TOR has the framework to succeed

[Protoman]

What do I mean by that? Well no game releases at their very best, as polished as it may look people will always find faults. My point here is that they have all the important stuff, and can easily add new content later on to round out their game, stuff like...

-more raids, grouping, and pve content
-more bgs, arena, and pvp content
-some kind of dungeon grouper
-any class balance issues
-complexity of enemy ai


I had a very enjoyable time in the beta, and was pretty impressed and satisfied with what I did see. There have been some small issues, stuff like "feels like im playing single player in an mmo" or "needs more pvp modes"...but they can all be dealt with in the next content patch. TOR has a solid foundation that they can build on, and as long as they listen to players and try to incorporate the best ideas they will succeed and have a dedicated following.

I absolutely love how unique and different each class is, even though they have mirror versions......as well as feeling more connected to every enemy I fight or item I loot b/c I have a story that explains their purpose.

Too many people want to see this mmo fail, myself included, because it doesn't go above and beyond expectations. But it's a step up from WoW....and with a little work can become a very great product.

[Deleted]

Too many people want to see this mmo fail, myself included, because it doesn't go above and beyond expectations. But it's a step up from WoW....and with a little work can become a very great product.

...except it does go beyond expectations and is aiding in bringing the storyline back to the forefront in MMORPGs, which is very important to a lot of disgruntled WoW fans. I left WoW after a good few years because the charm of the ongoing storyline vanished - yet ToR piqued my curiosity during the beta and I felt myself lusting to find out what would happen after and during each quest.

[vizzle]

No dungeon grouper, please and thank you.

[Senbo]

No dungeon grouper, please and thank you.

id actually like an old style vanilla/bc dungeon finder. just a list of people interested, not something that auto groups and sends you to the instance. just no cross server lfg like current wow please, during beta i made a hand full of friends just looking for groups in general. its something you just dont see anymore because people have the mindset they wont see them so who cares what they do.

[Greevir]

TOR is great if you go into with an OPEN mind. Unfortunately, that does not happen. People want it to be WoW 2.0 and if they don't fall into that category then they usually end up at the opposite end thinking it IS WoW 2.0. I went into the game expecting it to be Star Wars with a WoW feel. When I first heard of the game I wanted it to be a multiplayer KOTOR. So far I have not been disapointed. I have played wow for 6 years, I enjoyed it. Right now I need a change in scenery and SWTOR delivers that. I love the story and character attachment that RPGs are supposed to provide and SWTOR so far does this better than any other MMORPG out there. I have grown fond of my WoW toon (she's a sexy Draenei, who wouldn't!) but never at the level that I did with my SWTOR toon in beta. Honestly the WoW vs. SWTOR wars are pretty moronic and have no place in civilized discussion. WoW is WoW and SWTOR is SWTOR. There is no reason they can't co-exist in peace. The existence of both only makes them better games in the long run. Competition is always good. Monopoly sucks. (not the board game....) Ok, done with my extremely random and all over the place rant. Carry on.

[Spraxle]

I really disagree with the "doesn't feel like an MMO" comment. At least for my time it felt very very MMO-y. I skipped over the group quests on my Smuggler but that was because I was just pounding out regular quests to get my Starship. To me I think people are to hellbent on saying ToR isn't MMO-y but WoW is... Ok so everyone is entitled to their opinion but at least for me (and others I know) WoW didn't feel anything like an MMO. You just solo ground to 85 then sit in a que and not talk to the people in your group when your que popped 20min later. Maybe it was just the Beta thing but I found when I did group stuff on my Counselar (flashpoints and a few heroic quests) we actually talked some. Even if it was just commenting on peoples chat decisions or whatever it was still more communication then I'd done in my last year of WoWing.

People just need to take off their goggles and give it a chance.

[Deleted]

I really like the thoughts and the title its exactly how i see it.

As a Star Wars fan and MMO(WoW) player it ticks all the boxes currently and im looking forward to playing it.

But its how they're going to build on it, WoW wasnt great initially but for the first 2 years they had a very aggresive patching and content policy, filling gaps, fixing bugs, adding content, something like 10 or 12 patches, which built and kept up momentum, and lead to the subscription rise and popularity.

It'll be no good if they release SWTOR as it is, an interesting, solid game like this and then sit back put their feet up and think "jobs a good 'un" it'll just sink like a stone, they need to have a fairly large content patch every 3 months minimum in the first 12 months, they also need to start putting out any sneak previews or ideas or general musings about what may happen after launch in subsequent patches, so people come the 15th/20th will be thinking, look i got this awesome shiny new game and just look at the features they have planned ojntop of this, im so going to continue my sub. In this day and age they cant just rely on the launch game to keep people after the 30 days they need to have info about upcoming stuff to wet their appetitites.

[corebit]

IMO, The basic framework for a successful MMO is very simple. It should meet the basic rules of MMO gaming, and so far SWTOR meets all of them acceptably:

1. MUST leave a good 1st impression to the majority playerbase. This is super important.
2. MUST be intuitive and user-friendly enough for veterans and new players alike (lots of help, tutorials, etc)
3. MUST deliver a complete and consistent 1 - max level experience. That means not pulling crap like Age of Conan where 1 -20 was amazing, and garbage afterwards.
4. MUST deliver quality solo and group content. <- most MMOs cannot get this right. They offer either too much solo content and nothing social scaring off progression guilds, or too much required-grouping and kills off new players.
5. MUST have a good balance of PVP and PVE content. MMOs by their nature must have something for everyone, that's why PVE-only or PVP-only games like Warhammer failed.

[Prag]

Here's my take on the general feel:

If you're a hardcore PvP'er, this is probably not the game for you.

If you're the type of player that prefers the express lane and aren't interested in the story, this is definitely not the game for you.

I haven't enjoyed questing in years, but I spent the last 2 beta weekends truly enjoying questing, even though I was spacebar'ing to avoid ruining launch-day fun.

The MMORPG market needed a change. It's too focused on the instant gratification, and I think SW:ToR is a refreshing change of pace.

I don't, however, think there will ever be another World of Warcraft. That's a good thing, though. WoW did a lot of bad things to the gaming community.

[Deleted]

id actually like an old style vanilla/bc dungeon finder. just a list of people interested, not something that auto groups and sends you to the instance. just no cross server lfg like current wow please, during beta i made a hand full of friends just looking for groups in general. its something you just dont see anymore because people have the mindset they wont see them so who cares what they do.

From what I remember you can tag yourself as looking for a group and have a little icon appearing next to your name in the /who. If that's what you meant...
I saw a few complaints on the general chat about the absence of a dungeon finder though.
I find the lack of this feature very satisfying. ^^

[Goobkill]

From what I remember you can tag yourself as looking for a group and have a little icon appearing next to your name in the /who. If that's what you meant...
I saw a few complaints on the general chat about the absence of a dungeon finder though.
I find the lack of this feature very satisfying. ^^

I never got to a point to really start doing flashpoints, but I do think a LFD tool would be nice.. if it were single server.. WoW server community died with cross server LFD I think.

[Senbo]

From what I remember you can tag yourself as looking for a group and have a little icon appearing next to your name in the /who. If that's what you meant...
I saw a few complaints on the general chat about the absence of a dungeon finder though.
I find the lack of this feature very satisfying. ^^

i wasnt aware of this =O, i usually just found people in general lol. which in its own right was nice

[Vervacious]

If you're a hardcore PvP'er, this is probably not the game for you. Disagree

If you're the type of player that prefers the express lane and aren't interested in the story, this is definitely not the game for you. Agree

If you are a hardcore PvP'er but have only experienced WoW pvp, then maybe, ya. But if you have been around long enough to enjoy games like DAoC, and leveled a character in SWTOR at least to 30, you will begin to notice how deep the PvP potential is in SWTOR. So many abilities, so much utility,
as a guildie of mine said: @lvl 25 I was using 1-9 on the Keyboard and 1-6 on the Naga. 80% of those for every fight, the other 20% oh **** buttons. The game has some depth to it.

The pvp isn't about one shots. Alot of the abilities are situational, and what that means is it takes skill & practice to use them well. Coordinated CC will have a big impact on fights.

There's alot of potential for PvP in SWTOR.

[Prag]

If you are a hardcore PvP'er but have only experienced WoW pvp, then maybe, ya. But if you have been around long enough to enjoy games like DAoC, and leveled a character in SWTOR at least to 30, you will begin to notice how deep the PvP potential is in SWTOR. So many abilities, so much utility,
as a guildie of mine said: @lvl 25 I was using 1-9 on the Keyboard and 1-6 on the Naga. 80% of those for every fight, the other 20% oh **** buttons. The game has some depth to it.

The pvp isn't about one shots. Alot of the abilities are situational, and what that means is it takes skill & practice to use them well. Coordinated CC will have a big impact on fights.

There's alot of potential for PvP in SWTOR.

Unfortunately, I don't know of many "hardcore" PvP'ers that aren't Arena donkeys. It's all people were talking about in the General channel and in the Warzones. No RvR, no Arena/Rating system, pretty big turnoffs for the modern day PvP'er.

[Deleted]

i wasnt aware of this =O, i usually just found people in general lol. which in its own right was nice

The only reason I saw this is because it was written in the loading screen like the "Click on the light well" or "don't stand in fire" on the wow loading screen.
I too liked looking for groups in the general chat. As a matter of fact, I really liked the atmosphere in the general chat. Everyone seemed enthusiastic and good natured. The few trolls I saw never lasted too long

[Vervacious]

Unfortunately, I don't know of many "hardcore" PvP'ers that aren't Arena donkeys. It's all people were talking about in the General channel and in the Warzones. No RvR, no Arena/Rating system, pretty big turnoffs for the modern day PvP'er.

True. My fingers are crossed that some open-world RvR elements will be implemented post-launch in conjunction with the pvp area set up on Ilum.

[Alcsaar]

Every game needs a dungeon grouper these days. Sitting and trying to find a group for 2 hours isnt in my interest. It'll be okay for a couple months, then when everyone is level capped you'll never be able to find anyone for the low level dungeons on a new char.

On top of that, server culture or what ever isn't important enough (to me) to warrant not being able to group with people cross server (if that functionality even exists yet for ToR) in order to lower queue times drastically.

[Deleted]

True. My fingers are crossed that some open-world RvR elements will be implemented post-launch in conjunction with the pvp area set up on Ilum.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11...nd-all-out-pv/

Every game needs a dungeon grouper these days. Sitting and trying to find a group for 2 hours isnt in my interest. It'll be okay for a couple months, then when everyone is level capped you'll never be able to find anyone for the low level dungeons on a new char.

On top of that, server culture or what ever isn't important enough (to me) to warrant not being able to group with people cross server (if that functionality even exists yet for ToR) in order to lower queue times drastically.

Then don't play the game and go find something else to play?

The majority of us care VERY much about server community, not the bloody instant gratification attitude kicking about.

[Vervacious]

http://massively.joystiq.com/2011/11...nd-all-out-pv/

There's still no real on-going motivation for PvP in the Outlaw's Den. True, you might want to use the vendor once in a while, but how often is that going to drive you in there? We need something like realm ranks.

[Deleted]

There's still no real on-going motivation for PvP in the Outlaw's Den. True, you might want to use the vendor once in a while, but how often is that going to drive you in there? We need something like realm ranks.

The area is littered with high level gathering nodes as well though, I view that as a pretty good reason to go there, not to mention that fact that open world PvP kills reward Mercenary Commendations, which work like the Valor Commendations from Warzones.