So Mike, you think that EA/Bioware built $200 million worth of game in TOR?
Don't you think if you are building something that can't sustain a steady $15 per month subscription from most players you might want to rethink having the largest budget of any MMO ever in history by an order of magnitude?
Getting what they got out for the money they sunk in...and you are sitting there with a straight face saying that thier "real" mistake was the pricing plan? Seriously?
Sorry but the manufacturer budgeted out to build a Rolls Royce, what they ended up with most people consider, at best, a Chevy Cavalier and your trying to tell us that thier real mistake was not offering a "Lease"..... sorry, no sale.
Pretty much all of their articles are designed to push advertisers to the site. They really have no harsh criticism for ANY MMO. But at least they allow the discussions to be critical.
+1
This site as far as I'm concerned is only about the forums. The reviews at best are a joke (SWTOR MMO of the year lol) and the colum peices I just ignore out of hand just like the game reviews for being nothing more than paid advertising for the most part.
QFT
I only read and post in the Forums
While I think that the articles and the reviews in this site are heavily biased due to commercial reasons (my opinion), the forum and the management of the forums are the best.
They allow you to say almost everything as long you are not blatantly insulting someone else.
That's why I still log almost every day on this site, after 7 years of joining.
PS: MikeB, SWTOR is a huge disappointment and you know that.
The game might be technically a MMO, but no one enjoy the MMO features, players just focus on the story..............and you know that too.
I know you like it.
I liked it too...........but as a Single Player game.
For me SWTOR is KOTOR 3...................as a MMO though, it is a bit redundant.
LOL. Ouch. Even old grudges against the peoples in blue are coming out tonight. *Pops the top off another brew.* It's like I am trapped in an episode of the Drunk and on Drugs Happy Fun Time Hour. Everybody is high on forum fumes and and spitting fire at their disagreeables. But... at least watching all the wounds get salted has been fun.
Has this not been the most entertaining ~48 hours on this forum that you can remember, at least in the immediate past?
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
LOL. Ouch. Even old grudges against the peoples in blue are coming out tonight. *Pops the top off another brew.* It's like I am trapped in an episode of the Drunk and on Drugs Happy Fun Time Hour. Everybody is high on forum fumes and and spitting fire at their disagreeables. But... at least watching all the wounds get salted has been fun.
Has this not been the most entertaining ~48 hours on this forum that you can remember, at least in the immediate past?
Ya, not since the "massive sandbox crowd" thread has this forum been so entertaining.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
I got banned 3-4 times when SWTOR was released and all the ridiculous puff pieces showed their biased faces on this site, becuase I disagreed with them. No I didn't swear or anything.. I just disagreed in a civil manner.
One of the bans was for asking you how you could possibly give SWTOR 8.5/10 for innovation.
@Wickedjelly -- I've been doing our weekly SWTOR column for upwards of two years now. Now that I have my own general column, I'll be writing about (and have already) other topics and games as well. There was no way I could ignore yesterday's announcement, however. And yes, I like the game, but no, it's not remotely all I play. I play Mass Effect 3 (MP), MechWarrior Online, League of Legends, SMITE, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2 (when they let me), Battlefield 3, random RPGs/little games, Skyrim, basically all sorts of stuff. I like to keep things varied. I enjoy SWTOR, but I don't marry my videogames. They're just games.
It's easy and convenient to paint a picture, as some have, of a blind fanboy that can see no wrong with his favorite game, but really read my pieces and you'll notice I often level criticism where I feel it's due, and have for the entirety of my SWTOR column's run. Even today's column rests my ultimately positive point in an accusation of arrogance and failure on EA's part. I just try to keep things balanced. IMO, EA screwed up for the reasons I mentioned, but they're also taking the right steps to reinvigorate a service (SWTOR) that clearly still has quite a bit going for it.
I simply don't see the game as deeply flawed as most. There are issues, sure, but I think it's pretty obvious to anyone that they've been blown far, far out of proportion. My contention today was not that anyone was wrong in their criticisms, you're free to have them, whatever they are, but that I see the primarily culprit of what we've seen unfold as being a business related issue more (as in, not exclusively) than a design one. The two just happened to merge in the worst possible way (poor endgame hold + a business model that can't sustain the game as a result). I think you'll find a lot less people arguing the game was shoddy on the way to level cap (the 'singleplayer' crowd will disagree, of course). Most of the people that played that far mainly left because it "ends".
Not having the foresight to see this issue and still attempt to charge a full sub fee in an environment that is increasingly friendly to quality F2P games was the biggest mistake here. It wasn't because BioWare gave Darth Malgus a voice and a Republic Trooper a storyline to follow.
That $15/month subscription often failed to attrition or collapse more often than it didn't even before the F2P wave in the West, and the environment as it stands today is more unfriendly to that model than it ever has been before. Now it isn't only, "Is this really worth $15/month to me?" but "Is this really worth $15/month to me when I can play X Y Z awesome games for free?" It's a completely new era for MMOs and this era makes the viability of an already disadvantageous business model that much worse.
I've never referred to you as a fanboy. However, yourself and some others wrote rather biased articles in the past overlooking the many issues with this game that were rather evident even in beta. Was pretty mindblowing at times. I just about fell out of my chair with that review piece many of you writers did.
Lately you have been more critical of the game I will give you that. Still, you seem to be missing the big picture about why the game is not performing like they expected. It isn't as simple as "sub games won't work anymore" or "nothing to do at endgame". It is a culmination of several aspects that simply gives this game very little long term sustainability for players.
For the record, much as some here think I hate the game I did enjoy my time with it. The fact is though as I have said since beta it is a short term investment...nothing more. Good or bad it is what it is. TSW is the same. Although to be fair I fully plan on returning to TSW at regular intervals and with SWTOR I have no desire whatsoever to return to the game.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
What has irked me most of all is the scoring system in the reviews where middle-weight games (swtor, etc) receive above 7 scores. Trust is much easier to lose then to gain.
What has irked me most of all is the scoring system in the reviews where middle-weight games (swtor, etc) receive above 7 scores. Trust is much easier to lose then to gain.
I haven't put faith in any website/publication's reviews with the sole exception of that aussie guy (can never remember his name) since probably 2005. The gaming publications try to claim they're unbiased and such, but they seem to have forgotten what a 90+ means. That means the game is just shy of perfect. JUST SHY.
When they give games like Modern Warfare and SW:TOR and such mid 90's scores it shows just how full of crap they are. These are games with glaring issues even the most ardent fanboy would have difficulty not noticing and yet they're conveniently overlooked by reviewers.
I honestly blame sites like metacritic as well. A review aggregate site like that would be a good thing if all the reviewers maintained a strict ethical compass and weren't indirectly paid by advertiser revenues. But since they are all it does is serve to overinflate a game's score because the 2-3 legit reviews in the mix are overshadowed by the dozens of paid reviews giving excellent scores.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
It is the cut scenes and voice over that make SWTOR single player. They can be good when playing with a like minded friend, but when playing in a group where some just want to space bar, it gets annoying.
Overall the stories are best enjoyed by yourself. It is fun to do it grouped as well, but for your own personal enjoyment it is best to do hem solo, as can get annoying if you do not get to see your dialogue response when you see someone elses choice.
Most single player games with multiplayer, keep the cut scenes to the single player game, but in multiplayer it is just full on gameplay action and fun with each other. Even Mass Effect 3 is like this.
What makes a great game is the gameplay, not the cut scenes and voice over, they are only used in games to make them more intersting and an interactive experience
Cut scenes just do not work too well in a mass multiplayer (mmorpg) environment
I was kind of sympathetic to the boy in blue until this morning's article which IS clearly a puff piece. I don't mind strong favorable opinions but they shouldn't be posted as news they should be posted as opinions in blogs. As it stands, it hurts their professional credibility.
It was posted as a column -- which is an opinionated piece. I don't pass my opinions off as fact. I make my case and if you want to agree with me, fine. If you want to tell me I'm completely off base and why, that's fine too.
@Wickedjelly -- I've been doing our weekly SWTOR column for upwards of two years now. Now that I have my own general column, I'll be writing about (and have already) other topics and games as well. There was no way I could ignore yesterday's announcement, however. And yes, I like the game, but no, it's not remotely all I play. I play Mass Effect 3 (MP), MechWarrior Online, League of Legends, SMITE, The Secret World, Guild Wars 2 (when they let me), Battlefield 3, random RPGs/little games, Skyrim, basically all sorts of stuff. I like to keep things varied. I enjoy SWTOR, but I don't marry my videogames. They're just games.
It's easy and convenient to paint a picture, as some have, of a blind fanboy that can see no wrong with his favorite game, but really read my pieces and you'll notice I often level criticism where I feel it's due, and have for the entirety of my SWTOR column's run. Even today's column rests my ultimately positive point in an accusation of arrogance and failure on EA's part. I just try to keep things balanced. IMO, EA screwed up for the reasons I mentioned, but they're also taking the right steps to reinvigorate a service (SWTOR) that clearly still has quite a bit going for it.
I simply don't see the game as deeply flawed as most. There are issues, sure, but I think it's pretty obvious to anyone that they've been blown far, far out of proportion. My contention today was not that anyone was wrong in their criticisms, you're free to have them, whatever they are, but that I see the primarily culprit of what we've seen unfold as being a business related issue more (as in, not exclusively) than a design one. The two just happened to merge in the worst possible way (poor endgame hold + a business model that can't sustain the game as a result). I think you'll find a lot less people arguing the game was shoddy on the way to level cap (the 'singleplayer' crowd will disagree, of course). Most of the people that played that far mainly left because it "ends".
Not having the foresight to see this issue and still attempt to charge a full sub fee in an environment that is increasingly friendly to quality F2P games was the biggest mistake here. It wasn't because BioWare gave Darth Malgus a voice and a Republic Trooper a storyline to follow.
That $15/month subscription often failed to attrition or collapse more often than it didn't even before the F2P wave in the West, and the environment as it stands today is more unfriendly to that model than it ever has been before. Now it isn't only, "Is this really worth $15/month to me?" but "Is this really worth $15/month to me when I can play X Y Z awesome games for free?" It's a completely new era for MMOs and this era makes the viability of an already disadvantageous business model that much worse.
EDIT: I also never wrote the class guides. thanks though!
EDIT2: Bunch of stuff added. I'll re-open the thread for now, despite the silly title. I don't write puff pieces and I'll let my writing stand on its own to prove it.
Kudos to you for responding to all this criticism and not just locking the thread .
Anyway, I actually agree that the game is not so flawed that it cannot be enjoyed. I think it's just not good enough to achieve success in the current competitive environment.
The problem is that it's basically a hybrid between a SPRPG like KOTOR and an MMO like WoW, but there are many SPRPGs that do SPRPG better than SWTOR, and there are MMORPGs that do MMORPG better than SWTOR. At least that's how I feel. I know that I was playing Xenoblade at the same time as I was playing SWTOR, and I just found the story and gameplay of XenoBlade so much more intriguing from an SPRPG standpoint, so I wound up ignoring SWTOR for it.
And from an MMORPG standpoint...I really think that WoW, or even Rift has it beat handsdown. All my opinion, but I felt that the world of SWTOR just wasn't as interesting as the world of WoW, the battlegrounds weren't bad but weren't anything special, the open-world PvP was abysmal, the only real social hubs were incredibly drab, and getting into flashpoints was irritating due to lack of LFD, which wasn't added until significantly after release.
So I mean, while it's not a bad game, I just felt that it basically chose to compete with both SPRPGs and MMORPGs, and it wasn't good enough to really "win" in either arena.
Sorry Mike. Most of the players who quit ToR did so before they reached level 30. Despite the story the game was never the living game world that many of us were hoping for. I only regret that I didn't get off the starter planet before launch. If I had maybe I wouldn't have bothered as what I assumed was an underwhelming starter area turned into an underwhelming game. I played a game once: I took screenies of the "open world" bits of coruscent and nar shadaa. The game was to tell which was which. It was pretty hard actually. The point is that the whole game just felt generic and cheap from the joke space game to the all-pervasive taxi you took everywhere. I expected better and I won't support mediocrity anymore.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy. ______________________________ "This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
Even today's column rests my ultimately positive point in an accusation of arrogance and failure on EA's part. I just try to keep things balanced. IMO, EA screwed up for the reasons I mentioned, but they're also taking the right steps to reinvigorate a service (SWTOR) that clearly still has quite a bit going for it.
I simply don't see the game as deeply flawed as most.
You are blaming EA but not mentioning Lucas and bioware ,please .EA bought bioware after lucas and bioware made deal and decided game concept
You blaming EA ( business decision = subscription based payment ) but closing your eyes to truth, EA wanted a F2P game bioware rejected back in the day .You are out of touch with reality as bad as bioware devs , game is beyond repair after some months it will as low as SWG at the end of life .MMOs also about to be trendy it was a part of success of wow ,swtor missed this train and will have painy death . But not for payment model because shitty design decisions and shitty clueless devs
Tell me Mike do you see any difference between complaints from cryptic games and swtor ?Why will f2p save swtor
What about game engine cant hold enough people on same space for an mmo ? This alone very serious deep flaw
My last sentence to Lucas, youll not have wow numbers never .The thing is you dont get is your SW fans are not computer savvy but all blizzard fans are (or gamers with another word ) .
Yes EA is in fault ,its fault is giving money to clueless people and not controlling but it is not a surprise if we think how many mmos EA screwed (= no clue about mmos )
The game still isn't a singleplayer, and you're still stupid to say it is.
How F2P changes anything about that is beyond me.
And btw, I just unsubbed, so it's not like I'm in a terribly good mood when it comes to TOR
I'm not subbed either, but I still agree with the both of you. People on this site get so bent out of shape when others enjoy a game they don't like that they throw any insult around no matter how stupid or childish it is. Just look at all the "nanner nanner" type posts we've seen since the hybrid model was announced.
MikeB, I first saw your article under the recent forum activity listed as “news discussion.” Next, I, saw it as a “feature” when visiting the game hub here. It was only after looking into the blue header today that I saw “column” and it doesn’t stick out enough from the white blob of text around it that I typically skip as promotional fluff for the writer on the way to the meat of an article. To be constructive, a few simple tweaks to further differentiate editorial columns from news reports or actual featured game articles might help combat the perception that someone has been bought off in a bad way to provide an abundance of positive opinion as...
LOL. Ouch. Even old grudges against the peoples in blue are coming out tonight. *Pops the top off another brew.* It's like I am trapped in an episode of the Drunk and on Drugs Happy Fun Time Hour. Everybody is high on forum fumes and and spitting fire at their disagreeables. But... at least watching all the wounds get salted has been fun.
Has this not been the most entertaining ~48 hours on this forum that you can remember, at least in the immediate past?
Oh, I had fun but the knives are sharp around here... Too many people with stitches. LOL.
I was kind of sympathetic to the boy in blue until this morning's article which IS clearly a puff piece. I don't mind strong favorable opinions but they shouldn't be posted as news they should be posted as opinions in blogs. As it stands, it hurts their professional credibility.
It's easy and convenient to paint a picture, as some have, of a blind fanboy that can see no wrong with his favorite game, but really read my pieces and you'll notice I often level criticism where I feel it's due, and have for the entirety of my SWTOR column's run. Even today's column rests my ultimately positive point in an accusation of arrogance and failure on EA's part. I just try to keep things balanced. IMO, EA screwed up for the reasons I mentioned, but they're also taking the right steps to reinvigorate a service (SWTOR) that clearly still has quite a bit going for it.
I simply don't see the game as deeply flawed as most. There are issues, sure, but I think it's pretty obvious to anyone that they've been blown far, far out of proportion. My contention today was not that anyone was wrong in their criticisms, you're free to have them, whatever they are, but that I see the primarily culprit of what we've seen unfold as being a business related issue more (as in, not exclusively) than a design one. The two just happened to merge in the worst possible way (poor endgame hold + a business model that can't sustain the game as a result). I think you'll find a lot less people arguing the game was shoddy on the way to level cap (the 'singleplayer' crowd will disagree, of course). Most of the people that played that far mainly left because it "ends".
That $15/month subscription often failed to attrition or collapse more often than it didn't even before the F2P wave in the West, and the environment as it stands today is more unfriendly to that model than it ever has been before. Now it isn't only, "Is this really worth $15/month to me?" but "Is this really worth $15/month to me when I can play X Y Z awesome games for free?" It's a completely new era for MMOs and this era makes the viability of an already disadvantageous business model that much worse.
EDIT: I also never wrote the class guides. thanks though!
EDIT2: Bunch of stuff added. I'll re-open the thread for now, despite the silly title. I don't write puff pieces and I'll let my writing stand on its own to prove it.
By "balanced" for the most part you mean SWTOR is ossum, and any criticism that the failure of it comes from the game design is foolish.
Saying the stuff has been blown way, way, out of proportion. To that I simply reply: the game lost 75% of its subcriber base in 7 months, despite having the largest budget in history of both game design and MMO marketing. It's sorta tough to blow that out of proportion.
And have there been sub games which failed? Of course. There have been tons of F2P failures as well. What does that tell you? Make a crap game, your going to fail.
It is why WoW, EvE and RIFT continue to thrive with a sub model. (Even with some free trials here and there.) Whatever one thinks of those games, they deliver value to the people playing them. So this isn't a "completely new era" for MMOs. We could enter one if GW2 becomes a resounding success. But let's face it, and this won't generate traffic to your site; we are in an age of godawful MMOs.
The game still isn't a singleplayer, and you're still stupid to say it is.
How F2P changes anything about that is beyond me.
And btw, I just unsubbed, so it's not like I'm in a terribly good mood when it comes to TOR.
F2p changes nothing, it has always been regarded as single player, apparently even before release according to the article
I just think if SWTOR can be called a MMO then so should Red Dead Redemption - you have more of an open world to explore, can harvest resources from creatures, it has loads of updates, they do special event weekends, including doing double or triple xp. It seems more of a MMO to me than SWTOR is.
I do not know why EA/Bioware could not do more for the game, like all other MMOs do, instead of just jump straight to F2P. Like they could have tried a double xp weekend
Phasing was a travesty, while Instancing was quite popular. It should be noted that Eq1 instancing actually dealt with interaction with other players to get a group, around an instance entrance.
Current implementations of phasing and quest phasing (disappearing from the world while speaking to a quest giver), make this game largely single player.
Had EA Bioware done real time questing that single player games do, while in a multiplayer environment (like Half Life 2 for instance), then at least the questing part wouldn't be so much an issue. If they ditched the green/red barriers then phasing might not be an issue ether.
The player limit for each zone before a new instance of a zone is a serious black mark for me though. Tatooine is the size of about 40% of a WoW vanilla Azeroth continent, and has a player limit of about 200, before a new instance is created .. what? WoW had technical issues if that many playes got into the same general area, but never if they got into the same side of the continent ... SWTOR is using old technology, or is using very inefficent technology?
In conclusion, this game has enough single player elements to get MMO'ers unhappy. It has phasing, player/group instancing (lobby game), entire zone instancing, and a removal of characters from the game world during quests. There are enough elements where calling this a single player game are justified.
The game still isn't a singleplayer, and you're still stupid to say it is.
How F2P changes anything about that is beyond me.
And btw, I just unsubbed, so it's not like I'm in a terribly good mood when it comes to TOR
I'm not subbed either, but I still agree with the both of you. People on this site get so bent out of shape when others enjoy a game they don't like that they throw any insult around no matter how stupid or childish it is. Just look at all the "nanner nanner" type posts we've seen since the hybrid model was announced.
That logic goes both ways kt... I have seen many of fans "report" and get bent when someone is critical or post that they don't like the game....
Phasing was a travesty, while Instancing was quite popular. It should be noted that Eq1 instancing actually dealt with interaction with other players to get a group, around an instance entrance.
Current implementations of phasing and quest phasing (disappearing from the world while speaking to a quest giver), make this game largely single player.
Had EA Bioware done real time questing that single player games do, while in a multiplayer environment (like Half Life 2 for instance), then at least the questing part wouldn't be so much an issue. If they ditched the green/red barriers then phasing might not be an issue ether.
The player limit for each zone before a new instance of a zone is a serious black mark for me though. Tatooine is the size of about 40% of a WoW vanilla Azeroth continent, and has a player limit of about 200, before a new instance is created .. what? WoW had technical issues if that many playes got into the same general area, but never if they got into the same side of the continent ... SWTOR is using old technology, or is using very inefficent technology?
In conclusion, this game has enough single player elements to get MMO'ers unhappy. It has phasing, player/group instancing (lobby game), entire zone instancing, and a removal of characters from the game world during quests. There are enough elements where calling this a single player game are justified.
Phasing and instancing are two very different things tho and both have a place in modern MMO's.
Phasing is great when used to alter a players surroundings after the completion of a questline so the village the player helped save is still saved whenever the player goes back to that area. This is so much better than having a stagnent world that never changes no matter what a player does.
Instancing when used correctly can only improve a game and should only ever be used for dungeon/raid encounters so the actions of one group don't impact the actions of other groups. The big problem is when instancing is used like it is in SWTOR,CO and STO to break up the playerbase into little box like areas all the time.
SWTOR is indeed using old and outdated tech but its also the old and outdated design of so many elements of the game that are the cause of why SWTOR is a failure.
The game still isn't a singleplayer, and you're still stupid to say it is.
How F2P changes anything about that is beyond me.
And btw, I just unsubbed, so it's not like I'm in a terribly good mood when it comes to TOR
I'm not subbed either, but I still agree with the both of you. People on this site get so bent out of shape when others enjoy a game they don't like that they throw any insult around no matter how stupid or childish it is. Just look at all the "nanner nanner" type posts we've seen since the hybrid model was announced.
mr Ktanner unsubbed? I thought you were TOR 4 life
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
The game still isn't a singleplayer, and you're still stupid to say it is.
How F2P changes anything about that is beyond me.
And btw, I just unsubbed, so it's not like I'm in a terribly good mood when it comes to TOR
I'm not subbed either, but I still agree with the both of you. People on this site get so bent out of shape when others enjoy a game they don't like that they throw any insult around no matter how stupid or childish it is. Just look at all the "nanner nanner" type posts we've seen since the hybrid model was announced.
I don't think anyone believes the game is literally a single player game. This would be a stupid thing to say. I mean, even Super Mario Brothers was a mutliplayer game.
What they mean is that the game feels like a single player game most of the time you are playing.
Comments
So Mike, you think that EA/Bioware built $200 million worth of game in TOR?
Don't you think if you are building something that can't sustain a steady $15 per month subscription from most players you might want to rethink having the largest budget of any MMO ever in history by an order of magnitude?
Getting what they got out for the money they sunk in...and you are sitting there with a straight face saying that thier "real" mistake was the pricing plan? Seriously?
Sorry but the manufacturer budgeted out to build a Rolls Royce, what they ended up with most people consider, at best, a Chevy Cavalier and your trying to tell us that thier real mistake was not offering a "Lease"..... sorry, no sale.
It doesn't even pass the straight face test.
QFT
I only read and post in the Forums
While I think that the articles and the reviews in this site are heavily biased due to commercial reasons (my opinion), the forum and the management of the forums are the best.
They allow you to say almost everything as long you are not blatantly insulting someone else.
That's why I still log almost every day on this site, after 7 years of joining.
PS: MikeB, SWTOR is a huge disappointment and you know that.
The game might be technically a MMO, but no one enjoy the MMO features, players just focus on the story..............and you know that too.
I know you like it.
I liked it too...........but as a Single Player game.
For me SWTOR is KOTOR 3...................as a MMO though, it is a bit redundant.
Has this not been the most entertaining ~48 hours on this forum that you can remember, at least in the immediate past?
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Ya, not since the "massive sandbox crowd" thread has this forum been so entertaining.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
ah the age of criticism is upon us, where even the critics get criticised
I got banned 3-4 times when SWTOR was released and all the ridiculous puff pieces showed their biased faces on this site, becuase I disagreed with them. No I didn't swear or anything.. I just disagreed in a civil manner.
One of the bans was for asking you how you could possibly give SWTOR 8.5/10 for innovation.
You still haven't answered me.
..Cake..
I've never referred to you as a fanboy. However, yourself and some others wrote rather biased articles in the past overlooking the many issues with this game that were rather evident even in beta. Was pretty mindblowing at times. I just about fell out of my chair with that review piece many of you writers did.
Lately you have been more critical of the game I will give you that. Still, you seem to be missing the big picture about why the game is not performing like they expected. It isn't as simple as "sub games won't work anymore" or "nothing to do at endgame". It is a culmination of several aspects that simply gives this game very little long term sustainability for players.
For the record, much as some here think I hate the game I did enjoy my time with it. The fact is though as I have said since beta it is a short term investment...nothing more. Good or bad it is what it is. TSW is the same. Although to be fair I fully plan on returning to TSW at regular intervals and with SWTOR I have no desire whatsoever to return to the game.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
What has irked me most of all is the scoring system in the reviews where middle-weight games (swtor, etc) receive above 7 scores. Trust is much easier to lose then to gain.
I haven't put faith in any website/publication's reviews with the sole exception of that aussie guy (can never remember his name) since probably 2005. The gaming publications try to claim they're unbiased and such, but they seem to have forgotten what a 90+ means. That means the game is just shy of perfect. JUST SHY.
When they give games like Modern Warfare and SW:TOR and such mid 90's scores it shows just how full of crap they are. These are games with glaring issues even the most ardent fanboy would have difficulty not noticing and yet they're conveniently overlooked by reviewers.
I honestly blame sites like metacritic as well. A review aggregate site like that would be a good thing if all the reviewers maintained a strict ethical compass and weren't indirectly paid by advertiser revenues. But since they are all it does is serve to overinflate a game's score because the 2-3 legit reviews in the mix are overshadowed by the dozens of paid reviews giving excellent scores.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
It is the cut scenes and voice over that make SWTOR single player. They can be good when playing with a like minded friend, but when playing in a group where some just want to space bar, it gets annoying.
Overall the stories are best enjoyed by yourself. It is fun to do it grouped as well, but for your own personal enjoyment it is best to do hem solo, as can get annoying if you do not get to see your dialogue response when you see someone elses choice.
Most single player games with multiplayer, keep the cut scenes to the single player game, but in multiplayer it is just full on gameplay action and fun with each other. Even Mass Effect 3 is like this.
What makes a great game is the gameplay, not the cut scenes and voice over, they are only used in games to make them more intersting and an interactive experience
Cut scenes just do not work too well in a mass multiplayer (mmorpg) environment
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Kudos to you for responding to all this criticism and not just locking the thread
.
Anyway, I actually agree that the game is not so flawed that it cannot be enjoyed. I think it's just not good enough to achieve success in the current competitive environment.
The problem is that it's basically a hybrid between a SPRPG like KOTOR and an MMO like WoW, but there are many SPRPGs that do SPRPG better than SWTOR, and there are MMORPGs that do MMORPG better than SWTOR. At least that's how I feel. I know that I was playing Xenoblade at the same time as I was playing SWTOR, and I just found the story and gameplay of XenoBlade so much more intriguing from an SPRPG standpoint, so I wound up ignoring SWTOR for it.
And from an MMORPG standpoint...I really think that WoW, or even Rift has it beat handsdown. All my opinion, but I felt that the world of SWTOR just wasn't as interesting as the world of WoW, the battlegrounds weren't bad but weren't anything special, the open-world PvP was abysmal, the only real social hubs were incredibly drab, and getting into flashpoints was irritating due to lack of LFD, which wasn't added until significantly after release.
So I mean, while it's not a bad game, I just felt that it basically chose to compete with both SPRPGs and MMORPGs, and it wasn't good enough to really "win" in either arena.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Well said, Mike. It's good to have one of the community managers here recognize the extremeties that some of the most vocal users here go to.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
______________________________
"This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
You are blaming EA but not mentioning Lucas and bioware ,please .EA bought bioware after lucas and bioware made deal and decided game concept
You blaming EA ( business decision = subscription based payment ) but closing your eyes to truth, EA wanted a F2P game bioware rejected back in the day .You are out of touch with reality as bad as bioware devs , game is beyond repair after some months it will as low as SWG at the end of life .MMOs also about to be trendy it was a part of success of wow ,swtor missed this train and will have painy death . But not for payment model because shitty design decisions and shitty clueless devs
Tell me Mike do you see any difference between complaints from cryptic games and swtor ?Why will f2p save swtor
What about game engine cant hold enough people on same space for an mmo ? This alone very serious deep flaw
http://www.shacknews.com/article/56292/biowares-star-wars-mmo-to
My last sentence to Lucas, youll not have wow numbers never .The thing is you dont get is your SW fans are not computer savvy but all blizzard fans are (or gamers with another word ) .
Yes EA is in fault ,its fault is giving money to clueless people and not controlling but it is not a surprise if we think how many mmos EA screwed (= no clue about mmos )
Currently Playing: World of Warcraft
Oh, I had fun but the knives are sharp around here... Too many people with stitches. LOL.
By "balanced" for the most part you mean SWTOR is ossum, and any criticism that the failure of it comes from the game design is foolish.
Saying the stuff has been blown way, way, out of proportion. To that I simply reply: the game lost 75% of its subcriber base in 7 months, despite having the largest budget in history of both game design and MMO marketing. It's sorta tough to blow that out of proportion.
And have there been sub games which failed? Of course. There have been tons of F2P failures as well. What does that tell you? Make a crap game, your going to fail.
It is why WoW, EvE and RIFT continue to thrive with a sub model. (Even with some free trials here and there.) Whatever one thinks of those games, they deliver value to the people playing them. So this isn't a "completely new era" for MMOs. We could enter one if GW2 becomes a resounding success. But let's face it, and this won't generate traffic to your site; we are in an age of godawful MMOs.
F2p changes nothing, it has always been regarded as single player, apparently even before release according to the article
I just think if SWTOR can be called a MMO then so should Red Dead Redemption - you have more of an open world to explore, can harvest resources from creatures, it has loads of updates, they do special event weekends, including doing double or triple xp. It seems more of a MMO to me than SWTOR is.
I do not know why EA/Bioware could not do more for the game, like all other MMOs do, instead of just jump straight to F2P. Like they could have tried a double xp weekend
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Kind of beating a dead horse, but this game is mostly single player.
It has phasing and instancing, along with a removal of players from the world via cutscenes to make this a less than stellar MMORPG.
Phasing was something SWTOR copied from WoW (bad idea), and instancing started with EQ1 (Lost Dungeons of Norrath, 2003)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EverQuest:_Lost_Dungeons_of_Norrath
Phasing was a travesty, while Instancing was quite popular. It should be noted that Eq1 instancing actually dealt with interaction with other players to get a group, around an instance entrance.
Current implementations of phasing and quest phasing (disappearing from the world while speaking to a quest giver), make this game largely single player.
Had EA Bioware done real time questing that single player games do, while in a multiplayer environment (like Half Life 2 for instance), then at least the questing part wouldn't be so much an issue. If they ditched the green/red barriers then phasing might not be an issue ether.
The player limit for each zone before a new instance of a zone is a serious black mark for me though. Tatooine is the size of about 40% of a WoW vanilla Azeroth continent, and has a player limit of about 200, before a new instance is created .. what? WoW had technical issues if that many playes got into the same general area, but never if they got into the same side of the continent ... SWTOR is using old technology, or is using very inefficent technology?
In conclusion, this game has enough single player elements to get MMO'ers unhappy. It has phasing, player/group instancing (lobby game), entire zone instancing, and a removal of characters from the game world during quests. There are enough elements where calling this a single player game are justified.
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.
That logic goes both ways kt... I have seen many of fans "report" and get bent when someone is critical or post that they don't like the game....
Phasing and instancing are two very different things tho and both have a place in modern MMO's.
Phasing is great when used to alter a players surroundings after the completion of a questline so the village the player helped save is still saved whenever the player goes back to that area. This is so much better than having a stagnent world that never changes no matter what a player does.
Instancing when used correctly can only improve a game and should only ever be used for dungeon/raid encounters so the actions of one group don't impact the actions of other groups. The big problem is when instancing is used like it is in SWTOR,CO and STO to break up the playerbase into little box like areas all the time.
SWTOR is indeed using old and outdated tech but its also the old and outdated design of so many elements of the game that are the cause of why SWTOR is a failure.
mr Ktanner unsubbed? I thought you were TOR 4 life
I angered the clerk in a clothing shop today. She asked me what size I was and I said actual, because I am not to scale. I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it... so that it achieves its maximum flavor potential. --Mitch Hedberg
I don't think anyone believes the game is literally a single player game. This would be a stupid thing to say. I mean, even Super Mario Brothers was a mutliplayer game.
What they mean is that the game feels like a single player game most of the time you are playing.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Forums are where you go to have your views reinforced. News articles are what you read to have your views challenged and expanded.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.