The end of the arguement. Is SWTOR in decline? Can it be saved?

The sky is falling!

Seriously though, the MMO genre has been on the decline for years. Today's players are fickle and require insurmountable loads of new and innovating content on a regular basis to be satisfied. The problem is there hasn't been a revolution in the genre since ....I hate to say it....World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft broke out of the previous generation of MMO by giving players a game that you could pick up easily and see content at a rather quick pace. Old staple MMOs (ie EverQuest, EverQuest II, UO, and DAoC) required many months of dedicated play to achieve what now can be had in WoW era games in days or weeks. As a result of WoW's success, newer games are now require to release new content and features at an exponential rate. Developing new content and features require a lot of money and manpower to be successful. To have the money you must keep current subscribers and lure in new players. Unfortunately this in of itself is a highly daunting task in todays MMO market. The fate of an MMO strictly lies within the players hands. If you enjoy a game, even slightly, support it. If you do not then expect it to fall into MMO purgatory.

TLR: It can be saved if players support it.

I think this thread may have gotten off topic...

Nevermind I'm mistaken, it varies.

what is up with all this "you should leave this game NOW cause this game will fail"!?

I like this game, I'm not bored and have pretty much cleared all pve content. so **** and let me stay and play the game.. damn, some people are just trolling and they don't even know it.. that's metatrolling.

*cough* game has been out for more than a year *cough*

(still going to try it out though.)

And also, to the WvWvW lovers out there... what happens when there is a world imbalance (because you know it's going to happen) I wonder what the QQ on the forums will be about.... sounds like a rehash of Illum.

I really want to like this game , I really do. My question is , if your going to take the ideas from other MMO's , why didn't BW take any of the good ones? The LFG system is archaic , the guild level system was great in Warhammer , the perk system ect.. I'm not saying that taking from another game is bad , its part of a collective creative process like most artforms and/or mediums , I feel like I'm playing KoToR 3 with multiplayer emements , not a true MMO. If you want to compete , take the GOOD ideas from past games and fire the guy that designed the armor sets n this game , hes terrible....

I have not read the 62 pages of this thread, but i thought just in the unlikely event someone wades through it for coherent posts, i would share why i *might* cancel.

I love this game. It is a great deal of fun. I have 3 50s, and working on a fourth. The problem is there does not seem to be a great deal of endgame. This is probably not the games fault, maybe its the player base!. But i am bored of pvp so i go on the fleet once a day and spam

"LFG any HM, can do any role dps/tank/heals!" and i often logout after a half an hour of no responses. I am also older and have less time that i was in "other MMOs" So sometimes i have 2 hours to spare so i think ill try to log for the slight possiblility of a quick HM. Oh, fatman has a 1 hour queue? ( rolled first day of EA so i didnt know what i was getting into) And saying reroll and leave 3 toons behind is not fun.

Anyway, i hope this game pulls through. I see awesome things going on with another warzone and world events. But i cant see them because i dont have time to wait in the Q. I might unsub and resub after a couple months of D3. havent decided yet. I have nothing to flame, no devs to blame. Im very impressed with the game as a whole, but it is what it is.

*points to Jame's sticky thread* They're working on a LFG tool. One thing I've seen with a lot of players is that they don't actively search for groups. Most just want to press a button, and do all the work for them. Not saying that it's all the players, but from what I have experienced (and it's very limited; what you expect me to know everyone?) that's how many players act, especially when it's not necessary to complete.

the problem has a lot of factors
1-the MMO market is saturated, you cant throw a stick without seeing another MMO being released nowadays, people who play MMOs are so spread out over a lot of games

2-there will always be people who have to try out the latest thing, then consume the content and move on to the next thing, they will never be long term players of anything because nothing really satisfies them

3-the economy is still in the toilet, so people have less disposable income

4-haters will hate no matter what, and there will be nothing you can do or say that will even allow them a civil discussion, whether it be people who just hate EA, or people who hate BioWare, or people who hate the game for whatever reason, or hate life itself.... they will always find reasons to spew hate and venom at anyone who doesn't share their views

Read my other posts. They have been ignoring us beta testers (original beta) since we had the chance to say anything. Most of the problems with the game that exist today were in the game 6-7 months before launch.

I was asked to talk about the game in person in NYC with several other people. When I did, all of us collectively voted the game a 5 - 6 out of 10. We told them all the problems with the game and not one of them were addressed. Most of us there were hardcore, experienced players with some casuals as well.

Its amazing how many things people agree on when they discuss it in person. A lot of the people who jump at the chance to disagree with vital recommendations (proper combat logs, good LFG system, better raid utility, open source UI), do not give the points a proper listen or understanding. The fact that the combat log thread I created went on for thousands of posts with inexperienced players screamed in agony against it when they couldn't properly defend their point of view and BioWare continue not to listen not even responding one post in the thread.

Go to a WoW forum and compare the amounts of developer posts. BioWare has failed to listen to the community. To shorten it, here is a list:

Failed to be as active as needed on the forums (sorry, simply stating in videos that you promise you're listening doesn't cut it)
Failed to address issues presented almost a YEAR before launch
Failed to listen to priority solutions (fans saying they don't care about story focus on gameplay)
Failed to deliver proper customer support/in-game support

I can go on further than that, but do not let the pompous responses from Stephen Reid fool you. They didn't listen and he can say whatever he wants about developers not responding as much because they do not want to address the same issues more than once without moving onto new topics. But please, where are these new topics that were addressed? They don't exist.

Statements that 1.2 will be the biggest patch in MMO history... a joke. Statements (old article) that gamers really do not know what they want.... a joke. Statements that this game will be taking from WoW... a joke.

Yes, people forget about that. One of the doctors released a statement that gamers do not know what they want in a game. During the development of this game, the attitude the entire staff has had towards the community has been that we do not know what is good for the game. That is the case for a lot of people, but after looking at the Guild Summit and the kinds of people that were poking at advice and that were chosen is ridiculous. Not to mention the unbiased census from that summit was that they only chose to showcase material and shrugged a lot of valuable suggestions off.

Fact of the matter is, everything valuable someone brought up they wanted in game, got the same generic response that it would be in the title... eventually. Their priority system has been trash since day one focusing on emotes on vehicles (which still don't work). All they did was market how their MMO would have story. People constantly said that was cool, but they wanted to see gameplay. All through development all we heard was STORY STORY STORY... while everyone BEGGED for combat news and commented on it. AND NOTHING WAS DONE.

Everyone raved about the leveling, all BioWare SHOWED during development was LEVELING. Their lack of focus in end-game not only shows their inexperience since so many titles failed due to it, but it also shows how they DID NOT LISTEN. Everyone begged to see end game and real content, but STORY was all we got. Even then, the story isn't that good. 2-3 classes are OKAY but BioWare simply isn't the great developer everyone thinks they are.

Give Blizzard the IP, sure you'll miss the reason you are doing a quest here and there, but at least there will a focus on PLAYING and not LISTENING. Seriously, SWTOR is like a pop-up book. I wanted an MMO.

QFT!! Love that article! So true! Hahahah!

The game isnt' dying. What people are seeing on the servers isn't people leaving, is less people playing concurrently. It's the typical (as in every single MMO ever made) "launch surge/dropoff" of playtime that gives the illusion of loss of subs.

Incidentally, the number of subs for TOR has only been increasing, not declining.