Do you think story is really what MMO players want?

[GalacticKegger]

Impatience is not the same as finding something boring.

My wife and I find participating in the storylines for every class highly entertaining. We also found "other" MMOs cramming us into end game and forcing us to farm bosses like loot pinatas as inducements to buy into future expansions emminently boring and lacking in creativity.

[vekkth]

They don't keep 100% of the sale price of the game. They lose 30% to the retailer and 35% to Lucas. Don't kid yourself. TOR has to sell a ****-ton of units AND subscriptions to go into the black on this game.

 

100k people sticking around for 4 years, as you say, doesn't pay the bills because the thing you're not factoring in is that it costs millions of dollars a year just to keep an MMO running. Or did you think developers don't pay for bandwidth, servers, salaries and benefits of CSR's and developers working on future content, taxes, fees to credit card companies, etc. Those 100K subscribers barely finance paying the bills, and you can't offset the cost of developing a game until you've paid your overhead.

 

dude you know so little about making money, really just think this - EvE online is a profitable highly developing project with no sub model and not much over 150k? or how much do they have now.

 

if fact, server + personnel costs are nothing compared to development/marketing costs or revenue when its millions of sold copies/subs. Also i am rather positive that if Lucas gets a really big percent from sales like you are pretending he does (which is *** pulled numbers, i think) he actually is an investor - noone gets 30 percent by only owning copyrights, i mean, noone will ever be that stupid to work for someone "for free" like that. Business doesnt work like that.

 

I do believe that with millions copies sold already, EA are very close to be near payback level, just because its budget cant be as big as a typical Hollywood weekender blockbuster, and its already 50-60 millions of dollars of sales, probably around 25-30 of pure revenue. that is a lot of money.

 

To OP - i wouldnt play an mmo without a proper story, only pure PvP oriented ones. i watch almost all cutscenes and wholeheartly enjoy this. WoW lost all appealing to me when i realized that the story i valued so much in the series ended for me with Arthas death.

[RamataKahn]

Right, as opposed to WoW where people sit around all day waiting for groups and queues, and where it is amazingly easy to cap lvl solo.

 

That's exactly how it is in this game as well.

[Samy_Merchi]

Well. They do say ignorance is bliss.

 

Different tastes doesn't equal ignorance.

 

Labeling different tastes as ignorance *might* equal ignorance.

[SnoopyDoo]

Same thing I've done on every other MMO - rolled a new alt and gone through the story again. Only difference is, here it's going to be a LOT more fun!!!!

 

Just to point out levelling a new character will be almost the same experience unless you go to the opposite faction.

[a_Stalker]

I have no problem lvling multiple characters.

 

I love the story aspect of the game.

 

I hat to name that 'Other title', but I could only lvl 1 lvl 80 character. Lvling in that was a

grind, in TOR the grind isnt there for me.

 

This is a joke. SWTOR forces you to level in an almost a linear way and I cannot bear to see Coruscant or Nar Shaddaa or Taris ever ever again.

 

What the OP was saying is that the story line alone does not make an MMO and he thinks they have missed out a lot of vital features in order to concentrate on the voice overs.

[Gunryu]

Different tastes doesn't equal ignorance.

 

Labeling different tastes as ignorance *might* equal ignorance.

 

Does paying 15 dollars a month for a single player game because that's what you want?

[Samy_Merchi]

Just to point out levelling a new character will be almost the same experience unless you go to the opposite faction.

 

Yeah it's no problem, I've enjoyed rerunning RPGs since Ultima IV.

[Yowfatto]

What do you think you will be doing when you reach max level in TOR?

 

How did you survive in WoW when they had nothing when it launched, they had what one raid? SWTOR has more content at launch and end game than any other MMO in history at launch. End game, a dozen flashpoints, 2 WZ, still class quests, Ilum a whole planet for PvP. You call that lacking in end game compared to other MMOs that launched with pretty much nothing?

 

Sounds like your impossible to please more than anything, besides that WoW really has gone down hill after their first expansion. They lost over 2m subs this year, probably more for next year. SWTOR certainly doesn't want to do anything that WoW is doing right now, if anything they are looking at it's mistakes and not going to make the same ones.

 

End game in WoW now? Folks are blowing through CATA in no time due to it being so ridiculously easy, and people are abandoning the game in droves after CATA. I expect the same for the pandas. WoW had a good thing, not anymore. You make a coma grind to cap, which is as boring as being in a coma, then blazingly get through all the end game content. Not a good recipe in the least. SWTOR has a great recipe. Very fun lvling and then quite a lot of end game content.

[Samy_Merchi]

Does paying 15 dollars a month for a single player game because that's what you want?

 

It's chump change compared to a movie ticket for example. $15 for two hours sitting in a dark room, or $15 for 30 days of server access? I think it's a great deal.

[Gunryu]

Yeah it's no problem, I've enjoyed rerunning RPGs since Ultima IV.

 

 

And there we have it folks, this is NOT an RPG it is SUPPOSED to be an MMO, RPG = Single Player game!

[SnoopyDoo]

Different tastes doesn't equal ignorance.

 

Labeling different tastes as ignorance *might* equal ignorance.

 

It is a different taste. What I believe is ignorant is believing this game will continue to be fun just rolling new characters over and over again with the same content. You are either a VERY big lore lover or simply value RPG above everything else in any game you play. Different taste yes, the ignorance is faith in this game's story pillar as though it is the saviour of MMOs.

[Halphas]

Spending 95% of dev time on content that most players will finish in 1/2 months was a pretty big mistake. Sure the class stories are mildly interesting, but you have to sit through 10 times as many crappy sidequests to do them. Once you finish the story, you're stuck with farming 3 warzones or doing some epicly bugged raids. GW2/D3 cant come fast enough.

[Yowfatto]

This is a joke. SWTOR forces you to level in an almost a linear way and I cannot bear to see Coruscant or Nar Shaddaa or Taris ever ever again.

 

What the OP was saying is that the story line alone does not make an MMO and he thinks they have missed out a lot of vital features in order to concentrate on the voice overs.

 

No it doesn't make everything in an MMO, but for an MMO that has more content and end game content at launch than any other MMO in history at launch, what the heck do you want?

[Samy_Merchi]

And there we have it folks, this is NOT an RPG it is SUPPOSED to be an MMO, RPG = Single Player game!

 

Call it what you want, it's fun as heck!!!

[Julsnet]

The 2 original posts was closed for no reason. Just because the mods are trying to censor all posts that bring the game a negative image. Last one was closed for "not talking about anything constructive, instead talking about cancelations." Really? That doesn't even make sense, I had one sentence talking about me canceling my sub. It's funny because there I just saw a post with over 2,000 views and a bunch if replies, and everyone was trolling and calling each other names. Yet it hasn't been closed, because it's defending SWTOR against WoW remarks, yet mine gets closed after 10 minutes because people started arguing about something else. Funny. Well I'm not getting this thread closed again, so I took that SMALL part in this HUGE post out. Let's see their next excuse....

 

 

 

I waited for this game for a long time. I really tried to like it, I kept telling myself it will get better it will get better. It won't, and even if some things change for the better, I am playing RIGHT NOW aren't I? and I want the experience to be enjoyable RIGHT NOW.

 

Note- when i compare anything to other mmo's, dont say "o go back to wow if it was so good." Im just comparing it so you can better understand what I'm talking about, so stop QQing all over the post. Remember, to each his own. This is MY opinion, and I'm entitled to it, though most of this stuff is one-sided and cant be argued against.

 

Overall, this game is NOT an mmo. It's a single player RPG with minimum mmo content in it to call it an mmorpg, solely to make money.

 

 

-The light and dark side choices are useless. I always wanted to do different choices both dark and light, but in order for it to actual be useful (barely as it is), I have to pick either ALL dark or ALL light choices. This game was supposed to be built on how I control my destiny, yet it rewards the mainstream path and leaves variability to rot

 

-No chat bubbles. Enough said. And stop commenting that it's an easy fix, because you look like an idiot. If it was an easy fix, it would have been fixed in beta, let alone now after weeks after launch.

 

-PvP is broken, and CANNOT be repaired, at least for a year or two. Mixing all lvls together in warzones?!?!?! ***? Yah balance our health and damage of our moves, but do you honestly think as a lvl 19 I have enough spells to take on a lvl 38 we'll say who has cc's, stuns, and many pew pew moves? I pretty sure whoever thought of this system must have been on something.

 

-The actual warzones BLOW. Ok huttball is cool at first, but gets old TOO fast. alderran is sooo bad. SO bad. Its small first off, and all u do is aoe and fight around the flag points in one giant mass of people running around in one area.

 

-The planets r mostly small. its like if earth was a planet, the entire zone would be the size of upstate new york. you call that a planet? there are a FEW fairly sized planets, but u fly by them quickly and never see them again.

 

-The planets themselves, however small they are, are SO poorly designed and have no open space. The mountains and different environmental terrains make it so I follow a linear path to wherever my quest is. No openness at all. In wow, the zones were so open and I felt free to go wherever, I had breathing space. In this game, it doesn't feel real at all, feels like they wanted to use less memory space so they restriced the environment of the planets, as if they weren't small in the first place.

 

-The auction house or whatever its called is just a mess. You can't even search for anything. You have to go through of a huge list of detailed options to identify EXACTLY what you are looking for before you can even type anything. If I want to see the prices for something I'm going to sell, I'm not going to spend 5 minutes going through a list to find that out

 

-operations and flashpoints are so glitched. So many bugs that I feel like its still beta

 

-the amount of bugs in general, like i said above, they didnt spend anytime at all to fix them

 

-No option for macros. This can be easily fixed as well, but who knows how long until it will be, if chat bubbles haven't even been implemented

 

-Worst customer service I have EVER seen in my life. Their emails take over 5 days to respond, and the phone lines are even worse. When you call them, a MAJORITY of the time you will here, "Lines are too busy, call again later" and then it hangs up on you. ONE time I got lucky and it put me in que. Guess how long I waited? Over two hours. TWO GODDAM HOURS. No joke, after 121 minutes of leaving the phone on the speaker, I was like **** this and hung up. Didn't even get my problem solved. The reasoning for this will be explained in the next problem below, so read on

 

-Ques for both getting to the game and the actual site. Wait, the actual site? Since when does a website have a que? And no, don't even think about saying, "its because a lot of people play the game," No. The servers just blow. Only ~1.5 million players currently play the game, so if your site/servers can't handle THAT, then that's just sad. Vanilla wow had ques too, but it was only about 5-10 mins MAX. And that was only for the actual game. It's so sad to even say that a website has que problem, and the fact that it's not because there are a lot of people going on it makes things worse.

 

-No social aspect to game. The chat is soo annoying. More in aion but also a bit in wow, you could customize your chat so you have for example, on tab for general chat, one for only regular chatting with people around you, one tab for party chat, one for guild, or you could even mix a tab to have like guild and party chat. In this, all you have is one social tab and one combat tab. The social chat is filled with the General [barrens] chat of people randomly talking about stuff, so a lot of times you miss people who try and talk to you. Its already hard enough to talk without chat bubbles, this makes it near impossible.

 

-When you target someone and you use a spell, it follows them wherever they go, so you cant kite people. If your a melee character and are running around say a ranged dps, they will ALWAYS hit you with the spell/attack because the character auto locks on you while your are casting/charging, so it will turn on its own in the same spot and if the enemy goes behind you, it turns around on its own. Horrible for melee characters

 

-Some moves you have to wait until the animation is finished before you can actually do anything else. For example, if you are a sith inquisitor, you have to wait for the character to actually move his hands in a dumb motion to cast Static Barrier before I can cast another spell. In pvp and sticky pve situations, it really is the difference between life and death.

 

-Certain/Numerous buggy things in the interface. One is when I right click on a name in the chat to whisper or do an action do, it doesn't work often times and I have to click a bunch of times before it works. It's really annoying when the general chat is going through so fast.

 

-Inspecting is so hard to get to, you have to right click the character, then scroll to Other Actions, and then go to the drop down list to actually get to it. Inspect is one of the most used actions from player to player, so why is it so hard to get to? People arent standing still most of the time, they are moving, so taking a long time to get to a command that only works when they are next to you is so dumb.

 

-Ships. No they arent YOUR own ship. You just go inside, and watch a 5 second animation of light speed to another planet, then your out. They should have had like mini games or something for ships, or allowed people to go in your ships. you could have even decorated the inside of your ship in different ways or had at least some sort of customization besides the unnoticed gear that you attach for space battles. Had multiplayer interactions/stuff u know? Even runescape had player owned houses where other people could come inside and do lots of fun stuff in.

 

-Space combat was just another addition they added for it to look good so people buy the game, but then see it is such a joke. Its like a cheap rip off of Star Fox. you go in a linear path shooting stuff. Like, if you ever played super smash bros, you know when you beat the 1p part, at the end your the gunner of a fake ship or something and you shoot the names of the people as they go by in space? Kind of like a playable credits. Thats pretty much the same thing as space combat in swtor.smh

 

-crafting is HORRENDOUS. You dont even craft, your companions do. I could get max lvl stats in all my crew skills by standing in one spot for hours. You don't do anything, you just send your companion off to gather stuff, then send em off again to make stuff out of what they gathered.

 

-Companions ALWAYS get in the way. Everytime I run into someone I need to talk to, my companion for some reason ALWAYS has to go right in front of me and block me from being able to press the character. No, I dont want to ****in talk to ur ugly face every goddam minute khem, Get the **** out of my way.

 

-Voice acting and visual customization: The thing they spent the most time and money on, voice acting, and its not even that great. At first, yes its pretty good, but thats only because its new and you havent seen any other mmo with this depth of voice acting. but after a while, you notice the same voices from everyone. Not only that, but a lot of your own replies are the same. "This is beneath me Ill do it" and corny lines like that are frequently used in the EXACT same tone. And visual customization is even worse. In aion, the customization for your characters was the best I've ever seen in my life. It's the exact opposite in this game. You see a lot of familiar faces in different NPC's that you interact with. Only difference is one might have a mustache while the other doesn't.

 

 

 

Now, I know in the future, SOME of these things MIGHT be fixed, probably not even fully. But like I said in the beginning, I'm playing this game now. I'm lvling and experiencing the game NOW. I don't want to wait until some of these major issues are fixed to fully enjoy the game. Sorry BioWare, you should have sticked with what you were actually good at, single player RPGs. You can have the $60 I paid for the game as a donation for actually attempting to make an mmo.

 

Looks like its pandas for me...peace

[Gunryu]

No it doesn't make everything in an MMO, but for an MMO that has more content and end game content at launch than any other MMO in history at launch, what the heck do you want?

 

 

Half of which people can't even play because it's bugged to hell and back and the other half is just bad.

[a_Stalker]

Thanks! I'm loving it and this is exactly what I've asked for on previous MMO forums. On them I've waged a similar crusade as you are here, except I was asking for more cutscenes, more voice acting, more immersive story. Now that a game like that is finally here I'm in seventh heaven. This is a dream come true. I hope you have as much fun in one of the WoW-style MMOs as I do here!!

 

I like the story too, and I like the voice overs. I skip some, I listen to some others. I like the light/dark decisions you have to make. I like the nice choice of quest rewards.

 

However I am missing some features, two of them vital in my opinion for an MMO.

 

So if it just the story line, why not play a Fallout 3 type game or COD? Why pay a subscription (on top of the purchase price) when all you seem to want is a good story?

[Yowfatto]

Spending 95% of dev time on content that most players will finish in 1/2 months was a pretty big mistake. Sure the class stories are mildly interesting, but you have to sit through 10 times as many crappy sidequests to do them. Once you finish the story, you're stuck with farming 3 warzones or doing some epicly bugged raids. GW2/D3 cant come fast enough.

 

Most people work, and can't get through the game in 2 weeks while working, pretty much impossible. Unless they have no life. This game is geared for casual players, not the 10%ers. It will take me a year to get through all the class storylines. Plenty for me to do and see, and in the mean time looking forward to new content and new expansions. GW2/D3, yup let's see how those do.

[SnoopyDoo]

How did you survive in WoW when they had nothing when it launched, they had what one raid? SWTOR has more content at launch and end game than any other MMO in history at launch. End game, a dozen flashpoints, 2 WZ, still class quests, Ilum a whole planet for PvP. You call that lacking in end game compared to other MMOs that launched with pretty much nothing?

 

Sounds like your impossible to please more than anything, besides that WoW really has gone down hill after their first expansion. They lost over 2m subs this year, probably more for next year. SWTOR certainly doesn't want to do anything that WoW is doing right now, if anything they are looking at it's mistakes and not going to make the same ones.

 

End game in WoW now? Folks are blowing through CATA in no time due to it being so ridiculously easy, and people are abandoning the game in droves after CATA. I expect the same for the pandas. WoW had a good thing, not anymore. You make a coma grind to cap, which is as boring as being in a coma, then blazingly get through all the end game content. Not a good recipe in the least. SWTOR has a great recipe. Very fun lvling and then quite a lot of end game content.

 

Well firstly there is very little end game content in TOR currently and secondly I merely made the comparison as a way of saying that this game is probably no better than WoW right now. . Again I don't know why you think I'm backing WoW, I'm just saying that end game in this is currently no different from in WoW.

 

Also I wouldn't criticise WoW as a way of making this game seem better, it wont work.

[Yowfatto]

Half of which people can't even play because it's bugged to hell and back and the other half is just bad.

 

Bugged to hell and back. Ya sure, when wow launched a lot fo people couldn't even go into zones you know why? because it was pinged as water to them. That's game breaking and a major issue, and others like that the game had for weeks. You don't know what a game breaking bug is.

[Gunryu]

Most people work, and can't get through the game in 2 weeks while working, pretty much impossible. Unless they have no life. This game is geared for casual players, not the 10%ers. It will take me a year to get through all the class storylines. Plenty for me to do and see, and in the mean time looking forward to new content and new expansions. GW2/D3, yup let's see how those do.

 

 

Well based off what I have seen of GW2 and the fact that it is F2P with purchasable novelty items? Probably a lot better than this game, as for D3.....it's a single player game with co-op capabilities that doesn't charge a subscription fee and has story with it, so again my guess? Probably better than this game as well.

[Gunryu]

Bugged to hell and back. Ya sure, when wow launched a lot fo people couldn't even go into zones you know why? because it was pinged as water to them. That's game breaking and a major issue, and others like that the game had for weeks. You don't know what a game breaking bug is.

 

You amuse me, you really do, you will sit and defend this game to your death and not admit that this game has a lot wrong with it.

[Samy_Merchi]

It is a different taste. What I believe is ignorant is believing this game will continue to be fun just rolling new characters over and over again with the same content.

Well, what I believe is weird is believing this game will continue to be fun grinding for items at level cap. I can't imagine how anybody could ever enjoy that, it's the dullest thing I can imagine in gaming. At least I'll be running a story while I'm grinding for items from 1 to 50, end gamers will just be spinning in place while grinding items at 50. I can't imagine it could ever be fun like that.

 

But you know what? It *is* fun for some people like that. And more power to them. I hope they all find such a game.

 

You are either a VERY big lore lover or simply value RPG above everything else in any game you play. Different taste yes, the ignorance is faith in this game's story pillar as though it is the saviour of MMOs.

 

I do value RPG above everything else. And I do have faith in this game's story pillar as the savior of MMOs *to me*.

 

I don't for one moment pretend that *everybody* is going to love a story based MMO -- you yourself are evidence of that -- but for me, SWTOR is a real hallelujah moment, and that's a fact. Nothing ignorant about that.

[Yowfatto]

Well firstly there is very little end game content in TOR currently and secondly I merely made the comparison as a way of saying that this game is probably no better than WoW right now. . Again I don't know why you think I'm backing WoW, I'm just saying that end game in this is currently no different from in WoW.

 

Also I wouldn't criticise WoW as a way of making this game seem better, it wont work.

 

12 flashpoints, 2 ops, dailies, whole planet pvp, class quests, ya that's not much in end game content in the least for a game that just launched. Just more than any other MMO in history that launched.