End Game Content... the death of every new MMO

[Elkay]

For reasons that have escaped my thoughts MMOs have traditionally (SWTOR is no exception) started out with enormous potential and strength (amazing graphics, visuals, character development, questing, etc. etc.) with the amount of 'gaming' tapering off as a player gets closer to the level cap.

 

While this may be an industry requirement to ensure funding and on-time release of the game, unless dealt with swiftly and immediately - the server populations will begin the downward spiral into closure.

 

Here's how it works:

Launch: Avg Age: Level 1

Everyone is excited. The mechanics and visuals are flawless. Quest, solo and group content is vast. Server populations are so high - waiting queues are created forcing players to have to delay logging. Noobie planet populations are crowded...everyone is excited!

 

Week 1: Avg Age: Level 15

Server population has started to spread out. Most are progressing while others are testing new classes or alignments. The volume of bodies per planet increases as the number of planets that hold higher-level content begin to decrease. There is a bounce in everyone's step as they think, "I know something you dont know!" - New gear is discovered, modified, displayed. Flashpoinst and PVP are rampent. Toons are becoming more powerful and specialized...everyone is excited!

 

Week 2: Avg Age: Level 30

Population is reconverging from the noobie worlds onto the mid-level worlds. Pilots are sewing their oats in space. Issues in the game mechanics are ironed out and patched. More and more content becomes available. Flashpoints are expanding - class quests becoming a challenge. Datacrons!! Find them! The excitement builds...Get 50!!!

 

Week 3: Avg Age: Level 40

The race to 50 is on. Its within everyone's grasp. New Flashpoints, Class-quests are getting completed. Operations are within reach. Galactic Trade Network is overflowing with newly discovered items, missions, materials, etc. Guilds are comfortably set with a solid core of 16 and another half dozen alts and stand-by's. Strategies are formulated for the upcoming HM and NM operations. Here is a list of the Stims and Adrenals you must have! Make sure you repair! Logon's have been dealt with by expanding login servers.

 

Weeks 4-??: Avg Age level 49.??

Players game to socialize, pvp or quest. At level 50 there are only a few quests that can be repeated. Gear sets are established...everyone wants Rakata. To get Rakata armor and weapons - you have to be successful in the Ops HM / NM... but here's where the game starts to show its rust:

 

The average toon age is now very close to 50 with guilds filled to capacity...there are only a couple of flashpoints that a player can run and repeating those while entertaining the first dozen times quickly gets old. There are only two Ops - both extremely exciting as each guild in turn learns their own strat for killing the mini's and the zone bosses...very quickly, boss drops go from equipping toons to equipping their main companions to equipping their off-off-off companions.

 

Weeks progress:

Players no longer log in daily. Many log in every few days...run a FP or a handful of dailies...they wait for 'raid night' which after 4-6 weeks becomes more of a burden than a thrill. Guild populations begin to deminish with many only a few weeks before over flowing with players...now having to search for Pick-Up toons just to compete effectively against the Ops bosses. Server populations are rarely 'high' with most at 'light' - guild trade network becomes filled with cheap items because everyone is selling, no one is buying. This makes questing / raiding / FP's less important because... no one is buying and the repairs are outrageous.

 

Dont believe me? Make a toon, any class, any alignment and login. Look around you. How many players do you see? 2? 3? There are no (very few) new toons being made

 

What went wrong:

First, having only 2 ops was a bad idea. The launch should have included at least 4. Next, the number of items dropped off each boss should have been reduced. Allowing a guild to fully equip itself in just a few weeks makes the necessity of running the ops greatly reduced. Next, having a zillion level 1-40 quests while only a dozen at level 50 made leveling up easiler to be sure...but also makes being level 50 boring as you know what. Instead of having everyone's skill tree maxed when they hit 50, there should have been a seperate "XP" pool for skills that the players earn by killing, questing, etc...again - more reason to continue to play on a more frequent basis.

 

My fear: Patch 1.2 will bring a handful of new dailies which will re-excited whats left of the population and probably bring back another group that actually stopped playing a month or so back. The new Op will inject new excitement into the guilds that are having troubles getting even 8 people to login...

 

But will this be enough? Yes, it will work for the first several weeks but then like the rest of the game, the players will get everything, have everything, have seen everything and become restless and bored.

 

Its my hope that Bioware is in agreement with my message above and are working diligently on new, high-end content with some kind of boost to the skill tree that will be XP-based giving day-to-day players "just enough" reason to login and not cancel their accounts.

 

For those who strongly disagree with what I'm saying, of course there are other things to do in the game for pure entertainment: Empire-only players can make a Republic toon and see the other half of the game and vice versa...but most have a love-affair with their main character and want to take it further and higher than the next person of the same class. Who doesn't see another Marauder (w/e) standing next to them and inspect their gear? Some looking to see how they can improve and others...as a measuring stick for their own achiements.

 

Time will tell...

 

-LK

Edited April 4, 2012 by Elkay

[RickRedOne]

Here's how it works:

Launch: Avg Age: Level 1

Everyone is excited. The mechanics and visuals are flawless. Quest, solo and group content is vast. Server populations are so high - waiting queues are created forcing players to have to delay logging. Noobie planet populations are crowded...everyone is excited!

 

 

 

Launch + 2 days: Avg Age level 49.??

Players game to socialize, pvp or quest. At level 50 there are only a few quests that can be repeated. Gear sets are established...everyone wants Rakata. To get Rakata armor and weapons - you have to be successful in the Ops HM / NM... but here's where the game starts to show its rust:

 

-LK

 

I fixed your timeline. This is for the people that rushed to get to 50, (just like they do in every other game they play), and then start complaining about there is nothing to do.

 

I saw the same thing when Rift launched, top level characters after 2 days. And with Rift there is really no reason to create an alt, since there is no different story.

[icroyal]

I agree with the OP. I've been seeing exactly what he's been describing. It's not just that people are getting bored, but they're getting frustrated that 4 months into the game, EV is still not fixed. Many people have been unsubscribing in our guild for this reason alone that they see a lack of commitment from Bioware in endgame and therefore are leaving.

[Battilea]

What went wrong:

First, having only 2 ops was a bad idea. The launch should have included at least 4. Next, the number of items dropped off each boss should have been reduced. Allowing a guild to fully equip itself in just a few weeks makes the necessity of running the ops greatly reduced. Next, having a zillion level 1-40 quests while only a dozen at level 50 made leveling up easiler to be sure...but also makes being level 50 boring as you know what. Instead of having everyone's skill tree maxed when they hit 50, there should have been a seperate "XP" pool for skills that the players earn by killing, questing, etc...again - more reason to continue to play on a more frequent basis.

 

While I agree that Ops drop too much loot, I don't think having only 2 is necessarily bad, though when they only take an hour each to complete, yeah, it isn't much.

 

The bigger issue is the single group content. You quickly get what you need for it. In this game, even faster, due to what you get in Ops. And then what? It is these that should provide something for you to do every day, at most any time of the day, something you'll be very, very unlikely to get from Ops.

 

The group content is what needs more support. Now, the quantity wasn't necessarily bad. What is lacking though is reasons to run them. They put the commendations on dailies and weeklies, not on the FPs themselves. There isn't much to get with those columi comms, some gear that is mostly available from drops. No speeders. No big ticket item every player wants, like a Columi mainhand, available for comms only. No special color crystals. And so on.

 

So you quickly hit the point where there's no incentive to do something PvE every day. And so you PvP, because that offers a bit more of a reward, a reward that takes longer to get. But that's only if you like PvP.

 

Single group content is the key to the start of MMOs. Raid-wise, there just needs to be enough to anchor the week.

[Shecrazy]

The problem is bioware fully intended that people make 8 characters. Bioware made 8 interesting fun stories and a leveling process that is probably more fun than the endgame because of it and they WANT you to level alts out the wazoo.

 

The main thing they shot themselves in the foot with is not releasing the legacy system with launch when they so obviously wanted people to make alts and not have to spend millions of hours gearing up one main.

 

The issue I see is so many people are uninterested in leveling alts having come from games where alts were seen as tedious and unnecessary.

 

My biggest gripe to this day is still that you get TOO MUCH xp while questing. By the time I was off balmorra on my original character I was lvl 27... I could have pretty much skipped nar shadaa and everything it had to offer entirely. That's an issue, the leveling process is far too quick to be a sufficient time sink. How can they give themselves time to come out with more endgame content if they allowed people to reach cap in such a ridiculously short amount of time.

 

Wow took a solid 4-6 months for the average player to reach cap, this is a bit much if you want people to make alts but it at least at launch gave the devs time to create more things and fix issues before people had nothing to do but sit around and complain about them.

Edited April 4, 2012 by Shecrazy

[TUXs]

I completely agree OP, especially with your point about the hundreds of sub 50 quests, but the shockingly low number of 50 quests.

 

I also think you may be overlooking PvP just a bit. While some players enjoy the e-sport WZ's, it's not even close to what Bioware sold us. We were told OPEN WORLD PVP with objectives. Ilum was such a debacle, they should fire the entire crew.

 

The sad reality is, you either do one of the 3 WZ's at 50, or you run one of your 6 daily quests at 50...that's it.

[remainderman]

I can't agree more with the overall sentiment of your article. For me and many in my guild, the endgame is pvp. I played SWG for 5 years, and even though I viewed the day-to-day content on the open-world format of SWG to be healthier, if it wasn't for the fairly robust open-world pvp, I would have quit after a year or two.

 

TOR has enough content (and I'm sure they will add more) to keep me interested for a while, but if they never have real open world pvp (not WZs only) then I will get bored easily. Why get the best gear? Why do dailys for a week just to get one implant that has 30 more on 2 stats? If the answer is just to play more ops, instances, hard modes, then after I grind up most professions and gear them out (if I last even that long), I will probably just quit playing.

 

What would make open world pvp work? Very simple: Have some sort of reward for open-world pvp kills, then have cross-faction communication so we can set up fights, etc. Yes, this gets ppl all worked up talking trash etc., so what. It worked in SWG for 7+ years. At present, the only real pvp we get is WZs. No ones shows up at illum because now you can get your daily kills through the WZs. I don’t mind Alderaan and The Voidstar, but Huttball, especially same faction, has become a mandatory unque. I hear that other WZs might be same faction as well. Terrible idea. How’s the Tatooine free-for-all zone working?

 

I hope BW hires some game DEVs who understand what makes MMORPG pvp work, and it’s not instance-based zone fighting with objectives. This leads to massive exploits, gets boring and is not real pvp anyway. I’m hoping to be here 5 years from now, but if there is no real pvp, I simply will unque and stay that way.

[Khaunshar]

PvP has not ever worked in a game with a post-WoW community. The reason being that with no incentive, only few play (thus game fails), and with incentives, PvP is not PvP, its minimizing effort/time to get incentive, which almost always involves avoiding ACTUAL PvP. Look at WAR, AoC, WoW, Ilum here and many many more.

 

This game, as others have done recently, showers players in easy-to-get loot, and thus gets everyone to the finishing line too quickly.

[cbowsin]

It takes longer to program content than it does for players to play through content and get bored of that content. That will always be the 'norm'. It has always existed, when players finish a single player game that took the developers years to create, they jump to another single player game that has been worked on for years, so to the players there were always other games to play with new content. But as MMOs became popular, players wanted to stick to one MMO but found the content not coming out fast enough for them and there is a reason for that.

[Inzi]

I'm confused on why you think leveling is the focus of the game. For a good portion of the population, leveling is a means to an end(game). To me, an mmo is about getting a max level character and then progressing in raid content and pvp and making it the best I can. While I agree that the endgame content we had at launch didn't really hold me over until now... I think the biggest reason for that is that it was just too easy. It should take a few weeks to down everything the first time, not a few hours.

 

That being said, we're looking at the next tier here. We get new quests, okay, it's not 10 new levels for you people who like to grind levels, but there are quests. We get a new operation with a new tier of gear. We get new game features with new things to seek--pets, legacy perks, a REASON to have millions of credits, a REASON to have professions other than biochem... personally, I am eager to see how this goes.

 

If you want a game where you're going to be questing forever, maybe an mmo isn't right for you?

[Canis_Anubis]

Playing an RPG of any kind is like a trip by handcar over a railroad. You input effort, you progress along the rails, until you reach the point at which the track ends. At which point a normal RPG simply ends, but an MMO makes the track into a circle, and charges you $15/mo to ride round and round and round, until they can scrape together enough content for another stretch of track.

[Artacks]

It seems the right time, after playing it for a good 2-3 months, to give my verdict on the latest and most expensive MMO in recent memory, namely Star Wars: The Old Republic.

 

I'll preface this by saying I have a (maximum) level 50 Marauder in full Tier 3 (Rakata) raid gear, so I am somewhat familiar with the game and how everything works.

 

TOR is a good game, but it isn't a great game. The ironic thing is that BioWare have gotten a lot of the difficult things just right, and then made some rookie mistakes that severely detract from the whole experience.

 

For story, TOR is the best MMO on the market to date, hands down. BioWare took all of their craft and storytelling from making the Dragon Age and Mass Effect games, sprinkled Star Wars secret sauce on top and came up with close to perfection. Every class has its own distinct storyline that you will progress through, and they are by far some of the most interesting and varied quests in the game. At points you will think you are playing an offline single-player RPG, because the voice acting and writing is of such a high standard not usually found in MMOs, where story is often a passing afterthought, placated with a few paragraphs of quest text.

 

I can only speak for the Sith Warrior storyline, which was outstanding, but I am assured by my friends who are playing other classes that their personal stories were of an equal quality. Unfortunately for reasons I will explain, this is both a blessing and a curse.

 

MMOs to date have usually concentrated on endgame content, with the old joke being that "the game begins once you reach max level". In WoW all of the best content was reserved for the highest-level players, who had their own battlegrounds and raids and had begun to make their characters extremely powerful. In TOR, you get to level 50 and find that...that's about it really. Yes there are endgame raids for level 50 characters, but they are both a) quite easy, and b) quite buggy. It also used to be the case that level 50s did not have their own warzone brackets in PvP, so fresh-faced level 10 characters (the lowest level at which you can queue for PvP) would sometimes go up against some level 50s in the same warzones. Their stats were boosted to level 50 equivalent, but they still lacked most of the super abilities of awesomeness that were available to the 50s, and so got their asses handed to them as a result. Thankfully BioWare have already fixed this, and now level 50s only queue against other level 50s, but you are still rolling the dice since the only other bracket available is 10-49.

 

This brings me to PvP.

 

TOR has a very clunky PvP system. There are three instanced warzones that you can queue for, however you cannot queue for specific ones you like, only a single queue which is randomly any of the three. Some of the PvP warzones are interesting in their own way, but are really nothing to write home about. There is also an open-world PvP area on the planet Ilum, which is extremely underwhelming. The first few times I went there the Republic and Empire forces would simply trade the control points back and forth, since that was all that was required to finish the daily and weekly PvP quests which is how you obtained tokens to buy the best PvP gear. BioWare then changed it to where you had to instead gain a certain number of kills to complete the quests, which sounds good in practice until you realise that the Empire has a substantial population superiority on many servers, including my own. This means that Republic players spent most of the time sitting in their base - where they cannot be killed - except for the rare occasions where they temporarily have more people and so venture forth looking for Empire people to kill. The upshot of this is that the PvP quests become extremely difficult for either side to complete, and accordingly the number of people going to Ilum has dropped dramatically in the past six weeks.

 

And as for obtaining PvP gear itself, you complete the aforementioned PvP quests and obtain PvP bags that in turn contain tokens which you can use to purchase PvP gear. The bags have a small chance to contain a piece of PvP gear directly, but there is no guarantee it will be a piece you need even if you do happen to get lucky enough to find one in a bag, so duplicates are commonplace. As I said, it's a very clunky and poorly thought-out system that is a clear placeholder and is being completely overhauled when patch 1.2 comes in a month or so.

 

Moving on to the UI, which is one of TOR's biggest problems. In short the UI looks like it was designed by my children, with blocky elements, action bars which cannot be moved or resized, and a UI for the Galactic Trading Network (TOR's auction house) which is so bad it has to be seen to be believed. BioWare have acknowledged these issues and have promised a revamped UI in the forthcoming 1.2 patch, but to have let the game be released with something that looks so bad is astonishing to me. This brings me to probably one of the biggest gripes that I (and a lot of other people) have with the game: there is no combat log. That a game could be released in late 2011 with no combat log is nothing short of mind-boggling. What just hit me? How did I die in PvP? What enemy ability just crit me for 6000? How much DPS does one spec of mine do over another? Fortunately all of these questions are moot, because they cannot be answered without a functional combat log.

 

You might be thinking, Gaff, you have hammered TOR to death, so why are you still playing it? Well, for all its faults (and there's a lot), it's still fun in short bursts, and a lot of my friends are still playing it. But with games such as The Secret World, PlanetSide 2, TERA and Guild Wars 2 all scheduled for release in the next few months, I'm not sure how much longer I'll be playing TOR. I was hoping that it would be "A Clash Of Kings", but it has unfortunately turned out to be more like "A Dance With Dragons".

 

BioWare got so many of the difficult things right in TOR but then failed so spectacularly with the easier things, you really do think that six more months of development could have fixed these annoyances and would have set the game up to take over WoW's mantle as King of MMOs; it would have been a slam-dunk. But no combat log in a 2011 game? Really?

 

The good news is that most and perhaps all of these issues can be fixed by BioWare in patches. Their problem is, as I stated above, that there are several big MMOs scheduled for release in the next few months, meaning that time is not on their side. I hope they succeed, I truly do, but some of these missteps are so egregious that sooner rather than later I will probably be moving to greener pastures in another game...where hopefully they have a gosh darn combat log.(fixed)

 

http://www.gaffonline.com

Edited April 4, 2012 by Artacks

[Canis_Anubis]

This game, as others have done recently, showers players in easy-to-get loot, and thus gets everyone to the finishing line too quickly.

 

Are you really suggesting the solution is to make the repetitive exercise of queueing for the same warzones over and over be even LESS rewarding? Check your priorities, son.

 

The reason the game is over too quickly is because there isn't enough game, not because the reward schedule isn't punishing enough.

[DeathDiciple]

IMO the problem is raid-or-die. Regardless of how fast or slow you actually get what you want, logging in for 2 raids a week is not enough. If you get stuff too fast, you'll simply 'win the game' if you don't well... I know 'hardcore' will disagree but I won't pay my sub for 6 months just to play 1 day a week.

 

What the game should've offered is some sort of alternate advancement, legacy is kinda step in that direction, but not really - too little, too late, it's mostly fluff. The only other way I can think of is player controlled space, but that is way harder to build properly than AA, with balance issues etc.

 

And yeah I dont find running 3 WZs over and again much better/less of a chore either.

Edited April 5, 2012 by DeathDiciple

[Nessirin]

While I agree that Ops drop too much loot, I don't think having only 2 is necessarily bad, though when they only take an hour each to complete, yeah, it isn't much.

 

The bigger issue is the single group content. You quickly get what you need for it. In this game, even faster, due to what you get in Ops. And then what? It is these that should provide something for you to do every day, at most any time of the day, something you'll be very, very unlikely to get from Ops.

 

The group content is what needs more support. Now, the quantity wasn't necessarily bad. What is lacking though is reasons to run them. They put the commendations on dailies and weeklies, not on the FPs themselves. There isn't much to get with those columi comms, some gear that is mostly available from drops. No speeders. No big ticket item every player wants, like a Columi mainhand, available for comms only. No special color crystals. And so on.

 

So you quickly hit the point where there's no incentive to do something PvE every day. And so you PvP, because that offers a bit more of a reward, a reward that takes longer to get. But that's only if you like PvP.

 

Single group content is the key to the start of MMOs. Raid-wise, there just needs to be enough to anchor the week.

 

While I agree with most of what you said, there actually are a few speeder drops in HM flashpoints. FE drops a cool looking tan + flame covered mount, and Kaon drops that box car that normal ops drop.

[Mycrossy]

This is a well thought out OP and subsequent reviews. All of the posters so far are right on target. BIoware, pay attention. This is the best post of what is going on wih the State of the Game.

 

I agree with all of it. Well done.

[Grimne_Lothos]

I'm confused on why you think leveling is the focus of the game. For a good portion of the population, leveling is a means to an end(game). To me, an mmo is about getting a max level character and then progressing in raid content and pvp and making it the best I can. While I agree that the endgame content we had at launch didn't really hold me over until now... I think the biggest reason for that is that it was just too easy. It should take a few weeks to down everything the first time, not a few hours.

 

That being said, we're looking at the next tier here. We get new quests, okay, it's not 10 new levels for you people who like to grind levels, but there are quests. We get a new operation with a new tier of gear. We get new game features with new things to seek--pets, legacy perks, a REASON to have millions of credits, a REASON to have professions other than biochem... personally, I am eager to see how this goes.

 

If you want a game where you're going to be questing forever, maybe an mmo isn't right for you?

 

The reason that people are saying that the leveling is the focus of the game is because that is the only part that is actually good. Or rather, an improvement upon the games that came before it. Everything else is same ol same ol.

 

But answer me this, while I might enjoy leveling an alt of every class in order to experience the story line, why am I playing a MMO for that? Leveling an alt is basically a single player game.

[anstalt]

I actually think the amount of endgame content we have is pretty amazing at the moment. The problem is we have no reason to do 99% of it.

 

 

World PvP? Apart from ilum, its hard to find people, and Ilum is a rubbish zone.

 

Flashpoints? All you get is columi gear. Its easy to get and even easier if u raid too. Once you've got columi gear, why run flashpoints?

 

Raids? The two we've got I think are actually great, apart from the bugs I love them. But, once you've learnt them, gear comes very quickly and raids are completed very quickly.

 

Warzones? Currently the only content that can be repeating infinitely and rewards you every time. But, pvp isn't for everyone, warzones aren't for everyone, and there are only 3 of them.

 

 

 

Whilst they work on adding more content (fps, raids etc) and fixing world pvp, they need to fix a massive rookie mistake:

 

Rare loot drops!

 

 

This game basically offers you three gear sets: tionesse/columi/rakata (or pvp equivalents). Once you've got the best tier, thats it, you "win". Where are the random rare drops? That earpiece that has comparable-but-different stats to rakata?

 

Those rare drops are usually the reason many people repeat content long after they got the main drops. Currently, there is no loot I can get from pve outside of HM ops. Give me a reason to re-run flashpoints!

[peterjohndevries]

The sad part is that there is no rocket science described here

1) non-existent rare loot drops...oh look. I got a purple augment! makes PVE questing a bore

2) excellent storyline development which drove the PVE experience which they assumed meant that you would play alts for the storyline: hey .... I play with friends so we quested together in PvE and wait - the PVE didn't scale the encounters (city of heroes) so it was too easy and oops...just got to see the entire friends storyline already

3) ridiculous amount of mandatory travel. taxi to port, port to shuttle, shuttle to orbital station, orbital station to airlock. ship to location....repeat

4) Why no cooperative open world quests? (Warhammer)

But hey...PvE is pretty much standard fare for MMO - but the level rate was absurd. As stated, you outlevelled the quests almost immediately and then JUST did your class quest to get OFF a planet - not to experience the planet (because frankly, how many antenna can one squad of soldiers go repair anyway). I've never levelled as fast as in this game as a casual gamer

 

So then it comes to PvP

1) 3 warzones? COME ON. yes, they can all be different based on who you come across.....WARHammer had 3 per 10lvl and came out with specials. So who designs a game that starts with no level brackets and thinks a buff to stats is all that is needed against fully geared and talent high level players?

2) WHY did no quests intersect on any planets? You want PvP, then make the quest lines cross, not just create tiny (tatooine) areas or open world areas that have no real objective to them.

3) NO credit for player kills before level 50 daily/weeklies? WHY? first time I dropped an imp on alderaan and waited to see something happen and went 'huh'? I don't even get XP?

4) no relation between PvP activity and in-game changes. Who cares what happens on Ilum....doesn't affect the game

 

Problem is, they wanted PvP in the game but it is not a PvP game. Like WOW with added PvP versus WAR which was PvP, and they scored HUGE on storyline but then endgame PvE content drops dead

 

I'm a casual gamer....REALLy casual and three months into an ONLINE game, I'm stuck. Flashpoints-check. Raid-check, Pve-check, max affection-check. gear-check. I suppose I could be expecting too much but I'm not the kind to just repeat and repeat....that's not gaming....that's time killing

 

New Patch comes out - 1 more op, 1 more wz....what are people thinking - a couple weeks of interest?

[NoTomorrow]

I strongly disagree with anything the OP says. In fact i started to hate these sort of opinions. I don't care if you are a hardcore gamer or not. I am leveling and gearing slowly my chars and i am having a lot of fun. It took me 3 months to gear up with columni and champion gear. I haven't even started working on my next tier yet.

 

I am doing dailies, flashpoints, ops, pvp and all stuff. I recently started my first force user class after having 3 non-force. My legacy level is 22. And I am happy.

 

Call my opinion biased, but i dont want the hardcore gamers to have gear of 3 tiers above me. All these crazies running arround and bragging about their rakata gear. I hate them. If you find yourself bored, move away to another game, you will not be missed.

[ninjashadowdark]

The problem is bioware fully intended that people make 8 characters. Bioware made 8 interesting fun stories and a leveling process that is probably more fun than the endgame because of it and they WANT you to level alts out the wazoo.

 

The main thing they shot themselves in the foot with is not releasing the legacy system with launch when they so obviously wanted people to make alts and not have to spend millions of hours gearing up one main.

 

The issue I see is so many people are uninterested in leveling alts having come from games where alts were seen as tedious and unnecessary.

 

My biggest gripe to this day is still that you get TOO MUCH xp while questing. By the time I was off balmorra on my original character I was lvl 27... I could have pretty much skipped nar shadaa and everything it had to offer entirely. That's an issue, the leveling process is far too quick to be a sufficient time sink. How can they give themselves time to come out with more endgame content if they allowed people to reach cap in such a ridiculously short amount of time.

 

Wow took a solid 4-6 months for the average player to reach cap, this is a bit much if you want people to make alts but it at least at launch gave the devs time to create more things and fix issues before people had nothing to do but sit around and complain about them.

 

The main thing they shot themselves in the foot with is not releasing the legacy system with launch when they so obviously wanted people to make alts and not have to spend millions of hours gearing up one main.

this is funny lol

[NoTomorrow]

The main thing they shot themselves in the foot with is not releasing the legacy system with launch when they so obviously wanted people to make alts and not have to spend millions of hours gearing up one main.

this is funny lol

 

you know what company to blame for the early release. If they were given some extra 2-3 months, all the 1.2 stuff would have been in game from the release, and none of this crap we have endured would bother us.

[CarneyBravo]

@ OP - great review and insight!

 

Although I don't agree every last point, I think you're dead on that with the current state of end game, and concept that its possible to "win" the game.

 

The game seems to be built around the saying "It's about the journey...Not the destination" and although the journey is spectacular the 1st time; the journey becomes a commute to work through rush-hour traffic by the 3rd or 4th roll.

[Valhalyn]

 

Wow took a solid 4-6 months for the average player to reach cap, this is a bit much if you want people to make alts but it at least at launch gave the devs time to create more things and fix issues before people had nothing to do but sit around and complain about them.

 

 

I've got to question your experience with WoW here...even in BC it took me a month to reach 70, in vanilla it took about the same amount of time to reach 60. In Wrath it took me 2 weeks to reach 80, and in Cata it took 2 weeks to reach 85. I have 9 Toons in WoW on 2 different servers, my main is a Warrior Tank I've played since Vanilla.

 

I believe this game is perfect for the leveling experience. It's not a constant grind with little reward, which is the EXACT reason no one wanted to roll alts in WoW, until they started nerfing the hell out of the experience levels. In ToR you can roll an alt and have decent gear for your alts with relative ease, and lets face it most people not only care about the stats on an item but how ****** it makes them look. And in WoW, while leveling you pretty much looked like a Hobo with mix and match sets all the way to Cataclysm.

 

As for the Raiding experience, well I hope that this new raid will last more than just a few weeks, hopefully with 3 different difficulty levels it will do just that. If it lasts 2 months thats more than enough time to have a new OP and more FP's pumping on the PTS. I think Bioware knows what its doing right now, and with future updates we'll see more and more of that thinking come to light.