Is SWTOR a 'big-boy' MMO now?

By big-boy I mean one of the strongest competing in the market. Moreover what I'm getting at here is that despite all these numerous massive triple A MMOs releasing, SWTOR still seems to be going from strength to strength contrary to the countless dooms day messages about *insert hyped MMO release here*.

The latest example of this is The Elder Scrolls Online, a game which has suffered one of the worst releases in recent memory, even the biggest Elder Scrolls diehards have chastised the game and not even SWTOR's infamous 1.2 update seems to match the intensity of which the gaming crowd have torn ESO to shreds.

Guild Wars 2 does not seem to have suffered the same fate and has apparently stabilised.

Other examples of course exist but these releases don't seem to have pulled away from SWTOR at all, on the contrary the theme I am getting is that SWTOR is well beyond the hate train that it once suffered from, passed the hate carriage onto Guild Wars 2 and has only grown in the relative shadows since those days.

Though GSF hasn't been quite the saviour patch it was being touted as, it seems to have gotten an average-good reception and with Galactic Strongholds on the horizon with the long awaited Guild Flagships, players seem to slowly be giving SWTOR a second or perhaps third chance, with many claiming to have gotten a sense of great improvement compared to previous years.

So in the midst of bad releases, the opinion of SWTOR seems to have grown, if so could SWTOR be getting a second wind from all this?

Of course these are merely my own observations and doesn't account for the experiences of others.

But I am getting the sense that the failure to live up to the hype much for these new releases, much like SWTOR did is giving SWTOR's own improvements a time to shine.

Have you gotten similar experiences in recent weeks and share my observations or have you had completely the opposite experience? feel free to chime in but let's keep things civil.

I feel it is. I can't speak for others however.

The hate carriage has been passed to GW2? Sh!iiiiiiiiiiiit, I was hating GW2 way before it was cool.

Funny but I think the hate is squarely placed on ESO right now, I genuinely can't remember a release getting such a bad response for a good long time.

I don't think anyone hates GW2.

It's kind of either a "Love" or "Total apathy" game. Hard to hate it — just too well-done / charming / pretty. But not everyone's cup of te


oh well you died, just zerg it lol

I haven't seen any MMOs released that I'd be remotely interested in compared to TOR. Maybe that makes me their target audience, maybe I'm not interested in a fantasy MMO at the moment, maybe that makes TOR a BBMM now.... who knows?

This kind of labelling has never seemed very important to me.

Depends on your test. When you lose 1.5 million of your subscribers and forced to become F2P, I would say 'no'. Have Bioware done enough to make SWTOR a tempting alternative as a sub based MMO - No.

If you enjoy playing Sim type games, then I guess SWTOR is the place to be. Housing, slot machines, endless amounts of costumes then I would say 'yes'.

But posting something based on zero facts is pointless. If ESO survives it's first month as a paid MMO, then it would have done well and with Wildstar just around the corner, it's going to be a tough year.

Either way, the fact that EA no longer talks about SWTOR tells you the true story - 'No'.

A respectable opinion, unfortunately the popularity and revenue gain for a title in this genre means life or death and also equals how much development we may see in the future.

I hate it. It's nowhere near GW1 and I hate what ArenaNeta has done to the franchise. Instead of a western-style MMO, we got a glorified, childish, asian, seizure-inducing coloring book.

This is why I ♥ SWTOR most of all, really.

I am so freaking sick of elves and magic spells. There's nothing wrong with them? But I am just sick of it. The gaming industry has too much of a hardon for High/Low Fantasy in RPG design.

Even WildStar doesn't really feel like SciFi. I can't explain it, but I feel like WS is just WoW Burning Crusade — SciFi vibe covering basically the same stock Fantasy stuff we always get from MMOs / RPGs.

SWTOR is refreshingly devoid of pretty much every expected element, it's so flat and sterile... I love that.