One of the biggest problems for a current MMO: The People

[Yinata]

People that blame anyone else than Bioware/EA for overhyping the game, need to go back and review some of the things they said over 2010/2011 about how epic/amazing SWTOR would be, and how it would be unlike any MMO experience ever. Well that was all lies, outside of being basically fully Voiced Over there really isn't a lot that sets this game apart outside the "Legacy" System which we know now was a cash shop that they were testing/seeing if it worked on actual players before making their final Cartel/Cash shop implementation. Overall though Bioware delivered a lot of Hype in the months/year heading up the game, and upon actual delivery to the customer it fell flat on it's face, and this is where it's now.

 

Also the point of your thread is invalid, communities of people build MMO's, yes there are bads in this community, but the good people equal them out for the most part. This is why games grow and succeed as MMO's is these loyal players bring in others and so forth.

 

The problem with EA/Bioware is that they didn't care about building or framing this online community, and they took actions such as pulling Ranked Warzones the night before 1.2 hits, the 1.1 Illum Debacle, and now the F2P announcement that made customers not trust them. Once they did these things, their hopes of growing the game to the levels they had hoped were gone, because without a community that thinks you are credible, MMO's fail. After being lied to and fed the "Legacy System" which is going to be the cash shop as a majority of the content since release EA/Bioware have few customers that actually trust them left. The fact they had known they were implementing this system for quite some time and said nothing to inform their customers just shows they are in it for the money, and didn't want to break the news until they had likely milked yet another month out of subscribers.

[CosmicKat]

Blizzard destroyed the MMO with WoW. What we are playing now are just the scavengers feeding off the corpse of the MMO genre.

 

It's a dying breed of game because developers do not make MMO's anymore. For example, one could quite easily level to 50 in TOR without ever grouping, speaking to, or otherwise interacting with another human being. No game where that statement is true can accurately be described as an MMO.

 

The fans and developers share equal blame. The fans for insisting on the dumbing down of the genre to childlike levels, and the developers for listening to us.

[NoxiousAlby]

I talked to two people I work with that played SWTOR at launch and dropped their subs. (Not that two people mean anything on this scale), but both said that they will definitely be playing again when it goes F2P. Both liked the game but with all the other monthly subs they were balancing, Hulu, netflix, web hosting etc. They just couldn't take on another sub. They are hoping they sell quest content packs similar to LOTRO. So they can pay as the play without a monthly sub commitment.

 

My point is that if a lot more people feel that way this could turn out not so bad for all of us.

 

Is $15 a month that great a burden? To me those people who are gainfully employed would have no problem budgeting aside $15 a month if that is what they wanted to do. On the other hand there are those who cancelled because they felt the game wasnt worth $15 a month, and yes they maybe interested in returning if it is F2P.

 

Either way I judge F2P in MMO's that started as P2P as a failure of the game, and there are others that feel as i do. There are plenty of SE Asian MMO's that are F2P (that end up costing far more than any P2P I know) as well as World of Tanks (recognised as the best armoured warfare game on the market) and they are all P2W.

[Dein_Cathair]

I feel a huge part of the problem in this gen of MMO's are the people not necessarily the games. And I'm not slamming the people either I just think that they way people play games have changed affecting how MMO's are played and perceived.

 

 

This sounds like the most recent Bioware insiders remarks.

 

His remarks were clearly of ignorance and of trying to deflect the inadequacies of Swtor onto the players.

The fact is, if you design a quality product you can have millions of Subs ( WoW)), if you cannot, you end up in trouble.

 

It is quite true many companies fail, but they fail because they generally do not know how to design a quality product based on actually providing a quality product. This does not just apply to Bioware either, many companies have no clue as how to do it.

 

What is your real goal here? inflame the community?

Edited August 2, 2012 by Dein_Cathair

[Rayvest]

Your wrong, it's the game. I left a mouth after the release and saw that EA showed no care in the people. They make these videos in interviews acting like they love the people but the problem is, they don't listen.

 

I complained about the UI, they never responded to my emails. This was in beta and after the release.

I complained about the fleet system. We couldn't find a group to get passed the point in our development because getting in a group would take hours. They never responded to my complaints and emails.

I complained about a community of people who were ruining the gaming experience. Oh they responded to me about that with warnings.

I complained about the player vehicles running all over the Fleet Station. Some of the vehicles as big as a house, come on, really? Plus I think this is way there was so much lag on the station. Do we really need to ride these on the station? They never responded.

 

EA came out with the new Fleet quest system to make it so we can get into a group. I waited till the release came out, not one day before and what did I find? I have waited as little as 10 minutes. The problem during those two times was that someone would que in and then quit as soon as we ported into the quest. Then we had no choice but to leave the group which then we were placed in a time penalty. Another two attempts I waited over 30 minutes and I see people are begging for tanks. Poor balance. Failed system.

The UI change was what I asked for during beta, they couldn't do this before the release?

 

Now I see all these locked servers which tells me they want to cut them so they don't want people creating new account on them and the F2P is announced tells me they are sinking.

 

Once F2P goes live, lol watch the players then. You think allot of them are horrible now. The gate will be opened.

 

Not me, I want no part of a failed team.

 

Bring back SWG! It looked better anyway.

[spacerobot]

People that blame anyone else than Bioware/EA for overhyping the game, need to go back and review some of the things they said over 2010/2011 about how epic/amazing SWTOR would be, and how it would be unlike any MMO experience ever. Well that was all lies, outside of being basically fully Voiced Over there really isn't a lot that sets this game apart outside the "Legacy" System which we know now was a cash shop that they were testing/seeing if it worked on actual players before making their final Cartel/Cash shop implementation. Overall though Bioware delivered a lot of Hype in the months/year heading up the game, and upon actual delivery to the customer it fell flat on it's face, and this is where it's now.

 

Also the point of your thread is invalid, communities of people build MMO's, yes there are bads in this community, but the good people equal them out for the most part. This is why games grow and succeed as MMO's is these loyal players bring in others and so forth.

 

The problem with EA/Bioware is that they didn't care about building or framing this online community, and they took actions such as pulling Ranked Warzones the night before 1.2 hits, the 1.1 Illum Debacle, and now the F2P announcement that made customers not trust them. Once they did these things, their hopes of growing the game to the levels they had hoped were gone, because without a community that thinks you are credible, MMO's fail. After being lied to and fed the "Legacy System" which is going to be the cash shop as a majority of the content since release EA/Bioware have few customers that actually trust them left. The fact they had known they were implementing this system for quite some time and said nothing to inform their customers just shows they are in it for the money, and didn't want to break the news until they had likely milked yet another month out of subscribers.

 

A couple of thoughts on this:

 

RE: Communities of people build MMO's: I think this is what could happen with the F2P transition. The people who really dislike the game are gone, and the people who like the game can play it without the monthly sub wall.

 

RE: Ranked warzones being pulled: The only thing I can think is that there were some issues with it not working correctly. I would rather them pull it than release it buggy and not working even though I was really looking forward to it. Without being there and working on the system I can't really comment on if that item is a failure by the devs or not.

[Rayvest]

This game had one of the worst communities i have ever seen outside of the RP servers.

 

They did and still do. Even time I spoke out against it I would receive a warning from the forum police.

 

Well they get what they sow.

[NoxiousAlby]

What did they not deliver? In all seriousness I would like to know what you are thinking on this. Obviously full 3d space combat isn't in, swoop racing and pazaak, but what else was supposed to go in that hasn't so far?

 

Still waiting on dual spec, bug fixes (to many to list), slow addition of end game content (1 raid with 4 bosses added within the 8 month mark), Tier gear with relevant statistics to your class, nightmare mode EC, & nightmare mode FP's just to name a few. Add them to what you've already mentioned and there is a significant proportion of content lacking in this game. And I sincerely doubt F2P and an ingame store will fix any of this.

[spacerobot]

Still waiting on dual spec, bug fixes (to many to list), slow addition of end game content (1 raid with 4 bosses added within the 8 month mark), Tier gear with relevant statistics to your class, nightmare mode EC, & nightmare mode FP's just to name a few. Add them to what you've already mentioned and there is a significant proportion of content lacking in this game. And I sincerely doubt F2P and an ingame store will fix any of this.

 

Ahhh i forgot about Dual Spec. I definitely would love that added too, BUT did they promise all this was going to in game within a certain time frame or is it people expecting certain things and being PO'd that they aren't in yet?

 

I did not follow SWTOR over the last year of development before launch because I did not want to get burned out on the game coverage. I wanted it to be pretty vanilla to me so I didn't read a lot of the pre-launch articles and interviews.

[DarthTHC]

Still waiting on dual spec, bug fixes (to many to list), slow addition of end game content (1 raid with 4 bosses added within the 8 month mark), Tier gear with relevant statistics to your class, nightmare mode EC, & nightmare mode FP's just to name a few. Add them to what you've already mentioned and there is a significant proportion of content lacking in this game. And I sincerely doubt F2P and an ingame store will fix any of this.

 

But... but..... BUT... they keep saying they'll deliver more content more quickly! Why can't you believe them? LEAVE EA ALONE! *sob*

 

/emo

[CosmicKat]

They did and still do. Even time I spoke out against it I would receive a warning from the forum police.

 

Well they get what they sow.

 

Yep it's a really bad, and immature community compared to most MMO's. The immaturity part is completely surprising to me. Since Star Wars hasn't been good for 30 years, you'd think this game would have a larger percentage of older players. *shrug*

[Yinata]

A couple of thoughts on this:

 

RE: Communities of people build MMO's: I think this is what could happen with the F2P transition. The people who really dislike the game are gone, and the people who like the game can play it without the monthly sub wall.

 

RE: Ranked warzones being pulled: The only thing I can think is that there were some issues with it not working correctly. I would rather them pull it than release it buggy and not working even though I was really looking forward to it. Without being there and working on the system I can't really comment on if that item is a failure by the devs or not.

 

The problem is you won't have the same sense of community, the F2P'ers won't be able to participate in a guilds activities, running Operations/FlashPoints/Warzones due to their weekly limit. This leads to in many cases F2P can destroy community because it causes a divide between Subscribers and the F2P people, which is going to be worse with this game due to their limits and really not feasibly playing a large role in any sort of guild in an organized PvP/PvE environment. This is where the problem with the transition will come, if they don't make enough F2P'ers subscribers, they won't be able to replenish the supply of recruits that PvE and PvP guilds need to continue doing Ranked Warzones and Operations.

 

We can agree to disagree about Ranked Warzones being pulled, but it happened right around the time people would be resubbing for 1.2 ranked warzones, and honestly it's hard to believe they suddenly and magically found a bug the night before that made it unimplementable and caused them to go redesign for 3 months. More likely is they knew it wasn't ready and wanted to get as many people to resub for the patch before breaking the news, that was just the way it seemed to the majority of the community. There had to be major issues with ranked that they knew weeks ahead of time that it wasn't going live, yet kept the hype going to get people to resub. That was just he impression it left a lot of us with at least.

[spacerobot]

The problem is you won't have the same sense of community, the F2P'ers won't be able to participate in a guilds activities, running Operations/FlashPoints/Warzones due to their weekly limit. This leads to in many cases F2P can destroy community because it causes a divide between Subscribers and the F2P people, which is going to be worse with this game due to their limits and really not feasibly playing a large role in any sort of guild in an organized PvP/PvE environment. This is where the problem with the transition will come, if they don't make enough F2P'ers subscribers, they won't be able to replenish the supply of recruits that PvE and PvP guilds need to continue doing Ranked Warzones and Operations.

 

We can agree to disagree about Ranked Warzones being pulled, but it happened right around the time people would be resubbing for 1.2 ranked warzones, and honestly it's hard to believe they suddenly and magically found a bug the night before that made it unimplementable and caused them to go redesign for 3 months. More likely is they knew it wasn't ready and wanted to get as many people to resub for the patch before breaking the news, that was just the way it seemed to the majority of the community. There had to be major issues with ranked that they knew weeks ahead of time that it wasn't going live, yet kept the hype going to get people to resub. That was just he impression it left a lot of us with at least.

 

So say your guild is running a raid in a certain raid instance the F2Per does not have. They can buy that raid right? Or is that not how it is going to work?

[NoxiousAlby]

Ahhh i forgot about Dual Spec. I definitely would love that added too, BUT did they promise all this was going to in game within a certain time frame or is it people expecting certain things and being PO'd that they aren't in yet?

 

I did not follow SWTOR over the last year of development before launch because I did not want to get burned out on the game coverage. I wanted it to be pretty vanilla to me so I didn't read a lot of the pre-launch articles and interviews.

 

With dual spec I assertained that it would come withn 12 months, although had the decision been mine I would have introduced it at the same time as the LFG tool to alleviate queues. I can only speak for myself but it's the fact that BW/EA have obviously given thought to a F2P model for some time. And have or are allocating resources for it to be in place by the fall, when there is so much that subscribers are currently waiting on their decision comes as a slap in the face to those that gave BW the benefit of the doubt in the first place.

Edited August 2, 2012 by NoxiousAlby

[RobNightfall]

Nope. Its the game. If the game is bad, people will leave.

 

This. This game is a combination of miserable development, even worse customer service, and a tissue of lies in the product marketing campaign. That's why it has gone F2P, no one who wants an MMO and not an enhanced single player game will pay $15/monthly for SWTOR.

[NoxiousAlby]

So say your guild is running a raid in a certain raid instance the F2Per does not have. They can buy that raid right? Or is that not how it is going to work?

 

I dont think it's that simple, my guild raids 4 nights a week when there is new content but things have slowed down at the moment. When the new raid is introduced in 1.4 and a guild member has chosen F2P and buys raid content for 1 night they wont get an invite. It takes a regular dedicated team to work through the content since the introduction of EC (which is a good thing), so I dont see F2P players being of any constructive value to my guild.

 

Edit: If they can buy the entire raid for it's duration then that might change things

Edited August 2, 2012 by NoxiousAlby

[CommunitySupport]

Hello everyone! While we appreciate your thoughts, we'll be closing this thread, as it does not directly discuss Star Wars: The Old Republic. Thanks for your understanding.