At least in WoW you can actually see players of the opposing faction? You can actually set foot at the opposing faction's city and actually play there instead of being hit by God with a mighty DOT!
You give a high praise to TOR comparing it to WoW.
How did FFXI make no sense, and who is "everyone" because the game was pretty damn popular when it came out? Its a little off-topic, but I loved the game, so I'm just curious.
You had a series that up until that point you bought it and was free. There were alot of people at the time including myself who refused to pay monthly for a final fantasy game. I mean Sony was on a f'n roll here....FF7,8,9,10 were just master pieces and then they tried to cash in.
A dev can not simply add the ability to play with other people and now the game is a mmorpg. There is just so much ignorance in TOR when it comes to why it is not a mmorpg it is shocking. In the past 7 years it is obvious they never even attempted to log onto another mmo and even open the Auction house. The testing of the end game was pitiful at best and someone got it in their head that end game was not as big a deal as story.
They did what I expect from a single player RPG dev. They emphasized the ever loving crap out of story and everything else took a back seat.
I question their capabilities with MMO's and that balance that needs to be kept when presenting everything to people. They have strong talents in some areas, but are lacking fundemental design techniques that would've made SWTOR more impressive in general.
I have to give them a negative view only because they missed on the little things and the amount of those quirky little things had significant damage to my satisfaction with SWTOR.
What they are talented in with the story telling and voice over work, the cutscenes are good but people who've really played can name alot of bad things in cutscenes too. Clipping of characters that are speaking (I think its Mandalorian Raiders Flashpoint that has that one Darth Malgus is speaking and camera is focused on the top back of his head cant see anything), there's bad animation when loading into Voidstar warzone (don't press the space bar when the warzone pops and watch the introduction and you'll see).
There's cutscenes are well done overall so the fudgy ones can be ignored by most I guess. We know the pvp and other things; no need to discuss those just thought I bring something else up a little different to justify my vote for the people.
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
I used to love Bioware in the era of Baldurs Gate and I still respected Bioware in KOTRO and DA days. But ever since then Bioware dwindled down on an EA-ization of their games I find unfortunate.
ME2, DA2 already were beyond their peak, games which showed the direction SWTOR would take, towards more simplification, streamlining and less living, breathing worlds. Already in Mass Effect and DA the trend to make quest tunnels was strong. More and more the environment became blander and more limited. Dragon Age 2 was a new low, with the city of Kirwall so devoid of life, of anything that made it feel like a real, living, breathing city and narrowed down on the sheer must-haves of the quests. No superfluous houses were there to enter, barely any citizens, bland textures and unbelievably small quest tunnels. I recall how horrible narrow those DA2 tunnels were. It was so much the very opposity of the vast, living, breathing worlds Bethesda makes!
Bioware always narrowed itself down to the story aspect, and every other aspect was neglected.
In terms of visuals and living breathing world Bioware got worse and worse with each new single player game, and SWTOR is just the ultimate low. Nothing there feels alive. And worst of all is the ambient sound department. Many areas of SWTOR have NO ambient sound at all! It's like a silent museum. Almost no NPC talks, you come to places where war is supposed to be, but mostly it's silent, you come to forests or swamps or anything, and it's all silent.
When I was in Skyrim in the snowny mountains, heck I was freezing in my room! I could hear my steps creaking in the snow, I could see my breath, I could hear a wolf howl, people talk, fish was in the rivers, butterflies in the meadows, I saw wolves hunt some animal, ANYTHING. THAT was a living breathing world, visually and with sound.
SWTOR is a museum. It is silent, it is dead and the very opposity of immersive. And Bioware has lost me as fan. What I hear about ME3 with tons of DLC for cash and collectors edition only content and making a storydriven action game tells me clear I will boycott ME3. Bioware has under EA degenerated into the same "cheap" mass market trash company as every other EA company. It's what EA does to companies, and we knew it all along. SWTOR is a game which represents the new game type of Bioware, a sort of expensive fast food game company. And I see zero insight in their own shortcomings AT ALL. That would at least be a factor to be more generous, when they at least SEE and admit their shortcomings. But no, they defend it and want to make more of the same! Sorry, they just lost their "soul" when they sold themselves to EA.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I think i'm gonna lay off Bioware games for a bit and see what happens. I loved ME1 and ME2, despite ME2 being more action and less rpg. I know it's probably pretty obvious but when devs get picked up by giants like EA and Activision the focus goes from "Let's make the best game possible, to get the most sales." to "Let's get the most sales possible, while churning out the cheapest pos possible."
It's a shame that it has to be this way, but im a firm believer in the free market. If everyone just said MEH and didn't buy these products they might change thier ways. But it seems the younger folks are afraid if they don't support thier brand of franchise that it will dissapear forever. Such as "IF TOR fails then there will never be another star wars mmo".
Personally, I couldn't bring myself to play any further. I only made 45 with my highest character. Its not really a hate it thing, so much as I expected great things from bioware. I know that the warning were out there. Leaked game footage, game footage on SWTOR's site, dev interviews, etc. Bioware assured us their creation was going to be great and it was going to be star wars (every marketing puke says things like that). I understand they were going for a WoWish feel. However, I expected it to be WoWish in terms that it would be the current standard for WoW, in terms of features, performance, story/quests. The voice overs are great, until you've rolled an alt and find you're on the same quests. I found myself tapping the space bar to speed through the chatter. The AI was disappointing... mobs just milling about like zombies. The dungeon / questline with the same bloated boss that takes 3 to 10 minutes of repetative beating with lightsabers (it gets tough to stay awake after an hour of play). Frankly, being a jedi, or a sith didn't feel at all like being a jedi or a sith when it came to combat. I don't have stats to really sight. I've seen a number of guesstimates about server declines, unsubs, boxed sales, etc. But I don't think I'm alone. For me the game just isn't where it needs to be to hold me for a year.
How did FFXI make no sense, and who is "everyone" because the game was pretty damn popular when it came out? Its a little off-topic, but I loved the game, so I'm just curious.
You had a series that up until that point you bought it and was free. There were alot of people at the time including myself who refused to pay monthly for a final fantasy game. I mean Sony was on a f'n roll here....FF7,8,9,10 were just master pieces and then they tried to cash in.
A dev can not simply add the ability to play with other people and now the game is a mmorpg.
1) SquareSoft made Final Fantasy, not Sony.
2) An MMORPG is very different than a single player RPG. If your problem is with the name "Final Fantasy", that just doesn't really make any sense at all.
3) A dev can, and often does, make any changes they want to their franchises. Grand Theft Auto was originally a 2D top-down game. Resident Evil used to be survival horror. Warcraft used to be an RTS.
The game is what the devs make it into. Maybe you should've tried it instead of refusing to play because of the monthly fee. If you tried it and didn't like it, that would be one thing, but otherwise you can't really make an informed judgement.
I will bide my time until ME3 is in my hands. If the game TRULY is miserable then that's that for me.
I'm willing to give a company multiple failures but after a while, that good grace wanes.
Some of the early reviews indicate issues with the game (stuttering, framerate, incorrect audio syncing, etc). If they're present and the game is not fun. Bioware is on my list right next to Cryptic and it'll take something TRULY incredible to get them off that list.
Man I miss the Black Isle Studios Bioware relationship. EA is the devil.
Now anything can be a MMO as long as it is multi player and online. "Hey all we had to do to KOTOR is add raids and battlegrounds and now it is a mmo..lets do Mass Effect now..and next Dragon Age". If you want to see what a extremely watered down industry looks like, then watch what is about to happen.
Everything can be a mmo and if we leave stuff out then who cares we can shit all over our fanbase and fix any mistakes after launch. We are so screwed once the genre shifts to a full f2p model.
If EA/Bioware (or as Im starting to call them BEAWARE) Devs are so arrogant that they are calling themselves "Doctors", then they should be sued for Malpractice and lose their liscense to Develop
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT Playing: Skyrim Following: The Repopulation I want a Virtual World, not just a Game. ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
Now anything can be a MMO as long as it is multi player and online. "Hey all we had to do to KOTOR is add raids and battlegrounds and now it is a mmo..lets do Mass Effect now..and next Dragon Age". If you want to see what a extremely watered down industry looks like, then watch what is about to happen.
Everything can be a mmo and if we leave stuff out then who cares we can shit all over our fanbase and fix any mistakes after launch. We are so screwed once the genre shifts to a full f2p model.
Bioware can make some amazing stories and SWTOR has an amazing story. But they have just proven that its impossible to do an amazing story and have an amazing MMO at the same time. You have to compromise on one or the other and sadly when it came to SWTOR the MMO side of things came at the expense of a great story.
Cause anyone can honestly say that once you have done the story content in SWTOR the MMO side of things is a complete mess. You have PVP that is so limited and such a mess. You have a small handful of BG's and open world pvp (if you want to even call it that) that is such a mess people do nothing more then trade kills to get it done and overwith asap. Raiding in SWTOR is a joke of bugs and repeating the same content hoping for loot so you can repeat the content on a harder mode that really does nothing more then scale up the damage and hp the mobs have with the addition of maybe one or two new abilities to the bosses (and that is not always the case with every boss).
Bioware made a great story and they have shown they can do great single player games and heck even back in the day great co-op games. But they need to pull out of the MMO market as they have shown they don't have the slightest clue whats going on.
I wont say EA did or did not have anything to do with the mess that is SWTOR or what Bioware is pumping out these days. But the Bioware of today is nothing compared to the Bioware of the past.
If EA/Bioware (or as Im starting to call them BEAWARE) Devs are so arrogant that they are calling themselves "Doctors", then they should be sued for Malpractice and lose their liscense to Develop
If EA/Bioware (or as Im starting to call them BEAWARE) Devs are so arrogant that they are calling themselves "Doctors", then they should be sued for Malpractice and lose their liscense to Develop
LOL thats hilarious. Actual medical Doctors creating Video games.
Never knew that.
SWTOR still suck ass though so.......yeah I still think they should be sued for Malpractice
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT Playing: Skyrim Following: The Repopulation I want a Virtual World, not just a Game. ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
I liked them more when guys like Rob Bartel, Jay Watamaniuk, Derek French and the rest of the "Live Team" frequented the forums and were directly involved with the community concerning the products they were working on, especially Neverwinter Nights.
...
Same here. I was a Bioware fan during their Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Night years.
From there, however, the founders of Bioware (commonly known as the doctors and now bigwigs at EA) led Bioware ever more into the shooter/action/console/cinematics/watch-a-slightly-interactive-movie style of gameplay. I believe they had commercial success with that but that gameplay isn't my personal preference thus I didn't play Bioware games any more.
Bioware didn't make a single fantasy title between NWN and Dragon's Age (what was it, for 8 years?) and when I bought Dragon's Age Origins I thought that it showed: they didn't have any competent gameplay designers for those titles any more. Now their competence is about telling a story like in a Hollywood movie, making cutscenes and having virtual romances with NPC henchmen. Well, not exactly my cup of tea. But enough people seem to like these things.
Same here.
And in before someone say about rose-tinted glasses. I actualled re-played BG2 with some mods like 1 year ago and I had a blast. DA2 that I played few months later was just horrid. Swtor that I played beta was bad.
Even praised DA:O was at best medicore (seriously what with that idiotic amount of filler combat there? and auto full health & mana? + many many small things that made this game well not nearly as good as Baldurs).
Bioware can make some amazing stories and SWTOR has an amazing story. But they have just proven that its impossible to do an amazing story and have an amazing MMO at the same time. You have to compromise on one or the other and sadly when it came to SWTOR the MMO side of things came at the expense of a great story.
I am not sure this part is true. Nothing stopped them having a dynamic world, auction UI that made sense, or proper beta testing of the end game. They approached it like a single player and paid for it. I am not saying the population crashed like in FF14, but it took a bit of a dive on the pvp side for sure.
It may not be the game everyone wants, but BW did build the game they said they would. Given the track record for MMO development, I have to give them credit for staying true to the design.
I'm playing SWTOR as a single player game mainly, and grouping for heroics and flashpoints. I do miss the old school MMO's, but even if we had one today, I wouldn't have the time to play it like I used to anyway.
LOL thats hilarious. Actual medical Doctors creating Video games.
Never knew that.
SWTOR still suck ass though so.......yeah I still think they should be sued for Malpractice
No arguements there. Back in the day it was one of those eye-opening moments as a kid. I was like.. holy crap, these doctors wanna be gamers? They make more money that way? I'm going to school for what? Screw this I'll make video games :-)
P.S. Keep in mind this was near the start of the real UPSWING of gaming (well modern gaming).
Originally posted by Puremallace Originally posted by Thomas2006
Bioware can make some amazing stories and SWTOR has an amazing story. But they have just proven that its impossible to do an amazing story and have an amazing MMO at the same time. You have to compromise on one or the other and sadly when it came to SWTOR the MMO side of things came at the expense of a great story.
I am not sure this part is true. Nothing stopped them having a dynamic world, auction UI that made sense, or proper beta testing of the end game. They approached it like a single player and paid for it. I am not saying the population crashed like in FF14, but it took a bit of a dive on the pvp side for sure.
Thats what I am saying when I say the MMO side of it took a back seat for the story side of things. The game is / was a single player RPG with MMO elements tacked onto it. Whatever the reason be why they didnt flush out the MMO side isnt really the point. It could have been (lack of money, time restraints, EA, Talent, ect. We will never know).
SW:TOR hasn't changed my impression of BioWare as much as the release day DLC for Mass Effect 3 has. When I figured out who exactly was making SW:TOR, it was pretty easy to figure out that the game was only going to be a mediocre title. Needless to say, the trifecta of DA2 then SW:TOR and finally release day DLC for Mass Effect 3 has shown that BioWare is in a downward slide.
I do like SWTOR, but I have cancelled my subscription in protest of the day 1 DLC for Mass Effect 3. I think that whole situation (along with the rushed cash grab that was DA2) has done far, FAR more damage to my perception of them as a company than the fact that their first MMO has a few bugs.
Though to be fair, boycotting ME3 is going to hurt a LOT more than not playing SWTOR...
My opinion of Bioware has fallen a huge amount over the last two years not just because of SWTOR with was bad but also over DAO 2 being utter rubbish and the upcoming DLC BS for Mass Effect 3 which is just taking the piss imho. I'll pick up a copy of ME3 second hand at some stage but no way on earth am I going pay a dime to Bioware/EA's coffers.
Comments
Why you keep saying it is a wow - clone?
At least in WoW you can actually see players of the opposing faction? You can actually set foot at the opposing faction's city and actually play there instead of being hit by God with a mighty DOT!
You give a high praise to TOR comparing it to WoW.
You had a series that up until that point you bought it and was free. There were alot of people at the time including myself who refused to pay monthly for a final fantasy game. I mean Sony was on a f'n roll here....FF7,8,9,10 were just master pieces and then they tried to cash in.
A dev can not simply add the ability to play with other people and now the game is a mmorpg. There is just so much ignorance in TOR when it comes to why it is not a mmorpg it is shocking. In the past 7 years it is obvious they never even attempted to log onto another mmo and even open the Auction house. The testing of the end game was pitiful at best and someone got it in their head that end game was not as big a deal as story.
They did what I expect from a single player RPG dev. They emphasized the ever loving crap out of story and everything else took a back seat.
I question their capabilities with MMO's and that balance that needs to be kept when presenting everything to people. They have strong talents in some areas, but are lacking fundemental design techniques that would've made SWTOR more impressive in general.
I have to give them a negative view only because they missed on the little things and the amount of those quirky little things had significant damage to my satisfaction with SWTOR.
What they are talented in with the story telling and voice over work, the cutscenes are good but people who've really played can name alot of bad things in cutscenes too. Clipping of characters that are speaking (I think its Mandalorian Raiders Flashpoint that has that one Darth Malgus is speaking and camera is focused on the top back of his head cant see anything), there's bad animation when loading into Voidstar warzone (don't press the space bar when the warzone pops and watch the introduction and you'll see).
There's cutscenes are well done overall so the fudgy ones can be ignored by most I guess. We know the pvp and other things; no need to discuss those just thought I bring something else up a little different to justify my vote for the people.
PM before you report at least or you could just block.
Oh Bioware... how the mighty have fallen.
I used to love Bioware in the era of Baldurs Gate and I still respected Bioware in KOTRO and DA days. But ever since then Bioware dwindled down on an EA-ization of their games I find unfortunate.
ME2, DA2 already were beyond their peak, games which showed the direction SWTOR would take, towards more simplification, streamlining and less living, breathing worlds. Already in Mass Effect and DA the trend to make quest tunnels was strong. More and more the environment became blander and more limited. Dragon Age 2 was a new low, with the city of Kirwall so devoid of life, of anything that made it feel like a real, living, breathing city and narrowed down on the sheer must-haves of the quests. No superfluous houses were there to enter, barely any citizens, bland textures and unbelievably small quest tunnels. I recall how horrible narrow those DA2 tunnels were. It was so much the very opposity of the vast, living, breathing worlds Bethesda makes!
Bioware always narrowed itself down to the story aspect, and every other aspect was neglected.
In terms of visuals and living breathing world Bioware got worse and worse with each new single player game, and SWTOR is just the ultimate low. Nothing there feels alive. And worst of all is the ambient sound department. Many areas of SWTOR have NO ambient sound at all! It's like a silent museum. Almost no NPC talks, you come to places where war is supposed to be, but mostly it's silent, you come to forests or swamps or anything, and it's all silent.
When I was in Skyrim in the snowny mountains, heck I was freezing in my room! I could hear my steps creaking in the snow, I could see my breath, I could hear a wolf howl, people talk, fish was in the rivers, butterflies in the meadows, I saw wolves hunt some animal, ANYTHING. THAT was a living breathing world, visually and with sound.
SWTOR is a museum. It is silent, it is dead and the very opposity of immersive. And Bioware has lost me as fan. What I hear about ME3 with tons of DLC for cash and collectors edition only content and making a storydriven action game tells me clear I will boycott ME3. Bioware has under EA degenerated into the same "cheap" mass market trash company as every other EA company. It's what EA does to companies, and we knew it all along. SWTOR is a game which represents the new game type of Bioware, a sort of expensive fast food game company. And I see zero insight in their own shortcomings AT ALL. That would at least be a factor to be more generous, when they at least SEE and admit their shortcomings. But no, they defend it and want to make more of the same! Sorry, they just lost their "soul" when they sold themselves to EA.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
ME2 was good... but some things were definitely moving in the wrong direction.
DA2 was really bad.
TOR is the definition of meh.
I think i'm gonna lay off Bioware games for a bit and see what happens. I loved ME1 and ME2, despite ME2 being more action and less rpg. I know it's probably pretty obvious but when devs get picked up by giants like EA and Activision the focus goes from "Let's make the best game possible, to get the most sales." to "Let's get the most sales possible, while churning out the cheapest pos possible."
It's a shame that it has to be this way, but im a firm believer in the free market. If everyone just said MEH and didn't buy these products they might change thier ways. But it seems the younger folks are afraid if they don't support thier brand of franchise that it will dissapear forever. Such as "IF TOR fails then there will never be another star wars mmo".
Personally, I couldn't bring myself to play any further. I only made 45 with my highest character. Its not really a hate it thing, so much as I expected great things from bioware. I know that the warning were out there. Leaked game footage, game footage on SWTOR's site, dev interviews, etc. Bioware assured us their creation was going to be great and it was going to be star wars (every marketing puke says things like that). I understand they were going for a WoWish feel. However, I expected it to be WoWish in terms that it would be the current standard for WoW, in terms of features, performance, story/quests. The voice overs are great, until you've rolled an alt and find you're on the same quests. I found myself tapping the space bar to speed through the chatter. The AI was disappointing... mobs just milling about like zombies. The dungeon / questline with the same bloated boss that takes 3 to 10 minutes of repetative beating with lightsabers (it gets tough to stay awake after an hour of play). Frankly, being a jedi, or a sith didn't feel at all like being a jedi or a sith when it came to combat. I don't have stats to really sight. I've seen a number of guesstimates about server declines, unsubs, boxed sales, etc. But I don't think I'm alone. For me the game just isn't where it needs to be to hold me for a year.
1) SquareSoft made Final Fantasy, not Sony.
2) An MMORPG is very different than a single player RPG. If your problem is with the name "Final Fantasy", that just doesn't really make any sense at all.
3) A dev can, and often does, make any changes they want to their franchises. Grand Theft Auto was originally a 2D top-down game. Resident Evil used to be survival horror. Warcraft used to be an RTS.
The game is what the devs make it into. Maybe you should've tried it instead of refusing to play because of the monthly fee. If you tried it and didn't like it, that would be one thing, but otherwise you can't really make an informed judgement.
(for the record I thought FF8 and 10 sucked)
I will bide my time until ME3 is in my hands. If the game TRULY is miserable then that's that for me.
I'm willing to give a company multiple failures but after a while, that good grace wanes.
Some of the early reviews indicate issues with the game (stuttering, framerate, incorrect audio syncing, etc). If they're present and the game is not fun. Bioware is on my list right next to Cryptic and it'll take something TRULY incredible to get them off that list.
Man I miss the Black Isle Studios Bioware relationship. EA is the devil.
My point further proven
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/02/27/bioware-doctors-discuss-mass-effect-mmo/
Now anything can be a MMO as long as it is multi player and online. "Hey all we had to do to KOTOR is add raids and battlegrounds and now it is a mmo..lets do Mass Effect now..and next Dragon Age". If you want to see what a extremely watered down industry looks like, then watch what is about to happen.
Everything can be a mmo and if we leave stuff out then who cares we can shit all over our fanbase and fix any mistakes after launch. We are so screwed once the genre shifts to a full f2p model.
If EA/Bioware (or as Im starting to call them BEAWARE) Devs are so arrogant that they are calling themselves "Doctors", then they should be sued for Malpractice and lose their liscense to Develop
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
Bioware can make some amazing stories and SWTOR has an amazing story. But they have just proven that its impossible to do an amazing story and have an amazing MMO at the same time. You have to compromise on one or the other and sadly when it came to SWTOR the MMO side of things came at the expense of a great story.
Cause anyone can honestly say that once you have done the story content in SWTOR the MMO side of things is a complete mess. You have PVP that is so limited and such a mess. You have a small handful of BG's and open world pvp (if you want to even call it that) that is such a mess people do nothing more then trade kills to get it done and overwith asap. Raiding in SWTOR is a joke of bugs and repeating the same content hoping for loot so you can repeat the content on a harder mode that really does nothing more then scale up the damage and hp the mobs have with the addition of maybe one or two new abilities to the bosses (and that is not always the case with every boss).
Bioware made a great story and they have shown they can do great single player games and heck even back in the day great co-op games. But they need to pull out of the MMO market as they have shown they don't have the slightest clue whats going on.
I wont say EA did or did not have anything to do with the mess that is SWTOR or what Bioware is pumping out these days. But the Bioware of today is nothing compared to the Bioware of the past.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioWare
Dippity doo they are doctors. Educate yourself.
I think they're a bit arrogant.
They also never seem to be able to take criticism and seem to blame the players most of the time.
LOL thats hilarious. Actual medical Doctors creating Video games.
Never knew that.
SWTOR still suck ass though so.......yeah I still think they should be sued for Malpractice
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
Same here.
And in before someone say about rose-tinted glasses. I actualled re-played BG2 with some mods like 1 year ago and I had a blast. DA2 that I played few months later was just horrid. Swtor that I played beta was bad.
Even praised DA:O was at best medicore (seriously what with that idiotic amount of filler combat there? and auto full health & mana? + many many small things that made this game well not nearly as good as Baldurs).
I am not sure this part is true. Nothing stopped them having a dynamic world, auction UI that made sense, or proper beta testing of the end game. They approached it like a single player and paid for it. I am not saying the population crashed like in FF14, but it took a bit of a dive on the pvp side for sure.
It may not be the game everyone wants, but BW did build the game they said they would. Given the track record for MMO development, I have to give them credit for staying true to the design.
I'm playing SWTOR as a single player game mainly, and grouping for heroics and flashpoints. I do miss the old school MMO's, but even if we had one today, I wouldn't have the time to play it like I used to anyway.
No arguements there. Back in the day it was one of those eye-opening moments as a kid. I was like.. holy crap, these doctors wanna be gamers? They make more money that way? I'm going to school for what? Screw this I'll make video games :-)
P.S. Keep in mind this was near the start of the real UPSWING of gaming (well modern gaming).
Thats what I am saying when I say the MMO side of it took a back seat for the story side of things. The game is / was a single player RPG with MMO elements tacked onto it. Whatever the reason be why they didnt flush out the MMO side isnt really the point. It could have been (lack of money, time restraints, EA, Talent, ect. We will never know).
SW:TOR hasn't changed my impression of BioWare as much as the release day DLC for Mass Effect 3 has. When I figured out who exactly was making SW:TOR, it was pretty easy to figure out that the game was only going to be a mediocre title. Needless to say, the trifecta of DA2 then SW:TOR and finally release day DLC for Mass Effect 3 has shown that BioWare is in a downward slide.
I do like SWTOR, but I have cancelled my subscription in protest of the day 1 DLC for Mass Effect 3. I think that whole situation (along with the rushed cash grab that was DA2) has done far, FAR more damage to my perception of them as a company than the fact that their first MMO has a few bugs.
Though to be fair, boycotting ME3 is going to hurt a LOT more than not playing SWTOR...
I never really liked them to begin with...
In the end, the game is okay. Pretty much how I have felt about every MMORPG since WoW ruined the genre...
My opinion of Bioware has fallen a huge amount over the last two years not just because of SWTOR with was bad but also over DAO 2 being utter rubbish and the upcoming DLC BS for Mass Effect 3 which is just taking the piss imho. I'll pick up a copy of ME3 second hand at some stage but no way on earth am I going pay a dime to Bioware/EA's coffers.