The problem with SW:ToR

[Blazer Miles]

Okay, seeing as i'm sick of reading ME3 threads (partly because i liked the ending, partly because it's getting excessive) i'm starting a SW:ToR thread.

Recently, in a news post somewhere (think it can be found here on the escapist actually) i read that blizzard had lost a lot of subs when ToR came out, not suprising really, it's a good game; but i want to talk about what my personal biggest gripe is with it. I gave it a big, long chance, even got a char to max level; and i had fun, which is the main thing, but it was never the same kind of fun i had while playing WoW (disclaimer, i'm not a WoW fanboy, i quit WoW a fair while before SW:ToR came out), you see, the problem is, imo, that it does what it is trying to do TOO WELL. What is ToR trying to be, really?, from what i gathered it is trying to be a story driven, player choice based MMO; and it does half of that really well, but the other half is what detracted my own personal experience. You see, in a single player game, if you go on a massive quest chain and defeat an awesome boss; and everyone loves you, etc, it feels like an achievement and makes you feel good, in ToR you also get this feeling of achievement but it is almost immediately dashed by the fact that EVERYONE ELSE IS ALSO DOING/HAS DONE IT. Saying "Yay!, i'm now supreme emperor of the universe!" is fun until you realise there are several hundred other "Supreme emperors of the universe" running around, it becomes less of an achievement and more of a "Oh, i finally got here" kind of thing (similar to max level in WoW). If WoW does just one thing right, it is never making you feel like the big, "only hope" kind of hero, which is where SW:ToR failed the most for me.

For discussion value, has anyone else had similar thoughts on SW:ToR/any other games that suffer the same problem?

 

[WoW Killer]

I usually capitalise the O in Old when giving the title, as it's not a conjunction.

My main issue with SW:TOR was that they didn't manage to join the single player and multi-player aspects of the game together. I mean it was made and marketed as an MMO with a greater emphasis on storytelling, which sounded perfectly rational to me. But when you've got to the end of your story (normally at cap) having never once grouped up, it kind of defeats the point of an MMO. Looking back to vanilla WoW (and this is something that isn't present in current WoW), I remember as early as level 15ish I was forced to group up as part of a Silverpine quest (where you've got to kill some gnoll like things on an island), and it just so happened the people I teamed up with happened to form a guild and we ended up raiding Zul Gurub and Molten Core together. While I think MMOs need to have a solo element to them, they need to tie this in with group play to some extent, because grouping up and being social, no matter how enjoyable that turns out to be, isn't actually that natural a thing when playing a video game.

The other issue with SW:TOR was (I keep using past tense as if the game is already dead, and that's perhaps unfair; it's dying, but not yet dead) that the story emphasis and in particular the dialogue options and voice acting meant that content was expensive to produce. You can only produce x number of quests over time with that sort of cost behind you, and that meant that the content available at launch was a lot less than what came with vanilla WoW (I mean just look at the time taken to reach cap) even if the time taken was better spent from the point of view of the player. Don't get me wrong I enjoyed the levelling process in SW:TOR much better than I did WoW; the story element meant it never felt like a grind. But it didn't have me playing for very long. Ultimately, from a business point of view, WoW happens to have taken more of my money than SW:TOR.

 

[DANEgerous]

Hummm the lack of being the only hope is what had me leave WoW it had that power through out BC and for parts of WoLK but in CATA i never felt it, i mean you can PUG Deathwing. It eventually got the the point that downing him was expected and the one and only thing that mattered was loot drop and my roll on said loot.

That said i always bastardize my charter as much as I can if it can be got away with no detriment to my charter i pick the least likely option that no one ever picks. I can do this in ToR I i can tell people to go screw off I an a Sith lord that like to save people or I can be an asshole Jedi. While i still do not feel like the last hope for mankind it at least feel like i am not the same as every other Orc in the game and essentially the same as ever other carter in the game.