Top 5 MMO's BioWare should model SWTOR endgame after?

[QUOTE=Bluerodian;4157037]Not really no. You are ignoring sub numbers from other games that topped a million. DAoC was not the top of the market back then competing against games of that day.

Seems you have some selective memory. Not blaming you, often happens with people remembering their first or favorite MMO.

1. EQ2- RoK time period. Talent systems that actually are earned rather than given at each level with an AA system. Tiered Raiding that almost no one could clear and were very challenging. Mentor system, in depth crafting system that actually made acrafting fun and not just click a button. Housing system and amazing lore, heritage quests with awesome rewards.

2.EQ1- the vast world that I could always get lost in, working to get quests. months to reach max level on first toon whether it was grindy or not. death penalties. great community back in the day. nothing like walking into halas and getting mauled by all the bears, wolfs, and skeletons at such a low level and running back to the guards. Body runs.

3.Asherons Call- The community events and atmosphere of the game even though it was hard to compete with EQ1.

4. World of Warcraft- Bringing the casualness to mmos to build a bigger communtiy. Improving on features that EQ1, AC, DAOC and all others that came before it to bring more people to the genre. Things like Dungeon Finder, Raid Finder, seemless contintents with no load times. there are many other things that they evolved the genre that can be learned from.

5. Any mmo with an amazing character creation- Champions, COH, COV, almost any asian based MMO. Any mmo should have an amazing character creation. If that game expects me to have 90, 100, 180 days played time I want my character to be amazing not some bland carbon copy of every other human body type with the 8 different hairstyles and 4 body types.

You can't model after DAoC unless your PvP is fully integrated with your game such that RvR is actually happening. Almost no games do this kind of design even though it's the ONLY one that doesn't suck for PvP in MMORPGs.

BGs and/or arena are not quality PvP in the MMORPG sense, they are slapped on garbage mini games that have zero tie to the rest of the game.

Plus, even DAoC flushed RvR down the toilet once they added RPs and RAs. MMORPG should be compelling and purposeful, as it was in DAoC before they added points and epeen to it. Once they added RPs and RAs, it diminished the whole system and turned it more into a point farming and ganking situation. DAoC PvP was at its best before RAs/RPs, when people went out to fight for their realm and there were epic battles with 100's of people at once. I'm hoping GW2 recaptures this because IMO, nothing else ever has and MMORPG PvP has sucked for years now.

Beyond that, TOR has the same endgame as anyone. What they don't have is balance worth a crap and the content is more brutal than ever to grind.

The balance of risk/reward/difficulty between raids, hard mode instances, lvl 50 instances, and PvP vs the rewards is completely screwed up. In addition, PvP gear should never be competitive with PvE gear for PvE endgame content. It's PvP gear...duh. It's really stupid for soloists doing next to nothing to get high quality PvE gear via pseudo-PvP (BGS are not real PvP).

The heavily scripted instances with VO and deep stories are amazing the first time. They're ok the next few times. Once you're grinding them for gear/points/whatever over and over all that scripting and VO is nothing but utterly brutal.

Content in any MMORPG gets miserable once you have to grind it, but you feel it a LOT more in TOR due to how heavily storied and scripted the content is. Redoing the same dialogs over, and over, and over, is just pain.

Raids, like reg EV, so stupid easy it's just silly. Wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't a loot pinata compared to the far more difficult HM 4-mans.

The other tedium factor is trash mobs. My crew quickly abandoned doing any bonus stuff in endgame instances. You double the length of the instance doing bonus crap, for 1 extra boss that drops the worst loot in the instance. Trash in general in TOR is so insanely volumuous and repetitive, especially in endgame instances. It might give a heroic feel at times, but when you need to grind instances, the endless repetitive trash is just horrid.

MMOs as a whole need to embrace the randomized content that's been in some games for years, it would make pve endgame so much better. LDON from EQLive, randomized zones/dungeons/content in Diablo - stuff like that - not 100% random but enough variance that there's usually a feeling of exploring and unknown.

Endgame instances should also be shorter. No LFG tool + long and tedious instances assures people will have problems finding groups, which is not fun. I join guilds, I have friends, I get groups but so many people need help with LFG and the game design should lend itself to making grouping more accessible.

Not really, no. According to MMOData.net, during the 2001-2003 timeframe Lineage was posting the highest subscription numbers (around 3 million), but that was due to its wild popularity in Korea; it wasn't nearly so popular in the west. RuneScape had roughly 1 million "subscribers", but it was a free web-based MMO at the time, so the comparison doesn't quite balance out. Everquest had about 425 thousand subscribers, Final Fantasy XI about 300 thousand, Ultima Online and DAoC both about 250 thousand.

So yes: at the time, DAoC was showing perfectly respectable numbers. The only million-plus games on the radar were a free web game and something the Koreans were into. Not really a "selective memory" situation. Sorry you didn't enjoy DAoC as much as others did.

[QUOTE=Deyjarl;4170835]First of all...I do not count free games like Ragnarok. Secondly, I am speaking of Western audiences. Lineage was the only MMO in 2001 to have over a million but 99% of their customers were from Taiwan, and Korea. I highly doubt you played that game, or are referencing that game.

Sooo...Please name one Western MMO that had over a million subscribers back in 2001!!

Everquest was #1. EQ had higher numbers than DAOC but never broke a million during 2001-2002. Upon release, DAOC quickly outnumbered UO and Asherons Call in subscription numbers. Anarchy Online was which posted numbers below 150,000 took third place right after DAOC. This trend continued until 2003 when Lineage 2 was released which had a Western audience. Everquest was number one for 5 years., followed by DAOC being in the top three for the same time period.

So please go do some research before you start spouting out selective memory stuff.

Daoc was the second largest MMO in the market in NA during its prime. I find it funny how many were not around or intentionally forget that pre WoW a MMO would be fine with 100k or less subs a month.

I have not played any MMO before or after Daoc that had such a gratifying end game model. Three factions fighting in a huge open world frontier with meaningful consequences of their actions. It took a community to survive let alone win in that game. I would kill for this game to have a similar end game.

Don't sweat it. The guy literally has no clue what he is talking about. I've played MMOs since UO pre Trammel split and I remember what people were playing back in Daoc's prime. In NA it was EQ and Daoc. You also had games like UO and AC but Daoc and EQ were the big two.

Buffbots ftw! Serious beer goggles for the DAoC fans. I get the same chuckle when I hear people talking about how great SWG was pre-NGE.

There really was only UO, EQ1, DAoC, and AC to pick from in NA. Played them all. A big part of EQ1's success is due to not having any real competition. DAoC came along and lessened the stupid downtime, then eventually WoW showed up and put an end to ridiculous down time. I have actually read a book while playing EQ1 when having to solo.

Buffbots were lame.

Gatecamping was awesome.

Leveling was terrible.

Killspam made it all worthwhile.