Jeff Hickman and Bruce Maclean now on IGN with details on story

They said story was a 4th pillar, they're ignoring the other 3, and guess what happens when you remove make one pillar too long compared to the others. Your structure collapses. Also if they're pivoting to an online Kotor RPG, I want SWG back in DBG Austin's hands, because with this new direction it ceases to be an mmo.

Firstly you are going back to quote content that is what ... nearly 2 years old and also is tlaking about mistakes they've made that they've since fixed ideally ( or at least attempted to by adding tons of end game content to the game, my opinion is that this is what is not working ).

I don't think you can by all rights quote claims made so long ago about a completely different issue ( a lack of end game content because people pissed through the story content and had nothing to do ) compared to the issues they face now.

Now ... the people you talk about are the casual MMO market as I see it, if they can't be bothered running multiple toons they generally can't be bothered running group content like operations either. Operations are more niche content for the more vested MMO player and not the casual MMO player. Thus adding more and more operations won't do a lick of good to keeping people playing if they don't do operations to begin with ( and the majority of people don't based on that earlier point around operation metric's put forward by Infernixx ).

Many casual players of this game may indeed not roll a second, third toon ( oh and how many do I know that have multiple toons, pretty much everyone in my guild which is about all the people I know in game beyond people on forums who I don't know outside of forums for the most part ) but again those players are most likely not going to raid and probably just get a bit sick of SWTOR in general and want something else to do ( I am one of these players, I felt like some GTA 5 style play and now I'm keen for some fantasy witcher 3 style play before I fully return to fully playing star wars again ).

Now we get the new content that is 9 chapters on release with more to come on a regular schedule ... your end game content then becomes the new content they keep adding and it also encourages all the truly casual players ( the majority of players ) to subscribe to enjoy this even if it is just one toon.

I mean just by them saying they will regularly add in new chapters more or less answers your entire post so I really don't see how you think this is some big mistake by Bioware, this is what they should have done in the first place really. 1 - 2 raid added a year max but keep the story content rolling in every month or 2.

I think you need to somehow get away from thinking that end game content like raiding is everyone content, it's not, it's niche content and will never, ever save an MMO in today's market without good ACTUAL everybody content like story addons to back it up.

Even if they said "a 4th pillar", is it not odd how they beat that one to death in every single video and never really talked about the others? Its because this is Bioware, story is what they do. The other pillars are things they really aren't that familiar with. Sure this game will most likely cease to exist as a proper MMO. However, I personally am ecstatic that its moving into this direction. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed doing anything with other people in this game due to the toxic nature of the MMO side of the community. The side of the community in every single online, story driven game that eventually drives me away from it.

Being able to see the full story without some jerk criticizing me for how I choose to play is a huge positive! Being able to watch every single second of the cutscenes every time I see them because I choose to, without some jerk telling me to hit the spacebar is a huge positive to me! Bottom line the story should be accessible to all players without the need for forced player interaction with others. Yes they can choose to do so but forcing it is a huge turn off.

This is a type of game where the forced social nature of MMOs is actually the absolute worst thing you could do to it. That's not to say that grouping with friends who you know or respect isn't fun. But having the meat of this game being locked away unless I group with them or, in the case of OPs, a bunch of people I have no desire to deal with, is just crap. If my money each month as a subscriber continues to pay for the ability to have a game where the story has no roadblocks to access it including removing all need for a multiplayer group (leave it as optional) and the story itself is continually advanced and of Bioware quality, then I'll pay to play this game until the end of time.

unless we lose the battle against vitiate and vitiate causes us to be put in carbonite.. than I cannot think of a more reasonable answer as to how our characters could possibly be captured in such a way. And even then it seems unlikely that vitiate would allow us to live.

other than that, im on board and excited about everything else.

it also sounds like there are no more factions, such as republic and empire, there is only outlander. Which could support the "cross faction" ques.

That confirms my suspicions about the companions getting scattered and us having to find and recruit them again.
And that we'll have new interactions with them.

The more stuff the reveal, the more convinced I'm becoming that I'm dreaming all of this.

They're not talking about 'now'...They're talking about their total metrics over the last three years. Well before 12x XP came along.

Simply put, it's the story that keeps people playing. There's a certain percentage of the player base that comes and goes, who show up when the new raids are here, grind through that raid content, get it all done and then leave for months until the next raids show up. And for the longest time, the Dev catered to those locusts, tried to get them to stick around with NiM content and all that jazz.

Now, though, they're focused on giving story content to the much larger group that sticks around and plays through the story over and again. Something that they can look back over the last three years and see for themselves. And it's well over-due.

im sorry, if my companions havent been spending their time trying to find my carbonite body and resurrect me... to hell with them!! I will take all the new guys for my crew!

When the game went f2p and nearly died the number one complaint was not story, it was end game content.

So keep telling yourself story are the main group of players, but late at night when you go planet to planet you will see maybe 3 or 4 people there, then go to fleet and you will see hundreds queued for flashpoints, operations, and warzones, and those numbers speak for themselves. Their metrics are joke, a farce, and are quite honestly laughable, I have 10 toons that are in their main story at the moment, doesn't mean I play them though, that is all those metrics show, is that those toons are currently in the main story. Nothing else.