To all those demanding for more story content...

Well, in high-tech industries for example such as Intel I could imagine they'd use it for their CPU development. With vertical progression for example being pentium 1 --> pentium 2 --> pentium 3 --> pentium 4 --> core2duo --> core2quad --> i3/i5/i7.

Whereas more horizontal development could simply be the addition of yet another model within the same line, such as i7-3930, i7-3820, etc.


I think the main problem which they faced is that many players weren't glad with the notion of having to roll alts, as a form to get their additional content.

As such, developing more class story chapters is of course a nice addition to the game, however will not deliver the quantity of content players may desire. If after all you only play through 1 of those storylines anyway, 7/8th of the content of each patch would go unplayed by you, and the first complaint given would be how little there was to do.

That makes it a much more logical choice to throw out the class specific quests, but rather focus on factional quests (so only half goes to waste) or perhaps even cross-factional quests included (<50% going to waste).

That decision will give a much greater bang for buck for the average player.

New Base Class

• 2 New class storylines from 1 till cap (2x50 levels = 100 levels of content)
• 4 New voice actors for the new base classes
• 10 New voice actors for the companions of the new classes
• Dozens of voice actors for the storylines of the new classes
• Adding new class-areas to existing content in a non-obstrusive way (yes, many in-game areas will require an overhaul!
• About a hundred voice actors having to return to say a few words for all the world arcs where players are directly adressed by their class (happens in about every mission chain)
• Yet more voice actors having to return to redo flashpoint and operation conversations, since class references exist there as well
• Ballancing 10 different classes, or 20 different advanced classes or 60 different talent trees (avarage maintenance!)

New Advanced Class

• About a 16 voice actors having to return for the overhaul to the "pick your advanced class" missions
• Ballancing 8 different classes, or 24 different advanced classes or 72 different talent trees (highest maintenance!)

New Class-story / levelcap increase

• 8 New class storylines from 50/55 till new cap. (Let's say that takes 10 levels: 8x10 = 80 levels worth of content.)
• A few dozen voice actors for the storylines of the new class stories
• Ballancing 8 different classes, or 16 different advanced classes or 48 different talent trees (lowest maintenance!)

Each has its own benefits and drawbacks, but I think it's pretty obvious that additional classes are definitely more expensive than either adding new advanced classes or adding new class stories or raising the level cap. Even the development of those put together is probably cheaper than adding a new baseclass, though the maintenance cost to keep the game ballanced will probably be highest.

No I agree class stories were probably doomed since before release, as wading through the same 80% of content just to experience >20% Class Story content got very, very repetative.

But it is still a shame, because it was done well, I think where it was let down was in not being at least 50% of levelling content......... of course that would have made it even more expensive and time consuming to make.

But I wonder if maybe they shouldn't have cut down on the class story, to say 2 per faction (Force Users and Non-Forcer users) and upped the % Class Story from there.

Ultimately by making it less class specific, there becomes less reason to do a class specific story. But rather they can stick to a better quality faction specific quest line.

We'll have to see what they do with Makeb, but if they play their cards well they could do it in such a way that all of the quest content on that planet, has the same level of quality as the current class specific quests, rather than just the mediocre grind-quests making up the quest hubs.

For example recently having done chapter 2 and most of chapter 3 on my imperial agent within two days, after leveling up that character primarily through PvP, it really shows of the quality of the class stories well. Much better than playing it mixed in with all the other quests. In my view, Makeb questing should feel exactly like that.

I don't think story is what is holding TOR back, in fact I think it's what it's keeping it afloat.

By all accounts hard core raiders and pvp-ers moved on. TOR is now the quintessential causal game of people lapping up the story and leveling content.

That's about the only thing that it has going for it. The vocal minority on these boards moaning for new elder content isn't really representative.

Stuff like Makeb is what lands perfectly for the vast majority of this games demographics but that's just a small tie over. TOR is gonna continue developing all manners of story or it's gonna go bust as soon as the general gamer pool gets done with what vanilla provided.

It sure as heck can't stand on the merits of it's pvp or pve endgame and it doesn't look likely it ever will. If it ditches what's keeping the majority of people here ATM to try and do a "NGE" in terms of it's overall focus it could get ugly for them very fast.

So I either expect ambitious story expansions (which include continuation of class story or new classes) cos EA/BW realize they gotta spend money to make money OR this game going the way of SWG sooner rather than later.

As a raider myself, I definitely do not believe that's entirely true. As on common raiding days it's not unheard of to see for example 15+ instances of TFB or EC, even if only 8 people would be in those instances, we're still talking at least 240 players raiding at prime time on a single server then. As however the number of players in instances goes beyond 8, the true figure will undoubtfully lie even higher.

Sure, not all will be hardcore raiders, but there's still quite a number which do. Beyond that, also non-hardcore raiders will still seek new raiding content from time to time.

If they do that then the new people they brought to the market will leave. They'll be left with nothing but traditional MMO players, who they'll have to compete with every other MMO for. Being part of that new market, and this being my first MMO, I know I'll leave without more story. Considering the story is the interesting part to this game.

Close but not quite. Say you have CPU's as your primary product line.

Vertical progression would be adding the next level of CPU to your product line. Whether those are larger jumps such as going from i3 to i5 to i7, or smaller jumps such as the i7-3820 to i7-3930, it's all vertical.

Horizontal would be like adding different types of products such as Motherboards, Servers, etc. These are completely separate and unrelated to your other product line (CPU's). They are additional products that are not progressive with your previous products. They can, in fact, have their own progression (vertical) chain.

Taking this back to TOR, adding additional class stories, Ops, etc. would be vertical as they build off an existing system. Adding Pazzak, Swoop Racing, etc, would be Horizontal as they are their own separate entity. These seperate entities might end up having vertical expansions of their own however.

But why would it be termed thusly? I'm sorry, but it still doesn't make any sense to me. Pentium 1, 2, 3, and so on screams of the word "horizontal", a left to right kind of thing (you even used arrows to illustrate the example!).

Similarly, improving the same product line has vertical connotations for me: like stacking building blocks atop each other without changing the foundation.

Planet story is fine, however it means that the SAME CONTENT IS ALWAYS EXACTLY THE SAME with each character run though. Which gets old quickly.

The only saving grace of content from L1 to L50 is the 8 seperate class stories.