You guys remember when you first learned how to drive and how much fun it was to just get in your car and drive it anywhere?
That's how I think of grouping in multiplayer games. 15 years ago it was quite the novelty to be sitting in your room in Armpit Manitoba playing and chatting together with 4 others from all around the globe: it was new and cool.
Well it ain't new or cool any more. it's just part of every day connected life. And just like how some drives in your car are annoying PITAs so is some grouping with habitual AFKers, bad players and anti-social dufuses. I'm pretty damn picky these days about who I group with and for what purpose and people who think that MMOs are still all about grouping are either clueless or 6-yrs old.
By far the most important part of any MMO is what there is to do when you either can't or just don't feel like grouping. Making sure that the solo part of the game is fun and interesting and it's there in large quantities is the best possible 2015 MMO design decision.
Sorry retro "back to the roots" nostalgia fans. This is the way it is and will continue to be in an even bigger fashion.
While I understand that some groups can be bad. The groups are bad today compared to lets say Vanilla WOW, or TBC, Or FFXI, or UO, or SWG, or the other MMOS out there, is for 1 and ONLY 1 reason. AUTOMATED GROUP FINDER TOOLS which players become to reliant on because of WOW and WOTLK. Instead of Saturday morning when you get online for an hour before you cut the lawn or do what ever you need to do Saturday, you see your friends or Guildmates on. You say HEY GUYS how is it going? Yea well I need to run Dungeon X can you guys be online tonight around 830/9 tonight? Ok sounds good I will see you guys tonight and we can do X Dungeon. Cool; Yea Mike we might be able to do Z dungeon for you tonight too. Ok sounds good See you guys later.
NO! that does not happen today, its click the window to bring up the Dungeon Tool. Click the Button JOIN GROUP. Window Pops up (35 Minute Wait) "F THIS F THAT I HATE HOW LONG QUEUES ARE" Then the Queue pops and your all mad that it took 35 minutes for you to get into your instance. Now you are pissed off and get into a group which is on the last boss in the instance, and you are even more pissed. So people say Ready? Then the tank runs in and face pulls the boss, does tank and spank and does not pay attention to interrupts your getting all mad because you died because the group is taking a ton of avoidable AOE damage and a wipe. People bitch and complain and point fingers and the group disbands.
This above is the NORMAL group today is what you describe Iselin. And you are right to hate it. However the SOLUTION is not single player game play. The Solution is what MMOs have always meant to be. A Game which you subscribe to and play for years at a time where achievements are reached over months, not days and weeks. Problem is if something is to take a player 10 hours of game play like a Storyline, or Leveling Crafting, or a list of Dungeons to run. Its ALL labeled as GRINDING. So when something is labeled as GRINDING we feel its something that is tedious and not fun. Then what happens? We make that what we call Grinding EASY and then we complain that things are too easy and there is 0 reason to play after a week. For Example, if Raid "Red Dragon" takes 2 to 4 months for the hardcore players to master and it has 10 bosses, people complain how hard it is for the Average Player. Then we make it easy were the Average player clears it in 3 weeks, now they are bored for 4 to 6 months or maybe even a YEAR waiting for new content.
What am I getting at? The problem is the Community and their Perception of MMO. It boils down to US. YOU, ME, and the Millions of other players that play in this Genera. It is 100% the core of all of our problems. MMOs; MMORPGs to be more specific (SWTOR, WOW, FFXIV, RIFT and the rest of them) are games that take a lot of money to Develop, then add in the support staff to support the servers and customers. You have an On going Dollar amount you need to reach for Operational cost. Well you cannot make that Dollar amount then make a Profit if your game has people that never stick around. Why do you think Blizzard cut support staff in the last few years? Yep because people leave the game.
Until the Community stops trying to play an MMORPG with blinders on and they are the ONLY thing that matters MMORPGs will suck. Why do you think many of the big Publishers stopped making MMORPGs? Because there is no Money in it because peoples perception of MMORPGs are all a mess right now. Why are MOBAs working for so many? Because people want fast content they can burn through in a matter of days vs something that is Achieved over TIME. And yes its OUR faults along with Blizzard's for making LFD. Why? Example I been in WOW guilds in Cata, MOP and WOD where people were like, WHY CANT WE CLEAR THIS NORMAL RAID or HEROIC RAID IN 3 TO 4 WEEKS. THIS SUCKS WE ARE A FAIL GUILD!. Yet the Raid just came out a week or 2 weeks prior and being half way done with the raid is not good enough. Wait What are you going to do when you complete this on Normal or Heroic. Yep you are going to cancel your account and complain that there is 0 content for you.
Basically WHAT IS WRONG WITH CONTENT THAT WILL TAKE YOU 2 to 4 Months to complete? Even if you have lets say 2 Raid levels, HELL for the hard core raiders, and Normal For Raiders (NO LFR). These raids for the people of these skill levels will take 2 to 4 months to complete but when its complete, guess what a brand new raid is out or within weeks of dropping.
The same design goes with Housing, players complain that it takes so much grinding to buy a house in FFXIV. Yet they go to WOW and are handed what is basically housing. In 3 weeks maybe 4 they are bored because they have everything, VS it might take 3 to 4 months of work to get the first level house and get all your stuff.
I am confused. Is Swtor becoming P2P again starting with this expansion?
Are they abandoning the base game?
It;s weird if the game is a F2P but expansions are available to subscribers only.
I think it's not subscribers only, just "bundled" into the sub like the Cartel or Revan before. So it's easier / cheaper to get it with a 1month sub.
Loved this chapter in the column:
"12X class experience made SWTOR play like a single player game. The game finally felt like it lived up to the “eight KOTORs” BioWare originally advertised when played this way. This is ironic to me, as I recall one of the most vocal debates going on here at MMORPG.com when I first started out was centered on how Star Wars: The Old Republic was a single player MMO. I pushed back at the time in a number of columns and even in my review because it frankly wasn’t true."
Ironic indeed, the countless times we said it's singleplayer, and you even wrote a column that TOR is not a singleplayer game Welcome to the dark side, the advertised cookies are on the table to your right
Originally posted by Torval Is the change that you won't have the option to bring another player into your story instance like you can now in the early game?
No, I believe you can still bring them. But I wouldn't qualify spectating a friend's cutscenes as a co-op experience.
Hey now it worked fine in NWN2 vanilla at least IMO. . Even though I had to let the wife do her thing (talk) during those moments, in the SOZ expansion they lost a lot of the cinematic feel when they added the new system. WHile it allowed everyone to talk, it didn't feel quite as immersive to me.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
This makes perfect sense for Bioware and I approve.
They crunched the numbers and saw an overwhelmingly large portion of their players were playing solo. Even in group activities such as flashpoints and warzones a majority of people queued solo. So it makes good business sense to cater to your largest customer base.
"The last expansion released for SWTOR was Shadow of Revan, a largely single player affair.", Yes, is not this great? Love it, would never ever play any MMO that would force me to group play. Never. Want my money, give me SOLO FRIENDLY MMO. Ok, if I would be jobless or eternal student with nothing to do, probably would not have problem with that. But because I WORK and have things to do in life and still want to enjoy games when I have time (and MMO's are special breed of games) then solo friendly is a MUST. Then for end game for sure I will need group content. If I will have time. Otherwise will wait next expansion pack.
And Swtor brings best from both worlds, nobody is forcing you nor to solo nor to group. Whole game up to max level can be soloed. And I LOVE it. And at the same time whole game can be leveled just by group content.
I hope that in the end these chapters will play more like flashpoints and operations the class missions in term of multi-player expraince.
While in a class mission only one person could choose the dailog options in a flash point everyone could and the game rolled on who will get picked. In mu mind that's the way to go here since everyone are going to be the "Outlander" or whatever we'll be called.
The only down side to this, as far as I see, is that going this way will mean that your own story becomes dependant on the choises of others as well, which can be some what of a bog deal if BioWare stay true to thier word the the choises we'll make will affect the flow of the story.
WELL, WELL. They were unable to fix the broken game engine due to which many players left (fps slideshows in warzones and raids, client-server-client response delays) so they decided to GAVE UP and abandon MMO aspect. That's the sad true.
I played TOR from release to first expansion, then quit.
I spent pretty much that entire year and bit trying to really enjoy the game and suggest improvements to the developers moving forwards, but when I saw their plans for the first expansion I knew the game would never improve, so I took my money elsewhere.
TOR has basically been a single player game since release. 99% of the quests are solo and you are given companions that trivialise the content. The group features (heroics, flashpoints, raids, pvp) were all ridiculously easy from launch onwards with success or failure depending almost entirely on gear. A good example of this: my guild cleared Eternity Vault and Karaggas palace on hardmode on our first try. We weren't even a hardcore guild!
With this expansion, its just further confirmation that Bioware cannot design good group systems or content and so they are essentially giving up. If you are a solo player, thats fine, the renewed focus on story is probably a good thing: you can log in, play for a month, complete the story and then move on to a better game.
For me, the solo side of the game was also rubbish. The storylines were extremely generic and derivative. Then, the light/darkside "choices" ultimately turned out to be pointless fluff with no consequences, further making the game feel extremely linear and dull.
SW:TOR could have been amazing. They had the staff, the talent, the IP and a ridiculous budget. Yet, they made a generic flacid themepark that is only still running because it has lightsabers.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
Originally posted by Gorwe I am just scared that the new story shift will ruin everything that makes swtor so magical. Rep vs Emp story focused SW gameplay.
...I have a BAD feeling about kotfe, and I'm seldom wrong with these hunches.
I would check that hunch.. SWTOR has done nothing but improve since ROTHC so im expecting nothing but another improvement. Maybe people had different expectations of those xpacs but they were not BAD xpacs. Not even close to bad. TOR hasnt dropped a bad update yet so whatever comes its gonna be an improvement. just wait on it.
"Beliefs don't change facts. Facts, if you're reasonable, should change your beliefs."
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
Originally posted by Gorwe I am just scared that the new story shift will ruin everything that makes swtor so magical. Rep vs Emp story focused SW gameplay.
...I have a BAD feeling about kotfe, and I'm seldom wrong with these hunches.
I would check that hunch.. SWTOR has done nothing but improve since ROTHC so im expecting nothing but another improvement. Maybe people had different expectations of those xpacs but they were not BAD xpacs. Not even close to bad. TOR hasnt dropped a bad update yet so whatever comes its gonna be an improvement. just wait on it.
To be honest, at this point he's pretty much turned it into a self-fulling prophecy. So regardless of what they do, he'll find something to be disappointed about.
"and I'm seldom wrong with these hunches."
Whenever someone claims that, their minds are pretty much made up already.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
lets not put our unrealistic expectations on this. Just take the info given and wait for the thing to come out. Then we can properly assess it.
Oh yea for all the people saying "blah blah i quit TOR after x amount of time blah blah" I suggest you reboot it and give it another run. True the game had a few bumps before but its overall a better product than it was. I say sub for a month and do a class story you havent done yet.
"Beliefs don't change facts. Facts, if you're reasonable, should change your beliefs."
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
Originally posted by Gorwe I am just scared that the new story shift will ruin everything that makes swtor so magical. Rep vs Emp story focused SW gameplay.
...I have a BAD feeling about kotfe, and I'm seldom wrong with these hunches.
I would check that hunch.. SWTOR has done nothing but improve since ROTHC so im expecting nothing but another improvement. Maybe people had different expectations of those xpacs but they were not BAD xpacs. Not even close to bad. TOR hasnt dropped a bad update yet so whatever comes its gonna be an improvement. just wait on it.
To be honest, at this point he's pretty much turned it into a self-fulling prophecy. So regardless of what they do, he'll find something to be disappointed about.
"and I'm seldom wrong with these hunches."
Whenever someone claims that, their minds are pretty much made up already.
true.
"Beliefs don't change facts. Facts, if you're reasonable, should change your beliefs."
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
Oh yea for all the people saying "blah blah i quit TOR after x amount of time blah blah" I suggest you reboot it and give it another run. True the game had a few bumps before but its overall a better product than it was. I say sub for a month and do a class story you havent done yet.
I have been looking around for a new MMO to play but I was so burnt by SW:TOR that I've yet to find an MMO to play that I feel I can commit to.
My primary reasons for leaving TOR were:
1) Open World PvP - completely non-existant
2) Tiered Gear - one of the worst design decisions you can make for an MMO is to have tiered gear at endgame. It segregates the community and places too much emphasis on obtaining gear, rather than on getting good at the game
3) Too easy endgame - I hear this one may have gotten better, but the first two raids released were a cakewalk, even on nightmare mode. The third raid was better with more challenging bosses but was still quite easy.
4) Gear requirements - The huge leaps in stats between one tier of gear to the next meant all old content was trivialised and all new content was pointless until you got the requisite gear.
5) Linear, generic, mind-numbing leveling - I truely hated the leveling experience in SW:TOR. The storylines were too derivative and generic so I never felt attached to any of my characters. The zones were too linear and the worlds felt empty.
6) Holy Trinity - The trinity can work, but its boring. Bioware took it a step further and dumbed down the trinity too much. This resulted in boring content design to fit with the trinity. Why couldn't they add support classes?
Most of these problems are underlying system issues, design decisions made years ago by people that should have known better. MMOs live and die with the community and Bioware simply made too many decisions that killed off the community, forcing its players to rely on the content they provided which just wasnt good enough. I'd happily return and fork over a monthly sub if they ever bothered addressing these underlying issues, but they never will.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
Originally posted by etharn It was single player game since day one. Only group activity I liked was the raids due to more story BUT if this was a true single player like it should of been those stories would of came regardless of gathering people up to do them. I used to be super interested into swtor but how they treated their customers really pisses me off. Have fun I guess :P
aaaargh..... "like it should of been those stories would of came" Cant you see this is an abomination ? Maybe it's because my native language isn't English, I don't know, but it just looks and sounds horrible on paper. Maybe it's impossible to hear the difference when you talk, but it's so obviously wrong when you see it written...
unrelated: that made me disproportionately happy to the amount of actual humor in it (being from not from Eyebrow Saskatchewan)
on topic: I was always excited for the story elements in the game, and was unaware of the shifts they had made, because, while the story elements are what drew me in, the story elements are also what caused me to stop playing.....
cut-scenes and full voice over are very time intensive, and in the time I could do one quest there, I could gain a lvl in another 'clickthrough the same old story' game....
time to reinstall and have a look around, I think
"We aren't going to ... Period. End of statement."
If only BioWare made KOTOR games that played like a long stream of Flashpoints and ensured that the character progression didn't feel so stale, as it does to me at least, I'd've stuck around.
Probably keep me subbed for another 6 months, the storylines are what make this game, for PVP or even 'Raids' other games tend to have better mechanics, although the operations in SW;TOR aren't half bad, and they can be very enjoyable if you get the right groups. Its a game thats established itself pretty well in its own 'niche' among the themepark games out there, there isn't enough there for it to be my main game, but, it can be very entertaining even so.
Spot on. A more single player focus is what I personally want to see, and I am subscribing again as a direct result of the 12x and the renewed focus on the main strength of swtor. Story!
Comments
While I understand that some groups can be bad. The groups are bad today compared to lets say Vanilla WOW, or TBC, Or FFXI, or UO, or SWG, or the other MMOS out there, is for 1 and ONLY 1 reason. AUTOMATED GROUP FINDER TOOLS which players become to reliant on because of WOW and WOTLK. Instead of Saturday morning when you get online for an hour before you cut the lawn or do what ever you need to do Saturday, you see your friends or Guildmates on. You say HEY GUYS how is it going? Yea well I need to run Dungeon X can you guys be online tonight around 830/9 tonight? Ok sounds good I will see you guys tonight and we can do X Dungeon. Cool; Yea Mike we might be able to do Z dungeon for you tonight too. Ok sounds good See you guys later.
NO! that does not happen today, its click the window to bring up the Dungeon Tool. Click the Button JOIN GROUP. Window Pops up (35 Minute Wait) "F THIS F THAT I HATE HOW LONG QUEUES ARE" Then the Queue pops and your all mad that it took 35 minutes for you to get into your instance. Now you are pissed off and get into a group which is on the last boss in the instance, and you are even more pissed. So people say Ready? Then the tank runs in and face pulls the boss, does tank and spank and does not pay attention to interrupts your getting all mad because you died because the group is taking a ton of avoidable AOE damage and a wipe. People bitch and complain and point fingers and the group disbands.
This above is the NORMAL group today is what you describe Iselin. And you are right to hate it. However the SOLUTION is not single player game play. The Solution is what MMOs have always meant to be. A Game which you subscribe to and play for years at a time where achievements are reached over months, not days and weeks. Problem is if something is to take a player 10 hours of game play like a Storyline, or Leveling Crafting, or a list of Dungeons to run. Its ALL labeled as GRINDING. So when something is labeled as GRINDING we feel its something that is tedious and not fun. Then what happens? We make that what we call Grinding EASY and then we complain that things are too easy and there is 0 reason to play after a week. For Example, if Raid "Red Dragon" takes 2 to 4 months for the hardcore players to master and it has 10 bosses, people complain how hard it is for the Average Player. Then we make it easy were the Average player clears it in 3 weeks, now they are bored for 4 to 6 months or maybe even a YEAR waiting for new content.
What am I getting at? The problem is the Community and their Perception of MMO. It boils down to US. YOU, ME, and the Millions of other players that play in this Genera. It is 100% the core of all of our problems. MMOs; MMORPGs to be more specific (SWTOR, WOW, FFXIV, RIFT and the rest of them) are games that take a lot of money to Develop, then add in the support staff to support the servers and customers. You have an On going Dollar amount you need to reach for Operational cost. Well you cannot make that Dollar amount then make a Profit if your game has people that never stick around. Why do you think Blizzard cut support staff in the last few years? Yep because people leave the game.
Until the Community stops trying to play an MMORPG with blinders on and they are the ONLY thing that matters MMORPGs will suck. Why do you think many of the big Publishers stopped making MMORPGs? Because there is no Money in it because peoples perception of MMORPGs are all a mess right now. Why are MOBAs working for so many? Because people want fast content they can burn through in a matter of days vs something that is Achieved over TIME. And yes its OUR faults along with Blizzard's for making LFD. Why? Example I been in WOW guilds in Cata, MOP and WOD where people were like, WHY CANT WE CLEAR THIS NORMAL RAID or HEROIC RAID IN 3 TO 4 WEEKS. THIS SUCKS WE ARE A FAIL GUILD!. Yet the Raid just came out a week or 2 weeks prior and being half way done with the raid is not good enough. Wait What are you going to do when you complete this on Normal or Heroic. Yep you are going to cancel your account and complain that there is 0 content for you.
Basically WHAT IS WRONG WITH CONTENT THAT WILL TAKE YOU 2 to 4 Months to complete? Even if you have lets say 2 Raid levels, HELL for the hard core raiders, and Normal For Raiders (NO LFR). These raids for the people of these skill levels will take 2 to 4 months to complete but when its complete, guess what a brand new raid is out or within weeks of dropping.
The same design goes with Housing, players complain that it takes so much grinding to buy a house in FFXIV. Yet they go to WOW and are handed what is basically housing. In 3 weeks maybe 4 they are bored because they have everything, VS it might take 3 to 4 months of work to get the first level house and get all your stuff.
It would be better if Bioware just scrapped the mmo part of SWTOR all together and made it a true single player game. Like it should have been.
Kotor 3 should have been made, not this crap.
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
I am confused. Is Swtor becoming P2P again starting with this expansion?
Are they abandoning the base game?
It;s weird if the game is a F2P but expansions are available to subscribers only.
I think it's not subscribers only, just "bundled" into the sub like the Cartel or Revan before. So it's easier / cheaper to get it with a 1month sub.
Loved this chapter in the column:
"12X class experience made SWTOR play like a single player game. The game finally felt like it lived up to the “eight KOTORs” BioWare originally advertised when played this way. This is ironic to me, as I recall one of the most vocal debates going on here at MMORPG.com when I first started out was centered on how Star Wars: The Old Republic was a single player MMO. I pushed back at the time in a number of columns and even in my review because it frankly wasn’t true."
Ironic indeed, the countless times we said it's singleplayer, and you even wrote a column that TOR is not a singleplayer game
Welcome to the dark side, the advertised cookies are on the table to your right 
Hey now it worked fine in NWN2 vanilla at least IMO.
. Even though I had to let the wife do her thing (talk) during those moments, in the SOZ expansion they lost a lot of the cinematic feel when they added the new system. WHile it allowed everyone to talk, it didn't feel quite as immersive to me.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
fixed:)
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
This makes perfect sense for Bioware and I approve.
They crunched the numbers and saw an overwhelmingly large portion of their players were playing solo. Even in group activities such as flashpoints and warzones a majority of people queued solo. So it makes good business sense to cater to your largest customer base.
"The last expansion released for SWTOR was Shadow of Revan, a largely single player affair.", Yes, is not this great? Love it, would never ever play any MMO that would force me to group play. Never. Want my money, give me SOLO FRIENDLY MMO. Ok, if I would be jobless or eternal student with nothing to do, probably would not have problem with that. But because I WORK and have things to do in life and still want to enjoy games when I have time (and MMO's are special breed of games) then solo friendly is a MUST. Then for end game for sure I will need group content. If I will have time. Otherwise will wait next expansion pack.
And Swtor brings best from both worlds, nobody is forcing you nor to solo nor to group. Whole game up to max level can be soloed. And I LOVE it. And at the same time whole game can be leveled just by group content.
I played TOR from release to first expansion, then quit.
I spent pretty much that entire year and bit trying to really enjoy the game and suggest improvements to the developers moving forwards, but when I saw their plans for the first expansion I knew the game would never improve, so I took my money elsewhere.
TOR has basically been a single player game since release. 99% of the quests are solo and you are given companions that trivialise the content. The group features (heroics, flashpoints, raids, pvp) were all ridiculously easy from launch onwards with success or failure depending almost entirely on gear. A good example of this: my guild cleared Eternity Vault and Karaggas palace on hardmode on our first try. We weren't even a hardcore guild!
With this expansion, its just further confirmation that Bioware cannot design good group systems or content and so they are essentially giving up. If you are a solo player, thats fine, the renewed focus on story is probably a good thing: you can log in, play for a month, complete the story and then move on to a better game.
For me, the solo side of the game was also rubbish. The storylines were extremely generic and derivative. Then, the light/darkside "choices" ultimately turned out to be pointless fluff with no consequences, further making the game feel extremely linear and dull.
SW:TOR could have been amazing. They had the staff, the talent, the IP and a ridiculous budget. Yet, they made a generic flacid themepark that is only still running because it has lightsabers.
I would check that hunch.. SWTOR has done nothing but improve since ROTHC so im expecting nothing but another improvement. Maybe people had different expectations of those xpacs but they were not BAD xpacs. Not even close to bad. TOR hasnt dropped a bad update yet so whatever comes its gonna be an improvement. just wait on it.
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
To be honest, at this point he's pretty much turned it into a self-fulling prophecy. So regardless of what they do, he'll find something to be disappointed about.
"and I'm seldom wrong with these hunches."
Whenever someone claims that, their minds are pretty much made up already.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
lets not put our unrealistic expectations on this. Just take the info given and wait for the thing to come out. Then we can properly assess it.
Oh yea for all the people saying "blah blah i quit TOR after x amount of time blah blah" I suggest you reboot it and give it another run. True the game had a few bumps before but its overall a better product than it was. I say sub for a month and do a class story you havent done yet.
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
true.
"The Society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
Currently: Games Audio Engineer, you didn't hear what I heard, you heard what I wanted you to hear.
never paid swtor time of day. until i saw the new trailer. and with the lack of lore and new content Wildstar has been delivering i gave it a go.
I love it and i welcome a personal story driven mmo!- something many current mmos lack.
I have been looking around for a new MMO to play but I was so burnt by SW:TOR that I've yet to find an MMO to play that I feel I can commit to.
My primary reasons for leaving TOR were:
1) Open World PvP - completely non-existant
2) Tiered Gear - one of the worst design decisions you can make for an MMO is to have tiered gear at endgame. It segregates the community and places too much emphasis on obtaining gear, rather than on getting good at the game
3) Too easy endgame - I hear this one may have gotten better, but the first two raids released were a cakewalk, even on nightmare mode. The third raid was better with more challenging bosses but was still quite easy.
4) Gear requirements - The huge leaps in stats between one tier of gear to the next meant all old content was trivialised and all new content was pointless until you got the requisite gear.
5) Linear, generic, mind-numbing leveling - I truely hated the leveling experience in SW:TOR. The storylines were too derivative and generic so I never felt attached to any of my characters. The zones were too linear and the worlds felt empty.
6) Holy Trinity - The trinity can work, but its boring. Bioware took it a step further and dumbed down the trinity too much. This resulted in boring content design to fit with the trinity. Why couldn't they add support classes?
Most of these problems are underlying system issues, design decisions made years ago by people that should have known better. MMOs live and die with the community and Bioware simply made too many decisions that killed off the community, forcing its players to rely on the content they provided which just wasnt good enough. I'd happily return and fork over a monthly sub if they ever bothered addressing these underlying issues, but they never will.
aaaargh..... "like it should of been those stories would of came" Cant you see this is an abomination ? Maybe it's because my native language isn't English, I don't know, but it just looks and sounds horrible on paper. Maybe it's impossible to hear the difference when you talk, but it's so obviously wrong when you see it written...
best regards, the grammar nazi
unrelated: that made me disproportionately happy to the amount of actual humor in it (being from not from Eyebrow Saskatchewan)
on topic: I was always excited for the story elements in the game, and was unaware of the shifts they had made, because, while the story elements are what drew me in, the story elements are also what caused me to stop playing.....
cut-scenes and full voice over are very time intensive, and in the time I could do one quest there, I could gain a lvl in another 'clickthrough the same old story' game....
time to reinstall and have a look around, I think
"We aren't going to ... Period. End of statement."
ya. ok. whatever.
but what do i know, i'm only a vanbois i'm told.