Hi,

I constantly hear that this game would be different if they would not start making it 5 years ago etc. Well - Guild Wars 2 was in development for 5 years and they were able to upgrade some of the features. And it's not only MMO out there that was in development for couple of years.

I think that Bioware just played it safe and they were copying stuff from others while they should copy them, check them and upgrade them or change them from the bottom. For example:

~ WHY in TOR people are punished for helping yeah other (Kill steal) ? GW2 solved this.

~ WHY world is static ? This was fixed in Rift a little and GW2 on higher scale (events cause change in economy, vendors products etc). No need for sandbox if they don't want to create one but world should by more dynamic.

~ Why player is fixed with one weapon ? I would like to see system like in GW2. Operative with 1 pistol could have some hitman skills (headshot, criple shot etc) and trooper could have rapid fire, blast or something. After playing GW2 couple od days I don't see how I could go back to game like TOR. Switching weapon and your tactics as needed is something great. Someone is trying to kite you ? Use a bow and send few arrows to his knee. 

~ Why they decide to fix our aligment ? You can be bad or good but that's change nothing. You can't join siths while you are Rep. In GW2 you don't have faction wars on the map BUT you can do stuff on any faction areas. 

~ Engineers are idiots. Why crafters can't make better weapons than some ancient stuff you find in a flashpoint or something ? Want to do world PVP ? Add 2-3 planets that are full of resources of any kind, deeper into planet - more rare resources. And then make it for something like Ilum. Main theme would be war for resources between factions. Add to this later some other type of PVP activities like guild ships you could assault and some kind of automatic weaponary (siege weapon) that can be created only from resources from this planets and you have quite a nice chain of PVP stuff working together.

Seriously - Bioware played safe and it's cost them lossing subs. It's not about 5 years of development. It's not about then and now. Every game take time to create. And I'm afraid that lack of talent made TOR a failure. And this is NOTHING NEW. Bioware lack of talent is showing past few years. 

After great KOTOR and interesting Jade Empire that was not a success and quite interesting Mass Effect 1 and Dragon Age Origins we experienced failure after failure.

~ Mass Effect 2 - game about nothing. That game could never happen and it would not affect the story. More a shooter than RPG.

~ Dragon Age II - everyone knows how much failure that game was. Short, simple, stupid, with silly animations, pathetic story and paratroopers in full plate armor that were teleported from USS Enterprise to your room.

~ Mass Effect 3 - quite nice shooter but nothing new, pathetic RPG with now real consequences of your actions and bad ending. Every promise made by devs about this game was a BIG LIE.

~ TOR - you know that one.

In other words. This game is not what it was back in the days. So we should stop looking at Bioware from the perspective of Baldurs Gate etc. Today - Bioware is 5% of making generic games and 95% of marketing full of lies.

Right up until the last moment, People were still screaming "Story will save the mmorpg genre"

Endless cycle of hype: Company gives hype to players, Players turn hype in to praise.
It was as much the communities fault as the companies for not changing design.

Bioware is just a cover name these days for Electronic Arts, since EA bought Bioware a few years ago.  The lack of quality, with an increase in marketing hype and lies all come from EA.

Fans told EA Bioware for years what they would like to see in a Star Wars MMO, and they were ignored.  EA played it safe definitely, because all their marketing research said players wanted a WoW themepark, evidenced by millions who play WoW+Rift.

This is why a good company (like ArenaNet) is doing well.  They actually know about and enjoy playing games.  They have a passion for gaming, and are willing to take risks, and do whatever it takes to make a game fun, not necessarily hugely profittable.  Fun first.

On the other hand, give design to a bunch of marketing researchers and you have a really dry boring game incoming that fits all the metrics for success, but lacks the fun factor (EA games).  It didn't help that EA just was so behind the 8-ball that they didn't realize a graphics engine can break even a game that excels in other areas .. and SWTOR uses a garbage self-modified & incomplete version of Hero.  Other games are worried about their engine starting to lag a little when 100+ players are on-screen at once .. SWTOR starts gasping for air when a dozen+ players are near you.  Ilum with 20+ players (10 vs 10) was a slide-show.  Pathetic.

As an ex-SWTOR player, I'm enjoying GW2 now much like you.  I like playing the Engineer class, because it feels like playing an Imperial Agent, but in a living breathing world, with a top notch graphics engine, capable of the "Massively" part of the term MMO.  I'd check SWTOR out again if non-WoW stuff was added, like free-flight space combat, racing minigames and such .. but I don't see EA spending any major money on this game unless F2P generates a ton of revenue.  And even then it's up in the air if they would actually have the talent to do game enhancements, or even spend additional money, since this game cost them a bundle already.  All their updates recently just seem to be tweaking numbers, then coming back to customers and saying, "See what we did?  We've been busy!"

For the true SW experience, I'd rather just play console games I guess.  At least those feel like I'm in a Star Wars universe, with a huge diversity of mission styles.  If I could sell my SWTOR game box & key I would in a minute.  I'll never part with my console SW games though :-)

Originally posted by Nikkita
So in other words you just want them to copy paste features from GW2 so that people can futher complain about how it is a GW2 clone and Bioware is nothign but a hack? not that this game already gets a lot of bashing lets add some more fuel to the fire.

No, god no. I think that copying good parts from other games is not enough to make good one. 

1. Take your ideas and direction you want to go.

2. Take ideas from your competitors. 

3. See what you can do better and what is not working at all and make it better.

4. Combine and create.

This is what TOR was lacking. Party system is the same one I see from very first MMO I was playing and that had one. Quests are the same (kill & fetch). Classes the same (trinity). Progression the same. Everything in TOR is the same. No new things, no improvments. This is why this game failed in the end. Except Star Wars itself - there is no reason to play it.

Story ? Story hold for few weks or less. That's it. People quickly realize that side missions as just a crap and you SPACE them and only class missions have some value.

Originally posted by Sevenstar61
Some people actually love these games, you know? So it's just opinion - yours

Yes, but the problem for Bioware and EA is that those people you mention are a minnority.

This game failed because it was a shit MMO.

They should have made KOTOR 3 instead.

The same happend to Blizzard, once Activision took over all their games started to become alot like EA.
As if they have the same owner EA / Activision -_-

Its bad for gamers good for their income, making fast food games instead of the good games the former studio's once produced.

Dunno who is worse EA or Acti ? but both have major influence in Bioware / Blizzard and that is a very bad prospective.

I wont throw them any cent anymore.....you can fool me once....

I honestly think that Bioware had no idea of how much they were chewing off.

I think they thought it would be relatively easy to copy WoW. I think they thought they could churn out the game in a few years tops.

The plan was, buy Hero Engine, copy wow set in SW universe, add story, roll in dough, add new content quickly via their "new type" easy to edit the game world Hero engine.

The game got pushed back to 2010, then 2012.

By then they had poured much more time and money into the project, and all the little technical design problems weren't just compounding, but causing chain reactions of develpment problems resulting in what SWTOR is today.

At first glance, WoW seems easy to replicate. After a cemetary filled with WoW-clones, perhaps it's not so easy after all.

Originally posted by Sevenstar61
Some people actually love these games, you know? So it's just opinion - yours

However his opinion matches those of the literally hundreds of thousand of people, in fact more than a million and a half, who bought the game and don't like. I respectfully point out that your - opposing - opinion is in the tiny minority.

Originally posted by FrodoFragins
Any SWTOR designer must feel ashamed when they look at what GW2 did with a smaller budget.

Highly doubt it. They created a game that sold millions of copies and they made good money off it. Other then that I doubt they really give a shit.

Originally posted by FrodoFragins
Any SWTOR designer must feel ashamed when they look at what GW2 did with a smaller budget.

ROFL, GW2 is bug ridden, AH, does not work, Mailing system is broken, no trading, event, event, events, bleh, story, what story, lame, lame

People hit level 80 , and are bored already with out trying, SWTOR had a great story, gamers told Bioware what they wanted and they DID listen, I was in beta and heard the screams from testers, and they listen they asked for space combat they got it, they asked for companions they got it, so don't sit here and say they didn't isten.

Players are just as much to blame, and the fanboys from GW2 are making me laugh, the game is down right  boring, the PVP is meaning less, the game has been done over and over, GW2 fanboys make me laugh even harder...

Originally posted by noncley

Originally posted by Sevenstar61
Some people actually love these games, you know? So it's just opinion - yours

However his opinion matches those of the literally hundreds of thousand of people, in fact more than a million and a half, who bought the game and don't like. I respectfully point out that your - opposing - opinion is in the tiny minority.

The issue is gamers need to make there own games, so we can rip them apart they where never this bad back in the day, people are so anti social anymore, and they care about loot , not playing a game with friends, back in the day people did..

Gamers only have them selfs to blame... They asked for these games, you buy them and they make money, look WOW made millions, EQ, made millions , SWTOR made millions stop buying the games, and maybe investors will take a chance on differnt types of games, look at SWG, alot of people liked it, but not as many as SWTOR..  I myself perfer SWG, sandbox style , but gamers like there hand held, so they will continue to make this trash.. You people are to blame.

Originally posted by Zecktorin
What your not seeing is how better the game was in earlier builds. EA did tell Bioware to scrap some stuff and did rush them a bit. Bioware wanted to take their time and do some stuff they didnt get a chance to during devlopment.  Bioware actually wanted to push the release date back even future to add features that people wanted in the game and to give it more polish for release.  Its really sad that Bioware had ot team up with Ea and is gonna get the boot like Westwood did.

What you say bares considering.

On the other hand, when you make a deal with the devil and the devil lets you delay releast from 2010 to 2012; expecting the devil to allow you to delay release again from 2012 to 2013 seems extremely naive. Overly optimistic at best.

At some point, with the millions and years the game was taking to develop, you would think Bioware Austin would realize that their notoriously ruthless overlords EA would expect delivery of product.

Too many cappuccinos, steady pay checks, and SWTOR tattoos in the la-la land of Bioware Austin.

Being Devil's Advocate: EA was right in the Holiday 2011 timetable as being ideal in capitalizing in a lull in the MMO market. Releasing with 2012's GW2, MoP, and to a lesser extent, TSW and Terra might not have been pretty. 2013 seems to have a glut of releases on the horizon as well. The best air force is the one in the air philosophy.

Originally posted by Darkcrystal

Originally posted by FrodoFragins
Any SWTOR designer must feel ashamed when they look at what GW2 did with a smaller budget.

ROFL, GW2 is bug ridden, AH, does not work, Mailing system is broken, no trading, event, event, events, bleh, story, what story, lame, lame

 

People hit level 80 , and are bored already with out trying, SWTOR had a great story, gamers told Bioware what they wanted and they DID listen, I was in beta and heard the screams from testers, and they listen they asked for space combat they got it, they asked for companions they got it, so don't sit here and say they didn't isten.

 

Players are just as much to blame, and the fanboys from GW2 are making me laugh, the game is down right  boring, the PVP is meaning less, the game has been done over and over, GW2 fanboys make me laugh even harder...

Ignoring your GW2 remarks; Star Wars fans asking for space (Star) combat (Wars) in the game, on a franchise which built itself around space combat, doesn't seem surprising.  Bioware's not anticipating this is a bit surprising and their tacking on a Starfox shooter on rails last minute has been received in a rather lack luster manner.

As to claiming that beta testers demanded companions and Bioware introduced companions to appease the beta testers is just silly.

The companion system is a carry-over of the KOTOR franchise. The companion system was always an intergral part of Bioware's "Fourth Pillar" which Bioware spent million on in fully voiced and animated companion quests.

"Players are just as much to blame," Blaming the playerbase for SWTOR's underperformance is .... I can't even find the correct words at the moment. Especially since you start using the term fanboy in your next sentence.

Originally posted by f0dell54

Originally posted by FrodoFragins
Any SWTOR designer must feel ashamed when they look at what GW2 did with a smaller budget.

Highly doubt it. They created a game that sold millions of copies and they made good money off it. Other then that I doubt they really give a shit.

You are forgeting something - GW2 sold better than TOR. TOR had Bioware and EA behind, Star Wars, Mythic and 500mln dolars. Advertisment cost 200mln from that 500. They even had some flash mobs on the street or something.  And still they sold much worst. And today TOR is on edge of dying and this game is going F2P.

So yeah, they must be ashamed right now.