SWTOR: Dying or Prosperous?

[Hanscholo]

Not really sure i am qualified to tell you anything.

 

I am staying though, i love it.

[mcfabulous]

Bioware dropped the ball bigtime and essentially we're playing a worse version of WoW with no endgame, linear gameworld full of bugs and an unresponsive interface. Given this and WoW both cost $15, which are you gonna choose.

 

 

I don't have much faith in Bioware to fix the issues which all stem from their lack of vision and attention to detail. Just look at the gameworld, much of it is bland and undetailed. NPCs you can't talk to let alone click, mobs just sit around lifelessly, no critters or small wildlife wandering about, the same oak tree model on nearly every planet (seriously where is the alien plantlife?! who plays a space mmo to see oak trees?!). no bodies of water or swimming, no day/night cycles, barely any music...

 

 

I mean any one of those things on their own isn't too noticeable, but when they're ALL missing... this game is an obvious money grab. You don't put out a game to compete with WoW and have it be worse in quality than WoW in nearly every facet save story. I mean it's 2012, how could they not get their interface to work with 100% reliability, something Blizzard achieved in 2004...

 

I don't want to hype it up like I did this game, but someone posted this earlier

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBC_ig73aMs

 

my god man. all I'm saying. BW should take notes on innovation

[Jesira]

You really put a lot of effort into a post that starts right off with bad data.

 

2 million sales? Where are you getting that from? VGCHartz, the same entity that said TOR had sold 1 million preorders in the U.S. alone, not including Europe and digital downloads?

 

People who believed VGChartz thought TOR had 2 million sales before the game even released, and then felt stupid when Bioware announced just over 1 million total members on December 22nd. So now people are going to buy into the nonsense AGAIN?

 

Over 1 million individual box sales & therefor players is an incredible far cry from tanking, even still. But if you think that they stopped dead at 1 million and haven't climbed by a significant degree since the official launch date then I don't really know what to tell ya.

Edited January 12, 2012 by Jesira

[AirshipGirl]

In a couple of months we'll all know what direction this game takes. Right now it is still less than a month from release. If in a couple of months people are still complaining about no lfg, no adjustable UI, poor guild chat, no server forums, to much sharding, and people asking for server mergers because there is not enough people playing on their server...then we can pretty much guess this game will never see a substantial population. First impressions are everything.

 

Right now Bioware is cutting their own throats, especially when they try to BS their way out of the high texture mess. This will not end well for Bioware. After DA2 and if this game goes sour, Bioware will loose a lot of fans they once had. So they better start thinking about stepping up their game plan and making their player base happy - otherwise we're looking at another Warhammer.

[Jeedaix]

Over 1 million individual box sales & therefor players is an incredible far cry from tanking, even still. But if you think that they stopped dead at 1 million and haven't climbed by a significant degree since the official launch date then I don't really know what to tell ya.

 

 

Don't bother with Mannic, futile he hates even when hes happy

[Jesira]

Don't bother with Mannic, futile he hates even when hes happy

 

Lol, I see...

 

Well from my experience the game and the time cards for the game have been selling out pretty much anywhere I've gone, last week I was shopping for a late christmas family and friends thing and some people wanted to try out SW:TOR, so I went to buy it and I had to go to 3 different places just to get enough copies + 1 game time card each. Two of them were best buy and they both had employees say that the game was selling out almost as soon as they were getting copies in.

[AirshipGirl]

Over 1 million individual box sales & therefor players is an incredible far cry from tanking, even still. But if you think that they stopped dead at 1 million and haven't climbed by a significant degree since the official launch date then I don't really know what to tell ya. The game and the time cards for the game have been selling out pretty much anywhere I've gone, last week I was shopping for a late christmas family thing and some people wanted to try out SW:TOR, so I went to buy it and I had to go to 3 different places just to get enough copies + 1 game time card each. Two of them were best buy and they both had employees say that the game was selling out almost as soon as they were getting copies in.

 

Warhammer sold over 1.5 million copies, then it died a very fast death...took less than 3 months before that game was nearly a virtual ghosttown. SWTOR may break that record if Bioware doesn't start paying attention to the players in a meaningful way. All these people you see being critical of the game are a representation of a larger portion.

[Edaros]

WAIT WAIT HOLD ON.

 

 

We wanted to much?

 

 

A decent end game is asking for too much?

Better LFG tools is asking for too much?

Hard mode content that is hard? Is asking too much?

Macros and being able to scale UI is asking too much?

 

1: No, you EXPECTED too much. Learn to read.

 

2: A decent end game from launch day. Ok. How long have you been playing mmos? Did you even play any other mmos from day 1?

 

Wow didn't have any decent end game content on launch day. Infact, it didn't have anything to go wild about. Neither have any other mmo i've played since day 1.

 

3: LFG tool is pointless. In fact, explain -why- we need it instead of just saying you want it.

 

4: In reply to the two last frantic QQ lines with question marks attached to'em.

 

Get a grip, the game is still in its infant state. Go back to your wow and stop trying to pretend that you know how a game should be at launch.

 

MMOs evolve over time as new features and content are added.

 

How long did it take for wow to get their LFG tool? It took a LONG time. At least in TOR we have the LFG comment feature which isn't half bad if people uses it a bit more often along with /who.

 

Most of the people are upset that features day 1 should have had in does not. We are not talking about class balance here. We are talking about things that could have easily been added to the game before release if they would have listen to player feed back.

 

If the player feedback was constructive rather than mindless rants, i'm sure they'd listen, and no, -MOST- people are aware that the game is in its infant state and not even a month old and that it will evolve and get new features and content added at a later time once other bugs have been fixed.

 

But please, do go back to wow. The less of you whiners on these forums the better.

[Teladis]

Over 1 million individual box sales & therefor players is an incredible far cry from tanking, even still. But if you think that they stopped dead at 1 million and haven't climbed by a significant degree since the official launch date then I don't really know what to tell ya.

 

Other mmos start off strong and died off also.

 

 

What upsets people is that Bioware has learned nothing from history.

 

First impressions are key moments in a mmo. It can make or break it.

 

 

Most mmos who had a rough start but fix it, still did not get the numbers they was hoping for because First Impression killed it.

 

 

Bioware has failed it's First Impression, thanks to the one factor that it needed to have to make a MMO live on todays market. That is a fun end game.

 

 

Bioware has failed.

[Jesira]

Warhammer sold over 1.5 million copies, then it died a very fast death...took less than 3 months before that game was nearly a virtual ghosttown. SWTOR may break that record if Bioware doesn't start paying attention to the players in a meaningful way. All these people you see being critical of the game are a representation of a larger portion.

 

Did they get 1.5 mil right away? I played Warhammer when it came out, and that game was incomparably worse than MOST any MMO I've played. Sorry, but I don't totally agree with that assessment, although I can see your point of view and do agree that there are some glaring issues. But I don't see more than one or two in particular that I'd consider game-breaking....SW:TOR is a genuinely FUN game that offers a relatively diverse set of content for people to play, and has a significantly better end-game than most MMO's in recent years have launched with..

Edited January 12, 2012 by Jesira

[Bryoal]

This game is hardly doomed. The ones leaving are the impatient. Its BW's first MMO, just like WoW was Blizz's first MMO and how well did their launch go? How many bugs did they have?

 

Now you can respond to me and say "Well they have Mythic devs and whatnot on their team." Honestly how do you know how many of them are there? Myabe the majority never worked on an MMO before.

 

People do not know how to have patience, there are bugs of course. Are any of them stopping you from playing the game? If so report it, look at patch notes, if its serious BW will fix it.

 

The only problem I even see this game having is that too many people come here expecting the best, but get a standard MMO at launch, go around trash talking it and spreading the word that its a horrible game and its gonna die in 2 weeks.

 

My guild downed Soa today, one of they attempts some of the platform was missing, we tried it anyway and failed. So what. Noone started raging on vent like you see here on the forums, we tried again. And guess what, we got him to 3% and the last pillar hit him but he bugged and it stayed, were we dissappointed? Sure, did we curse BW and the mother it came from? Hell no. We gave it one more attempt, and yea we killed the SOB. We all cheered and thats what an MMO is about, having fun with people, get to know them, not to complain about every single thing that is wrong or not to your specification.

 

Want to help make the game better? Go the the test server forums, make a thread, label it as Feedback or Suggestion and let BW know. They are listening to the customers and you can see that by their posts on the High Res textures and the ability delay, THEY ARE WORKING ON IT.

 

TL:DR

Not everything is done at the snap of a finger (Especially something like this) and I think alot of people have forgotten aabout that, thus leading to useless threads, constant complaints/trolling, and bad word of mouth getting out.

[Drakos]

Other mmos start off strong and died off also.

 

 

What upsets people is that Bioware has learned nothing from history.

 

First impressions are key moments in a mmo. It can make or break it.

 

 

Most mmos who had a rough start but fix it, still did not get the numbers they was hoping for because First Impression killed it.

 

 

Bioware has failed it's First Impression, thanks to the one factor that it needed to have to make a MMO live on todays market. That is a fun end game.

 

 

Bioware has failed.

 

I don't think their first impressions have been terrible. I think they're generally mixed. Most people seem to like the game, there's only a relatively small population of us that won't be back next month - but we can't know that until next month anyway.

 

Since most players are still in the level 30-40 range, they have another month with which to begin working on their endgame and addressing all of the issues therein before it really gets decided whether or not it's endgame is or isn't successful in today's market.

[demoncrat]

Dying. I play a tank that does a lot of HMs on a very busy server. Most healers aren't logging in anymore so I can't just pick someone up and look for 2 dps.

 

It's dying. I'm going to stick around a bit longer, probably up to March, but I suspect we'll continue seeing very low populations in most zones because the servers can't handle more than 1k users total, it seems.

 

Good job, Bioware.

[Teladis]

1: No, you EXPECTED too much. Learn to read.

 

2: A decent end game from launch day. Ok. How long have you been playing mmos? Did you even play any other mmos from day 1?

 

Wow didn't have any decent end game content on launch day. Infact, it didn't have anything to go wild about. Neither have any other mmo i've played since day 1.

 

3: LFG tool is pointless. In fact, explain -why- we need it instead of just saying you want it.

 

4: In reply to the two last frantic QQ lines with question marks attached to'em.

 

Get a grip, the game is still in its infant state. Go back to your wow and stop trying to pretend that you know how a game should be at launch.

 

MMOs evolve over time as new features and content are added.

 

How long did it take for wow to get their LFG tool? It took a LONG time. At least in TOR we have the LFG comment feature which isn't half bad if people uses it a bit more often along with /who.

 

 

 

If the player feedback was constructive rather than mindless rants, i'm sure they'd listen, and no, -MOST- people are aware that the game is in its infant state and not even a month old and that it will evolve and get new features and content added at a later time once other bugs have been fixed.

 

But please, do go back to wow. The less of you whiners on these forums the better.

 

 

To compare wow back in that day to a mmo today is dumb. Wow had to build a MMO from the ground up, They did not have anything to fall back but EQ, and they tried to with some, but they had to come up with new things to make the MMO stand alive.

 

 

 

Bioware has many MMOS to see what worked and what did not. They had a lot of player feedback and they picked to ignore it.

 

I'm not sure if it was because of a limited amount of time, or because of other things, but here I will explain more things for you since you don't understand.

 

 

 

 

To say that a LFG tool is pointless is the most laughable thing of your two cents. It took wow a long time to add it because no other mmo had it. Bioware has had plenty of time to see how much it works and picked not to have it. Bioware also stated the phase zones was bad idea and stated a reason why that was so dumb, that many people laughed.

 

The one biggest issue in todays market is that people want to log on and play the game with sometimes a very limited time to play. A lfg queue system helped players do such a thing, because they could sign up and have the game save them time, and let them play when they wanted to play, not when there friends, or wasting time spamming chat for a group to get lucky.

 

 

I don't know about you, but if I log on for 2 hours. I want to spend that two hours doing a flash point. Not logging on and "hope" to get a group.

 

 

This is things that bioware should have looked at on the drawing table, things they should have had on day 1. They learned nothing from the past, and that is why they are going to get what they deserve in a few months.

[Ribtips]

Forums are always home to the vocal minority and a wretched hive of scum and villany. What remains to be seen is if it's the 5-10% type minority or the 30-40% minority that's complaining. In-game community is much better, though. Bottom line is that some people like the game as it is, some people have a low tolerance for bugs, and some people just don't like the direction BioWare went with the game.

 

this^^

[Jswizzle]

Warhammer had a pretty good launch as far as sales go. Not even comparable to what this game is doing though.

 

Analysts are saying 2 million subs, by March 31. I think we are going to hit that sooner considering reports of 2 million copies sold. You might not believe what the only available data says about TOR sales, but they claim the sales are tracked by region. Why would they make it up? Plus it doesn't account for digital downloads.

[Caramel_Ham]

Forums are always home to the vocal minority and a wretched hive of scum and villany. What remains to be seen is if it's the 5-10% type minority or the 30-40% minority that's complaining. In-game community is much better, though. Bottom line is that some people like the game as it is, some people have a low tolerance for bugs, and some people just don't like the direction BioWare went with the game.

 

Im one of the players that "dont like where BW went with this game"

 

That said, theres nothing i can do about it. I do enjoy the single player, im sorry, the leveling process of this game though.

 

The IA class story is freaking awesome so far (lvl 37). The sorcerer one is pretty good in the beginning...then gets really stale...then finally picks up at the end (lvl 42-43). The bounty hunter (lvl 17) is so far extemely dull.

 

Since there is nothing i can do about how the game is, most of my complaints are limited to bugs, low cap servers, and extremely instanced game world. Oh and i cant forget trolling biodroids.... while once in a while, actually having an intelligent exchange of ideas with one....though that happens rarely.

 

As for answering the OP's question. I think this game is prosperous right now because of the unique leveling process. Though i do not see a lot of players sticking around once they have reached level cap and have done some of the operations. This game does not have enough content, nor was created with end game in mind as far as what is there right now.

 

If BW releases new planets with a completely new concept. One that actually befits the massive starwars name. Then they can easily create the best end game content ever. I think that is the strongest factor in having different instanced planets, instead of one giant world. It all depends on BW if this game is to be financially a big success.

[Jesira]

Generally mixed, I suppose..Pretty sure I'll start sounding like a fanboy but I'm really not. I've seen far less complaints about this game from people actually playing the game than I have seen in years of playing MMO's. I've seen plenty of "the sky is falling" remarks on these forum's and they hardly ever provide constructive criticism and sound more like trolling, which is why people tend to get flamed to hell and these topics explode into gigantic debates that get closed down and even THAT is to a far lesser degree than I have seen in years of forum posting

 

My first impressions of this game are tremendously positive, I think the game is GREAT and brings some things to the genre that I've been waiting for. From what I've seen on the two servers I play, it's 99% positive feedback. The biggest problem that I see other than the raid bug, is that the personal story comes to a "close" right around level 50, and I think they would of been wise to have the next part ready for launch so that people didn't feel like they were hitting a wall.

 

The general idea is that people will mostly want to roll alts to experience other aspects of the story, and that'll probably be true in the majority but I'm one of those people that really just wants to focus on my one character, and alts are a casual process for me, so it's kind of sad in that regard.

Edited January 12, 2012 by Jesira

[Jswizzle]

I generally agree with the assessment that time will tell the true story. I completely understand the issue people are having with lack of end game content. It's coming though. No game developers are going to only focus on end game content. It simply doesn't make any sense. You have to get people to the end game first.

 

Most gamers are casual. They simply don't get to the end game in 2 weeks like some of us. When they do get to the end game , they make another character.

[Bryoal]

I generally agree with the assessment that time will tell the true story. I completely understand the issue people are having with lack of end game content. It's coming though. No game developers are going to only focus on end game content. It simply doesn't make any sense. You have to get people to the end game first.

 

Most gamers are casual. They simply don't get to the end game in 2 weeks like some of us. When they do get to the end game , they make another character.

 

Sadly most people dont understand this. I rushed to 50 yes. I watched all the scenes, and I KNEW what end game was going to have. 2 Operations, and one with only one boss. And what does BW do? THEY ARE ALREADY ADDING MORE CONTENT. I mean lets me serious. How many people in the game have cleared Nightmare Operations? I doubt many did.

[Teladis]

Sadly most people dont understand this. I rushed to 50 yes. I watched all the scenes, and I KNEW what end game was going to have. 2 Operations, and one with only one boss. And what does BW do? THEY ARE ALREADY ADDING MORE CONTENT. I mean lets me serious. How many people in the game have cleared Nightmare Operations? I doubt many did.

 

Problem is, without a good LFG queue system like a next gen mmo should have. The better question is, why pay monthly for things that could come out?

[Edaros]

To compare wow back in that day to a mmo today is dumb. Wow had to build a MMO from the ground up, They did not have anything to fall back but EQ, and they tried to with some, but they had to come up with new things to make the MMO stand alive.

 

 

 

Bioware has many MMOS to see what worked and what did not. They had a lot of player feedback and they picked to ignore it.

 

I'm not sure if it was because of a limited amount of time, or because of other things, but here I will explain more things for you since you don't understand.

 

 

 

 

To say that a LFG tool is pointless is the most laughable thing of your two cents. It took wow a long time to add it because no other mmo had it. Bioware has had plenty of time to see how much it works and picked not to have it. Bioware also stated the phase zones was bad idea and stated a reason why that was so dumb, that many people laughed.

 

The one biggest issue in todays market is that people want to log on and play the game with sometimes a very limited time to play. A lfg queue system helped players do such a thing, because they could sign up and have the game save them time, and let them play when they wanted to play, not when there friends, or wasting time spamming chat for a group to get lucky.

 

 

I don't know about you, but if I log on for 2 hours. I want to spend that two hours doing a flash point. Not logging on and "hope" to get a group.

 

 

This is things that bioware should have looked at on the drawing table, things they should have had on day 1. They learned nothing from the past, and that is why they are going to get what they deserve in a few months.

 

1: Oh but i do compare it since WOW back then at launch was a lot worse.

 

WOW had plenty of mmos they could've learned from as well. Archeron's Call, Ultima Online, EQ, and more. These were the old school mmos and they had features wow never implemented as well.

 

2: LFG tool might still be implemented but i don't really see the problem of not having it. Join a guild, do flashpoints with guildies. I'm running flashpoints all day, every day with guildies.

 

3: This is indeed a nextgen mmo and as such, i think it's a good thing they don't copy every single feature wow has.

 

4: The biggest issue in todays mmo market is that there are waaaaay too many kids whining about what wow has and what other mmos doesn't have. Just like you're doing, right now.

 

Either you play it, or you don't. It's really that simple. You're just part of vocal minority.

 

If a developer gave it's customers every single bit of thinkable feature on launch day, what would that leave the game with in terms of expansions and other feature patches for the future? Nothing. THAT is how mmos work. They give you the full game in content patches and expansions over time.

 

I do belive it is you who do not understand how this industry works

[Bryoal]

1: Oh but i do compare it since WOW back then at launch was a lot worse.

 

WOW had plenty of mmos they could've learned from as well. Archeron's Call, Ultima Online, EQ, and more. These were the old school mmos and they had features wow never implemented as well.

 

2: LFG tool might still be implemented but i don't really see the problem of not having it. Join a guild, do flashpoints with guildies. I'm running flashpoints all day, every day with guildies.

 

3: This is indeed a nextgen mmo and as such, i think it's a good thing they don't copy every single feature wow has.

 

4: The biggest issue in todays mmo market is that there are waaaaay too many kids whining about what wow has and what other mmos doesn't have. Just like you're doing, right now.

 

Either you play it, or you don't. It's really that simple. You're just part of vocal minority.

 

If a developer gave it's customers every single bit of thinkable feature on launch day, what would that leave the game with in terms of expansions and other feature patches for the future? Nothing. THAT is how mmos work. They give you the full game in content patches and expansions over time.

 

I do belive it is you who do not understand how this industry works

 

Spot on man. People need to realise this isnt some game thats been out for 5 months and is still littered with bugs, its a fresh MMO. And ontop of being a fresh MMO look at how massive the game is.

 

Go ahead and start saying "LOL BUT PLANETZ R SMALL". Its obvious you have not even gotten to Balmorra nevermind Hoth or Voss.

[Edaros]

Problem is, without a good LFG queue system like a next gen mmo should have. The better question is, why pay monthly for things that could come out?

 

Here you go with that LFG crap again.

 

Maybe it'll be implemented, maybe it won't. Point is, show some freaking patience. The game hasn't even been out a full month yet.

 

There are greater concerns like bug fixing that takes prio to adding new features or content, this early after release.

[thomaspraill]

Everyone's trying to be diplomatic here and I can appreciate that but here's some brutal honesty:

 

This game is boring. Even the non-spacebars that are still enthralled with the story are going to get bored eventually. Unless they have some major, major, fundamental ground shaking patches in the next 6 months this game will die. Mark my words.