3 Areas of development SwTOR could break WoW and every other MMO

nothing against Roberts but... he has made many claims that he never actually could deliver.

Tl;dr

One area are would be the companion system. This is one thing that SW:TOR has that other MMOs do not have.

It only makes sense that you expand on the one thing that your competition doesn't have, in order to capitalize on that market. Are there a lot of solo players who don't like group content? I'm sure they would love content that involves them and their companions, which they can solo.

Create companion content which requires all of your companions. Missions that only you and your companions can accomplish. Some class stories already have a glimpse of this, where the companions that you did not select are npcs. You can even copy Mass Effect and Dragon Age style.
This will be a new content for solo players and can keep them playing.
This will create demand for gear because now you need to buy gear for all your companions instead of just the one you are using.
Create epic arcs for all companions, to get the ultimate unique weapon for them. Make it a grind for companions. Further keeps players playing.
Make companions more useful, like somehow make them useful for hardmode FPs through strong presence gear. This can alleviate tank/healer shortages too.
Expand the companion system further in other ways.

well, with all the space missions .. heroic etc etc .. will lead to many people not playing them becuase of epilepsy.
I have epilepsy (andi know how many different forms it comes in) and i cant do the space missions .. let alone actively responding to other players movements.
Imagine the number of players that would cheat. EA/BIO cant keep up with the hackers/exploiters/cheats/goldbuyers out there in normal PVP and PVE content. You honestly expect them to be able to control space-combat cheats.
I aint surprised they havent implimented much extra content ... the playerbase would cheat cheat cheat, because that is what some players do. So the only response is to give no reward for completing the new content.
Would the player base play it if there was no reward? nope.

so, do you impliment something, spend millions on making it/implimenting it/controlling it and then have no player play it? or every player who plays it has hacks/cheats and makes your initial gameplay worthless and then come on the forums bashing it?

what do you do?

EA/BIO need to keep money essentially valuleess (lets keep goldsellers dead in the water, the release of F2p has done what we all thought it would and played right in to the goldsellers hands.
Keep new content going and encourage people to make alts and level them up .... maybe it might be fun if they made titles based on players who have no gear in slots ..... "the wrecklessly brave" or "the downright daft" if you kill a boss with only 5 pieces of clothing on you. Maybe "mommys little carebear" if you completed BT normal in level 50 gear ... stuff like that. Or how about "the forgetful" if you kill a boss without using any of your cooldowns or procs.

Personally, what id like to see if a bit of comedy in the game ... i know i know, "we dont want wow 2" but imagine the jokes you could have.
Lets not forget, the films were entirely tongue-in-cheek ... well the good ones were, anyway.

yea, i like this idea. Always thought it was a good plan. Maybe you could unlock new clothing changes for your comp .. stuff like that. Nothing you can sell, just fun stuff.
Epic weapons for em, i also like that idea.
maybe gear that can be got through different ways, thats also a good idea. sick and tired of my comps having to wear hand-me-downs.

dont like the idea of using them in fp/ops though .. that would just laed to exploits and cheats.

More Innovative New Features:

Do things no one else has done before, that are cool, and innovative:

Animation Studio:
Studio App that can modify or personalise the animation of your character abilities, for e.g. rather than Slash finishing with a sideways swipe, it can instead go vertically.
Rather than your hands finish a cast with both arms stretched forth, you can make only one hand do it

Terrain creator, use to do this or have this for NWN, where you could basically build your own dungeon.. wlell, the SWTOR game has many worlds, and we all know that you only adventure in a litle part on one of the continents, albeit a vital one. with this TES set, well playerscan always create and import addiitions to a planet, not usre how that will work with a server, but the idea is yo
u could even design your own trial period or your guilds.

Voice Program:
Go cutting edge. There is already technology, thaht using the mould of a person's throat and recordings, anyone who speaks through it will sound like the person, do that for your voice actors for each of the classes, incorproate the program in the game, and enable a voice chat system live in game. That is positionaly sensitive. So people will hear each other in say sounding like hteir characters no matter what they sound like.

YOu can then have the ability to shout, which will extend the area someone cn hear what you're saying, and a /whisepr will only be heard by people within 2 yards ofyou..unless you targe the person and shift clik the speak option iwn which case only that person will hear your whisper

i'll edit this post later

If they had done those things from the beginning, yes. Now? Heck no.

1. They have lost so many customers in the worst way imaginable and now have a reputation of a company that does not listen, nor show signs of care about the customers. Their updates and feedback is lacking to the point that most people left feeling as if they did not matter one bit.

2. The game has already gone freemium. A slap in the face to F2P players having their genre used in rip people off and a bigger slap in the face of subscription gamers who are being told they are dumb enough to fall into paying for a game that wasnt good enough to begin with.

3. How can an expansion hope to bring in a bunch of new players when those players will first notice that the game is freemium, which is a massive turn off because its a sign of a near dead game, and then, even if they become interested will instead go the freemium option instead of buying the expansion to try the game, not see ANY of these great expansion features and end up leaving because the base game is shallow and missing the depth an MMO needs.

Game is over in terms of beating the better MMOs out there. Bioware would have still had a chance if it had actually gone F2P and made updates purchasable. As is, new players will get a chopped up version of a game that couldnt hold players in complete form and will end up not retaining many or increasing revenue enough to make EA want to keep investing in the game.

you do realize that more people have tried wow then actually stayed and played right?

The MMO community really needs to lose the "we had 2.4 mil people, but the vast majority have left" argument. It's a been there done that point that really, while true, applies to EVERY SINGLE MMO ON THE MARKET. And YES, EVEN WoW.

Pretty much every mmo on the market has a 75-80% attrition rate. People that have tried the game and left. Even WoW has stated that as many as 40million people have tried the game. By your point, WoW would then be classified as a failure. Add that, people need to realize the the 10mil number is just padding in terms of WoW. Their NA/EU subs is probably in the neighborhood of 4mil players, with around 6mil in China. Where in China it's a pay by the hour and WoW gets a pretty fixed license amount from China. Basically, more than 50% of their population accounts for 5% of their income. If you don't believe me, look it up. Check the investor calls for Blizzard Quarterlies. Check mmodata.net for basic numbers. Granted, they don't show NA/EU vs China numbers but if the percentages are similar to past history, then my numbers are fairly close to accurate.

2nd point, this game is not broken. Does it need a lot of tweaks and bug fixes? Absolutely, as does every game on the market these days.

IMO, SWTOR is a much better than average game. And if they continue on the path they've taken recently, as least as far as I can tell, it's on the right path and will grow as a game and as a community. There are millions of loyal Star Wars fans out there. If EA/BW/Disney can come together and put some work into it, this game could be great.

TBH, freemium isn't the taboo word it used to be. There are a lot of successful freemium games out there. It actually is becoming the norm of the vast majority of MMO's out there. The main exception is still WoW.

How can the hope to bring in new players? Really, that's your argument? My answer...how can it not. It's free. People can try it, and if they like it, they'll stick around. Granted it's up to BW/EA to deliver a good game, good customer service, etc... It's also up to the playerbase to deliver a good community, a pleasant, welcoming environment to those players as well so that they will stick around.

Attitudes like a lot of people, like your post, for example, tend to turn people off. The community needs to get positive, upbeat and help this game move forward. If the vast majority of players had your attitude, then this game is doomed. Thankfully it does not.