The community, the game and what has become of it so far

[meminemall]

Until we as the consumer want something and will guarantee success of something different and innovative. There will not be a market for MMO's that will blow us away and be out of this world. Thus companies will never invest in one.

 

It is our responsibility as the consumer to take blame for why every MMO feels like playing WoW and why WoW feels like playing every other mmo.

 

Think of DCUO. They Offered something totally different from WoW. Did they make it? No. Why? Cause we as the consumer didn't want the change.

 

Case rested.

[CanWolfShadow]

I'm here because I'm enjoying the game.

 

Are there issues? Yep. And I expect them to be addressed over time.

The key question for me is "AM I HAVEING FUN?" if anser = yes the Bioware gets $15 a month from me. If answer = no, then Bioware no longer gets my money.

 

 

TBH, if I get 3-4 months out of the game then I consider the money i"ve dropped on this game money well spent.

[xianfusheng]

You HAVE to give a game more time than a few weeks before you start with the "Well chalk up another failure", otherwise we all might as well go back to WoW and be enslaved to Blizzard if we intend to play an MMO.

 

I agree a lot with that statement, people nowadays don't seem to have the patience anymore to wait for much longer then a week or two before they claim the game will be a failure. They do not give it enough time to progress and improve, which is just plain wrong because no MMO ever starts out perfect and without flaws, it takes time to make something this big and even longer to improve on it.

 

 

On a further note, and also in agreement with Samborino and acknowledging my own mistake, I was indeed wrong to say that I admit that it is a WoW clone, it's not, in truth it is just a "clone" of today's common MMO standards that we see in so many games, even in MMO's before WoW or that were released not long before or after WoW (Think of EQ2 which was released a few weeks prior to WoW)

 

I'm here because I'm enjoying the game.

 

Are there issues? Yep. And I expect them to be addressed over time.

The key question for me is "AM I HAVEING FUN?" if anser = yes the Bioware gets $15 a month from me. If answer = no, then Bioware no longer gets my money.

 

 

TBH, if I get 3-4 months out of the game then I consider the money i"ve dropped on this game money well spent.

 

In the end, and all honesty meant with it, that's actually what it is all about, to have fun with it.

[knightblaster]

Until we as the consumer want something and will guarantee success of something different and innovative. There will not be a market for MMO's that will blow us away and be out of this world. Thus companies will never invest in one.

 

It is our responsibility as the consumer to take blame for why every MMO feels like playing WoW and why WoW feels like playing every other mmo.

 

Think of DCUO. They Offered something totally different from WoW. Did they make it? No. Why? Cause we as the consumer didn't want the change.

 

Case rested.

 

It has to do with where the bar is set, I think.

 

Personally, I don't think we will ever see another MMO (other than perhaps the next MMO that Blizzard is working on) reach something close to the number of subs that WoW currently has in the West -- that is, even leaving aside Asia, where the plan for access differs.

 

The trouble is that because so many people are playing WoW, developers and publishers want a piece of that pie -- and as a big a piece as they can manage to get. In other words, they are after that market, because it is big. The trouble is that replicating WoW's success is very, very difficult for the reasons I mention upthread. This isn't stopping companies from trying, however.

 

As a result, WoW remains the "bar" in terms of "success". In fact, it's an unrealistic "bar", however. Realistically, a new MMO could hope to maintain a stable subscriber base of 500k and be a great success --> but in the era of WoW, that is considered a failure by comparison, because of where WoW is. Even a game like EVE that has around 400k subs is considered a "niche" game.

 

The "bar" for success, which is now based around an extreme outlier (WoW) has warped everything: player expectations, developer/financier/publisher expectations, market expectations. The market is now warped.

Edited January 8, 2012 by knightblaster

[meminemall]

I agree a lot with that statement, people nowadays don't seem to have the patience anymore to wait for much longer then a week or two before they claim the game will be a failure. They do not give it enough time to progress and improve, which is just plain wrong because no MMO ever starts out perfect and without flaws, it takes time to make something this big and even longer to improve on it.

 

Well since everyone wants to compare this game to WoW lets do so for a moment.

 

WoW released with 350,000 box sales ( Stated at a press release 2 weeks afterwords) and 250,000 toons made the first day. It released with 47 reported bugs 9 of them were game breaking.

~Had 0 raid content

~Quest were all text based. 0 cinematic. The only cinematic you have seen in WoW before WoTLK was when you first installed the game in both vanilla WoW and Burning crusade.

~Had 0 voice acting except for until Burning crusade and even then it Was Chris Metzhen doing all the acting.

 

And EVERY Tuesday from the day the game released all the way until the end of 3.3.3 brought New Game breaking bugs i.e Lag, Disconnects, Exploits, Boss bugs Etc.

 

The average wait time for them to fix a bug each week lasted for about a week.

 

Raids and new content was released every year. Burning crusade was released every 10 months WoTLK was released every 7~10 months Cata So far 6~9 months.

 

Bottom line it took WoW 7 years to get to where it is today. And still is not the pinnacle of success.

[HavenAE]

Please don't come out with this like everyone else.

 

If a newly started company tried to sell me a CD player for the same price as an iPod but used the justification that the older company had "been around for a longer amount of time" so I should be more sympathetic toward their product's relative failings I'd just give it a miss.

 

This game is going to be compared to older MMOs and people have every right to demand that this game is, at the very least, standing toe-to-toe with the older games. I don't think this game is bad at all but it's clearly not as good in a lot of respects (PvP, openness, etc.) as its more established competitors.

 

Advances in music technology and comparing two MMOs is a terrible analogy.

 

I really wish people would stop doing things like this. Using car, TV, house analogies as if they have any kind of relevance or similarities to an MMO. Hell most of the gaming industry has very little in common with MMOs when you stop and look at the differences.

 

I wouldn't have bought Skyrim if I knew it would take Bethesda at least 1-3 months before they got their game sorted out.

 

However knowing going in that SWTOR would take at least that long I was more than happy to buy it and both examples are great games.

 

I simply expect more sooner from one type of product than I do the other.

[xianfusheng]

Please don't come out with this like everyone else.

 

If a newly started company tried to sell me a CD player for the same price as an iPod but used the justification that the older company had "been around for a longer amount of time" so I should be more sympathetic toward their product's relative failings I'd just give it a miss.

 

This game is going to be compared to older MMOs and people have every right to demand that this game is, at the very least, standing toe-to-toe with the older games. I don't think this game is bad at all but it's clearly not as good in a lot of respects (PvP, openness, etc.) as its more established competitors.

 

That comparison makes no sense at all.

 

First off, practically no one would by a CD-player for the same price of an iPod whether the company is new or old, the CD-player is an outdated format of portable music players and is hardly used anymore.

 

Secondly, the CD-player and iPod are two completely different things, sure they are both portable music players but you simply cannot compare them due to that they are not the same thing.

 

In your comparison, it would be like comparing a textual based MMO vs a 3D MMO, you can't make that comparison, it's not the same thing.

 

Advances in music technology and comparing two MMOs is a terrible analogy.

 

I really wish people would stop doing things like this. Using car, TV, house analogies as if they have any kind of relevance or similarities to an MMO. Hell most of the gaming industry has very little in common with MMOs when you stop and look at the differences.

 

^ This, I fully agree with.

[Dravinian]

The problem that I think some of you have with comparison is that you don't truly understand the comparison.

 

The comparison is very rarely about content.

 

It is about graphics, gameplay, mechanics, playability, replayability.

 

It is ENTIRELY valid to compare these things as 5+ years of development do not change the very basics of the game engine and the way the game is played.

 

SW:ToR has problems that go way beyond class balance and content or bugs, it gets right down to the nitty gritty of playability, how well the game mechanics work and how playable they are.

 

These are justifiably comparable to other MMORPGs.

 

And when you do compare, SW:ToR loses by a very large margin....which is why some of you are so desperate to avoid that comparison.

[xianfusheng]

Personally I dislike comparing games to each other, because I frankly find it silly to do so as it is not such a big deal to me, though of course I can perhaps understand why it is a big deal to other people.

 

Now, one most know that my library of MMO's played is relatively small (perhaps downright insulting to a veteran MMO player) so my knowledge of comparison is rather small. I for example have never played WoW, nor EQ2 nor GW1, actually, the only MMO's I have played were Rising Force: Online, Perfect World and Dynasty Warriors online, three MMO's that are hardly alike when compared. There was never a reason for me to compare them either because that's not why I played them for.

 

A common thing is to compare SW:TOR to WoW because the latter is the ruling king of the MMO genre whether you like it or not. I dare to say that I never liked WoW, but then again I never liked Warcraft in general and when Blizzard came with an MMO based of an RTS game I simply wasn't moved by it. Would I say that it is a bad game because of that? No, some people may find it hard to admit but WoW is simply a good game when it comes down to it, it is not the leading MMO currently out there for nothing. The game itself is not bad, I simply just do not like it and as such you wont see me bashing it and claiming that it sucks.

 

Do I find SW:TOR superior to it? No, not at all and quite frankly I don't care either whether SW:TOR is better then WoW or not because it simply does not matter to me. Comparing games, or just MMO's in general is all fine and dandy, but in the end all it does is creating a rift between players who either like WoW and players who like SW:TOR. That's about the same as people who like PS3 and people who like Xbox 360 and how they end up bashing each other on how their system is better and how the other is a piece of crap.

 

In all honesty, the MMO community should not even follow such examples because, let's face it, there will always be people who like WoW better, or EQ2 better or any other MMO, and there will be people who solely swear by SW:TOR and that is perfectly fine, it is however not fine when you bash onto the other game just because you do not like it. We are all entitled to our own opinion yes, but we have to respect that of others as well and there is simply no point into arguing which MMO is better. They are all great games to the people who enjoy playing them and have fun in them, and in the end that is all what matters. To have fun in a game.