Any succesfull MMO is good for the industry as it convinces people to take massive financial risks to build them... 

With a massive failure of a game with the visibility of SWTOR you would see a pretty significant reduction in the number of projects being funded which would all but eliminate any posibility of the sandbox grail you seek.

With large amounts of potential profits you could attract the attention of a large investor or publisher willing to finance a well thought out MMO with a sandbox design.  There are several MMO's in the pipe right now that could potentially fit the bill.

If however SWTOR were to fail spectacularly the funding for many of those projects would be scaled back resulting in less than complete games.  These games tend not to do very well and sandboxes with their heavy reliance on perfect and complex mechanics to let players shape the world and game systems tend to get released in an all but unplayable state when rushed. 

If you want innovation in the MMO market you should cheer each sucess as it only grows the market and draws in hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of previously non MMO gamers to the genre.  Casual MMO's like WoW or SWTOR help to introduce people to the genre and removes alot of the stigma attached to it as a dark corner of gaming.

SWTOR may not be your personal prefrence in game design, but it is a wonderful story driven casual game that is helping to grow the market.  I can't count the number of players I've grouped with to whom this is their first MMO.

If the game gets balanced and a better end game/ PvP added it will rock.  My guess is people are subscribed to level up alts.

Originally posted by Deewe

I'll take this analogy.

 

 

My neighbor, a French pastry chef, opened a bakery in a North American city.

 

As you can guess he started making French fine pastry and well most of the people told them it was not so bad but they prefer you know classic north american stuff.

 

Thing is it takes time to educate people and change their habits. When your mouth is used to be assaulted by sugar you won't even notice the subtle aroma in more delicate food. 

Deewe you are becoming my favorite person here.  I've used a simular analogy, but I think the gaming industry is becoming more and more like the movie/Hollywood industry.   We can all think of movies that got high ratings that we thought were absolute piles of crap.  Its marketing.  If the minority of people *care* about these issues like we do, why waste your time trying to make them happy when you can make more money with a lower quality product?

Originally posted by Strayfe

 

Unacceptable.

 

 

I'm not having fun cause your having fun. So you should stop having fun. If I can't have fun nobody can.

 Originally posted by Loke666

Just relax, TOR is not a bad game but I kinda doubt that it will keep those players for more than a few months the way it is made.

Other MMOs that use different mechanics are on the way and I think a few of them will seel very well.

I just don´t see TOR being able to go head on head Vs GW2 and Class 4. TOR is just too much like a single player game and those are very fun for a while but usually lose it's magic when you max out 2 characters.Adding Wow style raiding to the concept just ain´t enough.

It is far more important that a different game succeds than a game like TOR fails, the publishers needs proof that other types of games can sell well, not that current style MMOs womt.

The only thing TORs failure would tell investors would be that the genre isn´t worth the risk, and that would be bad, M'OKAY?

I have to agree with this post actually.  Looking at my gaming history, its unusual that I am playing SWTOR and enjoying it.  However Star Wars was the first film I had ever seen back in the 70's and the lore is something that has added a lot of weight to this game.

There is a big HOWEVER though.  I am playing the game like a single player game and once I get through the main storyline for 2-3 characters I wont stick around at all. 

The only way I can describe it, is like going to a real life theme park and its the best one I have ever gone to.  So I spending most of the time running between all the new rides but once I have tried them all I may return once a year.

I try not to think what this game could have been, as its too depressing.  A sandbox Star Wars game would kill my RL anyway.

I personally feel that they should have individual storylines up to level 10 and then you decide which side you join... They could have made it so much more sexy.

But hey, its a great single player game :)

Completely agree OP. Of course many will simply not comprehend your point and simply dismiss you as being a hater. Hell, half of them wont read past the first 142 characters. 

I guess the big hope is that publishers and developers start thinking 'hmm that space really is well and truly saturated....we are going to have to risk trying something different (gasp) if we wan't to reap the epic rewards'. 

@ the last post.  Cant agree more. 

However I think SWTOR making a ton of cash is a good thing because investors will look at the industry favourably as they can see how much money it can generate. 

What we need now is a company to realise a gap in the market and make a sandbox AAA that will be a massive success, then I guess we will see a ton of them come out.

If Bioware even went 20% sandbox, this game could have been epic. 

They just played it very very very safe with SWTOR 

It is kind of encouraging that it looks like people are risking somehwat different approaches. The Secret World, Guild Wars II, even Terra with its action orientated combat. All seem fairly imminent (though Funcom aren't hyping TSW yet).

Investors are the kind of people that will invest on guaranteed successes rather than risky adventures. They already aren't funding sandboxes or whatever you're fancying this moment. They only want cash and gaurenteed returns.

Originally posted by Nickless_man

Investors are the kind of people that will invest on guaranteed successes rather than risky adventures. They already aren't funding sandboxes or whatever you're fancying this moment. They only want cash and gaurenteed returns.

 

Success or failure of SW:TOR means NOTHING to the sandbox mmo community. That ship has sailed since NGE and won't return for another 10+ years. And when it does return, it won't be from big investors/publishers like EA. It'll be a CCP like studio.

I would say that ship sailed the second SWG launched.

They put a ton of money into that game, and it crashed n burned.  Anyone paying attention when NDA broke knew how screwed up things were. Investors see the SW name, with plenty of backing, and yet it failed.

Personally I dont think companies should release a game without some substantial PVE content for the folks that enjoy it.