There were too many things to choose just one. Overall, the combination of those things caused me to burn out quickly and lose my will to log in.
I can't help but think that if SWTOR had been more like SWG (pre-NGE) and less like WoW it would have been more successful. Still....I enjoyed the game for the brief time I played it and don't regret buying it. Live and learn, I say.
You are one of many people who say this, but the fact is that SWG was a failure so Sony instituted changes which kept the game afloat for awhile but was still a failure
I guess this goes to show that 'Failure' is a relative term. 8 years of subscription; Fans who wish it was still running; Comes up anecdotally as a model when crafting, space combat, and many other systems are discussed.
At this point I am disgusted by the comparison. The two games share the same IP but that is it. SWTOR isn't worthy to be mentioned in comparison to SWG.
They are actually different games, the problem is SWG fans thought they were getting SWG2, they refused to research the game , they did not play the beta, they did not understand that Bioware was making the game. It is hard to compare them, SWG had a more open world, get a speeder right away (post nge i believe) and have fun driving around, good crafting and harvesting (if you really get into harvesting) and a good space game, TOR has better production, voice overs, cut scenes, combat, story progression, performance, graphics (it is newer after all), small grouping, flash points. SWG always felt to ME like a chat room combined with a sandbox and a very realistic (to realistic, do i really want to spend my game time being a dancer?) SWG world, Tor reminds me of a single player with mmo elements and Bioware elements, WOW like but with much better story etc, linier world. Both have their good points and bad points. By the way length of time does not necessarily mean success, look at Vanguard, UO, the realm, asherons call. It simply means it has rabid fans (although few in number) and the developer has the resources to keep said game going.
nor does cost of production, media hype, etc. The argument you seem to be making is not that SWTOR is success or failure, but instead you brought in the SWG strawman and said That is a failure. The person who you replied to brought up SWG, but you added the failure part.
If SWG had the same contemporary level of quality in graphics and was still around, SWTOR would not be around. SWTOR is a vapid empty box, an exercise in front-ending cutscenes and visuals over depth. You didn't have to be a dancer in SWG, but for those who wanted it, they could be a dancer. In SWTOR you could use the jukebox, and the population in the cantinas showed how well this encouraged socialization.
The man behind the curtain at Bioware has been seen, and he has produced a terrible game, whether it makes the stockholders happy or not. SWTOR was successful in disappointing customers, and in getting the industry to take a look at anemic game worlds to see if they can avoid making the same mistake.
There were too many things to choose just one. Overall, the combination of those things caused me to burn out quickly and lose my will to log in.
I can't help but think that if SWTOR had been more like SWG (pre-NGE) and less like WoW it would have been more successful. Still....I enjoyed the game for the brief time I played it and don't regret buying it. Live and learn, I say.
You are one of many people who say this, but the fact is that SWG was a failure so Sony instituted changes which kept the game afloat for awhile but was still a failure
Except, SWG didn't fail. SWG had more success than SWTOR has had.
That is a flawed aruguement because TOR has not been out very long. Look at Vanguard, UO, Asherons call, the realm. games that have been going on for year after year with very few players. The fact is that Sony saw the game as a failure because of its population and changed it to something they thought would increase it and that failed-so it was a double failure
At the same point in time of its life, SWG was more successful than TOR. It wasn't shutting down servers and it hadn't suffered from a major population drop. That didn't come until 2.5 years after its release
The changes happened because LucasArts (and SOE, no doubt) got greedy. WoW was released and was an instant hit and redefined what a successful MMO was. In their eyes, there was no way Star Wars shouldn't have those kind of numbers and thought something was wrong. The first major changes weren't controversal but nothing too drastic, the fundamentals of the game remained mostly the same and the game gained new appeal. However, nothing on the level of WoW and thus the NGE came along, which did bring some drastic changes to the game to make it more WoW like - enough changes that it could have been released as a seperate game. This move backfired on them and they did lose a good number of subs - but the game continued to hold a healthy number of players over its years after this.
As you may have picked up, I put most of the blame on LucasArts for these changes, due to evidence from TOR. TOR is the ultimate move by LucasArts to copy WoW and make a Star Wars game that would have subs "worthy of the IP". However, once again, it's blown up in their face.
No, SWG's subs topped out at around the 300-400k mark. In pre-WoW time, this was very successful for an MMO - Everquest was really the only other Western MMO to have hit higher. They hit 1 million boxes sold in August 2005
The link you offered shows 1 million sold but 250k subs - a 25% retention rate, and that was just after an expansion. Much less than the "tortanic" which at there latest report had at least 33% which is what SWG was after the CU (though it crashed yet again after the NGE), and I'd bet an expansion for SWTOR would bump it up way further than 25% when that time comes. Even if SWTOR fell to 25% itself a few months from now, they both were pretty much following the same trend retention wise.
SWG isn't the success people on this board claims it was.
No, the article is saying it had 250k subs at the time of that article, when they sold their 1 millionth copy. That doesn't mean it didn't peak at 300-400k earlier in its lifetime.
SWG didn't have a major population drop out until November 2005. Until then, it held pretty steady with fairly reliable sub numbers. It's when LucasArts got greedy that they lost those numbers.
Too much running around for like ever to get to a destination. It's not fun walking around. The game was a complete bore, this is the only MMO that I can say was actually boring.
They copied WoW, it was so obvious from class mechanics. But while in WoW all this made sense, in Star Wars universe it didnt. I dunno all these heals with glowsticks firing into friendlies or bots scanning them just makes so much less sense than a shaman casting a chain heal or druid casting a regrowth. All these kiting and CC mechanics.
That all could be ignored if it would be as comfortable and fun to play as WoW was (well, kinda, until I got totally and forever bored with it). But hell, it was not:
- unresponsive abilities, with animation locks, lags, and shit
- party/raid frames presenting false information. That combined with no mouseover heal, no ability to designate different combination of key/mouse presses on a raid/party frame being different heal/ability made healer's life a PITA compared to WoW
- broken class balance in everything. cc, damage, knockbacks etc
- uninteresting abilities. Compare any wow healer to swtor healer and how they play in pvp or pve and you'll see.
- very "small" feeling locations, not a "vast seamless world" that WoW is.
The first is because the developers bit off way more than they could chew, and refused to acknowledge the problems it had in beta, much less fix them. Instead, it's like they just used the beta phase to drum up hype about the game, rather than refine it.
The second is that the game didn't launch with the basic quality of life features that any MMO should have these days. It gave a lot of people the impression that the game launched in an unfinished state, between lack of features and the many bugs.
The last is that with the initial launch rush, they over-estimated how popular the game would be, and created way too many servers. As people left the game due to the above reasons, servers because desolate.
You could also say the PvP potential of the game failed as well, due to the stun/mes/slow fest that it is. PvPing while walking isn't very exciting.
it flopped because a MMO should be community driven not a single player game trying to be a MMO for the sake of it. TOR should have been a single player game with co op online play for up to 4 to 5 players and not tagged as a MMO. The story in MMO's should be created ny the players using the world you give them. No MMO focus should be on a single player type stories where the player if the hero to save all. I've got more stories to tell than TOR in just 3 months of player Planetside 2 closed beta.
The game had an excellent gamedeveloper in BioWare, it had economic power in EA and an outstanding IP in Star Wars!
But along the way something went wrong, very wrong! What?
Many things
- game is linear like hell
- game have so many instances that yo hardly play with someone else and groups are for 4 people only
- because short level range for areas (1 planet have 4 areas, there is 1 lvl per area and 4 levels per planet) it's hard to find party for long time
- no grup activities
- no activities outside fighting and quests
- no reason to go back to low lvl areas
- no reason to play after lvl 50, only grind is there for yet another pair of pants
- you reach max lvl in few weeks plaing 2-3 hours a day
- no reason to trade since in few weeks you reach items you can't trade anyway
-no reason to craft since after lvl 50 everything is better than what you can do
- retarded controls and gameplay
- boring fights (awesome button)
- stupid developers (op healing for a long time, nerfing operatives to just some lame mele class)
- boring quests (go and kill 10,20,40 mobs)
- boring class story
- avarage graphic
- poor performance ( i play tera, planetside 2 and few other games on full with 60fps while TOR was around 40 nad he looked ugly as hell)
- empty world (no reason to explore it unless there is a quest where you going)
- wow clone (everything is like in this old school mmo but worst) unfit for 2011
- worst f2p system ever (even slots are blocked, seriously ? )
- i have no desire to play this game even after it went free and it would be last game I pick up since there is Planetside 2 and Guild Wars 2 with no monthly fee.
Whole game is just bad. They were afraid of risk of doing some innovative and they failed.
I beta tested SWTOR and decided never to pay anything for it.
My brief summary of why it sucked goes:
Outdated and very disappointing graphics
A combat system that was as dull and anti-immersion as they come
Otherwise same-old, same-old, just with 'Star Wars' and 'Bioware' tacked on
Mind you, various other MMOs which have been released since have also been very disappointing for simple reasons, mainly due to Korean-style grindfest questing and/or tab-select-and-push-the-same-button-combat.
I've been playing computer games since 1979 and sometimes it feels as if developers have stopped trying.
But, nothing against Koreans, of course (except for the government in the North), you guys make kimchi and dol sot bi bim bap!
It was overhyped, people went into it expecting the greatest PVP/RAID/PVE insert own personal preference here, a solution to world famine and the ability to fart lightning bolts upon purchase.
When you go back to it with lessened expectations its a good solid game.
People burned out on the end game, when the player base declined the suits paniced and pulled the rug out from under the game. If the suits hadn't paniced and started firing everyone people would have held out hope for future content.
Along with the lack of end game, the pvp wasn't enough to fall back on. The open world pvp zones could have been awesome if we were given a reason to do them. Plus, the expertise system was garbage.
Originally posted by IAmMMO it flopped because a MMO should be community driven not a single player game trying to be a MMO for the sake of it. TOR should have been a single player game with co op online play for up to 4 to 5 players and not tagged as a MMO. The story in MMO's should be created ny the players using the world you give them. No MMO focus should be on a single player type stories where the player if the hero to save all. I've got more stories to tell than TOR in just 3 months of player Planetside 2 closed beta.
The stories are now an offical part of Star Wars history. The stories reflect what "happened" and each are a reliving of that experience. They all, therefore, had to lead to the same end in order to keep the lore in line with the "history" of the Star Wars universe.
Ahnog
Hokey religions are no replacement for a good blaster at your side.
I beta tested SWTOR and decided never to pay anything for it.
My brief summary of why it sucked goes:
Outdated and very disappointing graphics
A combat system that was as dull and anti-immersion as they come
Otherwise same-old, same-old, just with 'Star Wars' and 'Bioware' tacked on
Mind you, various other MMOs which have been released since have also been very disappointing for simple reasons, mainly due to Korean-style grindfest questing and/or tab-select-and-push-the-same-button-combat.
I've been playing computer games since 1979 and sometimes it feels as if developers have stopped trying.
But, nothing against Koreans, of course (except for the government in the North), you guys make kimchi and dol sot bi bim bap!
Walk a mile in a developer's shoes and you might not critisize them so.
Ahnog
Hokey religions are no replacement for a good blaster at your side.
Its an overall bad game. Yah, it has parts that do not suck (leveling 1 character on each side is decent fun), but when you add and deduct everything it just comes out negative however you turn it.
Endgame is especially bad, anti social speed runs through FPs/OPs to grind gear...i mean...even those who reached endgame couldnt stomach it. OTOH, leveling second character on same side is...omg boring. I mean, they managed it to be more painful than Korean grinder lol. Miniscule different content (class story) is so scarce and insignificant in sea of generic MMO yawn quests, that it begs some questions.
They think free trial to 50 will change their luck...when they didnt actually change anything in their game. How could they possibly deduct that giving away best part of the game will make people suddenly sub for bad parts...
And I said I´m not impressed by this number, because they had to dump 90% of the available servers to get a handful of remaining servers with decent population.
This game is bleeding more subs than Star Wars Galaxies ever did.
To all those people going, "oh well I better tell the people playing SWTOR that it isn't a success," as if you're saying something profound and meaningful: It is a reflection on you, a bad one, that you can say that without any hint of irony.
To all those people going, "oh well I better tell the people playing SWTOR that it isn't a success," as if you're saying something profound and meaningful: It is a reflection on you, a bad one, that you can say that without any hint of irony.
I assume you would prefer that only positive statements be made on these forums, and that your continued support for SWTOR be lauded. It's offensive to suggest that honest critique of SWTOR is simply some sort of cyber bullying. I think you grossly misunderstand the purpose of this online discussion forum.
I beta tested SWTOR and decided never to pay anything for it.
My brief summary of why it sucked goes:
Outdated and very disappointing graphics
A combat system that was as dull and anti-immersion as they come
Otherwise same-old, same-old, just with 'Star Wars' and 'Bioware' tacked on
Mind you, various other MMOs which have been released since have also been very disappointing for simple reasons, mainly due to Korean-style grindfest questing and/or tab-select-and-push-the-same-button-combat.
I've been playing computer games since 1979 and sometimes it feels as if developers have stopped trying.
But, nothing against Koreans, of course (except for the government in the North), you guys make kimchi and dol sot bi bim bap!
Walk a mile in a developer's shoes and you might not critisize them so.
Been there, done that.
Well apart a handful of designers I worked with, that think they know better than everyone what the players need, most are great and skilled people.
In fact too often the issue lies in the clueless producers and execs.
SWTOR is the apogee of this: being a few key designers made really wrong choices in terms of designs and the execs failed to both manage properly the studio and understand it was going wrong.
If you remember when Wow went live all studios were astonished someone could make an MMO with so few bugs (compared to the others at the time). During a post mortem Blizzard explained their success lied mainly in the following points:
Doing runs in the office after 5PM to kick the devs out, even against their will: it improved the quality of the code a lot.
Working in strike team using am agile methodology.
Comments
nor does cost of production, media hype, etc. The argument you seem to be making is not that SWTOR is success or failure, but instead you brought in the SWG strawman and said That is a failure. The person who you replied to brought up SWG, but you added the failure part.
If SWG had the same contemporary level of quality in graphics and was still around, SWTOR would not be around. SWTOR is a vapid empty box, an exercise in front-ending cutscenes and visuals over depth. You didn't have to be a dancer in SWG, but for those who wanted it, they could be a dancer. In SWTOR you could use the jukebox, and the population in the cantinas showed how well this encouraged socialization.
The man behind the curtain at Bioware has been seen, and he has produced a terrible game, whether it makes the stockholders happy or not. SWTOR was successful in disappointing customers, and in getting the industry to take a look at anemic game worlds to see if they can avoid making the same mistake.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
At the same point in time of its life, SWG was more successful than TOR. It wasn't shutting down servers and it hadn't suffered from a major population drop. That didn't come until 2.5 years after its release
The changes happened because LucasArts (and SOE, no doubt) got greedy. WoW was released and was an instant hit and redefined what a successful MMO was. In their eyes, there was no way Star Wars shouldn't have those kind of numbers and thought something was wrong. The first major changes weren't controversal but nothing too drastic, the fundamentals of the game remained mostly the same and the game gained new appeal. However, nothing on the level of WoW and thus the NGE came along, which did bring some drastic changes to the game to make it more WoW like - enough changes that it could have been released as a seperate game. This move backfired on them and they did lose a good number of subs - but the game continued to hold a healthy number of players over its years after this.
As you may have picked up, I put most of the blame on LucasArts for these changes, due to evidence from TOR. TOR is the ultimate move by LucasArts to copy WoW and make a Star Wars game that would have subs "worthy of the IP". However, once again, it's blown up in their face.
No, the article is saying it had 250k subs at the time of that article, when they sold their 1 millionth copy. That doesn't mean it didn't peak at 300-400k earlier in its lifetime.
SWG didn't have a major population drop out until November 2005. Until then, it held pretty steady with fairly reliable sub numbers. It's when LucasArts got greedy that they lost those numbers.
Error: 37. Signature not found. Please connect to my server for signature access.
Agreed.
The game has flaws, but no more than any other mmo.
Ahnog
Hokey religions are no replacement for a good blaster at your side.
To bad it's no mmo.
i voted space being mnigame thats just removed the whole immersion of space to me.
also endgame and how pvp was done i mean comon..light versus darkness and all we got was one frakking silly bg.
I vote gameplay/feeling.
They copied WoW, it was so obvious from class mechanics. But while in WoW all this made sense, in Star Wars universe it didnt. I dunno all these heals with glowsticks firing into friendlies or bots scanning them just makes so much less sense than a shaman casting a chain heal or druid casting a regrowth. All these kiting and CC mechanics.
That all could be ignored if it would be as comfortable and fun to play as WoW was (well, kinda, until I got totally and forever bored with it). But hell, it was not:
- unresponsive abilities, with animation locks, lags, and shit
- party/raid frames presenting false information. That combined with no mouseover heal, no ability to designate different combination of key/mouse presses on a raid/party frame being different heal/ability made healer's life a PITA compared to WoW
- broken class balance in everything. cc, damage, knockbacks etc
- uninteresting abilities. Compare any wow healer to swtor healer and how they play in pvp or pve and you'll see.
- very "small" feeling locations, not a "vast seamless world" that WoW is.
It failed for three reasons:
The first is because the developers bit off way more than they could chew, and refused to acknowledge the problems it had in beta, much less fix them. Instead, it's like they just used the beta phase to drum up hype about the game, rather than refine it.
The second is that the game didn't launch with the basic quality of life features that any MMO should have these days. It gave a lot of people the impression that the game launched in an unfinished state, between lack of features and the many bugs.
The last is that with the initial launch rush, they over-estimated how popular the game would be, and created way too many servers. As people left the game due to the above reasons, servers because desolate.
You could also say the PvP potential of the game failed as well, due to the stun/mes/slow fest that it is. PvPing while walking isn't very exciting.
You make me like charity
Many things
- game is linear like hell
- game have so many instances that yo hardly play with someone else and groups are for 4 people only
- because short level range for areas (1 planet have 4 areas, there is 1 lvl per area and 4 levels per planet) it's hard to find party for long time
- no grup activities
- no activities outside fighting and quests
- no reason to go back to low lvl areas
- no reason to play after lvl 50, only grind is there for yet another pair of pants
- you reach max lvl in few weeks plaing 2-3 hours a day
- no reason to trade since in few weeks you reach items you can't trade anyway
-no reason to craft since after lvl 50 everything is better than what you can do
- retarded controls and gameplay
- boring fights (awesome button)
- stupid developers (op healing for a long time, nerfing operatives to just some lame mele class)
- boring quests (go and kill 10,20,40 mobs)
- boring class story
- avarage graphic
- poor performance ( i play tera, planetside 2 and few other games on full with 60fps while TOR was around 40 nad he looked ugly as hell)
- empty world (no reason to explore it unless there is a quest where you going)
- wow clone (everything is like in this old school mmo but worst) unfit for 2011
- worst f2p system ever (even slots are blocked, seriously ?
)
- i have no desire to play this game even after it went free and it would be last game I pick up since there is Planetside 2 and Guild Wars 2 with no monthly fee.
Whole game is just bad. They were afraid of risk of doing some innovative and they failed.
DariusZP, you got it right.
I beta tested SWTOR and decided never to pay anything for it.
My brief summary of why it sucked goes:
Very boring to level up with the second character, same planets, same stuff to do - only different cutscenes.
No space sim
Graphics look dated, also a lot of copy paste
:-/
Overall an uninspired game.
SWG was much more innovation and creativity imho, also Star Wars feeling, hope Disney gives a licence
to SOE to make SWG 2
Secrets of Dragon?s Spine Trailer.. !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwT9cFVQCMw
Best MMOs ever played: Ultima, EvE, SW Galaxies, Age of Conan, The Secret World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2X_SbZCHpc&t=21s
.
.
The Return of ELITE !
Chose other.
It was overhyped, people went into it expecting the greatest PVP/RAID/PVE insert own personal preference here, a solution to world famine and the ability to fart lightning bolts upon purchase.
When you go back to it with lessened expectations its a good solid game.
People burned out on the end game, when the player base declined the suits paniced and pulled the rug out from under the game. If the suits hadn't paniced and started firing everyone people would have held out hope for future content.
Along with the lack of end game, the pvp wasn't enough to fall back on. The open world pvp zones could have been awesome if we were given a reason to do them. Plus, the expertise system was garbage.
http://thewordiz.wordpress.com/
1000+ people after two rounds of server merges from ~250 servers to 24 ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAryFIuRxmQ
Secrets of Dragon?s Spine Trailer.. !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwT9cFVQCMw
Best MMOs ever played: Ultima, EvE, SW Galaxies, Age of Conan, The Secret World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2X_SbZCHpc&t=21s
.
.
The Return of ELITE !
The stories are now an offical part of Star Wars history. The stories reflect what "happened" and each are a reliving of that experience. They all, therefore, had to lead to the same end in order to keep the lore in line with the "history" of the Star Wars universe.
Ahnog
Hokey religions are no replacement for a good blaster at your side.
Walk a mile in a developer's shoes and you might not critisize them so.
Ahnog
Hokey religions are no replacement for a good blaster at your side.
Its an overall bad game. Yah, it has parts that do not suck (leveling 1 character on each side is decent fun), but when you add and deduct everything it just comes out negative however you turn it.
Endgame is especially bad, anti social speed runs through FPs/OPs to grind gear...i mean...even those who reached endgame couldnt stomach it. OTOH, leveling second character on same side is...omg boring. I mean, they managed it to be more painful than Korean grinder lol. Miniscule different content (class story) is so scarce and insignificant in sea of generic MMO yawn quests, that it begs some questions.
They think free trial to 50 will change their luck...when they didnt actually change anything in their game. How could they possibly deduct that giving away best part of the game will make people suddenly sub for bad parts...
He said a 1000+ at 2am.
Ahnog
Hokey religions are no replacement for a good blaster at your side.
And I said I´m not impressed by this number, because they had to dump 90% of the available servers to get a handful of remaining servers with decent population.
This game is bleeding more subs than Star Wars Galaxies ever did.
Secrets of Dragon?s Spine Trailer.. !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwT9cFVQCMw
Best MMOs ever played: Ultima, EvE, SW Galaxies, Age of Conan, The Secret World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2X_SbZCHpc&t=21s
.
.
The Return of ELITE !
To all those people going, "oh well I better tell the people playing SWTOR that it isn't a success," as if you're saying something profound and meaningful: It is a reflection on you, a bad one, that you can say that without any hint of irony.
I assume you would prefer that only positive statements be made on these forums, and that your continued support for SWTOR be lauded. It's offensive to suggest that honest critique of SWTOR is simply some sort of cyber bullying. I think you grossly misunderstand the purpose of this online discussion forum.
Survivor of the great MMORPG Famine of 2011
Been there, done that.
Well apart a handful of designers I worked with, that think they know better than everyone what the players need, most are great and skilled people.
In fact too often the issue lies in the clueless producers and execs.
SWTOR is the apogee of this: being a few key designers made really wrong choices in terms of designs and the execs failed to both manage properly the studio and understand it was going wrong.
If you remember when Wow went live all studios were astonished someone could make an MMO with so few bugs (compared to the others at the time). During a post mortem Blizzard explained their success lied mainly in the following points: