On dead servers, people leaving, and more.

[Raeln]

Sorry, but that is the core of the console gamers. Not the core of the MMO players.

 

But even then. Those who can spare 4 or 5 hours a week at most just take longer to accomplish things. WHich keeps them coming back beyond their initial month or two. Which is what this game is struggling to keep people doing.

 

And those people who can play 4 or 5 hours a week at most, do nothing for the population. They might be fun, cool people. They might be good gamers. But a game full of those is a dead community.

 

A game full of those 4 to 5 hour a week players fills the game developer's bank account so they can make more content for the 20+ hours a week players.

 

This is not new science. This is how WoW has operated for the last 8 years, and yes - I knew people that literally only played about 2.5 hours a week there. They also remained subscribed for years because they hadn't consumed but a fraction of the content that others had.

[LeonBraun]

One thing that hasn't really been brought up (or focused on) in this thread yet, is the perpetual laundry list of bugs and broken/missing basic game features.

 

When you place your product head to head with the titan of all MMOs (WoW), and the game is frustrating, clunky, and broken to many, many simply move on.

 

WoW has gotten really good at making a patch, letting it launch, and letting the players enjoy. TOR has to find a way to launch a patch in such a way that they aren't in perpetual damage control mode every time one goes live.

Edited June 1, 2012 by LeonBraun

[Raeln]

They DO last. The onyl reason they don't last, is when everything was achieved in a few days.

 

Some games retain their hardcore crowd for years upon years. SWG, AoC, EQ, all of those games retained the same people for years and years. How? By making things difficult to accomplish, and giving them something to work towards.

 

The subscriber base that SWG, AoC and EQ had will not sustain a game this size. The revenue is just not enough.

 

Only WoW has succeeded with the whole "Lets just give our players everything easily" model. And the hardcore players there don't last. Because of that model. But that game also has the worst community in the history of online communities. It's full of children, whining and more drama than Desperate Housewives.

 

WoW emulated the console "Easy" or "Normal" settings, and did it very well. I know EQ1 was more of a "Hard" console setting, due to the heavy group requirement on everything, including farming crafting materials.

 

We've seen how "Cataclysm'ing" raid content in 1.2 worked out - can't find enough people to run EC even on storymode. No, the core of a MMORPG is not the hardcore player. It hasn't been in any MMO that wanted to retain more than 300 to 400k subs.

[Valkirus]

One thing that hasn't really been brought up (or focused on) in this thread yet, is the perpetual laundry list of bugs and broken/missing basic game features.

 

When you place your product head to head with the titan of all MMOs (WoW), and the game is frustrating, clunky, and broken to many, many simply move on.

 

WoW has gotten really good at making a patch, letting it launch, and letting the players enjoy. TOR has to find a way to launch a patch in such a way that they aren't in perpetual damage control mode every time one goes live.

 

What WoW excels at is having the game's content easy and timely for the player base to access. TOR has failed horribly in that department.

[DarthMaulUK]

Persistence is effort. It takes "effort" to reach valor rank 70. It requires many hours of waiting in a queue and hundreds of Warzones to earn the valor. That is "effort".

 

The word you are looking for is "skill". No MMORPG will ever deny gaining PvP points again (read: WoW failure) when losing. Someone always has to lose in PvP and people that consistently lose tend to quit playing very quickly. This is also why ratings killed the WoW Arena system. Complimentary points are what ensures they stick around.

 

The fail part of PvP in an MMORPG is that the developers keep wanting to attach gear progression to it just like they do PvE.

 

Its ok for the 'veterans' who were here at launch, grinding away, gearing up making lots of cash because there were alot of people playing. But those re rolling, or those new will find it very difficult to get a group together for raids, flashpoints and/or pvp, making the grind for stuff even longer.

 

Bioware have failed to grasp short term and longer term goals for the game and its community and failed to react quickly enough. With such a large community team, we havent even seen ONE live event yet. They must stop playing it safe and add the WAR into the game to create some excitement.

 

Not just for those who enjoy pvp, but for those who pve - PUT THE WAR BACK IN THE STARS PLEASE BIOWARE

[Journeyer]

Has OP played Denova?

[Raeln]

Making things more difficult or time consuming keeps the players who provide a vast and active community here longer. The longer they stay, the longer other people stay because they have more ready access to group aspects, good guilds and other content. You lose those hardcore crowds, and the casual crowds log in, see no one, play through single player mode (which is basically what most of this game is, at this point) and leave.

 

Casuals never stay. They find little time (Likely for good reasons, dont get me wrong) to play and provide little to no ways in terms of a community that keeps people here. A game full of casuals is a dead, silent game.

 

SWTOR is proof of that - all your hardcore gamers are gone, and you've a silent ghost town of a game full of casuals.

 

The hardcore players are the ones that rush through the content. They burn it up, spit it out - cry that there isn't more to do. Unsubscribe and buy the next game. They may come back when a new content patch comes out and in 2 months, they are gone again.

 

The casuals are the ones logging on, slowly consuming content but provide a nice pad of numbers when you do a /who. They also make things like LFD and PvP queues work.

[Valkirus]

The subscriber base that SWG, AoC and EQ had will not sustain a game this size. The revenue is just not enough.

 

 

 

WoW emulated the console "Easy" or "Normal" settings, and did it very well. I know EQ1 was more of a "Hard" console setting, due to the heavy group requirement on everything, including farming crafting materials.

 

We've seen how "Cataclysm'ing" raid content in 1.2 worked out - can't find enough people to run EC even on storymode. No, the core of a MMORPG is not the hardcore player. It hasn't been in any MMO that wanted to retain more than 300 to 400k subs.

 

Very well said. They made the end game content easier for the casual players to access with the expanded cross server LFG tool to raids. But at the same time reserved the harder settings and rewards for the hardcore players. And to say ( as the OP suggested ) the community is the worse than any in MMO history, he/she forgot to mention anytime you have 10.2 million subs, you will increase your chances for coming in contact with the rude jerks. WoW has retained a ton of older players who have been playing the game for over 7 yrs. And it is not Blizzard's fault if you associate yourself mainly with pugs and fail to use the ignore list.

[Deewe]

]

I've played this game since early access, and before that, since the open beta. I fell in love with its game play, it's beauty, and the marvel that is the SW Universe.

 

But Bioware/EA/Whoever is really running things, is running the game into the ground. The past few months have seen a crashing and burning SWTOR population. A lot of the reasons why are very fixable, as well. However, instead, they wish to continue to sift through the players to earn more real world credits and ignore the major issues that are absolutely killing this game for it's main player base.

 

1. Gear earning, pvp hardmodes, raids and the like are all watered down to ultra simplicity and extremely easy to achieve/complete.

 

First and foremost, the redone PvP gear/PvP medal mechanics have obliterated the challenge and difficulty of becoming a competitive PvPer, especially in the level 50 queue. Let's face it, prior to those changes, pvp required strategy and effort to meet the goals for a win. Winning meant medals. You could essentially obliterate the other team in kills, and still lose due to lack of strategy. it was fun, challenging, and new 50s had a long climb to reach Battlemaster and other ranks for the better gear. Now, it is overly simplistic, all gear oriented, and all the main achievements of pvp are earned in such an easy fashion that few people stick with it. And hence, They leave the game because those goals are so easily accomplished.

 

Hardmodes and Raids are the simplest i've ever seen in any MMO in my 12 years of playing them. What is so hard about having to out dps an enrage timer? Where is the actual effort and strategy involved? Every boss, every instance, every time, it's all about "can you kill him before he goes into rage?" How lame. It chases people away.

 

Gear wise, just about any new 50 can get all their top gears, pvp or pve, in a couple weeks time. Do your daily HM quest everyday, your weekly quest for them 2 or 3 weeks in a row, and you're going to be full Columi in a faster time than it took you to reach 50. Join a guild that does raids, and you'll be full Rakata in no time as well. Pvp wise, valor ranks come so easily now, and the rank restrictions were removed from most gear. So that is easily earned as well. Handing everything to people on a silver platter for little effort just makes people leave. They run out of things to do far too fast, and leave.

 

2. The leveling zones/planets are intensely boring after your first run through.

 

Every aspect of an MMO is a grind in some fashion. But the combat in this game is so simple. Kudos to the devs however, because they make every class feel like they are one man army. But so what? The layouts of the planets, or most of them anyway, are god awful. The stories the first time, are pretty neat. But the second playthrough, assuming you want to play through a second time just to stay in the game, pulls up the sheer redundancy and plainness of the game's leveling to the forefront. And the poor planet layouts start to show more and more. It becomes aggrevating more than fun.

 

The game's one saving grace, the class storylines, are redundant in themselves. Everyone is a galactic savior, single handedly saving all living beings or single handedly toppling society. If I wanted to play Mass Effect, I'd go pay 50 bucks one time and be done with it. Not pay 15 a month over and over to keep playing it.

 

3. They overshot their expectations with player populations, and the majority of servers are dead silent.

 

You can't find groups if you arent in a large guild. You can spend all day and be one of maybe 3 people to ever step foot on a single planet. The player hub area, the fleets, are often ghost towns with under 30 people the majority of the day.

 

Age of Conan, a game long thought to be dead, had 494 people playing on my old server saturday night. One server I play on in SWTOR had 198, summing up everyone on every planet i went to. The other, a measely 103. Yet Age of Conan is thought to be the dead game. Then what does that make SWTOR?

 

4. Server transfers is only a way to harness more dollars from the players, not solve the population per server issue.

 

If they really wanted to solve the problem, they'd condense servers. 6 RP servers? Make it 3. 10 Pve? Make it 5. Etc. Some mergers would be time consuming, but it'd be a saving grace to all the people who want to stay but have so little reason to do so.

 

Instead, they want to charge us money to transfer servers and possibly end up in the same situation, and have to pay again to find another new server. I understand it's business.But sapping players for every last dollar instead of fixing the real issue is why EA is arguably the most disliked company of our generation.

 

---

To sum things up, people are leaving. And leaving in droves. Many new subscribers come to the fold, and they are gone shortly after too. The servers are ghost towns, the main aspects of the game at level 50 are simplistic, and few people want to level through those poor zone/planet designs a second time just to stick around and have something to do.

 

I do NOT plan to leave SWTOR. But I fear for the games future if this current trend continues. If people wanted to play WoW, they would go play WoW. And at the moment, all this game is, is a much lower population version of WoW, with lightsabers instead of steel blades.

#1: There's no such thing as incentive/end content for PvE/PvP in TOR yet.

--------This would keep player in game and paying the monthly fees. You are right saying PvP has been reduced to gear.

 

#2: Planets design are too linear and does not promotes exploration nor alternative pathing.

--------Would only be fixed with new planets. Too much work involved to redo existing content to a sufficient extend.

 

#3: Dead servers

--------Server merge ("super servers") and free character transfer will help. Hopefully they'll make it smart enough to help balancing faction population too.

Edited June 1, 2012 by Deewe

[Raeln]

Its ok for the 'veterans' who were here at launch, grinding away, gearing up making lots of cash because there were alot of people playing. But those re rolling, or those new will find it very difficult to get a group together for raids, flashpoints and/or pvp, making the grind for stuff even longer.

 

Bioware have failed to grasp short term and longer term goals for the game and its community and failed to react quickly enough. With such a large community team, we havent even seen ONE live event yet. They must stop playing it safe and add the WAR into the game to create some excitement.

 

Not just for those who enjoy pvp, but for those who pve - PUT THE WAR BACK IN THE STARS PLEASE BIOWARE

 

It's not feasible for a game company to run live server events like back in the days of EQ1. There are too many servers and at best, the event would have to be scripted because it would be impossible for a company hire an extra 100 to 200 employees to acts as these event organizers (need at least 1 per server to run a live event simultaneously).

 

I believe the last live server event that I know of in EQ1 was when Verant still owned the game. After selling it to SOE, I think their future "events" were merely scripts that had a very rare chance to run or were globally triggered by an admin.

 

I think these live events would be awesome but it's only something that I would expect to happen in a niche game with a smaller playerbase.

 

Keep in mind there is a downside to a short 1 to 2 hour "live" event too. It tends to upset or disappoint players that could not be online or were unaware that such a thing might happen at that time. Imagine someone getting the "I was there at the event" T-shirt for their character, only because they happened to be online. Their friend didn't because well - they were at work and couldn't log on. Live events - if they were even financially feasible, are a double-edged sword.

[DarthMaulUK]

SWG has lots of live events - especially when the Tusken Raiders attacked Bestine. So if a smaller team could do it - why cant Bioware? And this was done at SWGs most popular time.

 

Personally, I have never seen a game become so stale so rapidly. At least in games like Rift - you can group up and take on a Rift or engage in some open world pvp because enemy factions werent kept apart like they are here.

 

Ive extended my sub until GW2 arrives and that, will probably be the final nail in this games coffin as far as pvp goes. Which is a shame, because I like the combat - I love the sounds of lightsabers but I just wish Bioware would hire developers with brains and flex some creative muscle.

[Deewe]

I just wish Bioware would hire developers with brains and flex some creative muscle.

Well rest assured some devs do have it but the producer and some leads are hitting the wrong buttons.

[Raeln]

SWG has lots of live events - especially when the Tusken Raiders attacked Bestine. So if a smaller team could do it - why cant Bioware? And this was done at SWGs most popular time.

 

It's not that it can't be done. It surely can. It just isn't necessarily affordable for the developer at the current $15 a month sub price.

 

Again, I'm only talking about LIVE events where GMs take control of mobs during the event. These types of events require a living, breathing GM to be at the keys on each server to control these mobs personally.

 

Developers should certainly consider creating scripts that can run randomly where some number of mobs attempt to invade a town or city - that's certainly possible and should happen.

 

Personally, I have never seen a game become so stale so rapidly. At least in games like Rift - you can group up and take on a Rift or engage in some open world pvp because enemy factions werent kept apart like they are here.

 

Ive extended my sub until GW2 arrives and that, will probably be the final nail in this games coffin as far as pvp goes. Which is a shame, because I like the combat - I love the sounds of lightsabers but I just wish Bioware would hire developers with brains and flex some creative muscle.

 

There's plenty to do. I think some of the issue is they were expecting something different from WoW. The missing LFD system certainly does leave a big hole because there are many like me that don't want to idle on the Fleet while waiting for a group to form.

[Lurchy]

No more people are leaving on my server and I know you all know why, so lets all say it together!

 

 

 

They all left already!

 

 

 

 

.

Edited June 1, 2012 by Lurchy

[Balthazod]

Yes that's what is needed. If only EA and Bioware could see past the fluff like like dead servers, buggy sounds. And lack of features such as cross server PvP and LFG tools!!!

 

OH LORDY WEN CAN I HAZ BUBLZ!!!

 

Chat bubbles and more legacy perks, ho and more unarmed combat move, and could you remove a few action slots always have far too many of them.....

[Mailek]

There were 54 on the fleet today on my server. I can't fathom how they would let it get to this point. It's really bad. This is worst than the Pre-CU| NGE hit for Star Wars Galaxies.

 

Not it's not / wasn't. Pre CU SWG had 300kl subs, after CU that dropped by 100k, then NGE another 150k. So unless this game loses 700k more subs (which it might), it's nowhere near as bad as what had happened with SWG. Stop bending the truth to make your points valid.

[FooBard]

I haven't logged into the game in about a month now. Fortunately my sub is paid up through 8/17, so I still have a couple months to decide whether I want to play this game again - ever.

 

It's not looking good though, as the model of this game is just - too plain and generic.

 

Grind + Gear = Win.

 

I'm not looking for win, I'm looking for fun. Can't seem to find it.

Edited June 1, 2012 by FooBard

[stephenjohnp]

There is an extreme lack of end game content PvE wise and you can blow through all of it in 2 weeks if not less.

 

PvP is far too gear dependant to be taken seriously.

 

When Guild Wars 2 comes out, this game is dead.

Edited June 1, 2012 by stephenjohnp

[KassKass]

Really long past caring now....

 

Moved On, and Happy to have Mark Hamill screaming at me, telling me jokes etc DC FTP, it aint perfect but dammed side more enjoyable than this shambolic abomination that is SW:TOR.

 

Unsubbed and moving on........

[Finestyle]

I started playing when the game was released, and I was enjoying it, people everywhere, my server was hard to join there was that many people... but then I had to take a break due to RL and when I came back everywhere was more or less baron, most people had gained levels and I'd play for a couple of hours and be lucky to see more than 5 people... this really stripped all the fun from the game for me, it is supposed to be an mmo and I'm playing solo 95% of the time and it made it almost impossible to do any of the harder quests. So I decided to look for a guild, and I found one... A nice bunch of people... but unfortunately not too many members in my level range so I still ended up playing alone most of the time.

 

Eventually I slowly but surely logged in less and less and then just stopped logging in altogether, it wasn't a concious decision to quit, I just wasn't drawn to the game any more. It had become boring, playing alone, in a MMO, beautifully designed worlds all but baron of life. A story was unfolding that I wanted to be engrossed with but most of the time found myself wishing I was at the level cap just be be around people.

 

Why am I posting this? I'm not sure really... I just logged into the site today to cancel my subscription after not logging in for over a month to make sure another payment wasn't due and I figured while I was here I'd have a quick look at the forums and I saw this thread.

For me personally, the reason why I'm not playing SWTOR any more is because there was simply too many servers from the start. Once the initial rush of players died down there just seems like there wasn't enough people to fill them all... I understand that transfers will be coming available?, what about server merges? (I haven't been keeping up to date I'll admit). either way, for me it's too little too late. If I hadn't have had to take that break and fall behind so much, who knows, I may still be playing.... but I don't see how the game will attract many new players if they have to go through what I was going through... It just becomes boring.

[SWGVet]

Not it's not / wasn't. Pre CU SWG had 300kl subs, after CU that dropped by 100k, then NGE another 150k. So unless this game loses 700k more subs (which it might), it's nowhere near as bad as what had happened with SWG. Stop bending the truth to make your points valid.

 

Excuse me?, you don't tell me what to do, secondly I was merely meaning what I said in a general sense, not all scientifically speaking. You worry about yourself and yourself only. I'll continue to do as I please whether you like it or not pal.

 

 

Good Day!.

[kirorx]

Excuse me?, you don't tell me what to do, secondly I was merely meaning what I said in a general sense, not all scientifically speaking. You worry about yourself and yourself only. I'll continue to do as I please whether you like it or not pal.

 

 

Good Day!.

 

Ouch, Burn. lol

[DarthOvertone]

So while I agree we need world PvP people need to throw out some ideas how to make it work because just saying we need it won't help all it will do is bring more doom and gloom. How can they implement world PvP without running into the population balance issue, we can't leave it in BW's hands thats obvious so give some ideas instead of just asking for world PvP.

 

Imp Wars 1.2 pretty much shattered any possibility of factionally balanced OPvP in the future. The only real possibility for OPvP in this game now is to eliminate factions altogether. Eliminate factions and make OPvP engagements Guild and Alliance-based.

 

 

They go through content so quickly and any mmorpg that want's to imitate wow's success needs to consider casuals first.

 

In the SWTOR universe, this has turned out to be a failed strategy. EA's explanation in their own quarterly report for the massive hemorraging of subs in SWTOR was their inability to retain casual players, even though their initial game design and marketing effort was designed to target casuals specifically. Their marketing worked quite well to lure casuals in, they sold 2.7 million boxes. The game failed to hold them. Down to 1.3 million subs as of April.

 

This game has been dumbed down so much already. Everything is so easy and simple to do, except for acquiring a couple of the datacrons (lol). It couldn't be easier for players without completely giving away the farm.

 

I think casual players like a challenge as much as hardcore players. I also think that, deep down, a casual player wants to be a hardcore player, and will strive in game to do so. The only difference is time.

 

 

Which mmo has hard contents at 2012?

 

Who said to make the content hard? The point is that the content should be more challenging and difficult. This can certainly be done without making it hard and would be a welcome change to the drooling faceroll that it is now. Although, the endgame HM Raids should certainly be harder. Being able to blow out both EV and KP HMs in the same night is stupid easy ridiculous.

 

 

I, among many others, said this exact same thing back in January. They had months to adjust the difficulty of the content and to add something meaningful and long-term for people to keep them playing yet did absolutely nothing.

 

Back in January, after I hit level 50 in 4 weeks (and that was taking my time lol), I made a post in General chat about the issue. The post garnered about 15 pages of responses. All people slamming me saying I'm just a hardcore elitist and wrong. I'm willing to bet that if I were to pull that thread up today, 90% of the peeps that responded have probably already hit level cap and moved along to another game. lol

[Evironrage]

This morning 3 standard pops

PvP Fatman (east coast)

PvE Jedi Covenant (east coast)

PvE Drooga's Pleasure Barge (west coast)

Everything else is light.

 

That was at 9:04am PST. It has not changed 2.5hrs later.

[Sundragon]

I gave up on my dead server (valor rank 98 Sorc) and moved to The Fatman. I simply got tired of doing the same 4 warzones with the same 8 folks every single time and waiting 20 minutes in between.