No More Daily Quests! Restore SWtOR's Honor! This is not another WoW clone!

All based up, again, 9 years of work, research and development. When WoW releases an expansion, endgame usually consists of two or three raids, two daily areas and a PvP map. Then Blizzard starts with it's Patch cycle, which adds a new Daily area or a revamped version of old content, such as Darkmoon Island or Hard Mode classic dungeons. Now once every Patch X.X, they'll add some new feature, but they always do the new daily area that is designed to be better than the previous one. Either by adding more story, easier challenges or some sort of chance at a rare item. All done because Blizzard looked at the last Daily area and said "Okay people loved X, but hated Y. What can we do to highlight X and how can we improve Y for the next one?"

That's why WoW's dailies are better than ours. They've been evolving it. If the last Daily area had you just killing bears for butts (which people hated) and fighting monsters for territory (which people loved), Blizzard designs the next area to focus less on killing goats and more on wrangling Chimeras. That's why Bioware can't keep up. By the time they figure out that people like Bounty Hunts and epic duels, Blizzard will have already done that patch and be on Vehicle combat and turtle punting minigames, which we may love.

WoW doesn't only look at itself, though. WoW looks at other MMOs and steals what they see fit. When I got back to WoW to try Mists of Pandaria, I saw a bunch of things WoW had copied from SWTOR. Area loot, a rage system akin to Sith Warriors, Rogues having sneak just like Operatives and Assassins. WoW doesn't only look at itself but at the genre as a whole. Why doesn't Bioware do that?

How come that Bioware didn't copy the Tol Barad daily format when they created the Black Hole questing area? Have they not had enough years in the business, or are they just inept? Lord knows they stumble on a lot of tech hurdles. Your post just points out that Blizzard is flat-out a better company when it comes to developing MMORPGs.

One company has to be better than the other though. But if SWTOR can't ever catch up to WoW, which seem to be what you are insinuiating, why do they keep copying stuff? I suppose you could argue that the recurring events are new, but recurring events become repetitive as well and recurring events are not as cherished as one-time events. And on the event front they have to wrestle with Guild Wars 2, who releases new content every 2 weeks... and that content is rather substantial.

The only reason this MMO is competitive at the moment is because of its IP, and not because of the stellar work of its developers. [edit] That's not to say that I don't appreciate the class stories or all the original content. I just don't like the route they've taken their game.

All they did with dailies are take missions you would normally do a one-and-done with and let you repeat them if you want. No biggie. If you don't want to do them, one-off the quest and go do something else. There's not like there's a lacking of content in this game anymore.

First, most of that stuff you mentioned was in WoW since Crusade.Wrath/Cata. SWTOR didn't originate those. They were in WoW first. SWTOR copied WoW.

Secondly, Yes, Blizzard is better than Bioware at developing MMORPGs. But as you point out, Bioware does a bang up job with stories. That's where WoW always falls flat. Anyone who's played WoW can tell you their stories are either WoW-ified rip offs of pop culture or terrible fanfiction. There's a reason why the phrase "Green Jesus" tossed around over there. Every game developer has that one thing that's going for them. Bioware has story. Bethesda has massive content. Blizzard has engaging gameplay. R* has open world.

You have to remember that this is Bioware's first MMO EVER. They're completely behind the curve. That's not to say they won't get better, but you shouldn't expect them to know the next big thing in MMO gaming right off the bat. In time, the game will grow in it's own, and Bioware will soon know the ins and outs. I have always said, since Beta, that Bioware is learning. This entire game is a learning experience and pass or fail, Bioware gets something out of it and the next one will be better. Look at KoTOR and compare it to Mass Effect. The romances are more robust, the character has actual dialogue, companions are semi-useful. That's the evolution. They learned how to go at that from years of tweaks, change and experimentation. That's how they got good and then created the perfect RPG: Dragon Age: Origins. Granted, they then screwed it to hell with 2, but live and learn.

Point is, SWTOR is not the WoW Killer, and it shouldn't have to be. Bioware just needs to focus on making it the best SWTOR it can be, and take the lessons and experiences and, if they choose to, make the next MMO they make better.

Which it will be, provided it's a Mass Effect MMO with Turians as a playable race from the get go.

Pwease, Bioware?

I am starting to see the unfortunate truth. Who is this mysterious order of sandbox haters that bash everything that could be slightly interesting? Where do they come from and how are there so many of them?

Think you misunderstood. In Mists of Pandaria WoW changed their rage system. Previously, melee swings and enrage (later on Battle/Commanding Shout) generated rage, and all attacks cost rage. Since Mists of Pandaria they made it so that some attacks generated rage while others cost rage, very similar to SWTOR's system. Stealth in WoW has always been silly, but I believe they nerfed it in Mists of Pandaria and slapped a sneak ability on it instead, like Operatives and Shadows. WoW may have come up with the concepts, Bioware altered them, WoW looked at these alterations and applied them to their own game.

Bioware did a good job with stories from a single player point of view. WoW did a much better job with an "online" story. You can question the quality of the story in WoW but you have to admit they do provide story more often than ToR. They may not have voice acted cutscenes but each area in WoW is full of lore. The raid bosses are very interesting as well. Less so in Mists of Pandaria, admittedly, but villains like Kael'thas, Lady Vashj, Illidan, Kil'jaeden, Arthas, Deathwing etc... they were enemies that it felt epic fighting. SWTOR in comparison has really lame boss encounters, and their plots since launch have been very weak.

I appreciate the class stories, I think they're great for reaching level 50, but I've always complained that this game lacks an overall story arc. So in many ways, I think that WoW does story better than SWTOR. That said, I don't appreciate the fourth wall breaking of all the pop cultural references that has cropped up in that game... but is SWTOR any better? We have gangnam style in this game now, and it's cringe-worthy. Not to mention, the factions have lost their identities. We see reps running around in imperial armor and imps running around in republic armor. That breaks the fourth wall for me just as much as all the Harrison Jones puns did in Uldum.

There were no Worgen, Goblins, Blood Elves, Draenei, or Pandaren when WoW came out. There were 3 starting zones on each side when it was released. Not only that, but their quests were boring quest logs like they are today. Poorly put together stories. You know a game has a bad story when it has characters such as Thrall, Garrosh, Varian, and if you're even more interested in characters like this, look up Med'an. Worst character writing. Ever.

3 starting zones per faction. You're arrogant and clearly new to WoW. Now, about your 'WoW had more content at release' part:

PvE: When the game was released, there were two raids. Classes were so horribly balanced and only Alliance could have Paladins and Horde had Shamans. Paladins had 5 minute buffs that weren't party or raid wide, so they had to cast it on each person. They spent their entire time buffing, to say the least. There was no raid finder until Cataclysm either, and no transmog (which existed in other MMOs years before its time) or reforging before Cata.

Oh, and by the way, WoW didn't have Tanks or Healers at release. They were called Warrior and Priest, and if you were not one of those, you had better be dpsing. That was WoW's balance.

PvP: Arenas didn't exist until Burning Crusade, and rated battlegrounds came with Cataclysm. Battlegrounds were such a joke, they're poorly designed and still are to this day. Isle of Conquest (Wrath) and Alterac Valley favor the Alliance, the chances of Horde winning those are slim. You also had to run up to a NPC in a city in order to join the queue for a battleground, and you had to run to instances in order to do a dungeon. That didn't change until Wrath of the Lich King.

Look up "World of Roguecraft" if you're seeking insight about WoW's pvp balance at release.

Quests: WoW quests have always, even to this day, been boring text logs. If you roll two different alts and quest on them, you will end up going through the same stupid stories. Sometimes they don't even have a story, they're just dull pop culture references. The lore is that much of a joke in that game. Horde has some decent Horde in its starting areas now, but Alliance has degraded even more with the release of Cataclysm. Quests for Alliance that had lore were replaced with pop culture after pop culture reference.

At the release of WoW, servers were constantly down. This persisted well into Wrath of the Lich King where sometimes they would give out free days if someone's server was down for an entire day, sometimes they decided we didn't deserve one. There were constant bugs, sometimes if you took a zeppelin you would fall through the world. You could fall through the world just by thinking of falling through the world. That's how buggy the game was.

But you never see people complaining about WoW's issues at release, because those issues were a decade ago. When that game was competing with virtually nothing. Wonder why it grew so fast? Because it was casual.

True the WoW lore is rich, but it's all stemmed from the RTS, and the MMO had a terrible time trying to translate it. Let's take a look at those villians you mentioned. Arthas started out in Frozen Throne as this bad, ultimate evil. He was dark but he had this allure that made people love him. He was a threat that you didn't mind having. Cut to Wrath, and his entire character seemed to get butchered. All the stories that involved him ended with him acting like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget. "I'll get you next time, Heroes!" Then came the Icecrown raid. As you said, the fights were epic and amazing. But you remember what happened AFTER the fight? "There must ALWAYS be a Lich King!"? Terrible end. Arthas died a helpless shell of himself. I mean, his last words were "Is it over, Father?" or something like that. Very anti-climactic for a guy we used to believe could have destroyed us. Then there's Deathwing. Bad Dragon, epic look, dark designs. Stole the dragon soul and kidnapped his fellow dragon's cluth to raise them evil. Pretty epic, right? The came Cataclysm and he was reduced to an absentee villain and his entire end game ends with him getting flushed down a whirlpool.

Blizzard has good BACK stories. When they try to bring it to the fore front, they end up failing miserably. They're not good with main stories. That's why the best storyline they ever made was the Old Gods. Because they weren't the vocal point. It was just something that happens on the side. Ulduar and Ahn'Quiraj were just one off raids of the patch and they were EXCELLENT. Karazan is another great story because it didn't have anything to do with the main story, save for the Draenei at the end, which was a disappointing end itself.

I played through Warcraft 3's campaigns a few months ago, and I can't tell you how true this is. Some of the best stories in WoW are from expansions based on the lore of the RTS games.

Cataclysm was just awful all around though, no amount of lore from the RTS could've saved that atrocity. At least Arthas had an interesting background. You know it's bad when Ragnaros, a boss recycled from Vanilla, is more liked by players than Deathwing.

First swtor has no honor, and never had any honor to begin with. Ever look at the old trailers before launch, in all this time they have brought one thing into the game that mimics their trailers. Not to mention how horrible the trooper is by way of looking like a star wars trooper, and acting like a star wars trooper animation wise. So not sure where you are getting the honor part from.

Secondly no more daily quests? I do not see that happening anytime soon, its a great way for devs to pat themselves on the back, and say we did something good. Although this last patch was hardly the worse, bringing in star wars mounts into the game, was one of the best things the devs have done in a long long long long long long long time. The sad truth is it still takes 10k+ to move a mod around on end game gear. If your upgrading your companions as you go, you can go through allot of creds fast. So people do need a way to make a quick bunch of creds, and dailies provide that.