Having npc's yapping at you over and over and offering no escape from the torment is the hallmark of any AAA mmo. Any competent developer knows this. I mean it was "fun" and "innovative" when they thought it up, so it must be "fun" and "innovative" the hundredth time around for the consumer, right?

Take such a "feature" as the ship droid. Didn't BW put someone on that for a week or two saying "here, run back and forth past this point over and over while you do the rest of the testing. While youre at it, run around with your companion and hear her go "I'm not just the pretty side kick buster" hundreds upon hundreds of times and get back to us with your impressions and comments"? I suspect they didnt. I mean, how else could these features, totally unfit for the mmo genre make it past the design phase and actually reach the consumer? Fill in with other examples and discuss. Go!

Having fun at imperial / republic fleet?

Yeah, how refreshing. Nothing happens. Very refreshing indeed.

Holidays and such are fun, light hearted events that give a little spark to mmo's and ties the community together. There will be no such thing in swotor. Swtor is serious, and true to the IP. Now knuckle down, man up and go back to the stories.

Qft, yet still I have hope that someone will get it. You dont have to go all in with one concept, you can have a mix of both. I mean, games like farmville has to tell some devs that not EVERYTHING in an mmo needs to revolve around you being a combatant. Chalk this disaster up to simply, incompetence. It's that simple. It is not about more development and more polish and fixing the combat. It's about BW not getting it at the core level, blinded by their "innovation" as they were. They must have seen the flaws fairly early on in development, but pushed on anyway hoping that the VO and cutscenes would carry the damned thing. Yet, the friggin ship droid is still there. The companions go on and on and on with the same "immersive" and "funny" comments. Over and over. This tells us that the leadership in the BW Austin camp does not know how mmo's work. What their function is. I'm playing Rift atm. Slept on that game until now. The quality between this and Rift is just worlds apart. It boggles my mind how BW could throw this IP straight into the bin with all the strange descisions they made, given the astronomical budget and the long development.

The most annoying thing is that they suckered me into investing in this thing. Then again, I DID pirate DA2 and enjoyed that until the second act where the present day, trade mark "BW flat" hit me. So I see it as compensation for the team on that game. SWTOR is just abysmal.

Dude you cant force choke someone through a holocall dude, because there is no force! It's all BACTERIA! Midcooloeriamns!

EA/BW have given up on this game. True story bro...

Yeah, thats an astute observation... Rifts team beats the BW outsourced mess to a bloody pulp without breaking a sweat.

Dude, that's impressive.

Are we talking years here, or months from you bio tubbies? I mean given what the game design here brings at its core. The VO, the story focus etc. Imagine that a few months from now they got it all sorted technically, and the game runs smooth as silk. Can you find a long term home at the republic or the empire fleets? /Droidlife. Proud two month game card holder.

I gotta stop reading these threads. The fan boy "backwardness" is just off the hook. :/

YOU go play wow! *Storm out teary eyed*

Even if it were so, what he says is correct. You can overlook his whole analysis of the games chance for success and what he says is still "food for thought".

I agree with this, along with your comments on "talent pool" in the op i cited. If you look at a game like Rift for example, it is just clear as day how flat and uninspired this product is when it comes to art, "x-factor" and overall appeal. No wonder it turned out that way with outsourcing. I remember when I read that EA louse rant. It made me uneasy because I suspected that that guy was the real deal. Somehow i feared that BW kind of bailed on this game half way through development. I mean, the issues we see now lie at the very core of the design (questionable choice of game engine for example) and they must have become apparent fairly early, and there must have been some meassure of denial/panic. I think they put their "story" blinders on and believed that this element would somehow elevate the game and make it unique. You could chalk that up to lacking talent/competence. In so many aspects of the game BW seem to lack a basic understanding of what makes a AAA mmo game "tick", so to speak. You can see it in details such as the nagging companions forced on the player. The ship droid going on and on with his "immersive" sound loops. The story elements snuffing out the players own immaginative input and investment in their toon. I had a more clear idea of who my toon "was" when playing WoW, and I didnt partake of a fraction of the lore in that game. I built him myself. All in all it feels like BW have misunderstood their own project, and proceeded to paint themselfs into a corner they can not get out. I think the future holds only mostly damage control and an attempt to salvage what they can.

He has insight into the industry because he is a gamer and an investor, or would you say that a truck driver who's never played an mmo in his life would be able to give as accurate an assessment? Stop being stupid for petes sake.

But everything he says in that op is on point. Surely you must see this?

Hahaha!

Poppycock and you know it.

I post this thought through and very accurate analysis because I do not want people like you carrying sub standard products out of sheer, emotional attatchment and, as they say "fan boyism". It is bad for the genre. Bad for the future. Other games should have your attention. Good games that have potential and longevity and innovation. If you didnt know deep down that what this guy puts forward is true, you would not react like this. "Whine threads" would not detract from or interfere with your enjoyment of the game, they would seem absurd. They would not exist at all in these numbers. I guess you are going through the denial stage at this point. Give it a few months. Have catharsis. Move on.

I said "Food for thought".

Found this analysis over at mmo-champion and I agree with most of his points. It's basically a breakdown of the state of SWTOR as it stands today, and the reason for it's mediocricy, if not failure. Sad, really. But there are reasons for everything. http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1066407-Censored-by-SWTOR-forums-Why-MMO-s-fail-my-take-on-Bioware-EA-(long-read)

Lol, so they should sticky a thread telling people to play their craptastic mmo with sunglasses and puke bags at the ready? To funny! Hillarious actually. Aah, my sides, they split!

I went and tried Rift, and bought Rift after rage-uninstalling this game. Theres no comparison quality wise. And! How come Rift can handle absolute pandimonium on screen during invasions and such, with all the colors of the rainbow popping off while big groups of people wail on a huge boss, but SWTOR turns to a slide show in similar situations. It's just bad, bad, bad. Also, Rift feels like an actuall online world, with a community. The environment just has that spark. The mobs look good, act more lifelike etc. The sound is on point. The art...gees. Night and day. The list goes on.