Star Wars the old Republic is simply not ready for prime time.

[Dakkongj]

There is only so much testing that can be done with software as complex as a mmo/game. Eventually you just need to release it.

 

That being said there is no way to catch/predict every bug that could possibly arise when going from a beta test server to a live server with thousands more people.

 

As to the priority, not all bugs/glitches are easy to fix, first they need to be able to reproduce the bug, then figure out exactly which line of code (among millions) has the problem and fix it, while at the same time, ensuring that fixing the said line won't affect lines of code else where in the program. This is a never ending, thankless job.

[WarTornPanda]

Yeah? And?

 

Haha... If you fail to understand why standards are different from 2004 and 2011 then you need to go play Space Wars and leave the rest of us alone.

[SnoggyMack]

Haha... If you fail to understand why standards are different from 2004 and 2011 then you need to go play Space Wars and leave the rest of us alone.

 

You're going to have to list these standards, because I've seen a ton of MMORPGs released since 2004 that have all had problems at launch.

 

Here's a fun example:

 

DC Universe Online.

 

It had a very very smooth launch. Not very many customer facing gameplay impacting showstopper bugs. And the one or two it did have were worked out and fixed in days.

 

BUT ... it's User Interface and Chat tool were and still are terrible.

 

And it took them months to hash out better character customization, yet it still falls terribly short of the customization options its "competitors" (the other super hero MMORPGs) all have.

 

So yeah, I think clinging to this whole "standards" concept doesn't work. Each MMORPG I've seen released in the past two years have all had problems in common with this one.

 

I guess tomorrow you all can start in on the "This is 2012 not 2011, so let's not compare TOR to DCUO" if you'd like.

[zandadoum]

You guys must have never. EVER. Play an MMO title at launch.

 

WoW? WoW was a worthless, buggy, laggy, crashy, unfinished piece of crap with less functionality than SWTOR has at this stage in it's development.

 

It's been 17 freaking or so days since early access.

 

I could see all of these threads popping up eight months or a year from now. But 17 days?! Come on.

 

have we played the same wow?

i have been on wow since US closed beta, got an US account on release and switched to EU when it was released here.

 

some of the same bugs here (seems like bioware made swtor ripping off an old wow beta) like stuck between every damn rock, mining node problems and some stuff that reminds me totally of wow back in 2004/2005... stuff that should never have happened here, a game released 2011. seems like bioware devs lived under a rock and learned NOTHING from all the other MMOs flaws.

 

that being said, wow on launch had much less bugs than this game. ui worked better, auction house was much better, guild panel actually worked, etc. yes, servers had queues and there was the occasional lag and also long maintentance, but less overall glitches and bugs.

 

an MMO should put more focus on social aspects like chat system, guild and auction house. and swtor fails at all 3 of those.

[exxor]

I think we have to distinguish between complaints over relatively minor issues and ones that are game breaking. Things like the UI design and frame rate are understandable in a newly released game and Bioware should be given time to fix these issues. The server queue issue however is a serious problem. Bioware knew how popular this game would be at launch and designed a horrible system for managing the influx of players. I don't know if this was an intended design (if so...one of the dumbest I have ever witnessed in an MMO), or complete incompetence (again if so...one of the most striking examples I have seen). This is a great game that is fun and well written...if you can get in and play the damn thing. Some people like myself only have a select few hours of playtime and when you try and log in with only an hour to play and are met with a 35-45 minute queue...this is a real problem and makes it unworthy of spending the $15/month subscription. The problem is they allow more players to register and build characters on a server than the server can handle at any one time. this is a poor design IMHO and it puzzles me why a smart company like bioware would make such an egregious mistake. The gameplay things should be given time to get worked out...but the game entrance issues (server queues) should be fixed immediately. Their launching a game of this scope in this manner causes me to question their abilities as game developers. I dont know how they thought this would be acceptable to the players...

[Solar]

You are the type of person that let's companies get away with this **** so these buggy games keep getting released and rushed out the door to have us unwitting consumers to spend our hard earned money on.

 

So, you reference historically knowing that this occurs while claiming to be "unwitting" yet, you continually participate in the vicious cycle and it’s ... my fault? Yes, 'cause I /dragged you into it against your will over these many years; right?

 

Go ahead; trust me blindly again.

[zandadoum]

I think we have to distinguish between complaints over relatively minor issues and ones that are game breaking. Things like the UI design and frame rate are understandable in a newly released game and Bioware should be given time to fix these issues. The server queue issue however is a serious problem. Bioware knew how popular this game would be at launch and designed a horrible system for managing the influx of players. I don't know if this was an intended design (if so...one of the dumbest I have ever witnessed in an MMO), or complete incompetence (again if so...one of the most striking examples I have seen). This is a great game that is fun and well written...if you can get in and play the damn thing. Some people like myself only have a select few hours of playtime and when you try and log in with only an hour to play and are met with a 35-45 minute queue...this is a real problem and makes it unworthy of spending the $15/month subscription. The problem is they allow more players to register and build characters on a server than the server can handle at any one time. this is a poor design IMHO and it puzzles me why a smart company like bioware would make such an egregious mistake. The gameplay things should be given time to get worked out...but the game entrance issues (server queues) should be fixed immediately. Their launching a game of this scope in this manner causes me to question their abilities as game developers. I dont know how they thought this would be acceptable to the players...

 

1st: please use parragraphs and/or linefeed for better reading

2nd: disagree. server queues are never developers fault, when there are still empty/light servers. it's not their fault player are like sheep all running into the same server.

server queue makes people reconsider and start on a free server, which is good.

[Wedgie]

I think they're just keeping the server cap low so that any new players go to newer servers, and once things level out they'll raise the caps...but i'm not on the dev team so my guess could be wrong.

 

And I think it's a case of getting credit for the handful of bad things you do as opposed to the 1,000 you did right. People could for the most part care less about the right things because they don't cause problems. The game does have some issues, the BH bug a huge one. But even if they had another year to polish the game, there would still be issues that arise at launch. A million people will find more bugs than a few thousand. As stated before it's just released, let them fix what can be fixed quickly while they're working on the big issues which take more time.

 

as for it not being 2004, it's not....the game hasn't had 7 years of development and updates. I don't think wow had this kind of scope at launch, but I'm not and never was a "hardcore elitist" for that game. TOR is pretty big when you take into account all 8 classes, playing one to 50 in 17-19 days and saying the games sucks or is broken isn't a fair shake to the game or the devs.

 

that's my 2 cents worth, and in this economy it's probably not worth that lol.

[EzoEo]

Haha... If you fail to understand why standards are different from 2004 and 2011 then you need to go play Space Wars and leave the rest of us alone.

 

You obviously haven't factored in that little know thing called money and a budget.

 

MMO's will cost more to produce now that 6 years due to many things.

 

If you don't like the game or don't want to play it then way for your 30 days to expire and leave the rest of us alone.

 

You would still have gotten more for money than any single player game on the market.

[Taurusaud]

If the developers need more time they should give customers more free time. Give us 3 free months or something instead of just one. But charging $15/month to play something with game-breaking bugs isn't a smart way to keep lots of customers. Be innovative damnit!

[Warjhinn]

have we played the same wow?

i have been on wow since US closed beta, got an US account on release and switched to EU when it was released here.

 

some of the same bugs here (seems like bioware made swtor ripping off an old wow beta) like stuck between every damn rock, mining node problems and some stuff that reminds me totally of wow back in 2004/2005... stuff that should never have happened here, a game released 2011. seems like bioware devs lived under a rock and learned NOTHING from all the other MMOs flaws.

 

that being said, wow on launch had much less bugs than this game. ui worked better, auction house was much better, guild panel actually worked, etc. yes, servers had queues and there was the occasional lag and also long maintentance, but less overall glitches and bugs.

 

an MMO should put more focus on social aspects like chat system, guild and auction house. and swtor fails at all 3 of those.

 

Do you really think that Blizzard Developers would freely consult with Bioware and help them work out bugs they already experienced so that Bioware could release a better product than Blizzard did??!!! Really!!

 

and no.. Blizzard did not have a smooth launch on WOW. It was much worse than this. So much so that many people dropped it for a few months and went back to other games and tried WOW again later. i was one that went back to UO.

[exxor]

1st: please use parragraphs and/or linefeed for better reading

2nd: disagree. server queues are never developers fault, when there are still empty/light servers. it's not their fault player are like sheep all running into the same server.

server queue makes people reconsider and start on a free server, which is good.

 

When your part of a guild and the developer assigns your entire guild to a server...it is a little difficult to just "pick a free one".

 

Bioware designed the guild system for this game and failed to take this into account when filling up the servers. If we as a guild had picked this server than I would agree...but we did not...bioware did.

 

And i just dont understand how you can say server queues are not the developers fault. Once a server is full, close it to any new players period! you can always open it up again later if population drops. To continue to allow new players to crowd already full servers and make the queues worse is their fault. Bioware is in control of their servers and the blame falls squarely on them for this mess.

[shootist]

Haha... If you fail to understand why standards are different from 2004 and 2011 then you need to go play Space Wars and leave the rest of us alone.

 

I wonder just how much profit WoW has made and how much has been sunk back into its continual development, and how much that overall development cost has been.

 

I also wonder if it would be possible to develop a pre-launch game that could rival that scale of development without having yet received a single cent in sales.

Edited December 31, 2011 by shootist

[SnoggyMack]

When your part of a guild and the developer assigns your entire guild to a server...it is a little difficult to just "pick a free one".

 

A little difficult, but not unmanageable. What you do is get together with your guildmates, talk it out and then organize.

 

See, you're already a guild. So organizing these people should be simple. It's what guilds are all about. A group of people coming together. If you can form a guild that then subsequently is capable of forming any kind of organized grouping of its members for any kind of content/quest/raid/whatever, then you can bring your guild together for a server jump this early in the game's lifecycle.

 

So in this case, you get everyone together, and decide to move to a different server. And then re-form as a new guild. Get one dude up to the right level with 5k credits, and reform like voltron.

 

Annoying? Yeah. A bit of a hassle? Definitely. But still, a very workable solution to the problem.

Edited December 31, 2011 by SnoggyMack

[MrTijger]

I wonder just how much profit WoW has made and how much has been sunk back into its continual development, and how much that overall development cost has been.

 

I also wonder if it would be possible to develop a pre-launch game that could rival that scale of development without having yet received a single cent in sales.

 

Thats information you can find in their financial reports, it might just be a lot of work and I bet an analyst has done that already.

[shootist]

Thats information you can find in their financial reports, it might just be a lot of work and I bet an analyst has done that already.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you could bet your arse no developer could secure enough investor finance to develop a game that could rival WoW for depth, scale and polish right from the start.

[stupidhero]

To summarize this thread:

 

Bobby Kotick was right ?

[MrTijger]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say you could bet your arse no developer could secure enough investor finance to develop a game that could rival WoW for depth, scale and polish right from the start.

 

Very likely yes, SWTOR is the pinnacle of what a company will invest, I expect.

[MrTijger]

To summarize this thread:

 

Bobby Kotick was right ?

 

About what? Al he said was that Lucas would be taking too much of the profit AFAIK.

[Zhit]

TOR is an amazing game for a game released in 2005. For a game in 2012--not so shiny.

[Lightmgl]

Very likely yes, SWTOR is the pinnacle of what a company will invest, I expect.

 

SWTOR is also heavily restricted by the Lucasarts licensing though. Lucasarts is known for having an iron grip on it's IPs with large 30% royalty fees and final say over anything being created. I know alot of folks in the industry who won't go anywhere near the Star Wars IPs just because of the issues of dealing with this.

 

With such a complicated mess between Bioware, EA, and Lucasarts who knows how effectively the budget for the game was actually used. It sounds like alot of the money was pissed away on fluff, the incredibly long development cycle supports this.

Edited December 31, 2011 by Lightmgl

[Vydor_HC]

Yes, the game is buggy as hell. Bioware has time to correct that, and the issues I've seen are not design problems that cannot be corrected by code enhancements.

[Solar]

TOR is an amazing game for a game released in 2005. For a game in 2012--not so shiny.

Which one is?

 

All I ever hear around these parts is the vague and overly general 'All MMO's fail.'

 

Which doesn't lend any credence to these types of threads and their points at all.

[KrelosDarksky]

An MMO needs a community to survive and people like you are openly telling people to ****. You are killing the game that you "love" so much.

 

Sorry for having some standards, bud. I happen to value my money more than you I guess.

 

That is incorrect.

 

An MMO needs a QUALITY community to survive.

 

Trolls and flamers like the OP are a plague on new games.

 

They come in for the free trial or the first few weeks and do everything within their means to turn people off of the game unless it completely fits their square peg ideals.

 

If you want to talk about what is hurting this game, more than anything, you need to point the finger at all the bad-mouthing of a game that is only a few weeks old and hasn't even had the opportunity to address a lot of the issues.

 

Beta makes things playable and corrects major issues. (And no .. not having a LFG tool like WoW's is not a major issue.)

 

Post-release patches correct mistakes, bugs and exploits and add new content.

 

The people that are on these forums now talking about how terrible the game is (in most cases because it isn't 'Space WoW') and how they know so much better about how a game SHOULD work are doing a lot more harm than good in 99% of the cases.

 

If those players are SOOOO displeased then they should cancel .. not try to ruin the game for other people by coming to the forums and campaign against it.

[Norsmeang]

This thread went from a good post to troll trash halfway through the first page...

 

what a lovely community we have