official Star Wars: The Old Republic

[killmaster84]

Best PVP game yet >_>

[metal_dragen Veteran]

Just a note to anyone that has left the game:

Bioware has started doing character transfers from selected origin servers to selected destination servers in order to consolidate the playerbase and increase populations on fewer servers.

For anyone that was concerned about the lack of players, PvP queue pops, etc., now would be a good time to check in on the Transfer page on the official site to see if your server is eligible for transfer (they are adding more as the day goes on and will continue over the next few days) or will be receiving new players.

[SirEvan]

I, along with every one I know canceled our accounts. Between the relentless bugs, short story line (and no, I personally am not playing through the game 10 times to get every character), and lack of substance in updates...the game just got to be really boring. same flashpoints over and over, same missions..even raiding got lame. I'm not an MMO fan so maybe thats a big part of it, but when i was part of a coworkers guild even doing weekly raids became tedious and boring. Also, the game economy was rediculous. Crystals and such are 2million + credits...where most people don't have more than a few hundred thousand. Combine that with the fact that people exploited the hell out of the game (PVP missions, rakghoul plague dna...etc) Just makes it not fun. If it were F2P i might get back in, but other than that...nah.

[Slane]

My server on there. Sadly still not enough to get me to continue playing.

[HawkMan]

I, along with every one I know canceled our accounts. Between the relentless bugs, short story line (and no, I personally am not playing through the game 10 times to get every character), and lack of substance in updates...the game just got to be really boring. same flashpoints over and over, same missions..even raiding got lame. I'm not an MMO fan so maybe thats a big part of it, but when i was part of a coworkers guild even doing weekly raids became tedious and boring. Also, the game economy was rediculous. Crystals and such are 2million + credits...where most people don't have more than a few hundred thousand. Combine that with the fact that people exploited the hell out of the game (PVP missions, rakghoul plague dna...etc) Just makes it not fun. If it were F2P i might get back in, but other than that...nah.

huh ... :boggle:

the rumours of game exploitation is highly exaggerated though, nothing even close to the degree you claim ever happened. also the crystals can be earned by simply playing, except for the pre order ones.

[HawkMan]

Also my server won't be part of the merger in stage one since I'm on the the Euro RP PVP server which has no target untill phase 2.

I'm not complaining though, I still have fun with the storyline on alts, questing on dailies and doing PVP. I'm not entirely sure what my server is at right now though, normal or light, but I haven't actually noticed that much difference since it used to be Very heavy. However I'm looking forward to server getting consolidated anyway, as my opinion on MMO's is that there's never to much, even if there's plenty of people around as it is.

More interested in update 1.3 than transfers though, and the new planet space quest and Cathar will be interesting.

[SirEvan]

huh ... :boggle:

the rumours of game exploitation is highly exaggerated though, nothing even close to the degree you claim ever happened. also the crystals can be earned by simply playing, except for the pre order ones.

It did happen, and I know it did because I participated in it.

People would go to...what was it, illum? to the PVP areas. Republic and Imperial forces would gather in an area, in tight bunches, and take turns destroying each side to quickly ramp up PVP kills to complete daily/weekly missions. Rakghoul DNA samples were also obtained at an insane rate by standing around on fleet and waiting for people to blow up. During the entire plague duration, there was a group of at least 30-40 people that would camp on the fleet station, just waiting to catch it then blow up. I would log in from work using log me in to move my character around a bit so as to not get kicked. I could get easy 100 or more samples a day doing this. People would exploit this and then sell them for as much as 5K a piece. You tell me that that's not exploiting the game. Was it allowed? debatable...maybe mods just didn't care to punish or fix it...but it's still exploiting the game if you ask me.

As for the "lack of substance in updates", I'm talking about having to download a 20MB...100MB...whatever sized patch, and it fixes a whopping one thing...over half the patches were some crap like "fixed issue with bounty hunter weapon not being the correct dimensions" blah blah blah. you know what? After like 20 patches, including the 1.2 patch, why is it that my Sniper's graphics were STILL jacked up? Nose shows through the helmet, along with ears, and part of the neck. Can't even fix graphics issues, but they sure can add in white crystals. Also, when you notify them about a bug, they can't tell you if it's fixed, going to be fixed, or not. All you get back from their "CS droids" were something along the lines of "we cannot provide an update on this, stay tuned to the release notes to see if it's fixed" ****ty CS if you ask me.

[metal_dragen Veteran]

I, along with every one I know canceled our accounts. Between the relentless bugs, short story line (and no, I personally am not playing through the game 10 times to get every character), and lack of substance in updates...the game just got to be really boring. same flashpoints over and over, same missions..even raiding got lame. I'm not an MMO fan so maybe thats a big part of it, but when i was part of a coworkers guild even doing weekly raids became tedious and boring. Also, the game economy was rediculous. Crystals and such are 2million + credits...where most people don't have more than a few hundred thousand. Combine that with the fact that people exploited the hell out of the game (PVP missions, rakghoul plague dna...etc) Just makes it not fun. If it were F2P i might get back in, but other than that...nah.

If you're not a fan of MMO's then several of your complaints are just a result of that - the purpose of the game is to get the loot, and getting the loot for you and your group involves repeating content until you beat it and then some.

However, I will say that, yes there are bugs, but they are fixing them. Yes, there are exploits, but they've patched for several and banned accounts for others.

As for your complaints about the story and content - this I just can't understand. Not only does your class story stretch over 50 levels (which will take a couple weeks, even playing several hours per day to complete), but each planet has a unique story and there are unique stories for companions and flashpoint/operation content. As for content, the game is 6 months old - 6 months - and they've already released 2 major content patches in that time.

As for the crystals - those were either a) magenta crystals (which are very rare because the pattern only drops off a world boss on a timer and requires high-end materials) or b) the pre-1.2 crystals from the vendor (and the whole point of those was that they were limited to pre-1.2 only since they were adding end-game crystal schematics to the crew skill [artifice] and were expensive because of their limited nature).

Rakghoul DNA - the plague was created to involve the server, of course they knew people would exploit the deaths to earn the DNA and if people were stupid enough to still pay 5k per for them, that's their fault for not understanding how the plague worked (I also did the same thing farming DNA to get the black-green crystals for a couple of my characters as well as the pet and then sold off about 60 left-overs and made 200k on them). This also benefited people who couldn't log on everyday or for long enough each day to farm enough to get what they wanted. If they didn't want the DNA to be farmable, they would've made it BoP and only rewarded from the quests.

Not trying to convince you to return, just making the point that while some of your concerns are valid - MMOs are not finished when they are released, they're just getting started. Even WoW still fixes bugs/exploits weekly with their maintenance/patches and that game is over 7 years old.

[SirEvan]

If you're not a fan of MMO's then several of your complaints are just a result of that - the purpose of the game is to get the loot, and getting the loot for you and your group involves repeating content until you beat it and then some.

However, I will say that, yes there are bugs, but they are fixing them. Yes, there are exploits, but they've patched for several and banned accounts for others.

As for your complaints about the story and content - this I just can't understand. Not only does your class story stretch over 50 levels (which will take a couple weeks, even playing several hours per day to complete), but each planet has a unique story and there are unique stories for companions and flashpoint/operation content. As for content, the game is 6 months old - 6 months - and they've already released 2 major content patches in that time.

As for the crystals - those were either a) magenta crystals (which are very rare because the pattern only drops off a world boss on a timer and requires high-end materials) or b) the pre-1.2 crystals from the vendor (and the whole point of those was that they were limited to pre-1.2 only since they were adding end-game crystal schematics to the crew skill [artifice] and were expensive because of their limited nature).

Rakghoul DNA - the plague was created to involve the server, of course they knew people would exploit the deaths to earn the DNA and if people were stupid enough to still pay 5k per for them, that's their fault for not understanding how the plague worked (I also did the same thing farming DNA to get the black-green crystals for a couple of my characters as well as the pet and then sold off about 60 left-overs and made 200k on them). This also benefited people who couldn't log on everyday or for long enough each day to farm enough to get what they wanted. If they didn't want the DNA to be farmable, they would've made it BoP and only rewarded from the quests.

Not trying to convince you to return, just making the point that while some of your concerns are valid - MMOs are not finished when they are released, they're just getting started. Even WoW still fixes bugs/exploits weekly with their maintenance/patches and that game is over 7 years old.

I guess what I'm getting at, and correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've heard, MMO's, like WoW for example, normally have dynamic content. Maybe I'm wrong, but I heard that quite often WoW Game/Dungeon/whatever masters...(lets call them server admins) frequently put new missions or quests into the game...or made monsters appear to challenge players. This made the game dynamic and brought new content in all the time. Again, If I'm wrong, forgive me, but that's what I was told (not being an MMO player). Contrast that with SWTOR, which, at least for the sniper class, was a pretty boring story line up until the end. After that, yeah you have FP's and Raids, but there were what, maybe 20 total? After 2-3 weeks, they were all done, and repeated multiple times. No new gear, no new missions.

Patch 1.2 came out, added like 2 more missions, a few new gear items, legacy mode, whatever...but in the end it didn't really change that much, unless maybe you had multiple characters to take advantage of the legacy system, but TBH, with how tedious it was leveling to 50 (having to walk everywhere because speeders weren't allowed in certain places), I would NOT do it again just to get 2+ more toons.

you can take this with a grain of salt, since I've admitted I don't like MMO's. I skipped WoW, was convinced to try SWTOR, but it couldn't keep my attention. I will say that I did alpha/beta test two other MMO's that never went live, and while I actually like those, SWTOR just doesn't have enough to keep me in.

[Xilo]

The Titanic has sunk.

It was a fun game up to 50, but then after 50 there's not much to do. I was on a pretty "populated" server and just a few weeks ago there would usually only be 20-30 people on fleet when just about a month before there would be 80-100.

[HawkMan]

Let me put it this way, you heard wrong. There's no dynamic content or GM adding custom missions in WoW. and compared to WoW and most other MMO's this game is getting better content patches by miles, the only game that comes close is EQ2 the first two years.

As for dynamic content, the ONLY MMO's I've seen that had GM's actually doing GM tasks and roleplaying characters int he game world doing custom missions and handing out rewards was in Anarchy Online. I was a Guide or whatever we where called back in the start when we did that, and we could basically take over any NPC to start a custom mission and where encouraged to.

it's also the only game I see it being a possibility in since it only had two servers. you can't do dynamic content across hundreds of servers.

[HawkMan]

The Titanic has sunk.

It was a fun game up to 50, but then after 50 there's not much to do. I was on a pretty "populated" server and just a few weeks ago there would usually only be 20-30 people on fleet when just about a month before there would be 80-100.

Except for Daily quests and PVP, and hard mode flash point and Operations... no, absolutely nothing....

Also your numbers are only the people on the fleet. not the hundreds/thousands of people on other planets, in ships, in instances in PVP, in flash point in operations...

[Xilo]

Except for Daily quests and PVP, and hard mode flash point and Operations... no, absolutely nothing....

Also your numbers are only the people on the fleet. not the hundreds/thousands of people on other planets, in ships, in instances in PVP, in flash point in operations...

Daily quests get boring as hell. You can get all hard mode flash point gear in a couple weeks. It's also not new content in any way. You are doing the same flash points you did leveling up. As far as operations go, there's really only 2 or so worth doing.

Measuring by fleet is a good way to measure the activity on the server. Where do you idle between pvp/operations/flash points? Usually the fleet.

The game is severely lacking in content and the game is dying. If you believe otherwise, then you are delusional.

[HawkMan]

Then WoW and every other MMO is dying as well.

[Xilo]

Then WoW and every other MMO is dying as well.

Except if you look at WoW, there's way more to do (more than 2 raid zones worth doing that aren't just a rehashed hard mode, more max level dungeons, more than 2 zones worth of dailies) and their subscriptions have been pretty steady. You almost always see the same amount of people idling in the main cities during peak hours. That's the thing with these other MMOs that have been around for a while. There's more things to do at end game, and populations remain stable.

When Bioware employees are telling people to just level more characters because they ran out of things to do, there is a problem.

Hell, I was on a PVP server in the hope of having more things to do, but when leveling up, I never even saw people on the opposite faction. What's the point of being a PVP server if the opportunities for world PVP are minimal?

Your statement doesn't even make any logical sense.

[HawkMan]

2 raid zones in your OPINION

you can keep doom and glooming and whatever, meanwhile I and a million others will keep enjoying the game.

question is why are you flaming a topic about a game you don't like or enjoy.

[Xilo]

2 raid zones in your OPINION

you can keep doom and glooming and whatever, meanwhile I and a million others will keep enjoying the game.

question is why are you flaming a topic about a game you don't like or enjoy.

I never said I didn't like it or didn't enjoy it. I quite enjoyed it leveling up to 50. Got to 50 and got best gear in a month because it was that easy.

I merely said this game is dying. Which is a fact if you look at population levels compared to 1 month ago.

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

When Bioware employees are telling people to just level more characters because they ran out of things to do, there is a problem.

Bioware has stated from the beginning the main focus for the game was for "Casual" and "Rerollers", that's the whole reason for the Legacy, Voice Acting, and Class Storylines. Bioware has stated this even before Closed Beta. If you went into the game thinking otherwise I'm sorry. They have also said it is not about the " 50 and above Endgame " and not their focus.

My complain on the game is mostly population based reasons along side of bugs from a shoddy engine/programming

*edit - Casual is not the play it for a month or 2 like the ones they lost already, they are the short term people that jump ship every new game that comes out. casual as in play a couple hours a week, max a class and reroll a new one deleting characters when filled slot wise

[Twiddle]

That isn't casual...

I consider myself casual, and the game just lacks things to do, even for a casual.

Granted, it doesn't lack ability to create alts, but that is not the definition of casual. I really only ever care about one character, and doing things with them. Re-rolling has nothing to do with being casual. If re-leveling is your thing, then that is a preferred method of play.

[HawkMan]

Yes that is casual, there's more than one way to be casual.

[dead.cell]

I guess what I'm getting at, and correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've heard, MMO's, like WoW for example, normally have dynamic content. Maybe I'm wrong, but I heard that quite often WoW Game/Dungeon/whatever masters...(lets call them server admins) frequently put new missions or quests into the game...or made monsters appear to challenge players. This made the game dynamic and brought new content in all the time. Again, If I'm wrong, forgive me, but that's what I was told (not being an MMO player). Contrast that with SWTOR, which, at least for the sniper class, was a pretty boring story line up until the end. After that, yeah you have FP's and Raids, but there were what, maybe 20 total? After 2-3 weeks, they were all done, and repeated multiple times. No new gear, no new missions.

Patch 1.2 came out, added like 2 more missions, a few new gear items, legacy mode, whatever...but in the end it didn't really change that much, unless maybe you had multiple characters to take advantage of the legacy system, but TBH, with how tedious it was leveling to 50 (having to walk everywhere because speeders weren't allowed in certain places), I would NOT do it again just to get 2+ more toons.

you can take this with a grain of salt, since I've admitted I don't like MMO's. I skipped WoW, was convinced to try SWTOR, but it couldn't keep my attention. I will say that I did alpha/beta test two other MMO's that never went live, and while I actually like those, SWTOR just doesn't have enough to keep me in.

Actually no, WoW doesn't do that at all. There only a few games that actually have dynamic events, but nothing to the level which Guild Wars 2 will bring I believe. Closest resemblances I could give are with Rift, and how mobs could end up being spawned (on timers I guess) to invade towns randomly and capture certain points on the map, to which you'd come to their aid. They also had "rifts" (get it?) that'd open up and mobs would sort of rule that area until enough players could come and kill them off.

Warhammer Online had public quests which I believe was where a lot of these events first showed up in MMOs, but they weren't dynamic really if I recall correctly. They just reset after you finished them on timers, were in the same spots pretty much. Still fun though at least.

World of Warcraft is barely even bringing those into existence with "Scenarios" with their next expansion, but they don't seem all too dynamic from the sounds of it either, and seem rather on par with Warhammer's approach back in 2008. I could be wrong though.

Just thought I'd clarify on that. :p

[HawkMan]

None of those are GM created dynamic quests like he said though, that's something I only ever saw in Anarchy Online, and I'm not sure they do that anymore either. not after tey had to drop the volunteer guides because of the lawsuit.

[metal_dragen Veteran]

I guess what I'm getting at' date=' and correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've heard, MMO's, like WoW for example, normally have dynamic content. Maybe I'm wrong, but I heard that quite often WoW Game/Dungeon/whatever masters...(lets call them server admins) frequently put new missions or quests into the game...or made monsters appear to challenge players. This made the game dynamic and brought new content in all the time. Again, If I'm wrong, forgive me, but that's what I was told (not being an MMO player). Contrast that with SWTOR, which, [b']at least for the sniper class, was a pretty boring story line up until the end[/b]. After that, yeah you have FP's and Raids, but there were what, maybe 20 total? After 2-3 weeks, they were all done, and repeated multiple times. No new gear, no new missions.

Patch 1.2 came out, added like 2 more missions, a few new gear items, legacy mode, whatever...but in the end it didn't really change that much, unless maybe you had multiple characters to take advantage of the legacy system, but TBH, with how tedious it was leveling to 50 (having to walk everywhere because speeders weren't allowed in certain places), I would NOT do it again just to get 2+ more toons.

you can take this with a grain of salt, since I've admitted I don't like MMO's. I skipped WoW, was convinced to try SWTOR, but it couldn't keep my attention. I will say that I did alpha/beta test two other MMO's that never went live, and while I actually like those, SWTOR just doesn't have enough to keep me in.

Re: bolded part above: :s

The Imperial Agent storyline is widely considered the best written storyline in the game. My main is a Sniper and I loved every minute of the story. If you think that story was boring, then this game is definitely not for you, because that's the cream of the crop story wise.

Granted, I have a different perspective on MMOs (even though SWTOR is only my second MMO - I played WoW through TBC). I love having alts and leveling them. Especially in SWTOR where I get a new storyline for each class.

Tedium I understand, and so does Bioware because they added the ability to ride speeders inside spaceports and stations, they added the option to shuttle direct to your ship from a planet so you don't have to shuttle to the station, walk to your hangar elevator, ride the elevator, walk to your ship and then zone in.

However, I find that the tedium also lessens because I can queue for PvP wherever I am, play a quick match, and get ported right back where I was to pick up right where I left off. I also have alts so that I can experience different story content if I get bored with one.

Like I said before, not trying to convince you to stay, just trying to understand and give my perspective.

[dead.cell]

None of those are GM created dynamic quests like he said though, that's something I only ever saw in Anarchy Online, and I'm not sure they do that anymore either. not after tey had to drop the volunteer guides because of the lawsuit.

Every time you reply to me, it feels like you're getting the wrong message despite the fact that I'm agreeing with you 99% of the time. :rolleyes:

Anyway, I know what he's talking about. I was just giving the most closest resemblances of dynamic events which don't require a GM to perform. Most "GM events" are created either on betas (see GW2) and private servers. Regardless, the answer to his question is still no.

---

BioWare considering free-to-play for Star Wars: The Old Republic

BioWare Lead Designer Emmanuel Lusinchi dropped a word-bomb on the Star Wars: The Old Republic community, stating that the game may be heading in the direction of free-to-play. Lusinchi said that the studio is investigating possibilities: "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."

This comes out of an interview in GamesTM magazine, in which Lusinchi addressed the challenges of being competitive in a largely F2P industry. While SWTOR has a large playerbase, it lost 400,000 subscriptions from its peak earlier this year as well as several members of its dev team.

Lusinchi says that the challenge isn't just that SWTOR is a subscription-based game, but that there's a lot of great options in the field. "If it was just free-to-play games and they weren't very good it wouldn't even be a question," he said, "but there are definitely good games out there and good games coming out, so of course all of this competition impacts your plan with what you want to do."

Of course we did hear about the limited free trial at E3, but this interview seems to indicate the possibility of a move to full F2P in SWTOR's future.

Joystiq - Image1 Image2

[HawkMan]

No I actually did agree with you, just pointing out that AO did have what he was talking about, and as far as I know the only game to ever have had it,(except for the Vampire game that was a regular CRPG and let one player be a GM for a group of people. but not a dynamic quest in an MMO so...)

As for that article, it's pretty much a "well we're considering anything just in case".