BioWare Willing to do ''Anything and Everything'' to Keep SW:TOR Afloat

[neferseki]

"anything and everything" to keep it afloat

Except fixing bugs. I've been playing since its december release last year in the US and now on AUS servers and a lot of the bugs I saw then are still present.

Starting to get sick of them myself even if I started out not caring too much. I can see why a lot of people aren't playing anymore.

[Vencha88]

Still play SWTOR daily, usually my Guardian Hul'kh but now I am also starting to level my Gunslinger (Hul'kh's sister!), Powertech (Father of Hul'kh's unmade rival!) and Assassin (The Gunslingers rival!, I love the constant editions, and while I didn't bother with the even, the suddenness and "Special News Report" style of it was great fun.

Also, the changes to PVP and the way gear is gained added alot for me, along with the new Warzone and making all of them same faction.

[Bronze_D]

I'm still playing through TOR for the story of each class and collecting codex entries for background universe information.
Granted, 97% of quests are the same, but it's the class quests I'm playing through, messing with ls/ds options, companion quests etc etc.
Sure in essence it's a WoW clone and the "same" as every other "simple" MMO as you put it Tas, but I'm not playing it expecting some revolutionary experience, I'm playing it for the simple fact I'm a die-hard Star Wars fan and the KoTOR nostalgia and I will continue to subscribe and play until the new content they continue to bring out doesn't satisfy me.

The Rakghoul event the original article points out is a perfect example. It was totally out of left field and left people stunned with what was going on. Travelling to Tatooine to investigate the outbreak felt downright cool, to investigate the crashed ship, taking part in the new daily they brought out each day of the event filling in the gaps about what happened, fighting the new "infected" world bosses, filling out new codex entries, I found it extremely cool. Of course the DNA sample farming killed the event a little but without farming I was still able to buy three of the green-black crystals, a number of companion customisation kits and the Rakling vanity pet.

My point is, they're continuing to bring out new story elements and PvP isn't the be all and end all of every MMO. Yes it's an integral part and I agree, PvP is abysmal in TOR but it's the world I'm interested in.

A valid point, and for the first few months this will likely keep a sizeable population of the game.

The trouble is that the population then will finish consuming them.

Once that's done, their interest will rapidly burn out and when that happens... well, game over.

So they have to add new contents in to maintain interest, which is the same thing WoW did, add new content in every say 6 months or so.

But a new trouble then shows up, the players in this day are now becoming more and more accustomed to the system and pace (since it's the same old system really and by now they're perfectly familiar on how to approach it efficiently), and they chew up the new contents the dev throw in so fast that it's basically a sink hole.

The players are pulverizing the content through at a pace the dev simply can't keep up with, so what's the standard WoW solution? Throw MORE DEV resources into making new content which is what Bioware and EA is doing as well.

This however simply will not last, the players get more and more and MORE efficient by every passing day at chewing the new contents, while it gets less and less profitable to funnel resources keeping the interest of the players while reducing player bleed rate (as they lose interest and look for a new game).

Hence why PvP is vital, a robust and extensive PvP is much more resistant at being chewed up by the players because the players themselves actually provide part of the content itself.

This means that maintaining player interest on the PvP contents can be done with smaller team and resources that doesn't keep growing like a cancer in time and scale, and thus much more stable and reliable.

[Nekosan]

Vanguard had one of the single best crafting games, an housing systems I have seen in any MMO, including Asherons call. An AC1 had what has to be an amazing system, so to be beaten is a big deal. .
Vanguard really fell over cos the devs ran out of money, an they were trying to make an old school MMO in a market where people wanted shallow, simplistic game play removed of any need to think for yourself.

I think they still could have succeeded as an oldschool style MMO, the problem was that they listened to all the testers advice all the way through alpha/beta and then just suddenly decided one day that they wanted to get on the WoW gravy train, they also refused to deal with the chunk loading issue that drove many people away before they even played 15 minutes of the game, once they got dumped by the initial publisher because of that it just spiraled out of control.

The sad thing is that at the time it was the biggest videogame flop in history (200 mil iirc) but nobody learned anything from it, for some reason nobody learned the golden rule: "make YOUR game, not someone else's, draw up a plan and stick to it".

[Twist.of.Lemon]

Vanguard had one of the single best crafting games, an housing systems I have seen in any MMO, including Asherons call. An AC1 had what has to be an amazing system, so to be beaten is a big deal. .
Vanguard really fell over cos the devs ran out of money, an they were trying to make an old school MMO in a market where people wanted shallow, simplistic game play removed of any need to think for yourself.

Don't forget having a gutless pile of **** like Brad McQuaid who couldn't handle being there as a large chunk of his staff were fired in the Sigil car park.

[Krogan]

Personally I went into SWTOR knowing it would be couple of months of fun story and expected nothing else, I also got nothing else as the game in every other way was and is far worse then WoW. I played up to lvl 44 with my gf and honestly I think I would have tired a lot sooner if it wasn't for that shared experience but eventually it all started feeling very same same at about lvl 30 the only thing I really enjoyed was using knockback to kill enemies with fall damage(imo the single best feature of the game hands down).

But SWTOR never even felt like an MMO to me, it is without a doubt the most linear MMO experience I have ever had and much like ME3 you realize after a while that you aren't actually making any real choices that will have any kind of impact.

Overall SWTOR was exactly what I expected it to be and it was a nice distractions for a couple of months, I guess other people find something more in what I found to be an incredibly shallow gaming experience but people are different.

As for GW2 I really don't see any way that it could disappoint me, all I want from it is a different combat system, open content that friends/family can join without being on the same quest line or level and pvp that is more then killing people.

[sifter132]

TBH I find it pretty hard to not just start ranting everytime i see a MMO thread lately, I let my SWTOR sub expire because the game is just missing something, it feels like the way the game will be a year from now is how it should have launched. That's not to say that it was unpolished, it was remarkable polished compared to the majority of releases, but the lack of a loot hook (or a hook of any kind) kind of killed it for me, the hard to find instances etc were just the icing on the cake.

SWTOR makes me a little sad, I want to love it so much but it's just not happening.

I just think the expectations are unreasonably high. People expect a completely FINISHED product, with all the features they want. Has ANY MMO launched with all those features at once? Hell no, they were added slowly over time. Whether that be customisable UI, player housing, open world PVP areas etc. Most MMOs are battling to have stable servers on release, let alone the boat load of comfort features that players beg for.

[Tas]

Vanguard had one of the single best crafting games, an housing systems I have seen in any MMO, including Asherons call. An AC1 had what has to be an amazing system, so to be beaten is a big deal. .
Vanguard really fell over cos the devs ran out of money, an they were trying to make an old school MMO in a market where people wanted shallow, simplistic game play removed of any need to think for yourself.

I think they still could have succeeded as an oldschool style MMO, the problem was that they listened to all the testers advice all the way through alpha/beta and then just suddenly decided one day that they wanted to get on the WoW gravy train, they also refused to deal with the chunk loading issue that drove many people away before they even played 15 minutes of the game, once they got dumped by the initial publisher because of that it just spiraled out of control.

The sad thing is that at the time it was the biggest videogame flop in history (200 mil iirc) but nobody learned anything from it, for some reason nobody learned the golden rule: "make YOUR game, not someone else's, draw up a plan and stick to it".

Agreed, its sad because Vanguard was a great game, it really had the oldschool feeling back. But just blew up.

[Bluefire]

Personally what I think they need to do is put in xp holds into modern mmo's..
Using wow for example.
You hit 60. xp is stopped you cannot group with anyone higher than 60.
Gear is limited via ilvl (you cant equip bc gear)
Now you need to gear up.
Clear MC, Move on to BWL on your first nef down (bwl) your xp is unlocked.
Progress to lvl 70. Rinse, repeat.
Hit 80.. xp locked, Rinse, repeat.
There is SO much content in WoW that people dont experence.
You smash to 85 in under a week, take another day to a week to gear up, then raid.
And you can SEE the people who havent played vanilla/bc content.. they join in and two pulls later everyone is like.. yep.. that ones a wrath baby.

[Matty]

I know for one I have stopped playing.

At about level 20 I got bored of the gameplay. It's rather repetitive.

[Nekosan]

I know for one I have stopped playing.

At about level 20 I got bored of the gameplay. It's rather repetitive.

There's also very little social element to it, aside from doing the 4 mans at the end of every zone you just don't have any contact with other people, somehow they made an MMO with no social hubs.

[heatho]

Somebody just make a new Ultima Online or equivalent please. Eve appears to be the only true sandbox MMO out there.

[TRB]

TBH I find it pretty hard to not just start ranting everytime i see a MMO thread lately, I let my SWTOR sub expire because the game is just missing something, it feels like the way the game will be a year from now is how it should have launched. That's not to say that it was unpolished, it was remarkable polished compared to the majority of releases, but the lack of a loot hook (or a hook of any kind) kind of killed it for me, the hard to find instances etc were just the icing on the cake.

SWTOR makes me a little sad, I want to love it so much but it's just not happening.

I just think the expectations are unreasonably high. People expect a completely FINISHED product, with all the features they want. Has ANY MMO launched with all those features at once? Hell no, they were added slowly over time. Whether that be customisable UI, player housing, open world PVP areas etc. Most MMOs are battling to have stable servers on release, let alone the boat load of comfort features that players beg for.

has any mmo spent $300 mill on production?
I'd want a finished product for that kind of money.
and if its not finished I want to pay only a portion of the cost upfront and for subs until it is in a "finished" state.

[Avant]

So glad that the hype for this game has finally started to die off.

[Matty]

TBH I find it pretty hard to not just start ranting everytime i see a MMO thread lately, I let my SWTOR sub expire because the game is just missing something, it feels like the way the game will be a year from now is how it should have launched. That's not to say that it was unpolished, it was remarkable polished compared to the majority of releases, but the lack of a loot hook (or a hook of any kind) kind of killed it for me, the hard to find instances etc were just the icing on the cake.

SWTOR makes me a little sad, I want to love it so much but it's just not happening.

I just think the expectations are unreasonably high. People expect a completely FINISHED product, with all the features they want. Has ANY MMO launched with all those features at once? Hell no, they were added slowly over time. Whether that be customisable UI, player housing, open world PVP areas etc. Most MMOs are battling to have stable servers on release, let alone the boat load of comfort features that players beg for.

has any mmo spent $300 mill on production?
I'd want a finished product for that kind of money.
and if its not finished I want to pay only a portion of the cost upfront and for subs until it is in a "finished" state.

I don't get this argument. It's not like you paid 300 million to get it developed. And the money they spent on it doesn't have any negative affect on you.