I think there is something people failed to see (and sometimes I wonder if some posters actually read the OP):
I love Star Wars
I love Stories and RP (I am a pen & paper role player)
I love KOTOR I
I am used to and appreciate theme park gameplay a-la WOW
I used to be a hard-core end-game gamer but prefer my game casual and slow nowadays (I didn't make it to 50 in *2* months because I took my time and tested a lot of the content)
Now, honestly, if I'm not the perfect target for this game, who is?
I never asked for SWTOR to be something else than what it is, I just expected it to be good at what it is (especially with the rumored budget). I'm not in some kind of crusade to bankrupt Bioware or anything. I just would like them to acknowledge when they didn't perform well on their core features (and I consider a stable engine to be a core feature) so that the game can move forward.
However, I sure as hell won't keep paying a subscription in hope they come back to their senses. I think a lot of people underestimate the sheer denial Bioware is in right now.
It's been my impression as of late that you're only allowed to voice your opinion if you're a sycophantic suck-up fan of the game, the developer, and the Star Wars franchise.
In the beginning, I started out defending the game AND Bioware, thinking; "The game just released, they need time to get settled in and they'll start addressing the issues people come up with as soon as they start identifying them."
But after seeing more issues arise after each patch, I'm astounded that they would even dare to claim that they had implemented any "fixes" except a few of the most minor ones.
As game-breaking as some issue have been even after the most recent patches, my evaluation of the game is that it's still in beta stage, and should not have been released.
I never expected my opinion of Bioware to fall so drastically, I have admired and respected everything else they have done, but this just seems to be far below the standards they have established for themselves in other projects.
Thing is with the whole "it's a new game" argument is that LOTRO, rushed out the door six months early because Turbine was in dire financial straights with the failure of DDO, had more end-game content. They had one-tenth the budget of SWTOR and built a better game.
So when people made that argument... I used to get so ticked-off because it was bull. For $250 million they could have done a lot more with the UI, the guild functions, the crafting, the textures, the raids, the AI, clever quests requiring puzzles to solve (yes there are MMOs that have those), enlivening the environment with weather, back-ground NPCs and creatures (bugs, birds, bats, whatever), day-night cycles, rivers and ocean you could swim in, not wade across, fixing all the DX bugs, all the other world things they ignored...
Instead they chose the most insignificant part of MMO game-play to address -- fully voicing and animating a bunch of 'go kill 10 rats' quests.
And left the rest of the world sterile and the community/economic/crafting things broken...
And, for the record, they've been doing this second-rate thing for a while. DA2 is obvious as a cash in... But if you look critically at their AAA CRPGs... They finish between 18 and 36 hours, they have little replay value, they're padded with a LOT of running-back-and-forth or in circles. And they do this because they have to cut corners on story depth and level design because they spend too much on voice-acting and cut-scene animation...
I don't even buy their games until they go used or bargain bin anymore. I'm not interested in a game where 40-hours of game-play means 20+ hours of needless running, 5 hours of boring speeches and 15 hours of CRPG-on-a-rail...
Comments
I think there is something people failed to see (and sometimes I wonder if some posters actually read the OP):
I love Star Wars
I love Stories and RP (I am a pen & paper role player)
I love KOTOR I
I am used to and appreciate theme park gameplay a-la WOW
I used to be a hard-core end-game gamer but prefer my game casual and slow nowadays (I didn't make it to 50 in *2* months because I took my time and tested a lot of the content)
Now, honestly, if I'm not the perfect target for this game, who is?
I never asked for SWTOR to be something else than what it is, I just expected it to be good at what it is (especially with the rumored budget). I'm not in some kind of crusade to bankrupt Bioware or anything. I just would like them to acknowledge when they didn't perform well on their core features (and I consider a stable engine to be a core feature) so that the game can move forward.
However, I sure as hell won't keep paying a subscription in hope they come back to their senses. I think a lot of people underestimate the sheer denial Bioware is in right now.
I Just had a vision if Mmorpg.com had music in each post,i think the most appropriate would be Queen Another one bites the dust !!
Thing is with the whole "it's a new game" argument is that LOTRO, rushed out the door six months early because Turbine was in dire financial straights with the failure of DDO, had more end-game content. They had one-tenth the budget of SWTOR and built a better game.
So when people made that argument... I used to get so ticked-off because it was bull. For $250 million they could have done a lot more with the UI, the guild functions, the crafting, the textures, the raids, the AI, clever quests requiring puzzles to solve (yes there are MMOs that have those), enlivening the environment with weather, back-ground NPCs and creatures (bugs, birds, bats, whatever), day-night cycles, rivers and ocean you could swim in, not wade across, fixing all the DX bugs, all the other world things they ignored...
Instead they chose the most insignificant part of MMO game-play to address -- fully voicing and animating a bunch of 'go kill 10 rats' quests.
And left the rest of the world sterile and the community/economic/crafting things broken...
And, for the record, they've been doing this second-rate thing for a while. DA2 is obvious as a cash in... But if you look critically at their AAA CRPGs... They finish between 18 and 36 hours, they have little replay value, they're padded with a LOT of running-back-and-forth or in circles. And they do this because they have to cut corners on story depth and level design because they spend too much on voice-acting and cut-scene animation...
I don't even buy their games until they go used or bargain bin anymore. I'm not interested in a game where 40-hours of game-play means 20+ hours of needless running, 5 hours of boring speeches and 15 hours of CRPG-on-a-rail...
And I used to be such a fanboy...