You would think the Star Wars universe would provide an ideal setting for an MMO. It has everything, from `wizards` to swordplay to epic duels to guys with blaster rifles. It has this planet, that planet, a rich and well established lore, depth, and so on and so forth. Despite this, it looks like Bioware and Lucas Arts have just released one huge dud on the MMO market. Rumors are circulating that Bioware is now exploring the F2P model and just completed a wave of free server transfers to accommodate people playing on empty servers. While advocates of F2P might argue otherwise... this to me sounds like the last gasps of an MMO in serious trouble. If this is true, considering the alleged investment in development and the fact that they had all of the Star Wars universe at their disposal, this can, should and will be considered a monumental failure.

Correct me if I'm wrong (sincerely!), but wasn't SW:TOR designed as a "casual friendly" WoW clone that's soloable? It definitely wasn't designed as an unforgiving, challenging `hardcore` struggle, that is for sure. It wasn't a game world that was designed and existed despite the player rather than one that existed for them (to use a `world-centric` game design definition i've read on this forum and liked).

I see a lot of people claim that the moron-friendly philosophy is the future of MMOs. That games like FFXI and Everquest are remnants of the past (that challenge is a remnant of the past) and that games that cater to people who don't have the time to play them, or that aren't very good at them, etc, is the wave of the future.

And yet... here we are, watching an MMO based in the Star Wars universe (which should translate into huge success by itself), backed by Lucas, EA and designed by Bioware, fall flat on its face six months after its release.

Now I'm not at all opposed to an MMO providing a good experience for casual players.
But to cater to them almost exclusively... IMO, you simply cannot cater to people who will barely play your game over the people who will and expect that to be the formula for success. WoW captured lightning in a bottle. That is my opinion. Everything came together for Blizzard and it came together for them at the right time.
I don't think, moving forward, that the secret to an MMO's success is in trying to clone that experience and game developers that believe that run a high risk of suffering SW:TOR's fate. This game had a rumored budget to be somewhere between 150 and 200 million dollars (is this correct?) as well as having the advantage of being Star Wars. It should have been the MMO of MMO's. Instead it's pathetic.

While this will no doubt be met with plenty of disagreement, I have always believed that FFXI could have done much better than it did (and it did pretty good) if (aside from actually advertising!) 99% of the content in the game wasn't designed for level 75's. It had, IMO, an endgame that any competitor would be hard pressed to rival, but little leading up to that.
When new players, RL friends or otherwise, asked me what they should do, the only answer I could give was "Get to 75."

I suspect the vast majority of players who tried XI and quit XI did so before even reaching the Dunes, when they found themselves lost, killing rabbits outside their starting city with no idea how to proceed or what awaited them if they had.
Most of the players SE lost, I imagine, were lost before ever reaching level 20, before they had the chance to become goal oriented, and that was, IMO, FFXI's biggest failing - not the challenges or the dangers presented by Vana'diel. That, I believe, is what ultimately played a large role hooking everyone.

So what does SW:TOR's lackluster success and seemingly dismal future say about what actually is the future of the genre and what should SE take away from this as it moves forward with 2.0?