Top 5 MMO's BioWare should model SWTOR endgame after?

[MWidowmaker]

 

2.EQ1- months to reach max level on first toon whether it was grindy or not. death penalties. . Body runs.

.

 

no.... those were not fun then, they would not be fun now

you must have really enjoyed delevelling in PoF and not being able to retrieve your corpse eh?

[RachelAnne]

I split the topic into a few major points that an MMO make good.

 

1. Graphics & sound

 

Everyone that played AoC will know what I mean. To walk through a forest was a real journey, to travel through a desert made you feel the heat and sand and you could pretty much smell the green while walking through it.

 

Yes it did need a high end pc, but it was the best atmosphere and graphic environment I ever encountered in an MMO.

 

2. Housing

 

SWG & Ultima made playing the game a second "life". People did log on just to water their flowers, buy a new item or decorate their living room. It felt real.

 

3. Raiding & endgame

 

I still see vanilla and tbc wow as the best raiding experience I ever had. You had to beat very large encounters, that were like some big giant that could easily crush you with its feet. It felt epic to down these bosses and to advance into the next room. To coordinate a group of 40 players felt special,

 

4. PvP

 

For me also vanilla wow had the best pvp ever in an MMO. The idea of combining world pvp with BG´s was fantastic and since it was server only you had real foe´s and knew that meeting a specific player on the battlefield was an honor and a challange.

Never again did I know so many players of a server like at that time - just the rank 14 grind was a bit too much, but the rest brilliant.

 

5. Char design & crafting

 

AoC had also a very good char design, you could change everything of your char - the possibilities were endless. I miss that at the other MMO´s from today. What I also miss is a class system that really is unique. I dont know, but too many MMO´´s give people too much.

If a person choose´s to play a healer, then he should only be a healer and not a tank or dps if he wants to. The whole everyone must be able to do everything is boring.

 

Crafting is a tricky one, because SWG had the long craft´s that took days, wow had the special craft´s that only 1 or 2 players from the server could do and that were needed for raiding, AoC had the great feeling while you were hunting for crafting materials and Ultima had the big variety.

Those combined + the idea of BW with companions would sure make a great crafting system.

Edited April 29, 2012 by RachelAnne

[jarjarloves]

Just for conversations sake, what 5 MMO's should BW model additional SWTOR endgame material after? Not talking about an expansion,. Pretend you had to remain at lvl 50 forever. Which game formula would you choose?

Here are my top 5:

 

2) World of Warcraft- Don't hate on this one. WoW did a lot of things right to give players lots of endgame material. I'm not talking WoW in it's current form, but pre-Cataclysm.

3) Star Wars Galaxies- Jump To Lightspeed. Crafting, Player Housing. That honestly was enough for most.

.

 

 

2 WoW pre cat was just end game raiding like what they have in SWTOR.

 

3. SWG did NOT have enough for most. If it did people wouldn't have fled from that game like the plauge. The reason they did the NGE because they didn't have enough subs.

[Zekim]

One aspect of SWG that I did love was the random, unpredictable spawns of MOBs that dropped rare items. You had a tough time finding them let alone camping them. Mandalorian armor was probably the holy grail of armor sets back in the day. Now, this was when groups of 20 got smacked around just trying to collect one piece of the formula to craft a single piece. Once the CU and eventually the NGE hit, it was all camping solo and luck o the loot. The mark of the hero was another one of these rare (but attainable) items. It just added something unique to the game for me.

[Budahla]

Is that why they never broke 300,000 with that game?

 

Sometimes I wonder if all those fondly remembering DAoC only do so fondly because it was their first MMO?

 

They only had 300k because it was dam hard and thats how we liked it. PvP was godly.

[madmarsh]

5. And PvE like the modern mmo. I did quite like Global Agendas pve system, where you would queue up for it like we do with warzones and it would balance a group out to do the instance (flashpoint type) pve. Raids/encounters etc like swtor/wow/etc have. And rare drops you could farm like the older games have. Also make grinding viable again WoW's introduction of do 100000 quests to level was quite novel at the time, but sometimes i would like to just stand in one area and level up like you did in daoc/eq/etc by grinding monsters.

i love GA great game and they should do the RvR/WvW like GA as well.

Edited April 29, 2012 by madmarsh

[NuxiousOne]

For games that are relevant now look at Age of Conan...it has, by far, the best PvE end game raiding out there right now

[thominoh]

Just wanted to toss in my 2 credits worth.. I like the idea you suggested retro original MMORPG such as EQ1 and DAoC.. I would even go as far as to add AC in there as well.. I do want to say that you can't compare sub numbers of the 90's to those at the time WoW was released or even today.. When I first started EQ in 1999, I was running dial up like most everyone else.. Most households did not have internet like they do today, and further MMO's back there were very much like a true MUD (aka AD&D), then the console type shoot em ups we have today.. It's a different genre and the games have mutated over the years..

 

To those that disagree with the OP.. I'm sorry.. However the MMO market today is is like the mad rush of fast food restaurants during the boom.. YES, they target the easy crowd and have the most customers, however that by no means make them the best cafes in the world.. This is like comparing apples with oranges... I'm waiting one day that some company will take a different path and make a steakhouse MMO, knowing it will have a smaller customer base, but still be profitable.. I have my eyes on ArchAge myself.. along with a couple others..

[Asturias]

SWTOR is on the right path but I do agree with OP about taking some ideas from previous MMOs and DAOC is one of them. The hole get to level ten idea and choose a class is a DAOC idea. I believe if they focused on RvR, Space combat with zones missions, space PvP this game will have be far ahead of the game. They have the holy grail right in front of them.

[RocNessMonster]

Anarchy Online, endgame began at 175/200. Maxing to level cap wasn't require and was a massive grind for the last 10.

 

Anarchy Online: Shadowlands, by 210/220 I did every bit of content. Once again grinding to max level wasn't required.

 

Everquest 2, raiding started at 15.

 

Anarchy Online: Notum Wars, Tower battles actually meant something, everything in SWTOR is temporary.

Edited April 29, 2012 by RocNessMonster

[Kalfear]

Buffbots were lame.

 

Gatecamping was awesome.

 

Leveling was terrible.

 

Killspam made it all worthwhile.

 

Buffbots were lame and bad game design

 

Gatecrashing? Meh, I took it as a challenge myself. I guess if you didnt like being challenged I could see how it was so terrible! Funny thing is there were 2 gates per realm plus ports to other realms so if your gate is being crashed, go around it. I wasnt that hard to do.

 

Leveling was awsome. Could have used more story yes but DAoC was perhaps the best laid out leveling design going at release. It wasnt so hard it was EQ level curve but it was still long enough that it wasnt a 2 week max out job either! You could solo but it was definately faster to group up. Sorry but DAoC Leveling curve (at release) is what MMOs should be looking at going forward. This 2 week max crap has ruined MMOs as no one feels any real attatchment to their characters anymore.

 

Killspam. Turn it off, again, not a hard concept.

 

Sorry DAoC wasnt perfect and it got worse and worse every expansion and update. But other then the buffbots, your list rather petty. Sounds like you get mad if everything didnt go your way. I mean listing killspam when you simply could click it off in options? Come on. Gate Crashing when you could simply go to other gate? Come on.

Edited April 29, 2012 by Kalfear

[Elwacko]

Shadowbane for PvP dynamic

Asherons Call for PvE Raids

Rift for engine and PvE Global

[Deyjarl]

Wow the DAoC fanboi in force.

 

It was fun, at least until the PvP map revamp then they were bleeding subs. But no it was not widely popular, not by a long shot.

 

And no 300,000 back then is not the same as some of the games successful. And no it wasn't just a US market they had EU servers also for those sub numbers.

[Sir_Galapagos]

So my idea for space combat is pretty much copy/paste star wars battlefront.

 

i loved sw battlefront and i was expecting space combat like that and it was a huge let down.

[juliandracos]

Wow the DAoC fanboi in force.

 

It was fun, at least until the PvP map revamp then they were bleeding subs. But no it was not widely popular, not by a long shot.

 

And no 300,000 back then is not the same as some of the games successful. And no it wasn't just a US market they had EU servers also for those sub numbers.

 

Well, no mmorpg prior to WoW in the US probably ever counted as wildly successful then. I mean who knew that if you remade EQ, but made it insanely easy and put "Warcraft" in the title you would end up with millions of players. If SOE knew that was all it took, it would have made the game easier a lot sooner.

 

DAOC was the #2 mmorpg for its time, with EQ being #1 at 425k. SWG briefly held the #2 spot after DAOC. However all mmorpgs (except EVE) had massive population drop offs after WoW. Euro population was never that high and if you want to use that to dismiss DAOC accomplishments, remember that Euro players also played EQ, SWG, and every other big US release.

 

NF did not cause subscription bleeding. (People always want to blame things they did not like for subscription fall offs). Around 75k people left around the begining of WoW. Another 75k left during WoW's first year. In terms of percents you will find it similar across all of the other mmorpgs.

[Toweleeeie]

DaoC RvR type pvp would be fraking awesome!