SWTOR: Really EA? Are you seriously surprised?

[Euryptus]

I really enjoyed SWTOR. I did. But the major problem with it is also its greatest strength - it's a single player MMO.

Nail hit on the head there, Ryank. I'd also add that the storylines, even though they were a major selling point, were often pretty ropey. Case in point being the Smuggler story, with often half-baked reasons conjured up to make sure you kept in with the Republic; and the episodic nature simply didn't work that well. To give Bioware their due, there were some great bits within the storylines for the various classes that both surprised and entertained - just not enough to stop you skipping that lovingly crafted cutscene with its dialogue when you knew that ultimately the quest was yet again to go from A to B to kill X number of mobs and duly return.

I'd also add that the Light/Dark side 'morality' was badly implemented from the get-go, which really limited the player to being a very two-dimensional character. End game content and PvP were sorely lacking - a similar situation to WoW in the early days, admittedly, but you would have thought someone might have realised this earlier. And all the space missions were repetitive rail-shooters - making them feel like an afterthought that was hurriedly bolted on to the game.

In addition to this, they made the same error as Warhammer had in the early days - too many initial servers leading to poor levels of population spread over a vast area.

As others before me have suggested, they would have been better off making a full-blown single player game.

Now don't get me wrong - there is plenty of fun to be had in SWTOR, but its a game to visit rather than a game you'd stay with for any length of time. And hopefully this lesson will be finally learnt - it's not enough to simply copy WoW, no matter how many bells and whistles you add. Genuine innovation is needed - sadly this is risky, and if there's one thing major companies like EA fear, it's taking a risk.

At the moment I'm pretty much done with MMORPGS, unless someone makes a seriously large step forward.

On the other hand, I still have high hopes for Planetside 2 - screw roleplaying, give me mass troop movements, a big stonking tank, and (fingers crossed) meaningful/valuable capture of territory with actual battlelines being drawn up and attacked/defended(Not asking for much, am I ?)

 

[Flames66]

If it goes F2P I might even consider playing it.

 

[dragongit]

I fucking called this MMO failing like all others the moment they announced it

1.3 million players minimum 13 dollars a month = 16.9 million turnover per month

1.3 million players maximum 15 dollars a month = 19.5 million turnover per month

Yes, they are massive failures who should be ashamed of themselves.

Edit:
Also their extremely positive reception by critics.

Aggregate scores
Aggregator Score
GameRankings 84.14% (43 reviews)
Metacritic 85/100 (71 reviews)

Honestly they should have just committed mass suicide.

as someone else stated, the game easily cost 200 million with voice acting and other widgets. Plust the marketing. bare in mind that it's still costing them money by keeping servers up, and paying developers for patch content. The actual price of SWTOR may end up costing 300 million by the end of the year, and with lower subscription numbers or even free to play they may not reach that goal for a while.

As for positive critic scores, you want to know another MMO that had good reviews when it came out?

Warhammer Online
Metacritic 86/100 (54 reviews)

Not sure when the last time I ever heard someone talking about that game though, other then as a reference as another fantasy MMO that was hyped to be the next WoW killer, and failed.

 

[Baralak]

I really wish MMOs would stop trying to be the next WoW killer, and just focus on being a great persistant online game in their game's universe...

 

[Kennetic]

I love EQ2 and if it wasn't deserted and a glitchy mess, I would've kept playing instead of going back to WoW. It's little things that can kill an MMO such as never getting into a dungeon group and such

 

[faefrost]

Not true. SWTOR is a fantastic single player game that you will happily get 60-90 days out of as you bring a number of classes up to the level cap. The personal quests and stories during leveling are fantastic. Then you realize you have hit the endgame, there is no endgame, all the pretty stories and cutscenes are gone, and all that is left is eye bleedingly painful daily quest grinding or a handful of buggy badly balanced and unoriginal raid bosses to do daily or weekly. At that point you cancel your subscription and go back to WoW.

As far as what WoW does to keep subscribers. Love Blizzard or hate them, they do do this better than anyone else. There is a broad depth of content, side things to engage, places to go and do, and they make it very easy to play their game. Yeah you will eventually get bored with it, but there is such a degree of polish to what they have built that it tends to have a longer player longevity.

Bioware thought that being able to make great RPG's made them fully qualified to make the best, most expensive MMO ever. They were wrong. They are the best in the business at RPG's. This shows up in the wonderful leveling game. Unfortunately the end game is where their complete amateurism in MMO development comes to the forefront, and there is no way to escape it.

 

[Baralak]

I love EQ2 and if it wasn't deserted and a glitchy mess, I would've kept playing instead of going back to WoW. It's little things that can kill an MMO such as never getting into a dungeon group and such

EQ2's thriving rather well as a f2p MMO, as is the original EQ. EQ2 is what WoW should be, IMO. It's a great MMO, with good combat, involved crafting, things to do that don't involve combat, from mining and crafting (even gaining levels in a skill-based class, like carpenter) to a fully fleshed out, built in trading card game.

 

[Ryotknife]

SWTOR didnt do enough (or anything at all in most cases) to resolve the many issues which was affecting the game (server merging, faction inbalance, pvp, pve was horrible, blah blah blah).

probably the most fun ive ever had leveling in a mmo. and if it wasnt for huttball i probably would never play any of my max level chars.

 

[Kennetic]

I love EQ2 and if it wasn't deserted and a glitchy mess, I would've kept playing instead of going back to WoW. It's little things that can kill an MMO such as never getting into a dungeon group and such

EQ2's thriving rather well as a f2p MMO, as is the original EQ. EQ2 is what WoW should be, IMO. It's a great MMO, with good combat, involved crafting, things to do that don't involve combat, from mining and crafting (even gaining levels in a skill-based class, like carpenter) to a fully fleshed out, built in trading card game.

It's not f2p when I get locked out of my chars when my subscription is up that's one of its problems (plus my ranger can't solo for shit)

 

[Gatx]

They should've just stuck to making Knights of the Old Republic 3. Or kept the title, but focused on a single-player only game. That would have been much better imo.

Considering what they did with Mass effect 3 i'd rather they didn't completely ruin the KotOR series.

I thought they did by turning it into an MMO.

 

[Savber]

MMORPG are dying. Sure GW2 will probably give a little revival but with the oversaturation of all these MMOs, the market itself is definitely in decline.

 

[The Human Torch]

Wow I didn't even know they had such a shitty setup, I guess my mate was too embarrassed to tell me the full story after I warned him about this game for so long.

Anyway that is quite the hilarious read and I fucking called this MMO failing like all others the moment they announced it, WoW still owns that market and you just can't beat them with a game almost as good.

Could you point out what WOW does better? A friend of mine said some people had complaints about swtor and I want to know what wow does to keep its subscriptions.

Obviously WoW did not start out with 10 million subs, it took them almost 4 years to build up such a playerbase, but it did have an amazingly popular beginning. With no copies of the game being available the first 2 months after launch, and servers melting due to the massive amount of people wanting to play.

WoW had two major advantages:
1. It's based on a very popular, well-known and high quality IP. I.e. the Warcraft RTS series.
2. WoW runs on almost any computer, including Macintosh. Heck, install it on your easy-bake oven and it would probably run.

SWTOR has neither of these all important advantages working for them. Star Wars is a famous IP, yes, but not all Star Wars fans are gamers, and Star Wars games have a terrible reputation (some exceptions not counted of course). Plus, the game has very high system demands for relatively low quality graphics.
My computer should be able to handle SWTOR with all the settings on high. It doesn't. It's a poorly program piece of shit. The loading times were 7 to 10 minutes for me, and after complaining about it on the SWTOR forum, I found out that people with more powerful computers than myself, had the exact same problem.

SWTOR basically locked out half it's potential playerbase with it's high system demands and poor programming.

This game should have remained single player, as another in the Old Republic series.

 

[kingcom]

D&D Online was, here's two dungeons, you can grind them to level five or give us money. Lots of money.

I know it was something like that for a brief period but for most of its f2p life they dropped any level cap, you can fairly easily get to high levels (though 17+ seems very difficult) with the need to grind a few levels. Hell theres only 2 quests that you can pay for below level 5.

 

[Irridium]

Yeah, F2P might be the best for the game. I actually really like it, but it seems Bioware developed it as they do their other games. Make a great game while playing through, but with jack shit to do at the end other than start a new character and do it all again. It's great for me, because that's what I do, but for most people? Mainly MMO players? Yeah, that's just not gonna cut it.

I'd say the biggest mistake, though, is putting up so many servers in the first place. Caused the population to be spread out, making it seem like there's far less people who play when there's actually quite a bit. Which causes people to leave because it feels like the game is dead and who wants to play a dead game?

Hopefully after the server transfers/merges are all said and done and the 1.3 patch gets released things get better.

why even try to make pay to play MMORPGs anymore?

Because dats where da big money is bro! Look at WoW! Making millions!

Never mind the 20 or so other MMO's that tried, failed and ended up making loses. No. Just look at WoW and how successful it is.

i love you for this.

F2P could actually end up saving ToR, as going F2P has given new life to several MMO's already. hell, Age of Conan is still alive and kicking thanks to its F2P conversion and i thought it died long ago

Wait, Age of Conan is still alive?

Huh. Well, good for it then.

 

[Lugbzurg]

Wait... They actually thought The Old Republic could compete with World of Warcraft? Seriously? I mean... seriously!? I just don't understand what anti-logic they could have built up that could possibly bring them to this conclusion.

Then again, these are the same people who demand that Dead Space 3 sell 5,000,000 copies, or else they'll cancel the series.
...Right after claiming "indie".

 

[Captain Pirate]

this is the sole reason i am waiting for it to go f2p, i'm gonna blow through all it's single player stuff in a month then toss it to the side

*goes back to circling EA like a starving alone person in the desert*

Yeah, pretty much this.
It doesn't look hugely bad, but not worth both the money and effort involved with EA, Origin, etc to actually play the fucking game.
When it turns F2P I'll check out the cool, free stuff then leave, as I imagine lots of people I know will.

 

[Raddra]

I didn't play SWTOR because there was no player Wookies in it.

No Wookies, its not star wars to me.

I felt like they took out much of the feel of Star Wars to go with their writing and romances and voice acting, since that was their 'thing'. But without the races that make star wars star wars and not star trek it just failed to me, I wasn't going to give it my money unless I could recreate my wookie. :| And not a bunch of different colored humans.

I miss the golden days of SWG, where you could run around with Wookies, Trandoshan and Rodians, it felt a lot more like Star Wars to me than this game ever did.

I know, odd complaint and some people will probably get knots in their underwear with it, but there's my reason I kept my wallet closed.

 

[The_Lost_King]

For those who don't want to read the articles: What it comes down to is that SWTOR's subscriptions are in drastic decline and they are considering making it free to play THIS soon after release (it came out in December 2012).

Unless you have a time machine, I think you meant 2011.

Edit: Fucking Ninja's

And it's news like this that makes me think Bethesda is making a mistake by trying to make an MMO. So many people have tried and failed, why risk it when you could just spend that time on a console game that will do well

Bethesda isn't making it though. They are making skyrim dlc(and hopefully planning to set elder scrolls VI in elsweyr) and helping Zenimax online a little in the development of Elder Scrolls Online. Zenimax Online is making the mmo. Bethesda is just helping with lore. It better be subscription free though.
OT: Yay they are going f2p now I get tot try it.
Off Topic (again): I hope now they will call swtor un canon and make kotor 3 which will make up some of the loss from swtor. Oh and let Obsidian do it and NOT cut their deadline by an entire YEAR.

They should've just stuck to making Knights of the Old Republic 3. Or kept the title, but focused on a single-player only game. That would have been much better imo.

Considering what they did with Mass effect 3 i'd rather they didn't completely ruin the KotOR series.

I thought they did by turning it into an MMO.

They might be able to fix that by declaring TOR non canon and then they can make kotor 3. Which I highly want them to after just getting to kotor 2.

 

[Starke]

D&D Online was, here's two dungeons, you can grind them to level five or give us money. Lots of money.

I know it was something like that for a brief period but for most of its f2p life they dropped any level cap, you can fairly easily get to high levels (though 17+ seems very difficult) with the need to grind a few levels. Hell theres only 2 quests that you can pay for below level 5.

Yeah, I'm usually pretty snippy when someone screws up details like that too. What did stick with me, when I went into the game (which was right after it went F2P) was the experience of playing through the tutorial, and then being told, "no more content for you, unless you cough up money, or grind these two dungeons." And, as far as I can recall, at the time it really was only two free dungeons.

Though, I might be wrong about the level cap, it could have been 10, with a $5 or $10 surcharge to bump it to 20, instead of 5 to 10, then another higher priced bump from 10 to 20.

I didn't play SWTOR because there was no player Wookies in it.

No Wookies, its not star wars to me.

I felt like they took out much of the feel of Star Wars to go with their writing and romances and voice acting, since that was their 'thing'. But without the races that make star wars star wars and not star trek it just failed to me, I wasn't going to give it my money unless I could recreate my wookie. :| And not a bunch of different colored humans.

I miss the golden days of SWG, where you could run around with Wookies, Trandoshan and Rodians, it felt a lot more like Star Wars to me than this game ever did.

I know, odd complaint and some people will probably get knots in their underwear with it, but there's my reason I kept my wallet closed.

The insane thing is that the reason given for not including Rodians, Wookies, and Bothans was because of fears "the player wouldn't be able to identify with the character" or some such tripe. Sorry, my girlfriend just corrected me, it was because the writers were snickering at the prospect of a Wookie or Rodian in one of the romance plotlines.