If they let you use three companions at once you could play an offline single player mode. The only thing you would be missing are raids.
Same for warlock with pets in WoW? "If WoW let the warlock have 3 tanking/dps pets then you could play an offline single player mode. The only thing you would be missing are the raids." Well, you wouldn't get the auction house, the pvp battlegrounds, ranked matches, other players buffs, guild buffs, general chat (nvm that's a good thing). Oh look, the same thing for SWTOR too! Isn't that interesting. Never saw that coming! This SWTOR must think it's an MMO or something.
Oh it's an MMO alright, a single player MMO.
Yet no one has been able to clearly explain what about SWTOR is different from the majority of other around 20 MMOs I've played that gives it this oh so unicorn-like quality of "single-player-MMO-ness." Will you be the first? /blinkblink
The fact that it is more rewarding to solo, and the entire game is oriented around you solo questing through instances with cutscenes? The world is an afterthought, there isn't even a day and night cycle. All the content is geared towards the singleplayer storyline. That's why its a singleplayer game with optional coop features. Nothing about it is massive.
It's just an extreme of a trend thats existed for a while. I'd say WoW, right now, is barely an MMO. Same for LotRO, AoC, and TSW...
Originally posted by rdrakken
Originally posted by Normike
Yet no one has been able to clearly explain what about SWTOR is different from the majority of other around 20 MMOs I've played that gives it this oh so unicorn-like quality of "single-player-MMO-ness." Will you be the first? /blinkblink
Oh hear we go. "clearly" define.
What is clear to one person is a muddled mess to another. What is fully explained by one person, goes far over the head of another because of a complete refusal to see beyond their closed eyes.
So, to play your game...no one has been able to clearly explain what about SWTOR makes it an MMO like the majority of the over 20 other MMOs I've played. Will you be the first? /blinkblink
It has already been stated that just being online and played by many players does not make it an MMO, Quake and Unreal tournament were also online capable and played by millions. Just having a persistant world does not make it an MMO, Dayz mod...Mount and Blades persistant world mod does not make it an MMO. Oblivions multiplayer mod does not make it an MMO. The currently alpha Skyrim multiplayer mod does not make it an MMO.
The argument about GW1 being an MMO or not went on for YEARS because of the fact it only had a hub with everything else instanced and extremely solo friendly leveling...SWTOR deserves this argument more so than any other game recently released.
Bioware stated it themselves, they are making a HYBRID and want to change what people think of when it comes to MMOs. Well, they did just that...and most people DONT LIKE IT AND REFUSE TO REDEFINE THE GENRE TO INCLUDE THIS STEAMING PILE OF BANTHA POODO.
Originally posted by Loke666
No, TOR is not a singleplayer game but it ain´t really massive either.
It is about as massive as DDO and GW, not very much. The problem is that most people that pay monthly fees want their games to be massive. TOR should either have released as B2P or focused more on making the game feel a little more like a MMO.
As I see it is TOR a good game, but it ain´t worth the monthly fee, just like DDO wasn't worth the monthly fee.
Again, the point was missed. It's like dancing around the question. What about SWTOR is different from: Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call, Champion's Online, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dark Age of Camelot, DC Universe Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, EVE Online, Everquest, Jumpgate: Evolution, Lineage, Lord of the Rings Online, Matrix Online, Rift, Star Trek Online, The Secret World, Shadowbane, Tera, Ultima Online, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, WoW.
How can you ignore other MMOs at the same time trying to call SWTOR a "single player focused" game. It doesn't put any more focus on "single player only" functions than any of those other MMOs I've played. SWTOR gives better gear, xp, buffs, and other perks for playing in a group. So the game is obviously encouraging you to play in a group, it's just not forcing you to if you don't want to. So there goes that myth. The content is geared towards story, not "single player storyline". You can play any story with a group and in fact get some perks if you do. The game looked massive enough to me in comparison to the above listed MMOs I've played. So there goes that myth too.
Again, listing Quake, Dayz, Diablo3, GW1 in comparison to SWTOR is a straw man argument. You could compare those games to any MMO and come up with reasons. By that reasoning Everquest, Star Trek Online, DC Universe Online, Asheron's Call aren't MMOs. Actually you could argue the whole list doesn't contain a "real" MMO. Can someone compare SWTOR to the majority of MMOs in the list above me and explain clearly why it's not MMO enough? Compare SWTOR to the majority of MMOs in the list, not to other games that aren't MMOs. If you're going attack this game for something, then you should look at the whole MMO genre. Because otherwise you look a little bonkers.
SWTOR not massive? I've seen more players at an open world boss fight than I have in EQ, City of Heroes, DCUO, and close to Rift. The zones are about the same size as in most of those MMOs listed above, and there are a lot of zones. It has around the same amount of instances and dungeons as most of the MMOs above as well. So there goes another myth.
Why are we jumping on the bandwagon in calling SWTOR a "single-player focused" experience without being able to explain it in comparison to most of the other MMOs in the MMO genre. I'll be here if someone can though.
If they let you use three companions at once you could play an offline single player mode. The only thing you would be missing are raids.
Same for warlock with pets in WoW? "If WoW let the warlock have 3 tanking/dps pets then you could play an offline single player mode. The only thing you would be missing are the raids." Well, you wouldn't get the auction house, the pvp battlegrounds, ranked matches, other players buffs, guild buffs, general chat (nvm that's a good thing). Oh look, the same thing for SWTOR too! Isn't that interesting. Never saw that coming! This SWTOR must think it's an MMO or something.
Oh it's an MMO alright, a single player MMO.
Yet no one has been able to clearly explain what about SWTOR is different from the majority of other around 20 MMOs I've played that gives it this oh so unicorn-like quality of "single-player-MMO-ness." Will you be the first? /blinkblink
The fact that it is more rewarding to solo, and the entire game is oriented around you solo questing through instances with cutscenes? The world is an afterthought, there isn't even a day and night cycle. All the content is geared towards the singleplayer storyline. That's why its a singleplayer game with optional coop features. Nothing about it is massive.
It's just an extreme of a trend thats existed for a while. I'd say WoW, right now, is barely an MMO. Same for LotRO, AoC, and TSW...
Originally posted by rdrakken
Originally posted by Normike
Yet no one has been able to clearly explain what about SWTOR is different from the majority of other around 20 MMOs I've played that gives it this oh so unicorn-like quality of "single-player-MMO-ness." Will you be the first? /blinkblink
Oh hear we go. "clearly" define.
What is clear to one person is a muddled mess to another. What is fully explained by one person, goes far over the head of another because of a complete refusal to see beyond their closed eyes.
So, to play your game...no one has been able to clearly explain what about SWTOR makes it an MMO like the majority of the over 20 other MMOs I've played. Will you be the first? /blinkblink
It has already been stated that just being online and played by many players does not make it an MMO, Quake and Unreal tournament were also online capable and played by millions. Just having a persistant world does not make it an MMO, Dayz mod...Mount and Blades persistant world mod does not make it an MMO. Oblivions multiplayer mod does not make it an MMO. The currently alpha Skyrim multiplayer mod does not make it an MMO.
The argument about GW1 being an MMO or not went on for YEARS because of the fact it only had a hub with everything else instanced and extremely solo friendly leveling...SWTOR deserves this argument more so than any other game recently released.
Bioware stated it themselves, they are making a HYBRID and want to change what people think of when it comes to MMOs. Well, they did just that...and most people DONT LIKE IT AND REFUSE TO REDEFINE THE GENRE TO INCLUDE THIS STEAMING PILE OF BANTHA POODO.
Originally posted by Loke666
No, TOR is not a singleplayer game but it ain´t really massive either.
It is about as massive as DDO and GW, not very much. The problem is that most people that pay monthly fees want their games to be massive. TOR should either have released as B2P or focused more on making the game feel a little more like a MMO.
As I see it is TOR a good game, but it ain´t worth the monthly fee, just like DDO wasn't worth the monthly fee.
Again, the point was missed. It's like dancing around the question. What about SWTOR is different from: Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call, Champion's Online, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dark Age of Camelot, DC Universe Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, EVE Online, Everquest, Jumpgate: Evolution, Lineage, Lord of the Rings Online, Matrix Online, Rift, Star Trek Online, The Secret World, Shadowbane, Tera, Ultima Online, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, WoW.
How can you ignore other MMOs at the same time trying to call SWTOR a "single player focused" game. It doesn't put any more focus on "single player only" functions than any of those other MMOs I've played. SWTOR gives better gear, xp, buffs, and other perks for playing in a group. So the game is obviously encouraging you to play in a group, it's just not forcing you to if you don't want to. So there goes that myth. The content is geared towards story, not "single player storyline". You can play any story with a group and in fact get some perks if you do. The game looked massive enough to me in comparison to the above listed MMOs I've played. So there goes that myth too.
Again, listing Quake, Dayz, Diablo3, GW1 in comparison to SWTOR is a straw man argument. You could compare those games to any MMO and come up with reasons. By that reasoning Everquest, Star Trek Online, DC Universe Online, Asheron's Call aren't MMOs. Actually you could argue the whole list doesn't contain a "real" MMO. Can someone compare SWTOR to the majority of MMOs in the list above me and explain clearly why it's not MMO enough? Compare SWTOR to the majority of MMOs in the list, not to other games that aren't MMOs. If you're going attack this game for something, then you should look at the whole MMO genre. Because otherwise you look a little bonkers.
SWTOR not massive? I've seen more players at an open world boss fight than I have in EQ, City of Heroes, DCUO, and close to Rift. The zones are about the same size as in most of those MMOs listed above, and there are a lot of zones. It has around the same amount of instances and dungeons as most of the MMOs above as well. So there goes another myth.
Why are we jumping on the bandwagon in calling SWTOR a "single-player focused" experience without being able to explain it in comparison to most of the other MMOs in the MMO genre. I'll be here if someone can though.
Be still my friend, it's over.
The zones might be the same size, but the advantage other games have on this is that they are seemlessly connected (no loading screens). Tatooine was a sham because not only is it a several minute wait from your spaceship, but it also is riddled with invisible walls and "exhaustion" areas (places like Fatigue in WoW .. or places you die if you stay too long).
SWTOR is not a good example of a huge world (or even universe!) .. it's a rat maze and you are only allowed to go to certain places, and if you try to go outside those places, you get an electrical ZAP.
Still think SWTOR has huge zones? I don't think it does either.
On your rant about it not being a single player game .. LOL! Makes me wonder if you ever even played this game. Speak to me if you have, I'll cut down other arguments you have.
So I was just playing the free trial thing. I just ran the Esseles with 4 players. The only words that were typed in chat the whole time were a message typed in the wrong channel saying "i'm in a flashpoint atm" This game is probably pretty multiplayer if you drag three real life friends along with you though.
"I will not play it nor any other MMO until they make it possible to obtain the best gear without forcing people to group up to do so." SwampRob
The zones might be the same size, but the advantage other games have on this is that they are seemlessly connected (no loading screens). Tatooine was a sham because not only is it a several minute wait from your spaceship, but it also is riddled with invisible walls and "exhaustion" areas (places like Fatigue in WoW .. or places you die if you stay too long).
SWTOR is not a good example of a huge world (or even universe!) .. it's a rat maze and you are only allowed to go to certain places, and if you try to go outside those places, you get an electrical ZAP.
Still think SWTOR has huge zones? I don't think it does either.
On your rant about it not being a single player game .. LOL! Makes me wonder if you ever even played this game. Speak to me if you have, I'll cut down other arguments you have.
I'm not here to change anyone's mind at random. But someone trying to tell me something that doesn't make sense is a little irritating lol.
The zones are large. Some have barriers that push you back if you go too far, which all MMOs have. Some of SWTORs zones have streets, tunnels, hallways. Similar to some of City of Heroes zones, City of Villains zones, The Secret World zones, Star Trek Online zones, Champion's Online zones, Matrix Online zones, etc. Some of the planets with open zones that I loved in SWTOR were: Alderaan, Hutta, Tython, Tatooine, Quesh, Dromund Kaas, and Voss. Alderaan actually was fun to head off in one direction and see how far you could go. I spent hours just exlploring Alderaan and just looking at the scenery.
Planets that had rat mazes were Nar Shaddaa, Taris (some zones), and a couple more. When I was on Nar Shaddaa I couldn't wait to finish questing and get the hell out. It zones were too flat, and looked to similar. It didn't have the same feeling of a deep complex criminal city that was vertically stacked with many different levels of a city like it was in Kotor 2. Nope, didn't like Nar Shaddaa.
But there were plenty of planets with large open zones I loved. So I don't really get the reasoning behind the complaint. Even when I played GW2 (which I also love) there are some zones where I'm run up against a big hill and I go "Oh, let me go a little more west to go around it." Still running into the hill, no way to climb it. So I figure it must be a zone boundary. I turn around and go east, keep bumping up against this hill that cannot be crossed. Then I think "Damn, let me just try to find this zoning portal to get to the next zone." And eventually if I continue running along the hill long enough I find this shiny shimmering round zoning portal. The process is similar with most MMOs. Also when I think about SWTOR's and GW2's zones there isn't really a massive difference in size between them, or most of the other MMOs in my list. Also, I gave a list of the planets with wide open zones.
The "single player MMO" is really just a petty insult. However I do understand where it's comming from since what Bioware did was to force an MMO down into the mold of their other games like Mass Effect and such.
The zones might be the same size, but the advantage other games have on this is that they are seemlessly connected (no loading screens). Tatooine was a sham because not only is it a several minute wait from your spaceship, but it also is riddled with invisible walls and "exhaustion" areas (places like Fatigue in WoW .. or places you die if you stay too long).
SWTOR is not a good example of a huge world (or even universe!) .. it's a rat maze and you are only allowed to go to certain places, and if you try to go outside those places, you get an electrical ZAP.
Still think SWTOR has huge zones? I don't think it does either.
On your rant about it not being a single player game .. LOL! Makes me wonder if you ever even played this game. Speak to me if you have, I'll cut down other arguments you have.
I'm not here to change anyone's mind at random. But someone trying to tell me something that doesn't make sense is a little irritating lol.
Nothing I said didn't make sense did it? Provide examples.
The zones are large. Some have barriers that push you back if you go too far, which all MMOs have.
No, they do not all have push backs. They might if you got to extremes and force a "push back", but a quality game has believable boundaries, like water. Pre-flight WoW had boundaries, but to see them you needed to pull out all the guns, water walk, speed, Warlock soulstone resurrection, die and take more potions then keep running, etc .. just as examples.
Some of SWTORs zones have streets, tunnels, hallways. Similar to some of City of Heroes zones, City of Villains zones, The Secret World zones, Star Trek Online zones, Champion's Online zones, Matrix Online zones, etc. Some of the planets with open zones that I loved in SWTOR were: Alderaan, Hutta, Tython, Tatooine, Quesh, Dromund Kaas, and Voss. Alderaan actually was fun to head off in one direction and see how far you could go. I spent hours just exlploring Alderaan and just looking at the scenery.
Yes those places in SWTOR were nice, but they were still rat mazes, guided by level restrictions and quest availability (and your own personal level).
Planets that had rat mazes were Nar Shaddaa, Taris (some zones), and a couple more. When I was on Nar Shaddaa I couldn't wait to finish questing and get the hell out. It zones were too flat, and looked to similar. It didn't have the same feeling of a deep complex criminal city that was vertically stacked with many different levels of a city like it was in Kotor 2. Nope, didn't like Nar Shaddaa.
/agree .. a major highway / road is what you traveled on, and it only went to certain locations.... it didnt even branch off to other roads near it .. rather it made you go ALL the way around. Yippee! (but you can't do that because the map doesn't connect, duh! .. lol)
But there were plenty of planets with large open zones I loved.
Well the "large open zones" ones were pretty much Alderan and Tatooine .. were there more?
So I don't really get the reasoning behind the complaint. Even when I played GW2
OK stop there. You are trying to equate my dislike for SWTOR with some likeness for GW2? No. I don't like GW2, and the graphics are not what I expect in a quality game .. the gameplay feels clunky.
(which I also love) there are some zones where I'm run up against a big hill and I go "Oh, let me go a little more west to go around it." Still running into the hill, no way to climb it. So I figure it must be a zone boundary. I turn around and go east, keep bumping up against this hill that cannot be crossed. Then I think "Damn, let me just try to find this zoning portal to get to the next zone." And eventually if I continue running along the hill long enough I find this shiny shimmering round zoning portal. The process is similar with most MMOs.
No, It is not.
Also when I think about SWTOR's and GW2's zones there isn't really a massive difference in size between them, or most of the other MMOs in my list. Also, I gave a list of the planets with wide open zones.
SWTOR has no wide open zones. Every zone is riddled with invisible walls, and boundaries. Areas in the middle of the "wide open zone" are off-limits ... this is not a wide-open zone. I know the flaws because I spent many hours bored and circumvented the barriers to see what was beyond what I couldn't see .. and I fell a couple miles to my death. Open world? ummm no.
The story telling aspect of the game make it single player. Wow are just quests that have anything to do with you. Even if you can make it to L80 alone.
Sure in swtor you can play some instances with a group of players, but so what? The conclusion of those doesn't put your group the focus of the story. You all goes on your own ways after without anything to add to the big picture.
The fact of the matter is this: Gamers who want to play with each other will simply do so. It doesn’t matter if the game is a sandbox game or a themepark game. It doesn’t matter if you can solo to level cap or not. The beauty is that we now have options to experience these games how we want. Could MMOs use more group centric content to give those so inclined more challenges to tackle? Maybe. But complaints that an MMO that clearly has group content (whether it has enough of it is subjective) is a singleplayer game because it doesn’t explicitly force you to play with others is just ridiculous.
I disagree. Lotro had a quest system that usually ended up with you needing to group with parts of it. Finding the group wasn't usually to difficult (in popular areas) but once the quest was done, poof, no more group. Often times people didn't ask about other quests or even say goodbye. People take the path of least resistance. In Tor, this meant skipping the heroic areas and flashpoints then going to the next planet. I'm all for letting people solo to max level, but I think advantages to grouping should be substantial either from safety, loot or lack of downtime.
Why are we jumping on the bandwagon in calling SWTOR a "single-player focused" experience without being able to explain it in comparison to most of the other MMOs in the MMO genre. I'll be here if someone can though.
MMO Waltzing!
If it's new It's not old school enough
If it's new It's not innovative enough
If it's too grindy you can't level fast enough
If it's forced grouping it's not independant enough
"SWTOR not massive? I've seen more players at an open world boss fight than I have in EQ, City of Heroes, DCUO, and close to Rift. The zones are about the same size as in most of those MMOs listed above, and there are a lot of zones. It has around the same amount of instances and dungeons as most of the MMOs above as well. So there goes another myth"
Well let's do a comparison. SWG had more land are on one of it's planets than SWTOR has in all it's zones. That good enough of a comparison for you, since SWG had many planets? You could fit 10 SWTOR's on AC1's main continent. I could go on and on. There is no sense of exploration in SWTOR at all, it just a tiny MMO. There was nothing massive about it at all. Just like it's space combat, everything felt like it was on rails.
No real need to group, the quest line is entirely solo oriented. Sure you can do some group oriented things, but strictly optional.
"SWTOR not massive? I've seen more players at an open world boss fight than I have in EQ, City of Heroes, DCUO, and close to Rift. The zones are about the same size as in most of those MMOs listed above, and there are a lot of zones. It has around the same amount of instances and dungeons as most of the MMOs above as well. So there goes another myth"
Well let's do a comparison. SWG had more land are on one of it's planets than SWTOR has in all it's zones. That good enough of a comparison for you, since SWG had many planets? You could fit 10 SWTOR's on AC1's main continent. I could go on and on. There is no sense of exploration in SWTOR at all, it just a tiny MMO. There was nothing massive about it at all. Just like it's space combat, everything felt like it was on rails.
No real need to group, the quest line is entirely solo oriented. Sure you can do some group oriented things, but strictly optional.
Yes you are right SWTOR lacks depth, but it still doesn't mean its anything less than an MMO. Though, you said it there yourself. And some have cleaverly pointed out listing many other MMOs that are just as solo friendly.
How I heard and have always taken this critizim has been
"If SwTOR online had been a single player MMO it would be a homerun. A huge success."
As an mmo it carries to little of what anyone wants to do.
The PVE content on release for max levels was basicly unplayable. (high end raids nightmares etc.)
There was no queing as a full group for pvp and there was no rated battle grounds. (these are basics to any game there is no excuse for this)
Leveling as a group is basicly unheard of in my circle of friends and in any competative circles I have never heard of anyone doing this anyways and this seems to be your chief reason why people are saying it is a solo mmo rpg. Which leads me to believe you have no idea what you are talking about.
//Your logic about when something is said also does not make it less true. Take philosophy pythagoris made an assumtion that all things were basicly water. not having evidence does not make something less true it just allows people to see the evidence. If this criticizim came about orignial because people knew that bio makes great solo rpgs and took it to the next level does not change the fact if it is true or not.//
//tl:dr inductive and deductive reasoning.
For super casuals that love star wars this is a good game.
If you cant write your opionion unbaisedly then you probably should look for another job or hopefully you were forced to write this propoganda.
MikeB, what you are failing to understand in the "it's a singleplayer game" comment is; the story driven cut scenes and radial choice menu make it seem like biowares single player games. Couple all that into another fact, that you can solo the entire game to max level makes it more or less a pay to play single player game. The mmo elements in the game are cloned right out of blizzards play book, even the classes can be broken down into wows classes. Pvp is a stripped down version of wows. Open world pvp non exsistent.
What swtor needed to be, was a mix of swg and wow. Not a mix of dragon age and wow. Why it needed to be more like swg was because gamers want a complex and diverse virtual world to live in. They don't want to be dictated to how they play the game. They want freedoms and complex mechanics revolving around crafting and economy. The next thing swtor screwed up was the social aspect of the game.. There is none.. In fact, every mmo launched since swg has none.. and its a big reason why these games are failing. Failing, as in, retention of box sales as subs. . Thats the proper definition of a failing mmo. Yes even wow is failing. It was inevitable, it just lasted the longest with the most subs and Ill get to why that is shortly.
What ruined this game and this entire mmo genre, in my opinion, is blizzard and world of warcraft. It indirectly ruined it because of falsified sub numbers being reported on, which gave an illusion of success to on-looking developers and companies. The only success WoW attained was the proven fact that they used a technique called Audio Visual Entrainment to get gamers addicted to that game.. No other gaming company has ever done this... It explains to me, and those familar with AVE, how wow became as successful as it did. Couple this fact with the games ability to run on 500 mhz cpus, a lack of mmo's at its launch, and you have a very broad user base already playing sc2 and diablo/warcraft, just waiting for the mmo.. There was litterally 9 million gamers waiting for blizzards mmo. They retained 4-5 million subs, not 10 million.
The game blizzard made was not that good. In fact, to the 15% of the people in this world who can't be hypnotized or brainwashed, who tried this game, we thought it downright sucked. It was boring and slow and lacked any kind of complexity that would intrigue a normal human being into playing it. But it got a lot of people addicted through AVE.
I seriously wish people would wake up and understand the history of mmo's starting from UO/eq... This mmo genre is heading for a complete collapse and its coming fast with this new model of buy the box, free to play but get raped in the cash shop on items and things you would normally earn in game by playing it... What is the sense of playing then if I can spend money and get the things I would normally have unlocked or attained through the course of playing the game? Whats the point? The only people who like it are unemployed living in moms basement who can only scrounge up enough scratch to buy the boxed game and have 18 hours a day to play it.. Ya we should listen to those people when making games, they got their lifes in order.. It will be those people who will be the vocal majority in support of such free to play mmo models, and it will be those same people who cause the mmo genre to collapse in on itself, and in effect create a whole new free to play genre that will completely suck the fun right out of gaming. Maybe I'm getting to old to play these games..
I disagree with the authors assumption that people just decided bioware was going to produce a single player game from concept, and that misconception continued after launch.
I was an avid TOR forum poster from its inception, and what bioware released as far as news, made the single player concepts.
No guild bank=single player, rail space combat=single player, the most limited guild functions any trip A mmo has ever launched with=single player, no adaptive gear from heroics, so I started just skipping them=solo player, on a pvp server"black vulkars, I ran into three opposite factions in the world, so there was no real threat=solo player, open world pvp was trash, no reason to do that=solo player, no swoop racing or pazaak(mini games), which bioware f$$$$ing invented!!!!=solo player, very limited crafting experience=solo player.
Every time bioware announced something on their website, 50% of the time it left you thinking the same thing, this sounds very solo oriented. Two raids at launce, meant my guild was on lockout timers all the time, I know its good compared to mmo'es launched in the last ten years, but it doesn't feed the current gamers enough. I was fully geared after two weeks of running hm operations, so there was never a reason to want to do them anymore(no decorations, or crap loot for showing off) just more level 3 speeders! Nightmare was easier than I expected, I figured it was something we would be working on for awhile, but it wasn't. And it offered nothing, new as far as gear, or anything.
You know, as a casual player, I thought this wouldn't matter, but I honestly felt like I beat the game, and theres nothing to do that isn't repetitive trash. I never really could explore those linear bread crumbed planets, the most interesting things where the codex entries that told you about something cool, but you couldn't actually do it(like the trench on tatooine, the codex tells you how no ones ever returned from it, but you can't go down there? The codex sounds more exciting than the planets where lol. Maybe if they would have mixed zones on planets for different levels, making them hard to navigate without running into some elite monster or npc here and there, maybe I would have grouped. Starwars has massive environments, getting lost in the deserts of tatooine or the whiteouts of hoth, the massive bustling city planets with shady back alleys, the massive trees of kashykk giving the planet many different layers. TOR's planets offer none of this. Theres walls everywhere. You don't discover a shady ally on corascant full of danger, you go to a map called shady alley and walk a limited patch with no real danger, or anything to explore.
I realize the game doesn't ever force you to group, and alot like that, but for somereason once I hit that, I really missed meeting random people trying to conquer a real challenge. TOR has as much depth as call of duty. Just my opinion, I really hoped for more, maybe not a swg, but I did hope it would feel like a massive galaxy full of danger, and not just a game with 20 maps to play through than your done.
Is that why so many players have stayed on to continue the lasting friendships forged with their guildies in the process of levelling and then partaking in all the group activities that abounded at launch? You know, all the multiplayer content that was super-fun to do with your new friends, reinforcing your bonds with them.
No you say? People finished their individual stories and then unsubbed. Do you mean the stories where all the plot-advancing parts took place in instances in which no one else could even enter? The individual stories which Bioware sold as the most important new thing in mmo gaming and built their game around?
This is a great article, something I've been wanting to say for a long time. I see these threads started saying this game is a singleplayer rpg with co op play. It's just as much an MMO as WoW ever was. It's in an open persistant world, yes there's some zoning involved but not much to be honest. The worlds are huge, the game world itself is pretty big, there's more real group content than many games launch with, or receive in their first year and it's just as "social" as other modern MMO's are. I almost wonder if they put in a server-wide chat channel if it would shut people up on this grossly inaccurate argument. I've found myself grouped and enjoying social parts of the game more in SW:TOR than I EVER did in WoW or EQ2, or LOTRO, or any other game I've played in a while. All games can be solo'd from start to finish, and require minimal grouping for other content. Are people really so annoyed at the removal of text boxes? If so, how? The cinematic gameplay adds a heck of a lot to genuine immersion that MMO's have severely lacked ever since they were created. Could they add more social aspects of gameplay? Yes, but so can every other MMO to come out then. People just love to troll this game and want to see it fail because they're miserable and want to effect other peoples fun.
To add to that, as the article says it's time to let go of the old stuff and accept the new while pushing higher standards on developers as time goes on. If you really love this genre, and want it to continue to be an option for your gaming then hoping for games to fail is the WRONG way to support that, I'm very sorry to disappoint people with this opinion. But all you're going to do is prevent this genre from existing.
To me it simply WAS a single player game. And I enjoyed it as such. I have actually reccomended it to several friends as a single player RPG.
The truth is (as far as my opinion goes) other than the class storylines the game offers nothing. Some people may say its a single player RPG as a bad thing but I dont. You can easily finish two or three storylines in a months time and not have to pay more than the box price.
To call the game a good MMORPG is delusional though. Sure it does some things just fine. But to me it lacks everything required to make it feel like a real game world. It lacks personality which to me is a crime with an IP like SW.
Um. I hate to point out that all games now of days are called RPG's and not true MMO's by someone. To say that Star wars is the only game to get this criticism is ridiculous. The reason that it seems like more people may say it compared to games like Rift is because.... Wait for it... It's more popular. Hence the more fans a game has then the more haters it will have. Very amutuerist writing, you come across like a pouting child because everyone doesn't love your favorite game.
For me when i felt disapointed by the direction the game took right from the start, don't get me wrong i enjoyed my time in the game story wise and won't forget that, unfortunatly i also remember the
1. On rails SP space combat
2. no guild bank
3. no reason to leave fleets for mats for crafting as pets did this
4. and the worst one for me was illum described in interviews as one of the most dynamic pvp zones ever seen in a mmo, but if more than 10 ppl started fighting it became a slidshow, so ppl went to get their dailies done then left.
The game just felt to me at least like it was trying it's hardest to push the player more towards a single player experience.
From how i understand looking at patch notes etc it has started making improvments but after getting the chance to try for free after the last 2 patches have gone back to look but just found i am completly disinterested with what's going on around me, the dmg was done at an early stage and i can't see me subscribing to the game again.
It's a real pity as i was looking forward to this mmo more than any others that have been on the horizon for a while
I think one of the reasons that this game gets so much hate especially from those who have played WoW for perhaps a long time, is that they expected this game to fail quickly, but somehow it did not.
We have seen scores of AAA games come and go during the 7 years since WoW's release. Most of them we played for a few days, some about a week and very few lived beyond the first free month. Alot of those games just died and many took the slow path to suicide by going FtP (LOTRO is actually doing better because of it but that might be the exception to the rule). SWTOR was not going to be the exception to this, and should have gone the same way so that we could continue to feed our money to Blizzard and slip into our comfort zone that WoW provides. But that did not happen.
SWTOR refuses to die, no matter how much hate it gets, no matter how many 'Fail game is Fail' posts it gets, and refuses to go FpT no matter how many 'SWTOR needs to go free to play!' posts it gets. Why is that?
I get hammered by info that the game is a solo game, and yet I find it very rewarding to play in groups, have a ton of fun with the heroics, compete with premade teams in Warzones, join with friends on the class quests, play the auction house, run 4- and 8-man flashpoints, do operations and battles world bosses. None of that could be done solo so I have no idea where the notion of this game being an 'MMO in name but not in execution' comes from. Have these persons actually played the game? It sure does not sound like it, from my point of view.
I think that we all need to just accept that SWTOR is here to stay and that it can exist alongside WoW. Enough with the hate - just play what you want and be done with it.
So making everything instanced and giving everyone NPC companions doesn't contribute at all to the game feeling singleplayer with optional coop? (which is what people toss around).
Man this article is so uninformed its sad.
I think you're missing his point--he said you certainly can criticize SWTOR for its single player focus. But the game has group content on every planet, group instances and raids and therefore IS an MMO. It may not be an MMO that you like, but it meets the definition.
Comments
Again, the point was missed. It's like dancing around the question. What about SWTOR is different from: Anarchy Online, Asheron's Call, Champion's Online, City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dark Age of Camelot, DC Universe Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, EVE Online, Everquest, Jumpgate: Evolution, Lineage, Lord of the Rings Online, Matrix Online, Rift, Star Trek Online, The Secret World, Shadowbane, Tera, Ultima Online, Vanguard, Warhammer Online, WoW.
How can you ignore other MMOs at the same time trying to call SWTOR a "single player focused" game. It doesn't put any more focus on "single player only" functions than any of those other MMOs I've played. SWTOR gives better gear, xp, buffs, and other perks for playing in a group. So the game is obviously encouraging you to play in a group, it's just not forcing you to if you don't want to. So there goes that myth. The content is geared towards story, not "single player storyline". You can play any story with a group and in fact get some perks if you do. The game looked massive enough to me in comparison to the above listed MMOs I've played. So there goes that myth too.
Again, listing Quake, Dayz, Diablo3, GW1 in comparison to SWTOR is a straw man argument. You could compare those games to any MMO and come up with reasons. By that reasoning Everquest, Star Trek Online, DC Universe Online, Asheron's Call aren't MMOs. Actually you could argue the whole list doesn't contain a "real" MMO. Can someone compare SWTOR to the majority of MMOs in the list above me and explain clearly why it's not MMO enough? Compare SWTOR to the majority of MMOs in the list, not to other games that aren't MMOs. If you're going attack this game for something, then you should look at the whole MMO genre. Because otherwise you look a little bonkers.
SWTOR not massive? I've seen more players at an open world boss fight than I have in EQ, City of Heroes, DCUO, and close to Rift. The zones are about the same size as in most of those MMOs listed above, and there are a lot of zones. It has around the same amount of instances and dungeons as most of the MMOs above as well. So there goes another myth.
Why are we jumping on the bandwagon in calling SWTOR a "single-player focused" experience without being able to explain it in comparison to most of the other MMOs in the MMO genre. I'll be here if someone can though.
Be still my friend, it's over.
The zones might be the same size, but the advantage other games have on this is that they are seemlessly connected (no loading screens). Tatooine was a sham because not only is it a several minute wait from your spaceship, but it also is riddled with invisible walls and "exhaustion" areas (places like Fatigue in WoW .. or places you die if you stay too long).
SWTOR is not a good example of a huge world (or even universe!) .. it's a rat maze and you are only allowed to go to certain places, and if you try to go outside those places, you get an electrical ZAP.
Still think SWTOR has huge zones? I don't think it does either.
On your rant about it not being a single player game .. LOL! Makes me wonder if you ever even played this game. Speak to me if you have, I'll cut down other arguments you have.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
So I was just playing the free trial thing. I just ran the Esseles with 4 players. The only words that were typed in chat the whole time were a message typed in the wrong channel saying "i'm in a flashpoint atm" This game is probably pretty multiplayer if you drag three real life friends along with you though.
"I will not play it nor any other MMO until they make it possible to obtain the best gear without forcing people to group up to do so." SwampRob
I'm not here to change anyone's mind at random. But someone trying to tell me something that doesn't make sense is a little irritating lol.
The zones are large. Some have barriers that push you back if you go too far, which all MMOs have. Some of SWTORs zones have streets, tunnels, hallways. Similar to some of City of Heroes zones, City of Villains zones, The Secret World zones, Star Trek Online zones, Champion's Online zones, Matrix Online zones, etc. Some of the planets with open zones that I loved in SWTOR were: Alderaan, Hutta, Tython, Tatooine, Quesh, Dromund Kaas, and Voss. Alderaan actually was fun to head off in one direction and see how far you could go. I spent hours just exlploring Alderaan and just looking at the scenery.
Planets that had rat mazes were Nar Shaddaa, Taris (some zones), and a couple more. When I was on Nar Shaddaa I couldn't wait to finish questing and get the hell out. It zones were too flat, and looked to similar. It didn't have the same feeling of a deep complex criminal city that was vertically stacked with many different levels of a city like it was in Kotor 2. Nope, didn't like Nar Shaddaa.
But there were plenty of planets with large open zones I loved. So I don't really get the reasoning behind the complaint. Even when I played GW2 (which I also love) there are some zones where I'm run up against a big hill and I go "Oh, let me go a little more west to go around it." Still running into the hill, no way to climb it. So I figure it must be a zone boundary. I turn around and go east, keep bumping up against this hill that cannot be crossed. Then I think "Damn, let me just try to find this zoning portal to get to the next zone." And eventually if I continue running along the hill long enough I find this shiny shimmering round zoning portal. The process is similar with most MMOs. Also when I think about SWTOR's and GW2's zones there isn't really a massive difference in size between them, or most of the other MMOs in my list. Also, I gave a list of the planets with wide open zones.
The "single player MMO" is really just a petty insult. However I do understand where it's comming from since what Bioware did was to force an MMO down into the mold of their other games like Mass Effect and such.
Want a nice understanding of life? Try Spirit Science: "The Human History"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw&feature=plcp
Recognize the voice? Yep sounds like Penny Arcade's Extra Credits.
I go into space: solo content.
I play on the server my guild was assigned (Kaas City): server is dead for 3 months.
I craft: solo
Bioware managed to make SWTOR a Massivelly Messed Game. I should have bought KOTOR instead, at least that was intented to be solo.
This is nothing more than subjective!
The story telling aspect of the game make it single player. Wow are just quests that have anything to do with you. Even if you can make it to L80 alone.
Sure in swtor you can play some instances with a group of players, but so what? The conclusion of those doesn't put your group the focus of the story. You all goes on your own ways after without anything to add to the big picture.
Yes, swtor is a single player mmo. Deal with it.
I disagree. Lotro had a quest system that usually ended up with you needing to group with parts of it. Finding the group wasn't usually to difficult (in popular areas) but once the quest was done, poof, no more group. Often times people didn't ask about other quests or even say goodbye. People take the path of least resistance. In Tor, this meant skipping the heroic areas and flashpoints then going to the next planet. I'm all for letting people solo to max level, but I think advantages to grouping should be substantial either from safety, loot or lack of downtime.
MMO Waltzing!
If it's new It's not old school enough
If it's new It's not innovative enough
If it's too grindy you can't level fast enough
If it's forced grouping it's not independant enough
"SWTOR not massive? I've seen more players at an open world boss fight than I have in EQ, City of Heroes, DCUO, and close to Rift. The zones are about the same size as in most of those MMOs listed above, and there are a lot of zones. It has around the same amount of instances and dungeons as most of the MMOs above as well. So there goes another myth"
Well let's do a comparison. SWG had more land are on one of it's planets than SWTOR has in all it's zones. That good enough of a comparison for you, since SWG had many planets? You could fit 10 SWTOR's on AC1's main continent. I could go on and on. There is no sense of exploration in SWTOR at all, it just a tiny MMO. There was nothing massive about it at all. Just like it's space combat, everything felt like it was on rails.
No real need to group, the quest line is entirely solo oriented. Sure you can do some group oriented things, but strictly optional.
Yes you are right SWTOR lacks depth, but it still doesn't mean its anything less than an MMO. Though, you said it there yourself. And some have cleaverly pointed out listing many other MMOs that are just as solo friendly.
How I heard and have always taken this critizim has been
"If SwTOR online had been a single player MMO it would be a homerun. A huge success."
As an mmo it carries to little of what anyone wants to do.
The PVE content on release for max levels was basicly unplayable. (high end raids nightmares etc.)
There was no queing as a full group for pvp and there was no rated battle grounds. (these are basics to any game there is no excuse for this)
Leveling as a group is basicly unheard of in my circle of friends and in any competative circles I have never heard of anyone doing this anyways and this seems to be your chief reason why people are saying it is a solo mmo rpg. Which leads me to believe you have no idea what you are talking about.
//Your logic about when something is said also does not make it less true. Take philosophy pythagoris made an assumtion that all things were basicly water. not having evidence does not make something less true it just allows people to see the evidence. If this criticizim came about orignial because people knew that bio makes great solo rpgs and took it to the next level does not change the fact if it is true or not.//
//tl:dr inductive and deductive reasoning.
For super casuals that love star wars this is a good game.
If you cant write your opionion unbaisedly then you probably should look for another job or hopefully you were forced to write this propoganda.
MikeB, what you are failing to understand in the "it's a singleplayer game" comment is; the story driven cut scenes and radial choice menu make it seem like biowares single player games. Couple all that into another fact, that you can solo the entire game to max level makes it more or less a pay to play single player game. The mmo elements in the game are cloned right out of blizzards play book, even the classes can be broken down into wows classes. Pvp is a stripped down version of wows. Open world pvp non exsistent.
What swtor needed to be, was a mix of swg and wow. Not a mix of dragon age and wow. Why it needed to be more like swg was because gamers want a complex and diverse virtual world to live in. They don't want to be dictated to how they play the game. They want freedoms and complex mechanics revolving around crafting and economy. The next thing swtor screwed up was the social aspect of the game.. There is none.. In fact, every mmo launched since swg has none.. and its a big reason why these games are failing. Failing, as in, retention of box sales as subs. . Thats the proper definition of a failing mmo. Yes even wow is failing. It was inevitable, it just lasted the longest with the most subs and Ill get to why that is shortly.
What ruined this game and this entire mmo genre, in my opinion, is blizzard and world of warcraft. It indirectly ruined it because of falsified sub numbers being reported on, which gave an illusion of success to on-looking developers and companies. The only success WoW attained was the proven fact that they used a technique called Audio Visual Entrainment to get gamers addicted to that game.. No other gaming company has ever done this... It explains to me, and those familar with AVE, how wow became as successful as it did. Couple this fact with the games ability to run on 500 mhz cpus, a lack of mmo's at its launch, and you have a very broad user base already playing sc2 and diablo/warcraft, just waiting for the mmo.. There was litterally 9 million gamers waiting for blizzards mmo. They retained 4-5 million subs, not 10 million.
The game blizzard made was not that good. In fact, to the 15% of the people in this world who can't be hypnotized or brainwashed, who tried this game, we thought it downright sucked. It was boring and slow and lacked any kind of complexity that would intrigue a normal human being into playing it. But it got a lot of people addicted through AVE.
I seriously wish people would wake up and understand the history of mmo's starting from UO/eq... This mmo genre is heading for a complete collapse and its coming fast with this new model of buy the box, free to play but get raped in the cash shop on items and things you would normally earn in game by playing it... What is the sense of playing then if I can spend money and get the things I would normally have unlocked or attained through the course of playing the game? Whats the point? The only people who like it are unemployed living in moms basement who can only scrounge up enough scratch to buy the boxed game and have 18 hours a day to play it.. Ya we should listen to those people when making games, they got their lifes in order.. It will be those people who will be the vocal majority in support of such free to play mmo models, and it will be those same people who cause the mmo genre to collapse in on itself, and in effect create a whole new free to play genre that will completely suck the fun right out of gaming. Maybe I'm getting to old to play these games..
I disagree with the authors assumption that people just decided bioware was going to produce a single player game from concept, and that misconception continued after launch.
I was an avid TOR forum poster from its inception, and what bioware released as far as news, made the single player concepts.
No guild bank=single player, rail space combat=single player, the most limited guild functions any trip A mmo has ever launched with=single player, no adaptive gear from heroics, so I started just skipping them=solo player, on a pvp server"black vulkars, I ran into three opposite factions in the world, so there was no real threat=solo player, open world pvp was trash, no reason to do that=solo player, no swoop racing or pazaak(mini games), which bioware f$$$$ing invented!!!!=solo player, very limited crafting experience=solo player.
Every time bioware announced something on their website, 50% of the time it left you thinking the same thing, this sounds very solo oriented. Two raids at launce, meant my guild was on lockout timers all the time, I know its good compared to mmo'es launched in the last ten years, but it doesn't feed the current gamers enough. I was fully geared after two weeks of running hm operations, so there was never a reason to want to do them anymore(no decorations, or crap loot for showing off) just more level 3 speeders! Nightmare was easier than I expected, I figured it was something we would be working on for awhile, but it wasn't. And it offered nothing, new as far as gear, or anything.
You know, as a casual player, I thought this wouldn't matter, but I honestly felt like I beat the game, and theres nothing to do that isn't repetitive trash. I never really could explore those linear bread crumbed planets, the most interesting things where the codex entries that told you about something cool, but you couldn't actually do it(like the trench on tatooine, the codex tells you how no ones ever returned from it, but you can't go down there? The codex sounds more exciting than the planets where lol. Maybe if they would have mixed zones on planets for different levels, making them hard to navigate without running into some elite monster or npc here and there, maybe I would have grouped. Starwars has massive environments, getting lost in the deserts of tatooine or the whiteouts of hoth, the massive bustling city planets with shady back alleys, the massive trees of kashykk giving the planet many different layers. TOR's planets offer none of this. Theres walls everywhere. You don't discover a shady ally on corascant full of danger, you go to a map called shady alley and walk a limited patch with no real danger, or anything to explore.
I realize the game doesn't ever force you to group, and alot like that, but for somereason once I hit that, I really missed meeting random people trying to conquer a real challenge. TOR has as much depth as call of duty. Just my opinion, I really hoped for more, maybe not a swg, but I did hope it would feel like a massive galaxy full of danger, and not just a game with 20 maps to play through than your done.
Is that why so many players have stayed on to continue the lasting friendships forged with their guildies in the process of levelling and then partaking in all the group activities that abounded at launch? You know, all the multiplayer content that was super-fun to do with your new friends, reinforcing your bonds with them.
No you say? People finished their individual stories and then unsubbed. Do you mean the stories where all the plot-advancing parts took place in instances in which no one else could even enter? The individual stories which Bioware sold as the most important new thing in mmo gaming and built their game around?
This is a great article, something I've been wanting to say for a long time. I see these threads started saying this game is a singleplayer rpg with co op play. It's just as much an MMO as WoW ever was. It's in an open persistant world, yes there's some zoning involved but not much to be honest. The worlds are huge, the game world itself is pretty big, there's more real group content than many games launch with, or receive in their first year and it's just as "social" as other modern MMO's are. I almost wonder if they put in a server-wide chat channel if it would shut people up on this grossly inaccurate argument. I've found myself grouped and enjoying social parts of the game more in SW:TOR than I EVER did in WoW or EQ2, or LOTRO, or any other game I've played in a while. All games can be solo'd from start to finish, and require minimal grouping for other content. Are people really so annoyed at the removal of text boxes? If so, how? The cinematic gameplay adds a heck of a lot to genuine immersion that MMO's have severely lacked ever since they were created. Could they add more social aspects of gameplay? Yes, but so can every other MMO to come out then. People just love to troll this game and want to see it fail because they're miserable and want to effect other peoples fun.
To me it simply WAS a single player game. And I enjoyed it as such. I have actually reccomended it to several friends as a single player RPG.
The truth is (as far as my opinion goes) other than the class storylines the game offers nothing. Some people may say its a single player RPG as a bad thing but I dont. You can easily finish two or three storylines in a months time and not have to pay more than the box price.
To call the game a good MMORPG is delusional though. Sure it does some things just fine. But to me it lacks everything required to make it feel like a real game world. It lacks personality which to me is a crime with an IP like SW.
+1
Games previously played: AO, AoC, Aion, AoW, Eve, SWTor, WaR, STO, TSW, DCUO, FE, BP, ProjectEntropia, FootballSuperstars!
Actually, being solo friendly is not really the game's downfall. It is the extreme handholding and questing on rails just like it's lame space game.
Because of it's inate design, this game is really not fixable. That is what happens when you get a designer that is not well versed in the MMO genre.
For me when i felt disapointed by the direction the game took right from the start, don't get me wrong i enjoyed my time in the game story wise and won't forget that, unfortunatly i also remember the
1. On rails SP space combat
2. no guild bank
3. no reason to leave fleets for mats for crafting as pets did this
4. and the worst one for me was illum described in interviews as one of the most dynamic pvp zones ever seen in a mmo, but if more than 10 ppl started fighting it became a slidshow, so ppl went to get their dailies done then left.
The game just felt to me at least like it was trying it's hardest to push the player more towards a single player experience.
From how i understand looking at patch notes etc it has started making improvments but after getting the chance to try for free after the last 2 patches have gone back to look but just found i am completly disinterested with what's going on around me, the dmg was done at an early stage and i can't see me subscribing to the game again.
It's a real pity as i was looking forward to this mmo more than any others that have been on the horizon for a while
I think one of the reasons that this game gets so much hate especially from those who have played WoW for perhaps a long time, is that they expected this game to fail quickly, but somehow it did not.
We have seen scores of AAA games come and go during the 7 years since WoW's release. Most of them we played for a few days, some about a week and very few lived beyond the first free month. Alot of those games just died and many took the slow path to suicide by going FtP (LOTRO is actually doing better because of it but that might be the exception to the rule). SWTOR was not going to be the exception to this, and should have gone the same way so that we could continue to feed our money to Blizzard and slip into our comfort zone that WoW provides. But that did not happen.
SWTOR refuses to die, no matter how much hate it gets, no matter how many 'Fail game is Fail' posts it gets, and refuses to go FpT no matter how many 'SWTOR needs to go free to play!' posts it gets. Why is that?
I get hammered by info that the game is a solo game, and yet I find it very rewarding to play in groups, have a ton of fun with the heroics, compete with premade teams in Warzones, join with friends on the class quests, play the auction house, run 4- and 8-man flashpoints, do operations and battles world bosses. None of that could be done solo so I have no idea where the notion of this game being an 'MMO in name but not in execution' comes from. Have these persons actually played the game? It sure does not sound like it, from my point of view.
I think that we all need to just accept that SWTOR is here to stay and that it can exist alongside WoW. Enough with the hate - just play what you want and be done with it.
I think you're missing his point--he said you certainly can criticize SWTOR for its single player focus. But the game has group content on every planet, group instances and raids and therefore IS an MMO. It may not be an MMO that you like, but it meets the definition.