What makes a MMO an MMO and how does SW:TOR stack up in this regard?

SWTOR is completely on rails. By that I mean, a specific path is laid out in front of you, and you can't deviate from it. The class story line should be this way, don't get me wrong. Aside from that, players should be free to explore maps and take on different quests within those maps to gain experience how they see fit. As it stands now, it doesn't exist. 1.3 will change some of that, providing the player options to increase xp to questing, PvP, Flashpoints, through Legacy perks. But if the current Legacy system is any kind of indicator, it will be expensive.

While leveling, there is really no need to be social in SWTOR. That's the real MMO aspect, grouping up with and playing with other players. You can level through all content on your own because this game is extremely easy. Even the heroics can be solo'd if you wait a few levels and go back to do them. Same with flashpoints. The slight xp and social point gain while grouping is too minimal to be a real incentive to group up.

Fleet is supposed to be to social hub for each faction. Without a viable LFG tool, it's more of a fancy waiting room and shopping center. The capital cities were originally supposed to be the hubs, and fleet stations were implemented as a last minute change. Bad move in my opinion.

Servers are mostly empty. Add all of the above together in addition to not enough players online overall, and you have a pretty miserable social experience. This is where SWTOR really falls short. Players are spread too thin.

This is close to what I feel except I'm not adverse to the feeling that developers still make games that try to be fun and engaging but inorder to recoup costs and make profit they make games to fit modern sensibilities. When the popular MMO's moved from a more forced grouping ethic, though not all early MMO's were about forced grouping really, to a form that gave the player a way to play solo, players grasped it wholeheartedly and its been the way ever since. This puts the onus on players to form communities themselves which happens mainly with Guilds these days, find the right guild and you never have to worry about the multiplayer aspect ever again.

I disagree. When paying for a service, options are the best, well, option. Grouping and raiding should be an option, just as soloing is. Not everyone has an opportunity to group or raid, either because of time restraints, scheduling, or various other reasons. Forcing players to group limits the number of players from actually experiencing content. It also limits when content can be experienced (prime time, or no time). The option to group or raid should be available for those that want to go through content with friends (assuming they have some) or other players (assuming there are some online when you play) to have a "different" challenge, but not the "only" challenge. Solo players pay just as much as raiders and groupers, and should have access to the same content and rewards, just in a smaller format. The challenge, whether solo, grouped, or raiding, should be relative in difficult to each other, and rewards/time required should be relative to the number of people involved.

For example, if the average raid takes 2 hours, a soloer might have to complete a series of challenging content that takes 8 hours total (numbers are made up, btw). The advantage a raider has is that they can get the content done in 1 short 2 hour span, if they have the players available and are willing, while a solo player can complete the content at his leisure, as his schedule allows as well. Many would be willing to take the raid method over solo, due to the time frame required, while others would prefer the solo method simply because its more convenient for them.

Moving on, I understand what you mean when talking about the community aspect of MMO's, and to an extent I certainly believe that grouping can help build a community. That said, the community will exist as long as players play the game. When games exclude a certain portion of the community from participation, players leave because they hit the ceiling and have no reason to log in any more. Heck, even raiders and groupers hit this ceiling quite frequently because content isn't released faster.

MMO simply means that the environment is dynamic because other people can affect your surrounding. If you want to group up, you can. If you don't, that's fine too, but your personal environment might be affected because of these other players. Boss mobs might be down/unavailable because other people killed it. PvP might ensue because other players will be looking for targets. Gear is available via trading/etc, not simply what you collect yourself. Those things make up an MMO. Those things also create a community. Forced grouping and raiding, though it seems to have become a "norm" for MMO's, is not innately part of the definition of an MMO.

This is false. One of the hallmarks of an MMO is that it is massively multiplayer. If you look at the vast majority of servers at primetime, you will quickly realize that the "massively" part is missing.

All other definitions aside, you cannot do an MMO on a server that has a grand total of 20 players on it.

the massive multiplayer is a term that is used to define the ABILITY for a bunch fo people to log in at the same time...it is not soley dependant on the number of people logged in


by your logic any time an mmo is starting up from downtime and the numbers are low then the game isnt an MMO...

the number of people in game does not make it an MMO>. it makes it a successful MMO.

the massive multiplayer is mutually exclusive from the number of people playing the game at anytime.

you are defining the term completely wrong.

by your definition the fatman server is an mmo while the majority of the rest of the game isnt...

do you not see how that is completely failed logic

I agree with this definition.. MMO - (M)assively is based on the games overall potential to house a massive amount of players... and SWTOR got this covered... or at least they designed it to be.. the actual performance of it sugests it struggles to deliver it but that's another story for another thread.

Allow to to skip a letter quickly as it to is correct - (O)nline.. absolutely no way to play this MMO without it so score two for Bioware ...

Now back to the second letter of our three (M)ultiplayer - This for me is my beef - yes Bioware offered us a 4-man, 8-man etc etc but almost as a knee jerk reaction to get it out the door fast.. to me it feels like a bolt on, much like Endgame feels like a bolt on to justify the marketing hype and a sub retention glossy...
By its very design 1-49 requires no such thing though... Heroics and Flashpoints make no difference to you getting to lvl 50 and for many players out there actually seeing a Heroic or Flashpoint at level is a challenge in itself.
The game does not lend itself to Multiplayer it just added a facility somewhere in order to meet the requirement of what makes an MMO.... so yes it might be considered Multiplayer by that fact.. however the reality of it that many of us feel is that it is merely a single player game with some added endgame co-op as a bolt on to try and retain players after the story part grows thin....
But then why should a story biased game require it to be multi-player in the first place.. I am sure had Bioware announced SWTOR as the next Star Wars KOTOR it would have hit home to the same amount of fans of the IP and with a stream of paid for updates/expansions would of done just as well... endgame is a joke its just all about everyone getting the same gear to look the same and do the same things...
So MMO - by definition yes it meets it, but by design/challenge of content it is seriously lacking imo for it to taken seriously.

There's really a number of issues in your questions.

SWTOR is an MMO. But it's losing mass from it's massively fast. People refer to it as a single player game in a pejorative sense because it lacks design features that encourage people to play together.

You're correct, most first generation MMO's were not perfect and there was quite a bit of grinding and in many cases there's a lot of features that can be criticized about them... But the one thing many of them did have, and SWTOR lacks, is community.

To build a community one must design a game to encourage it. That means variable content where you can solo some things but you can't solo the majority of the content.

There are a variety of ways to do this:

Asheron's Call and many other games used variable difficulty in terms of level and number of MOBs on their maps. There were easier lower level spawns close to the starter areas, and then as you moved farther away from the towns things got wilder and woolier. Same with the dungeons. The entry areas were survivable but as you got further into the dungeon things got harder fast. The transition between difficulty areas was seamless but you learned real fast where you could go by yourself and where you shouldn't go without friends along. As a survibal tactic you either learned how to group or you didn't experience much of the content until you were way past the level of that area. There was little limitation on group size. We could put together a dungeon run of our entire guild, and frequently did.

Asheron's call also had a very powerful guild system which encouraged higher level players to mentor lower level players and help gear them and work them up. Moreover it's crafting system encouraged people to trade even without a Global Market. Initially people would just hang out in certain towns if they had something to sell that they'd crafted, and of course the huge guilds provided a market for crafters within those guilds.

Other games have zones which are rated by level. They have tools that allow for grouping and content that's variable for the size of the group. City of Hero's, for example not only has level related zones, but instances of variable difficulty where players can set the difficulty of the missions for numbers and levels of MOBs. More over they have a 8 man maximum team size for normal teams, great looking for group tools, and the side kick / exemplar system that allows players of different levels to play together.

The way SWTOR is designed it actually discourages people from grouping together until they reach the endgame. The group limit of 4, the inclusion of combat companions, the static spawns and content, the lack of meaningful crafting, the galactic market--where you never have to even talk to people to get what you want, the fact that you can get most of what you want in terms of gear without crafters or the galactic market, the fact that there's no grouping tools for finding other players other than guilds, the fact that you don't need a guild or group to play... well in a nutshell SWTOR is group Unfriendly.

Group unfriendly is not a good MMO design. MMO's thrive on community. People playing together. If you're not going to play with other folks, then you might as well be playing a single player game. Anyway SWTOR is a game where a lot of people are playing together in the same environment, but not with each other. They end up playing by themselves and when they finish the content they leave... and that's why this game is compared (unfavorably) to a single player game.

Your mistaking what the game allows for and what the situation of servers promotes.. they are entirely differnt things... the game provides the facility for a massive amount of players to play it at the same time and together... dead servers although dead still offer the same potential...
Whether tha game can in fact handle the massively part of an MMO is as I said... for me questionable

I think that's pretty fair logic. The game is more than the features implemented in the software. It's the entire service. It is an MMO on a few servers. It is not an MMO on a whole lot of servers.

Why is that bad logic?