What can SE learn from Bioware's failing Star Wars MMO?

If anyone interested... Current SWTOR peak player counts is around 60-80K. Failure of colossal proportions.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TheVedis

dont clone games, thats what ya gotta take away

---

Pretty much this. A Blizzard developer said himself that you will never beat WoW if you just make another clone of WoW.

Actually, Extra Credits from Penny Arcade put a really good perspective into WoW clones.

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-future-of-mmos

All I think can be said in the video above. The only games I see succeeding and staying in competition with WoW (not over succeeding it) is Final Fantasy XIV 2.0 and Guild Wars 2. FFXIV 2.0 will definitely caters to a certain group of people (Japanese and JRPG players), and the idea of international servers is one of the reasons that FFXI was a huge success for a long time.

I played SW:TOR and got a Bounty Hunter to 50. I will say beforehand, the story was incredible and it was better than all the three prequels put together. However, that is as far as I can say about it. It not only pretty much used WoW's form of end game style, it also was no where near casual friendly. I remember in end game, I had to do dailies on two planets that had group oriented quests and easily took me 2-3 hours to take care of all of them (assuming you have a party ready to go), not only that, a daily was required of you to finish a dungeon. I don't know if you played dungeons in SW, but they were not short by any means. You were looking at a good two hours to finish a dungeon. So if you wanted to be as progressive as possible in the PvE department, you had to easily sink 5-6 hours of gameplay a day.

Like someone said, WoW caught lightning in a bottle. They found the balance of casual play and hardcore play. Making it so you can gather your Valor Points anytime of the week, you just had a weekly cap instead of the old way of getting 120 a day if you were on everyday. It catered to casuals because instead of feeling forced to be on everyday, you could get whatever you wanted done on the weekend and still make the same progress as a hardcore. Of course, ultimately hardcores succeeded over casuals with hard mode raids.

The concept should always be this way, making a balance between hardcore and casual but ultimately rewarded the hardcore more in the end. Hopefully FFXIV 2.0 and Guild Wars 2 sees this and make sure that balance is set in their game.

I believe FFXIV 2.0 and Guild Wars 2 will be highly successful because they don't clone WoW, simply put.

FFXIV 2.0 at worst will derive concepts mostly from FFXI and use concepts that made WoW successful without cloning it (Like a content finder system, this should be a standard tool in all MMO's.). That is okay though, since I believe FFXIV shouldn't be exactly like FFXI, but it should give us a sense of familiarity. If I am a FFXI vet and getting into FFXIV for the first time, it is good that I have some sense of familiarity to get me hooked in. At the same time, a person who has never played a FF MMO should be comfortable getting into it right away. Looking at everything so far and by interviews, it sounds like this is exactly what SE is doing. So I believe FFXIV 2.0 will be a major success that SW could not.

Guild Wars 2 will most likely succeed because it's main intent is to break away from the generic MMO formula, and by playing the beta, it really shows, and in a good way. Can't wait to play the full retail.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by leomike35

I think SE need only look at its own past mistakes and stay the current course. 2.0 will be the game ffxiv fans and devs should have released and after it does 1.0 will become a vague memory.

---

1.0 will never be a vague memory.
It left a bitter taste in evertbody's mouth.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Airget

-PVE and PVP balance. In their attempts to balance PVP they ended up nerfing PVE builds which pissed off a lot of people since the concept of a sneak attack imperial agent operative was pretty much deemed worthless ONLY because people were moaning for a nerf through PVP not PVE. Rather then just adjust abilities for PVP they just adjusted it to be the same for both PVE and PVP which pretty much made said build worthless.

---

And SE is going the same way with their justification of spell cast interruption while moving. Separate rulesets for PvE and PvP is the only way to go. Ragnarok Online did it quite well, imho. I hope SE will consider it too, especially since YoshiP stated himself, that they expect only 15% of people to be actually interested in PvP and that it won't be one of their major focusing points in one of the interviews.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Pandastirfry

And as to MUDs dying off... You do know what killed them right? MMORPGs, why play text only when Everquest has actual characters. What will kill the MMORPG will be it's replacement not some new fad but genuine innovation to the genre, like full immersion VR or some such nonsense

---

And I can't wait for that to happen :D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sagagemini

1.0 will never be a vague memory.
It left a bitter taste in evertbody's mouth.

---

At least everyone who bought the game or pre-ordered the collectors edition.

SWTOR was a SinglePlayer game with great story bunched together with boring mmo-elements. You had a boring way between the main story elements, after you reached the max level, there was no reason to continue.

I agree with the OP that focusing on the non-casual players is the key of a successful mmo in the future

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Laf

If anyone interested... Current SWTOR peak player counts is around 60-80K. Failure of colossal proportions.

---

[1]Citation needed.

Also is that EU+NA or NA alone? We all know population dropped, but doubt it dropped that low... Even XI had more than 60K peak concurent users.

Latest "official" number given was 1.3 million in the beginning of May. And 1.3 million is far from being a failure.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by yukikaze_yanagi

oh, we have plenty instead. Just because something have more subscribers than another, don't mean they're doing good.

---

What determine if you are doing good or not is net profit. It was said (EA statement) that SWTOR would be profitable with ~500K subscriptions. They're just way over that (for now).

I don't see XIV becoming anywhere near profitable soon. If XIV can already make up for all the money lost, that would be a miracle.

As someone who looked forward to, and is still currently playing TOR, I have to say I am definitely disappointed in how BioWare has handled it thus far. It's actually funny if you compare it to XIV. I couldn't stand XIV at launch, however SE has gone out of there way to make the game better with each patch. BioWare seems to be doing the opposite with their game. They have, in the opinion of many, made the game worse with just about every patch released. Where SE took action quickly to save their game early on, admiting mistakes, BioWare seems to kinda tip toe around issues and sugar coat things.

So while I agree that part of the games impending doom is due to the fact that it pretty much is WoW in space with light sabers, another huge reason is the comedy of errors that is BioWares management of the game. It came out of the gates strong, and there is no reason they shouldn't have been able to retain a much larger portion of the 2 million or so who purchased the game 6 months ago.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sagagemini

1.0 will never be a vague memory.
It left a bitter taste in evertbody's mouth.

---

For me it already is. I barely remember the times when I had to go back to an aetheryte crystal like every ten minutes because I had no MP anymore. XIV really has come a long way.

I played FFXI quite a bit and it was getting to the yutunga jungle (spelling is probably off) that i finally gave up. i didnt have the patience to sit for three hours shouting for a party, to get a party, kill 5 mobs, have a person drop, then stand there and look for a replacement.

What FFXIV needs to succeed, IMHO, is to have some way of making the journey to endgame worth while. like one of the posters said, "get to level 75" is not incentive to play the other 74 levels. I like there is currently a story to follow every 5 levels, it helps, but it is not enough. aside from that you can do guild leves, get bogged down with 100's of the same reward that you sell to a vendor, or find a party to grind on mobs with. this isnt exciting or immersive.

I think having the instanced cutsceans speak, would help (among other tweaks to the cutsceans, like proper skipping options, dosent wast time in the timed dungeons, get rid of time limits for dungeons, etc. but thats another post.). give a nice long quest line that provides lore and gives you a place in the NPC community that you can be proud of. all they need to do is take a page or two out of their offline RPG and how colorful the stories were, even in the side quests. I know SE has some stellar story tellers in their ranks, pull some of them out and make them work on this.

after all, its not the picture that the art connoisseur falls in love with, its the detail and the heart put into it. Yoshi has already put in his heart and soul to this game, and it shows. Dont stop now!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DeadRiser

I also hated how everything was so linear. You never saw many people out in the world.

---

And to think this is what people want to happen in FFXIV.

Thing is, I havent seen a great MMO release since WoW/FFXI...period. Some were for sure, better than others, but none seemed to last long aside hardcore fans of what have you. This is especially true for releases. FFXIV flopped harder then SWTOR did, by loads more. Non insanely challenging/long term leveling MMOs simply get snagged eventually because they zoom through and hit all the content within a few months...then get bored.

SWTOR was and is an amazing game. The voice acting, cutscenes, leveling and combat were all better then any MMO I've played thus far. Its main issue, and someone nailed it on the head, was its lack of challenging endgame content. The flashpoints were fun, but very limited after a while. SoA was the hardest thing to beat, but even then became fairly easy. I'd say SoA is as hard as AV but AV is shorter.
This and the fact FFXI/FFXIV ruined the idea of one class a character for me. I had no motivation to make more characters after my Jug hit 50. Leveling on the other side was alright, but I was still basically doing the same leveling quests over and over from before. With FFXI/FFXIV ... and I believe this to be its single best thing, I could switch classes with my one character. This by far is the best function I've ever seen, and games without it seem meh and not worth it to me.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Payadopa

For me it already is. I barely remember the times when I had to go back to an aetheryte crystal like every ten minutes because I had no MP anymore. XIV really has come a long way.

---

I've been playing the game since the Alpha, so it's kinda hard for me to forget about all the crap i've been through. lol
But it sure is nice to see the game evolve.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Velhart

Like someone said, WoW caught lightning in a bottle. They found the balance of casual play and hardcore play. Making it so you can gather your Valor Points anytime of the week, you just had a weekly cap instead of the old way of getting 120 a day if you were on everyday. It catered to casuals because instead of feeling forced to be on everyday, you could get whatever you wanted done on the weekend and still make the same progress as a hardcore. Of course, ultimately hardcores succeeded over casuals with hard mode raids.

---

Let's not forget class balance as well. Being able to do the content as any class/job you want and still being useful was a huge boost for raiding. Players are happier when they can play the role and spec they want over being forced into what used to be known as a "raiding spec" back in TBC.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by leomike35

I think SE need only look at its own past mistakes and stay the current course. 2.0 will be the game ffxiv fans and devs should have released and after it does 1.0 will become a vague memory.

---

We all know it should have been FFXI 2.0 that they should have released.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Duelle

Let's not forget class balance as well. Being able to do the content as any class/job you want and still being useful was a huge boost for raiding. Players are happier when they can play the role and spec they want over being forced into what used to be known as a "raiding spec" back in TBC.

---

Can do this now in both XI and XIV, the only problem is elitist who want the easiest way out.

What an MMO needs for sustainability? What WoW has that no other MMO has?

If you new to WoW there's a lot to do a whole lot. WoW has that going for it...the there's years of content there for you to complete. If you new to any other MMO you got a content problem.

How to curb the problem for FFXIV?

More DYNAMIC Hamlet Defense. Good trending for the future of this type of content. PvP...

Pet breeding...

Mini PvP games...

Will there be another MMO as huge as WoW? Unless a company can create many years worth of content or include a time sinker.

Coliseum PvP Ladder Tournaments...just a thought for the future.

FFXIV is heavily focused on end game content yet it's end game comprises...3 primal fights, 3 hamlets, 3 instance raids, 4 strongholds...

How many hundreds of times have you all done those?

This generation of gaming folk have very short attention spans...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Elexia

Can do this now in both XI and XIV, the only problem is elitist who want the easiest way out.

---

And what I was getting at is that the devs should do their best to remove that easy way out.

Though XI's jobs are not interchangable. Can't swap a DRK out for a THF and still perform on the same level. Can't replace a SAM with a BST and perform on the same level. WHM and SCH aren't exactly interchangable either. Which is leagues away from the raid losing nothing if your melee DPS include a Ret Paladin, Combat Rogue and Frost Death Knight because the raid still performs near the same as if they had a Fury Warrior, Unholy DK, and Assassination Rogue. Or the raid not being shackled to a resto Shaman for raid heals and a Holy Paladin for tank heals.

XIV's hasn't quite gotten there yet.

MMO market is really flooded these days. There are many free to play games for people to pick from as well. Free to play games aren't nessassiry bad but the reason they make more of a profit then most pay games is you get that one guy usually 1 out 5 whos willing to dump tons of cash into the cash shop which would pay for like 10 peoples subscriptions.

Also SE made the classic Everquest 2/ Lineage 2 mistake. Releasing a direct sequel to an already popular MMO. Thus splitting the playerbase and seeing a decline in both games. Blizzard was smart in a way because they never did this. They just keep updating WoW.

SE is going to release Dragon Quest X which is a MMO for the Wii in August 2nd and for Wii U when it comes out. This will split their JP player base for FFXIV and FFXI even more so. Dragon Quest games are huge in Japan and most JP players actually prefer playing MMOs on consoles rather then PCs as seen by how many preferred to play FFXI on PS2. SE has no plans for a NA / EU release of Dragon Quest X. This is sure to make a lot of those JP only people happy. I wouldn't be surprised if this game does better then FFXIV there.

So yea they are really killing themselves with over-saturation of the market.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zumi

MMO market is really flooded these days. There are many free to play games for people to pick from as well. Free to play games aren't nessassiry bad but the reason they make more of a profit then most pay games is you get that one guy usually 1 out 5 whos willing to dump tons of cash into the cash shop which would pay for like 10 peoples subscriptions.

Also SE made the classic Everquest 2/ Lineage 2 mistake. Releasing a direct sequel to an already popular MMO. Thus splitting the playerbase and seeing a decline in both games. Blizzard was smart in a way because they never did this. They just keep updating WoW.

SE is going to release Dragon Quest X which is a MMO for the Wii in August 2nd and for Wii U when it comes out. This will split their JP player base for FFXIV and FFXI even more so. Dragon Quest games are huge in Japan and most JP players actually prefer playing MMOs on consoles rather then PCs as seen by how many preferred to play FFXI on PS2. SE has no plans for a NA / EU release of Dragon Quest X. This is sure to make a lot of those JP only people happy. I wouldn't be surprised if this game does better then FFXIV there.

So yea they are really killing themselves with over-saturation of the market.

---

Dragon Quest X here will be inevitable. Will we play with JP is another question though. The Dragon Quest series sells well over here, not to the extent in Japan, but it makes good sales here. Dragon Quest 8 had really good sales, along with the DS ports. Not to mention DQ9 was a huge success here.

I am sure there would be a good NA/EU playerbase here, but I highly doubt we would see the Wii version come here, but very possible to get the Wii U version, which may be for the best. Wait for it to polish up a bit and get it in a better HD resolution.

Ya know, I was just thinking about the OP and title of the thread, and just had to throw this out there..

I don't think SE could possibly learn anything from Bioware. In fact, this thread really should be on TOR's general forums titled "What Bioware could learn from SE on how to save an MMO". But I think the forum mods would lock/delete it before it even got a single reply.

I've said it many times. When XIV launched, I was not a happy customer at all. It was when SE took action, publicly admitted their mistakes, and made good with the people who purchased the product by giving us a free year while they fix it that kept me.

Most other companies would give some line about product not meeting expectations, pointing to market trends and using language that investors like to hear. SE came out and as gamers, told their customers publicly that the product doesn't live up to their expectations, nor that of the franchise, and that they WILL make it better. And, much like a lot of other people I'm sure, I kinda rolled my eyes and said whatever...

Until they actually did it, and involved us in every step of the process.

It really boils down to customer service ya know. Treat your customers good, and they will reward you by purchasing your product/service. Fail to do that, and people will go where they feel they are being treated like a person, not a subscription.

I think it boils down to smart use of the IP. BioWare failed to capitalize on the popularity of the Star Wars franchise, and FFXIV 1.0 failed to capitalize on the popularity of the Final Fantasy franchise.

TOR should've been Mass Effect Online. It'd be about as popular, and woulda saved them some royalty cash. Of course, I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan, but while playing TOR all I was ever reminded of was Mass Effect.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nix

Awww I really enjoyed the smuggler storyline, I loved hunting Skavak and getting Flashy back haha D:

---

Yeah, it was great. The problem is that act two and three fell apart. Everything after defeating Skavak was just so boring.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Amherst

Yeah, it was great. The problem is that act two and three fell apart. Everything after defeating Skavak was just so boring.

---

Yeah, I agree!

It was a nice twist at the end, but like everything post-skavak and before the twist was pretty balls ; ; I found it hard to continue.

Atleast we got Flashy back!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mishakai

Ya know, I was just thinking about the OP and title of the thread, and just had to throw this out there..

I don't think SE could possibly learn anything from Bioware. In fact, this thread really should be on TOR's general forums titled "What Bioware could learn from SE on how to save an MMO". But I think the forum mods would lock/delete it before it even got a single reply.

I've said it many times. When XIV launched, I was not a happy customer at all. It was when SE took action, publicly admitted their mistakes, and made good with the people who purchased the product by giving us a free year while they fix it that kept me.

Most other companies would give some line about product not meeting expectations, pointing to market trends and using language that investors like to hear. SE came out and as gamers, told their customers publicly that the product doesn't live up to their expectations, nor that of the franchise, and that they WILL make it better. And, much like a lot of other people I'm sure, I kinda rolled my eyes and said whatever...

Until they actually did it, and involved us in every step of the process.

It really boils down to customer service ya know. Treat your customers good, and they will reward you by purchasing your product/service. Fail to do that, and people will go where they feel they are being treated like a person, not a subscription.

---

THIS. I haven't been playing consistently for the last year+ but this is why I continue to follow whats happening with FFXIV and why I reactivated a couple of months ago. I never gave up on them after they publicly admitted their mistake and started engaging the players to try to fix it. If nothing else, I commend them for how they've handled the bombing 1.0 and how they've conducted themselves since then. I have every faith that Yoshi P will give us a game that SE can be proud of with 2.0, and until then I'm willing to deal with the random stupid remnants of 1.0.

As for SWTOR...My husband and I really enjoyed it as a co-op RPG. There's a serious lack of co-op RPGs in the market and SWTOR had tons of content. But as others have said, it never forces you to group, and very rarely were we really challenged unless we were doing something way above our level. In my opinion, that is SWTOR's biggest failing. Its not a social game, its a single player game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mishakai

Most other companies would give some line about product not meeting expectations, pointing to market trends and using language that investors like to hear. SE came out and as gamers, told their customers publicly that the product doesn't live up to their expectations, nor that of the franchise, and that they WILL make it better. And, much like a lot of other people I'm sure, I kinda rolled my eyes and said whatever.

Until they actually did it, and involved us in every step of the process.

It really boils down to customer service ya know. Treat your customers good, and they will reward you by purchasing your product/service. Fail to do that, and people will go where they feel they are being treated like a person, not a subscription.

---

It's less about customer service and more about resources and how much control we're talking about, not to mention the weight of the franchise in question. In the case of TOR, I'm sure Bioware would be willing to fix things, or at least do the visible shake up in staff and resources SE pulled for XIV. But Bioware is not holding the reins. EA is holding the reins. And EA cares more about their investors and is willing to cut their losses instead of a) interacting with the public and b) put forth the resources to fixing the mistake. This is known, and why people cringe whenever EA is mentioned or involved.

Sure, depending on how XIV does after 2.0 hits, it may set a precedent for companies to say "well, if we play our cards right we might be able to fix a poor product while keeping a portion of the people interested in the product until it gets fixed" rather than pulling the plug and washing their hands. Of course, I think only those who are their own entity would be able to take that course of action. Blizzard may be able to do something like that (though I fear Vivendi has much more control over them than anyone is willing to admit), but guys like Bioware, Mythic, and so on are at the whim of their corporate overlords. =/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sagagemini

I've been playing the game since the Alpha, so it's kinda hard for me to forget about all the crap i've been through. lol
But it sure is nice to see the game evolve.

---

I've been playing since Alpha, too. Guess we'll have to agree to disagree then. ^^

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eekiki

TOR should've been Mass Effect Online. It'd be about as popular, and woulda saved them some royalty cash. Of course, I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan, but while playing TOR all I was ever reminded of was Mass Effect.

---

Wow, thinking about it, I would play the shit out of a Mass Effect MMO.

All the new MMOs like SW, GW2, Rift, etc try to create games for people with short attention spam and rely on their initial sales to make profit. Look at GW2, it's same shit rehashed over again but their advertising campaign makes it seem like it's MMO Jesus himself would design. People now days buy into that stuff, they want to be told what they should buy. How many times did you buy a game after reading a review and said wtf the reviewer was thinking?

Now we live in a time where there is a conflict between the MMO generation which is mostly 25 years old + and younger players. New players want to be able to access everything at all times and get the best stuff as fast as possible. They want to breeze through content at a pace no developer can keep up with. While older players want to relive their past experiences.

I think with XIV people are looking for more of a personal experience we've seen in XI. Set aside all the endgame drama, in my opinion XI fostered a community that's been closer than any other MMO I"ve played. That's why it was my favorite game. You felt like you knew people. You exped with them, teamed up on occasions, or engaged in some sort of conflict.

This is what lacks for me in the new MMOs. You can solo to cap without interacting with anyone. The dynamic events encourage teaming up but to me its like playing with a bunch of NPCs. With older MMOs people were much more invested because they strong community and long term goals.
Now people play MMOs almost like they play Modern Warfare, they want to turn it on, play instantly and drop whenever they feel like it. Any content that doesnt fit that model in their eyes is worthless.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cichy

All the new MMOs like SW, GW2, Rift, etc try to create games for people with short attention spam and rely on their initial sales to make profit. Look at GW2, it's same shit rehashed over again but their advertising campaign makes it seem like it's MMO Jesus himself would design. People now days buy into that stuff, they want to be told what they should buy. How many times did you buy a game after reading a review and said wtf the reviewer was thinking?

Now we live in a time where there is a conflict between the MMO generation which is mostly 25 years old + and younger players. New players want to be able to access everything at all times and get the best stuff as fast as possible. They want to breeze through content at a pace no developer can keep up with. While older players want to relive their past experiences.

I think with XIV people are looking for more of a personal experience we've seen in XI. Set aside all the endgame drama, in my opinion XI fostered a community that's been closer than any other MMO I"ve played. That's why it was my favorite game. You felt like you knew people. You exped with them, teamed up on occasions, or engaged in some sort of conflict.

This is what lacks for me in the new MMOs. You can solo to cap without interacting with anyone. The dynamic events encourage teaming up but to me its like playing with a bunch of NPCs. With older MMOs people were much more invested because they strong community and long term goals.
Now people play MMOs almost like they play Modern Warfare, they want to turn it on, play instantly and drop whenever they feel like it. Any content that doesnt fit that model in their eyes is worthless.

---

I agree with both of those points but at the same time I think you also nailed why people don't commit to MMOs like they used to. Simply developers don't give us that much to commit to any more. They're so afraid that people will be intimidated by systems content and difficulty that excessive streamlining is being done on all fronts.

Somehow I still have faith in Japanese developers because they're the most likely to relate to the committed niche market that honestly hasn't gone anywhere simply because there's nowhere to migrate to.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Cichy

All the new MMOs like SW, GW2, Rift, etc try to create games for people with short attention spam and rely on their initial sales to make profit. Look at GW2, it's same shit rehashed over again but their advertising campaign makes it seem like it's MMO Jesus himself would design. People now days buy into that stuff, they want to be told what they should buy. How many times did you buy a game after reading a review and said wtf the reviewer was thinking?

Now we live in a time where there is a conflict between the MMO generation which is mostly 25 years old + and younger players. New players want to be able to access everything at all times and get the best stuff as fast as possible. They want to breeze through content at a pace no developer can keep up with. While older players want to relive their past experiences.

I think with XIV people are looking for more of a personal experience we've seen in XI. Set aside all the endgame drama, in my opinion XI fostered a community that's been closer than any other MMO I"ve played. That's why it was my favorite game. You felt like you knew people. You exped with them, teamed up on occasions, or engaged in some sort of conflict.

This is what lacks for me in the new MMOs. You can solo to cap without interacting with anyone. The dynamic events encourage teaming up but to me its like playing with a bunch of NPCs. With older MMOs people were much more invested because they strong community and long term goals.
Now people play MMOs almost like they play Modern Warfare, they want to turn it on, play instantly and drop whenever they feel like it. Any content that doesnt fit that model in their eyes is worthless.

---

After playing both GW2 beta weekend events, I can sincerely say that Anet is heading into the right direction with MMOs for several reasons.

1) It's free to play (with cosmetic items available with micro transactions)

2) It does away with the holy trinity by making all classes fulfill each role (and still all classes feel unique)

3) It promotes exploration and doesn't give you arbitrary quests with inconsequential quest dialogue.

4) It promotes players working together toward a common goal. (Which surprised me, as it actually worked)

5) It takes the best from best selling MMOs without copying them. (There's nothing wrong with using a well loved system)

I'm not going to come on here and say that Guild Wars 2 is perfect, but I personally believe that they are taking steps in the right direction. They made huge changes between the first and second beta weekend based on player feedback, and it was actually refreshing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Duelle

Ignoring your badly-placed diatribe (TOR's downfall won't be philosopher's stone to returning the MMO genre to the days of no-life-EQ-gaming, despite how you wish it were), the following are the problems of TOR:

1) Crappy engine: one of the things that really cause trouble is how garbage the Hero engine is (not as bad as crystal tools, but its down there). Worst of all is that Bioware built the game on an outdated version of the Hero engine and supposedly declined to receiving updates from the guys who made it.

2) Lacking class balance: In retrospect, all the classes were designed seemingly with a single-player game in mind, and it shows when the jedi consular rose to being the "only" viable healer. Not to account the amount of brokeness in PvP.

3) Lack of endgame content: Much like FFXIV(!), TOR doesn't have much in the way of high level content. Hence why the operations were released in a state some consider premature, flashpoints were not properly tuned and so on.

4) Imbalance of population: In one of the few times aesthetics harm rather than help, Sith outnumbered Republic players considerably since launch because people liked the Sith. That's REALLY bad in a game with a PvP element.

Casual-friendly had nothing to do with TOR's issues. Bioware just made a crapton of bad design decisions and it bit them in the ass.

What I find funny about the OP is that even the WoW crowd looks at TOR and points out these technical issues and bad decisions over saying "0mg w0w clon fa1lz bring bak n0-lifez tr0ll0ll". The Hero engine is a technical issue. The decision of launching the game with barely any PvE content was a bad decisions. Sith Inquisitors and Jedi Consulars making the hop to live OPd like they were in beta was a bad decision. Skimming on a lot of the stuff they wanted to add was a bad decision. Launching without the basic MMO tools was a bad decision.

...in a way, TOR is pretty much FFXIV but without the company behind it willing to pump money into fixing the game. Knowing EA, they'll dump the game soon enough. Not that I didn't see any of it coming, because when I saw that people like the guy behind WAR's Bright Wizard fiasco was on the TOR team, I sensed a great disturbance in the Force. :O

---

Just wanted to addressone of your points, because point 1 is more of a grey area then the Hero Engine is crap.

Bioware bought an early build of the hero engine, and did not contract the Hero engine designers for updates. They then re-programmed the bejeezus out of it. The Engine Bioware used could be hardly called the Hero engine anymore.

Class balance was pretty lackluster. From 1-50 I enjoyed my Jedi Shadow enough. I found some of the base issues are slightly covered up by the fun of being a Jedi. Weeee. then hit lvl 50. All the money (and lots of it) i spent for crafting, useless.

One of the big issues i think BW found was Faction imbalance. They totally ignored the probability of a large segemnt of people gravitating to the Dark side. And did nothing via effects, cool moves, cool gear or ANYTHING to prevent, nor systems to fix, such an issue. They instead denied the issues, but its not easy to hide the difference.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

All in all, i belive the OP argument is faulty on the grounds that Because SW:tor failed, Casual doesn't work.

Not adding goals to progress over the long term can hurt a game.

But "instant Gratification" is not limited to those with only a few hours to spend. One of the best ways to facilitate quality crafting and stable markets into a game is to make Endgame rewards depend on Crafters to furnish the "phat lootz". But even some the "hardcore" don't want to depends on anyone beside their static group.

The "glory days" of hardcore gaming had a MUCH smaller amount of games on the market too. Companies will go where the money goes.

The only way to make your MMO desires known is to as a gamer, stop paying 100+ dollars for Collectors edition access before we even know what we're buying (The Secret world, i'm eyeballing you!)

I had more rant, but i'll pass since this will likely get buried. My thoughts are not the same as the OP. A solid game with a solid gameplay for all can be done. A single game need not have a single audience. Its the mechanics and systems placed there that decide that.

I have to say the only thing that I am sighly worried about and I have a lot of faith in this development team.

Having played other MMOs. FFXI, WoW, Aion... and the like. I am afraid they will make it so its so easy to solo that you wont need to party. I play MMOs to play with other people to meet people and to come together with people to overcome a challange even if that challange is leveling or a end game content challange. I want to play with other people as a natural progression though the game not just a static of people that is formed out of a few friends game hoping. I think that is the biggest problem with MMOs today and Tor had this issue too. they are massively single player games. you never need to group and you never really have a incentive to group up. even WoW anymore till you hit raid content you dont do anything but solo and that was a huge turn off for me with that game.

the game does need to be slightly more solo friendly then FFXI was but still needs to encourage or force players to group up with one another to some degree so that way you can build a community of friends in the game. that is what kept me playing FFXI for 7+ years and my room mate for 8+ years. it was the friends we met and the people that join our journey not easy mode stuff that you can bust through being a casual player in a few weeks.

A good MMO needs, Group content, Goals, Ways for people to meet up and play together, places to build friendships for lasting game play experiences but also allow for enough solo content to not make it feel like you need a Raid worth of people to "wipe your own arse."

that said I am still looking very foward to 2.0 and am sure they will pull it off right. I am sure they have looked at all the other games trappings and steered away from the pitfalls that poor MMO WoW clones have shown to be the real problems the games had.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Viritess

Class balance was pretty lackluster. From 1-50 I enjoyed my Jedi Shadow enough. I found some of the base issues are slightly covered up by the fun of being a Jedi. Weeee. then hit lvl 50. All the money (and lots of it) i spent for crafting, useless.

---

I saw it as more the fact that the developers went out of their way to make non-force users more appealing, because what everyone argued back when TOR was announced was that it would follow that silly tradition where the Jedi steal the show and everyone else would be fodder. Just like it is in the movies. Hence the combat superiority of ranged classes like the Trooper and the Smuggler; to get every tom, dick and harry that saw the movies to actually respect the classes, especially in the case of the Trooper due to how Stormtroopers and Clone Troopers were useless fodder in the movies.

Quote:

---

One of the big issues i think BW found was Faction imbalance. They totally ignored the probability of a large segemnt of people gravitating to the Dark side. And did nothing via effects, cool moves, cool gear or ANYTHING to prevent, nor systems to fix, such an issue. They instead denied the issues, but its not easy to hide the difference.

---

There was no stopping this either way. The sith are just more appealing between their very pragmatic society, the power structure, the cool lightning and so on. That's really where the appeal of being the faction that have historically been bad guys in Star Wars kind of took over.

I think is a little premature to call a game with a 1million plus subscribers an utter Failure. Does the game has glaring flaws and problems ? Sure! Does the game lack end game content ? Sure! Does the game lack pvp balance ? Sure! Does the game lacks challenge for hardcore players ? Sure!

Bioware's problem has been what every single MMO developer has missed since wow hit the market, wow dint just take X or Y idea from EQ and improve on it, they had also tripled the amount of content available from the get go, the game released with over 15 istances, all very distinctive from the other, some short, some long, some even raid worthy, and it had end Game. This newer games, have just enough content to get you from 1 to cap and then sit around asking yourself WTF NOW ?

It is the same with Swotor, and it was the same with FFXIV(Tho to a more glaring fault), i dont think SE needs to learn or pay attention from anybody, they have made the same exact mistake bioware did, they need to focus on how to right them with 2.0, not 3.0

TOR was pretty crappy lol. I was max lvl on 2 characters b4 the free trial even ended.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by XxOstiaxX

I think is a little premature to call a game with a 1million plus subscribers an utter Failure.

---

The game no longer has 1 million plus subscribers, otherwise they're just wasting money on subscriptions they're just sitting on. It had a strong start, strongest in a long time, but now every server seems to be trailing at light population and the game is hurting. The game is plagued with hundreds of issues never addressed, a lack of overall content to keep people there after the story, issues surrounding EA leading to some very bad press, and stupid decisions from EA in general.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Otaku

This

Taking elements from a game is one thing but pretty much re-skinning one is another
I won't mind if XIV takes elements that work in say WoW, XI, GW2 or even DAOC but if a game is too close to the original game you might as well just play the original game.
I will say one thing that has kept me coming back to the FFMMO series is the "one character" model, I played SWTOR for about 3 months and got 2 characters to 50, whenever I wanted to switch roles (ie we need a tank not a healer) I had to log out and log back with my other character, something I think SE has actually done right.

---

I think that is one of the keys for MMOs, to have only one do it all character... That means you get attach to the character, you wont do stupid things to ruin the reputation you have build along the journey... no need to have 5-6 diff characters to exp different roles...
I think its genius...

I don't think this was mentioned before, but...

You also got to understand where we are now. Most, if not all, players who used to play Everquest/FFXI/WoW back in the day are now reaching their mid-20s to early 30s. I should say those who still are keeping tabs with the MMO genre have HIGH expectations nowadays. I can assume this is the case because we get those bursts of nostalgia and we want to experience that again.

In this day and age where we're seeing the influx of the newer generation coming into the scene. This generation's "expectations," I should say, wants and HAS to have everything now, now, NOW. So, we have developers who want to cater to that kind of demographic because they know they'll keep that audience interested if they continue to spoon feed them with OOOH SHINY content that takes little to no skill whatsoever to achieve. Kind of like giving them a quick fix of "sense of achievement" in which it starts to wear off over time. So unless they can keep up with that, people will get bored and want to go/do something else.

I guess attention span comes into play here, as well. There are too many "distractions."













I actually have no idea what I'm talking about.

The forum for the failed MMO FFXIV is hotly debating the failures of other MMOs.

Is it hard irony, or a sign of doom?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by _pops

In this day and age where we're seeing the influx of the newer generation coming into the scene. This generation's "expectations," I should say, wants and HAS to have everything now, now, NOW. So, we have developers who want to cater to that kind of demographic because they know they'll keep that audience interested if they continue to spoon feed them with OOOH SHINY content that takes little to no skill whatsoever to achieve. Kind of like giving them a quick fix of "sense of achievement" in which it starts to wear off over time. So unless they can keep up with that, people will get bored and want to go/do something else.

---

Although I agree with this, my only statement would be: Surely there is enough room in the world for 99 instant gratification MMORPGs and 1 (FFXIV) that is not.