I wish this is how SWTOR Launched.

[Kalfear]

I don't think the old team should be completely thrown under the bus. they did a lot right and laid the core foundation for the game.

 

it's just that their lack of experience in the MMO market killed them.

 

I dont know Zion

 

I can forgive inexperience or sticking to a vision/concept

 

But the old team (not just devs either, the entire team from devs to cust service to mods, all of them) came off so heavy handed and arrogant towards anyone that ever dared to disagree with them that I find it really hard to give them any props at all.

 

Few case in points just for examples:

 

1) Telling closed beta testers to stop making game suggestions and to only report bugs (I have been alpha/beta testing MMORPGs for over 20 years now and SW:TOR is the ONLY game I have ever seen the dev say something like that to their closed beta testers. Im not saying all games acted on testers suggestions. But no other game ever told testers to stop making suggestions to improve game)

 

2) I've told this story before but perfect example. Back before game even entered closed beta there was a guy on forums bashing game every which way for no other reason then to troll the forum membership excited about upcoming game.

 

I simply told this poster to stop trolling (didnt swear, insult, belittle, nothing of sort. Simply told him to stop trolling.

 

I recieved a infraction for this

 

I appealed the infraction as unreasonable and unwarranted and ill never forget response I got from this games original mods

 

(and Im quoting here) "You called him a troll, that makes you a troll, the infraction stands" (end quote)

 

Completely baffled by such a infraction and attitude I took it to the forums original head of cust service (forget name now) and he backed up the mod saying "calling someone out as a troll, even if they are trolling, is in itself a form of trolling".

 

It remains to this day quite possibly the stupidest infraction I had ever received online (and honestly before TOR forums I could count on 2 fingers the number of infractions I received on any MMORPG forums (and I been around since day 1 of the genre).

 

Let me be clear here, there are times I knew I would be infraction-ed on this forum back in those days because sometimes the only way to effectively respond was to say it in a way that did break TOS.

My example how ever was NOT one of those times and the sheer arrogance shown by the mod and team leader speaks volumes towards the general attitude problem that was very presence back then with this brand.

 

3) Telling people to stop bothering him (and insulting them on twitter... the goto guy during game launch) when people complained about the entrance via waves system they came up with that was not aggreed upon or mentioned at time of pre order purchases.

 

Its NEVER ok for a employee to insult the cust base (especially in such a cowardly way as doing it on twitter) because they have taken offence to not getting the service and entry they paid for in the pre order.

 

And then bragging that at 3pm Est you will be home for dinner with the family every day while other people had been sitting at their computers waiting for a email that honestly should not have existed because it was not part of the early entry purchase agreement for many of the pre orders.

 

I've opened allot of business's over my years and one thing has always held true. Opening week is hectic and you will spend more time at the business then you will at home.

 

The optics put forth at launch by a number of very poor developers and managers was completely unprofessional and really very stupid.

 

Absolutely no excuse for it.

None

 

If they wanted to do waves they should have said so up front and clearly what the system was going to be for early access.

 

I know I got in fairly early but completely understood others annoyance because at no time was it even suggested or hinted at that some pre orders could be waiting upwards of 5 of the 7 days (of the early entry period) to be able to log in.

 

Personally I envisioned maybe 24 hours tops for all the pre entries to get in.

But I also thought the devs and team would be working around the clock for a couple days at least

Which is pretty common practice for any newly opened business.

 

If someone had told me that during launch week, Bioware workers associated to SW:TOR would work their normal day shift and then go home in the early afternoon, leaving a skeleton crew that only monitors game stability after hours. Well I would not have believed them and called them nuts.

 

That's just 3 examples that come to mind Zion.

There was many many many many more outrageous behavior and arrogant practices done by the original team through betas and early retail.

 

But I do not believe in giving free passes to people being paid to be professionals when they make the same mistakes that were made before them. I just don't think failure to learn from someone else s mistakes that came before you is an acceptable practice in any business structure.

[tdmaha]

don't know what your problem is but... he was not talking about visual limitations with polygons and pixels and rendering. the engine we are using now is a hacked up beta version of the hero engine so there are a LOT more limitations to what the devs can do with it.

 

this game still feels more like a single player game instead of a real MMORPG

 

Oh geez here we go ignorant Swtor is a single player game...so are the following games single player to you?

 

WoW

LOTRO

Rift

Tera

Age of Conan

Eso

Wildstar

Ffxiv

I can name more if you want...

[LordArtemis]

I don't think the old team should be completely thrown under the bus. they did a lot right and laid the core foundation for the game.

 

it's just that their lack of experience in the MMO market killed them.

 

I toss the majority of them happily under the bus. Seemed to me they were determined to see this game nosedive into the ground rather than listen to the players IMO.

 

The new dev team, however, reversed most of the foolish design decisions and refusals the original team would not budge on, and the game is healthy today as a result IMO.

[SgtJeremy]

Hood toggle. Am I right guys

 

Don't much care for Housing but if it helps bring back some folk I am all for it. I just wish this game had a proper team at launch. I love this game and it could be so much more if it was run right from the beginning.

[arunav]

I got the game I wanted at launch.

 

Shame so many other people didn't I guess.

 

I did too, and I also like what they've added (except GSF, which I thought had poor controls, not enough maps, and was rolled out way too slowly).

 

Where I disagree with the Op is new content that is playable is extremely slow in making its way into updates. Though I think $15 a month is completely reasonable for this kind of a game (cheap even, considering how many hours you can enjoy it), even I have looked back on 2014 and thought it's hard to justify, based on new things to do in PVE, the bulk of what SWTOR is.

 

And before anyone counters with housing is the biggest update ever, it mostly recycles old content for decoration opportunities, aside from giving folks a goal to decorate/work on something long-term, and asks the player to do more of the same in dailies, crafting, GTN sales and the like just to be able to decorate.

 

I'm glad the game seems to be doing better in general, and even EA is talking about SWTOR again.

 

Still, until BW starts to include more FPs, Ops, WZs, and other playable content more regularly in updates, I remain skeptical about the long-term future of the game.

 

The current model relies too much on monitization avenues that aren't playable content, and there are probably decisions made by EA on why this is the case.

 

In addition, it doesn't exactly build confidence that after selling armor assets back to players we're now starting to see the environmental ones as well. I'm sure it'll make more money for EA/BW, but what does it say about the game, if that is what is resorted to in order to make a profit? To me, it's mostly that new things aren't being made at a substantial rate, and the development staff is too small to do so.

Edited August 24, 2014 by arunav

[Desolaytore]

We told them in the damn beta the game wasn't ready for launch, they should have waited atleast another year. So they release it anyway, removed a lot of the good stuff from beta, and didn't fix major bugs. But the game is on the right track now, the sad part is it took this long for it to happen.

[Edzew]

Oh geez here we go ignorant Swtor is a single player game...so are the following games single player to you?

 

WoW

LOTRO

Rift

Tera

Age of Conan

Eso

Wildstar

Ffxiv

I can name more if you want...

 

learn to read i said it feels like a single player game. and the games i have actually played out of the ones you listed WOW, ESO, Wildstar though i shouldn't really count ESO kuz i only played like 5 min of it because it was such a crap game. but out of those games not one felt like a single player game like this one.

[Fantazm]

It is as it is now, not as it was getting on for 3 years ago.

[Edzew]

I

The new dev team, however, reversed most of the foolish design decisions and refusals the original team would not budge on, and the game is healthy today as a result IMO.

 

now lets just hope we finally get a non human looking playable race soon!!!! if we get that THEN ill agree the new team is actually listening and is willing to budge on the old teams absolute refusals!

[LordArtemis]

now lets just hope we finally get a non human looking playable race soon!!!! if we get that THEN ill agree the new team is actually listening and is willing to budge on the old teams absolute refusals!

 

Fair enough. I did find that refusal pretty silly back in the day.

[Kaisernick]

yes i love what they have done but i still want to kill some of my companions again.

[ZionHalcyon]

*sigh*

 

I see the ex-SWG vets have invaded the thread to express their dissatisfaction with SWTOR not being SWG 2...

 

Which was not my point. *facepalm*

[Edzew]

*sigh*

 

I see the ex-SWG vets have invaded the thread to express their dissatisfaction with SWTOR not being SWG 2...

 

Which was not my point. *facepalm*

 

umm i could be wrong here (but i don't think i am) but i think YOU are the first person to bring up SWG so far in this thread.

[ZionHalcyon]

umm i could be wrong here (but i don't think i am) but i think YOU are the first person to bring up SWG so far in this thread.

 

I've been on these forums long enough to recognize some of the names of the SWG complainers in my thread. so, sorry if you are new here but I have been around long enough to know these people and to know what they're about, because they make it quite obvious in other threads where yes they have constantly compared SWTOR to SWG.

[Grammarye]

It's a nice sentiment, but almost all MMOs go through this. They launch a little ropey, some people have fun, some people leave, and then if the dev team have their act together, they expand and add more content, and slowly improve. Some people then come back, others give it a try. I had a rule a while back not to try any MMO until it had been receiving a year's polish at least.

 

Lets' not kid ourselves. Not a single MMO in business today had all the features it does now at launch. There are plenty of WoW vets who will wax lyrical about there being only a certain amount of stuff at launch. Nostalgia and rose-tinted spectacles are terrible, but very human, things.

 

If we're going to wax nostalgic, really, I think TOR launched ok - it was the most stable launch I think I'd ever seen, and that was with about 2 million players bashing on it (just unfortunate they didn't stay). It had a bonanza of stories available, some of which I still haven't completed. Sure, there's an instant gratification crowd that space-barred their way to max level on day 4 or something like that, but you can never stop players from doing that with any and all content.

 

If the devs made mistakes (and lets' not forget how 20/20 hindsight is), it was hugely fragmenting the population on servers, not having enough content ready to go for a month later, and a questionable engine choice that continues to visibly make life awkward today, more so than other equivalent MMO engines in use. It's easy to say that this was Bioware's first MMO, but they supposedly had MMO vets from other games on the team. I just find it sad that that experience wasn't leveraged well at the time.

 

It's a classic software lesson that gets repeated a lot - a few key architectural decisions can make or doom a project. I'm just thankful TOR is still going despite one or two awkward ones.

Edited August 24, 2014 by Grammarye
Correct wording

[Darkulous]

I recieved a infraction for this

 

I appealed the infraction as unreasonable and unwarranted and ill never forget response I got from this games original mods

 

(and Im quoting here) "You called him a troll, that makes you a troll, the infraction stands" (end quote)

 

Lol, ya I hear you. SWTOR forums back then were wonky. It's still the only game forum I've received infractions in.

[Edzew]

I've been on these forums long enough to recognize some of the names of the SWG complainers in my thread. so, sorry if you are new here but I have been around long enough to know these people and to know what they're about, because they make it quite obvious in other threads where yes they have constantly compared SWTOR to SWG.

 

well i have been around sense beta and i also played SWG. i haven't seen anyone talk or even hint at SWG in this thread until you brought it up. so far all i have seen is people talking about THIS game and how some things have changed and how others have not. so the only one to blame about bringing up SWG is you.

[LordArtemis]

*sigh*

 

I see the ex-SWG vets have invaded the thread to express their dissatisfaction with SWTOR not being SWG 2...

 

Which was not my point. *facepalm*

 

Again, Zion, I have to say for someone that wishes folks would stop bringing up SWG or comparing this game to that game, you sure do mention that game quite a bit....

 

...even when it hasn't been mentioned by anyone else. You think we can have one nice discussion without bringing up that nightmare?

 

Really, we should ALL, including you....just let it go for now IMO. Lets talk about the merits of SWTOR for a while, eh?

Edited August 24, 2014 by LordArtemis

[Marak]

It's funny when looking back on some of the stubborn design decisions we had back at launch. Adaptive armor is so taken for granted now but I distinctly remember a dev talking about how he wanted "all jedi and all sith to look a certain way" and thus everyone was shoehorned into some of the most awfully designed tier gear in the history of MMOs. Oh and you're stuck with green/blue or red/orange crystals, get over it. I refused to level my inquisitor for the first year of this game because of how awful they looked at 50.

 

And the class balance philosophy was embarrassing. "Shadows/Operatives should excel in 1v1, so we can't fix their sustained dps or reliance on openers" Like I'm seriously not convinced someone didn't get ganked one too many times by a rogue in early WoW and decided to exact their revenge against future stealth-based classes.

 

And then there was Ilum. My god. That was just a clinic on raw developer ineptitude.

 

And then I don't even know what happened with the servers thing. I don't know if it was misplaced pride that they didn't want to admit they made too many servers or what. They released this game in a huge window where WoW was dragging on the last patch of Cata and no other big games were coming out for a few months. Of course the population surged those first few months and then tapered off. Did they really think they were going to sustain that growth? Even if this game was destined for 3-5 million players this was a comical misstep by management.

 

SWTOR has come a long way for sure, but man they've really had to overcome some just plain old stupid development and management decisions.

[ZionHalcyon]

Again, Zion, I have to say for someone that wishes folks would stop bringing up SWG or comparing this game to that game, you sure do mention that game quite a bit....

 

...even when it hasn't been mentioned by anyone else. You think we can have one nice discussion without bringing up that nightmare?

 

Really, we should ALL, including you....just let it go for now IMO. Lets talk about the merits of SWTOR for a while, eh?

 

you have a very fair point. unless someone else brings it up, I think I'll drop it for now.

[AlixMV]

Which makes me feel pretty hopeful for 3.0. Because 3.0 will come with content based around GSH, Guild Conquest, GSF, and crafting, right from the start.

 

It all depends on what floats your boat.

 

I, on the other hand, have Guildies making noises about quitting the game unless 3.0 knocks their socks off. At least one of them would nominally have been into housing, but what they want out of SWTOR is frequent content updates and story. We haven't had a new Operation in over a year (and, no, Nightmare Mode Oricon doesn't count because it's only there for the top 1%) and the Tacticals are too far the other direction on the easy scale. The class story system was awesome, but now except for a couple lines here in there, it's mostly an afterthought. Everyone travels on the same hamster wheel whether you're a Sith Inquisitor or a Vanguard.

 

If SWTOR had launched as it is now, it would be awesome. But it did take learning from all their mistakes to get this point. And it's still not in a great spot.

[GRINnBARRETT]

I find it difficult to focus on the threads you create due to the obnoxiousness of your forum signature.

[ZionHalcyon]

I find it difficult to focus on the threads you create due to the obnoxiousness of your forum signature.

 

I find your lack of focus, disturbing.

[LordArtemis]

Well, I for one think the game, in its current state, should have been the one to launch. Now a few valid points have been made....like the idea that most MMOs need work after launch, and most lose quite a bit of their initial playerbase.

 

All fair points.

 

But I would point out that the reversals....too many to list....and QoL changes made a HUGE difference in the appeal of the game to a wide audience recently IMO, and I do believe that many of the original choices made by the first team were simply arrogant and/or narrow minded. They made far too many mistakes...again, too many to list (naturally just my opinion) and the game is MUCH better off today with the current team.

 

Just my slant.

Edited September 27, 2014 by LordArtemis

[well]

learn to read i said it feels like a single player game. and the games i have actually played out of the ones you listed WOW, ESO, Wildstar though i shouldn't really count ESO kuz i only played like 5 min of it because it was such a crap game. but out of those games not one felt like a single player game like this one.

 

If it feels like that to you then nothing will change that. Now I been playing single player games since WarCraft One. In that time I never had a bunch of people jump into my game. Maybe I should of left BLTs out or a few brews. You know why a lot of people don't group. It is simple. They don't want the drama. They just want to have fun. GW1 came out with Hero's and people complained about pugs going away. Wrong answer. The reason some people preferred using Heroes is because they never went AFK or bailed out. It is nice just playing the game without a few sith for brains ruining it for you.