To the Anonymous Insider

If anything will bury this game its EA's greed. Right after launch they started that survey asking people how much they would pay for DLC. They only 4 months after launch they start talking about going F2P, really? Did they expect to get 10 millions subs at launch or something? It took WoW years to get where it is, not an over night success some people think.

They need to hire some new bean counters over at EA who understand short term and long term investments. Square Enix said Final Fantasy XI is the most profitable game they have ever released. Not because they have sold millions of copies but because they have kept the server going for 10 years. MMO's are all about the long term.

Or do i mean the video that james ohlen put on the website, or the podcast they discussed it. maybe even the tons of interviews they did on it. I dunno have a stab at any of them.

Very little if anything stands up as "sandbox" by that defination.

Not Elite, not GTA, not even the Eldar Scrolls games..... not even Minecraft come to think of it.

It's exceedingly rare for a publicly traded company to even consider profit beyond 90 days. Not saying that's right, just that's how it is.

trying to say eve is like swg is just as insulting dont you think. Also may i ask what is so bad about sandbox elements, does it take you to far out of your combat zone. if you have actual choice in what you do will you fall off the deep end.

And thats because pure sandbox and pure themepark do not exist beyond a few games and most of them within single player simulator, you have an mmo and the game is part of both. sandbox elements and themepark mixed, the only difference is the slider on which they lean closer towards.

I really, really like this idea. It will make the galaxy feel more alive and encourage people to socialize while doing fun things.

End-game need not be operations. In fact, I'm so burned out by running ops. I have good end game gear by now I don't even bother using it since I just can't find the energy to do another EC run. I am having way more fun levelling another character.

There HAS to be alternatives to operations for "end game." Of course, BioWare should continue to develop that aspect of the game since there are people who enjoy it and don't burn out. However, I am willing to bet most people will never even see EC story mode or whatever new operations BioWare will release. There needs to be something for these players to do to ensure the long term profitability of SWTOR.

Mini-games is an excellent idea. People can play pazzak for credits. There can be swoop races with server ladders. And what about arena matches? I am not talking about the WoW style PvP arena, but more like the ones in KOTOR I (on Taris) and KOTOR II (on Dxun) where a player faces off against waves of increasingly tougher NPCs. For SWTOR, this can be made to include teams so players can work together. To make it more interactive, BioWare can incorporate the ladder system in Witcher 2's arena matches where speed and "stylistic" kills yield more points.

And of course, the space missions are utterly pathetic. BioWare claims people enjoy the space missions based on what they see in their "metrics." Of course people are running space missions if that's the only way to get space commendations to get social gear and crafting materials! And of course people would be running the Impossible mission for their daily commendations. It doesn't mean people enjoy it. Space is something that can use some serious improvement, and it can provide a new form of gaming in SWTOR. It has been raised numerous times, but cooperative space missions in a non-rail environment would really help.

BW communicates just fine. What folks are crying about is that they don't communicate what each specific person wants to hear be it mini games or what have you. What I find truly humorous is the fact that the devs of the OTHER game never said jack to anyone for years. You would hear about new stuff about 30 days before it would land for testing (or launch before the PTR) and no one seemed to have that much heartburn about it.

Here BW has relaunched a whole team to interact and communicate yet everyone still rants and screams and talks about how this should have been a sandbox / SWG 2 or how that other thing wasn't in the game and still should be or how something else sucks. We also know there are many who post this garbage that don't even play the game anymore because of whatever complaint. Not playing is their right, still crying about it is not.

I don't blame BW one bit for not sharing outside of generalities. They lose no matter what.

Where did I ever say sandbox elements were bad? I wish this game had some of them. I was just perplexed by the people that expected this to be more like SWG, when there was no reason for anyone even remotely following the game to think that was the case.

This I can agree with. I'd say very few games are solidly in the middle of this scale. Certainly this game is too far toward themepark and not even close to the middle.

Give me more sandbox in my MMO's and I'll show you a subscription base that will grow instead of decline.