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So I was making my website rounds when I noticed a post about SWTOR. I keep up with the game because I would like to see if it ever goes F2P, but even my desire for it to go F2P never makes this a welcome sight.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4435219#edit4435219

Hey folks, since you’re reading this you may likely have heard that we’ve done some restructuring here on the SWTOR team. Sadly, we are bidding farewell to some talented, passionate and exceptionally hard-working people who helped make SWTOR a reality. Impacting people’s lives this way is always very hard, but we’re ensuring the affected people are treated with dignity, fairness and respect.

Looking back at launch, we all came together and did something historic. We executed one of the largest, most successful and stable launches of any MMO yet in industry history. That is not an easy feat for any development team or company and we are humbled and honored by our fan community’s strong support both at launch and beyond.

Looking forward, the studio remains vibrant and passionate about our many upcoming initiatives for Star Wars: The Old Republic. We still have a very substantial development team working on supporting and growing the game, and we feel we are in a strong position, with your continued involvement and feedback, to continue to build Star Wars: The Old Republic as one of the most compelling and successful online experiences in the world today. There are many strong initiatives planned for cool new content and new features that we’re excited to tell you about in the upcoming weeks and months.

Rest assured that we remain dedicated to delivering a high quality service in SWTOR to you, our fans, and we will continue to support and grow Star Wars: The Old Republic over the weeks, months and years to come.

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Rumors are already flying around, so it is hard to say who actually left, but the largest and most backed rumors is that they fired the class writing team, basically the people that made all those personalized class quests you do throughout the game. If that is the case then fuck EA, that was the best part of the game for me when I did the trial.

This just makes me wonder though, is EA ever patient? The game has not even been out a YEAR yet, not even a year, and they are already laying people off that were big enough that they had to post about it. Didn't this happen to Warhammer Online too? All this and the Mass Effect diasco and... God fuck EA right up the damn ass.

Now that development is completed they can drop paychecks to save money. Later when they need it they'll hire others at lesser wages. After all, they are only adding content, not writing it, right?

So, you're asking if a company that shuts down its servers for most games in less than 6 months of a game's release is impatient?

Yeah, EA generally sucks the bag.

Well, now that the game is out, they don't need people to write class specific questlines, right? I mean, it's not like they're ever going to need to expand any of those quest lines, or do any expansions, or add classes to the game. And even if they do, they can just get someone cheaper even more better qualified, or promote someone from an internal team who's been doing an awesome job of placing trees and bushes in the digital landscape.

Yeah, EA is probably screwing themselves (and their audience) yet again, by going for the fast and easy cash now rather than wait until a long-term investment pays off. But if all of their past foibles haven't taught them anything, this won't either.

Edit: Damn, ninja'd by Dave.

I don't understand it. They KNOW the only thing everyone liked about SWTOR were the class specific quests. That's....Those are the guys you should KEEP! Fire the idiots who came up with the things players don't like, no?

Everybody wants the money WoW makes now, but nobody is willing to keep working at it and start relatively small, as Blizz did. WoW may have grown big very fast, it still didn't start out with 15 million subscribers and 5 staff members.

They don't need to, see "them still being in business"...

Tehy way they burn through devs is a damn shame.

and

Add this to that list:

Oh yeah, good one I had missed.

As someone who took a couple chars to the cap and tried to raid/PvP, yes, the storylines are the best part of the game (granted I didn't try the 1.2 addition zones). Guess we'll see how this turns out, but it sure doesn't sound good.

Bullfrog, Maxis, Westwood, Blizzard and BlueByte were my absolute favourites way back when. BlueByte's jsut a name Ubisoft slaps on some of their crap now, Blizzard of today is as much like Blizzard of the old times as modern EA is like the EA who gave us Tie Fighter. All the rest's been buried by EA. Such a shame

To be fair, Maxis is still doing well for a studio, the problem is all EA wants them to make now is The Sims.

How long has it been since the last SimCity? They just finally announced a new one, and I bet on my life at some point it's going to be dumbed down so they can fit some Sims styling in it, that is why Societies ended up a piece of junk.

I really miss Bullfrog, I still remember playing Theme Park and Theme Hospital.

ScytheRexx said:

To be fair, Maxis is still doing well for a studio, the problem is all EA wants them to make now is The Sims.

How long has it been since the last SimCity? They just finally announced a new one, and I bet on my life at some point it's going to be dumbed down so they can fit some Sims styling in it, that is why Societies ended up a piece of junk.

I really miss Bullfrog, I still remember playing Theme Park and Theme Hospital.

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They've already announced that the enxt SimCity, like the last one but even more so, is going to be an MMO. "No city will be able to prosper on its own, because that isn't realistic". So those trolls who f*ck up your online gaming experience? They're the guys you'll need to buy your power, or coal, or food, or whatever from. Enjoy. I don't understand: the last one was a flop because of it! Eh.

Me, I'm still waiting for a remake of SimAnt.

I cancelled my SWTOR account after the Mass Effect 3 ending debacle; I had decided EA was not a company I wanted to give my money to anymore.

This makes me feel really, really good about that decision.

I kind of did the same, HowDroll. I'm still interested in Secret World though.

SeraRelm said:

I kind of did the same, HowDroll. I'm still interested in Secret World though.

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It's been years since I've been truly impressed by a MMO, so I'm having a hard time anticipating anything I agree that Secret World does look interesting, though. We shall see.

EA, I want to love you. I want to throw piles of money at you. Please, please stop being so evil.

HowDroll - I know exactly what you mean. My brother recently started playing Tera Online and is liking it, I spent 10mins with it and wasn't "moved" enough to get a copy. WoW's combat system feels dated as all hell but I still love the lore so it keeps my sub. I'm finally playing more single player games thankfully, none of them EA based on the bright side.

To be honest, I mostly played SW:TOR as a single player game with some multiplayer chat. That wasn't enough to keep me.

That's exactly what happened to me with SW:TOR as well. Was loving the single player storyline but the very flat combat just couldn't keep me for 50 levels.

Pretty much what happened to me. It's why I want it to go F2P so I can just enjoy the storylines at my own pace without worrying about paying a monthly fee for it, because I know once I finish up the stories I will likely stop playing.

I'm still enjoying it, but mainly because of the people I get to do stuff with. I'm subbed until at least July/August, depending on when my free "loyalty" month kicks in. 1.3 will be out by then, and hopefully we'll get some details on 1.4 (the next content update).

It's not a bad game, it's just still very... formative. It doesn't have the huge amount of content that City of Heroes or WoW have due to being around for years, nor does it have all the functionality those games have. But those things ARE still being added and the game still has lots of potential, mainly due to the strength of the franchise behind it.

That being said, yeah... it's a dumb move for EA, but the SWTOR was already a giant, bloated beast. They absorbed near entire companies into it to make release. People were going to be let go eventually.

Does anyone know what the player counts have looked like since launch?

Ed: I never played SWTOR but everyone I knew from EvE that played it heavily quit after the first 5 months or so. If this is indicative of their general player count then I'm not surprised that they are shutting down servers/firing people. Game was a bust and they are trying to salvage as much as they can out of it.

MMOData.net reports Q4 earnings from EA as noting that there were (at that time) 1.3M subs, down from 1.7M in February.

Personally, I just couldn't get into the game as an MMO. It seemed like a great single player game, but I didn't want to keep paying $15 a month to play a single player game... which is kind of ridiculous of me, since right now I'm paying my $15 a month WoW sub just so I can play D3 for free. They lost my wife's sub because we were tired of her getting charged every 28 days, instead of every 30.

It's at like 1.3 million at last count. That's hardly bad... I know City of Heroes survived for years with far less than that.

And yeah... I kind of feel like SWTOR was released a year too early. If they had that extra year, they'd have more post-50 content and the Ranked Warzones would be ready. They need to get the Ranked Warzones out ASAP... on servers with huge faction pop differences, it's hard to get the wins you need for your weekly, meaning it's hard to grind up for your Battlemaster/War Hero gear. On my server this means that just about everyone the Repubs have has full War Hero, while the Imps are lucky to even have a full team of Battlemasters.

*just caught up with StarCraft 2

computers are doing what now?

ElJuski said:

*just caught up with StarCraft 2

computers are doing what now?

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Skynet

*shrug* It was a predicted failure. KOTOR fans were clamoring for a sequel; EA wanted in on that sweet, sweet money WoW brings in, so they made it an MMO even when each and every fan site pretty much said they didn't want it. So they got an MMO that practically everyone I know or I've heard about who's played it, played it like a single player game. Guess what? If people play your single player RPG for 5 months, that's a pretty rad game. But once they're finished with the "Star Wars" bit, they're out.

Bubble181 said:

*shrug* It was a predicted failure. KOTOR fans were clamoring for a sequel; EA wanted in on that sweet, sweet money WoW brings in, so they made it an MMO even when each and every fan site pretty much said they didn't want it. So they got an MMO that practically everyone I know or I've heard about who's played it, played it like a single player game. Guess what? If people play your single player RPG for 5 months, that's a pretty rad game. But once they're finished with the "Star Wars" bit, they're out.

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Man, just cut and paste "elder scrolls" in place of "star wars" and "Skyrim" in for "KOTOR" and you'd be a very canny prognosticator.

Bubble181 said:

*shrug* It was a predicted failure. KOTOR fans were clamoring for a sequel; EA wanted in on that sweet, sweet money WoW brings in, so they made it an MMO even when each and every fan site pretty much said they didn't want it. So they got an MMO that practically everyone I know or I've heard about who's played it, played it like a single player game. Guess what? If people play your single player RPG for 5 months, that's a pretty rad game. But once they're finished with the "Star Wars" bit, they're out.

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It's sad that in this day and age of MMOs, a game that only has 1.3 million subs is considered a failure.

It sucks that people got laid off but it's certainly not unusual for an MMO to reduce the size of their development team post launch. It's happened to a lot of MMOs, most recently with Rift and that game isn't dead despite the doomsayers that tolled the end of the game when Trion had layoffs at the 3 month mark.

Still playing SWTOR and enjoying it mostly because I have a group to play with regularly. Though I have to say, the 4 player group size sucks. It's the one thing my friends and I complain about the most as there are regularly 5 of us playing at any given time. Sucks having to split into smaller group to do the same content. That said, if it's true that the story team was hit the hardest and they are going to phase the story out then the game will lose interest for me pretty fast.

Story is about the only thing SWTOR does better than most of it's competition. Going to be a shame to see that drop.

Gryfter said:

It's sad that in this day and age of MMOs, a game that only has 1.3 million subs is considered a failure.

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It is very true. While looking up more information on this whole fiasco I actually noticed this said in an older earning call. Be aware this was when they were sitting at 1.7 million.

Q: You've previously said you need about a half million subscribers to be profitable, is that still the case?
A: At 500,000 subscribers, we'd break even. At a million, we'd be making a profit but nothing worth writing home about. As it scales up from there, we're talking about a nice profit. At this point with the successful launch, we can take the worst case scenarios off the table.

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With losing 400k subscribers since this earnings call, I can see them getting restless considering it brings them closer to 1 million, which as they said, is "nothing to write home about" as far as profits go. They likely don't want to get anywhere near just "breaking even", which used to be a healthy subscription amount back in the day, so anywhere near 500k would likely be death for the game in the eyes of EA.

In other news, EA considers, what is by their reckoning, 7.5 million dollars of pure "after breaking even" profit per month to be "nothing to write home about."

Depends. I assume that there are *some* extra costs associated with extra subscribers. Extra servers, extra power usage, extra moderators/admins,...
Still, 2/3 of ti should be pure profit.

Yeah, but they can reduce costs by merging servers... which kinda needs to happen anyways because some servers (like mine) have very low populations.

Gryfter said:

It's sad that in this day and age of MMOs, a game that only has 1.3 million subs is considered a failure.

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Which is funny considering that only one mmo actually has numbers that go above 2 mil, while most hover around 1 mil or less...

But hey, you should totally base a business on statistically improbable odds... what could go wrong.

Are you talking about Lineage, Lineage 2, WoW or Aion?

All of those at one time or another went above 2 million.

Frank said:

All of those at one time or another went above 2 million.

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I meant consistently over more then a year or two...

Frank said:

at one time or another

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That's the point. You can't base your business plan on something that you might be able to achieve for a while. It's blatantly obvious EA wasn't aiming at 1 or 2 million subs, but 10 million and more. Which was a very foolish thing to do.

Anyway, a well-built MMO can probably assume that, with proper hyping, they can reach 2 million for a while - recuperating investments. Once it's a bit more stable, aiming/planning that you NEED more than 2 million to stay afloat (or give enough return on investment to bother, for those like EA who think just making a nice profit isn't worth it) is short-sighted and stupid, or arrogant and foolish. It's definitely not good bussiness practice. Any MBA student who proposed that would be flunked - you CAN'T base your bussiness models on the assumption that you'll be vastly more successful than your competition "just because".

@Li3n said:

I meant consistently over more then a year or two...

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Well, the Lineages have had huge subscriber numbers for over a decade...in Korea.

Frank said:

Well, the Lineages have had huge subscriber numbers for over a decade...in Korea.

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I've been looking around and from what i can find the first Lineage did have more then 2 mil for a few years, but the 2nd one didn't last as long (can't tell if it's a year or just a few months, small chart and all: http://www.joystiq.com/2006/04/19/mmo-subscriber-charts-show-whats-hot/)... which explains why Lineage Eternal is closer to the first...

Still, 2-3 MMO's from a pretty wide selection still make for a stupid way to go in regards of a business model...

Then again we are talking about an industry that considered PC gaming dead while the pc market rose every year constantly, just not as fast as the console one...

Lineage and Lineage 2 are just weird fucking anomalies that show that Korea shouldn't be trusted for any reason.

Those games were fucking awful.

I don't know about L1, but i've player L2 on 5x servers... levelling took forever... and even on a 10x one i couldn't get to max level.

Otherwise i found the combat for it and the one for WoW to be just as meh... it just doesn't work if you just take the turn based combat and paste it in a real time game... GW2 is the first game i can think of that seems to actually try adapting it to real time...

Why I hate EA and love other companies who are doing things right

http://www.bethblog.com/2012/05/24/mounted-combat-arrives-in-latest-skyrim-update/

Game is out.... 6 months now? And they are still adding new free features.... in a community full of people modding the shit out of the game...

Well, don't act like Bethesda is innocent.

They will forever be tied to trash, bullshit DLC thanks to horse armor.

Frank said:

They will forever be tied to trash, bullshit DLC thanks to horse armor.

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Which is likely why they are releasing these updates for free. They learned from that mistake, which you have to give them some credit for.

They're to blame for starting the whole DLC debacle, they are also one of the first to be releasing month after month of free content in a new world of DLC paid only.

Speaking of DLC, is it just me, or did Capcom really miss the entire point of people being pissed about disk based DLC? Taking it off the disk and putting it on a server doesn't negate the fact that they're charging for already completed content.

Actually... it kinda does, at least for me. If it's on the disk that I paid for, I expect access to the content because it's on something I own*.If they take it off the disc, then it's not on something I own. Therefore, I have no right to access it without charge. It's semantics, I know, but it's enough of a line for me.

*And that whole "license" thing that companies are trying to pull, where they say they are only licensing a copy of the game and that we don't own the disc or content? Bullshit. Name one other product or license that your not able to see/sign the contract for BEFORE you buy it?

Shegokigo said:

They're to blame for starting the whole DLC debacle, they are also one of the first to be releasing month after month of free content in a new world of DLC paid only.

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Start a shitty trend, let other companies start doing it, and then make amends while other companies catch the hate?

Love it.

Bowielee said:

Speaking of DLC, is it just me, or did Capcom really miss the entire point of people being pissed about disk based DLC? Taking it off the disk and putting it on a server doesn't negate the fact that they're charging for already completed content.

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You're talking about Ultimate Super-Duper Hey A New Stage Street Marvel Alphastalkers IV here, man. They've been doing this shit since SNES and people shoving quarters in arcade machines. Instead of already on the disc, they just re-release the whole game over again. Why pay $10-20 when you can pay $50 all over again? On top of that, they'll shit all over one of the most beloved IP's of all time for free!

CynicismKills said:

You're talking about Ultimate Super-Duper Hey A New Stage Street Marvel Alphastalkers IV here, man. They've been doing this shit since SNES and people shoving quarters in arcade machines. Instead of already on the disc, they just re-release the whole game over again. Why pay $10-20 when you can pay $50 all over again? On top of that, they'll shit all over one of the most beloved IP's of all time for free!

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No, it's the Street Fighter X Tekken bullshit where the game launched with 12 finished DLC characters on the disc, some of which won't be unlocked or purchasable until the fall. People were furious about this, especially since hackers immediately just unlocked and can already play as these characters.

Frank said:

No, it's the Street Fighter X Tekken bullshit where the game launched with 12 finished DLC characters on the disc, some of which won't be unlocked or purchasable until the fall. People were furious about this, especially since hackers immediately just unlocked and can already play as these characters.

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What I'm getting at is Capcom's done worse forever. They'd re-release the whole game again with a few new characters/stages and still list it at near retail price. The disc thing is shitty too, for sure, and had I bought the game I'd be pissed as hell, but it's just a new fancy way to screw people over. I had friends who were livid about the MvC3 re-release, too, only to get double-boned by this SFxT thing later.

I think the thing that's most fucked up about Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom was Jill and Shuma still had to be paid for.

You know, I should be happy that I saw this coming since it means I can play it more now, but with how EA has been treating everything I actually feel dissapointed. I wanted it to last longer in the format it was going.

Asked whether it would be feasible to adapt The Old Republic to a free-to-play model, Lusinchi coyly suggests that the wheels may be in motion for a drastic change.

Lusinchi: The MMO market is very dynamic and we need to be dynamic as well. Unless people are happy with what they have, they are constantly demanding updates, new modes and situations. So we are looking at free-to-play but I can’t tell you in much detail. We have to be flexible and adapt to what is going on.

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It may not be a bad move. Turbine's done a lot with LOTRO since it went free to play. So has Paragon Studios with City of Heroes. Free to play works, as long as your not giving the paying players a HUGE advantage in PVP.

AshburnerX said:

It may not be a bad move. Turbine's done a lot with LOTRO since it went free to play. So has Paragon Studios with City of Heroes. Free to play works, as long as your not giving the paying players a HUGE advantage in PVP.

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Hey it's better for me, I wanted to play but was unable to justify paying a monthly fee on it. It just does feel a bit sad having the change happen so soon, as MMOs that make the change rapidly are often going through a massive subscription decline. Even LOTRO took two years before making the change if I am remembering correctly.

It was more like 3, and they still honored all those life-time subs they sold by giving them all the perks of the 15 premium plan, plus free points.

Also, they're finally starting server mergers. The guild I was playing with says the new server they moved to is packed now.

That didn't take long.
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/bioware-mmo-project/1225605p1.html

I'm so glad Bioware's major resources were plowed into that, I tell you!

Should've just made another single-player Old Republic game.

I always love the F2P spin

"Players want flexibility and choice," BioWare said in a statement. "The subscription-only model presented a major barrier for a lot of people..."

Translation

"Our game flopped and we're trying to recover any costs we can."

F2P has arguably made some games better. I know LOTRO is a lot more fun now that it has a decent population of people to play with.

That being said, I'm kinda glad I stopped playing SWTOR last month. There simply isn't enough end game content for the solo player.

TOR is very similar to Diablo III in a lot of ways. Both have the same basic idea - a single player game with story and whatnot made into MMO. Both seem to struggle with the same problem - people run out of things to do at the end of the story, lack of end game, etc. Neither has fixed it, so far. Diablo's still going to try for a while with item tweaks and upgrades, we'll see.
However, going F2P means that I'll probably end up playing it too, finally - as KoTOR 3, a single player game with a bunch of idiotic NPCs milling about and a chat channel for some reason. Just like D3.

Sad to see the IP fail, glad to see the conversion-to-MMO fail.

Bubble181 said:

TOR is very similar to Diablo III in a lot of ways. Both have the same basic idea - a single player game with story and whatnot made into MMO. Both seem to struggle with the same problem - people run out of things to do at the end of the story, lack of end game, etc. Neither has fixed it, so far. Diablo's still going to try for a while with item tweaks and upgrades, we'll see.
However, going F2P means that I'll probably end up playing it too, finally - as KoTOR 3, a single player game with a bunch of idiotic NPCs milling about and a chat channel for some reason. Just like D3.

Sad to see the IP fail, glad to see the conversion-to-MMO fail.

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The problem I have is that it was a really good game, and I lived bring able to live in it, but they tried to mimic WoW in their execution. Tried, and unfortunately, succeeded. All of the problems TOR has are problems WoW had when it was new, and it took them a lot of time and dedication to address those, but that doesn't help when EA and players are comparing TOR in its infancy to WoW after years of maturation.

My major issue was the group party size and lack of instance content. 4 players max... and you didn't even need that much as someone could use a companion as a weak 4th player. It just wasn't uncommon to see 2 players use their companions and "2 man" content. Not that great in regards to keeping a game alive and well.

It was a good game... but once I max leveled my sniper and kept playing PVP BGs owning the charts and finishing weak PVE content... I got incredibly bored.... very fast.

I think the last 3 months of my 6 month subscription went down the drain.

http://kirksigmon.com/2012/01/tortanic-star-wars-the-old-republic-sinking-fast/

Welp

That last link is dated January; pretty sure it isn't the issue right now.

Really, I can't say this is true, but I have a feeling one of the reasons they are declining so rabidly is the fact a lot of the players likely wanted to play it the same way I want to play it.

I didn't want to play SWTOR like I played WoW, because the unique part of the game for me was the storyline and seeing how it played out for each class. I already knew that once I finished said storylines and reached the end, the likelihood I was going to go and do the "end game" was about 10%. That part didn't interest me because I already had WoW.

So after a few months people are hitting the end of those stories, and just move back to other games. That is my theory anyways.

I dunno. A lot of people say they don't want another WoW clone. But really there aren't a lot of other models. The UI can change, the levelling/skills can change, but at the end of the day your just putting lipstick on a pig, it's still the same. You grind levels, you accumulate gear, you rinse and repeat. There's only a handful of MMOs that have come out that I felt had a truly different design concepts, and almost every one of them has failed miserably or has only been able to maintain a small user base (Darkfall and EvE respectively. UO is the only exception.

Honest question, can someone show me another MMO that has done remotely well that isn't a WoW clone?

I don't think it was SWTOR attempting to be a WoW clone that became a problem, just the fact it was not close enough in the areas that mattered. To be honest the thing that always bothers me about new MMOs coming out is the responsiveness and cohesion.

When I run around on my Gnome Mage, I have this sense of connection with my surroundings that few games match. My footsteps seem to hit the ground properly, I don't have a floating issue, movement itself is pretty free. On top of that when I tell my Mage I want a fireball up that Gnoll's furry little ass, I hit the key, the bar fills, and the fireball is unleashed. If it's an instant spell the spell unleashes the milisecond I hit my key.

I am not sure I mentioned it before but SWTOR sucked when it came to the response level, and it was downright numbing. I would tell my bounty hunter to attack someone with a missle, he would stand there after I clicked, lift up his arm, you would go through some sounds and clicks as the missle prepared and then it launched. No bar telling me of a warm up, no instant response, you always had to wait for animations to finish before actions occured. I would hit the same key multiple times because I almost felt like it didn't catch my clicks, something felt wrong.

Maybe WoW just spoiled me with how quick and responsive it is. Everything feels under your control. Few MMOs ever bring that feeling, instead putting more into the froo-froo rather then the action. Hit a key and watch the character go into a "super summersault" attack that hits the enemy a second later, but now you have to let him finish the animation before another can be done.

There's no real way around that then. WoW has been out for almost a decade now. It's going to be more polished than anything else that comes out like it.

Necronic said:

There's no real way around that then. WoW has been out for almost a decade now. It's going to be more polished than anything else that comes out like it.

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It's not just about polish, it's about realizing what things need to be done well. WoW started out with the extreme cohesion and responsiveness I talked about.

I can't remember when I started, maybe 1 year after the game launched. There were a handful of glitches but not much. Was it that good right off the bat? If so I'm impressed, I've never really seen a company do that (they did with D3 as well, in terms of technical/UI glitches, not balance/design.)

It had bugs and glitches, but it was always that responsive.

I think it mostly comes down to animations, funny enough.

Another SWTOR example, but the Bounty Hunter has a AOE missile ability where he leaps into the air, and then shoots the missles at the location specified. It take a second for the Bounty Hunter to leap up, do the missile barrage, then drop. That second for the jump can feel jarring since it's out of your control and add a unmarked warm-up to the attack.

If this was a WoW AoE ability, like the rogue Fan of Knives, you hit the button and with speed that seems downright superhuman the rogue launches daggers in all directions for instant damage to everything around him. If it was a mage, same for Arcane Blast.

Now, this does have the downside of making it so skills can actually out preform the animations. I can't even tell you the amount of times using skills like Slice and Dice and Adrenaline Rush, that my attacks are attacking the enemy faster then my character looks like he could possibly be actually hitting the enemy. Sometimes I would even use an Eviscerate so close to the end of the last animation that the client just says "fuck it" and does not even show the special melee animation for the Eviscerate, it just applies the damage and is done with it.

In the end I would rather my character look like he is freaked out on cocaine with instant feedback then worry about drawing out the animations for realism or style.

Agreed. That kind of unresponsiveness is unnacceptal in an MMO. Too much of the combat requires finesse/timing. Not having something go off the moment you expect it is really dangerous. This is a big problem hey had in EvE when you started getting 1k-2k fights, the game would start lagging so much that weapons wouldn't fire when expected etc, people would design fleets/ships specifically to fight optimally in this. CCPs way to deal with this was to do something called "Time Dialation" where the game would intentionally slow itself to levels below where the lag would, so at least it was smooth. It was kind of neat playing the game in slow motion. It's not really the same because it would only happen in places w/ 1-2k players (or 200 if you were really unlucky).

Anyways, that aside, it's a bit inexcusable for them to do that. Makes me think they didn't really know what they were doing in the first place.

Gared said:

SWTOR made an excellent single player game, I'm just not sure why they launched it as an MMO. I know that EA and Bioware had been promising a Star Wars themed MMO for years, and sure it was good of them to live up to that promise, but there was nothing about SWTOR that ever made me feel like I should play in a group of people, or against another group of people or even against another single person. Nothing about that game said MMO to me, especially the companion system. Why should I wander around with a healer, when I can just use my healer companion?

It seemed like they wanted desperately to not be like WoW and did a pretty good job of it up until the "end game", but had no idea how to offer anything other than a WoW-like experience once people hit max level and then their entire execution fell apart because the systems and gameplay from levels 1 - 50(?) didn't mesh well with a standard Healer + 3DPS + Tank party for raiding. It's like they blew their entire creative budget on the individual class story portions of the game and forgot to make an ending; or like they took an awesome single player game, with room for people to play through the game up to 8 times (at least) to try each individual class, and turned it into an MMO.

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The story driven, multiple participant flashpoints were pretty awesome, but there weren't enough of them, and too often they were just combat than the unique mix of choice and roleplaying they could offer.

Also, I really liked huttball.

Ravenpoe said:

Also, I really liked huttball.

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My only issue with it was that 98% of all BG was this goddamned map.

I got tired of playing this... even when I dominated the BG.

Jay said:

My only issue with it was that 98% of all BG was this goddamned map.

I got tired of playing this... even when I dominated the BG.

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This got better after 1.3. They put in a new map and made it so you could do same faction PVP if there wasn't enough for a full game of Imps vs. Pubs. After that you barely saw Huttball.

Too late.

Fuck I hated Huttball. The combination of a sport-styled bg with traps that could kill you in seconds, were constantly changing states, and a ball that you had to throw to the braindead monkeys on your team, combined with the ability lag that ScytheRexx mentioned, made that the most frustrating pvp I've ever been in. I was honestly just leaving as soon as I loaded into it 80% of the time, because win or lose I knew I was going to be annoyed the whole time I was in there.

Vrii said:

Fuck I hated Huttball. The combination of a sport-styled bg with traps that could kill you in seconds, were constantly changing states, and a ball that you had to throw to the braindead monkeys on your team, combined with the ability lag that ScytheRexx mentioned, made that the most frustrating pvp I've ever been in. I was honestly just leaving as soon as I loaded into it 80% of the time, because win or lose I knew I was going to be annoyed the whole time I was in there.

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Huttball would have made an interesting scene on the Clone Wars TV show or maybe as part of a bounty hunter themed movie, but it was just annoying to play. If you didn't have at least 2-3 other people on your team in your vent, you simply had no chance of winning.

And all the arches, vents and what not with Jedis/Sith already jumping all over the place it was basically a clusterfuck. I learned how to use my macros to target bind and go through my Sniper's DPS macro sets to take shit down as long as they were in sight. I got so good at it, I was called a cheater multiple times.

I don't blame them... especially, when my damage output was on average 150k more than the next guy.

Yeah... nobody likes fighting Snipers or Gunslingers because of that. They have the tools to keep you away and the DPS to burn you down no matter what you are.