[eudaemonic]

I wanted to like SWTOR... I really did... but it was hard to turn my brain off to all the small things they didn't learn from Warcraft. With as many articles and whatnot out there about why things changed the way they did in WoW, I just don't know if they ignored it because they didn't want to be overly influenced - but it had a negative effect in my brain. It was like déjà vu.

After playing for about a month and a half, I unsubscribed and said I'll come back in a year or so to see how they're doing. I'm a fan of Star Wars so I'm not turned off by the universe or anything... I just felt like I needed a more refined experience.

[BladeoftheImmortal]

Aside from WoW, LOTRO is the only MMO that has endured pretty well since its inception, right?

Final Fantasy XI ma good man.

[zashga]

Final Fantasy XI ma good man.

Lots of older MMOs are still leading small, inconspicuous lives. Even Asheron's Call is somehow still afloat.

[PewPewK]

Damn, even EVE has more concurrent users than SWTOR plus the benefit that all EVE players are on a single server. SWTOR is gonna have to start some merges.

[border]

You know what will blow your mind?

The servers for Everquest Online Adventures (the Playstation 2 MMO) were still running until 2 months ago.

9 years of service for a poor-selling MMO on a nearly extinct platform. How did they even do it? And more intriguing, who the fuck was still playing it?

[pottuvoi]

Is TOR decent as a single player experience?
Might pick it up if price drops sometime in a future.

[BigDug13]

You know what will blow your mind? The servers for Everquest Online Adventures (the Playstation 2 MMO) were still running until 2 months ago. 9 years of service for a poor-selling MMO on a nearly extinct platform. How did they even do it? And more intriguing, who the fuck was still playing it?

It probably helped that EQ was from Sony so they only had to deal with themselves on decision making on continued support for their own system.

[M.D]

Speaking of EQ... when is Everquest next coming? Is EQ still popular?

[border]

It probably helped that EQ was from Sony so they only had to deal with themselves on decision making on continued support for their own system.

SOE has shut down other games that were far newer, I think. The Matrix Online definitely got axed, though perhaps they just didn't want to renew the license. Still, 9 years for a PS2 game that required the Network Adapter add-on. How many concurrent users could they have possible have had at the end? A dozen?

[Dapperk]

Is TOR decent as a single player experience? Might pick it up if price drops sometime in a future.

It's the best SP experience you'll get in a game of this type. That's really not saying too much though. If it was sold as a true SP game it would be subpar at best. Not enough variety in the quests/missions.

[99%]

Would it make sense for Zenimax just to axe Elder Scrolls Online now? Or turn it into a coop game instead of an MMO?

Writing is on the wall if you don't bring new shit to the table in this genre.

[etiolate]

Elder Scrolls Online sounds like they're adopting some more current design ideas and not just a straight wow-clone.

They just need to fix that art look and make the world come alive.

[99%]

Yeah but they won't change the design I guess, and while it has some new idea, I don't see it as new enough to really stand out long term like EVE for example.

[Dash Kappei]

Bethesda would be better off making their Elder Scrolls MMO F2P at launch. Or at least subscription free at launch if they want to sell the game at retail.

Absolutely. Or give each user two chara slots and a cap to, say, lev15. Promote that by giving members who pimp the game like a +level5 bonus cap (so to bring and increase to lev 20 the total). Shit like that.

[fluffydelusions]

Apart from having too many servers, it doesn't help that Hero engine is utter crap and lags terribly when you get more than 10 people on screen at once.

[mainframe]

I would seriously play again if it went f2p.

game could easily have micro transactions added in , and I be a sucker for it.

[Erasus]

MMOs are dying.

Not really.

GW2 out soon, TERA had a good launch. WoW still strong, and has new expansion comming.

F2P is on the rize. Aion, lotro, LoL, Forsaken World

[PenguinPoacher]

If Bethesda makes a good game it will be fine. The problem with Star Wars is it sucked. Very linear leveling, less endgame than classic WoW had. I think they spent more time working on shitty romance dialogues with your companions than the game.

[Draxal]

I disagree with a lot of other people on what ToR did wrong. Dialogue wasn't it, I think, as they have rolled out content quicker than pretty much anyone else. The "there's not enough content" argument is really sort of a misnomer for the real problem with the content which is that it's usefulness runs out quicker than it does in WoW. Flashpoints have no purpose once you're in the current tier of raiding, whereas you can run heroics in WoW for valor and buy non-set pieces while you wait for the goods to drop. That it should have been a single player game is the same shit you hear who say WoW should have been Warcraft 4, and arguably Lucasarts made the call on it being an MMO. Where I do agree though is that's it's derivative. There's a lot in the game that basically comes right out of TBC era WoW. It makes it very easy to transition over, but kind of leaves you feeling like "well, if it plays like WoW, why the shit don't I just play WoW?" Regardless of if I think others are right in their assessment or not, they're certainly cancelling like they are which basically left me in a place where, as much as I like the game, I have to go too. My guild went from 20 people launch week to 6 people in March to 1-2 people in May. Bioware's handling this exodus with complete ineptitude has eroded what confidence I may have had in them prior, and I eye the uninstall button on a daily basis because my friends aren't coming back at this point regardless to what Bioware does and space is at a premium on my SSD.

It's pretty much this, I really think Bioware listened to those Wow fans who always clamored for BC Wow, and hate modern Wow.

I mean even Blizzard catered to those fans initially, in Cataclysm, but it bit them in the ass and they reversed face quickly with the ez mode dungeons later on. It just shows sometimes you have to ignore listening to the vocal minority.

If Bethesda makes a good game it will be fine. The problem with Star Wars is it sucked. Very linear leveling, less endgame than classic WoW had. I think they spent more time working on shitty romance dialogues with your companions than the game.

End game vanilla sucked if you were not a raider. BC was considered a good expansion, because it did change end game a bit (dailies/arena).

[PenguinPoacher]

End game vanilla sucked if you were not a raider. BC was considered a good expansion, because it did change end game a bit (dailies/arena).

The raids in classic were much better than the raids in star wars. If you are talking PvP the massive battles at TM and Southshore were much better than the crappy pvp star wars put in that had Sorcerers/Sages dropping everyone than grabbing the ball and sprinting whilst getting pulled to the goal by another Sorcerer.

Edit: Come to think of it I saw a total of probably 20-30 other players while lvling in the later levels. The very poor instancing they implemented is another thing that turned me off.

[sangreal]

MMOs are dying.

non-wow theme park MMOs are dying (and should)

also, vanilla wow endgame was far superior to tor's endgame.

[Xiaoki]

MMOs are dying.

No, BAD MMOs are dying.

And rightfully so.

[SteveWinwood]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ8Da...hannel&list=UL

This is the greatest thing of all time.

[Draxal]

The raids in classic were much better than the raids in star wars. If you are talking PvP the massive battles at TM and Southshore were much better than the crappy pvp star wars put in that had Sorcerers/Sages dropping everyone than grabbing the ball and sprinting whilst getting pulled to the goal by another Sorcerer. Edit: Come to think of it I saw a total of probably 20-30 other players while lvling in the later levels. The very poor instancing they implemented is another thing that turned me off.

Tarren Mill was a lag fest majority of the time, and WSG was dominated by good druids as well (but I do agree Huttball is horrible).

The instancing isn't the problem with the later levels. It's just that the later levels are so gigantic it's like finding a need in a haystack, especially since the Imp/Republic zones have no crossover whatsoever unlike Wow.

Edit. Took out instancing part

[Dunlop]

If Bethesda makes a good game it will be fine.

Forgetting the fact the MMO will use the same Hero Engine that SWTOR does and as a MMO veteran let me make this absolutely clear: It is bar none the biggest piece of shit I have ever played and that is with BW pumping a ton of resources into it.

The Elder Scroll MMO looks absolutely nothing like any of the games it is supposed to be about, it looks like a WOW copy..worse than that it is a WOW copy from 5 years ago.

I think the writing is on the wall for SWTOR, but if they are going to merge it needs to be yesterday

[mattiewheels]

Didn't EA bet the farm on TOR literally? I wonder how their returns are looking, and if this will make them back their money of they just keep above water for long enough.

[nephilimdj]

Half the reason why people play WoW is because there are always people playing it. Its awesome running around the area and seeing other people I can talk to, troll, attack, and vice versa. Having such a low amount of players in a server makes no fucking sense what so ever.

Thats only really NA servers, due to all the Australians and such
EU servers are dead 6-10 hours a day

[Ezio]

Next!

I was under the assumption that LOTRO was doing very well after going F2P?

[mclem]

End game vanilla sucked if you were not a raider.

It also sucked if you wanted to be a raider, but weren't an acceptable class/spec combo. I'm not familiar with TOR, but I do hope they've nailed the accessibility to all.

[Effect]

Is TOR decent as a single player experience? Might pick it up if price drops sometime in a future.

Initially I would say yes. That's how I went into it after finding it for a lower price. There comes a point I feel when the barriers put in place to slow you do just become to much. Stories, the ones I played, clearly start to get dragged out just to keep you playing. There is a serious pacing issue. You also end up just doing the same things over and over again on each planet you go to. The locations and enemies just change.

I was under the assumption that LOTRO was doing very well after going F2P?

It is. Both it and DDO are doing very well it seems and are getting new expansions on top of their normal content additions.

[FieryBalrog]

I was under the assumption that LOTRO was doing very well after going F2P?

Everyone basically remembers Turbine's big success announcement right after it went f2p. But that was 2 years ago. All current info is that they're still doing OK, but the f2p bump was temporary and they didn't maintain that initial level of interest.

[Bomber Bob]

f2p please

[Patryn]

Didn't EA bet the farm on TOR literally? I wonder how their returns are looking, and if this will make them back their money of they just keep above water for long enough.

I believe EA has said that at this point they'll at least break even on the game. Howver it clearly won't be the massive success and constant source of money that WoW is for Activision.

[Dunlop]

On the F2P theme, anyone have an idea how DC Universe is doing? I can't find anything from 2012

[Jackl]

Point and click is dead. Tera may not have or keep amazing numbers, but it proved that you have to innovate if you want people to play your game.

And not "we added voiceovers!" innovate either, thats just nice. It doesn't keep people subscribed.

Tear down the entire model, start from the bottom up.

How should your game play?
Why is it fun?
Why would I want to keep playing?

GO.

[Majine]

Nothing can touch WoW, and WoW base stayed flat according to their latest data.

[riceandbeans]

Glad to see the Dragon Age 3 team were transferred and put to such good use.

[BattleMonkey]

Damn, even EVE has more concurrent users than SWTOR plus the benefit that all EVE players are on a single server. SWTOR is gonna have to start some merges.

No it doesn't. Average EVE concurrent users right now at prime time is 30-35k users. From this article the average concurrent users in TOR is around 74k. Problem is they are split up between 214 servers which is ridiculous. WoW has only a few more servers than that and has 10 times the user base. They really screwed up with the amount of servers they set up for this game

Everyone basically remembers Turbine's big success announcement right after it went f2p. But that was 2 years ago. All current info is that they're still doing OK, but the f2p bump was temporary and they didn't maintain that initial level of interest.

Company last I looked was doing good financially though exactly how well what game is doing is up in the air since they got 3 big f2p titles out. They are hiring though, so they can't be doing too bad.

[Effect]

There is something that WoW and older MMOs (EQ1 and 2, AC 1, Ultima, DAoC (to a degree but via different factions)) do and did that new games seem to be refusing to do I've noticed. Something they had from the very beginning. Yet it rarely gets talked about and I think it's actually a prettty big thing. Multiple leveling areas based on character race. I don't just mean starting off but for almost your entire leveling experience. I can start a human character in WoW and go through an entire section of the world. If I start a Night Elf or a Dwarf/Gnome I could do entire sections without having to set foot into the human lands or either of those other lands if I choose. Or I could take my human character and run him through the night elf leveling areas and stay there if I wanted to. That actually added replayability to alts. Sure as you reach max level that changes but with expansions that doesn't have to. Even though with Burning Crusade everyone started off in the same area but as you progressed you could you had a choice of what areas you could mess around in. I think this is part of why a lot of people continue to play the game.

One of my biggest issues with SWTOR was outside of the starting planet no matter what class I played as on the Republic side I would still be doing around 80% (not sure of the exact number but lets go with this) of the same content over and visiting the same locations over and over again. I don't have a lot patience for that. It's a problem I'm soon going to be having with TERA as well which is why I'm trying not to play any alts (just made them to grab the names I wanted.) It's why I ended up leaving Rift. I enjoyed that game but couldn't stomach redoing the same areas over and over again because I happen to like one side over the other and wanted to play as a different archtype.

[The Lamonster]

Nothing can touch WoW, and WoW base stayed flat according to their latest data.

Playing SWTOR resulted with me getting back into WoW.

It's like eating a cheeseburger at a new restaurant and while it's tasty, it just reminds you of your favorite cheeseburger which you must have ASAP.

[RoninChaos]

214 servers? lol, game surely didn't need that many. At launch they had open servers with no waits, yet a handful of popular servers had queues and people whined. Bioware caved and opened tons of more servers even though there was many with no wait. Good job They have all the voice over done for content going into next year. Their problem has been trying to plug holes into the game by adding in features to the game that should have been available at launch, while delaying their work on content. Their next content update was already in game and planned but it's been pushed back to the next one, and instead the update we are getting is nothing but game features that shoulda been at launch and they are just adding in. The voice acting has nothing to do with the speed of their content releases, the new stuff they add doesn't even need that much voice work, but again they have already recorded all the voice work. They are just stumbling over getting the MMO part of their MMO up to snuff. They are shifting focus onto doing things like server transfers and such. Game should not have been released when it was, it needed much more time to finish but EA obviously wanted it out before the end of the year

Exactly. Patch 1.2 is how the game should have launched.

[FieryBalrog]

Playing SWTOR resulted with me getting back into WoW. It's like eating a cheeseburger at a new restaurant and while it's tasty, it just reminds you of your favorite cheeseburger which you must have ASAP.

lol yea, I signed up for the annual pass 1 week after starting TOR

[Hoo-doo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZ8Da...hannel&list=UL

Oh wow. That was amazing.

[GungHo]

Some of these people were laid off.

Yeah, that would sting every time you looked in the mirror after a shower. And people around here ask why I don't bring any personal pictures and shit into the office...

Can someone explain to me what makes ToR so bad and why it's so hated?

It's very competitive with the WoW that existed in 2006.

If Bethesda makes a good game it will be fine.

Bethesda has nothing to do with Elder Scrolls Online.

[LongMuckDong]

I love SWTOR - been playing since launch, the haters and butthurt exhuded by the hivemind feeds my lightsaber the protein it loves and requires.

aka..

Bring on update 1.3 - LFG tool, Ranked Warzones and Super Servers sound brill.

[Derrick01]

I love SWTOR - been playing since launch, the haters and butthurt exhuded by the hivemind feeds my lightsaber the protein it loves and requires. aka.. Bring on update 1.3 - LFG tool, Ranked Warzones and Super Servers sound brill.

What have you been doing the whole time? There's nothing to do but pvp.

[Dresden]

What have you been doing the whole time? There's nothing to do but pvp.

Probably doesn't even play much.

Londa 2.0

[Izayoi]

The game had so many problems when I quit playing, but it sounds like a lot of them have since been fixed. I wonder why the playerbase keeps dwindling... Is the PvP still ridiculously one-sided? Part of the reason I left was getting into a Warzone only to be up against a full team of Battlemasters when most of my team were fresh 50s. Ilum completely fucked up PvP on my server, I still can't believe they didn't do any rollbacks...

[bjb]

Obligatory:



The game has been shit since before 1.2.

That patch was really just nail in the coffin.

[quickwhips]

MMO need to be not called MMO unless there is only one game server and everyone is on that server. I know its not totally realistic yet but its what needs to happen. Server transfers are stupid.