Quick thoughts on BioWare's direction with this game.

I think EA/Bioware took a huge risk by concentrating so much of their initial efforts on an overlooked aspect of the MMO genre, and paid a high price for it, in money and reputation. It's unlikely that they will direct much of their efforts towards the storyline because it is the most expensive aspect of the game and promises the least return for the money invested.

It's simply being realistic to admit that the game is run by a for-profit company and their focus has to be on making more money than they spend. If it cost $X to develop a new chapter in a single class's story, then it will take $8X to add a new chapter for the game as a whole. They may bring this down to $2X by developing a faction-specific story instead, one for Republic players and another for Empire, but after playing through the story once there's little incentive to play it again with another class.

It's a big clue to their plans that free members will be restricted from things like the trade network, flashpoints, PVP and Ops, while anyone can play through the level 1-50 storyline for every character. It's the reason why the game lost some two thirds of its subs, no matter how good the stories are they come to an end after a week or two of intense play, maybe a month for the casual player, and you are left with the same familiar wzs and fps to play over and over. For people drawn to the Star Wars name and not traditional MMO players, the game ends at 50. Even playing alts is somewhat pointless, you might be interested in the differences between Sith Assassin and Sorcerer but the story is exactly the same, and though the story is different the gameplay is the same for a Sith Assassin and Jedi Shadow. It was even somewhat frustrating to play different classes in the same faction, after playing through Hutta with a Bounty Hunter I found I didn't want to play nearly the same game with an Agent. So the average player probably plays four characters to level 10, one on each starting world, then picks one or two to continue to the end of the story before getting bored with the game and quitting.

So most people played the characters they want to play, experienced the stories they wanted to explore, and unsubbed when they finished. With the upcoming free options, these casual players can experience whichever stories they want at their own pace, without the bother of subbing/unsubbing to the game. I think it is doubtful that they will want to sink millions more into expanding the stories for every character when they either offer this content for free or charge for it through subs/cash shop options. Free players are unlikely to pay to experience new chapters and so developers will have a hard time convincing EA to sink that kind of money into a project that has little hope of showing a profit.

Unfortunately, I think their most likely route to profit will be selling competetive advantages in the cash shop to players who approach MMOs from a more traditional viewpoint, while more casual users boost their population numbers but not the bottom line.

Hmmm...this game!? Lets look at this for a moment...

STORY:
8 unique class stories a player can choose from.
2 genders
2 different alignments that can change the entire story
Total of 32 possible unique stories a player can engage in.

PvE:
2 Flashpoints
3 Operations
Story or Hard mode and 2 with nightmare, but the different modes don't change the encounter. You could argue a tweaked mechanic, but it takes more than additional health points to qualify as 'changing' the Ops, only one is even slightly challenging at 50.

PvP:
Illum's incentive removed
4 boxes - absolutely NO change in any way, from 1-50.

And you REALLY think PvPers have had too much focused on them?! Or even PvEers?! I'd even classify the 2 events we've had as MOSTLY about story content with PvE.

And please don't speak like you're talking for everyone - SWTOR's main draw for YOU may have been 'story', but it wasn't for me.

Okay, I get that, and thanks for a legitimate reply. But to call the story the "biggest selling point" of the game is a reach. Sure, it was new and done really well, I'll give it that. But the selling point for many was Star Wars, period. Story, PvP, PvE, RP, whatever was added fluff to the IP of the game. This game has lost over 50% of the player base, over 1 million in subs, and I highly doubt that is due to "story" woes. Read the Unsubscriber thread and you will get a plethora of answers, which most of it revolves around PvE/PvP content and just general lack of communication from this team.

I sympathize with those who enjoy the story aspect, but overall, the story has overall MORE content than PvP and PvE. IMO, I consider the story aspect PvE type of content, since it mostly revolves around that gamestyle. PvP on the otherhand, has received only ONE map since launch. ONE. They also shutdown Ilum to some degree, which directly punted World PvP off the map (although, I don't think rewards are needed to have World PvP, and my opinion is that it died due to that and the massive lag, but I digress), and ever since PvP has been in a constant state of laughable playability. Yes, Ranked WZ's came out (Pre-Season), but this came at the end of June...6 months after the game came out, and months after it was supposed to come out (they renegged on 1.2, and moved it to 1.3).

PvP has a TON of vast issues that needs addressing, heck tbh, most would be happy if they simply tweaked the classes a bit and fixed the game-breaking bugs that occur. Sure we want content, but to read the OP's misguided views on how PvP has had so much content is a slap in the face to those who are still here, and to the hundreds of thousands who have left. I hope story gets some updates, I do, along with ALL forms of gameplay as I don't think ANY gameplay option should be more important than the other. But when a team run by EA is at the helm, we're all going to be fighting for scraps from a lack luster team, and squabbling endlessly to find some merit to keep paying for this game. A sad truth I'm starting to realize. EA has done a terrible job, and have taken BW's reputation and literally fed them to the wolves, with zero accountability.

Sorry for the tl;dr...just tired of seeing massive amounts of players leaving, from all aspects of gameplay, due to a team who has shown repeatedly...they do not care. I'll end this by saying best of luck to all gameplay features, but I think the OP is reaching for their own gameplay fun time, and crapping over others because they think this game ONLY revolves around "story" time. /salute

I think what she really meant is that BioWare was promoting this game as a "story-driven MMO", and since it was being promoted by the developers as story-driven this attracted many of the players like her to want the game to progress story-wise.

I actually did come here for PvP and OPvP, but sadly, all of it is extremely disappointing and this game just shows that an MMO being story-driven is like a double-edged sword.

I feel we are in the back seat of a car.

The car is going 100 MPH and obviously the wrong way.

We constantly tell the driver that he/she is going the wrong direction.

However, the driver doesn't speak the same language as we do.

At this point you have two options.

Stay in the car that is clearly driving torwards the ever looming cliff...

...or jump out of the car and take your chances.

Not quite comparable, as some people might be enjoying the ride, but the only consequence to the ride ending is that there's no more journey. Not actual death.

It's more like human life really, the end is inevitable, you can't change that, it's whether you enjoy the time you're here or not.

Story is going to be a tough nut for them to crack, i think.

I'm going to imagine its very expensive to get all the things together to make a good story. Voice actors, writers, the cut scenes, etc. If the future stories aren't up to snuff with what is already in game, there of course will be a pretty huge uproar.

We all know TOR hasn't taken off nearly as most expected, and I'm willing to bet the return on their investment isn't currenty what they expected either.

I hope they add more story to this game, its one of the few things here that kept me somewhat interested, and could possibly bring me back. Personally, I dont see it anytime soon, as I'd imagine its a pretty big undertaking, compared to other aspects of the game they can work on.

"Take your chances"?

But see, I feel they've kept their promise about Story...there is a LOT of Story content, including the events, that is already in-game. Everyone needs to realize that stories end...they can be expanded upon in the future, but they're not quick updates...we waited 3 years between movie releases (original and only true trilogy :P )...it's expected to wait a long time for a new story to be written. PvP and PvE content doesn't need to end...

I think we all have different aspects we'd like to see continue or be improved, and we'll naturally be advocating for them going forward. On your point of the pvp mess, my theory based on what I've seen is that they didn't plan sufficiently for pvp when they launched and have been playing catch up ever since with limited success. The reason story has more content (and really it's only during leveling that you see it) is that that's what the game started with. Since then there has been nothing, and story at level 50 is pretty much non-exisitent.