I asked my self this question recently "Why the heck am i so back into this game?"
The simple answer is, "i'm enjoying it" so i'm playing it.
Longer answer is at its core it's a standard mmo, i love mindless grinding, i love lots of quests, fedx and kill y.
It also has great stories and everything is voiced. Call me lazy but when I'm tired and i want to wind down by playing a game, i really don't enjoy reading walls of text anymore.
My faith is my shield! - Turalyon 2022
Your legend ends here and now! - (Battles Won Long Ago)
I actually focused on the art design and the writing. Here is the thing about "alignments," whether the traditional good/evil or the Star Wars light/dark (which is not the same dichotomy) - if you take any alignment to it's extreme, it necessitates a character being either stupid or crazy. (Which is why my main always ends being his setting's equivalent of "True Neutral," or close to it in one direction or the other.) In this particular game, a full dark character tends to come across as batcrap crazy, while a full light character comes across as a naive drooling incompetent. Crazy can be very entertaining, allowing the full dark experience to be enjoyable. But, when blatant stupidity is presented as some kind of ideal to strive for, as it is for light characters on the Republic side, that is when the content makes me nauseous.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
Agree with all in OP. And there is much more why I love it. :-) As long as there are wow and swtor with expansions my gaming needs are covered. :-) And as filler up Aoc, Gw2, ...
Things that SWTOR did right from my point of view.
1. The only MMO I've played that I actually care about my character and about my companions. Love them or hate them LOL. I am very protective of my companions, though I have to admit that I was letting Kaliyo die in combat multiple times, when she pissed me off.
2. The only MMO I've played that leveling is actual fun and what's more leveling with friend increase that fun ten-fold. Try the evil-good side combination LOL, it's hilarious.
3. The only MMO I've played that you can actually play evil character.
4. The only MMO I've played that you can play evil character but in the same time bring good into your story /grin.
5. Flashpoints and Operations are the most unique group events from any MMO I've played. Nothing compares to them.
6. Ambient music is unique to each planet and just awesome. It's a pleasure to level and immerse myself in the music and mood of each planet. Balmorra on Empire side is my favorite.
7. I love combat in SWTOR, Animations are great, the skills are great and intuitive. I am a bit of old fashioned maybe, but I absolutely hate action based combat like Tera or GW2. SWTOR is just perfect for me.
8. Character animations. The best thing in SWTOR. It's reallistic. Every other game, maybe except EQ2 is just poor in this area. I dislike running animations in all Asian games including GW2, it's so faked.
9. Interactions with companions. Ability to romance with them.
10. Storylines. Most agree the best feature of game. But not only class stories, planet stories are great as well. One of my favorite is Empire taris story with Thana. She's such a b**ch. Got to love her .
11. The armor system is awesome. You can pick the armor you like and keep it from level 10 forever and just modify it as you go. One of the best features of game. Same goes for companions.
12. Legacy system. I am altoholic. I have 21 alts at various stages of leveling and legacy system rewards altoholics big way. After having all companions maxed up, with Presence sky-high I am just watching my companion wrecking havoc while I am just standing admiring them in action. Quite a fun.
13. Collection system. I love this one. lets say that you collect favorite weapon or armor you absolutely love, which can be quite expensive on GTN (in millions), you just unlock it in collection and hey it's available to all your characters. I have a trooper that has himself and all companion clothed in one armor. Now that is Havoc Squad. And collections are about everything: weapons, armor, pets, toys, mounts, crystals... etc.
14, Events. Events are meaningful and fun to do. I will they were adding/repeating them more often.
15. GSF. Ok, I absolutely suck here. I am a dead meat more often than less. But it's fun LOL.
16. I like that I can equip my alts in pretty good armor doing weekly quests. it takes time, but I have option here.
17. With legacy armor, you can send mods from one alt to another. Nothing is wasted as you progress through game.
Things that SWTOR did right from my point of view.1. The only MMO I've played that I actually care about my character and about my companions. Love them or hate them LOL. I am very protective of my companions, though I have to admit that I was letting Kaliyo die in combat multiple times, when she pissed me off.2. The only MMO I've played that leveling is actual fun and what's more leveling with friend increase that fun ten-fold. Try the evil-good side combination LOL, it's hilarious.3. The only MMO I've played that you can actually play evil character.4. The only MMO I've played that you can play evil character but in the same time bring good into your story /grin.5. Flashpoints and Operations are the most unique group events from any MMO I've played. Nothing compares to them.6. Ambient music is unique to each planet and just awesome. It's a pleasure to level and immerse myself in the music and mood of each planet. Balmorra on Empire side is my favorite.7. I love combat in SWTOR, Animations are great, the skills are great and intuitive. I am a bit of old fashioned maybe, but I absolutely hate action based combat like Tera or GW2. SWTOR is just perfect for me.8. Character animations. The best thing in SWTOR. It's reallistic. Every other game, maybe except EQ2 is just poor in this area. I dislike running animations in all Asian games including GW2, it's so faked.9. Interactions with companions. Ability to romance with them.10. Storylines. Most agree the best feature of game. But not only class stories, planet stories are great as well. One of my favorite is Empire taris story with Thana. She's such a b**ch. Got to love her .11. The armor system is awesome. You can pick the armor you like and keep it from level 10 forever and just modify it as you go. One of the best features of game. Same goes for companions.12. Legacy system. I am altoholic. I have 21 alts at various stages of leveling and legacy system rewards altoholics big way. After having all companions maxed up, with Presence sky-high I am just watching my companion wrecking havoc while I am just standing admiring them in action. Quite a fun.13. Collection system. I love this one. lets say that you collect favorite weapon or armor you absolutely love, which can be quite expensive on GTN (in millions), you just unlock it in collection and hey it's available to all your characters. I have a trooper that has himself and all companion clothed in one armor. Now that is Havoc Squad. And collections are about everything: weapons, armor, pets, toys, mounts, crystals... etc.14, Events. Events are meaningful and fun to do. I will they were adding/repeating them more often.15. GSF. Ok, I absolutely suck here. I am a dead meat more often than less. But it's fun LOL.16. I like that I can equip my alts in pretty good armor doing weekly quests. it takes time, but I have option here.17. With legacy armor, you can send mods from one alt to another. Nothing is wasted as you progress through game.
Very well thought out post as it covered things I forgot to mention. The legacy system is a very fun feature to play with as is the heroics and companion system.
Sevenstar I love what you wrote it is a good explanation of what is enjoyable in the game and your love for the game truly comes out. I always loved the game and have 9 characters which I made the mistake of trying to level at the same time and the same route through the planets killed my interest so now that I am back I am going to level one Republic and one Empire character and this way I will prevent the sameness from dousing my interest. It is truly a good game I just played it wrong and I will concentrate on these two for now.
What I absolutely loved doing was taking operative and doing group content alone with my companion. I would cc and go to town and it was so challenging and doable. Lots of games have challenging content but you cannot solo it but with the operative, sorcerer ,commando, scoundrel,sage,mercenary you can pull some amazing stunts and feel wow I did that on my own. I do group up but I love to challenge myself occasionally too. I duo with my husband a lot but he is a terrible group player he never worries about anyone but himself .
SWTOR is not doing anything right, just that other MMOs are doing everything just as or more wrong.
SWTOR makes other themepark games like WOW and LOTRO seem like a sandbox because SWTOR is so lacking in atmosphere and exploaration, which you have in WOW and LOTRO more so.
Then comes along Neverwinter and makes SWTOR look more of a sandbox as NW is even more constricted.
Dragons Prohpet is extremely heavy on the PC, and is the only game that makes my PC go into Windows basic.
Wildstar does not look that great, and even SWTOR looks better.
All the older MMOs are still better, but they are not surviving because they are getting old, and people are exhausting the content, especially when devs concentrate on the new and ditch the old.
SWTOR still does not beat the deepness of SWG, and if both MMOs released at the same time, SWG would be the one coming out on top, in the long run
I think ti's pretty easy to tell what is being done right, it's providing something the people want, those people seem to want an emphasis on story, interaction with that story. I remember near the beginning the devs stated that the one thing they wanted to bring back to the MMO field was the fourth pillar, which is story (yes people got tired of hearing about story over and over again). This is one area I feel they succeed beyond compare in, look at some of the later games, everytime a game comes out they talk about a gripping story where your actions have an affect on on either it or the world (sounds like what SWTOR was promoting and trying to accomplish) I can't remember this being something that was touted before hand. Either way story for a good portion of the games came back. So success at least for a while.
As for me, I felt like I had an impact on the story (Yes i know I did't have an impact on the world itself), plus the whole group thing really threw it for a spin when what you choose may not be what happens. I just felt more involved.
I also enjoyed the fact that they had an alignment system (look at my avatar and you won't be surprised why I brought this up) that worked with a morphing system as well. I really wish this worked like fable did and you got some kind of cool look for being good, but alas the kotor games didn't have this so I wasn't expecting SWTOR to have it either, but the whole alignment system really held me and was something I hadn't seen before to any extent, sure you could pick to be good or evil but you couldn't through your actions become good or evil, granted it was just many more switches to get to that point but once you were evil/good 5 it was something to brag about as it clearly showed you were dedicated to getting that score.
Another draw is that my companion isn't some lifeless skeleton or some such that just laughs or grunts or needs to be fed, they have motivations, interests. Not to mention at least one of them you can actually influence to be good or evil (do more of this please Bioware).
They got the story down pat, I care about the world, it's characters, now you just need to make it so I care about the other players of this world as well. Maybe allow NPCs to talk about these people's exploits (CoX would like to say hi here), maybe make it so some guild who solves the plague is talked about on TV (You can have their logo appear on the screen in a PiP box while the news person says what a great job the people in the organization did) or something along those lines.
What do i think they did right? they got players interested in the world and allowed them to feel like they apart of that world, if at least a little, by having people in the world seem more then just a kiosk handing out quest text in a box. What made this transition successful and why are they doing well now? Thats a bit harder, being a well known company helps, plus having a huge IP also helps, plus they do what a lot of games do, give you a fair amount of everything to try but not quite enough to actually just live off of that for free. You generally will see people pluck down money to get the full experience or buy the pieces they want. Someone who doesn't PvP (like me) woudln't buy a PvP pass for the week as my weekly amount is going to go wasted anyhow.
That is at least my theory on it. It provides entertainment while at the same time not just giving the game away for free.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
SWTOR is not doing anything right, just that other MMOs are doing everything just as or more wrong.
SWTOR makes other themepark games like WOW and LOTRO seem like a sandbox because SWTOR is so lacking in atmosphere and exploaration, which you have in WOW and LOTRO more so.
Then comes along Neverwinter and makes SWTOR look more of a sandbox as NW is even more constricted.
Dragons Prohpet is extremely heavy on the PC, and is the only game that makes my PC go into Windows basic.
Wildstar does not look that great, and even SWTOR looks better.
All the older MMOs are still better, but they are not surviving because they are getting old, and people are exhausting the content, especially when devs concentrate on the new and ditch the old.
SWTOR still does not beat the deepness of SWG, and if both MMOs released at the same time, SWG would be the one coming out on top, in the long run
then how come SWTOR is doing better then all those MMOs except WoW?
If SWG was so deep and amazing how come it did so poorly?
wait... if both SWG and SWTOR were released then SWG would win? SWG couldn't even win the market when it was launched and it was the only sandbox choice.
Of course SWG IS out now it can barely get 2,000 players now.
SWTOR is not doing anything right, just that other MMOs are doing everything just as or more wrong.
SWTOR makes other themepark games like WOW and LOTRO seem like a sandbox because SWTOR is so lacking in atmosphere and exploaration, which you have in WOW and LOTRO more so.
Then comes along Neverwinter and makes SWTOR look more of a sandbox as NW is even more constricted.
Dragons Prohpet is extremely heavy on the PC, and is the only game that makes my PC go into Windows basic.
Wildstar does not look that great, and even SWTOR looks better.
All the older MMOs are still better, but they are not surviving because they are getting old, and people are exhausting the content, especially when devs concentrate on the new and ditch the old.
SWTOR still does not beat the deepness of SWG, and if both MMOs released at the same time, SWG would be the one coming out on top, in the long run
then how come SWTOR is doing better then all those MMOs except WoW?
If SWG was so deep and amazing how come it did so poorly?
wait... if both SWG and SWTOR were released then SWG would win? SWG couldn't even win the market when it was launched and it was the only sandbox choice.
Of course SWG IS out now it can barely get 2,000 players now.
Oh the swg crew is a hoot to listening to so bitter so desperate do clueless they are. Almost three years in same jibberish they were crying about three years ago. They are so desperate for Swtor to fail it's so fun watching them squirm cause they have been so wrong.
on a positives note for them soe announced a new game just for them. Why waste another few years crying about Swtor when soe you know the company that's closed more mmos then anyone, the company that when things go bad go into maintenance mode a suck the money out of players like in swg and vanguard why not spend their time over there instead of on something they hate?
it is amazing how delusional they are. Yeah i read that about SOE i guess they realized with cash shops they could make a killing off of the SWG fanboys
I think that when the new SWG type game Smedley mentioned yesterday is announced, it'll be interesting to compare how they intend that game design to look. I have a feeling they'll make a game that provides at the very least, a fun alternative to the SWTOR traditional MMO approach.
SWTOR was okay in terms of storylines - that's the only area I think they stood out, although some storylines were better than others. I felt that there was too much grinding between segments, however, and I found the game itself too linear, so I quit after 6 months and didn't even finish a single storyline. I wasn't keen on how fleet centric the game was, a bit like a hub with operations minigames attached.
Overall, I think the reason so many players are in SWTOR, is because there's no real competition right now. Once that changes, we'll be able to figure out which developer delivers the better experience. Till then SWTOR is king I suppose, living it up in a vacuum.
SWTOR is not doing anything right, just that other MMOs are doing everything just as or more wrong.
SWTOR makes other themepark games like WOW and LOTRO seem like a sandbox because SWTOR is so lacking in atmosphere and exploaration, which you have in WOW and LOTRO more so.
Then comes along Neverwinter and makes SWTOR look more of a sandbox as NW is even more constricted.
Dragons Prohpet is extremely heavy on the PC, and is the only game that makes my PC go into Windows basic.
Wildstar does not look that great, and even SWTOR looks better.
All the older MMOs are still better, but they are not surviving because they are getting old, and people are exhausting the content, especially when devs concentrate on the new and ditch the old.
SWTOR still does not beat the deepness of SWG, and if both MMOs released at the same time, SWG would be the one coming out on top, in the long run
then how come SWTOR is doing better then all those MMOs except WoW?
If SWG was so deep and amazing how come it did so poorly?
wait... if both SWG and SWTOR were released then SWG would win? SWG couldn't even win the market when it was launched and it was the only sandbox choice.
Of course SWG IS out now it can barely get 2,000 players now.
SWG never went F2P, its entire lifetime, so did not do poorly
SWTOR would be deader than SWG if it still required a monthly fee, and it was the fastest MMO to go F2P from P2P, especially considering EA were confident with the monthly fee and did not intend it going F2P.
SWG never went F2P, its entire lifetime, so did not do poorly
SWTOR would be deader than SWG if it still required a monthly fee, and it was the fastest MMO to go F2P from P2P, especially considering EA were confident with the monthly fee and did not intend it going F2P.
TOR makes more money just on it's cash shop than any sub game other than WoW makes on subs, having a cash shop is not an indicator of doing poorly. Hell, the main reason SWG never added a cash shop is because the practice of adding cash shops to sub-based games didn't really catch on until after SWG had dropped to too few players to even justify the expense of adding a cash shop.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me.
SWTOR is not doing anything right, just that other MMOs are doing everything just as or more wrong.
SWTOR makes other themepark games like WOW and LOTRO seem like a sandbox because SWTOR is so lacking in atmosphere and exploaration, which you have in WOW and LOTRO more so.
Then comes along Neverwinter and makes SWTOR look more of a sandbox as NW is even more constricted.
Dragons Prohpet is extremely heavy on the PC, and is the only game that makes my PC go into Windows basic.
Wildstar does not look that great, and even SWTOR looks better.
All the older MMOs are still better, but they are not surviving because they are getting old, and people are exhausting the content, especially when devs concentrate on the new and ditch the old.
SWTOR still does not beat the deepness of SWG, and if both MMOs released at the same time, SWG would be the one coming out on top, in the long run
then how come SWTOR is doing better then all those MMOs except WoW?
If SWG was so deep and amazing how come it did so poorly?
wait... if both SWG and SWTOR were released then SWG would win? SWG couldn't even win the market when it was launched and it was the only sandbox choice.
Of course SWG IS out now it can barely get 2,000 players now.
SWG never went F2P, its entire lifetime, so did not do poorly
SWTOR would be deader than SWG if it still required a monthly fee, and it was the fastest MMO to go F2P from P2P, especially considering EA were confident with the monthly fee and did not intend it going F2P.
having only 2,000 subscriptions is pretty poor and that is including the people using a station pass.
SWTOR at its lowest point had around 500k subscribers
SWG at its highest point only had 350k subscribers. It only held 350k for a few months.
SWTOR held over 500k for 2 years
You would be incredibly neive to think that SWTOR wasn't launched with a plan to F2P.
In fact SWTOR has made more money in only 2 years then SWG did in over 9 years.
SWTOR is not doing anything right, just that other MMOs are doing everything just as or more wrong.
SWTOR makes other themepark games like WOW and LOTRO seem like a sandbox because SWTOR is so lacking in atmosphere and exploaration, which you have in WOW and LOTRO more so.
Then comes along Neverwinter and makes SWTOR look more of a sandbox as NW is even more constricted.
Dragons Prohpet is extremely heavy on the PC, and is the only game that makes my PC go into Windows basic.
Wildstar does not look that great, and even SWTOR looks better.
All the older MMOs are still better, but they are not surviving because they are getting old, and people are exhausting the content, especially when devs concentrate on the new and ditch the old.
SWTOR still does not beat the deepness of SWG, and if both MMOs released at the same time, SWG would be the one coming out on top, in the long run
then how come SWTOR is doing better then all those MMOs except WoW?
If SWG was so deep and amazing how come it did so poorly?
wait... if both SWG and SWTOR were released then SWG would win? SWG couldn't even win the market when it was launched and it was the only sandbox choice.
Of course SWG IS out now it can barely get 2,000 players now.
SWG never went F2P, its entire lifetime, so did not do poorly
SWTOR would be deader than SWG if it still required a monthly fee, and it was the fastest MMO to go F2P from P2P, especially considering EA were confident with the monthly fee and did not intend it going F2P.
having only 2,000 subscriptions is pretty poor and that is including the people using a station pass.
SWTOR at its lowest point had around 500k subscribers
SWG at its highest point only had 350k subscribers. It only held 350k for a few months.
SWTOR held over 500k for 2 years
You would be incredibly neive to think that SWTOR wasn't launched with a plan to F2P.
In fact SWTOR has made more money in only 2 years then SWG did in over 9 years.
Is that all you got?
Swtor wont last past ESO,Wildstar and EQN. Once ESO hits you will see a good chunk leave same with wildstar but once EQN hits its lights out.
The game is riding its IP, nothing more its a crap game imo for the amount of money invested.
SWTOR is not doing anything right, just that other MMOs are doing everything just as or more wrong.
SWTOR makes other themepark games like WOW and LOTRO seem like a sandbox because SWTOR is so lacking in atmosphere and exploaration, which you have in WOW and LOTRO more so.
Then comes along Neverwinter and makes SWTOR look more of a sandbox as NW is even more constricted.
Dragons Prohpet is extremely heavy on the PC, and is the only game that makes my PC go into Windows basic.
Wildstar does not look that great, and even SWTOR looks better.
All the older MMOs are still better, but they are not surviving because they are getting old, and people are exhausting the content, especially when devs concentrate on the new and ditch the old.
SWTOR still does not beat the deepness of SWG, and if both MMOs released at the same time, SWG would be the one coming out on top, in the long run
then how come SWTOR is doing better then all those MMOs except WoW?
If SWG was so deep and amazing how come it did so poorly?
wait... if both SWG and SWTOR were released then SWG would win? SWG couldn't even win the market when it was launched and it was the only sandbox choice.
Of course SWG IS out now it can barely get 2,000 players now.
SWG never went F2P, its entire lifetime, so did not do poorly
SWTOR would be deader than SWG if it still required a monthly fee, and it was the fastest MMO to go F2P from P2P, especially considering EA were confident with the monthly fee and did not intend it going F2P.
having only 2,000 subscriptions is pretty poor and that is including the people using a station pass.
SWTOR at its lowest point had around 500k subscribers
SWG at its highest point only had 350k subscribers. It only held 350k for a few months.
SWTOR held over 500k for 2 years
You would be incredibly neive to think that SWTOR wasn't launched with a plan to F2P.
In fact SWTOR has made more money in only 2 years then SWG did in over 9 years.
Is that all you got?
Swtor wont last past ESO,Wildstar and EQN. Once ESO hits you will see a good chunk leave same with wildstar but once EQN hits its lights out.
The game is riding its IP, nothing more its a crap game imo for the amount of money invested.
people said the same thing about SWTOR when GW2, Mists of Pandraia, and other MMOs came out.. Guess what? Swtor is still the Second Largest Wester MMO out there.
ESO and Wildstar are both launching as P2P which is going to hurt them. ESO has all the same problems SWTOR had at this point in beta but only far worse.
Hell look at DDO and LotRO both are MMOs that are still going on strong now. MMOs rarely die in this day in age with F2P. The only thing that will kill a MMO is sticking to a P2P model
Besides BioWare's storytelling method, I'd have to say that only the only thing I remember be very enjoyable were warfronts. All were very well designed and enjoyable. Oh, and Chiss, can't understand why it's Twi'leks everyone loves.
Comments
I asked my self this question recently "Why the heck am i so back into this game?"
The simple answer is, "i'm enjoying it" so i'm playing it.
Longer answer is at its core it's a standard mmo, i love mindless grinding, i love lots of quests, fedx and kill y.
It also has great stories and everything is voiced. Call me lazy but when I'm tired and i want to wind down by playing a game, i really don't enjoy reading walls of text anymore.
I actually focused on the art design and the writing. Here is the thing about "alignments," whether the traditional good/evil or the Star Wars light/dark (which is not the same dichotomy) - if you take any alignment to it's extreme, it necessitates a character being either stupid or crazy. (Which is why my main always ends being his setting's equivalent of "True Neutral," or close to it in one direction or the other.) In this particular game, a full dark character tends to come across as batcrap crazy, while a full light character comes across as a naive drooling incompetent. Crazy can be very entertaining, allowing the full dark experience to be enjoyable. But, when blatant stupidity is presented as some kind of ideal to strive for, as it is for light characters on the Republic side, that is when the content makes me nauseous.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
They are doing nothing right.
That would be about right.
Things that SWTOR did right from my point of view.
1. The only MMO I've played that I actually care about my character and about my companions. Love them or hate them LOL. I am very protective of my companions, though I have to admit that I was letting Kaliyo die in combat multiple times, when she pissed me off.
2. The only MMO I've played that leveling is actual fun and what's more leveling with friend increase that fun ten-fold. Try the evil-good side combination LOL, it's hilarious.
3. The only MMO I've played that you can actually play evil character.
4. The only MMO I've played that you can play evil character but in the same time bring good into your story /grin.
5. Flashpoints and Operations are the most unique group events from any MMO I've played. Nothing compares to them.
6. Ambient music is unique to each planet and just awesome. It's a pleasure to level and immerse myself in the music and mood of each planet. Balmorra on Empire side is my favorite.
7. I love combat in SWTOR, Animations are great, the skills are great and intuitive. I am a bit of old fashioned maybe, but I absolutely hate action based combat like Tera or GW2. SWTOR is just perfect for me.
8. Character animations. The best thing in SWTOR. It's reallistic. Every other game, maybe except EQ2 is just poor in this area. I dislike running animations in all Asian games including GW2, it's so faked.
9. Interactions with companions. Ability to romance with them.
10. Storylines. Most agree the best feature of game. But not only class stories, planet stories are great as well. One of my favorite is Empire taris story with Thana. She's such a b**ch. Got to love her
.
11. The armor system is awesome. You can pick the armor you like and keep it from level 10 forever and just modify it as you go. One of the best features of game. Same goes for companions.
12. Legacy system. I am altoholic. I have 21 alts at various stages of leveling and legacy system rewards altoholics big way. After having all companions maxed up, with Presence sky-high I am just watching my companion wrecking havoc while I am just standing admiring them in action. Quite a fun.
13. Collection system. I love this one. lets say that you collect favorite weapon or armor you absolutely love, which can be quite expensive on GTN (in millions), you just unlock it in collection and hey it's available to all your characters. I have a trooper that has himself and all companion clothed in one armor. Now that is Havoc Squad. And collections are about everything: weapons, armor, pets, toys, mounts, crystals... etc.
14, Events. Events are meaningful and fun to do. I will they were adding/repeating them more often.
15. GSF. Ok, I absolutely suck here. I am a dead meat more often than less. But it's fun LOL.
16. I like that I can equip my alts in pretty good armor doing weekly quests. it takes time, but I have option here.
17. With legacy armor, you can send mods from one alt to another. Nothing is wasted as you progress through game.
Sith Warrior - Story of Hate and Love http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxKrlwXt7Ao
Imperial Agent - Rise of Cipher Nine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBBj3eJWBvU&feature=youtu.be
Imperial Agent - Hunt for the Eagle Part 1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQqjYYU128E
Very well thought out post as it covered things I forgot to mention. The legacy system is a very fun feature to play with as is the heroics and companion system.Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
1 STAR WARS on the box
2 companions, this is the known BW quality
3 storylines , same as above
4 keeping the fractions split up, its always bad, when the enemies can farm lowbie kills with no risks
im surprised, that they havent monetized the storylines yet
yes, i put the companions above the storylines
companions are always there, stories are not
Sevenstar I love what you wrote it is a good explanation of what is enjoyable in the game and your love for the game truly comes out. I always loved the game and have 9 characters which I made the mistake of trying to level at the same time and the same route through the planets killed my interest so now that I am back I am going to level one Republic and one Empire character and this way I will prevent the sameness from dousing my interest. It is truly a good game I just played it wrong and I will concentrate on these two for now.
What I absolutely loved doing was taking operative and doing group content alone with my companion. I would cc and go to town and it was so challenging and doable. Lots of games have challenging content but you cannot solo it but with the operative, sorcerer ,commando, scoundrel,sage,mercenary you can pull some amazing stunts and feel wow I did that on my own. I do group up but I love to challenge myself occasionally too. I duo with my husband a lot but he is a terrible group player he never worries about anyone but himself .
Anyway thanks for that Sevenstar.
SWTOR is not doing anything right, just that other MMOs are doing everything just as or more wrong.
SWTOR makes other themepark games like WOW and LOTRO seem like a sandbox because SWTOR is so lacking in atmosphere and exploaration, which you have in WOW and LOTRO more so.
Then comes along Neverwinter and makes SWTOR look more of a sandbox as NW is even more constricted.
Dragons Prohpet is extremely heavy on the PC, and is the only game that makes my PC go into Windows basic.
Wildstar does not look that great, and even SWTOR looks better.
All the older MMOs are still better, but they are not surviving because they are getting old, and people are exhausting the content, especially when devs concentrate on the new and ditch the old.
SWTOR still does not beat the deepness of SWG, and if both MMOs released at the same time, SWG would be the one coming out on top, in the long run
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I think ti's pretty easy to tell what is being done right, it's providing something the people want, those people seem to want an emphasis on story, interaction with that story. I remember near the beginning the devs stated that the one thing they wanted to bring back to the MMO field was the fourth pillar, which is story (yes people got tired of hearing about story over and over again). This is one area I feel they succeed beyond compare in, look at some of the later games, everytime a game comes out they talk about a gripping story where your actions have an affect on on either it or the world (sounds like what SWTOR was promoting and trying to accomplish) I can't remember this being something that was touted before hand. Either way story for a good portion of the games came back. So success at least for a while.
As for me, I felt like I had an impact on the story (Yes i know I did't have an impact on the world itself), plus the whole group thing really threw it for a spin when what you choose may not be what happens. I just felt more involved.
I also enjoyed the fact that they had an alignment system (look at my avatar and you won't be surprised why I brought this up) that worked with a morphing system as well. I really wish this worked like fable did and you got some kind of cool look for being good, but alas the kotor games didn't have this so I wasn't expecting SWTOR to have it either, but the whole alignment system really held me and was something I hadn't seen before to any extent, sure you could pick to be good or evil but you couldn't through your actions become good or evil, granted it was just many more switches to get to that point but once you were evil/good 5 it was something to brag about as it clearly showed you were dedicated to getting that score.
Another draw is that my companion isn't some lifeless skeleton or some such that just laughs or grunts or needs to be fed, they have motivations, interests. Not to mention at least one of them you can actually influence to be good or evil (do more of this please Bioware).
They got the story down pat, I care about the world, it's characters, now you just need to make it so I care about the other players of this world as well. Maybe allow NPCs to talk about these people's exploits (CoX would like to say hi here), maybe make it so some guild who solves the plague is talked about on TV (You can have their logo appear on the screen in a PiP box while the news person says what a great job the people in the organization did) or something along those lines.
What do i think they did right? they got players interested in the world and allowed them to feel like they apart of that world, if at least a little, by having people in the world seem more then just a kiosk handing out quest text in a box. What made this transition successful and why are they doing well now? Thats a bit harder, being a well known company helps, plus having a huge IP also helps, plus they do what a lot of games do, give you a fair amount of everything to try but not quite enough to actually just live off of that for free. You generally will see people pluck down money to get the full experience or buy the pieces they want. Someone who doesn't PvP (like me) woudln't buy a PvP pass for the week as my weekly amount is going to go wasted anyhow.
That is at least my theory on it. It provides entertainment while at the same time not just giving the game away for free.
Help me Bioware, you're my only hope.
Is ToR going to be good? Dude it's Bioware making a freaking star wars game, all signs point to awesome. -G4tv MMo report.
then how come SWTOR is doing better then all those MMOs except WoW?
If SWG was so deep and amazing how come it did so poorly?
wait... if both SWG and SWTOR were released then SWG would win? SWG couldn't even win the market when it was launched and it was the only sandbox choice.
Of course SWG IS out now it can barely get 2,000 players now.
We are defined by our enemies, so this may actually have some merit.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
You stay sassy!
it is amazing how delusional they are. Yeah i read that about SOE i guess they realized with cash shops they could make a killing off of the SWG fanboys
They do a great job segregating the whales from the mules.
I think SWTOR is a model that's ahead of its time.
I think that when the new SWG type game Smedley mentioned yesterday is announced, it'll be interesting to compare how they intend that game design to look. I have a feeling they'll make a game that provides at the very least, a fun alternative to the SWTOR traditional MMO approach.
SWTOR was okay in terms of storylines - that's the only area I think they stood out, although some storylines were better than others. I felt that there was too much grinding between segments, however, and I found the game itself too linear, so I quit after 6 months and didn't even finish a single storyline. I wasn't keen on how fleet centric the game was, a bit like a hub with operations minigames attached.
Overall, I think the reason so many players are in SWTOR, is because there's no real competition right now. Once that changes, we'll be able to figure out which developer delivers the better experience. Till then SWTOR is king I suppose, living it up in a vacuum.
SWG never went F2P, its entire lifetime, so did not do poorly
SWTOR would be deader than SWG if it still required a monthly fee, and it was the fastest MMO to go F2P from P2P, especially considering EA were confident with the monthly fee and did not intend it going F2P.
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TOR makes more money just on it's cash shop than any sub game other than WoW makes on subs, having a cash shop is not an indicator of doing poorly. Hell, the main reason SWG never added a cash shop is because the practice of adding cash shops to sub-based games didn't really catch on until after SWG had dropped to too few players to even justify the expense of adding a cash shop.
Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.
having only 2,000 subscriptions is pretty poor and that is including the people using a station pass.
SWTOR at its lowest point had around 500k subscribers
SWG at its highest point only had 350k subscribers. It only held 350k for a few months.
SWTOR held over 500k for 2 years
You would be incredibly neive to think that SWTOR wasn't launched with a plan to F2P.
In fact SWTOR has made more money in only 2 years then SWG did in over 9 years.
Is that all you got?
Not much.
A simple mobile security key (because it awards 100 cartel Coins monthly?) is available only to subscribers.
Swtor wont last past ESO,Wildstar and EQN. Once ESO hits you will see a good chunk leave same with wildstar but once EQN hits its lights out.
The game is riding its IP, nothing more its a crap game imo for the amount of money invested.
people said the same thing about SWTOR when GW2, Mists of Pandraia, and other MMOs came out.. Guess what? Swtor is still the Second Largest Wester MMO out there.
ESO and Wildstar are both launching as P2P which is going to hurt them. ESO has all the same problems SWTOR had at this point in beta but only far worse.
Hell look at DDO and LotRO both are MMOs that are still going on strong now. MMOs rarely die in this day in age with F2P. The only thing that will kill a MMO is sticking to a P2P model
Besides BioWare's storytelling method, I'd have to say that only the only thing I remember be very enjoyable were warfronts. All were very well designed and enjoyable. Oh, and Chiss, can't understand why it's Twi'leks everyone loves.