I'm also one of the people who have cancelled their SW:TOR account because of the Mass Effect 3 ending..

 

I understand you are frustrated with you're anticipation of ME3, but I do not understand why you would cancel SW:TOR because ME3 did not meet you're expectations.

 

If it is because it carries the BW name, then with all of the other games by so many companies that "fail", how do you play any MMO that is out there?

 

Surely this list includes games that had previously been released, then joined other companies that have let people down with lackluster games.

Edited March 15, 2012 by Esproc

My reply is about SWTOR, not ME3.

 

I think what many people consider standard features in an MMO being missing from this game has shocked many given the hype, the budget and the names involved in making the game. It feels very lacking for a game at launch in terms of content. This whole "play old-school because it's hardcore" mentality doesn't really sit well with too many people in this day and age. The sheer number of bugs and difficulty and time involved in finding a fix has surprised many people, even those who have played from launch. Over and over again I've seen the line that "It's not the game, it's your system" when clearly it's the game. And that's when the customer service decides to make available information from the devs. Which happens shockingly rarely. And I don't think I've ever heard an apology, which is fairly strange and unexpected. The coding doesn't seem too tight and there is very little optimization and I'm starting to think they've got far too many devs and programmers (it's a massive number - over 650 which is a number I've never seen any game come anywhere near close to) and maybe it's resulted in bloated coding and compatibility issues within the coding which leads to issues for players. It feels like there are too many barriers with bringing players together, and unless you're comfortable spamming general chat or /who and whispering people of suitable levels and roles (which I'm not) you won't get too much done, and most people aren't used to it taking hours to be able to do something no matter what time of day you play anymore.

 

I know it's getting fixed, but the randomness of Champion bags broke many people and I hope the fix didn't come to late. Illum?

 

Sadly, all this has lead to a pretty bad rep for the game, and could actually destroy it. And it doesn't seem like the devs are exactly scrambling to fix the game itself. As a PVE'er wannabe (and I say wannabe as my entire guild has quit and it's almost impossible to get anything done) the patch notes for 1.2 contain pretty much nothing that's of any interest to me. Except crafted moddable gear being crittable. So I could be set to be able to make gear that's in demand meaning my crew skill won't be useless. The guild bank idea happened too late for me and a lot of people couldn't get over that there wasn't one.

 

They released it at Christmas, which while ground-breaking and new and different etc, might have been a bad idea. Most MMO players are parents and the makers of SWTOR chose to compete with being able to buy presents for children. So it's hard to live down in the minds of a lot of parents. At a time of year when we have little to spend on ourselves they released this game. As game designers know, giving someone a subscription-based game to someone who didn't specifically ask for it is a definite no-no as you're giving them a bill they might not have expected so they generally tend to recommend to their players NOT to give someone a copy of the game to a friend/family member as a gift when they're not expecting it. Yes, many adults may have asked for the game for a Christmas present and were given it, but for the rest of us we had to buy it ourselves. At the worst possible time of year.

 

And the community came as a shock to a lot of gamers from other games. That's all I'll say on that matter.

Edited March 15, 2012 by Darnu

Ok, so with the recent release of Mass Effect 3 and so many people not liking the ending, they are making comparisons to Star Wars the Old Republic being such a horrid game and using words like "fiasco" and such. It's all apparently evidence that Bioware has lost their touch and is going to completely fail as a company very soon.

 

 

Now... what did I miss? What are these people talking about? I've not been playing for awhile (still subscribed) because various things IRL have left me with less time to play video games, then I wanted to finish up a save for ME2 and now playing ME3.

 

So what have I missed?

 

You missed a lot of good games by the sound of it, so you dont have anything to compare swtor and mass effect to.

No biggie, games are just games, not important.

Edited March 15, 2012 by kaboro

Sadly true. I'm a history teacher, and assigned an Essay about the Fall of the Roman Republic.

 

Of 29 Students, 12 used the terms lol, omg, or some other internet leet-speek.

 

1 student actually said the Senate was trolling Caesar.

 

Hope the Mayans were right, cause anything else will be a ***-hat Sopranos ending.

 

Oh wow now I'm definitely thinking going into ancient history DESPITE the fact I could end up being a teacher is the wrong way of looking at it. Now I'm getting excited about reading essays like this :(

Best summed up in a quote by Ben "Yahtzee" Crosshaw:

 

"Fans are clingy complaining dip****s that will never ever be grateful for anything you give them."

 

Except they didn't "give" them anything, they sold it to them.

there are ALOT of fiasco in this game tbh,, just take Ilum,, know ilum are dead now,, but BioWare did let it live like that too long,, and now they AGAIN reward those ppl that is on server with HUGE faction difference,, now u can fight you own faction in ALL wz,, so the fact that bioware is give a **** about the faction that suffer big time on servers is my reason to have my account stay cancled this time,, call it what u want,, but fact is that im playing on server "Scepter Of Ragnos" as republic,, our guild is dying,, like ALL other guild there, if we need a DPS for a OPS its imposible to find any,, there isnt just not any to find

and no,, there is noone to recuite

Edited March 15, 2012 by FCI-DK

Sadly true. I'm a history teacher, and assigned an Essay about the Fall of the Roman Republic.

 

Of 29 Students, 12 used the terms lol, omg, or some other internet leet-speek.

 

1 student actually said the Senate was trolling Caesar.

 

Hope the Mayans were right, cause anything else will be a ***-hat Sopranos ending.

 

If true and i belive you. i can only say one thing OMG (yeah i know ). how is that possible?! Is dreadfull. Senate trolling Caesar is... what a hell? dont this kids have brains?

got me laughing for a bit, then i realize.. it isnt a laughing matter at all.

Yeah Bro, Caesar like was in da #%@ man, he was trolled by his blood yeah. Snakes stabbin in da back. Mandems in da hood like disrected him yeah...

 

 

That is sad but also very funny. I did actually lol when I read that about the essays. It is a disturbing trend of society and the English language slowly is going through a new evolution. although to be fair it always has been. Home Simpson DOH I believe is in the new Oxford Dictionary.

Before you try and troll me say im a hater, lets get one thing straight from the start, I love this game, the story mode is awesome, lots of new gaming ideas and the community is, in the most, very friendly, but we as gamers and BW as devs need to pull our heads out of the sand...

 

1 guilds are dieing out there, why , well because players ARE leaving en-mass, mostly due to a lack of patience, but some because the game falls short on many aspects, like buggy bosses (we want to fight mobs, not poor coding), UI issues, lack of combat meters ( yes is said the swear words, but everyone wants to make sure they are pulling thier wieght), plus other issues that have been well written about by the community.

 

2. Theres to many servers imho, I fully understand why BW. Launched with so many, but lets face it, the player base they where hoping for just hasnt happened, and you can reply by saying "myy server is fine ****", but 1 in 4 servers being good isnt realy good enough is it?

 

3. Free to play weekend already??!!...look back in gaming history, and every game that starts as a subs game and goes to f2p is in turmoil, something that cant be argued about can it

 

Solutions to these problems are kind of easy tbh, merge some servers to make life easier for players to actually play, sort the bugs out, dont give us new content if its not up to scratch. Simple really when you think about it.

 

Gamers have been spoilt by blizzard, dont ignore what they have done with warcraft, dont ignore what they have done, copy and spin it in a differant direction.

 

BW has the wieght of millions. Of mmo and star wars fans on thier shoulders, if the game fails you can add in millions of dollars worth of debt to add to it.

 

Am I going to un-sub, no

Am I going to re-sub after my 6 months is over? Jusys out atm

What did you mis ??

 

Obviously, and this has been going on for sometime now, the industry has became a money machine and it's not anymore about game for gamers but games for the money.

 

Who cares what the game is ? Certainely not EA (with Bioware in front because they are so cool)

 

People, Gamers, Girls and Boys ..

You all have been steamrolled by companies promoting game for what it could be and not for what it actually is. Wallet steamrolled !!

 

In the 80's they actually have forbiden false advertisement for kids where you could see actual toys flying or doing anything. Kids believe that the toys would actually do that once out of the box.

 

Aren't we the kids of the 80's for that matter, figuratively speaking or not ....

Aren't we disapointed that our game don't fly for real like they showed us in the sneak preview.

Why oh why they always release a cheap copy of original games, the one i always see in those wonderfull trailers.

 

ANyway like my sensei used to said : "some people deserve a high five ... in the face ... with a chair "

ME3 has nothing to do with TOR, they were developed by different departments. And the rage about ME3 is its ending, the laxk of choice in it to be specific. But none says ME3 was a bad game, the fans are so furios, cause Casey Hudson (executive producer of ME) says, 'yeah, we wanted to polarise the fans'. But ME3 is much better than 2 previous ones in almost all aspects, but the ending.

Before you try and troll me say im a hater, lets get one thing straight from the start, I love this game, the story mode is awesome, lots of new gaming ideas and the community is, in the most, very friendly, but we as gamers and BW as devs need to pull our heads out of the sand...

 

1 guilds are dying out there, why , well because players ARE leaving en-mass, mostly due to a lack of patience, but some because the game falls short on many aspects, like buggy bosses (we want to fight mobs, not poor coding), UI issues, lack of combat meters ( yes is said the swear words, but everyone wants to make sure they are pulling thier wieght), plus other issues that have been well written about by the community.

 

I for one don't want this game to fail. I actually care enough about it to post on the forums, which isn't something I usually do. There's too much to love about this game, and the sad thing is that history has shown with MMO's you don't get too many chances before the game fails.

 

They don't work that way, the cost of keeping them running etc is too high to make the sorts of gambles they did take with SWTOR and I'm not sure how they could have gotten the impression they were "playing it safely". If people are flooding to the forums en-masse to even point out why they are leaving, express their opinions and if they won't unsub, or even if they are playing making suggestions about what needs to be done, that's a good sign. For a pretty short while. Ex-players ARE hard to win back (even the ones that said they would), and difficult to convince that returning is a good thing and are pretty critical. Thinking of them like ex-partners sounds dramatic and cliche'd, but it's actually the most accurate analogy I can think of. The only unsubbers you can be close to certain of that they'll return are people who didn't really want to quit but had to for real life temporarily. And their return back NEEDS to be as smooth as possible. And players and community play a major part, but so does the game, and its ability to make the game accessible for players who are out of the loop, be they returning players or ex-players.

 

It's a sad reality, but they really do need to scramble and work overtime to start implementing/rolling these out. And they need to be talking to us a LOT more. And answering the questions their information raises. This way of thinking, that players have had a taste and they'll be back because they said they would be, is dangerous. They can't rest on their laurels, they need to scramble.

Edited March 15, 2012 by Darnu

What else do you expect from the UMADBRAH generation, a generation that progressed thru Super Mario, Street Fighter, Final Fantasy, WoW, MW in just under 30 years? High expectation is high. Rage on.

ME3 has nothing to do with TOR, they were developed by different departments. And the rage about ME3 is its ending, the laxk of choice in it to be specific. But none says ME3 was a bad game, the fans are so furios, cause Casey Hudson (executive producer of ME) says, 'yeah, we wanted to polarise the fans'. But ME3 is much better than 2 previous ones in almost all aspects, but the ending.

 

Actually, both SWTOR and ME3 have one specific thing in common: they both made extravagant promises on their products which they did not deliver, encased in a huge media swarm of hype and sensationalism. It took me 2 hours to delete all the posts made by Mass Effect 3 on my Facebook page the day of release. I'd been spending an average of a half hour, deleting all their posts leading up to release day the week before it. They wasted a huge amount of my time with hype to sell a game they lied about, outright. It's not about if it was a happy ending, or if anyone got what they wanted, it's simply about delivering what you said you would do, which they did not, which SWTOR did not. Anyone here could name about 10 features SWTOR did not release with, which were promised or at least considered standard in any other MMORPG.

 

This makes me wonder, do they share a single marketing department between them that is telling these Executive Producers/Directors what to say and do to build the hype for sales and stuff?

 

As for other fiasco's ..... hundreds of people received their physical copy of the game with blank or missing CD keys. Hundreds of people received security key fobs that were defective, and had to return them on warranty, on their own cost for shipping. Hundreds of people received CE boxes that had been delayed, and/or missing or damaged because they'd had to be re-opened to verify they had CD keys once it was realized it was an issue. This isn't a subjective thing, this was a real production fiasco, for certain. I STILL haven't been able to get to the post office to return my defective security key, or to pay packaging and postage for it.

 

 

In the end, am I jumping on the BW is evil bandwagon? No. I knew there would be issues with SWTOR, I expected them and saw through the hype so I didn't have bubbles get popped. Before I even saw the game, I set a clear set time I would be willing to financially support it before it could be what it was promised to be, before I would give up on them.

 

I did not buy ME3. I refused to, based on the fact that I no longer have faith in BW as a company to deliver what they promise. I was exactly right about this too: Casey Hudson clearly stated that there would be no loose ends left in the story, but they were so huge you could drive a Normandy through them. I KNEW it was going to be bad... so I wasn't disappointed and upset over it really. I did stop following them in Twitter and Facebook because I don't like all the hype. It's funny, if you think about it, only the people who actually bought into that stuff and read interviews and Tweets and Facebook stuff in the first place even know they didn't get what was promised.

 

Someone else bought me ME3 as a gift. I liked the ending and was caught up in the emotionality of it too much to notice all the missing parts that were not cleared up as intended. Later, I did realize them, but I still don't feel any rage over it because it was already a given. If anything SWTOR taught me not to believe anything they say. I still had had a good time anyway so I take the good and leave it alone, it's over. All it does is confirm for me the fact that I made the choice not to buy the game, and my future choices will be even more heavily weighted against it.

 

As for SWTOR, yeah, they lied too, yeah they over hyped too. Yeah they're still refusing even to admit some problems exist which need to be addressed. But I gave them a time limit, I'm not cancelling for ME3, I'll cancel when they've ignored those issues during my very generous time limit. That was my boundary, and I'm sticking to it.

Fiasco = server population falling off and not enough endgame quality to keep people playing.

Mass Effect 3 wasn't even an RPG u come to expect, it was dress up halo. weakest installment in the franchise, not to mention they hit you with a 9.99 download for an extra 10 minutes of content and a companion that could've and should've been in the game...very week EA/BioWare, that's 2 strikes in my book..SWToR feels like a beta with the weekest and poorest excuse for customer service ever.

Here's my 2 cents. It's giant corporations snatching up smaller companies and trying to streamline their budgets instead of focusing on creativity. Same stuff happened to my company, got bought out, then they hired 4 managers to do one guys job and then fired the old one and like half the people under him. It's corporate incompetence and the focus on the bottom line for stockholders, after stockholders are in the picture, the customer is only the second group of people whose opinion matters.

If there are enough people unhappy with Mass Effect 3 that it is actually making a dent in Bioware/EA's profit margin anywhere, odds are there was something really wrong with the ending to a great deal of people. That simple.

I'm not aware of any TOR "fiasco," love the game. But the ME3 situation is really simple. For months prior to the release, interviews given by the devs consistently painted one picture of how they were going to close out the series. The way they actually ended it (the very end, the bulk of the game was excellent) not only contradicted everything they had said in interviews, but the themes and overall tone of the entire trilogy, and it was so soul-crushingly nihilistic that it makes it seem, for those who care about the destination, that the journey had been a complete waste of time.

 

Of course, that is all assuming the ending it has is the real ending. There is compelling evidence suggesting BioWare has done an epic troll job, and the "real" ending will be released later. If we do take the ending at face value, then BioWare blatantly and consistently misrepresented their product, and a lot of loyal fans relied on that misrepresentation when making their purchases. At the very least, in that case, BioWare would owe the fans a sincere and contrite apology.