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Does TOR have a major flaw like past MMO's on release that will stop it from holding subs long term?
SethiusX
Member Posts: 171
Let me preface this by saying that I think WoW is a great game. For me, it has been a major source of addiction since early 2005. I feel it really upped the quality of themepark mmo's and helped define what is the standard in such games.
Now, each MMO that has been released has been called the "WoW killer" at one time or another, but they have all failed to draw the playerbase permenantly away.
Over the years I have enjoyed WoW, but as many, I have desired a change, a game that would be able to captivate me so that after a couple months I would not feel the need to go back to the familiar WoW. Each MMO that I have tried has failed to do this for me, for various reasons which I will list below (many have since fixed the issues below, but if you dont have it right on release, many players never return):
Lord of the Rings Online: After about a month playing this after release, I discovered that there was almost no solo content past lvl 20ish. This made the switch hard, as I want the option in an MMO to solo at will. I know that LOTRO has since rectified this issue.
Warhammer: The game was awesome in PVP overall, but endgame PVP was highly unbalanced on release, and their was little PVE game to soften this blow. If this game had had lots of PVE content on release, or the PVP had been balanced enough to be truly captivating, I would have probably stayed here.
Age of Conan: This game was awesome through Tortage, but once in the world, it felt bland and unfinished. A game needs to be completely finished on release, and not feel like you get to a certain point and it all falls apart.
Rift: Rift was very polished from beginning to end (with some pvp balance issues and useless rep grinds on release), but unfortunately, I found it to be too bland and dry. I lost interest in the upper levels before hitting 50, due to the leveling process seeming very boring, mimicking the stale accept and grind quests of WoW, without the character of WoW. Aside from the Rifts (and to a lesser extent the soul system), which were fun at first but quickly became a grind, particularly as the players spread out and you spent most of the Rifts solo or with a couple people, the game lacked innovation entirely.
I have played multiple other MMO's aside from these, but these are the ones that kept me the longest, but each ultimately had a flaw that led to my return to WoW.
I have tried TOR in two of the beta weekends, and as far as I can tell, it does not have any of the flaws listed in the games above to my knowledge:
-The solo content is readily available all the way to end game (unlike LOTRO on release)
-PVE and PVP options are fleshed out well with plans to expand in the works (unlike Warhammer's release)
-The game is polished and complete from start to finish (unlike AoC's release)
-It offers innovation and new features that won't be just a new form of grind - in questing the story and voice overs and new interesting elements such as the companion system and space combat mini game (unlike Rift's release).
So, what do you think, does TOR have a major flaw that will have players running back to WoW in a couple months? I mean is there something wrong with this game like the flaws described above that will cause it to drop subs?
Comments
considering every MMO you just listed was too "bland" for you..... i think your time in MMOs has come to an end.
you have simply grown out of them. move on. if you havent found one that you liked after 4-5 MMOs.... perhaps they just arent for you any more.
I am not sure that TOR will not feel bland after the stories become old -- sort of like how AoC felt bland after you completed Tortage.
I am not seeing a large concensus of reviews that defines the non-story elements of TOR to have a hooking effect. It might simply be a lack of details being shared, or it could be a sign that the gameplay is similar to what you experienced in AoC and Rift.
Well, I wouldn't it has any major flaws currently, but some flaws that could turn into game-killers in terms of retention down the road. My one major gripe with the game, as of now, is that aside from the first two planets, every class from either side has to take the same route to level cap. There are no overlapping of planets during the leveling process, and I think this is something that BW is going to have to add in later.
I don't want BW to make the same horrible mistake Trion did and design ALL their patches to cater to the endgame players. For a game so heavily invested in story, this would be a huge mistake, IMO. I'd like to see BW open up some other planets or extra zones within the current planets in order to give players more options for where to level as they are rolling their second and third characters on the same side. As of right now, that's really the only serious flaw in the game, and one that is easily fixed. The other stuff is nickel-and-dime stuff, and not game-breaking.
I should probably clarify that AoC's problem was that the game was not finished on release. That's what made it bland. Poor choice of wording.
Only thing that will keep it from holding subs long term is if they don't support the game with patches every 3-4 months or less. (By this, I mean content patches)
I don't agree. I love WoW for what it is, and I love pvp and raiding. I am, what you would call, a themepark player. I just want a game that actually doesn't have a major flaw that pushes me back to WoW. I love WoW, but 6 years is enough for one game, it is time for one that can replace it.
Also, I only said Rift was bland. I used the word on AoC incorrectly, I was trying to get at the fact that the game was not finished on release, and LOTRO was because of the lack of solo content and Warhammer was the lack of any pve at all.
I like this. This is in the spirit of the thread, and it is certainly a possible flaw. It is fixable, but will they be able to correct this before people hit max level and go back and play alts and find they need new leveling content?
I gathered that. What I mean is my concerns that TOR will feel bland once the story gets old, much like how AoC felt bland after Tortage -- basically that TOR without new story, is a bland game by itself.
The negative points I see about Tor are:
1. Untested Endgame - Well 2 weeks of testing compared to 5 months of endgame testing in Rift prior to release.
2. Action Combat - I did not enjoy the combat especially in group. Mobs died to fast, to much chasing and combat was to fast for my tastes.
3. If felt like a singleplayer game to me. A well made and enjoyable singleplayer game. I think this will be a turn off to many older MMO players.
4. Fast Leveling After people level 1-50 in 30-50 hours, long before the headt start ends, what then? Many will likely become bored and quit.
Even if you believe what i said in 1-4 there is a good chance TOR will do very well. Just because it has a built in market with many SW fans and Bioware fans. While it may lose many players it has the ability to gain many replacement players at a very fast rate.
I ma not bashing SWOR I think its a good game for what it is. But its not a long term game for me. Regardless I hope it does well.
I'm actually hoping those patches come quicker than that (every two months and one xpac every 1.5 -2.5 years, i know, its a dream). This is always my gripe with mmo's though, how slow the content roles out when they get my money monthly.
As an alt player in WoW, this limitation is rather unattractive. I certainly would not have played WoW for as long as I did, if I was limited to the same zones all the time.
The ability to modify your progression path, was something that added replayability, imo. Limiting us to various linear progression lines (as I understand it), makes the idea of playing an Alt though basically the same content, to be far less appealing.
Point taken. This is valid imo, that if the story is not robust enough in a story based game, it may get old too fast.
Like 1 flashpoint or something of equal size every 2-3 months would be awsome and quite impressive (will never happen I know, but they got plenty of folks, money, and new tools to make this work, we will see, they would have my sub a long time).
When i played this game during the beta weekend i was into (end of october i think...), i said to myself. This game is ready. So i suppose that all they have been doing since is polish polish and more polish.
The way quests are handed out is so good. The kill 10 rats type quests becomes interesting because of how the quest is handed to you. From now on, every MMO that deliver quests through text will fail to deliver, at least for me, immersion.
Even at level 1, you feel like a hero and this is what Star Wars is all about . Feeling heroic and important in the galaxy.
So to sum it up, i think it has everything. It will be as polished, if not more than WOW at release. The only flaw i can see is the huge queue at pre-release / release.
eqnext.wikia.com
I have seen a few reviews about the story getting stale quickly -- beta testers defaulting to the space bar a lot quicker than I would have thought. That hints that the story might not be as amazing as BW hyped it to be.
Also, I believe the story is pretty straight forward -- which decisions only changing with Cinematic plays inside an instance, rather than branching you off into even a secondary story path. So regardless of your decisions, you will progress through the same content at the same general pace. This to me seems to be something that will make the story more bland as well. It seems to be as if you went to disneyland, and rode the same rides in the same order you did the day before, but you simply sat on the 'left' side this time instead of the 'right' -- ie decisions do not really make an impact on the game.
Well Blizzard's speed of releasing content has become way too standard to the mmo industry, and Rift did prove that content can come out a lot faster. Perhaps Bioware can replicate that success.
The problem with this, is that it is not competing with WoW 2004, but rather WoW 2012.
It is like saying that a new car being released today, is better than the 2004 Civic, in a market where people are looking at the 2012 civic - which is much better.
I think you should probably just stay playing WoW forever. You like WoW, and you're now going to compare every single game you play to WoW. If it doesn't have an aspect that WoW does, you won't like it. If it does something different then WoW, you won't like it. You've defined the one game you like, and defined the multiple games you don't like. If you're happy with what you're playing, just keep playing it.
It takes a particular type of person to be able to try something new and simply appreciate it for what it has to offer. Most people just can't get over the differences from their first mmo, so they complain about how the new game has got it all wrong. Those people should never try anything new, it's just beyond their capabilities.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
That won't happen as long as the end game content is challenging and isn't cleared easily. 15 flashpoints on hard mode and 2 operations with normal/hard/nightmare should keep people occupied for a while.
I can't see any major flaws that will cause people to leave, at least in the journey to 50. As I said, as long as the end game is a challenge and takes a while to clear on all modes, the game will be fine as well as of course adding new content in time.
Single player isn't a problem, the end game looks far from single player and the leveling journey is done solo for about 90% of MMO players.
My first MMO was Everquest, and that is the one I compare to everything actually (and still play on P99). WoW is a great game, and of course every new themepark I play should have all the polished features of WoW (it is a precedent for themeparks now afterall). But after six years, I need a change, but I need something that is as well done as WoW, with innovation to boot (since it is 6 years later). We should expect no less from a game in the same genre this many years later.
Trust me when I say that WoW was a huge departure from the games I was addicited to prior to WoW (EQ and Shadowbane), but WoW got it mostly right, and innovated. I need a game to do that again.
That's not really a problem at all. No game will release with the amount of content that WoW currently has---it's not possible. But it certainly can release with the same kind of polish, and it will. As a developer, all you can do is provide enough content to see your subscribers through the first 3-6 months of the game while providing a solid, fun, polished game. Then, from there, they just need to crank out regular content updates. I already know Bioware is releasing a polished game with plenty of content at launch. And I'm confident they'll be adding to that every few months with solid content updates.
Games that launch really are only being compared to current games in terms of the "fun factor" and polish. They aren't being compared in terms of current content. There just needs to be enough content to sustain the game for the first few months before updates start happening. As long as the fun factor is there, that "new game" feel will keep that fan base there through the first couple of content patches. After that, it's up to the developer to make improvements and push out more stuff for players to do.
Its too late you admited you enjoy WoW, or at least that you don't hate it. Now you are a social pariah amongst the gamer community. :-(
(Totally kidding, but at the same time its kinda disturbing how people who own up to liking something thats popular get ridiculed rather harshly for it.)
Using your companion is completely optional. You can also try doing tougher quest killing mobs that are Stronger 2 lvls higher.
That sentence that I highlighted tells me that you would have a difficult time accepting a game, unless it's WoW v2.0
Good luck finding what you are looking for, irregardless.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
Hoth and Quesh share the exact same level range, just to give a small example of diverging leveling paths.
The problem is that people are judging SWTOR based on the first little bit of the game, since few people other than long term beta testers have seen anything else.
People seem to think that because they played through 15 levels of the game and read some reviews and interviews, that they KNOW everything that SWTOR has to offer.
Time will rectify this issue.
To answer the OP....no, I don't see any glaring flaws in SWTOR. The game is not perfect, and has it's faults, but nothing that outweighs it's merits.