I've given opinions on various matters, but decided to spend some time consolidating them into one thread.

 

Mainly, I think SWTOR has made great steps forward in the MMO genre, but for every step forward, it took two steps backwards.

 

An example: Crafting. Crafting with your companions is awesome. What a great feature. It's fun, easy, different. The problem is most crafting is actually completely useless. Crafting gear is quickly made obsolete by endgame items. It's unbalanced. A Synthweaver might make themselves a belt worth keeping for a bit.... but someone with BioChem can craft themselves reusable stims and medpacks exclusively for their character -- basically giving themselves huge stat boosts that the player can use and enjoy forever.

 

The game as a whole feels like this. There's some great features, but within these features, things feels empty, unplanned, and unfinished. You give us great group-content and cinematics. The first time I ran Black Talon, I was ecstatic by how different and innovative the game felt. A few weeks later, however, and I'm now spamming general chat and travelling to planets to spam MORE general chat, so I can form a group "the social way" to run an instance like Calicoid War Games -- where there is almost no cinematics, no voice-acting, and the instance itself feels like its somewhere between Alpha and Beta phase, still being developed.

 

It's a Star Wars MMO -- a concept that still makes me excited and want to open the game right up and play all day. It's got funding from Electronic Arts. Its had years in development. And it has a user-interface that collides with itself and in raids, doesn't even properly display people's health. It has a party chat system that is still being fixed -- and if I were in any way in charge of EA's accounting, I would be foaming at the mouth at that. This week, the mailboxes in the capitol fleet stopped working.... did you NOT have years of BETA?

 

All the innovation, all the immense resources put into this game, shows so much promise.

 

This IS a game that should kill WoW. It is newer, has (some) better features, and bears the name of the most-loved science-fiction ever created. Years and millions in the making, with one of the industries biggest publishers backing it up....

 

And the UI doesn't work. Are. You. ********. Kidding?

 

Seriously, I want this game to succeed. I actually think I want this game to succeed more than BioWare does. If I were an EA exec, again, I would be livid. People would be fired. Because I want this game to succeed more than it is.

 

Through the years and months leading to this game's release, we were told, through much anticipated waiting, that BioWare wanted to make sure launch was "smooth", and "just right". What we have now, post-launch, is a game of HUGE potential -- HUGE -- MARRED to death by imbalances, things left unfinished, bugs, glitches, and archaic mechanics. A million people bought the game? No ****. It's a Star Wars MMO. It should grow by millions more. It's what a Star Wars MMO deserves.

 

For shame that it probably won't happen.

 

I've subbed for 6 months of game time. I will use it. I will even enjoy it at times. But at the end of those months, if BioWare hasn't shown signs of making drastic changes and improvements, I'm going to look for a real MMO, made by a developer that doesn't take everything it has for granted.

 

 

 

I know some of you are completely satisfied by the product BioWare has sold you. I respect that, and I can see why people love this game. So please respect why some of us are conversely disappointed. Thanks for reading, share your thoughts, feel free to let me know if and why you disagree with anything I've said, politely.

Giving myself just one bump, since I put time into writing this and it went off the first page in less than a minute. Just one.

I share the same sentiments as the OP. Although Bioware have created an excellent product I do not feel as if it comes close to its originally touted potential, at some point, someone made the decision to dilute many of the game's features for reasons unknown. I have to admit that I am disappointed but because this is SWTOR -a game I've waited many years in anticipation- I will give Bioware/EA the benefit of the doubt and stick around for several months longer.

I absolutely love this game. It's very easy to pick up and play and get hooked. It has the Star Wars label which probably greatly helped the 1 million and growing sales. My Internet connection isn't the greatest so I often lag with minor lags but I still am able to see an outstanding game.

 

My Jedi Knight has Artifice set as his crafting skill and I was looking at what can be made as I level it up. I found at like 360-400 you can make Lightsabers including Zez-Kai-Ell's lightsaber. How can you say that isn't rewarding. I'm aware that getting 400 in any skill will take a long time but it gets very rewarding.

 

Also this is, as many people have pointed out, an MMO. It like any other game is going to have bugs and glitches but it isn't a console game which requires a few hours to fix. You try and go through miles of code for hours and find flaws and spend more hours fixing them. I'm just sayin' cut Bioware some slack. They're new at MMOs and they're doing incredible thus far.

Also with the $15-a-month subscription; This is the most expensive game ever made and I'm sure Bioware and EA want to compensate for as much of that money as possible because this could still shut them down if it fails. I hope it goes down with time, I really do. Do you guys remember when the 360 and PS3 came out? The first and very flawed versions cost $400 for Xbox and $600 for PS3 and plenty of people still bought them. Now you can get a 360 with 250g of memory and a more reliable system for $300 and a PS3 with 160g and, again, a more reliable system for $250. I know I'll spend more time on TOR than I will on my 360 for awhile and if that means getting a six month subscription for TOR for like $80; so be it. In time played and enjoyment caused from playing TOR, it is and will be worth every cent. Edited January 6, 2012 by KnightGreg

I have to agree with you, OP.

 

I think this is a great game, but the more I play it, the more I feel like this was a game that could have taken 15 years to build, much less 5. It's like the gigantic scope of their development just got away from them, and problems started slipping through the cracks, or getting ignored.

 

Levels 1-20 are wonderful. Now that I've passed that, I find myself wondering if they shouldn't have stopped at 40, axed 25% of the content, and put all their money and creativity into something FAR less ambitious in scope.

 

You can always add content later. But you only have one shot to hook people in the beginning.

Yea I mostly agree OP. I like some of the stuff they've done with the class story, and having a ship and companions is cool and all, but the game is really empty. I don't enjoy questing. The PVP is extremely weak and not fun. I hit level 30, choose my legacy surname, but of course, it's not implemented yet at all (why?). And then there are all the other things that completely irk me and make no sense, like the lack of Hi-Res textures.

 

If the game isn't dramatically improved by the end of next month, I will most likely cancel my subscription.