Star Wars: The Old Republic Gets Dreamy with Operation Nightmare

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Played SWTOR in Beta, and I was disappointed in a lot of ways. I found bright points about it, the story-driven aspect was neat for example, but the fact is that its still a WoW clone with a Bioware stamp. I really feel that Mass Effect 3 was dropped to the wayside because of the SWTOR development. I also just am not that in love with TOR's universe. It feels like a mess of half-baked ideas tossed together with fan-favorite additions (Chiss race for example) that really make no sense in the lore.
I expected more, got less and still play WoW. Why? Because WoW does it better, does it right and still keeps my love. I guess I feel that until MMO's stop trying to be WoW, I will continue to play WoW.
Oh and side note: EvE is too damn boring for me, though it is a good example of how not to be like WoW and be successful.

 

[EHKOS]

People still play this shitty game?

Hater gonna hate.

Nah, hater gunna play Guild War 2, Rift and other better MMO's.

captcha: telsa coil *uses it to zap the EAware away*

Look, I don't like it because of the mechanics, I like it because Star Wars. It's got the lore, the atmosphere, the theme. It's kind of like KotOR 2.5 with shit story. So let us play it in peace and mourning.

 

[Darmy647]

Let's face it: SW:ToR is actually not so bad.

Yes it is, and I don't care who plays what, popularity is meaningless to me. Stupid P2P price model not withstanding, there is A LOT of things that bother me about this game:

Stat bars to measure things that don't need measuring.

Meaningless and pointless choices that might as well not be there.

Outdated game mechanics, even for an MMO.

"meh" graphics that are somehow still computer intensive.

And a host of nit picks of which I've since forgotten.

I dont mind paying for a mmo I will commit time to. As a huge story pursuer such as myself, those story choices do matter here and there in terms of uncovering lore that may have been missed due to a dark or light choice. Not to mention said alignments give you access to powerful armors or weapons restricted to light or dark. I understand most of the choices dont directly benefit you, but itd the story and lore thats a award for me.

As for the graphics, id say they are really ok and suit the kotor universe. If my swtor looked like tera I myself would not want to play it. It does not represent kotor.

In closing, you seem not to have played this in pursuit of lore and story, or even to experience or see some key events in the star wars universe. If thats true, id be surprised if you liked it for its gameplay overall.

I'll give wild star a try certainly. Im a open armed gamer.

Here and there? Try very rarely, and even then that only applies to class quests, the rest? Forget about it, pointless filler that accomplishes nothing.

Also, question if I may: How do you numerically measure morality, or someone's affection for you? All this shit does for me is make the game feel even more artificial and it only helps to shatter my immersion. How about you hide these stat bars and let the players interpret what their morals are, or have to figure out just how their companions feel about them? This is a problem with ALL Bioware RPGs, not just this one. Was anyone else irritated when achoice was locked out in ME games because you didn't score enough renegade points? Yeah, that's this game. That's this game ALL THE TIME.

Thirdly, my complaint is not so much that the graphics were underwhelming (though the color pallet WAS bland in places) But more that the graphics were horrid for just how much power you needed to render it all. The model textures for characters in particular were pretty bad, lacking any real detail in the skin that you would see in a single player Bioware game.

And finally, who are you to say if I am in it for the story are not? Step off the podium bro, I gave an opinion about a game I didn't like and explained why I didn't like it.

You direcrly said under him "yes it is that bad". An opinion would have said " I think it is that bad". Also, do you know this is an mmo? You do? Making sure, this is a mmorpg by Bioware. Not just an rpg. Your point on the companion system is valid. Do you know another mmorpg that does it better? Im legitimately curious. Ill listen.

Update: I just want to clarify im not outright defending the game. As I said earlier, I completely understand its shortcommings. But this was tailored to be an mmorpg with story telling. Yes the options and choices are nowhere near perfect or great. But at the same time you should understand to an extent you have to make some sacrifices to mold this. Outright rageing about how bioware did this and that in their games is in no way the right response to defend your "opinion". Its just showing how ill-willed you are towards bioware and losing you're own standing ground and argumentive credit.

 

[Ishigami]

SWTOR's population capped at around 2 million, took a nosedive a few months after its release, and it's never returned to those heights since. Most current estimates place it at less than one million players.

Tell me something I do not already know:

apparently something of estimated 700k people in NA and EU do seem to like it at least a bit

It's incredibly likely that both GW2 and Runescape have comparable numbers to SWTOR, if not higher (both are estimated at around a million or more), and that's just two games I can name offhand.

I actually said that GW2 is estimated higher as well as is of course WoW. Runescape has been on the decline since 2007. Therefore I wouldn't count on that one.
It is hard to come by any real numbers anyway. Aside from CCP everyone tries to bury that information as deep as possible.

Aion's definitely got them beat in the East as well as globally, and I'm sure there are others (like TERA). SWTOR is not a "top three" game any more. They were in the opening few months of release, but they're not now.

In the east and globally yes but I talking about NA and EU wasn't I? - My reasoning for that was that the east seems to have very different taste when it comes to MMOs. Lineage and Lineage 2 for example had together at one point roughly about 5 million subscribers. Yet basically all of them where located in Asia most of them specifically in South Korea. So the number 1 and 2 MMOs in the world of 2004 was held there only with the subscribers of basically one country alone.
TERA had a good start but crumbled as quickly as SW:ToR. Their retention rate in the west was far worse then SW:ToRs before turning to F2P. So again I wouldn't count on that one to reach the player base of SW:ToR at least in the west. Again the east might be different.

And frankly the fact that SWTOR can't manage a higher player count than it has is not a good thing, considering it's powered by a much larger fanbase than most of the games that it's competing with.

So you are now an ignorant publisher who thinks franchise names can sell anything regardless of quality for your arguments sake?
You see my argument was that SW:ToR has still a considerably recurring player base. People that play the game and come back to play the game some more.
Large enough to argue about it being among the largest three or not. It is obviously not a clean cut.

But stop spouting off about how wonderful it is and how it's so much better than all these other games simply because there happen to be people who play it. It's really not.

I'm not saying it is wonderful but it is certainly is not as bad as many say it is. WoW isn't as well.
If these games were as bad as the hater make them out to be then even fewer people would actually play them wouldn't you agree?
I'm not saying that the player numbers are a direct indication of quality however that they indicate that these games are doing at least something right.

It's a mediocre game that's made and managed by a terrible company, one that many people outright refuse to support (and with darn good reason). It's hardly what you'd call "original", and its one defining feature is its story. I like a good story as much as the next guy but I expect more than story out of my video games, otherwise games like Heavy Rain would be the greatest video games of all time.

Some people think that. And the hate towards EA and BW is exactly what I was getting at with ?hater gonna hate?.
It doesn't matter what ?merits? the game has. It is hated regardless because it is from EA and BW.
In reality it is a decent MMO, maybe mediocre. There is nothing wrong with that yet people go about it being the worst thing ever.

SWTOR beat them to it, so I'm not sure what your argument is. That F2P means your game has failed? Then I guess SWTOR has failed, too, so your entire argument dismisses itself. And it took Rift a hell of a lot longer to "fail" than SWTOR: Rift's been going for other two years prior to the release of F2P, and it only took SWTOR about six months to make the swap. So if we're going to argue that F2P = failure, there is no question that SWTOR failed much, much harder than any of the games you've named thus far.

My argument is that if Rifts quality is so much better than SW:ToR then it should have been able to retain their player base better or even expand upon it.
Rift is estimated to have turned to the F2P model with roughly 250k subscriber left of the something over 1 million at their height.
That is quite frankly just as bad as SW:ToR.
GW2 seem to have sold something of about 3 million units yet the actual player base is estimated around the million mark. Not so much better either.

There a few exception to this sort of behaviour e.g. Eve Online and WoW for most of its running time.

It is a matter of fact that most people burn through the content and then leave for the ?next best MMO evar!? spouting something like ?PvP imbalanced!? and ?No endgame!? just to do the same there as well.
Once a expansion is released the player base explodes for moment until that content is chewed up as well. You could see this in SW:ToR as well. When ?Rise of the Hutt Cartell? launched my server (Tomb of Freedon Nadd) had almost 40 channels on Makeb many of them full (250 people).
Now month past it is a little bit livelier than any other planet in SW:ToR.
When GW2 launched their first bigger expansion everyone went back as well.

Of course, it's stupid to argue that F2P is failure to begin with.

Which I don't.

Fun fact: most companies make far more money after going F2P than they ever made as a subscription game. Why? More players, which means you can sell your item shop stuff to a larger group of people. Companies aren't switching to F2P because they "failed", they do it because it's more profitable.

I know.

Also: Rift's F2P is actually a genuine F2P model that provides you with access to basically everything, where SWTOR's F2P model is an absolute rip-off meant to essentially harass you into paying them money (as most of the gaming community's critics have pointed out). GW2, similarly, has a more genuine F2P model than SWTOR....and it's not even a F2P game. It's pretty damning when SWTOR's own website advertisements make it clear just how many features you're sacrificing if you want to play for free

I know all that.
I am actually a subscriber to SW:ToR and despite this I still argue in favour of a less restrictive F2P model because it will harm the player base in the long run.
I like to think that people like me even had a small success by convincing EA/BW to give preferred member at least 4 hot bars.
I'm not defending their business model.

So basically, chill your jets with the fanboi garbage. It's getting as old as the TOR-bashers.

Yea sure the very moment they stop... oh wait...

You realize that he was ranting about how the game was doing so well, which isn't actually the same thing as saying "it's not so bad", right

I was reacting to the argument made that player went to play other supposedly better MMOs. And all of those MMORPGs the players supposedly went to had declining player bases as well.
So they did not went to those games or stayed there now did they?

And the game is in fact doing well. From an objective point of view you have to realize that within the market of traditionally MMORPGs there is hardly any MMORPG within the western hemisphere than could actually amass considerably more than 1 million recurring players.
The only exception is of course WoW.
So having something around 700k players seems actually okay. It is not okay for EA from a business stand point having burned 200 million $ on the game but why should you or I care about that?

I dare say that The Elder Scrolls Online will have the same fate. People will praise it before launch then something of 2 million people (-500k +1,5 million) will buy it and one year later it will be in the same play field of something roundabout 1 million recurring players as well. It happened to all of those ?WoW killers? before why should it be different now?
To me it simply seems to be the extend the market is capable to support atm.
At least as far as traditional MMORPGs are concerned. Yea Dota and LoL have more players but they are also not really the same genre. I would argue they got their player bases by being not an MMORPG.

You don't brag about being the "third biggest NA MMO" (lol) if you're trying to objectively debate the merits of a mediocre game.

Neither do you argue against them. Which I think happened. He was making a snipe at the player loss and transition to F2P when he said that people moved on to play better MMOs.
So was everyone else when posting ?is someone even playing this anymore??.

Here and there? Try very rarely, and even then that only applies to class quests, the rest? Forget about it, pointless filler that accomplishes nothing.

You're problem are false expectations. Like so many others have.
You apparently think BW/EA would or should make a game that changes the entire world because you ripped a paddle of a flower.
Of course then you are up and arms against them because it doesn't happen completely ignoring the reality of video games because The Witcher 2 had a episode you could only access via one choice or something...
The reality is that in most cases you can't and don't want to create something like this because then a lot of the content you create is only experienced by a small amount of players while the development costs bend time and reality due to their weight.
It is the same with people complaining that they can't use a pinball machine standing round in a game or that even if they can that the pinball is not as good as a dedicated pinball game...

Also, question if I may: How do you numerically measure morality, or someone's affection for you?

Same again. Reality vs ideal.
The affection level of your companion is tied into the crew skill mechanics. The affection influences critical success rates of missions and crafting and also reduces the necessary time to accomplish these task.
Additionally it would not be possible or practical for players to keep track of their progress if they haven't had a stat.
And the game itself needs a stat anyway otherwise how would it determine when to trigger the next companion event?
I'm in favour of giving players the tools so they can make an educated decision rather than letting them run blindfolded into the knife. The later one makes sense for single player experience but not so much in a MMO experience that is largely driven by competitive thinking after all.

All this shit does for me is make the game feel even more artificial and it only helps to shatter my immersion. How about you hide these stat bars and let the players interpret what their morals are, or have to figure out just how their companions feel about them? This is a problem with ALL Bioware RPGs, not just this one. Was anyone else irritated when achoice was locked out in ME games because you didn't score enough renegade points? Yeah, that's this game. That's this game ALL THE TIME.

So now we are talking about single players games?
Why would your Shepard punch the reporter in the face when he was like a saint before? - Seems out of character to me.
If you have been middle of the line why would your Shepard be radical about anything regardless of direction later on? - Out of character again.
This btw has nothing to do with SW:ToR because there you can go from being an angel to purest evil within the next dialogue option. SW:ToR allows you to be out of character since the dialogue options are not bound to your light or dark side level. I'm sure you don't like this as well because it makes no sense for a Jedi to slaughter millions am I right?
Anyway some gear and your visual look when dark side depends on the stat.

For me both are valid approaches. One gives me the means and encourages me to pursue a certain experience the other surprises me with one all the while giving me the choice between them.

Thirdly, my complaint is not so much that the graphics were underwhelming (though the color pallet WAS bland in places) But more that the graphics were horrid for just how much power you needed to render it all. The model textures for characters in particular were pretty bad, lacking any real detail in the skin that you would see in a single player Bioware game.

IMO BW was going for the look of the animated series and I think they achieved that.

 

[Darmy647]

Let's face it: SW:ToR is actually not so bad.

Yes it is, and I don't care who plays what, popularity is meaningless to me. Stupid P2P price model not withstanding, there is A LOT of things that bother me about this game:

Stat bars to measure things that don't need measuring.

Meaningless and pointless choices that might as well not be there.

Outdated game mechanics, even for an MMO.

"meh" graphics that are somehow still computer intensive.

And a host of nit picks of which I've since forgotten.

I dont mind paying for a mmo I will commit time to. As a huge story pursuer such as myself, those story choices do matter here and there in terms of uncovering lore that may have been missed due to a dark or light choice. Not to mention said alignments give you access to powerful armors or weapons restricted to light or dark. I understand most of the choices dont directly benefit you, but itd the story and lore thats a award for me.

As for the graphics, id say they are really ok and suit the kotor universe. If my swtor looked like tera I myself would not want to play it. It does not represent kotor.

In closing, you seem not to have played this in pursuit of lore and story, or even to experience or see some key events in the star wars universe. If thats true, id be surprised if you liked it for its gameplay overall.

I'll give wild star a try certainly. Im a open armed gamer.

Here and there? Try very rarely, and even then that only applies to class quests, the rest? Forget about it, pointless filler that accomplishes nothing.

Also, question if I may: How do you numerically measure morality, or someone's affection for you? All this shit does for me is make the game feel even more artificial and it only helps to shatter my immersion. How about you hide these stat bars and let the players interpret what their morals are, or have to figure out just how their companions feel about them? This is a problem with ALL Bioware RPGs, not just this one. Was anyone else irritated when achoice was locked out in ME games because you didn't score enough renegade points? Yeah, that's this game. That's this game ALL THE TIME.

Thirdly, my complaint is not so much that the graphics were underwhelming (though the color pallet WAS bland in places) But more that the graphics were horrid for just how much power you needed to render it all. The model textures for characters in particular were pretty bad, lacking any real detail in the skin that you would see in a single player Bioware game.

And finally, who are you to say if I am in it for the story are not? Step off the podium bro, I gave an opinion about a game I didn't like and explained why I didn't like it.

You direcrly said under him "yes it is that bad". An opinion would have said " I think it is that bad". Also, do you know this is an mmo? You do? Making sure, this is a mmorpg by Bioware. Not just an rpg. Your point on the companion system is valid. Do you know another mmorpg that does it better? Im legitimately curious. Ill listen.

Update: I just want to clarify im not outright defending the game. As I said earlier, I completely understand its shortcommings. But this was tailored to be an mmorpg with story telling. Yes the options and choices are nowhere near perfect or great. But at the same time you should understand to an extent you have to make some sacrifices to mold this. Outright rageing about how bioware did this and that in their games is in no way the right response to defend your "opinion". Its just showing how ill-willed you are towards bioware and losing you're own standing ground and argumentive credit.

So you need a post to spell out that it's an opinion? Are you not capable of discerning an opinion for yourself? Because everyone else is. And what does that even have to do with all of the points I made?

At any rate, just because something does a certain thing "The best" does not mean they do it well, it's entirely possible to be the best of several poorly designed mechanics in a pile.

Lastly, now since you don't have an argument of your own you're just going to call me biased? My judgement of the game has nothing to do with the fact that it's made by Bioware, it has everything to do with the fact that I found the game lacking. Keep your accusations of intellectual integrity (or rather the lack there of) to yourself, bub.

A LOT of people make the mistake to TAKE it as a opinion unless properly worded. Not everyone will be in the same mindset as you to understand at first glance that it was an opinion because of the way you said it. I knew it was an opinion because you explained it to me a few posts back, I did not the first time we started talking. There are certain ways you need to say some things during an argument or even during a debate, which can determine the outcome and perception of what you've said to someone. It really does make a difference to many people, and overall will make whatever you are trying to say seem more worth it to actually pay attention to.

I've already stated once if you know of a companion system in a MMO that does do it better I also stated that you're points on it were also valid. Once again I was serious about another mmo with a companion system, because i dont know if one EXISTS. Once again, this is for an MMO. Many singleplayer rpg's do this, including the bioware titles you mentioned, but im speaking purely of MMO's. I'm not calling it the best, but the way you talked about it, i was honestly under the impression you knew of something better. I've looked high and low for some good story MMO's, so if anybody finds something even better, Im hungry for it.

Then don't in Mid Argument/end the argument with rage (I'll point towards the perception remarks from earlier, because i know you'll demand it was never rage. That's paragraph 1 just to be fair) towards the same developer who made the game about their previous choice systems used in previous games. That really does not say anything BUT being biased. Especially when we went from talking about an MMO to a single-player offline experience. I've made MY argument clear and well-said already about the rewards from the choice system in swtor. That was my only one. They are not completely useless to somebody who's hungry for some good lore or storytelling, not to mention chances for armor and weapons that may be locked out for them for being too dark or too light.I never even defended the companion system. I agreed it was crap, but when i asked about a better choice you apparently thought i was still calling it amazing. Im not sure how. That's all I have really had since we started and that was a while back. Just try to be more wordy, is the best way i could say it. I didn't take you're reactions or words hostily, but if you make certain remarks about a developers singleplayer games, then jump back to the mmo, that's a transition some would burn you at the stake for. I dont personally care myself because I hate bioware now.