Quick thoughts on BioWare's direction with this game.

This is me in a nutshell.

Story is my only attraction to this game, if that content is going to cease and I don't see any information in the next few weeks, I doubt I'll even acknowledge this game till about December and check in again.

I know many players came here for just the Story, which breaks me to think that this game, without any of these "online features", be just an RPG like its predecessors.

This game isn't doing so well on the MMO side of the spectrum, and with GW2 coming along it'll certainly make a huge dent in the PvP community. I'm apart of that niche, and it's sad cause I've seen many friends and teammates gone with more well on their way to try out GW2.

I don't mind if you want more Story and are enjoying it. I'm just trying to get my main point across to EAWare that mixing Story with an MMO isn't a very good idea. They should have done their research instead of making this hybrid. That's why I think the story-driven aspect of this game is like a double-edged sword. I know players want more of it, but it ends somewhere and doesn't get expanded frequently like how PvP and PvE can.

As for my argument to "ceasing the development of story", I'm just saying for EAWare to realize that they cannot stick with the ridiculous mentality of a story-driven MMO any longer and that they need to evolve to make this game more like an MMO, with that RPG still in there by adding sandbox elements. This game seriously needs a huge check-up and revitalization on its PvE and PvP. Just look at the Unsubscriber's Thread and you'll see.

Prior to launch there was a huge thread called something like "can I turn the story off?" where hundreds of people were saying they didn't want any story, they just wanted to click on an NPC and get given some objectives, they didn't care at all why they needed to collect 10 cat's teeth or kill a mob in a house, and they didn't want to spend time spacebarring.

They also wanted to set a default alignment so that they were automatically awarded either LS or DS points without having to go through the dialogue picking the right options.

I agree, was great Bioware Story telling, like all of thier games, that I enjoyed, putting our Class Story quests on the back burner, kinda makes me wonder how long I will stick around after I finish class story 8, putting in more warzones and flashpoints is not going to keep me playing, number one reason it is not new content, the game still lacks diverse game play to keep people playing, and paying, f2p is a bandaid not a cure I am afraid. I am no hurry to complete all my class stories hopeing they have some at least the new planet in, time will tell..

Different people like different things <shrug> Although why you'd start playing a game that was an overtly story-based mmo and not want any of the story elements....ah, well, people never have made sense to me.

I litteraly have no idea what there main direction for the game is, all i see are lots of little things that are going to ammount to one huge increase in the attraction to the game, its like they are jugling 20 eggs and if one drops it doesnt matter to much as there are still 19 left in the air and working if that makes sense.

Im happy with what they have done so far, they have brought in some great features like group finder and ranked, the legacy stuff seems cool and i see these for what they are, as solid base upon which the game can be built upon, i see alot of people who do not have the patience for development tobe done and i can understand others who have burnt through the endgame and are unhappy because i know people who only play mmos for the endgame, nothing else, they raid and thats it but this game it seems is not built for this at this moment in time.

overall im happy but that could change if they make me as a subscriber who is staying subscribed is forced to pay for content patchs like makeb when we were specifically told that the subscription would include all content minus expantion packs of which makeb cannot be classed as an expantion pack as all it will do is flesh out what we have now to a respectible level based upon what we have already paid towards the development of the game thus far.

I think SWTOR needs to find its true niche real fast. EAWare tried to cater for all the players coming in, and a lot of them wanted more endgame, more Story, more WZs, dailies, sandbox elements, etc.

The PvP community is going to take a huge blow from GW2, but even the RP and PvE communities are slowly decreasing, albeit just not as fast as the PvP community.

Right now, all that I see is the Story players staying as they're more interested in developing the Story Pillar, creating many alts and maybe even expanding their legacy. But as you can see, even Story is kind of killing this game if you look at the Unsubscriber's Thread. I have to say, though, PvP, PvE and even RP is taking a bigger hit than the Story players because of the lack of Open World, WZs, combat is stale, content is too easy, no sandbox elements, etc. I feel as if the Story players just seem more patient because they want to develop more stories with their characters, and they've sunk a lot of time into each character which hasn't brought many of them close to the Interlude for all of their characters.

This game may end up turning to be like post-NGE SWG 2.0, but it's all the themepark players creating alts and continuing the story. I think that's the game's true niche.

Because people "like different things"....

There was suppose to be a PvP planet with objectives, and faction fighting and questing. Folks mentioned how they were going to "live" on that planet.

Or maybe some were just looking forward to playing iconic Star Wars characters, or "living" in a start wars universe, or playing a "sci-fi" MMO

Amongst other things I'm sure...

I personaly think that GW2 is being hyped up so much that it will never survive it just like the over hyping of swtor did it harm by gaining way over the odds playerbase and then losing a bulk because people expected the hype to be reality, the pvp in swtor is good, the bolster system is good and once you get geared for lvl 50 pvp thats also good.

GW2 is trading on the strength of dynamic events and level dropping but really when you think about it, people sometimes just wanna face stomp old areas for things like mats and helping others when someone you know low level cant find anyone for an heroic mission, in gw2 you wont have any of that and even top levels dropping back to help out will end up being the same level as the person there helping thus your still going to need others and at 3 in the morning runs that aint going to happen.

Then you have the dynamic events, ye they are cool but they are landlocked, how many times are yoiu gonna enjoy putting fires out and chasing the same npcs up and down the map. Ive not heard alot about gw2's endgame but the game does trade on pvp and open world pvp, so how many warzones does gw2 have because wow survived years on just 3 warzones and swtor gets its head caved in for having 4 and one gametype never seen before in an mmo.

And im not attacking GW2, im just being a realist, nothing can live upto the hype that gw2 is getting and swtor recieved prior to launch.

Problem with that is that like the OP said they've pretty much lost that audience, and I'm not sure I see it coming back any time soon.