Gamasutra: The Burning of Star Wars - The Old Republic

[Urael]

Well one thing out of the F2P I consider positive is that it combats the "SWTOR is dead crowd"

 

Had a lot of friends who never tried it because they heard it was a flop and nobody played and they weren't going to risk paying money for a MMO with no players, then when F2P arrived a few of them tried it and found out the game actually does have people playing and actually has a lot of content

 

I am glad there are more people playing and that the worlds are more lively. People complain about "competition" with the full servers. They just need to tweek the spawn rate of mobs and clickables and there wouldn't be as many complaints.

 

We just need the game to be optimized for the latest drivers for the more popular video cards and bugs fixed and I know I would be happier.

[Spiritinblack]

3rd from the final?! Where you could mod all your gear at the stations and all quest rewards seemed to be some mod/enh/armoring?

 

It might be, I just know that even the gameplay was better. I know alot of us that still post were in beta.

 

It just seemed like it was good. Like what you were doing mattered.

 

It's not rose tinted glasses either as some might point out. I have seen alot say the same thing, now I wish I had taped some of it to let people see what I'm talking about.

[Mazikeen]

You forgot to mention the dizzy logic behind their contention that the $15 subscription fee was too high to retain subscribers... so therefore their solution to that problem is to implement a system that simultaneously lessens the percieved value to subscribers while trying to squeeze more money from us. Genius I say!

 

Actually it is. I've seen it work firsthand. People think '$X a month is too much!' but will nickel and dime themselves into the poor house. Do you have any idea how many people eat fast food, complain they're broke, then when someone with sense forces them to sit down and add all those fast food outing up the whiner all but falls over at the total they spent? On-Demand movies work in a similar way. Make something cheap and easy to obtain and people will spend ridiculous amounts on it.

 

SWTOR has it's issues, but some of us are happy with it overall. but then again, some of us have realistic expectations while others expect perfection for free.

[Sindorin]

Okay, was hoping someone would post another one of these reviews.

 

Here's a review of SWTOR from MMORPG.com, one of the worst anti-EA and anti-SWTOR communities out there. It's dated 1/6/2012.

 

 

Full Text Review, which the video abridges

 

 

Some interesting snippets of their review:

 

Just as I might want to finish a planet to see where my class story would go on the next one, world arcs had me eager to go from quest hub to quest hub to see where that particular story would take me. This trifecta of storylines (class, world, and side quests) does a good job of ameliorating that sense of grind that most MMOs can’t adequately mask.

 

Combat is even more exciting in Player vs. Player combat, and SW:TOR features a healthy amount of it! The Old Republic launched with three Warzones (instanced PvP scenarios) and two forms of Open World PvP. The three warzones are comprised of Alderaan Civil War (capture-and-hold), Huttball (football with deathtraps), and Voidstar (assault and defend). They’re all pretty fun game modes, and Huttball has finally grown on me after hating it for some time in beta. It simply requires significantly more teamwork than say Alderaan does, and so the experience can be a bit hit-or-miss if you solo queue.

 

Fortunately, BioWare seems to have drilled all this into their heads when developing this game, possibly to a fault, given how long it took the game to come out. They’ve been polishing this game for what seems like an eternity – and it shows.

 

Judging a game’s longevity so soon after launch is always a challenge. I’m no Nostradamus, but I have a good sense that this game’s got legs. Sure, those of you who burn through content will also burn through it here just as you would with any MMO, and possibly be left wondering with what you’re going to do now that you’ve essentially “done everything.” But for most of us, there is simply a lot on offer with The Old Republic right out of the box. There are eight class storylines, 15 Flashpoints, and two raids already available. Not to mention the game’s worlds are large and packed full of content. You’ll even have a completely unique experience going through the game as an Imperial if you’ve already gone through as a Republic class. This game has more than enough going for it to carry you through the first month of your subscription, and while we aren’t going to judge it on what BioWare intends to add over time, there’s certainly more stuff coming.

 

So, I ask you: what has changed? What's been added, and not removed? The only reason any people are going back to re-review the free to play SWTOR version, is so they arn't caught going against the bandwagon of hating SWTOR. Nothing fundamental has changed this game, and most of the categories, SWTOR scores 8's and 9's in.

 

It's hip to hate. But the facts are: the game is great!

[Master-Nala]

So, I ask you: what has changed? What's been added, and not removed? The only reason any people are going back to re-review the free to play SWTOR version, is so they arn't caught going against the bandwagon of hating SWTOR. Nothing fundamental has changed this game, and most of the categories, SWTOR scores 8's and 9's in.

 

It's hip to hate. But the facts are: the game is great!

 

Folks will tell you that EA bought the initial review score or that MMORPG.com was scared to anger EA. Of course, that would carry forward to today if true, but that doesn't fit the narrative.

[Urael]

It's hip to hate. But the facts are: the game is great!

 

SWTOR is not "great". It has "potential" but, in it's current incarnation SWTOR is lackluster, middle of the road and far too easy an MMORPG. SWTOR is a good "training" MMORPG for those that have never played. They are strong in teaching you the basics of MMORPG game play. They have an awsome story. They game is very buggy and not all popular video drivers are supported. Is SWTOR saveable? I hope so.

[iamthehoyden]

It's hip to hate. But the facts are: the game is great!

This is an opinion, not a fact. Your opinion is that the game is great, which is perfectly valid. But it's not a fact. Carry on.

[Nemmar]

Sounds like more hating to me, but there is some points to it.

 

The end-game does need more tuning, but its in no way anemic. What this game has is in essence the same thing WoW end-game has, so lets call WoW anemic aswell then, and that its not worth the subcription. Just cause WoW's questing system is crap and makes the end-game look better it doesnt mean the endgame in SWTOR is bad in any way. Ops are alot more fun to play than WoW raids, mostly because the game is simply better balanced and more fun to play. The difficulty of the content and the structure of the end-game is what needs optimising.

 

People that left, left mainly because of lack of new content. Every other argument is basically trying to take advantage of that fact to pull through. Like with every MMO it needs optimising, but it is true that the leveling experience is more rewarding than the end-game at this time. They need to streamline/make simpler the gearing up system. They need to add content at a good pace (wich seems to be happening now) and they need to tune the difficulty curve.

 

Also above 600k stayed subbed even through the drought months, so theres alot to enjoy in this game aswell. Not everyone goes and comes with the wind.

[Xatasha]

The author has a conflict of interests here. He is a former EA employee who seems to be a bit bias against EA games. He didn't do much research and may have an agenda. If he was a professional he would of had someone else do the review and done his research

[Urael]

The author has a conflict of interests here. He is a former EA employee who seems to be a bit bias against EA games. He didn't do much research and may have an agenda. If he was a professional he would of had someone else do the review and done his research

 

Because, all former EA employee's must write glowing reviews of EA products to be taken seriously. Rubbish.

[kamed]

SWTOR is not "great". It has "potential" but, in it's current incarnation SWTOR is lackluster, middle of the road and far too easy an MMORPG. SWTOR is a good "training" MMORPG for those that have never played. They are strong in teaching you the basics of MMORPG game play. They have an awsome story. They game is very buggy and not all popular video drivers are supported. Is SWTOR saveable? I hope so.

 

This is just my opinion, but honestly, after playing all those "hardcore" MMORPGs, I actually prefer this one more than the rest. Why? It's because there's an actual storyline, I'm sick and tired of all those fantasy setting MMORPGs and I want to wield a light saber =P

 

Anyway seriously, I would consider all those other MMOs again if only they can hire some decent writers to redo their storyline, because frankly theirs sucks. Like I used to play other MMOs and midway to max level I wonder to myself, "why the hell do I have to 120 harpies and loot 60 feather and livers?". For all their faults this game certainly delivers something that should come standard in all games, a storyline.

[CosmicKat]

So, I ask you: what has changed? What's been added, and not removed? The only reason any people are going back to re-review the free to play SWTOR version, is so they arn't caught going against the bandwagon of hating SWTOR. Nothing fundamental has changed this game, and most of the categories, SWTOR scores 8's and 9's in.

 

It's hip to hate. But the facts are: the game is great!

 

TOR makes a very good first impression, even to seasoned MMO vets. The problem is it stays the same game throughout. It never gets harder and it never evolves into something different from the first 10 levels.

 

This is easily observed by following general chat. Newbie zones are filled with people saying how much they love the game. By the time you get to Taris/Balmorra you rarely hear those things anymore and you'll often hear profanity laced rants about how terrible those planets are. Those planets aren't terrible, they just play exactly like the two previous planets and by then the shine has worn off and people have clued into the fact that what you've been doing for 20 levels is exactly what you will be doing for the next 30.

[Fornix]

I think it was a very honest article. Bioware seems ignorant of the games faults, the author isn't. There's a reason 2million+ people bought the game, only to quit.

 

Expecting even half of those players who initially picked up the game, to stay however, would have been an illusion. The problem SWTOR had was that it was seen as a "savior", just about everybody who was dissatisfied with their current MMO, picked it up. No matter what their background. It was to be expected that they'd have a high drop-off ratio with that.

[waterboytkd]

What blows my mind is that the editor at Gamasutra let this article get published. It wasn't an objective analysis of the game; it was a nerd-rant. The author obviously had some contentions with SWTOR, and just harped on these with memes and hyperbole. He made blanket statements and generalizations that are purely opinion-based, and then tried to represent them as researched fact.

 

Don't get me wrong, there are issues with the F2P implementation in this game (big ones, IMO), like having all the most desired cosmetic items coming in random packs, but there are also some good things that the author completely ignored, like the variety of adaptive armors so that any character can look like almost any other "archetype". That kind of bias in writing really hurts the author's credibility.

 

In the end, his article felt more like someone nerd-raging here on the forums than any kind of informed, objective analysis of the game. And for that reason, I don't feel like the article even warrants any kind of discussion any more than the "Bioware, you SUCK!" threads and the "Bioware, you guys are PERFECT!" threads on these forums do.

[Lium]

3) The hate parade. This game gets denounced for things that other games have done with little fanfare. The hate this game has directed to it is well out of proportion to its actual faults..

 

This is partly BioWare's fault. I agree that the hate can be a bit disproportionate, but BioWare exacerbates it by not doing really simple and basic things, like communicating with the players on major things.

 

For example, the Life Day fiasco. Even though this doesn't really bother me, I do think other players have a legitimate gripe here. How difficult would it have been for a CM or a moderator, or even a dev in a blog post, to simply say something like, "While we truly wanted to have an in-game event for Christmas, we just found it wasn't something we could do in the way that we wanted to do it given the current schedule and workload we have in front of us. We are pleased to offer the Life Day items on the Cartel Market, and we definitely have in-game events planned for the future!"

 

How hard would that have been?

 

Now, would that stop the complaints and the flames? No, of course not. But would it have gone a long way in heading some of it off? Absolutely.

 

Those are the little things that BioWare could do differently that in the long run, would make a HUGE difference. A large part of the frustration here is because the players don't feel like their concerns are being heard. And when they are heard, the solutions BioWare implement often make the problem worse, which just throws gasoline on the fire.

 

The first thing that devs could do is recalibrate their fractured relationship with the community.

[TUXs]

...but there are also some good things that the author completely ignored, like the variety of adaptive armors so that any character can look like almost any other "archetype". That kind of bias in writing really hurts the author's credibility.

I may be ignorant of what is all out there, but aren't the bulk of adaptive armors only available from Cartel packs or via the store directly? What alternatives to supporting the store (via in-game credits or cartel coins) do I have available to me? I'd like my Trooper to look like a Knight...

[Sindorin]

This is an opinion, not a fact. Your opinion is that the game is great, which is perfectly valid. But it's not a fact. Carry on.

 

You're missing the entire point, These reviews coming out do not add up. Nothing has fundamentally changed since the game was released, and given that these reviews seem unduly negative in content, only because it's popular to disparage SWTOR. Read the article instead of giving a kneejerk response.

[Sindorin]

TOR makes a very good first impression, even to seasoned MMO vets. The problem is it stays the same game throughout. It never gets harder and it never evolves into something different from the first 10 levels.

 

This is easily observed by following general chat. Newbie zones are filled with people saying how much they love the game. By the time you get to Taris/Balmorra you rarely hear those things anymore and you'll often hear profanity laced rants about how terrible those planets are. Those planets aren't terrible, they just play exactly like the two previous planets and by then the shine has worn off and people have clued into the fact that what you've been doing for 20 levels is exactly what you will be doing for the next 30.

 

Or I could jump on the 480+ member guild, most of whom have been there since launch or even beta, and have them tell me that they love the game. Oh wait, I've already done that...

[Fornix]

This is partly BioWare's fault. I agree that the hate can be a bit disproportionate, but BioWare exacerbates it by not doing really simple and basic things, like communicating with the players on major things.

 

For example, the Life Day fiasco. Even though this doesn't really bother me, I do think other players have a legitimate gripe here. How difficult would it have been for a CM or a moderator, or even a dev in a blog post, to simply say something like, "While we truly wanted to have an in-game event for Christmas, we just found it wasn't something we could do in the way that we wanted to do it given the current schedule and workload we have in front of us. We are pleased to offer the Life Day items on the Cartel Market, and we definitely have in-game events planned for the future!"

 

How hard would that have been?

 

Now, would that stop the complaints and the flames? No, of course not. But would it have gone a long way in heading some of it off? Absolutely.

 

Those are the little things that BioWare could do differently that in the long run, would make a HUGE difference. A large part of the frustration here is because the players don't feel like their concerns are being heard. And when they are heard, the solutions BioWare implement often make the problem worse, which just throws gasoline on the fire.

 

The first thing that devs could do is recalibrate their fractured relationship with the community.

 

BioWare already primarily announced there would be no real life events, so that ruled out a Christmas event. Beyond that there's Life Day obviously, however during the era of the old republic Life Day was only celebrated on Kashyyyk. And as Kashyyyk isn't in SWTOR, it's sort of obvious there is no event in place, it would be in contrast with standing lore.

 

So well yeh, a combination of what BioWare already explained, and in addition to the lore conflicts, it's reason enough for people to realize the chances of an event for xmas were very slim to nothing.

[TUXs]

You're missing the entire point, These reviews coming out do not add up. Nothing has fundamentally changed since the game was released, and given that these reviews seem unduly negative in content, only because it's popular to disparage SWTOR. Read the article instead of giving a kneejerk response.

 

Are you suggesting that the switch from P2P to F2P hasn't "fundamentally" changed the game?! I would argue that the cash shop has most certainly "fundamentally" changed the game. Crafting is a distant second to cash shop items. Looting new things is 3rd. What could have been rewarded for in-game accomplishments is instead being sold in a store. Subscribers aren't rewarded for subscribing, they're simply not punished as much. I don't feel like "new content" can be limited to a random loot draw for real money.

[Atrimentus]

You're missing the entire point, These reviews coming out do not add up. Nothing has fundamentally changed since the game was released, and given that these reviews seem unduly negative in content, only because it's popular to disparage SWTOR. Read the article instead of giving a kneejerk response.

 

Exactly. I've read quite a few of these "reviews" and they're very childish in nature. They're nothing more than biased click-bait for the bandwagon of SWTOR, MMORPG and F2P haters. But this one starts off just like the rest but ends with what seems the most perfect conclusion when it comes to this topic.

 

He points out that Bioware could've planned for the long-term by implementing a more favorable F2P system, to first focus on attracting new and old players and go from there. "Instead, BioWare seems to have tried to find a way to get the most money in the immediate present. I don't know how well it will work. I certainly don't expect it to work well in the long term. There's an expression out there: don't burn your bridges. I guess BioWare wants to invent a new one: If you're going to burn your bridges down, you may as well sell tickets to the show."

 

I agree with the conclusion 100% and it's undeniable that the current F2P system has a lot of flaws, too many flaws, that need to be start to get fixed RIGHT NOW and it kinda blows my mind that some people here are accepting it. Like he author says, the window of opportunity is closing fast. I believe this window will be open for about 3 months (if nothing is done about F2P, the hype will die down within 3 months). It's IMPERATIVE that this game continues to attract new players month after month while keeping old players happy as long as possible. This game is F2P for a reason and that reason is because it was dying, no player here should blindly accept the F2P system we have because Bioware can do better. Bioware COULD come up with something amazing. It's not impossible to make the come back of the decade. Bioware needs to shift their focus from short-term to long-term.

Not saying giving everything away is the answer but they could come up with something way more reasonable that increases interest and spending in the game. Now's the time to discuss it together with players to come up with the best system possible.

Edited December 17, 2012 by Atrimentus

[Urael]

Are you suggesting that the switch from P2P to F2P hasn't "fundamentally" changed the game?! I would argue that the cash shop has most certainly "fundamentally" changed the game. Crafting is a distant second to cash shop items. Looting new things is 3rd. What could have been rewarded for in-game accomplishments is instead being sold in a store. Subscribers aren't rewarded for subscribing, they're simply not punished as much. I don't feel like "new content" can be limited to a random loot draw for real money.

 

^This ...

 

But, TUXs (this is a tanget) didn't you know that being a subscriber is now the equivalent to "Pay 2 win"? Yeah I know, that is the current meme du jour about we who subscribe.

Edited December 17, 2012 by Urael

[Fornix]

Are you suggesting that the switch from P2P to F2P hasn't "fundamentally" changed the game?! I would argue that the cash shop has most certainly "fundamentally" changed the game. Crafting is a distant second to cash shop items. Looting new things is 3rd. What could have been rewarded for in-game accomplishments is instead being sold in a store. Subscribers aren't rewarded for subscribing, they're simply not punished as much. I don't feel like "new content" can be limited to a random loot draw for real money.

 

Those two things are suggesting that before the f2p switch there was a lot of purpose to crafting, however the market was already equally dead on most servers.

 

Secondly it suggests prior to the cartel market looting new gear outside of the regular ops and wz upgrades was within the realm of possibilities. Whilst actually very little changed there. Beyond that, the cartel market gear is mainly just looks, not so much stats.

 

Obviously subjective, however I'd say stats > looks.

[Xatasha]

Because, all former EA employee's must write glowing reviews of EA products to be taken seriously. Rubbish.

 

No, but we don't why he left or if he was let go. The fact is he should of passed on writing this. Even if he is trying not to be bias people will wonder because he is a former worker bee for EA.

[TUXs]

Those two things are suggesting that before the f2p switch there was a lot of purpose to crafting, however the market was already equally dead on most servers.

 

Secondly it suggests prior to the cartel market looting new gear outside of the regular ops and wz upgrades was within the realm of possibilities. Whilst actually very little changed there. Beyond that, the cartel market gear is mainly just looks, not so much stats.

 

Obviously subjective, however I'd say stats > looks.

 

Obviously F2P didn't happen over night, I'm simply of the opinion that they've gimped the crafting game from the moment they realized they were going F2P. Crafting in an MMO is in direct competition to any cash shop.