Quick thoughts on BioWare's direction with this game.

The forums is like the railway station..with a entertainment center in it.. ( forums ). Going to stay here until they make me leave or the free tickets are passed out for the next train...the Free to Play express special.

Yes, you was one of the few who liked the way Slithus was set up...lol. Most did not do Wintergrasp ether. In fact..I remember reading the forums back when TBC was out, Blizz stated only about 30% of thier player base pvp'ed on a regular bases. The majority of the players are PVE oriented in WoW atleast.

Good to see some people are acknowledging reality. The story that everyone loves, myself included, costs millions upon millions of dollars to make. There is no financial incentive for EA to back it now, because the game basically flopped.

TOR, relative to the leveling 1-50 experience, is over. It's sad that people can't acknowledge this, or even have to, but it's the truth. EA is giving 1-50 away to entice people to purchase things in the cash shop and make some additional revenue.

Short of a financial miracle, there won't be major changes or additions to TOR after the content that has already been produced dries up. This is why you haven't been receiving your content patches. F2P was decided a while ago, and the unreleased content is being saved for after its launch to give the illusion of a game that is still alive and moving forward.

Story is very, very, very slow to make (development-wise), it's also very expensive for the amount of content you get.

That's just the reality.

Bioware EA have said as much recently, although it's always been the case.

Quote: Originally Posted by Travleer

As with all MMOs that failed to meet their revenue projections. They have to stay solvent to keep it going

what that means for this game is no content updates, no major systems will ever be revamped (such as maps)

there will be very little development done to it. any "expansions" will be minimal and overpriced for what you get.

basically they will milk current subs for all they're worth and hope to make some new revenue with ftp cash shops and new subs from the FTP gimmick, but they have already written off this game as a loss. sad but true.

Yeah, it's feeling more and more like Warhammer Online with every passing week.

I think decision to change Makeb from a free content update to a payed for adventure pack says everything really.

what is that suppossed to mean exactly.

I always considered it more of an abomination of the DAoC formula.

So a set of developers (really) screwed up a somewhat popular PvP design, and thats it? No one should ever try it again? No one should try and bring it forward, and any one that does has no chance?

wonderful.

I'm glad (or at least hope) you're not a game designer.

Maybe the PvP base is fractured and needy because they get promised things like a PvP planet that will "blow them away", that turns out to be an embarresment, and a wonder how it ever made it to a live game after an extensive beta.

But since that didn't work, here have a few nodes to defend, and some tokens.

Yep, blame the consumer.

In the end this game was released earlier than it should have been with a lack of content, features and obviously some bugs that hadn't been resolved.

Why do I like this game?

1) Star Wars
2) Story

2 Simple reasons but before people start getting the wrong impression, when I say Star Wars I am referring to multiple aspects of what should be expected within a Star Wars game.

I played Guild Wars, I eventually got bored because once I had completed the original content the underlying setting itself just wasn't enough to make me want to keep playing.
I played City of Heroes / Villains, it was a fun concept being able to play as a villain. Due to financial issues at the time I had to unsub and after a while I found other things to occupy me and never really thought about the game again. There was a lot that could have been done with that game and I found some good people to play with who I played with regularly, which helped make the game more of an enjoyable experience. It was fun RPing a villain who at one point managed to corrupt another player who was playing a hero. These games have a good basis because there is lots of appeal for wanting to play heroes or villains.

SW:TOR is the third MMORPG I have ended up playing. The SW setting is a great setting to use. Yes, I intended to get around to trying out SWG but by the time I was able to get around to it based on everything I was reading about the game it seemed like the game was dying so I didn't bother. Then I finally found out this game was coming out and pre-ordered my copy of the game. I am a very casual player and don't always have a lot of time to play. I hit level 50 with my Sith Assassin, became a Darth and moved on to an alt to enjoy the next story experience. Now before I get told that I'm talking a lot about story here, I chose a PvP server. Why? Because what is SW without PvP? Ok, I'm a noob to PvP and gear grinding. I still have things to work out with crafting. So what? I can learn and when I have the time I will get around to experiencing all the things this game has to offer. I want to eventually get involved in these elements because SW is about these elements. I eventually want to feel like I am part of a complete SW experience. The SW brand is a core reason for me buying this game, the story was also an element I was looking forward to: to live through my own SW saga by playing the game was just extremely appealing. I do want to get involved with other aspects of the game but not always having as much time as others can lead to problems, especially when you need a group of people to accomplish things (and I have had a lot of difficulty at times finding people to group with). I want to see future content for expanded stories, more options and freedoms within stories to make them more individual and customisable, I want more companion content with alignment shifts and personality changes and more interaction options and even developing companion stories further (such as finally making Ashara reject the Jedi ways). I want to see more open world space scenes with travelling on ships freely, ship PvP combat, bombarding planets. This game has so much potential to engage and immerse players because it is SW but because the dev team lost control at the very start of releasing the game without enough content besides going through a set story many people lost interest. One day when I have gotten through all the stories I want to take part in other aspects to feel part of a SW universe so I hope there is focus on improving multiple elements of this game, including story and PvP elements so that I can feel like I'm part of a SW universe and experience the things I would expect from a SW game. So far I have been enjoying the game, I still have a lot to learn and I hope this game does improve in every way to make a more immersive SW experience where you actually feel like your character matters in this universe, that what they do matters and can have an amount of influence on other aspects of the game. If there is too much focus on one aspect then there will be moans from whoever doesn't get what they want. Do I want a good story and some extra story content? I would love it. Is it the most important thing to focus on right now? Maybe or maybe not because there are many things the devs need to focus on right now. I just see a lot of potential for this game and hope that this game develops and has a healthy future ahead of it.

That was a great read, but the thing is I just don't see many of the suggestions you said being added into this game.

First, BioWare chose an unfinished engine. They optimized it and look at it, the game can't even handle having 30 players on one screen. Ilum failed twice, and just imagine all of the Sorcerers using Force Storm. That would cause for a very choppy screen, wouldn't it?

Secondly, BioWare was bought off by EA. After doing some research and looking at some comments, some people wished this game good luck and even refused to buy this game because of EA's rap sheet in the past. It was most likely that they wouldn't have learned from their previous mistakes with WAR (and they haven't, the PvP in this game is a massive stunfest like WAR), and they're known for just wanting to grab as much money as possible from every game they end up destroying. I even heard a few months ago that EA was named one of the worst companies in America, and that doesn't make anyone inclined to buy their stocks (they're like around $13 right now?).

Thirdly, poor choices and management, and poor business decisions. This game is a story-driven MMO, but story, frankly, just isn't enough. Story can't be expanded upon like PvP and PvE content can, and it just takes too much time. The Story this game has offered is great, but I see myself still doing these "fetch quests" and grindy-like WoW quests, but I'll say the Story missions just offer some twists unlike the BS side-quests BioWare provided in this game. EAWare didn't do their research on how to design an MMO, and now look. More players want more Story, while others want more sandbox elements, better PvP and more difficult PvE. I have to say, the community is quite split.

Lastly, making this MMO an on-rails, themepark. Not everyone wanted to ride the ride (that being Story) all 8 times, like myself. I hate alting and it's extremely tedious. I only level through WZs because I find the side-quests extremely boring and grindy like WoW's. Plus, I was more into this for the (O)PvP that would be offered, and that the game would have the sandbox elements since one of the employees even stated this game was going to be "down the middle with themepark and sandbox". Not only making this MMO story-driven, but themepark? Seriously, EAWare? Themepark is just so limiting unlike sandbox, where it would compliment the caliber of this IP because this IP is always growing and expanding in many areas. Being story-driven and themeparked, well, prevents this game from doing that.

I'm glad you enjoyed the Stories. I only did about two of them. Was sick of the grind, and I just had to post my feelings about what you wanted for this game. I'm sorry if I ranted but this wasn't meant to attack you or ruin how you feel about the game. If you still enjoy it, keep enjoying it. I'm certainly not going to stop you, because you enjoying it is your opinion.

...Sorry, babbling again.

Whilst story is important, it is less repeatable than flashpoints, operations, pvp

If it is less repeatable, then that means people spend less time doing it. So, lets say they release new story content. You spend maybe 10 hours completing the new story line. Then thats it. You're done. You can level another alt through it, but for each character you can only do it once.

However, add a new warzone and the pvpers will repeat it for weeks / months and spend much more than 10 hours in the warzone. So, whilst you've completed your story content, got bored and quit, the pvpers are still having fun in the new warzone.

So, from a financial point of view, developing repeatable content makes much more sense than developing single-use story content.


Personally, I think Bioware is lacking content for EVERY playstyle:

1) PvPers have no open world pvp, and only 4 warzones
2) Raiders only have 3 raids, two of which are obsolete
3) Flashpointers' have tons of flashpoints, but they are all obsolete due to easy raids
4) Roleplayers have very little roleplaying tools and no decent social areas in the game
5) Crafters have a terrible crafting system to work with
6) Single-players have great visual classes to play, but little story differences and class mechanics are all basically the same.

No one is happy with the current state of TOR except those who haven't yet "completed" it i.e. got to 50 and seen endgame. Bioware tried to please everyone and failed. They need to decide on the direction of the game and stick with it. The casual / F2P route will net them the most money long term, but the game will be considered a failure and will not receive industry accolades. Going the pvp route would net them a die hard fanbase and keep the game going for years because frankly, there aren't any other AAA MMOs dedicated to pvp atm, but it wont generate enough money for EA. Going the pve endgame route would likely fail as other games simply do it better and it requires a massive amount of development to do right. EA cant afford that investment at the moment, they are too risk averse.