EA COO (Peter Moore) maintains confidence in BioWare

Okay, large guild raids I can understand. As for "what if you dont like PvP?" you will have to refer to Monoth quoting me on page 3. Sadly, being a realist in these forusm, gets your post deleted. No infraction, just deleted. There's also my post on page 4.

No doubt considering how happy NCSoft is with pre-purchases and pre-orders alone... >.>

I'm curious, where did this idea come from that games had to be EITHER theme park or Sandbox? The MMORPG market has gotten a bit ridiculous, and I still have to point the finger at WoW. Their massive success with the most stripped down theme park game ever made has put a silver bullet in this genre. To the businessmen that run the companies that produce these games, WoW's success is all they'll ever dream of. They'll be dying to copy that model, and it is a terrible model. It is the worst iteration of this genre to date in terms of depth of content and actual purpose in the game, that capitalizes on human greed and their obsession to constantly gather more shiny objects.

The bottom line is, people asking for sandbox elements in this game aren't crazy. People asking for more operations content aren't crazy. More PVP. ETC. The list goes on and on. This has ALWAYS been a genre of diversified interests, and most of the games in it gave you something to satisfy every crowd.

You're a complete fool for telling the guy he came here for PVP that he's the fool. The guy PVPing, Crafting, Raiding, Soloing, etc. - those are all parts of the market. None of them are the majority. There are simply too many splinter groups anymore.

The point you should take from this is that the game has to be complete in the sense of being well rounded. If you like running on your hamster wheel and getting new clothes to dress up your digital doll, more power to you, you probably like this game. But past games in this genre have done ALL the facets of an MMORPG well, and THAT is what disappointed so many of the players in this game.

If you're a raider - this is a decent game for you, but the content is too easy. Fun but easy.

If you're a PVPer - you'd better be the kind that likes repetitive bouts on the same handful of maps over and over again, and be prepared for the companies to release maps at a slower rate than Call of Duty that are far less in depth.

If you're a sandbox lover - go home, there's nothing original interesting, or player generated here. This world is a dead questline on rails. Great story, but it's every bit as over when you get to level 50 as KOTOR was, unless you'd like to stick around for 3 months and wait for one more operation that will take you a week to finish.

If you're a soloer - once you finish the story quests, unsub, because there's nothing for soloers at level 50, unless you want to hop on the repetitive warzone train.

If you're an RPer - sit here begging for chat bubbles, emotes, and interactive objects, and you still won't have them 9 months later.

If you're an alt-a-holic - sure, you have great stories, but the character creator is lackluster, poorly thought out, and limited by that very same story. The story ends after one playthrough. A great character creator gives you infinite playthroughs. Take the CoH and CoV one as an example of the best in the business - people would resub to that game just to roll new characters, even being sick of the gameplay.

All these groups are minorities, but also valid parts of the playerbase. To make one of these games, you have to please them all, or at least show them you're making an honest attempt at doing that. This was billed as an MMORPG, not the single player online RPG people were saying it was in Beta. That means these people have the right to expect all of these different features, because 90% of the games in this genre have managed that, except WoW. WoW made it okay to be completely one dimensional and lifeless, because it succeeded more than all of them.

The truth is - WoW had the magic to keep a large playerbase, for whatever reason. What the players really validated with their dollars was the fact that a huge community is what makes an MMORPG great, NOT the theme park model. But the executives will never get that, all they see is dollars, so they copied the most successful game in the genre to the point of porting over their abilities and talent trees.

I used to be this game's biggest fanboy. I'm still here for the few parts of this game that I do love, namely the combat. I waited for this game to be released before it was announced, from the moment I finished the first KOTOR game. But even I can admit that this was a screwed up, half finished MMORPG, with a remarkably smooth launch that was wasted on a crowd that was outraged to hit level 50 and found out there really was NOTHING else to do but a few warzones and operations.

That's why you need the sandbox. Not to be SWG 2.0. To give the playerbase a feeling of impact on the world they choose to roleplay in. This is a dead world with some pretty, but static scenery. That ruins immersion far more than any wookiee with a lightsaber. Sandbox content is self-perpetuating end-game that gives developers TIME to work on the other projects without people feeling like there's nothing to do, even if it's something as stupid as getting items to decorate your ship with or recoloring your speeders and ship.

Let the vocal minority of raiders that are actually happy with this game because they're bad enough to not be through the content keep coming in and blaming PVPers, the complainers, the SWG fans, and everyone else for this disappointment that came from this game, but there is a lot lacking. If you have to blame anyone, blame WoW and big business. Before then, this genre was creative, dynamic, and interesting. Didn't always have the best graphics or best esports play (in fact, some of the worst) but it was always the most creative and immersive. BioWare got the creative part right - but implemented it in a way that dies at a certain point - just like a single player RPG (their specialty). That's what disappointed us. The creativity needs to continue, at a steady clip, whether it's enthusiastic GM's dropping mobs on players when they're questing to new continuations to the storyline, to giving us new areas of strange planets filled with strange aliens to explore (the heart of Star Wars, adventure), to putting the war in the galaxy every day rather than waiting months for the next chapter to come out. Some of us managed to do more frequent, more immersive updates to our own campaigns with the NWN engine that BioWare designed for God's sake, and we did it with nobody's help but our own.

Funny that you apparently don't see F2P as a road to possibly saving the game. From a high level point of view it actually is.

One of the major complaints that many seem to agree on about this game is actually that it tries too much to be everything an MMO can offer without being good in any aspect of it except the story. So what do they do? They give story for free, and charge you for the MMO stuff like alts, repeating flashpoints/warzones regularly, operations, etc..
What this basicly does is give Bioware a very clear view of what their customers want. Whatever they spend the most money on is what they appreciate most.
Give this system a few months, and the developers will know what their playerbase actually wants them to focus on. They already told them with their wallets. And then BW is motivated to do more of that and to do it better.

Having given it some thought.. Going F2P the way they are now is a lot better way to listen to the community than going around the forums ever will be.

Epic post mate, and something I've been saying in many threads for a while now.

An epic MMO needs both themepark and sandbox features, as well as content for all playstyles. Its the only way to have a good sized community, options for playstyle to suit peoples ever changing moods, plus the sort of longevity needed in content to give the devs time to develop new stuff.

TOR lacks any sort of sandbox feature at all, so all the content that there is has become too short lived. The developers aren't pumping out enough content, so people are quitting. And there is just a general lack of content for all playstyles.

And this is where they hurt the game and it's ability to grow. First, almost all of the content is VO, very expensive. Great, but expensive. Even the side quests are voiced, which in my opinion is a bit silly and begins to detract from the novelty. They COULD add text based content via the terminals, but how would players react to it?

Second, they went with a progressive armor model, a HUGE mistake. Normalized gear with a horizontal progression setup would have been much better, especially considering some of the odd designs and a lack of ability to change armor color. Combine that will limited personalization options overall and you get the feeling you are limited far more than other games. Even WoW has an appearance system...Orange gear feels like an afterthought.

Third, they made crafting hands off and set up the overall system to be worthless to most players. Combine that with a market system that doesn't work very well and a lack of any other sandbox content and you end up having people repeat content since they have nothing to do. Voiced content. Content you paid way too much to develop so people could hit the spacebar.

Essentially is was the vision for the game that was flawed. They were told in Beta this would not stand, and were either unable to change it or unwilling. One thing is for sure...the current state of the game is too similar to how it looked at launch, and that is troubling.

Bringing in F2P, offering the same class stories that people burned through and then left the game will not stand muster IMO. They need sandbox content to get casuals to INVEST in the game. That means drastic changes. That means a new development focus.

It means they finish the game.

Actually they are doing quite well. They have subs, quoted for a top guy at BioWare, under a mil subs but over 500k. Even at the minimum of 500k subs is great. Tera has way less then 500k, Rift from last I heard was at the 200k-300k mark. Once this hits f2p, I would not be surprised to see subs back in the mil in time. I will even bet a decent amount of those f2p people go back to sub based or become subs if they are new to the game.

Those who think BioWare and the game is fail or want it to fail, then why even play still? Go play your Tera with the 50,000 population there.

I snipped a lot, but your entire post was a massive QFE for me. Very well stated!!!

Ooh fun stuff here.

First, those numbers of "over 500k" were at a time before the 6-month subscriptions purchased in December / January expired. They are expiring now. Going F2P means we may never hear a sub number again, but since EA said they needed 500k to be profitable, and they knew how many 6-month subs already cancelled, and they flipped the F2P switch, it's not a great stretch to suggest that the number after the 6-month subs expired was significantly under 500k.

Second, you brought Rift up. Yep, Rift has something around 250,000 subscribers. They have their own whacky IP, not the wildly popular Star Wars. They were at best a start-up shop, hardly existent, when BioWare, one of the top 2 most respected game developers on the planet (at the time) started this game.

Yet somehow Rift is thriving and releasing new content and features at an unprecedented pace while EA with their vast resources and super popular IP cannot find a way to release content every half year and have less than a 25% retention rate after 3-6 months.

Rift running circles around EA/BioWare like that is akin to a paraplegic 12 year old beating Usain Bolt in a 100m sprint. They should be embarrassed.

I don't want this game to fail. I want EA to step up and make this game worth the 50 cents a day subscription fee instead of implementing a cash shop that will cause them to focus way too much effort on trinkets, toys, and "boosts" that will quickly or eventually become pay-to-win.

People who quit this game saying money was a factor actually meant the game wasn't worth the money, not that they couldn't pay it as EA suits would have you believe. When they bought the game (paying at least $60 for it), they knew it carried a subscription fee. There was no surprise there. The surprise was the game wasn't WORTH it.

So hang on here.

We can only play one MMO?

We can't like two MMOs or like an MMO for it's own merits?

Last time I checked, I was the one that was in control of my own money, and I made the decisions on how I spent it.

No one forced me to buy TOR, I bought it because it had features that I wanted in an MMO, and it's by a game developer that I have lots of love for (Bioware). I did my research, took my time, and didn't let any hype get to me.

I don't just blindly buy the next big MMO, because that's what everyone else is doing.

This game is not 'fail'' to me. I'm having fun for my money. Isn't that what matters? That we have fun with what we are paying for?

If it doesn't have Richard Garriott then it's not Ultima.