I know variance on opinions on this are extreme, and even agreement whether SW is suffering from subscriptions or not. This is what I have observed: When I'm on various planets like Tatooine or Hoth, there is only 10 people online. In starter areas like DK, the population is 40-60. This is during this week. When I started, I recall 3 instances of the world like DK, with about 100 or so per instance. What is scary is that those I played with got bored, dropped guild, or dropped the game altogether, and these were die hard and totally into the game.

 

The biggest thing that has killed the game for them is the bugs in the end game operations. I'm a casual player, but I recognize the obvious need for fun stuff to do once you hit 50, and if this content has show stopping bugs, then this sort of kills the energy out of the game.

The emphasis on one-time content in a subscription-based game is, I feel, the problem.

 

If it's a game which you can get 3 buddies to buy, play whenever you feel like, and not be punished by needing to subscribe, then there's no problem. It's a fun game that way and to get together and play occasionally while ensuring you have all the pieces you need to run a successful group. You can have a satisfying play experience just by buying the box and chugging away at it at your own pace. However, with the subscription model, if you can't do absolutely everything with your three buddies after four months have finished (and it can, depending on your friends, be difficult to play reliably), the price of the game will have doubled for no apparent reason.

 

TOR's servers are not very system intensive. I'd wager it's entirely possible for a player with a solid to run a server of whatever world (for the sake of example, let's say Tatooine) and play with their friends on a local network. The online services such as mail can be handled online without a problem.

 

If TOR was B2P rather than subscription-based, I wouldn't hesitate to suggest my friends play it as a successor to the KOTOR games, with a little bit of fun co-op game content on the side. As a subscription-based game, I hesitate to suggest it to anyone in lieu of the juggernaut that is WoW- The only reason I'm playing TOR over WoW is that DS doesn't interest me. As soon as MOP or GW2 hits, I'll be jumping.

trust me when i say this. Once you hit 50 you will be like...ok what now? Spaming chat for lfg for fp's gets old in 5 mins and good luck finding a guild that's willing to take you because they enjoy pve...and dont get me started on the pvp lol.

 

To answer your question..whats killing swtor? simple. biofailware and EA. At least from what ive read that swg lasted many years..doubt this will see 2 years game time let alone 1.

i think it's the difficulty to find a quick group for a flashpoint or heroic. flashpoints are hella fun but they're inaccessible.

trust me when i say this. Once you hit 50 you will be like...ok what now? Spaming chat for lfg for fp's gets old in 5 mins and good luck finding a guild that's willing to take you because they enjoy pve...and dont get me started on the pvp lol.

 

To answer your question..whats killing swtor? simple. biofailware and EA. At least from what ive read that swg lasted many years..doubt this will see 2 years game time let alone 1.

 

As soon as you mentioned pvp i cringed a little, allot of the casual pvper's that i know no longer que do to being destroyed by premades. i myself have thrown in the towel today and have rolled on another server playing the republic faction because its new to me and ive never done any of the republic stuff yet.

 

all of the premades have turned off many people to pvp and i could see the que times getting worse and worse. so for me its the premades that killed pvp for me, having pugs go up against premades is just silly in my opinion.

Lack of group finder

What about bugged operations? Let's say you got a 50 and you were ready to do operations to find out that the content is blocked by bugs? Is this important? (A lot of guildees have dropped out of game because of this, and some still hang around for at least the pvp content).

All the systems (GTN, crafting, raiding, grouping, guilding) all have a common dependency.

 

PEOPLE

 

No people means many of these systems just fall apart or plain don't work, which creates a huge problem for the players unlucky enough to be stuck on basically a zombie server.

 

- P

All the systems (GTN, crafting, raiding, grouping, guilding) all have a common dependency.

 

PEOPLE

 

No people means many of these systems just fall apart or plain don't work, which creates a huge problem for the players unlucky enough to be stuck on basically a zombie server.

 

- P

 

This. Problem is they have dragged out so long without adressing the server population issues with transfers/merges that they might as well just close the worst servers down since there is no one left soon.

Boredom is killing TOR.

 

PVP feels unsupported or impossible due to a lack of people and no x-server or merges.

 

PVE is... PVE. But I'm told most pvers have their own issues like lots of bugs and such.

 

Basically, nothing to do.

Edited May 5, 2012 by Dystopic

The endless amount of mechanic bugs.

The unoptimized graphics engine(which still isnt tuned..)

The total an utter vacuum of a strong community.

GHOST TOWN SERVERS. Almost everyone I've seen quit, did so because of the dwindling server pop. And everytime someone quits, they make the remaining people in the server want to quit that much more.

the lack of real alien speices to play as.

even the ancient swgalaxies had some.

thats what killed it for me, oh and the thing that makes me crash all the time after 1.2.

Personally, I the biggest issue with SWTOR for me - is that it doesn't really feel like world to me.

 

It is way too segmented, and getting from area to area is extremely cumbersome - load spaceship - fly to star - load orbital station - run to shuttle. It takes a considerable time and it feels like an unnecessary bunch of actions you need to perform tediously every time you want to leave the fleet.

 

That basically turns the fleet into my world - I barely leave it to do anything other than WZs.

 

I miss the feeling of a world around you, and especially miss seeing people from 2 factions sent into the same areas for questing so some random, non objective based world pvp could occur .

IMO people were expecting a change and got more of the same. And what there was was consumed very quickly.

Unrealized expectations are what is killing SWTOR. The vast majority of us expected (going all the way back to when it was announced) this game to blow us out of the water, to have every thing that we want in a game, and to forever scratch our itch for a place to call our virtual home. The reality is, no games can do that anymore. Our desire for every game to be perfect leads us to assumptions that games fail and that the game is dying. We will never be satisfied and will continue to look forward to the next biggest thing b/c surely there is a game out there that can make the emptiness go away.

 

While that's the truth of the matter, there are some specific reasons that the average person doesn't log in. Each of us has their own. For me it's two things: lack of a true solo pvp experience at endgame. Premades will rule the day until cross-server queuing hits, and maybe even after that if the queue pool continues to shrink. Secondly, I'm player capped on the server I've built my legacy on. I'd gladly roll more alts, but I don't care to start all over again on a new server.

 

Part of this is also my fault (and many of yours I imagine). I simply consumed content too fast. The game isn't even 4 &1/2 months old yet I've burned myself out. I wasn't smart about striking a good balance of game play with real life. As I mentioned in another thread: we don't go to the movie theater & watch all the movies at once. Why are we maxing out our free time on one game?

 

So I've begun to pace myself. I'm willing to let the game grow while I do other things. I know my wife, my dog, and my health are appreciating my decision.

Edited May 5, 2012 by GRINnBARRETT

Lack of more Sandboxy things to do a L50 (like RvR).

 

The staticness of the world combined with having to level alts through the exact same path again and again and again.

Spoiled folks from Wow expected all the lazy/spoiled stuff from Wow in Swtor.

Pitty for them it wasnt that at all.

So they wont come back after a free period of playing.

And the folks who are staying are like "whheeee whheeee i want this and that whheee whheee"

Well, the PvP is awful.

End-game has destroyed this game. You all say dwindling server populations killed this game. Well, people had to leave the game for some reason. What is that reason? End-game PvP/lack of rich content.

 

PvP has, and continues to be one of the worst aspects of this game. It's vastly imbalanced. And it requires you to cater to a mucked up system in order to get anywhere. What system is that I speak of? Expertise. Expertise pretty much makes everything you acquire, do, learn (schematic wise) pointless because once you get to 50, the only gear that really matters is PvP gear. It's too versatile; expertise encompasses too much for one stat. And you are currently meant to grind for it in one way, buy it from essentially one source, and strive for the exact same gear. PvP gear can be used in PvE scenarios just fine, by the way. Don't even try to argue otherwise.

 

In summation this is what we have: a game that guides you along a path and dangles shiny things that it hopes you invest your time in to acquire. Once you get to the end, it comes crashing down very hard and basically tells you, "Sorry that was all just a big joke, now it's time to do what really matters: grind your face off for this gear that everyone else will have because all the countless hours you spent doing stuff prior doesn't matter."

 

In the end, the question that really matters is: is succumbing to an ancient system of effort/reward really worth it? Grind, grind, grind. And if yes, are you prepared to face countless hours of pure frustration due to SEVERE class imbalances? Funny, even the die-hard PvPers who roll FoTM classes and grind PvP (and who also think they're good because they do this) all left because even face-rolling others due to sheer broken mechanics could not hold their interest long enough.

 

Oh yeah, forget to mention: No open worlds. Don't even try arguing against this, just don't. Botched World PvP. INNUMERABLE GAME BREAKING BUGS. Dozens of lazy, cheap, graphical gimmicks. Anyone ever notice that the lightsaber blade is just 6 flat rectangles meshed together to create the illusion of 3-D? Look down the blade next time you get a chance. The water is essentially unfinished. The crafting system is dull; with a lousy, sloppy trade network to boot. Can't even bid on items? Really? What about all the random, unoriginal, uninteresting NPC enemies you encounter in your pre-50 grind? Enemies like: "plutterflume," or "razorron", or "sneaky goon". Animals/creatures that don't have anything to do with the Starwars Universe! Oh yeah, did I mention yet, no open worlds. The whole game -an MMORPG for that matter [!}- is a series of instances, layers, invisible boxes and graphical cut-off points. It's 2012, people. SWG had more, and was far more groundbreaking. But we get: Starfox 64-esque space combat minigame. No real RP. Can't sit in chairs, still. Emotes are horrible and very few. The Fleet cantinas down right suck. No synced up trade networks. One Rep, one Imp, one Neutral. Way to bleed an already dying economy. No player housing. That sort of makes sense though considering the whole game is a series of dozens of instances. Where would the player housing be located? In an apartment style instance on Coruscant? Maybe I shouldn't have thrown that idea out there. Let's not even being to discuss the numerous time/credits sinks like the Legacy system or pets or mounts or essential services like stim vendors and repair costs. Oh yeah, dropping 100,000k on skills.

 

What you get when you open the box is a very unevolved, uninspired WoW mod. This game wreaks of EA greed. A giant carrot at the end of a long stick, while running on a very, very steep incline. What happens when you get to the top? Well the carrot tastes rotten, and you do it all over again because you're promised with one that will taste better.

 

In the end however, the 200,000 people or so who left this game for good, were severely put off by the stinky end-game PvP. We're talking about PvP guilds close to 100 members who flat out quit prior and just after 1.2.

 

I'm very worried about the life of this game. Between December 20th and January 10th, you had to wait in line (3 hours on weekends) to access your server. Between the next two-three months Republic fleet had well over 100 at any given time (no need to mention the staggering numbers seen by the Imperial side). After 1.2 the server population declined to about 40 on each side. Now, just two nights ago, the server population -in total- was 40.

Edited May 5, 2012 by Maurdiib

I will sum it all up for you.

 

Incompetence is killing SWTOR.

What this game need is a Group Finder and a massive, complex achievementsystem. Thats all I want for now

IMO people were expecting a change and got more of the same. And what there was was consumed very quickly.

 

Since it was known pre-release that SW:TOR was a holy trinity game then those people must have been living under a rock if they expected something which wasn't.

 

Bioware stated they didn't set out to reinvent the wheel just make the best MMO they could.

Spoiled folks from Wow expected all the lazy/spoiled stuff from Wow in Swtor.

Pitty for them it wasnt that at all.

So they wont come back after a free period of playing.

And the folks who are staying are like "whheeee whheeee i want this and that whheee whheee"

 

are you kidding? SWTOR was easier then WoW leveling. What game were you playing?

There is no variety or reply value. its that simple

 

Flashpoints are fun but once you have collected the required gear and played it afew times they become dull and boring. Raids once completed afew times they become dull and boring.

 

Reason? everything in this game is too easy to gain. Armor is easy to collect, leveling is to easy etc

 

This game needs collections. more mounts/armor/items/weapons/rares. ATM this games endgame items are all generic sets that look the same and are dull and boring. Nothing in swtor is rare or hard to gain, hell even getting full rakata implants/earpiece isnt hard its just "dull and boring"

 

Ive played this game to death, six 50's across two servers/factions. I run a guild and find myself struggling to want to help ppl atm, not because im unhelpful but because im bored. Regards of hardcore or casual, i feel this game has no endgame grinds, nothing is difficult to gain and time isnt an issue as the raids can take around 1/2 hours (which is nice if that 1/2 hours you were actually challanged)

 

Overall the concept of SWTOR was good, but they just gave us a stunning world with nothing in it.

 

Ilum - dead planet with nothing but dailies that take 30mins to complete (you travel the same route over and over)

Corellia - same as above

belsavis - same as above

 

What im trying to say is, there is nothing in this game that is considered a "variable" everything is constant and nothing is dynamic and as much as i love swtor for what i wanted it to be, i hate it as much for what it has become......a wow clone that has taken nothing but the worst from wow and added voice acting that once played through 1/2 times becomes a drag on the ears and a timesink that can be avoided by spamming space every quest hand in.

 

GW2 is something that will change the mmo market, it may not destroy wow (infact i very much doublt it seeing as wow=mmo in most gamers minds atm)

 

GW2 is what bioware should have done, instead we have a copy and paste that was somehow corrupted along the way and filled in with generic ideas that are called "fresh and new".

 

Look back at the dev videos "you fight many characters" / "pvp is fresh and new, not seen before" / "in this game we try and avoid the same old kill big boss till it dies" and the list goes on, they either lied or rushed the game out, i would rather imagine EA pulled out the wipe and cried "more money" but hey what do i know, im just a simple gamer in a simple world with other simple minded people who simply wish to find a world they can call home.

 

SWTOR is like a hotel for me, im going to stay for awhile, raid the fridge, watch some dirty videos then steal me some towels as i leave...