Star Wars: The Old Republic will kill WoW - outsourced to Broadsword

[DalekFlay]

I'm just blathering. SWTOR is currently a ghost town as it is, but if you were to play it offline, you'd never see anyone out in the world, you'd just have your static NPCs. To properly make a SP game out of it, you'd at least want to put roaming groups of friendly and hostile NPCs...? At least to simulate some small part of the worlds being 'alive'.

This might be my singleplayer bias coming through, but... why would seeing random players running around be considered essential? Or even a good thing?

 

[Ninjerk]

Probably because the game was designed with that in mind.

 

[DalekFlay]

Probably because the game was designed with that in mind.

It's just visual though, as far as he's talking about. It's not a raid or a group quest or anything, it's just other people being there bunny-hopping and standing around your quest-giver. That shit's a negative IMO, not an essential piece of the game.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

 

[Zewp]

I finally got around to giving this a try, purely out of boredom. Holy shit, the controls are clunky. I don't know what it is, but I'm finding it very difficult to play.

Anyway, it seems to be a ghost town. My bet is they'll announce the shutdown before December.

 

[Ninjerk]

No way man, free to play success!

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So, how have people at Bio forums reacted to TOR basically, as DraQ or someone else said, becoming the most expensive fanfic of all time thanks to Disney?

 

[Wilian]

Considering it was always fanfic I doubt any sensible person would c.. Oh TOR forums

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Gotta be some butthurt going on there.

 

[Drakron]

Gotta be some butthurt going on there.

Not really, Stanley "End of the Rhine" Woo pretty much either banned or turned away any sensible person ... especially with DA2 reception were any voice of discord was silent and removed, everyone that remained is either a diehard fanboy or a fucking idiot.

The only complains I was able to notice was when TOR gone F2P as they didnt liked the idea very much and complained, as pretty much most sites were saying TOR F2P was incredible punishing they were apparently in near full support and even wanted to make it worst.

Funny thing is they are the ones most hurt by their draconian F2P model because they just sit at end game areas and their queues are likely dead, they failed to realize F2P with a subscription mixed main goal is stable population numbers so there are actually people to run dungeons, as far numbers go F2P changed nothing ... if queues were dead, they would still be dead because filthy F2P cannot queue now can they? Fucking morons ...

 

[Storyfag]

So, how have people at Bio forums reacted to TOR basically, as DraQ or someone else said, becoming the most expensive fanfic of all time thanks to Disney?

Luca$ never, ever concealed his opinion that *all* Star Wars media outside the movies are fan-fiction. Even if he profited greatly on them. Disney didn't really change anything. Still, some morons are butthurt. Nobody sensible cares.

Funny thing is they are the ones most hurt by their draconian F2P model because they just sit at end game areas and their queues are likely dead, they failed to realize F2P with a subscription mixed main goal is stable population numbers so there are actually people to run dungeons, as far numbers go F2P changed nothing ... if queues were dead, they would still be dead because filthy F2P cannot queue now can they? Fucking morons ...

Eh? Of course F2Ps can queue. Granted, not as often as the rest, and without spending some real jewgoldz or ingame credits they won't be able to use the best items.

 

[Rahdulan]

cares.

Funny thing is they are the ones most hurt by their draconian F2P model because they just sit at end game areas and their queues are likely dead, they failed to realize F2P with a subscription mixed main goal is stable population numbers so there are actually people to run dungeons, as far numbers go F2P changed nothing ... if queues were dead, they would still be dead because filthy F2P cannot queue now can they? Fucking morons ...

Eh? Of course F2Ps can queue. Granted, not as often as the rest, and without spending some real jewgoldz or ingame credits they won't be able to use the best items.

I assume he means Operations aka raids. F2P and even Preferred status players can't access those at all unless they fork up for a temporary seven-day pass. Then again, you can't use artifact-tier equipment without paying for it anyway so who cares. Actual PvE end-game is effectively non-existent for F2P players.

 

[Angthoron]

Wow, they're still sticking to this model of having to pay to wear epics, and sub to do raids?

EA marketology best marketology.

 

[Zewp]

And they're going to act surprised when they have to shut the MMO down for not making them any money.

 

[RK47]

Look, it's obviously Mythic & Bioware's fault for the game to fail.
Let's not dwell on things here. EA is not responsible for their design failures.

 

[Angthoron]

Design decisions are usually green-lit by the head office, though - and sometimes dictated by it. It's a collaborative fuck-up effort.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Should have gone with xserver qs from the start like Wildstar.

 

[Angthoron]

Aw, but the Hero engine they bought mid-beta didn't support that function, cut the guys some slack.

 

[Zewp]

Look, it's obviously Mythic & Bioware's fault for the game to fail.
Let's not dwell on things here. EA is not responsible for their design failures.

But, many people ere interested in the game after it went F2P, but the non-subscription restrictions are some of the worst I've ever seen. It's basically competing with Turbine for worst F2P MMO restrictions.

SWTOR is far from the worst MMO I've ever played and I might have played it through to level cap with at least one character, but I can't be arsed because of the restrictions on my account.

 

[set]

I'm surprised anyone does PVE if that how the system works -- it's a negative feedback loop. Who will PVE when there's so few people to PVE with? Who will pay to sub when there's no one to PVE with anyway?

 

[Major_Blackhart]

This is fucking hilarious.

 

[Xenich]

Design decisions are usually green-lit by the head office, though - and sometimes dictated by it. It's a collaborative fuck-up effort.

Whose design decision do you think was to have such a ridiculous exp reward level? The game leveled way too fast. You outpaced content so fast that you were leaving planets half finished. Also, the level curve completely screwed up the crafting game as it was pointless to even focus on anything other than max level crafting. So many times I found that by the time I was able to get the crafting item made, I was already in better quest gear due to out leveling it.

While the interface was a pain in the ass with that game, the whole leveling speed thing I think completely destroyed the game.

 

[Xor]

The game is shit for numerous reasons, but I think it still comes down to wanting every line of dialog to be voiced. That's the reason there is only one leveling track, and also why there has been so little new content added to the game. I suspect it's also why they set the xp curve so high - that way, people leveling alts would at least have a few alternative quests to do.

Edit: Also, there was a tell-all from a former Mythic employee that blamed management for the shit state the game was in, and that was months before launch. That's where the original $200 million figure came from, which was later confirmed by EA, so I have reason to believe it. Basically EA replaced Mythic's management with a bunch of incompetents who had no idea how to make an MMO, and brought in Bioware developers with no MMO experience and put them in charge of gameplay design, while the people with actual experience in the genre increasingly quit in frustration.

Edit2: I managed to track the blog down. It's been shut down since 2011, and even the articles that directly linked to it seemed to have mysteriously vanished. It's mostly about the Warhammer MMO, but he talks about TOR a few times as well.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110208071059/http://ealouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/hello-world/

And Bioware? Don’t make me laugh. They’ve spent more money making the Old Republic than James Cameron spent on Avatar. Shit you not. More than $ 300 million! Can you believe that?

And you know what they’re most proud of? This is the kicker. They are most proud of the sound. No seriously. Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work. That’s the best they have. The rest of the game is a joke. EA knows it and so does George Lucas,they’re panicking , and so most of Mythic has already been cannibalized to work in Austin on it because they can’t keep pushing back launch.

Old Republic will be one of the greatest failures in the history of MMOs from EA. Probably at the level of the Sims Online. We all know it too ……

 

[Ninjerk]

No wonder they played mix-and-match with WoW gameplay.

 

[abija]

Design decisions are usually green-lit by the head office, though - and sometimes dictated by it. It's a collaborative fuck-up effort.

Whose design decision do you think was to have such a ridiculous exp reward level? The game leveled way too fast. You outpaced content so fast that you were leaving planets half finished. Also, the level curve completely screwed up the crafting game as it was pointless to even focus on anything other than max level crafting. So many times I found that by the time I was able to get the crafting item made, I was already in better quest gear due to out leveling it.

While the interface was a pain in the ass with that game, the whole leveling speed thing I think completely destroyed the game.

Fuck no... game needed way faster leveling so planet story lines and side quests become 100% optional (at least for 2nd+ char on a faction).
The game had a HUGE amount of content, they could have made so much better use of it with faster leveling and offering alternate paths through the planets.

At release, I remember I skipped only 1 set of secondary quests on a planet and rushed through the last one and I finished the character story at 47 (did all dungeons once and only 1 or 2 space missions). Questing alone was surely not leveling you too fast.
Crafting wasn't that bad either, just leveling it up gave good gear for the slots you could craft for.