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

[KamikazeMan]

- Don't copy paste too many ideas from other games. It's great to take some ideas and make it your own, but directly copy and pasting like how Bioware did is just sickening.
- Don't have 200+ servers
- Offer transfers early on just in case a few servers drop in population.
- You have to have a lot of end-game content. People will, no matter what the exp curve is, hit level cap in a week. You want a lot of content for people to sink their teeth into for months on end.
- Offer new content every 2-3 months (they've been doing a good job with this so far)

That's it.

[RedAffinity]

I really enjoyed reading your thoughts, OP.

Question for anyone who would know, how many active players / subscribers does XIV have atm? Kind of curious.

[Cenewulf]

one thing SE can take from SWTOR?

I can name a few.

1. put more emphasis on crafting equipment.
One thing that made Pre-cu SWG great was the fact that crafters made the game what it was. There was no doing a dungeon to get that epic blaster you paid some other player a couple thousand (or hundred thousand) Credits and waited for them to craft it and then in term the money he made went to either buying resources or fuel for their harvesters so they could continue getting more resources for when the next guy needed that epic blaster.
2. put more money and time into actual gameplay than cool videos and graphics.
I hate to say this but Despite being a part of the current generation. I don't understand why people flock to games solely for graphics i mean look at swtor in this case. the graphics were a step over wow yeah but not much better.
3. more actual ingame events
Guild wars 2 i think has the right idea with their whole dynamic event system. I mean I was just walkin around and boom like 2 minutes away centaurs are attacking a mine and im asked to assist. When a game has alot of server events usually things can be a bit more fun (key word being usually)

that's all i can really think of really.

tl;dr
1. make crafting more essential
2. less graphics more actual game
3. more events

[Alucielyse]

WoW was successful only because it's got Blizzards name stapled to it.

[Duuude007]

WoW was successful only because it's got Blizzards name stapled to it.

By that measure FFXI did rather well due to SE's name.

[Alhanelem]

if wow was successful purely on the name, it would have died a while ago.

[MariyaShidou]

Don't underestimate cost. That is all. Many a games fail not because they don't sell millions, but because selling millions still make a loss.

[Alucielyse]

Everquest was the first real MMO that got things done right. Blizzard just happened to improve on what they had and out dated EQ. XI done well because it was the first FF MMO and all FF fans were wetting themselves to get the chance to get a crack at it, myself included. It was a brilliant idea and still is. There are a number of factors that cause WoW to be on top of other games when it comes to certain things. But there is far better out there. SE just needs to focus on what their players want in the game and have the ability to implement it. As long as they do that then the people that enjoy the game will stay and play.

[NefarioCall]

I really enjoyed reading your thoughts, OP.

Question for anyone who would know, how many active players / subscribers does XIV have atm? Kind of curious.

I'm really not sure... but i suspect that unless there's been a large growth lately, and there has been somewhat, but not really huge, that it's still under 50,000?

As for Star Wars. I played it hard for a couple hundred hours worth and then discontinued my service.
Honestly, i feel the game suffers from the same lack of content that FFXIV did at launch, it's just under a slightly more competent coat of paint. By this i mean there's voice acting and well, a tighter UI than this game had at launch but the content is really just a long string of fetch quests. ...and those fetch quests, aside from the instanced party zones is it, kinda like guildleves were .. IT in this game. The instanced zones are pretty cool, but even then, that's all they are really, one every few levels and not much else to it. The game has been out for 2/3rds of a year and a year before that in beta. But there's not really a draw and certainly no end game anything.

[ChiefCurrahee]

SW:TOR failed to deliver the STAR WARS feeling.

Star Wars was about a group of people coming together and against odds overcoming a great evil.

Look at the other Knights of the republic games, you gathered a team to defeat the bad guy.

In TOR you went from start to finish largely by yourself.

lets take XI as an example, the lv 25 rank mission where you fought the first dragon, lv 25 capped. You had to have the help of other people to progress. Sometimes you did this by working with a static group and clearing the encounter, sometimes you tagged along with a pick up, or you formed your own party to defeat the challenge. It was the first of many challenges this game presented you with that relied on outside help.

In TOR there was no point in the game where you had to have the help of outside influences to overcome a challenge to progress. So why is this a MMO?

TOR had zones that were built for cetain levels in mind, once past the point in your progression there was no reason to return to the zone.

In other games like XI for example, some zones catered to a large amount of levels. Like Crawlers nest. 35-40 in one spot worked well, then another area was good for 39-43 ish, then another spot was good for 43-46.

OR the citadel, was good for 30-35 then another spot was great for 46-50. You always had people in different stages of thier progression playing near eachother.

You also had to return to those lower zone areas to access higher level areas.

in Tor once I was done with a planet, I was done for good, never ever to return.