alloganex Posted June 19, 2013 Share Posted June 19, 2013 I have been reading a lot of posts over the last week and have had my own go out there speaking critically against Bioware for issues I have with this game and whatnot. Just now, however, I read a post talking about their numbers and how they have dropped since release of the game. Which everyone knows they have, hence the cartel market, as well as other things. There is something though that no one has had the balls to give Bioware credit for. This is their first MMO, which means that there will be issues, there will be bumps, and there will be trials. Another thing is the fact that they made this game out of a universe that everyone who liked a movie thought that they were going to jump in and become Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, never even paying attention to the name of the game. All these people seen were the words Star Wars and MMO and expected a bunch of stereotypical story lines and major Over Powering. Others who bought the game failed to realize with something being your first time, you will not be perfect. If you think you will be, just remember all of your own first times at anything and then ask others involved... i bet you will find out that you weren't as amazing in the situation as you thought you were. Also for some reason or other, people had expected SW:G. Surprisingly, that game I WAS NOT interested in nor ever played. Now this being said I would like for everyone to take a small step back, look at the game, and realize how much they actually did right with coming out for the Rookie Season. They need our help to grow, as we the Gamers are more like parent's teaching them how to impress us. Now with having officially stuck up for this game I will say that in the future I will most likely Criticize the game again (god knows I can't keep my mouth shut or my fingers from hitting the keyboard) but I will also take into account everything they have been striving to give us. And yes, I loathe the devil of EA also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dallayna Posted June 19, 2013 Share Posted June 19, 2013 I have been reading a lot of posts over the last week and have had my own go out there speaking critically against Bioware for issues I have with this game and whatnot. Just now, however, I read a post talking about their numbers and how they have dropped since release of the game. Which everyone knows they have, hence the cartel market, as well as other things. There is something though that no one has had the balls to give Bioware credit for. This is their first MMO, which means that there will be issues, there will be bumps, and there will be trials. Another thing is the fact that they made this game out of a universe that everyone who liked a movie thought that they were going to jump in and become Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader, never even paying attention to the name of the game. All these people seen were the words Star Wars and MMO and expected a bunch of stereotypical story lines and major Over Powering. Others who bought the game failed to realize with something being your first time, you will not be perfect. If you think you will be, just remember all of your own first times at anything and then ask others involved... i bet you will find out that you weren't as amazing in the situation as you thought you were. Also for some reason or other, people had expected SW:G. Surprisingly, that game I WAS NOT interested in nor ever played. Now this being said I would like for everyone to take a small step back, look at the game, and realize how much they actually did right with coming out for the Rookie Season. They need our help to grow, as we the Gamers are more like parent's teaching them how to impress us. Now with having officially stuck up for this game I will say that in the future I will most likely Criticize the game again (god knows I can't keep my mouth shut or my fingers from hitting the keyboard) but I will also take into account everything they have been striving to give us. And yes, I loathe the devil of EA also. Heh. I feel the same way to be honest. I remember having this conversation with my husband back in February: "Well the other MMO's we've played didn't have these problems as bad!!!" My response: "Yes, that would most likely be because all of them were over five years old when we were playing them." And, it's true. Most of the other MMO's that everyone brings up in comparison have had years upon years of trial and error that SWTOR just hasn't had. So, while I'll admit that some of these growing pains aggravate me to no end also but I do try to remind myself at least once before getting truly ticked off: "It's just a little over a year old- it's just a little over a year old." And, I do have to admit that most- (Not even remotely all!)- but, most of the changes lately have been for the better. I do reserve the right to grumble at the two-step-forward-one-step-back moments though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptRavenous Posted June 19, 2013 Share Posted June 19, 2013 There is a lot of wrong thinking out there. Some of the things I've seen on the forums are just plain ignorant. "World of Warcraft did it good. Bioware has no excuse for making mistakes that other MMOs made in the past!" - as if all MMO companies share their MMO programming knowledge with each other freely. They don't. Its a competitive business. The best Bioware could do is PLAY a few MMOs, then guess at how they implemented their features, then try their best to implement something similar (such as the LFG tool) based upon their own programming knowledge. "The big MMOs have great balance, have worked out the bugs, and have many great features that SW:TOR lacks. Is Bioware stupid? These things should have been implemented/fixed at launch!" - Sure, because all the big MMOs had these things at launch too, right? No, they didn't. It took them at least 2 to 3 years before they polished their product, and still continue to do so year after year. No MMO is ever finished polishing their product. People don't seem to understand, making an MMO is a LOT more difficult than a single-player game, or even an online first-person shooter. The SW:TOR project is like making 8 single-player games at once, and making them compatible with each other. A huge and difficult undertaking. Bioware did a lot better than most companies do with their first MMO. They still do. Some of them working into the wee hours of the morning or giving up their weekend to fix bugs introduced with a new patch, pouring over hundreds of thousands of code lines, straining their eyes to see through the wall of program text in front of them to find the one bit of coding causing the problem(s). So, yes, I will criticize Bioware when I think it is warranted, and praise them when they fix something, or do something right. This doesn't make us "fanbois", it makes us good players, the kind Bioware wants playing their game. Constructive criticism, and deserved praise. As human beings, we ARE capable of doing both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alloganex Posted June 20, 2013 Author Share Posted June 20, 2013 I would actually like to ask both of you if i can put your remarks up in my guild. If you both say no I'll understand, but this is one of the big debates that we are having over there. And to be perfectly honest, I am proud to hold a founders title in game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dallayna Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 I would actually like to ask both of you if i can put your remarks up in my guild. If you both say no I'll understand, but this is one of the big debates that we are having over there. And to be perfectly honest, I am proud to hold a founders title in game. Go for it. Don't think that I've posted any great wisdoms or anything but if something I've said has helped people regain some perspective, I've got not problems it being repeated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrJurgens Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 There is a lot of wrong thinking out there. Some of the things I've seen on the forums are just plain ignorant. "World of Warcraft did it good. Bioware has no excuse for making mistakes that other MMOs made in the past!" - as if all MMO companies share their MMO programming knowledge with each other freely. They don't. Its a competitive business. The best Bioware could do is PLAY a few MMOs, then guess at how they implemented their features, then try their best to implement something similar (such as the LFG tool) based upon their own programming knowledge. "The big MMOs have great balance, have worked out the bugs, and have many great features that SW:TOR lacks. Is Bioware stupid? These things should have been implemented/fixed at launch!" - Sure, because all the big MMOs had these things at launch too, right? No, they didn't. It took them at least 2 to 3 years before they polished their product, and still continue to do so year after year. No MMO is ever finished polishing their product. People don't seem to understand, making an MMO is a LOT more difficult than a single-player game, or even an online first-person shooter. The SW:TOR project is like making 8 single-player games at once, and making them compatible with each other. A huge and difficult undertaking. Bioware did a lot better than most companies do with their first MMO. They still do. Some of them working into the wee hours of the morning or giving up their weekend to fix bugs introduced with a new patch, pouring over hundreds of thousands of code lines, straining their eyes to see through the wall of program text in front of them to find the one bit of coding causing the problem(s). So, yes, I will criticize Bioware when I think it is warranted, and praise them when they fix something, or do something right. This doesn't make us "fanbois", it makes us good players, the kind Bioware wants playing their game. Constructive criticism, and deserved praise. As human beings, we ARE capable of doing both. /Agree Very well put, Ravenous! Very well put indeed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptRavenous Posted June 20, 2013 Share Posted June 20, 2013 I would actually like to ask both of you if i can put your remarks up in my guild. If you both say no I'll understand, but this is one of the big debates that we are having over there. And to be perfectly honest, I am proud to hold a founders title in game. Sure. I have no problem with that. I'm a Founder as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alloganex Posted June 22, 2013 Author Share Posted June 22, 2013 Thanks guys. Yeah my guild wants everything perfect from jump not realizing that the people had pushed bioware to put out the game before they were ready too. But what can I say? If you're ever on Ebon Hawk, drop a hello to Wray'thos. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tassia Posted June 22, 2013 Share Posted June 22, 2013 There is a lot of wrong thinking out there. Some of the things I've seen on the forums are just plain ignorant. "World of Warcraft did it good. Bioware has no excuse for making mistakes that other MMOs made in the past!" - as if all MMO companies share their MMO programming knowledge with each other freely. They don't. Its a competitive business. The best Bioware could do is PLAY a few MMOs, then guess at how they implemented their features, then try their best to implement something similar (such as the LFG tool) based upon their own programming knowledge. "The big MMOs have great balance, have worked out the bugs, and have many great features that SW:TOR lacks. Is Bioware stupid? These things should have been implemented/fixed at launch!" - Sure, because all the big MMOs had these things at launch too, right? No, they didn't. It took them at least 2 to 3 years before they polished their product, and still continue to do so year after year. No MMO is ever finished polishing their product. People don't seem to understand, making an MMO is a LOT more difficult than a single-player game, or even an online first-person shooter. The SW:TOR project is like making 8 single-player games at once, and making them compatible with each other. A huge and difficult undertaking. Bioware did a lot better than most companies do with their first MMO. They still do. Some of them working into the wee hours of the morning or giving up their weekend to fix bugs introduced with a new patch, pouring over hundreds of thousands of code lines, straining their eyes to see through the wall of program text in front of them to find the one bit of coding causing the problem(s). So, yes, I will criticize Bioware when I think it is warranted, and praise them when they fix something, or do something right. This doesn't make us "fanbois", it makes us good players, the kind Bioware wants playing their game. Constructive criticism, and deserved praise. As human beings, we ARE capable of doing both. I feel like this should be on every page. I've been playing MMOs since their inception in 1997 with Ultima Online. I have seen a lot of MMO launches, and massive failures, in my time. Of all the MMOs I've played, SW:TOR had without a doubt the smoothest launch, and the most content upon launch. People love to compare this game to WoW, so let me do that for a moment. When WoW launched in November 04, there was no end-game raid present yet, there was no PVP beyond FFA world PVP (despite the developers having promised us siege weapons and mind-blowing competitive PVP upon launch), the classes were horribly imbalanced, some of them were outright broken (warlocks), there was such horrible lag that if you were lucky enough to make it on to the server at all, you probably didn't loot anything you killed because you'd be stuck looting and disconnected. There were several hour long queues on most servers, which is why WoW has so many goddamn servers now which is where this came from. The game was almost completely unplayable for its entire first month, and in some cases longer. It took them months to implement standard features, like an end-game beyond running the same 5 mans over and over. Or zerging those 5 mans with 15 people. Even when PVP was introduced, it was only Warsong Gulch for the longest time. Imagine waiting months to get the PVP system the devs had promised on launch, only to be stuck playing Huttball, and only Huttball, for several months. Molten Core was the first raid introduced, followed by Onyxia, Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Qiraj, and Naxxramas. They also had the world dragons and Lord Kazzak as world bosses that guilds fought to the death over, but let's be honest, most people never had the chance to kill those bosses. They were on farm by the big guilds and big guilds only. I didn't add the 20 man raids (AQ20 and ZG) to this because they were not implemented well and barely utilized, they were too hard for PUGs to do, and didn't give good enough loot to make them interesting to already established raiding guilds. The raiding system was rudimentary and incredibly frustrating when it came to gearing players. There were no multi-class armor tokens, no commendation vendors, you relied on luck which caused a lot of problems for guild recruitment. Even though people were progressing through Naxxramas at the end, they were still having to run obsolete raids to gear up new players because WoW raiding had some of the worst player burnout I've ever seen. This perpetual cycle of needing to gear fresh blood was a death sentence for many guilds, and is why 40 man raids became a thing of the past. Ranked PVP (arenas) were only introduced after the first expansion, and at this point there were only 4 battlegrounds to choose from, Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley, and Eye of the Storm. The latter was released after the first expansion. So by this point, people had already been playing for 2 and a half years and stuck running the same 3 battlegrounds and 6 raids. 2 and a half years. Think about that. And the siege weapons that were promised as far back as 2002 were not seen in-game until 2008, a full 4 years after launch. Now let's look at what SW:TOR launched with, despite being rushed out the door to suit EA. 2 full raids (and a third one not far behind), 4 warzones, minimal lag and queue times, robust storytelling that was fully voice-acted, a loot system on par with WoW's current system (and that game had already been out for over 7 years), and hard modes, something WoW didn't start until Wrath of the Lich King. Let's also not forget the fact that you can customize your character, not nearly as robust as some of the less successful MMOs, but certainly far more than WoW. If this game had been allowed another year in development, it would have been perfect. Unfortunately, EA played its hand far too early and the community and staff suffered for it. This game is a monumental undertaking, and they pulled it off with great success despite everything. People love to look back on WoW with rose-tinted goggles, but WoW's launch was a nightmare, and the game didn't hit its stride until after it's first expansion, we're talking 3 years into the game's life. So people need to cut BioWare a little slack, for a first effort they did incredibly well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dallayna Posted June 24, 2013 Share Posted June 24, 2013 I feel like this should be on every page. I've been playing MMOs since their inception in 1997 with Ultima Online. I have seen a lot of MMO launches, and massive failures, in my time. Of all the MMOs I've played, SW:TOR had without a doubt the smoothest launch, and the most content upon launch. People love to compare this game to WoW, so let me do that for a moment. When WoW launched in November 04, there was no end-game raid present yet, there was no PVP beyond FFA world PVP (despite the developers having promised us siege weapons and mind-blowing competitive PVP upon launch), the classes were horribly imbalanced, some of them were outright broken (warlocks), there was such horrible lag that if you were lucky enough to make it on to the server at all, you probably didn't loot anything you killed because you'd be stuck looting and disconnected. There were several hour long queues on most servers, which is why WoW has so many gosh darn servers now which is where this came from. The game was almost completely unplayable for its entire first month, and in some cases longer. It took them months to implement standard features, like an end-game beyond running the same 5 mans over and over. Or zerging those 5 mans with 15 people. Even when PVP was introduced, it was only Warsong Gulch for the longest time. Imagine waiting months to get the PVP system the devs had promised on launch, only to be stuck playing Huttball, and only Huttball, for several months. Molten Core was the first raid introduced, followed by Onyxia, Blackwing Lair, Ahn'Qiraj, and Naxxramas. They also had the world dragons and Lord Kazzak as world bosses that guilds fought to the death over, but let's be honest, most people never had the chance to kill those bosses. They were on farm by the big guilds and big guilds only. I didn't add the 20 man raids (AQ20 and ZG) to this because they were not implemented well and barely utilized, they were too hard for PUGs to do, and didn't give good enough loot to make them interesting to already established raiding guilds. The raiding system was rudimentary and incredibly frustrating when it came to gearing players. There were no multi-class armor tokens, no commendation vendors, you relied on luck which caused a lot of problems for guild recruitment. Even though people were progressing through Naxxramas at the end, they were still having to run obsolete raids to gear up new players because WoW raiding had some of the worst player burnout I've ever seen. This perpetual cycle of needing to gear fresh blood was a death sentence for many guilds, and is why 40 man raids became a thing of the past. Ranked PVP (arenas) were only introduced after the first expansion, and at this point there were only 4 battlegrounds to choose from, Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, Alterac Valley, and Eye of the Storm. The latter was released after the first expansion. So by this point, people had already been playing for 2 and a half years and stuck running the same 3 battlegrounds and 6 raids. 2 and a half years. Think about that. And the siege weapons that were promised as far back as 2002 were not seen in-game until 2008, a full 4 years after launch. Now let's look at what SW:TOR launched with, despite being rushed out the door to suit EA. 2 full raids (and a third one not far behind), 4 warzones, minimal lag and queue times, robust storytelling that was fully voice-acted, a loot system on par with WoW's current system (and that game had already been out for over 7 years), and hard modes, something WoW didn't start until Wrath of the Lich King. Let's also not forget the fact that you can customize your character, not nearly as robust as some of the less successful MMOs, but certainly far more than WoW. If this game had been allowed another year in development, it would have been perfect. Unfortunately, EA played its hand far too early and the community and staff suffered for it. This game is a monumental undertaking, and they pulled it off with great success despite everything. People love to look back on WoW with rose-tinted goggles, but WoW's launch was a nightmare, and the game didn't hit its stride until after it's first expansion, we're talking 3 years into the game's life. So people need to cut BioWare a little slack, for a first effort they did incredibly well. Heh. Not only do I agree but you also forgot one. Granted, ROTHC was a bit on the small side but whereas WoW took 3 years to drop their first expansion, SWTOR just dropped theirs soon after their first anniversary- small or not, that's still pretty good for a bunch of noobs, I'd say. I also noticed something the other day while playing with my husband: Granted there are still some bugs that are lingering (and some really should have been dealt with earlier on) but there are tiny little improvements that have been quietly sneaking their way in that I haven't seen any mention of in these forums and I know that I didn't really notice until I started looking for them. Like being able to see the taxi in front of you the entire way- it used to be that the person and their taxi would just disappear right after launch or on Drommund Kaas for example- that shuttle from the city center to the Mandalorian Enclave, the Sith Sanctum, and the Citadel are now connected to the rest of the network. When you finish a chapter now after you use the Fleet Pass to pick up your reward you also automatically get a free pass to your Capitol City now too- or even the mouseover on gifts telling you what the affection gain on the companion you have out will give you. Like I said, they're tiny little tweaks so I couldn't honestly say when they crept in but they definitely prove to me that there are improvements that are going on and it makes me wonder just how many of them have been and are actually being made that no one has noticed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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