This game is TWO MONTHS old.

[Zortezurtek]

 

If I buy a new car, I expect it to come with air conditioning. If your excuse is that it's a new model this year and has only existed for 2 months... that's not going to fly.

 

 

MMOs are not like cars, they grow, whereas a car cannot be patched. If you are going to compare to the automobile industry, think of every patch like a new model of the same car released year after year with improvements and polish.

 

Comparing an MMO, a product that grows with its community and over time, to a product that always has to be final upon release is foolish to the point of fallacy.

 

You might ask "is it so hard to implement known features that all games have?"

 

Firstly, yes it is hard. You are not building a brick wall, it's not just concrete you have to add there as if that is the way things are done. Coding is different, that takes a while.

Secondly, they are being added so I doubt those will be the complaints in a few months or so.

Edited February 23, 2012 by Zortezurtek

[Skoobie]

MMOs are not like cars, they grow, whereas a car cannot be patched. If you are going to compare to the automobile industry, think of every patch like a new model of the same car released year after year with improvements and polish.

 

Comparing an MMO, a product that grows with its community and over time, to a product that always has to be final upon release is foolish to the point of fallacy.

 

You might ask "is it so hard to implement known features that all games have?"

 

Firstly, yes it is hard. You are not building a brick wall, it's not just concrete you have to add there as if that is the way things are done. Coding is different, that takes a while.

Secondly, they are being added so I doubt those will be the complaints in a few months or so.

 

Whenever I see someone use the car analogy, all I can think is "Do you expect a newborn baby to be walking and talking at birth?"

[Daboozy]

Yea, WOW gave free time cause of lag.. thats a pretty stand up thing to do!!!!

 

BW should give free time for having us still playing in beta.

[Daboozy]

Whenever I see someone use the car analogy, all I can think is "Do you expect a newborn baby to be walking and talking at birth?"

 

that makes ZERO sense..lol...HAHAHAHAA that was good for a laugh. babies dont have the option of being better unless its genetic or some crazy stuff..lol. Cars can be built better with the latest technology.

 

What the heck are you saying? lolll

[Skoobie]

Yea, WOW gave free time cause of lag.. thats a pretty stand up thing to do!!!!

 

BW should give free time for having us still playing in beta.

 

If we were still in beta, then it would already be free time.

[muzzle_flash]

Whenever I see someone use the car analogy, all I can think is "Do you expect a newborn baby to be walking and talking at birth?"

 

Swing and a miss

[Akirator]

Yea, WOW gave free time cause of lag.. thats a pretty stand up thing to do!!!!

 

BW should give free time for having us still playing in beta.

 

Except wow gave us time because the servers were completely down, not because there were bugs or lag.

 

Until all the servers start randomly crashing once or twice a day and staying down, its not even remotely the same situation.

[Daboozy]

If we were still in beta, then it would already be free time.

 

you completely missed the point of the post. You can read it again and edit if you need to.

[Daboozy]

Except wow gave us time because the servers were completely down, not because there were bugs or lag.

 

Until all the servers start randomly crashing once or twice a day and staying down, its not even remotely the same situation.

 

Id rather have server crashes with the amount of bugs they have...

[Skoobie]

that makes ZERO sense..lol...HAHAHAHAA that was good for a laugh. babies dont have the option of being better unless its genetic or some crazy stuff..lol. Cars can be built better with the latest technology.

 

What the heck are you saying? lolll

 

Just like a baby, MMO's grow with time.

 

It is born. Then as time goes on, things are added to it...just like a child learns as it grows older.

 

MMO's get bigger as time moves on, like a child growing up. MMO's mature over time, just like a young adult.

 

Some grow up to be outstanding games (adults), and some never grow up.

 

And eventually, they all die.

Edited February 23, 2012 by CommunitySupportEN

[Daboozy]

Since you are obviously too young to understand:

 

Just like a baby, MMO's grow with time.

 

It is born. Then as time goes on, things are added to it...just like a child learns as it grows older.

 

MMO's get bigger as time moves on, like a child growing up. MMO's mature over time, just like a young adult.

 

LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOO dude...you make NOOOOOOOO sense at all... you cant even compare the two...lol. And you are calling me young? lol

 

Common sense obviously ran from your life years ago.

[CommonKnowledge]

Firstly, yes it is hard. You are not building a brick wall, it's not just concrete you have to add there as if that is the way things are done. Coding is different, that takes a while. Secondly, they are being added so I doubt those will be the complaints in a few months or so.

 

Then general release should have been delayed whilst issues brought to light during Beta were addressed. When the games released people aren't going to care if it took a few months longer but was of better quality than if it was rushed out the door with its shirt unbuttoned and trousers still unzipped.

 

Like it or not MMOs have a window of opportunity that are there to establish a player base. MMOs which work are ones which quickly establish a player base from launch and keep them playing rather than relying on a steady stream of new customers. Launch will always have the highest influx of new players and the developers should have realised that. This game does have a declining population - the extent is unknown but people are leaving. Therefore because launch was almost 3 months ago there won't be enough to people joining to replace those leaving.

 

That's the problem with this game and no amount of "well in a few months time it'll be fine" will fix it.

[muzzle_flash]

Since you are obviously too young to understand:

 

Just like a baby, MMO's grow with time.

 

It is born. Then as time goes on, things are added to it...just like a child learns as it grows older.

 

MMO's get bigger as time moves on, like a child growing up. MMO's mature, just like a young adult.

 

Wouldn't that mean that at launch, the mmo your talking about, shouldnt even be playable? It should be a husk of code with the potential to become a game, but its going to be a rocky road there and will take time. Until then, it can do nothing by itself....

 

hehe I duno, I just found it funny

[Skoobie]

LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOO dude...you make NOOOOOOOO sense at all... you cant even compare the two...lol. And you are calling me young? lol

 

Common sense obviously ran from your life years ago.

 

I just did compare the two.

 

The fact you can't wrap your head around it pretty much says it all.

Edited February 23, 2012 by Skoobie

[itekazzawrrlic]

LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOO dude...you make NOOOOOOOO sense at all... you cant even compare the two...lol. And you are calling me young? lol

 

Common sense obviously ran from your life years ago.

 

Actually it's a right on comparison.... By some people's logic they expect a full grown adult to be born.

[itekazzawrrlic]

Wouldn't that mean that at launch, the mmo your talking about, shouldnt even be playable? It should be a husk of code with the potential to become a game, but its going to be a rocky road there and will take time. Until then, it can do nothing by itself....

 

hehe I duno, I just found it funny

 

That would be in utero..

[Oldgrimm]

MMOs are not like cars, they grow, whereas a car cannot be patched. If you are going to compare to the automobile industry, think of every patch like a new model of the same car released year after year with improvements and polish.

 

Comparing an MMO, a product that grows with its community and over time, to a product that always has to be final upon release is foolish to the point of fallacy.

 

You have to learn, that SWTOR has to compete with the competition of NOW, and not with the competition 7 years ago.

 

And the analogy with the car is quite fitting.

 

Know why?

Try to picture that:

 

You go and buy a new car (the 2012 retail price).

 

But you get this car (the car body is on par with the 2012 technology):

 

- not smooth running engine (HERO engine)

- without air conditioning system (Combat Log)

the retailer says: no problem it will be installed in 3-6months

- without a good audio equipment (UI a.s.o.)

the retailer says: no problem we are working on it, but we dont know exactly when we can fix it.

- with a very bugged chassis

 

Would you be willing to pay the full market price for this car? Or would you go to the competition with the working cars?

 

And yes, it is an analogy, but it clearly states the wish of the customer to get a working product.

The market is changing and the expectations of the customer are changing.

And if a big company fails to adjust to the new situation, than their product is deemed to fail on the long term.

Edited February 23, 2012 by Oldgrimm

[NKieffer]

If any of you have been around launches of other MMOs (which I doubt many people here have), you come to realize that they aren't going to be perfect at launch. An MMO is a living, breathing game that evolves over time. Every single feature you want or have seen in other games will often be added in at a later date once they fix the most pressing post-launch issues. Let's look at the launch of WOW.

 

World of Warcraft

WOW has had SEVEN years to add content. SWTOR has had two months. Can you imagine how much better this game will be even a year from now? But I digress.

Does anyone remember the awful lag issues WOW had at launch? I sure as hell do. Many servers were crashing for a long period of time over and over. Lag, loot lag, falling through the world, etc. Queue times were often an hour or more. The game was often unplayable at times until WOW had time to fix hardware issues. SWTOR has actually done better than WOW in this regard. WOW actually had to give some people free days because the lag was so bad and the servers were so unstable.

I think WOW had one or two raids? There weren't any battlesgrounds. There weren't a lot of things.

 

(blah blah blah WOW was released in 2004 SWTOR should have all the features it does blah blah blah ) No, it shouldn't SWTOR is a unique game that will add it's own content.

 

I personally love this game. I sincerely enjoy playing it. Those who don't are more likely to be vocal about it on the forums. I never see any of this "I hate SWTOR" chat in game.

Launch is a difficult time for ANY MMO, and SWTOR has actually done better than just about any MMO I've seen before.

 

This game isn't WOW and it never will be. Don't expect it to have all the features you love from WOW 2 MONTHS after launch. Give this game time to work out the few bugs there are and add a bit of content over the upcoming months and this will be the best MMO there is. Bottom line, MMOs take time to develop and add content and this is one of the smoothest MMO launches I've been around.

 

First off, SWTOR is WoW in space. It has "borrowed" so many core features of WoW that if Microsoft created WoW, they would be suing! What is the difference between the two? What does SWTOR have that WoW doesn't? Companions? Moddable armor (a stretch), and space combat?

 

I've lurked these forums for awhile, and have read a lot of what the community has been saying. This response is nothing personal against you, I am just sick and tired of hearing "WoW had 7 years to develop, and evolve, blah blah blah". First off, wasn't SWTOR in development for 5 years? So really it could have evolved with WoW. WoW was public. BioWare could have easily looked at WoW at any given time and said "hey, we like that idea, let's use it!". Instead they didn't. It's like they took a snapshot of WoW in 2004-2005 and used that model.

 

So, let's use your opinion for ... EverQuest vs WoW. Why compare these two? Well, one was the KING (EQ) and the other was the fresh idea (WoW). EQ was untouchable at the time. It was a HUGE SUCCESS, even back in the day of modems and 3D accelerators! The sheer number of "features" that WoW had over EQ on launch was rediculous. EQ had from 1999-2004 to continue to add features to their game. They did, but they kept catering to the grind, their last "fresh idea" being Lost Dungeons of Norrath. When WoW launched, it slashed EQ's "tried and true vision" to pieces. I'll admit, the launch wasn't perfect, but then again the technology in 2004 wasn't nearly what it is today. I recall Blizzard crediting time to all accounts due to server issues.

 

So, what were these features that WoW had over EQ? Let's see if I can make a quick list off the top of my list. Most of them have to do with eliminating the "grind".

 

Disclaimer: I did not play much of whatever MMOs were between EQ and WoW (AO, DAOC, SWG, etc), and I'm sure WoW took ideas from them, so this list is in no way stating that WoW was the innovator behind any of these ideas.

 

 

Quests! OMG. Real quests. You actually clicked an NPC and a nice little quest box popped up with a quest to complete. No more "Hail" and try to figure out what to respond with. Questing nodes are 99% of the leveling process in MMOs now. In EQ it was all a grind. Quests were few and far between. Some were completely usless! Epic quests were awesome and I still to this day don't understand how some people figured them out. Some of the stuff was so cryptic! In EQ, you could even hand in an item to an NPC and they would take it from you if it wasn't required for the quest!! So you'd lose the item and have to go get it again.

 

A real crafting system with no-fail combinations. In EQ you could grind for hours, or even days to get crafting components... only to click combine and FAIL, even at max skill! WoW turned this system on it's head and made all crafting no-fail.

 

Instancing for dungeon and raid content. Do you know how much it sucked to get a few of your friends together, travel to a dungeon, call camp check and find everything is camped. Same went for raids. You literally had to send out scouts to check what bosses were up and pray you mobilized your raid before other guilds on the server so you could beat them to the boss.

 

Holiday world events. I think Christmas was the first one anyone saw and it blew everyone away. Nobody knew it was coming, there was no calendar system in the game. Just one day you logged in and the towns were decorated, people were turning into elves, it was amazing to see a developer implement holidays into the game and have actual events. Very cool. In EQ, you had guide or GM run events. Most of these were of the flavor "spawn a lot of monsters in random zones and let players fight over them". I vaguely recall werewolves running rampant in one of the zones during halloween. Infact, Halloween may have been the only thing ever celebrated.

 

Super lenient death penalty. You die, you become a ghost, run back to corpse. EQ was... you died, you went to bind which could be continents away and you had to get to your body to loot your gear. A bad wipe on a raid could have destroyed your guild's entire night if a cleric wasn't able to camp out in a safe spot or /quit fast enough. Oh yes, there was even zones (prior to soulbound keys) that if you died in, you could not get back into unless you had a spare key because the key was on your corpse. Your corpse decayed in 7 days.

 

No XP loss on death. Yes, there are horror stories of players falling asleep, being bound in a bad spot, and logging back in to find they lost 10+ levels (weeks of playtime) in a matter of hours.

 

Fast leveling. I played semi-hardcore on WoW launch. I think it took me from November to January to hit max level which I think was 50. In EQ days Nov. to Jan. may have got me to level 20? This is hard to say because the game was so group heavy (soloing was nearly impossible past a certain level for a majority of the classes). You could spend hours LFG and not get a single point of XP. For some strange reason though, you kept playing...

 

All of the above are standard in MMOs now.

 

Had WoW launched with the same "features" as EQ and not changed anything, do you honestly think it would be successful as it is today? I don't. WoW did borrow some ideas from EQ on launch, and nearly all have been eliminated over time because it wasn't FUN (keyword here). Keys, gone. Flagging for a raid zone, gone. Huge raids, gone. Multi-hour dungeon / raid crawls, gone.

 

A lot of people are disappointed with SWTOR because they expected something new, but instead discovered that BioWare basically took Blizzard design, remodeled it as Star Wars and added a single-player story. Yet, they left out features that are starting (or have become) standard in MMO gaming (phasing? dungeon/raid finder?). Seriously, why have a Warzone Queue that is server only and now a dungeon queue?

 

A lot of people came from WoW because WoW is stale. I'm done running the same raid zone week after week, and grinding away tokens to buy gear only to have it become completely obsolete in the next content patch. The system is stupid and I want to have FUN again. We need something new! Sadly, SWTOR is nothing but the same. It's a great game, if you never played WoW, or any of the WoW clones out there. MMO players don't want WoW clones, we want new. Hence the complaints you see. It's all good though. The complaints will stop once Guild Wars 2 launches. This game has innovation written all over it! Do yourself a favor and give it a look. You won't hurt BioWare's feelings, and George Lucas will still be able to sleep at night in his bed of money.

 

TL;DR- Stop lying to yourself. SWTOR is a WoW clone. Comparing the actual launch of a game in 2004 to 2011 is like comparing an iPhone 4S to a Motorola Razr.

[itekazzawrrlic]

You have to learn, that SWTOR has to compete with the competition of NOW, and not with the competition 7 years ago.

 

And the analogy with the car is quite fitting.

 

Know why?

Try to picture that:

 

You go and buy a new car (the 2012 retail price).

 

But you get this car (the car body is on par with the 2012 technology):

 

- not smooth running engine (HERO engine)

- without air conditioning system (Combat Log)

the retailer says: no problem it will be installed in 3-6months

- without a good audio equipment (UI a.s.o.)

the retailer says: no problem we are working on it, but we dont know exactly when we can fix it.

- with a very bugged chassis

 

Would you be willing to pay the full market price for this car? Or would you go to the competition with the working cars?

 

And yes, it is an analogy, but it clearly states the wish of the customer to get a working product.

The market is changing and the expectations of the customer are changing.

And if a big company fails to adjust to the new situation, than their products is deemed to fail on the long term.

 

Like the previous poster stated... Foolish to the point of fallacy because cars don't get released that way... MMO's do... Apples to oranges.

[AshenK]

MMOs are not like cars, they grow, whereas a car cannot be patched. If you are going to compare to the automobile industry, think of every patch like a new model of the same car released year after year with improvements and polish.

 

Comparing an MMO, a product that grows with its community and over time, to a product that always has to be final upon release is foolish to the point of fallacy.

 

You might ask "is it so hard to implement known features that all games have?"

 

Firstly, yes it is hard. You are not building a brick wall, it's not just concrete you have to add there as if that is the way things are done. Coding is different, that takes a while.

Secondly, they are being added so I doubt those will be the complaints in a few months or so.

Lets use that then.

 

Lets say you go to a car dealership, the dealer tells you about this great car that they don't have yet. He tells you the maker of the car who you've heard of and maybe have owned one of their cars before and you really liked that car. Still this dealer sells you and others on this car.

 

Then the day the car comes out and you get it and what do you find? It has one seat, a steering wheel, the gas and break pedals and that's it. No radio, no other seats, it's not even painted. The dealer tells you that's how it came and if you want the other things with it to contact the maker. The maker tells you "Oh yeah we can paint your car and put in a radio in about three to four months." Along with this the car is breaking down and you need to wait for the dealer to fix that too.

 

Oh and as you are waiting for the car to be fixed, painted and for a radio to be put in? There that older car that you have had for about 7 years that has everything and still runs good. There's also that car that came out last year that's running and looking good as well. And the dealer himself is talking about three other new cars coming out that year. All three of those he test drove, one is a new model of an older car lets call it the D3 and it's looking really good. Another one it's an overseas Car however there's been some good press about it. And then there's this one the GW2 that the dealer tells you is one of the best things he got to drive. And reading up on that one the makers are putting everything they can into it.

 

And it also helps that with two of those cars you just have to pay for them. No extra fee's tacked on. And you are looking at this as news is breaking about how the maker of the car you just got is patting themselves on the back for a job well done as a mass protest is going on outside the factory that this car is made at. Along with the riot happening at their HQ. But they remind you that hey your car will be painted in the next few months.

[hamsterboom]

Wouldn't that mean that at launch, the mmo your talking about, shouldnt even be playable? It should be a husk of code with the potential to become a game, but its going to be a rocky road there and will take time. Until then, it can do nothing by itself....

 

hehe I duno, I just found it funny

 

well the beginning stage with the code would be the idea ..

 

it's still good to think along the baby terms but think of it as pre-school kids ..

 

it takes a while for them to pick stuff up (( patches and stuff, they have their naps (( weekly downtime)) but it does start showing small signs of learning and growing up ((background fixes))

 

what we all expect from a game is stupid high standards .. i expect alot more than what it is now , i have grown that bored with the game i have not even reached level 50 with a toon, i know this game lacks genrally what we're all used to (( i mean a shedload of difrrent things so you can genarally take your pick)) but we have all started play and still [play hoping that they they will be added.

 

me i find i get bored around 35-40 so close to the end but genrally all there is to do at that point is grind and grind and grind quests, side quests. theres not much to do other than that.

 

crafting is well laughable they made it so easy that it's hardly even worth the grind except for the money sink to make items a tiny bit better than quests rewards.

 

FP's mean you either have to whisper everyone around your level for a group or stand on fleet for ages spamming.

 

mini'games and such like little events, theres space combat but thats just about it.

 

pvp i don't actually mind that much even though i am a pve person normally

 

ok i've gone a bit off topic here ..

 

the game still has room to develop into something good or bad we just have to wait it out. mmo's are genrallly bad before they get better anyhow.

[itekazzawrrlic]

Lets use that then.

 

Lets say you go to a car dealership, the dealer tells you about this great car that they don't have yet. He tells you the maker of the car who you've heard of and maybe have owned one of their cars before and you really liked that car. Still this dealer sells you and others on this car.

 

Then the day the car comes out and you get it and what do you find? It has one seat, a steering wheel, the gas and break pedals and that's it. No radio, no other seats, it's not even painted. The dealer tells you that's how it came and if you want the other things with it to contact the maker. The maker tells you "Oh yeah we can paint your car and put in a radio in about three to four months." Along with this the car is breaking down and you need to wait for the dealer to fix that too.

 

Oh and as you are waiting for the car to be fixed, painted and for a radio to be put in? There that older car that you have had for about 7 years that has everything and still runs good. There's also that car that came out last year that's running and looking good as well. And the dealer himself is talking about three other new cars coming out that year. All three of those he test drove, one is a new model of an older car lets call it the D3 and it's looking really good. Another one it's an overseas Car however there's been some good press about it. And then there's this one the GW2 that the dealer tells you is one of the best things he got to drive. And reading up on that one the makers are putting everything they can into it.

 

And it also helps that with two of those cars you just have to pay for them. No extra fee's tacked on. And you are looking at this as news is breaking about how the maker of the car you just got is patting themselves on the back for a job well done as a mass protest is going on outside the factory that this car is made at. Along with the riot happening at their HQ. But they remind you that hey your car will be painted in the next few months.

 

 

The only problem with that is, that doesn't actually happen in reality..

 

The reality of MMO's is that this happens all the time.

 

Apples to oranges.

[Oldgrimm]

Like the previous poster stated... Foolish to the point of fallacy because cars don't get released that way... MMO's do... Apples to oranges.

 

Foolishness lies in the eye of the observer.

 

For some people it is foolish to pay a full price for a not finished product with missing core elements.

MMOs grow over time, that is right.

But the important core elements have to be right there from the release.

If thats not the case, than this game is not finished and was released way to early.

 

And a customer, who honors the penny, SWTOR doesnt deliver.

And in the nearest future the situation will not change positively enough, to keep me paying.

[Khemizt]

You are mistaken this game is several years old, with an extensive beta that they could no longer afford to continue, this game was released too fast with way too many bugs, hence the rampant complaints, this was a huge oversight on behalf EA wanting to meet financial quotas.

[itekazzawrrlic]

Foolishness lies in the eye of the observer.

 

For some people it is foolish to pay a full price for a not finished product with missing core elements.

MMOs grow over time, that is right.

But the important core elements have to be right there from the release.

If thats not the case, than this game is not finished and was released way to early.

 

And a customer, who honors the penny, SWTOR doesnt deliver.

And in the nearest future the situation will not change positively enough, to keep me paying.

 

Welcome to MMO's... hope this experience didn't scar you for life.

 

Can i haz your stuff?

Edited February 23, 2012 by itekazzawrrlic