I would say the article is offbase somewhat. The devs arent listning to the "vocal minority" on this one. They are listening to the majority.  You may not like it but thoes of us that enjoyed old school MMO's are the minority now. The only proof I need is to say look at WoW and virtually every MMO since WOW. They make massive amounts of money. Sure they all fall off because people either go back to WoW or simply dont play an MMO but most of them have a big following still. Not big in WoW terms but they still have a player base.

You can talk badly about f2p all you want but the model CLEARLY works or companies wouldnt use it. Look at Turbine. AC was a great, great game and pretty successfull in its time. But now, if they had not gone f2p with D&D and LOTRO they would have gone under as a company. But with there f2p model they have made bucketloads of money.

As for AC memories I'll never forget failing something like 20 compound bows before finally making mine. Was a great, great day. I'll never forget the story arcs either. One of the best and I think most hated ones was the shadow spires and BZ :)

Good article. The first level 50 took just over 3 days! I found it pretty funny as well that people were posting about how 'power players' only had themselves to blame as their main was only 35 .... after 2 weeks.  

And in SWTOR just about everyone has leveled fast. And I think this is one of the reasons that people have questioned whether SWTOR is really an mmo. Does it give you the jourmey? Is the end game worth the monthly sub? New content - sure; take a year off and come back for a month next year to run through it all. It feels like a single player RPG with co-op options; a Halo or Assassin's Creed rather than a 'traditional' - slower - mmo.

If, imo, it had been sold as such - a SWKotR 2 single player type game with a CoD style option to pay a yearly fee ($50 say) for the 'mmo' add-on - I think EA would have had less griping, more success and a game that would have continued to sell.

Originally posted by MMOGamer71

Simple,  MMO's in this case SWTOR is a product of design to appeal to the masses (read $$$), this includes the "me" generation that want everything now or with little effort.

I miss those days when leveling was hard and you died on mobs.

/agree

That's why I still think the 'old' Lineage II was one of the better 'modern' MMORPG titles around. Now with the coming of the Goddess of Destruction expansion, I've licked my wounds, counted my adena and left the game. And also has the same reason I did not buy SWTOR - I liked it in beta (a lot), but I couldn't see myself play it for 2 weeks, hit cap and then didn't know what to do...

In reality its not the leveling that is fun, it sounds like what was fun was exploring the game world.

Sometimes I ponder a future where leveling is phased out of all RPGs.

So let me get this right article writer your theory for the free fall is do leveling speed? Aion took 3 months and people left just as fast. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH LEVELING SPEED in TOR.

It has to do with the fact that they launched the game to early. You can not just leave some of the crap that they left out. Sorry I was proven about 90% right on this one. The year is 2012 not 2005 UI Customization especially from a 200million $ game is  MUST.

Some of the stuff they left out and the way they just flat out abused PHASING made the game feel more like KOTOR 3.0 and not WoW 2.0...single player rpg vs mmorpg for those who do not get the reference.

This idea of single server war fronts has proven to be a complete failure, Ilum was a complete failure for the same EXACT reason Blizzard had to end up instancing Wintergrasp, and the way they tested end game content during BETA was just flat out iditotic.

I played AO for years and never once got a max level character. I spent hours just running around doing missions, getting groups for mob grinds (usually turning out to be more of a social experience then anything), and screwing around in one of the social bars. To me that was fun. Theme-parking my way through an MMO to get to raiding or end game PVP is BORING! I don't care how cool looking the game is or how well done the "main story" is, if I have to go from zone to zone to zone with little more to do then complete quest and turn in quest then I'm going to leave. This is the biggest reason why I just said "hell with it" and passed on SWTOR entirely.

I think it's time to step back out of the box game devs. It's obvious MMOers are tired of the theme-park ride MMO, as most MMOs are being driven straight to a cash shop after only a year because of insufficent subs.

Faster leveling is what Blizzard have been talking about as well.

24M customers playing an average of 6 months a year = a headline 12M subscribers.

24M customers playing an average of 5 months a year = a headline 10M subscribers.

The numbers are illustrative but if the same number of customers spend less time in game then this is what happens to the headline sub number. People still playing just spending less time in game - and I suspect that this 'drop in and out approach' will happen in SWTOR, especially as new content is, as James Olsen has said, time consuming to produce. 

Green Mire armor, The Sword of Light (was that the name?) and Olthoi dungeons were some of the best MMO moments for me. 

When you look at it, it was the challenge that made is so much fun. The carrot that you could reach, but it was just so difficult to do that made me play week after week.

In a sense, Eve Online and to some extent Darkfall Online have this same old-school difficulty mode, but unfortunately the former has given us too many easy choices and the later is rid with cheaters and bitter old divas.

Hopefully one of the newer Korean games brings us something new and enjoyable. Yes, I'm looking at you, Archeage. 

That's what you get when a MMO company spends a majority of their investment in one-time content, ie video cut scenes and VOs.

Now everyone knows what to look for so can we please not support these half-a** projects anymore? It's time us gamers put our wallets away and support gaming companies who cater to us, not their bank accounts via box sales.

Really good article. Completely agree. i end up demotivated before i even start playing a lot of the new MMO's for this exact reason. MMO's used to about the journey not the destination.

And ofc its all WOW's fault. They were  the 1st MMO's to change to this ultra fast leveling systme and because there so successful most of the other MMO's followed. Even my beloved EQ2 which IMO is one of the best leveling journeys out there, you can now get to max lvl in 2days!!

Makes me a sad little panda

Half the pvpers getting the best pvp gear in sw:tor in just one month

nuff said

Originally posted by n3v3rriv3r

Kill 10 rats quests are really not mandatory in this game? Oh yes you have 15 of them and after you kill the rats you have to click on a console or something...briliant!

 

 

Give me 10 original quest ideas will ya, that you would use in your mmo.

But:

no "kill 10 vermin" quests

no "guide the npc from point A to B" quests

no "go talk to" npc quests.

plz give use your 10 quest as they should be?

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by Ausare

Yeah WoW really killed themselves only hold 9+ million subs for what atleast 6 years.  There is more to this than just speed of leveling/content issues.  Alt viability and fun, mini games, pvp fun, social aspects, difficult of end game content, amount of end game content...

WoW kept people for these reason even though the game was "easy" to level through.  Other newer games fail at some of these issues.

WOW didn't "keep" all that many people, more people have played and quit WOW than are currently subscribed. (OK, I can't prove that, don't waste thread time debating the issue here)

What they did manage to do is keep changing the game mechanics to appeal to a broader and broader player base while driving off the previous generation in the process (who likely would have left regardless, MMO's have a shelf life for everyone, no matter how fun)

And when it started out, WOW was a much slower leveling process, my first character took me 16 days played, (to level 60) my last avatar after Cata launched got to 90 in roughly 6.5 days played.

Even more, to get to 60 in my first character I literally had to do every quest, every dungeon and even grind a few levels to reach 60, so I missed no quest content.  In the last go around much like the OP said, I found myself rapidly leveling past the content, entirely missing some zones in the process. 

This did not make WOW a better game IMO..... since the end game is not why I enjoyed it. (Gear grinding is not my thing)

Same issue occurred with Rift, my first and only character, (no beta experience) reached max level in 1.5 months of pretty causal play...and there I was again, with nothing to do but grind for gear, and I stopped playing even though I had bought a 6 month sub. (no more of that I assure you)

 

 

More are playing WoW and have kept subs to it than any other game in the West. 

Better is your opinion.  I am going off the fact that it gets and keeps sub numbers while other games drop subs like a rock to something that is more like existing than thriving.  You can hate it all you want, but fast leveling is not bad if done right.  WoW has more than just level to nothing that games like SWTOR have.  Yes WoW leveling was slow at start while SWTOR is light speed all the way.  WoW put in legitimate time sinks that a lot (millions) seem to like. 

To say that WoW's leveling was detrimental to the game as the Writer says is hardly accurate.  I am sure the Blizzard company sit around talking about how they wish that they have changed the game to be successful and not such a flash in the pan like just about every game after has been.

Originally posted by dinams

People getting the best pvp gear in sw:tor in just one month

 

nuff said

 

nuf with the pvp already.....its a STORY diven RPG game not an arena game.....djeezes.

Originally posted by dinams

People getting the best pvp gear in sw:tor in just one month

nuff said

 

If you guys ever hear someone who earned their Battlemaster egar the legitamate way talk about how they feel when exploits where not fixed and roll backs were not done will tell you everything you need to know why atleast the pvp servers got hammered.

You simply can not treat your pvp'rs like that. I mean they were raging over nerfs in Rift or WoW, but nullifying a crap ton of hard work over night will cause more backlash.

I notice these days that the level cap is the mark of citizenship in a themepark game - whether it's openly stated or not, there's a subconscious "anyone not at the cap is a noob" reaction.  It quietly puts a lot of pressure on a player to accelerate and I don't think it would be solved by a slower levelling curve - I feel it's more about the evolution of the player culture over the years.

I think it would be interesting to see a game where all levelling was horizonal progression.  Each zone would be treated as an entire game onto itself - there would still be leveling, but it would be all zone-specific or mob-specific, allowing you to get that leveling feel and/or overpower a challenge that's got you stuck without getting a global power boost that renders content in other zones obsolete.   You already see this with reputation grinds and some achievements, but what if you it was applied to skills and buffs as well?  Levelless, but not progressionless.

When it launched, what distinguished WoW from its predecessors was its structure (the famous Theme Park design) and its orderly progression of quests rather than its leveling speed, because even WoW wasn’t all that fast in terms of leveling in the early days.

Correction:  In 2004, WoW had the shortest time-to-cap in MMO history up to that point.  That's before adjustments to mount speeds, early levels xp boost, etc.

It's one of the things that sold the game.

Originally posted by Zekiah

That's what you get when a MMO company spends a majority of their investment in one-time content, ie video cut scenes and VOs.

Now everyone knows what to look for so can we please not support these half-a** projects anymore? It's time us gamers put our wallets away and support gaming companies who cater to us, not their bank accounts via box sales.

It's time for those who feel that way to do that yes, problem is you're making it sound as though everyone should feel this way.

Originally posted by Distopia

Originally posted by Zekiah

That's what you get when a MMO company spends a majority of their investment in one-time content, ie video cut scenes and VOs.

Now everyone knows what to look for so can we please not support these half-a** projects anymore? It's time us gamers put our wallets away and support gaming companies who cater to us, not their bank accounts via box sales.

It's time for those who feel that way to do that yes, problem is you're making it sound as though everyone should feel this way.

 

Everyone should feel this way that's on this forum. Obviously you're NOT playing SWTOR, or you're waiting for GW2.

That being said, what do you think would have happened had Bioware invested the majority of its investment into a dynamic & seemless world coupled with reactive content, a skill tree based system WITHOUT levels, an open world economy crafting system similar to SWG, item decay, NO pvp-player looting, open faction pvping as soon as you get out of the starter world, and a 3 faction system?

Definitely better than this pile of trash people were told was "amazingly better than their previous competition".

Originally posted by Fadedbomb

Everyone should feel this way that's on this forum. Obviously you're NOT playing SWTOR, or you're waiting for GW2. 

Aye aye sir!  We will conform to your standards.