What Determines SWTOR's Failure?

[Trilella]

The game was fun for awhile, then about a week or so ago it just hit me all I am doing is Dailys to afford the ridiculous repair bills for deaths from running Operations.

 

PvP in WZ to me as Pure Healer is just stupid cause I usually have 3 Sith on me making sure I am dead each time so I never get to do my job, they should have medals for how many times you died in a WZ. Maybe if I was a Guardian or Sentinel I would live alot longer, but I am not going to go through mostly the same content to level another character, I just don't do that in MMOs. One character for me is it.

 

Datacrons - Already collected everyone of them including the +10.

 

FPs and HM FPs are just not worth the loot to me, only last boss drops anything worth a darn and yet I end up with 50k in repair bills for my trouble or worse.

 

Operations are the only thing I do enjoy, but they end up costing me 100-200k in repairs each night we do them. And you can only do them once a week. And oh joy we can do Normal and Hardmode each once a week with HM costing even more in repair bills.

 

Just bored and it's getting harder and harder not to cancel subscription each day. I have hardly played in the past 3 days cause I log in and just sit there cause just nothing I want to do.

[uruz]

Failure is when the servers are shut off.

[Forsbacka]

I keep seeing all these threads in this forum and the running theme is that SWTOR is going to fail is failing has already failed. The time lines for these failure projections range from 2 weeks to 6 months to a year, but what determines if SWTOR is a failure?

 

1. EA/Bioware lost money due to high development costs ($300 million) so SWTOR is a financial failure!

 

The fact is the game has sold at least 1.5 million copies already recouping about $90 million. Even if they don't sell another copy and 50% of the buyers unsubscribe they still recoup all their costs in little over a year and this doesn't even take into account the additional money brought in by the CE editions or DD editions

:

 

They will get prolly like 20-30 dollars per sold box and it takes lots of cash to mainteance servers, have people working on current game, future patches and expansions not saying that this game is failure but with their said 500k subs they need much more than just over a year to get profit, and EA aint in this business to get only even.

[Jswizzle]

The game was fun for awhile, then about a week or so ago it just hit me all I am doing is Dailys to afford the ridiculous repair bills for deaths from running Operations.

 

PvP in WZ to me as Pure Healer is just stupid cause I usually have 3 Sith on me making sure I am dead each time so I never get to do my job, they should have medals for how many times you died in a WZ. Maybe if I was a Guardian or Sentinel I would live alot longer, but I am not going to go through mostly the same content to level another character, I just don't do that in MMOs. One character for me is it.

 

Datacrons - Already collected everyone of them including the +10.

 

FPs and HM FPs are just not worth the loot to me, only last boss drops anything worth a darn and yet I end up with 50k in repair bills for my trouble or worse.

 

Operations are the only thing I do enjoy, but they end up costing me 100-200k in repairs each night we do them. And you can only do them once a week. And oh joy we can do Normal and Hardmode each once a week with HM costing even more in repair bills.

 

Just bored and it's getting harder and harder not to cancel subscription each day. I have hardly played in the past 3 days cause I log in and just sit there cause just nothing I want to do.

 

Why are you dying so much?? I'm sorry you are having trouble, but this seems like a completely avoidable problem you are having.

[Sleekit]

that 300 million figure is a made up lie.

 

it was originally posted by a guy on MMO Champions SWTOR sub forum complete with "professional" looking maths heavy post illustrating how the game was supposedly destined to fail and linking to the games Wikipedia entry as corroboration.

 

the guy who posted had edited Wikipedia himself mere minutes before and it was me posting on that forum who posted the revision history for the wiki page showing the edit and calling him out on it.

 

after continuing to try and and justify the posting for some time the guy admitted later in the same thread that he had edited the wiki page.

 

it was ofc leapt on by a great many WoW "fans" and has since been meme-ised across the net with little regard for the actual "source" and the fact it was utterly fabricated.

Edited January 26, 2012 by Sleekit

[Derbefrier]

Failure is when the servers are shut off.

 

and only if it happens with the first 2 years. i mean if the game last 5 years and the servers are shutdown i wouldnt call that a failure. but yeah untill the servers are shut down its not a failure.

[Sarfux]

the game is failing because I say it is!

 

that's the mentality of most people on the net and these games lol.

 

But wait...doesn't that mean if I stay and say it's success it's a success? hmm lol

[Derbefrier]

that 300 million figure is a made up lie.

 

it was originally posted by a guy on MMO Champions SWTOR sub forum complete with "professional" looking maths heavy post illustrating how the game was supposedly destined to fail and linking to the games Wikipedia entry as corroboration.

 

the guy who posted had edited Wikipedia himself mere minutes before and it was me posting on that forum who posted the revision history for the wiki page showing the edit and calling him out on it.

 

after continuing to try and and justify the posting for some time the guy admitted later in the same thread that he had edited the wiki page.

 

it was ofc leapt on by a great many WoW "fans" and has since been meme-ised across the net with little regard for the actual "source" and the fact it was utterly fabricated.

 

thats interesting i did not know this although i didnt place much importance in it to begin with

[Forsbacka]

thats interesting i did not know this although i didnt place much importance in it to begin with

 

200 is prolly most accurate estimate but so far estimates been from 120 to 300.

[Alwaysrun]

In my opinion it's all about community involvement. One aspect that SWTOR has been lacking in from as far back as early beta. Beta testers were submitting crucial observations that were all but ignored making testers feel their contributions were unwanted or marginalized. The added problem with no addons or other type of user submitted game modifications also was a major failure. The fact that Bioware didn't supply any sort of user created functionality was a real disaster and only serves to seperate the users from making the game feel more their own and having a positive impact on a game they care about.

 

Also alienating ones userbase with harsh bans and strict enforcement towards users for minor infractions also deters further game involvement. Once your game reaches that tipping point that it becomes chic or trendy to disparage your game it's all over but the crying. You can't take back "cool" it's just not ever going to happen and from there it's just an ugly domino scenario like AoC and Warhammer all over again.

 

Another aspect that unfortunately can't be addressed now is how lopsided the game is in regards to time spent by players leveling opposed to end-game pursuits. The leveling rpg elements are fantastic but they constitute such a small portion of an average players lifetime in a MMO. One spends 100+ hours in the leveling and rpg elements of any MMO but over the coarse of playing an average player can spend 1,000s of hours in end-game pursuits. SWTOR seems to have put all/most of their chips on the early game experience. I'm sorry but that just dosn't add up Bioware and that is by far the number one reason why many people have strayed away from your offerings.

[justamemory]

I've seen a disturbing trend...

 

MMOs haven't changed in 10+ years.

[Facelessred]

Dunno if this has been said, But it's similar to buyers remorse, On both ends of the spectrum

The buyer either over zealously defends his purchase, to counter act or reassure his own beliefs that he didn't waste his time or money.

 

Or the buyer is a sore loser, and doesn't wish to feel like the only one who lost out, so he will rally and shout and bring together as many other people who also feel this way. Misery loves company.

 

People are social animals they will group together in order to feel less vulnerable and crowd mentality is, if everyone is doing it, it's OKAY.

 

I personally am having fun, I am not some overzealous defender of the game, it has flaws and there are some pathways that I DO NOT want to see it go down. (right now its horrible end game gear that Doesn't match up to how I want my character to play AND looks INCREDIBLY ugly, seriously BW why did you even make modifiable gear yet the gear with the stats we NEED doesn't come as Mods instead?) I've played a lot of MMO's and I want this to succeed, because if it can get somewhere it will set a standard for entertainment in the MMO world that we really need.

[Pallox]

I've seen a disturbing trend...

 

MMOs haven't changed in 10+ years.

 

Lol...point taken. But if it ain't broke.....wait, is it broke? I still enjoy them.

[Nozzamorph]

What you guys fail to realize is that EA has it's own in house testing, public "BETA" for EA games is nothing more than a demo, as someone who has worked in a QA for EA, i can tell you that EA does not even RESPOND to public tester concerns.

 

The TOR public beta was a demo nothing more, and the TORtanic will surely sink. Just look at the MMO-junkies statistics tool you will see that at most SWTOR had 800k active players and now that number is down to 400k after the first month, that is A DISASTER for a triple A title.

Bioware and EA have released a garbage wow clone with a Star wars skin, don't believe me? Compare the classes to WOW, heck even the professions are reminiscent of wow.

Edited January 27, 2012 by Parali
spam, reposted content

[daays]

Is the game keeping it's launch population and growing?

 

Fact is SWTOR will lose 70% of launch population in 3 months.

 

Here's what you do at level 50:

 

-2 daily PvP quests

-2 raids on normal mode

 

There is no reason to do hard modes in this game. Not only is the gear only 4 item levels higher (140 compared to 136) but it's a downgrade in all situations.

 

Tank gear sacrifices shield rating for surge.

DPS gear sacrifices power for accuracy.

Healing gear sacrifices power for alacrity.

 

 

People took their time. They did all the quests. They did all the class quests. Now there is nothing do, unless you enjoy rolling an alt and doing the exact same journey all over again.

 

Then you the general issues with ability delay still in the game and stun locking yourself.

The awful RNG bag system for PvP.

The failure that is ilum in design.

The game issues with massive FPS lag even with top-end computers.

 

Do the dev's communicate well? Nope. Not at all.

No daily posts on the state of the game and what they're working on to improve it. No justification for their nerfs to classes.

 

In short, there is no vision for this game. And if this is their vision, then there is absolutely no reason to stick around.

 

The game was worth the box sale to experience. After that, it's not worth anything else.

 

It is quite clear during production they said:

"Yo guys so like there's this thing called an MMO RPG. It's like a single player game but you charge a subscription to people!"

"Sweet yo lets do that!!!"

"YEA!"

[DarthWomprat]

It's a failure in the sense that it simply isn't as engrossing and addictive as I had hoped.

[MilkPudding]

 

Fact is SWTOR will lose 70% of launch population in 3 months.

 

Here's what you do at level 50:

 

-2 daily PvP quests

-2 raids on normal mode

 

 

Frankly speaking, I've felt it only at level 30.

 

If BW thinks they could sustain a MMORPG with just flashy full voiceover and a decent story then they are very mistaken. Voiceover and the story are the pretty wrapper, what goes on inside is way more important.

[DarthWomprat]

Frankly speaking, I've felt it only at level 30.

 

If BW thinks they could sustain a MMORPG with just flashy full voiceover and a decent story then they are very mistaken. Voiceover and the story are the pretty wrapper, what goes on inside is way more important.

 

They bet on voice acting over gameplay and lost. Plain and simple.

[Toonasty]

They bet on voice acting over gameplay and lost. Plain and simple.

 

You nailed it!

[daytimeninja]

Losing the players on the horridly low population servers. Just combine them or point as recommended already.

 

I've already rerolled on a different server after getting all the way to 44. Would hate for someone to go through my same situation.

[ObiQuixote]

300m figure came from this guys rant.

 

http://www.gamerevolution.com/manifesto/ea-artist-soon-to-be-laid-off-burns-ea-management-2803

 

Another article on this rant, read the responses, all from industry people.

 

http://www.gamesbrief.com/2010/10/ea-louse-you-are-no-ea-spouse-your-pettiness-is-shocking/

 

EA/Bioware recently acknowledged they spent more than 200m on the game and I wouldn't be surprised if they are trying to hide true costs to make things look better for investors. ( Like putting some costs in general R&D which wouldn't get counted as a cost for the project. )

 

My understanding of the contract with LA is, LA's cut is 1/3 of the mothly subs. If this is the case going F2P isn't a possibility with out a re-negotiating the contract with LA.

 

So the question becomes at what point do the subs support the operational cost, the estimates I've read are 300-500k subs.

 

Considering that they only get $30 per box that means with 2.1m boxes they've recouped about $60m. That leaves a $140m loss if you're working with the consertive $200m startup, $240M if they really did spend $300m on the game.

 

If it takes 300k subs to support operations ( servers / CS / billing ) and they have 500k subs, that is roughly 2m a month profit after LA's share. With $140m left to go they are talking about 70 months to recoup the inital investment. And that's not even taken the costs of ongoing development into consideration.

 

So my guess, they fall under 500k subs things get real dicey and shutting the thing down is an option on the table.

Edited January 27, 2012 by ObiQuixote

[BobTheTeepo]

What you guys fail to realize is that EA has it's own in house testing, public "BETA" for EA games is nothing more than a demo, as someone who has worked in a QA for EA, i can tell you that EA does not even RESPOND to public tester concerns.

 

The TOR public beta was a demo nothing more, and the TORtanic will surely sink. Just look at the MMO-junkies statistics tool you will see that at most SWTOR had 800k active players and now that number is down to 400k after the first month, that is A DISASTER for a triple A title.

Bioware and EA have released a garbage wow clone with a Star wars skin, don't believe me? Compare the classes to WOW, heck even the professions are reminiscent of wow.

 

Also another post from the forum:

 

 

I posted this as an Amazon review, but felt like I should share it here. Have fun.

 

NOTE: There are spoilers for the JK class story. Please be advised.

 

The Old Republic was very much a hyped game. Announced in 2008 to much anticipation, it promised a revolutionary gaming experience that would create a new standard in the MMO genre. Not only were the great development team at BioWare behind it, but it was based on a very good license and on a series of single-player RPGs - Knights Of The Old Republic and its sequel, Knights of The Old Republic 2 : The Sith Lords. More than a few fans of those games (I included), were disappointed that we were not to have a sequel but nevertheless, we were looking forward to this game, to see what it could be. Perhaps the first warning sign though, is that Rich Vogel, former lead on Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest, is working on the MMO, and that BioWare are using an untested prototype engine - the HeroEngine.

 

Flash forward to 2011. The Old Republic nears release date, after being pushed back a few times, but pre-order numbers are huge and the hype machine is working even harder than it was in 2008. Anticipation builds, ignoring the cries of beta testers who are commenting that the game might not be as good as made out. The game is released, and I pick up a copy for both me and my younger brother, as we eagerly await an MMO that would replace World Of WarCraft, which was quit a year before in frustration at dumbed down game mechanics and a serious stale feeling.

 

The first twenty levels I found fun and engaging. The game shines here. I picked a Jedi Knight, and began playing the story on Tython. The dialogue over all seemed relatively good, and the voice acting in the MMO (much vaunted in previews), was relatively impressive compared to similar games, such as WoW, which often left me cringing. However, skills felt sluggish, and my character seemed oddly blurry. I blamed my own connection for the sluggishness (I live in New Zealand and was played throughout with 200ms ping), and perhaps a bug for the textures, that would hopefully be quickly fixed. The first twenty levels, that ranged from the planets Tython, Coruscant and the first chunk of Nar Shaddaa were generally interesting quest wise. The planet Taris was very much a low point, and later, I realized, a sign of things to come.

 

However, after about level 18, the game begins to slow down. Enemies took longer to burn down, and my droid companion T7, rapidly became very useless, very quickly. The sluggishness in my abilities became even more noticeable to the point my connection couldn't be possibly to be blame, and one thought that went constantly through my head was 'didn't I quit this game a year ago?'. I dismissed this and continued to soldier through. I reached level 24, and immediately shipped off from Nar Shaddaa to Tatooinne, the next planet in my quest, after completing my class quests on Nar Shaddaa two levels before reaching the minimum level requirement for Tatooinne. This would become a much bigger issue, which I will elaborate on later. I worked my way to Alderaan, the next planet after Tatooinne, and then levelled to level 33 on the planet Balmorra before quitting in complete and utter boredom.

 

Generally the class quests post level-20 still remain as fun and engaging as ever. They are usually a step-above other quest lines in terms of writing, and more or less kept me interested as I ploughed through enemies. However, generally quest design was just that - plough through enemies. Or plough through enemies and take their stuff. Or left click a chest to collect an item, or disable a turret. That's it. That's every quest in the game, all fifty levels worth. They might have voice-acting in an attempt to disguise this, but generally, every quest feels more or less the same. Sometimes an interesting environment or enemies will distract the player from this, or an interesting plotline tying the quests together. Because that feels like what all the voice acting is for, not to give character, but to hide the fact the quests are all the same. The same could be achieved with the old quest dialogue box from WoW with 'Accept/Decline' available. Heck, WoW even had dialogue options!

 

This is fundamentally behind the times in terms of theme park MMO's. Even WoW, the old mainstay, has quests that are more than that, even going back to its first release in 2004. In WoW, many of the quests would be variations on the 'kill this theme', but there were also such quests where I could bomb an enemy fortress, seek assistance for a dying crusader, throw parachutes to falling warriors in the air, or even compete in racing orcs on dragons. You could even reveal the royal adviser to be an evil dragon, and trigger a city wide event that could involve dozens of players (sadly, this quest is long gone.). The Old Republic, as far as I saw it, does not do this. It is simply two types of quests, repeated ad nauseam, with voice acting to cover it up. It is simply unacceptable for an MMO to have this design in 2011. It is even beat by WoW in what should be most important in a story-driven game - the permanence of your actions. For example, on the planet Balmorra, I was ordered to take an Imperial base for the resistance on the planet. I cleared out the base, and reached what the game calls a 'group phase' - essentially, a walled off area that only you and members of your group, if you are in one, can access. I wiped out the base, and watched the cutscene where the resistance establishes itself in the base. Then I left the group based phase. Now I am no longer allowed in the interior of the base, and furthermore, the outside of the base was still covered in Imperials. It was if I'd done nothing at all, except turn a bunch of green lines in a door into red ones saying I could no longer enter this door and explore that part of the game world. In WoW, this would have been handily carried out by phasing. Instead of entering a 'group phase', the whole world would have phased, from being an Imperial base into a Republic one, with generic Republic NPC's instead of Imperial ones. There is even a quest line like this in WoW, in the second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, where you build the Crusaders Tower, and add a new town for yourself to the map, along with the quest hub. In The Old Republic, the world does not change with your actions. The base is still the same as if you had left it.

 

Also to take issue with the quests is the writing of the game. BioWare have long been trumpeted as the masters of RPG writing. I would argue this point very much (my vote for that would go to Obsidian Entertainment), but generally find BioWare to be tolerable at worst to rather fun and interesting, even if it follows an obvious formula. I should perhaps have seen warning signs in Dragon Age 2, released earlier in March 2011. The games share writers (Jennifer Hepler, for example), and I generally found Dragon Age 2 one of the most intolerable games I have ever had the misfortune to play, with flat, boring and stereotypical characters to often cringe worthy writing. Dragon Age 2 reaching a blinding crescendo of 'barely tolerable', writing wise and game play wise, and did nothing to go beyond this.

 

WARNING : SPOILERS FOR JK CLASS STORY.

Spoiler

 

I played through the Jedi Knight class story. The first line you hear in game playing as a Jedi Knight is about how special you are, how you were the BEST duelist at whichever Jedi training academy you were at. You then proceed to defeat the opening quest mobs single-handedly, (or at least treated so by the quest-givers), defeat a Dark Jedi at level three with a training saber, which is supposedly impossible, and are met by the grand master of the Jedi herself at level four. You then get the bestest Knight ever as your Master, who hasn't taken a Padawan in over thirty years. Then every Jedi you talk to admires you, or compliments you on your achievements. Then you 'save' Tython by killing another Dark Jedi at level 10 and build your own lightsaber at the special Forge, where only the best make their lightsabers. Then you get applauded by the Jedi Council and made a Knight because you ~ saved Tython ~.

 

What does this sound like to you? To me, it sounds like an almost typical Mary Sue story, for the perfect self-insert character that does all this ~ awesome ~ stuff and is really special and everyone admires them because they are ~ awesome ~. The game continues in this manner, where your neophyte Jedi Knight defeats a Sith Lord at level 16, saves Coruscant in random side-missions. A few quests had interesting choices - do I choose to expose a corrupt Senator who is nevertheless fighting for the poor, or do let her continue?. But these choices are presented in a blanket light/dark dualistic way. Also, apparently it is the dark side thing to ask for money before doing something, and gives the same amount of Dark Side points for committing random murder.. Jedi don't buy food, apparently. The quest line gets even more ridiculous from there - the Sith Lord has leaked all the locations of the Republic's doomsday weapons and you've got to save the galaxy before they get all of them. Coincidentally, all the doomsday weapons weren't hidden on out-of-the-way planets in the middle of a nebula or a random asteroid, but in highly-populated planets that are also, coincidentally, the zones where everyone else goes. A few quests throw planets at you in the form of 'instances', but these are generally extremely brief, and do not cover these doomsday weapons. You go ahead and annihilate the weapons, saving each planet in the process, because you are the Jedi Knight. Rather than sending an experienced Knight or even a Master to accompany you, or even go in your stead, it is you who gets to save all these planets! Because.

 

 

On the last planet you've got to save (funnily enough, the Sith seem to wait for you to get there before doing anything with the weapons), you meet your Master again, who tells you he's going to go after Darth Angral, the Sith behind the scheme. You save the planet of Alderaan, but then get to see a cutscene of your master dying. This is obviously meant to evoke sadness and an urge to avenge this character but.. well.. in game, I'd had a grand total of 10 minutes out of at least 30 hours played talking to him. I felt no attachment to him at all - I'd spent more time talking to generic quest NPC's than my apparent Jedi Master. Also evoking Mary Sue traits is the fact that the player character then goes after Darth Angral and avenges their master, despite the fact that your master is, apparently, one of the best combat masters in the Order. But he can't beat you, Player Character!. Then the Jedi Council asks you to go kill the Big Bad, the Sith Emperor. Coincidentally, all the clues for getting the Emperor are where all the other player characters are going to do their story quests! And so on. It feels extremely contrived.

 

 

I also have several issues on how game lore was done. I may disconnect with some readers on this (if you ARE still reading), but Revan, the great big hero of the first game in Knights of The Old Republic, is a straight white dude with stubble. Like every video game hero, including the recent Galen Marek of the Star Wars franchise. It also completely rewrites a previous fan favourite, Knights Of The Old Republic 2, to advance a boring storyline that ultimately feels tired and generic,.

 

It was at this point, I stopped playing. I can find better writing in Dragon Ball than in BioWare.

 

This depiction of you as the Big Kahuna, the Next Big Thing in the class quests, also completed conflicts from how every other quest in the game sees you. Sure, I'm addressed as 'Master Jedi', but then I'm asked to go punch ten guys in the face because they're shooting at the quest giver. Or shut down three turrets. Or collect cat teeth. Or beat up three guys and take their guns. I don't even remember quests in much detail any more - they all mashed together into one big generic lump, because they are all the same.

 

Space combat also suffers from being overly generic. You get a ship at the completion of your second planet, that lets you fly around the galaxy at will. The same ship that everyone else gets in your class. Wanted to craft ships and sell them to people in this game? Go back to EVE Online. Space combat could have made up for this, but it is literally the same four missions repeated over and over again, with little variation. Station Attack 2 is the same as Station Attack 1, except the hard points you need to destroy have SHEILDS! And everything hits twice as hard, so you better buy upgrades! Oh, and you've got to shoot two more hangars! But otherwise, Station Attack 2 is identical to Station Attack 1, even down to the on-rails flight route.

 

Overall, the writing felt like a concentrated attempt to make the player feel special in a game where 50 other people are probably saving the planet all at the same time as you. To facilitate this, group phasing and story phasing are used to split off areas of the zone/planet from other players except you, which makes The Old Republic feel like a solo game. As aforementioned, the problem is that changes to the world brought about by your actions only appear in these phases - nowhere else. Characters in the phase will talk about how they are making the area their own, and then the area, outside the phase, is uh, not their own. Phasing areas of the game like this also does not contribute to the MMO experience. I am playing an MMO to play with other people, not to play a single player game with a subscription.

 

Which brings me to The Old Republics MMO experience - simply put, there is none. Planets are sharded (meaning they are hosted on different servers), which means it can be hours before you see other players on certain planets. Phasing off areas also does not contribute to the experience of playing a Massively MULTIPLAYER game. Grouping with a player is not necessary, you merely need to whip out a companion and kill the elites with them instead. Chat channels in game are near dead, even in the most populated areas. I saw a grand total of five guild recruitment ads while playing for over twenty hours.

 

What is also detrimental to the MMO experience of the Old Republic is not simply the empty feeling of the game, but also the simple fact that as an MMO, it is very much behind the times. The UI is cumbersome and overly flashy. It is not there to be usable first, but to look cool first. What is also terrible about the UI is the fact that it is missing industry mainstays that have been around since 2007. You can form a guild, but this provides no appreciable benefit beyond a green coloured chat channel. There are no guild banks, no guild achievements, no guild anything. There is no default threat meter, or target of target, or even a combat log to track your damage or what killed you whilst tanking a boss. Nothing. The UI also does not have the ability to be modded, to have these added in (as WoW did in 2005!), but is completely unable to be customized. BioWare have not made up for this by, perhaps, paying attention to excellent player UI's created for WoW since 2005, or even the default WoW UI itself, which has all I mentioned above as defaults since 2008. The Old Republic was announced in 2008. Surely they could have learned?

Instances, outside of the first one you run, are standard generic fare with the chance to gain light side or dark side points. If you've played WoW and run dungeons, they are more or less exactly the same thing.

This is not to speak of the abominable Auction House (GTN) interface, which does not even have the option to name filter what you after. You have to pick the category of item, the subcategory, and then search, and then use the name filter. There is no general search to perhaps see the most expensive items of the day, or browsing by name because you want a specific item. Again, WoW had these options in 2008 (though present in 2005), the same year as The Old Republics announcement. The Looking For Group interface is even worse. It consists of marking yourself as 'Looking For Group', but not what dungeons you are interested in, or even your role that you wish to play. You also have to type /who to find these players, then whisper them to find out what they want to do, and then either invite or decline. This is far cry from even the system used in WoW in 2007, or even in 2009. Other options include sitting in a major center spamming for three hours. Simply put, The Old Republic has a worse interface than WoW in 2007. And you can't modify it, so you're stuck with the flashy blue UI that doesn't do what you need it to do. The UI is possibly the worst element of The Old Republic - it fails to even measure up to an eight-year-old game based on an even older RTS engine.

 

Technically, The Old Republic appears, on the surface, to be okay. Environments are gorgeous, and everything but the character models looks great on high settings. Because the character models are stuck at low texture forever, because of a bug. This was later justified by a BioWare employee to actually be a feature - high resolution textures on player characters would stress systems too much. Except for the fact that beta testers report that high resolution textures were in the game before, worked fine, and did not cause any noticeable lag on decent computer systems. However, for what the graphics are, they should not require a heavy system to render. In essence, the game is badly optimized, and it shows. Low FPS will randomly occur, before shooting up again. This is not my system - my GTS 250 flew through Skyrim on Ultra High with no issues whatsoever, at around 60 FPS - but rather the game. The level of graphics in The Old Republic should not require what they do to display. Furthermore, bad graphics on characters are possibly the worst move by an MMO, as the characters are what we build and should care about. I was rightly impressed when my gnome in WoW went from a level 1 wearing crappy chain mail into a juggernaut of destruction with an enormous shield that was so big it clipped through the ground. In contrast, The Old Republic will have your character left with muddy textures forever, because apparently you can't handle it. Except in cutscenes, where they magically appear.

 

Companions were also supposedly a revolutionary innovation that would sweep us off our feet. In reality, it's like every class has a hunter pet from WoW, except the hunter pet can sometimes use a lightsaber! You also can't use them in dungeons, and some companions are very much worse than others, especially tank companions. Companions are also trite, and boring. Romances are included, but because my Jedi Knight was female, she couldn't romance the only standable NPC in the party who wasn't a droid. After level 50, you don't even need your companions with you, so what was the point in them?

 

I cannot comment on endgame, but from what I have heard, the boss design is terrible, heavily bugged (loot chests cannot be opened by players), and very easy and quick to complete. PVP at endgame has also suffered from a World PVP area where before Patch 1.1, the way to win was win-trading flags, and now it is Empire camping the Republic base and gathering inordinate amounts of PVP rewards for doing so. Republic and Empire population is heavily imbalanced also, with a 1:10 ratio on some servers.

 

This is not to mention the treatment of the community by BioWare. Threads criticizing BioWare are locked, or consolidated into one big thread where not a voice can be distinguished from the crying masses - an informative post can be drowned out by

'QQ RAGE QUIT' -type posts. The forums are, more or less, a cesspool. Recently, players asked for server forums - a standard in sharded MMO's. BioWare responded with a thoroughly inadequate system and then said 'this is the best you are going to get'.

 

The patches also don't fix anything. Ability lag was a major problem in the game, causing the sluggish controls I mentioned earlier. It is still a problem, despite apparently being 'fixed', and appears to be an issue with the engine, rather than anything else. Anti-aliasing was also added in the patch. Except enabling did nothing and the tool tip read 'not implemented yet'. But according to the patch notes, anti-aliasing is in. Outright lies around the patch have also been sighted - James Ohlen, lead designer says that the Auction House interface was apparently fixed in the patch. Except it wasn't! Huzzah! This isn't to mention that the bugged endgame is still not fixed.

 

The design team also puff up around the game, insisting it is the most revolutionary game ever released while the actual game insists this is not so. I wonder, have the developers played another MMO released in the last five years, or even looked at a screenshot? Because their game says they haven't. Their game is stuck in 2005, rotting with vanilla WoW, a game that was ever more interesting than this one, even at its lowest points.

 

In short, don't buy this game. Maybe get a trial account when they release them to see the class stories. But do not play this game. If you want an MMO, play something else, because this game is simply not worth your time when it can't even do MMO right when so many others can. This is not the revolutionary game promised, it contains one new innovation - voice-acting to hide the fact that all the quests are the same and the quest designers are extremely lazy.

 

What I want to ask, is why did they hire Rich Vogel, the man who wrecked another Star Wars MMO, to have another go. Because that is the most confusing element of all.

 

ADDENMUM :

 

The music is also an issue, because the same twelve tracks are repeated over and over with no real difference. And its in really bad compression rate, so it sounds like crap on decent headphones, as do the voices.

 

tl;dr I am disappointed in the Old Republic and you shouldn't buy it.

 

Go to page 4 of the amazon review guy's original post, and you'll find that I pointed at over a dozen inaccuracies in his post. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=236884&page=4 Not to mention, he got to like level 30.

 

I can literally (I mean it, and I am willing, so all you have to do is ask) copy and paste 50 detailed reviews that praise TOR, so you copying one that is VERY inaccurate does not help you at all. Reviews mean nothing, in the end. The game has faults, the game has strengths, some think it has more faults, some think it has more strengths.

 

Now, I'm going to point the inaccuracies in your post. MMO Junkies does not count subscriptions, it reads server stress. http://www.mmo-junkies.net/topic/210-swtor-statistics-tool-faq/ So where did you get that statistic?

 

Secondly, SW:ToR's population drop off has been no where near as severe as Warhammer/AOC experienced.

 

SW:ToR (use the yearly graph): http://www.mmo-junkies.net/statistics/

 

Warhammer/AOC: http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-2.png

 

Not only that, but the server stress has been going down AND up within the past week, we did not experience a mass exodus like everyone said we would on the 19-22nd.

 

I'm also getting so aggravated at the whole "tortanic" thing. Do you guys think before you speak? A game does not have to be wildly successful to not fail. I guess you have to define failing; I define it as shut down.

 

STO: Failed horribly, still alive two years later, only now going F2P.

Rift: (by your standards) Failed horribly, still alive almost 2 years later.

 

You know, I don't even disagree that TOR has tons of faults. But dude, your post was SO inaccurate -- that does not help your cause at all.

[DarthSublimitas]

The devs

[daays]

I'm also getting so aggravated at the whole "tortanic" thing. Do you guys think before you speak? A game does not have to be wildly successful to not fail. I guess you have to define failing; I define it as shut down.

 

STO: Failed horribly, still alive two years later, only now going F2P.

Rift: (by your standards) Failed horribly, still alive almost 2 years later.

 

Most people will define failing as losing 70% of your initial launch population 3-6 months down the road.

 

Yes, RIFT failed. As did AoC/WAR/AION-NA.

 

It's not hard to keep a game running. Just look at the hundreds of rinky-dink F2P Korean MMORPG's out there that have been going for years.

Edited January 27, 2012 by daays

[Geglad]

 

Not only that, but the server stress has been going down AND up within the past week, we did not experience a mass exodus like everyone said we would on the 19-22nd.

 

 

 

Oh yeah? Well you wait and see! I read on the interwebz that all of the other trolls hadda issue thingy type dealio with the calendar date and its been pushed to 21 DEC 2012!

 

The day Sw:ToR officially dies! It will be over! All the fail will finally push the cosmos out of whack and stuff! Yeah!

 

I KNOW IT! Its a TRUE FACT! A REAL FACT!

 

 

/thread

 

 

 

Ps: I didnt know there were cool facts like real and true facts, never did get english...told ya guys I was dumb lawlz...

 

 

 

 

-Lad