Moment of truth: Did Bioware do a succesful job at making a Star Wars MMORPG?

[Waypoc]

They did a great job of launching SWTOR.

 

They did a poor to fair job of launching an triple A MMO.

[Umbral]

The look and story are all Star Wars. Unfortunately that's just not going to be enough, and if they don't start giving the players what they're asking for, it just won't matter how Star Wars it is. There's not enough IP heads and SW RPers out there that also play mmos to carry this game. It's going to have to be mmo gamers, casual and hardcore, that carry it.

 

Game playability and desired features are king, and until game producers realize that it's just going to be more disappointments when new mmos are released.

Edited January 1, 2012 by Umbral

[Pyrolight]

Technically the moment of truths are at the 1 month 3 month and 6 month time frames. A MMORPG is just way to subjective.

[Memilish]

While the setting is aesthetically well realized and the mechanics are well functional for what they are, there's a large gap of gameplay and story that keeps nagging at me. In my opinion the game mechanics used don't mesh up well with a Star Wars setting when you're allowing Jedi and Sith to be played, making it feel like while the mechanics work, they were originally built for other characters or even another game entirely. Similarly, in my mind the ending of the Inquisitor storyline lines up very, very poorly with them going to Ilum having fair fights with people whose only defining characteristic is "tries to shoot you in the face with blasters".

 

Endgame feels like the same old same old, but that's okay. I'm willing to play a game entirely for the journey - which is well enough done overall - so I couldn't care less.

Edited January 1, 2012 by Memilish

[Northarrow]

Yes.

 

Hands down the best MMO on the market right now

[LSCIX]

YES. Considering it's only a few days old, it's amazing.

 

They took some of the bad things of previous MMOs (crappy vendors, buying stuff to regen) and fixed them, kept a lot of the good, and then added real acting.

 

I quit another MMO a year ago (I won't say which) because they had ruined the game by making their MMO an arcade game, so it's nice to see things back to hard again.

 

There is SO much cool stuff in this game, I am a totally satisified customer.

 

A few UI changes would be nice, like adding more buttons on the bottom action bars... but other than that: 9.0.

 

Thank you bioware!

[AltusImperator]

Practically all of my opinions are honest. I say practically all because I am not invulnerable to human passions. Yet, I'll give the obligatory "moment of truth" disclaimer.

 

Moment of truth:

 

The game is not open enough and this gives it an RPG feeling. Others have stated this before. Moving from one loading screen to another to reach my destination is disruptive. The game lacks a certain ambiance as the environments seem at times rough and impersonal. This is not always true as, for instance, cantinas typically do fit the bill but I wish that this was true in other parts of the world. Even small things such as character emotes are I feel underdeveloped. The list of criticisms can go on and on.

 

There are positive aspects of the game. Overall--despite my criticism--I like its style and the way it looks. The story is good. Heroic and bonus quests are great additions. I like the diversity of the worlds. They incorporated the star wars universe in such a way that fans can appreciate.

 

As an MMO as a whole it is challenging to appreciate, not until they do a lot of fixing.

Edited January 1, 2012 by AltusImperator

[Senden]

They made a GREAT Star Wars game but a mediocre MMO. The world just doesn't feel living, the entire experience is all about you feeling heroic and very little build up for any of the iconic characters in the universe if they even exist. You just have to look at the fact there isn't server forums to see just how much attention and care Bioware put into the MMO feel of the game.

[Klarick]

Easily the best MMO on the market.

[Goshee]

I absolutely love this game.

 

Sure there are a few tweaks needed here and there, as in any new MMO but so far this has been my favourite MMO experience to date.

 

I hope they sort out the UI, mainly dragging things around! Like when I'm inspecting a player to preview some armour the preview tab blocks me from selecting anything else so I can only preview one at a time unless I link all the items in chat.

 

Also hope the casting and animation activation time gets a bit tighter.

[Cameirus]

I know there is a /sit command. It doesn't mean you can sit down in chairs - which was my point.

 

ironically the animations are there....you can sit in the chairs on your ship infront of the map.....

 

You just cant use a chair anywhere else.....

[Sugerbabe]

Best mmo Ive played (played them all)

[Waypoc]

Best mmo Ive played (played them all)

 

It's a great game but honestly not near the best MMO.

[Zocat]

In my opinion, no.

 

There was so much promise, so much hype. It didn't deliver.

 

Bugs that were in early Beta are still unresolved.

 

Lack of basic features; day/night cycles, chat bubbles, sitting animations, sleeping animations, seriously?

 

A story and levelling experience more linear then WoW. More linear then WoW - at least there, you could choose between 3 zones to level in from say, 10-20. Here you have to play the same story every time.

 

Under-levelling problems and forced grouping; I don't want to be forced to do the heroic quests in order to progress. Being level 13 in level 14-15-16 Justicar Territory is awful.

 

Endgame I hear is lacking.

 

Aside from the dialogue, this game feels like WoW with a space element to it. Abilities are almost the same(On my Sith Warrior I matched up based on my experiences playing a Warrior in WoW, the abilities that I have.)

 

Not to mention how it was rushed out early when it needed at minimum 3-5 months more development time. In a perfect world, they would JUST be putting more beta invites in now.

 

I can sit in the cockpit seat of my spaceship - that works. Havent tried anywhere else - so I believe you. But the functionality is there - they probably just need someone to flag more seats as sittable. But it's not really a top priority thing and takes a lot of time.

Same thing applies to day/night cycles (btw - ever noticed that the nights are not really nights in games with a night cycle?^^). But yeah, it's definitely nice to have, same as a weather system. But it's just not top priority.

 

Linearity: And after your initial 1-20 zones in WoW you all meet in the same zones and do the same quests over and over again At least you have different class stories in SWTOR as well as different quests depending on what you chose (though those are very very few - and the different paths are very similiar). I'd say with using rested XP you can even skip the majority of some planets (if utilizing the right bonus series) and have 2 paths available.

 

Which leads me to your next point:

You say underlevelling - I say overlevelling. I try to avoid bonus XP (no logging out in rest zones, no pvp, no starship stuff, not running the same flashpoints multiple times) and I'm 3-4 levels above the planets. Everything's green. Imho they should make it require more XP to level up, so I'm not too high in the zones. So basically the exact opposite of your situation. And neither of our ways to play is incorrect. They're just different.

 

About "they need 3-5 more months". Welcome to the world of MMO launches. Name a single MMO which was ready for release when it was released. There is none. Not even a single WoW expansion/update was ready for release, when it was released (cannot talk about Cataclysm, so maybe they changed it there).

[Captain_Failure]

It's a great game but honestly not near the best MMO.

 

Subjective opinion.

[SnoggyMack]

A lot of you folks complaining that this feels like a single player game really just need to group more.

 

Of course, if you're having problems finding a group, that might not be the game's fault. That might be due to some user error. Which you know could be underscored by how friendly you all seem to be on the forums here.

 

[Rayvonuk]

Good game ? most certainly, good MMO ? im not so sure. Edited January 1, 2012 by Rayvonuk

[SwigMcJigger]

YES. Considering it's only a few days old, it's amazing.

 

They took some of the bad things of previous MMOs (crappy vendors, buying stuff to regen) and fixed them, kept a lot of the good, and then added real acting.

 

The vendors galore that sell mostly useless junk? Yes, that's a real bonus.

 

 

I quit another MMO a year ago (I won't say which) because they had ruined the game by making their MMO an arcade game, so it's nice to see things back to hard again.

 

It's so hard. Luckily I have a tank companion that I can just heal through 4 man content solo. Seriously, this is probably the easiest MMO I have ever played.

 

 

There is SO much cool stuff in this game, I am a totally satisified customer.

 

I made a post eariler asking where the cool stuff is. In WoW there are 100 places that I could think of that gave me a feeling of wonderment when I came across them. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what old ruins or monuments were for. In SWTOR I haven't found one thing that made me go "cooooool"

 

 

A few UI changes would be nice, like adding more buttons on the bottom action bars... but other than that: 9.0.

 

Let's fix all the game breaking bugs first. Bugs that aren't even addressed in the 1.02 coming out.

[Bregah]

I think they made a good, to really good, single player game (well, multiple ones, due to the class quests). There are standard MMO filler quests in the middle, that are ok, but nothing groundbreaking.

 

So on the positive side - really good single player story (fully voiced!) that I pay attention to and am enjoying.

 

The few Flashpoints I've run have been ok, nothing special, nothing terrible. The first one (Black Talong), I enjoyed the most, mostly because of all the conversations. I realize this would get old the 19th time I ran Black Talon, but the ones after BT were pretty much conversation-free. I kind of lost interest in them (and I'm a tank, so people want me to come along).

 

So I'm kind of neutral on 4 mans.

 

PvP - absolutely terrible. My first class was a sorceror (I've always healed, and I'm 18 in TOR), but I started another character to slice - made it a warrior, and chose Juggernaut. I had so much more fun in PvE (with both the gameplay and the story), that my Jugger is now 33. In MMOs, I like PvP. I don't claim to be super good, but I'm not horrible.

 

So I tried PvP here.

 

As a Sorceror, it's, at best, OK. The major issues are the awful combat response time that exists ONLY in warfronts - UI not updating, spells not going off, players warping strangely across vast distances, etc.

 

As a Juggernaut, it's simply terrible. I can do my jump, and I don't land for 3 seconds (in PvE it's instant, or nearly enough so that it seems like it). Auto-facing needs to be gotten rid of (at least in PvP), so many CCs, slows and knockbacks make getting to melee nearly impossible (and my jump is NOT a reliable way to get to someone).

 

Oh, did I mention that 9 out of 10 warzones are Huttball? 2 faction MMOs don't work at launch for PvP balance, and server-only queues (thankfully Bioware was smart enough to include a neutral warzone) lead to this faction imbalance being obvious to everyone on every server. Warhammer had this problem, Rift had this problem, and now TOR has this problem (and WoW had it for a long time as well). Talk about not learning from the mistakes of others.

 

I do NOT want to play Alliance

I do NOT want to play Order

I do NOT want to play Republic

 

And mostly for visual reasons (both WoW and WAR - the "good" side, to me, is easily the least interesting visually - especially humans in WoW and elves in WAR - and NO I don't mean Blood Elves for Horde - give me Tauren, Orcs and Undead all day over Blood Elves).

 

In Star Wars - the Republic seems..boring. The only interesting Light Saber wielder that's not Empire in the movies is Luke before he "learns control".

 

So as for PvP - definitely a failure here.

 

Overall, in terms of MMO-ness, I'd say subpar. In terms of a game that cost me $60 - pretty good so far. But subscription worthy? Leaning towards no (after 2 or 3 months of playing when I've exhausted any quests I want to do).

[Bloodtau]

They made a good star wars game, but a good MMO? hell, freaking, no.

[TheHirogen]

to asnwer the OP "did they"? answer is "YES!"

[Sablemyste]

They did an awesome job. I always see people, and not just those in my guild.

If you don't like what the vendors are selling, look for crafters.

 

The launch was smoother than most games. Sure, there is some tweaking to do but heck, RIFT still hasn't fixed bugs from their launch and they just keep popping out more updates.

 

Sure, this game isn't for everyone...no game ever is. Personally, I'm burnt out with WoW...same stuff over and over. I'm like the storylines, I like the classes, I like the game.

 

Sure, it might be easier for me as most of my guild came over as well so we generally have plenty of people if I need a flashpoint or heroic.

Edited January 1, 2012 by Sablemyste

[Feelinestars]

This game will go the way of Rift, Aion, Warhammer, EVE, all those other hyped WoW-killers.. but fail due to lack of execution. Bioware had years and hundreds of millions of dollars.. and we're playing a half-rate game which should still be in alpha. Oh, right, it's not an MMO.. and that isn't open for debate. WoW will continue to reign, and Diablo 3 will most likely put this game into obscurity for good before Mists even comes out.

[Kalfear]

In my Opinion Bioware gets a

 

70% mark on makeing a MMORPG (lost big percentage for giving away max level and giving way to much XP per encounter/quest)

 

And a

 

20% mark on running a MMORPG

 

TOR by itself is a fun game and anyone that denies that is lieing. The game is fun. Even with the meaningless levels and xp give aways, the game is fun.

 

The problem is pretty much every NON Design choice by Bioware has been a complete and utter travesty

 

Pre Launch? Travesty and a complete "how not to do it" guide for future deveopers

RP server moderation? Non existant and again a complete and utter travesty

Cust service? I havent actually dealt with it myself but from word going around Web its incompetence is on a level of Verrant in EQ days.

 

List goes on and on

 

As a developer, they got it mostly right

As a Administrator, you couldnt get much more wrong.

 

Was its EA dropping the ball? Possible, maybe EA handled the after market stuff and Bioware handled the game itself. Dont know. But its their name on the package so its their name that takes the hit for the endless screw ups and bad decisions/choices.

[Rayvonuk]

This game will go the way of Rift, Aion, Warhammer, EVE, all those other hyped WoW-killers.. but fail due to lack of execution. Bioware had years and hundreds of millions of dollars.. and we're playing a half-rate game which should still be in alpha. Oh, right, it's not an MMO.. and that isn't open for debate. WoW will continue to reign, and Diablo 3 will most likely put this game into obscurity for good before Mists even comes out.

 

Since when was Eve an overhyped wow killer or a failure ?