Warning! This is pretty long, so I've included a quick TL;DR at the end. Feel free to skip there, and share your ideas without reading my entire work of writing, if you don't feel like reading for a while
So SWTOR has been out for about half of one year, now, and I'm sad to see that it's not doing well. I should preface this by saying that I unsubscribed from SWTOR in January/2012, and got a full refund including shipping, from Amazon; so I am not a recent subscriber loss just venting my anger with the game, I'm an older sub loss, watching it spiral downward. That said, I do still want SWTOR to succeed, as I have friends who still play the game and I want them to be happy. I also would return to SWTOR, if it somehow managed to turn itself around. Basically, I think the best way to help SWTOR, is for us all to really analyze what's wrong with it. People are often more concerned with giving their own ideas of how to fix something, and asking for XYZ that they want, but I believe we must first take a while to think about what's really wrong
If SWTOR is not a good game, then what is? It's a complicated question, because with millions of potential users, there are vast amounts of different opinions. I encourage everyone to think about some other games that they think are good, and compare the pros and cons of those games, with SWTOR. To that end, I will do exactly that right now
Here are some games that I think are good, and why. I obviously won't include every game I've ever enjoyed, and I'll give examples from a couple genres that I like as well
Shady's good games:
- Diablo 3, this comes to mind first, simply because I've been playing it a lot (a lot, lot) these past 10 days. Diablo 3 might not actually be the best first example, because it's hard to say what really makes it good. The truth is that I just have fun playing it. A huge amount of fun, I consider it to be a very fun game. The gameplay is superb, being simple and refined, but with impressive difficulty levels. Graphics are terrible, and look like a 2005 game, but I love the art style, and the visceral, gory combat. The story is okay, but I'm not mad about an "okay" story, in a game about a big man killing hundreds of thousands of demons, that explode into a bloody mess. So overall, what makes Diablo 3 a good game is that it's fun
- The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion/Fallout 3/The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, I'll combine these three, for the sake of brevity, since they're similar in gameplay design, and made by the same Developer (Bethesda Softworks). Bethesda is the industry leader in open world single player RPGs, with lots of content. As stated, the amount of content in these games is impressive, but the way you can create your own Class, and influence certain events also give them a compelling edge as an RPG. Visuals are a key factor of why I enjoy these games, as well. Since Skyrim is the most recent, I'll use it as an example; Skyrim's graphics aren't too great for a 2011 release, from a purely technical standpoint, but they're still pretty good. It's the art style and visual direction that really makes the game pop, though. I'm embarrassed to say just how much time I spent wandering around, or simply looking at the world (especially at night time, with the snow) in Skyrim. I prefer the post apocalyptic/sci-fi theme and setting of Fallout 3, to the generic fantasty world of Elder Scrolls games, but I don't mind the generic fantasy enough to really bother me. The best example of what makes a game good here, is Oblivion, though. I've played through Oblivion about five times over the years, and I still find new things every time - including new builds, like a Paralyze, Burst Melee/Tank
- Mass Effect/Mass Effect 2, I didn't buy Mass Effect 3 (Thank God), because of how it betrays the story of the first two games, specifically with the "save Earth" stuff, but I heard it was a disaster, and I even saw that it had sparked some organized protesting over just how awful it was. Anyway, it seems relevant to add a BioWare title that I actually did like. Story has always been important to me, and Mass Effect had an amazing story, but lackluster gameplay. Mass Effect 2 had a good story which wasn't as good as the first Mass Effect's, but it also had really good gameplay, so I like it better overall. Each Mass Effect game has had very impressive visuals for it's time, and the first two had industry leading characters and character development, as well. What makes Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 good games is obviously the story, but for me personally it's also the fact that I honestly cared about Shepard, over the course of the two games. Very few games, movies, etc. can make me care about a fictional character
- Halo 2, Halo 3 - whatever they're on now are okay, but didn't really captivate me, and Halo: Combat Evolved (aka Halo/Halo 1) suffered from not having any Online Multiplayer, only the Single Player/Co-Op campaign, and 2-16 player at-console/system link LAN MP. I liked the campaign for each Halo game, but it was never the main attraction for me, because to me First Person Shooter(FPS)s are all about Multiplayer. Halo had a lower time to kill, and less weapons than older FPSs, but did not have the same no-skill mechanics as the new breed of FPS such as Call of Duty. While Call of Duty, Battlefield 3, etc. can be fun, they simply require no skill. Halo blended fun with the sky-high skillcap of first generation FPSs, and had some of the best FPS maps ever created. What made Halo 2 so good, was the high skill player vs player (PVP) Multiplayer, that has been played competitively for many years
- Grant Theft Auto 4, I'm reasonably fond of every GTA title since GTA 3, but GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas really fall short, compared to GTA 4. GTA 4 had (surprisingly) an extremely good story, while still keeping the fun open city, sandbox elements. Although I can't think of much to say here, I've included it in the list, to stress how important sandbox elements can be; though please note that I am not asking any major MMO to be a fully "sandbox" game, as previous failed MMOs such as Star Wars: Galaxies have proven that a fully sandbox game is bad
- Minecraft, another sandbox game. Perhaps the epitome of what a sandbox game is, as you can literally spend hours shoveling... sand, playing, and building with it. If one has not played Minecraft for any large amount of time, then it may be difficult to understand why people love the game so much, but anyone who has probably knows where I'm coming from. Minecraft gives you so much freedom, and especially when playing Online with some friends, you can end up creating some super cool stuff. The Monsters (though incredibly easy), and the mining itself provide some actual substance of gameplay, as opposed to other games, or even Minecraft's own creative mode, where you just make whatever you want with no work involved. Minecraft also scores points for fairly original content. Although Minecraft is actually an Infiniminer clone, most people have never heard of that game, so Minecraft gets the credit for popularizing a game where you play with blocks. It's also worth noting that Minecraft's popularity is impressive, given that it has such terrible, terrible graphics, while so many games today place such high importance on graphics, and many games with low end visuals are often overlooked. What makes Minecraft a good game is that it's a perfect sandbox
- World of Warcraft, WoW is an inevitable example here, but as I know many SWTOR players dislike, and don't want to talk about WoW, I'll keep this short. World of Warcraft was the first video game that really, truly captivated me. I had played other games before, but none of them came close to pre-expansion (aka "Vanilla", or "pre-BC)" WoW, and as both me and WoW get older, I've realized that nothing ever will. While I don't approve of what Blizzard has done to WoW, with the expansions, pre-xpac WoW is still my favorite game of all time. To avoid too much comparisons of WoW, to SWTOR, I'll stop here with WoW, but through the vastly different expansions, with wildly unpredictable target audiences/content focus, what has always made WoW a good game, is that it's so crazy fun/competitive/open/filled with people/diverse, and more, all at the same time
I'll stop there, as I think that's a good enough amount of examples for games I think are good
What's Wrong - The Core Issue
What's wrong with SWTOR? On one hand, it's easy enough to give a long list of complaints, and issues with the gameplay, technical problems, etc., but on the other hand, it's hard to imagine that a Star Wars game, made by BioWare could actually be described as a "disaster". Nevertheless, disaster is a fitting description, sadly. If I think about it, I see so many reasons why I should love SWTOR, it has story, good art style, and standard MMO gameplay
"Standard MMO gameplay" does raise a red flag, though, as SWTOR is unfortunately not nearly as fluid, and responsive as World of Warcraft. This is a major problem, since it effects combat. However, WoW is an outlier, in terms of fluidity/responsiveness. A few other MMOs with combat far worse than WoW, comparable to SWTOR, have been successful. A couple examples are Everquest, and Aion. These games have the same clunky combat, but managed to more than double SWTOR's subscriber count, and did not experience a 25% loss in subscribers during the first 6 months. World of Warcraft has had a devastating effect on the MMORPG market, though, so maybe SWTOR simply can't match other MMOs, because it came out at a time when WoW has been dominating for so many years, with no end in sight.
It's also possible to just look at how standard SWTOR is in general, even outside of combat. Sadly, BioWare took the path of imitation, over innovation. The only things SWTOR added to the genre are, lots of voice acting, which most people probably skip the vast majority of (I know I did), and giving every class a pet that you can have sex with
I'm forced yet again to think about Aion, though. In all it's glory, and all it's pretty graphics, Aion didn't innovate either... at all. In fact, Aion innovated even less than SWTOR, yet Aion was a success
So I've had a lot of time to think about this, and I think I finally have the answer. Looking at the games I listed, they all have one common factor. They are all popular. SWTOR is not popular. All the game mechanics, and Developer promises aside, we are simply left with a product that has no popularity. Making an MMO is a big gamble, because it can be a 10 year project, or a 1 year project, depending on the game's launch. Looking at other MMOs that suffered a similar fate as SWTOR, it always becomes apparent that those games had a terrible launch. Examples include fabled WoW killers, like Warhammer Age of Reckoning (aka Warhammer Online), and Age of Conan. These games were never able to get off the ground, because of a bad launch, and by the time the launch issues were fixed, and the games were sorted out, everyone had moved on, and the games were considered the laughing stock of the industry. Curiously enough, WoW also had a pretty awful launch. Blizzard is a rare breed, though, I daresay unique; there were just so many Blizzard fans from Starcraft 1/Brood War, Warcraft, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3/The Frozen Throne, Diablo, and Diablo 2, that any Blizzard game is really just "too big to fail". Diablo 3 breaking PC sales records overnight seem to really confirm this
This makes it easy to say that you simply must be as big as NC Soft, or Blizzard, to make an MMORPG. SWTOR isn't really lacking at an unrecoverable pace in this department, though. BioWare is not nearly as large, successful, or popular as Blizzard, but they (before SWTOR, and Mass Effect 3) were still a respected Developer, with their own fans. Add that, to the financial backing, and advertising output of Electronic Arts (EA, aka "EA Games"), and you have enough to rival NC Soft. Maybe not enough to take on Blizzard, but still enough to match Aion's numbers, and be far larger than something like Rift, or Warhammer. Yet, EA and BioWare couldn't get it together. Bad launch syndrome seems to have struck again, here. Despite a holiday 2011 release date, and lots of advertising, SWTOR was not able to get enough box sales at the start to really give an impressive number that might threaten the MMO market. This initial lack of popularity compounded on itself, when there were not enough players to fill up SWTOR's Servers, and the lack of popularity has ensured that most Servers are a barren wasteland. Add lack of players, to already existing complaints of SWTOR feeling like a single player game, and the term "MMO" starts to really get loose, as the "massively", and "multiplayer" are just not there, for most players
Anyway, TL;DR
TL;DR, I think what's wrong with SWTOR is that it's not popular. What do you think?