything "solo". It's over for the game as far as that goes. Even the PvP isn't Massive. There is nothing massive about this game other than the file size and loading time of Corellia.


Third.

Server MERGES. NOT TRANSFERS. Transfers don't fix anything.

Looking for group tool.

More content in zones AWAY FROM THE HUB.


This is either a really bad MMO or a really good MO. Take your pick.