Am I spoiled by my previous MMO?

I just wanted to write something about what to resonably expect when subbing to an MMO, seeing that there are alot of people who seems to think that coming additions to this game "should have been included from start".

My gaming history spans from EQ and EQ2 to WoW and LOTRO with a few more in between. With EQ there were downloadable content, quest really, that you had to pay for and all major additions to the game came in the form of a full paid expansion. WoW follows the same arch more or less, with major additions being full blown expansions.
LOTRO on the other hand were a totaly different beast, with tons of free content being added each month, and I am talking huge parts of continent and several hundreds of quests, and of course there were also paid expansions, like Mines Of Moria that gave a huge addon, more classes and hundreds of quests, raids and dungeons, as well as totally new gamesystems, f.x. items that levelled with you, and minigames.

I came to SWTOR directly from 5 on and off years of LOTRO, used to how things worked with that game, expecting that the industry had followed what had to be, in my mind, the best way of catering for their paying customers. That is; monthly addons wich actually gave me more that I had paid for when I bought the game, giving me a feeling of having made a great buy when paying my monthly downpayment. It would not really matter if I did not immediately use the addons, but it would feel like the gameworld was actually expanding by knowing that the stuff was out there for me to explore. In 5 months, I have paid roughly the same amount in subs as what I paid for the game in the store so in terms of value, I should be able to expect at least a seriously expanded universe by now - at least if I apply the model LOTRO used at the time of it's release.

Patch 1.2 gave me something that I would count as added value - but that is about it really. I do not count new operations, or even flashpoints or warzones as, frankly, I feel that such things are too simple to be counted. Those things are too...small, too limited and over too quickly, and the game should be absolutely crammed with that kind of stuff anyway. What I count as content is actual explorable places, something that gives me something new to do, something to amaze me, something that actually feels like I have gotten more than I paid for. This has not happened in SWTOR.

What I get is...bugfixes and tweeks and changes. It feels like I am paying for having the honor of Betatesting SWTOR, something I have always done for free with other games (and sometimes actually have gotten paid in the form of free months or free game at the time of release). I do not like this feeling, not one bit!

I want SWTOR to be a perfect game, I want it to succeed, to be viable years from now. I love Star Wars, I have fun with the game - but it has already started to age badly. I reroll from server to server as they empty, and after having levelled 30+ characters, the content starts to feel really small, too repetitive. I swear I could recite whole questlines from memory I would like to have choices while I level, not having to go from Korriban to Dromund K. to Balmorra, Nar Shaddaa, Tatooine, Alderaan, Quesh, Hoth, and so on in the exact same order with the exact same quests over and over. I would like to feel that every character I have is different from the others. Just take the thing that happens when you first land on Coruscant with your Jedi Guardian and goes through customs and that cutscene comes were something deep and characterbuilding is said between you and your companion - you know the one I mean. And you know it because even if you did not play a Jedi, you would go through the exact same thing, just with different dialouge - and that goes for Imperial side too. How hard would it be to expand that with a weekly patch? Not that hard I suspect, given that BW uses the HERO engine wich takes pride in facilitating on-the-fly changes to the gameworld so it should not even be needing a patch - just a little creativity and care for the fanbase, paying customers and The Game as a whole. Bioware have always delivered for me in the past, and I expect, nay Demand! that they continue to do so as long as I feed them with dollars.

OK, sorry for the longwinded text, but I needed to vent a little. You might think that I am one of those who threatens to unsub as soon as I do not get what I want, but I and quite the opposite. I will stay here for a few years, because I have patience, and truth be told it is not that much money even if I pay for both my sons, my own and my boyfriends accounts - but I want things done right - and the first thing for BW to do right now, while working out those bugs, is to give us a feeling that we got this game really cheap and that we would gladly pay double for what we got.

Oh, and LOTRO went F2P and still pumps out new content on a regular basis..... just saying...

This world is flooded with mmos.... You cannot expect eah and every game to be the same... And because of this player expectations for new games are unrealistically sky high...

Zomg ur game doesnt have this... Graaaaw you dont gave that.... Im a noob and unsubbing because you are not catering to me because i am more important to everyone else waah waaaah waaaah.

You get the picture.

What I want is a Star Wars RPG I can play cooperatively with my wife - no multiple other players - just my wife, perhaps over our home network.

I can't be alone in this. Does nobody else want something like that?

"Oh, and LOTRO went F2P and still pumps out new content on a regular basis..... just saying..."

Of course it does. That's how they make their money now.

Also came from LOTRO to SWTOR after many other MMOs too and the once getting over the difference in community I have to say that the game is a very different beast too. Turbine value there player base and make no hesitation in making sweeping changes or adding new content. I feel that SWTOR devs are still unsure of themselves and keep trying to cover all bases. Hopefully they get a bit more confident and start making some positive, sweeping changes soon.

It helps if you think about the state of an MMO in the first year as more of a privilege to being able to play while they polish it off, instead of a fully built game where new content can be served at a fast pace. The amount of content put in place is immense and yet there is still only so much time in a day. Because of this, the first year gets all the growing pains from how the fully functioning game settles towards stability. With all the uncertainty with what will happen, the designers must constantly jump around towards what needs to most focus first. Once this is done, then new content will take precedence and can be more accurately released on a timely basis.


Many of us are fully satisfied with having the ability to play this game now as opposed to 6 months down the road and this is what allows the game to breath through the early stages. Others tend to disagree (while lacking the insight that they can continue waiting till the game is finished being built) so mass complaints will always arise from this. Brighter days will always be ahead and content will speed up as time goes on.

Let's assume you are spoiled by having played other games: What's the problem? Gaming has become a highly competitive industry where new entries into the foray are expected to put up or shut up; new games will either deliver an experience that meets or exceeds players' expectations, or they won't. The games that don't will ultimately fizzle out and join the plethora of similar games on shelves, collecting dust.

It's not your fault that there are tons of games on the market. It's not your fault that many games fail to meet expectations when they're inevitably--and rightfully--compared to their competitors. It's not your fault that developers consistently deliver safe games that rehash and reuse outdated mechanics and features as opposed to new and innovative experiences.

Yeah. You're spoiled, but that's good for us and bad for developers. Maybe they'll get the picture and develop a game that expands on what the rest of the pack is doing. I found that game for myself, but it isn't SWTOR.

I was spoiled by the great combat system in Champions Online and it made SWTOR very boring but then, after I unsubed from this and went back to CO, I missed the voices so I quit that one too hehe! No MMO currently deserves a monthly fee. Anyone that played SWG was also spoiled by the freedom and possibilities compared to this but that would require a topic on its own.

Yes, allot of people have never played an mmo from the start, they have never experienced the growing pains of a new mmo, patches, balance passes, changes in player population, there is no mmo on the market today that had everything they have now, they all lacked something at launch, and grew to where they are now.
I think the market is flooded with to many mmo's these days, and they are almost all the same, sword and board fantasy games modeled after wow which was modeled after eq..

I miss some features my previous game had, and I know at some point Tor will have a feature like that, but I think the dev's are so far behind even getting core elements out, in a time when even more popular games are getting released, plus because of all the games out there players are just very transient these day, jumping from game to game, when wow released you only had a couple of choices today, there are hundreds if you take into account, mmo/rpg's mmo/rts mmo/fps. browser based games, I would bet if wow launched today ir would suffer like all new games do, they just came along at the right time.. I think the days of the standard sub based mmo's are dying out, I think the gw2 model will become more popular buy the box play for free and have a game built around MT's, sad but true /sigh

I can't believe you, for real...