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

1) Neocron (the original not the car crash that was DoY) Two main reasons -

a) the faction system with 7 or so different factions, all with complex relationships between them - allied, neutral or hostile. Made for a great, balanced pop with allied clans and considerations about whether you'd back up a friendly clan against a neutral one etc.

b) the outpost system. The best endgame content I've experienced. 20 or so outposts spread across the world map that were claimable by a guild and offered easier access to farming/levelling zones and an income. They were regularly fought over and led to some of the biggest, most tactical and most fun fights I've ever had in a mmo. Very easy to implement and gives real reasons for spontaneous open world pvp.

1. Dark Age Of Camelot PvP - As said above, this was hands down the best pvp. It gave opportunity to every playstayle, be it solo, small groups, full groups or zergs. They all co-existed. Of course you actually had to know what you were doing to play in anything other than the zerg, but the zergs were there for the masses. And don't forget the 3 realms (mythic really dropped the ball with warhammer :/)

2. UO/SWG type housing where you could place your house in the actual world and decorate your house creatively. This would include the 'rares' from UO that people would go after. And items that you dropped on the ground actually looking like the item they were.

3. Crafting Professions like UO/SWG - The way the crafting system worked in those games, your character WAS the crafter. If you were an armorsmith, then that is what you did. You were not a fighter or whatever. MMOs nowadays are centered around everyone killing stuff. It doesnt give the leeway for people who want to roleplay or experience the MMO in a different aspect. I thought the cantina/dancer thing in SWG was great and finding a LGM crafter in UO to make your new armor set after your old one broke was always fun hanging around the forge.

4. Non-class based system like UO/SWG- your one character could level or unlevel any profession/fighting and pick up a different one at any time.

5. And PvE like the modern mmo. I did quite like Global Agendas pve system, where you would queue up for it like we do with warzones and it would balance a group out to do the instance (flashpoint type) pve. Raids/encounters etc like swtor/wow/etc have. And rare drops you could farm like the older games have. Also make grinding viable again WoW's introduction of do 100000 quests to level was quite novel at the time, but sometimes i would like to just stand in one area and level up like you did in daoc/eq/etc by grinding monsters.



I think what no game has captured yet is bringing together the social players and the hardcore into one environment. And keeping the social butterflies around makes for an active community of people which is what keeps people playing games longer than reaching the max level.


And with people talking about DAOC at 300k, that was a HUGe number back then, when there was NOT a computer in every home. Most of us playing from universities or netcafes severely limited the market. WoW came on the scene as more and more people were having internet in their home and with the bombardment of advertising, it got people into gaming who had never been part of the market before. It mainstreamed it, so to say. And it made gaming 'easy' and noobie friendly.

DAoC getting 300,000 subscribers in those days would basically be the same as an MMO getting 6 million subscribers today. The top MMO of that time was Everquest, which maxed out at 500,000 subscribers. By comparison, DAoC was far more successful then SWTOR is.

DAOC gave EQ a run for there money hence the reason why EQ2 came out. DAOC was a head of its time but people tend to lean towards shiny new game and when WoW came out it was over for the old classic MMOs.

1 - 5) The Old Republic

I don't want a copy and paste version of some other game. I bought this game to play this game. I want the developers to do what they want to do and bring us a game from their studio, not anyone else's.

no.... those were not fun then, they would not be fun now
you must have really enjoyed delevelling in PoF and not being able to retrieve your corpse eh?

I split the topic into a few major points that an MMO make good.

1. Graphics & sound

Everyone that played AoC will know what I mean. To walk through a forest was a real journey, to travel through a desert made you feel the heat and sand and you could pretty much smell the green while walking through it.

Yes it did need a high end pc, but it was the best atmosphere and graphic environment I ever encountered in an MMO.

2. Housing

SWG & Ultima made playing the game a second "life". People did log on just to water their flowers, buy a new item or decorate their living room. It felt real.

3. Raiding & endgame

I still see vanilla and tbc wow as the best raiding experience I ever had. You had to beat very large encounters, that were like some big giant that could easily crush you with its feet. It felt epic to down these bosses and to advance into the next room. To coordinate a group of 40 players felt special,

4. PvP

For me also vanilla wow had the best pvp ever in an MMO. The idea of combining world pvp with BG´s was fantastic and since it was server only you had real foe´s and knew that meeting a specific player on the battlefield was an honor and a challange.
Never again did I know so many players of a server like at that time - just the rank 14 grind was a bit too much, but the rest brilliant.

5. Char design & crafting

AoC had also a very good char design, you could change everything of your char - the possibilities were endless. I miss that at the other MMO´s from today. What I also miss is a class system that really is unique. I dont know, but too many MMO´´s give people too much.
If a person choose´s to play a healer, then he should only be a healer and not a tank or dps if he wants to. The whole everyone must be able to do everything is boring.

Crafting is a tricky one, because SWG had the long craft´s that took days, wow had the special craft´s that only 1 or 2 players from the server could do and that were needed for raiding, AoC had the great feeling while you were hunting for crafting materials and Ultima had the big variety.
Those combined + the idea of BW with companions would sure make a great crafting system.

2 WoW pre cat was just end game raiding like what they have in SWTOR.

3. SWG did NOT have enough for most. If it did people wouldn't have fled from that game like the plauge. The reason they did the NGE because they didn't have enough subs.

One aspect of SWG that I did love was the random, unpredictable spawns of MOBs that dropped rare items. You had a tough time finding them let alone camping them. Mandalorian armor was probably the holy grail of armor sets back in the day. Now, this was when groups of 20 got smacked around just trying to collect one piece of the formula to craft a single piece. Once the CU and eventually the NGE hit, it was all camping solo and luck o the loot. The mark of the hero was another one of these rare (but attainable) items. It just added something unique to the game for me.

They only had 300k because it was dam hard and thats how we liked it. PvP was godly.