Too soon, BioWare.

[Pua]

As many will have seen on the official site, BioWare have released a video talking about the launch of The Old Republic and how successful it’s been so far. Some pretty grandiose claims are being made with regards to how great the game is, how many boxes have sold and how players love the innovation they’re finding.

For me, playing the game is enjoyable and a lot of good work has been done. But I can’t shake the feeling that a public back-patting session is wholly premature considering the game was released while incomplete, and still suffers from some pretty significant problems. Not only that, two months is not a realistic view of how the game is going to pan out over a meaningful period of time.

I suppose my problem is this.

1) We’ve been here before. Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings online, Warhammer Age of Reckoning, Rift… The list goes on. Games that launch to hype tend to sell pretty well out of the gate, but fall away when no real innovation or depth is found in their gameplay.

2) Some of the claims are meaningless. “A successful launch” is only true in some eyes, certainly not all. “Fantastic innovation” depends entirely on where you set the bar on what’s innovative. “Most successful MMO” after two months – it’s harder to be more meaningless than that.

3) This is just setting yourself up for a fall. By coming out and congratulating yourself on how wonderful you are, you’re basically handing the spuds to the kids with spud guns when subscriptions start to fall away and people realise what was promised wasn’t what was presented.

I don’t know, maybe I’m being oversensitive. But I’m playing a game that still, to this day, feels incomplete and I can’t help but think that I’m being short changed when a company spends time telling me what a wonderful job they’ve done, when so many players are sat at their computers bemused.

The “GM” service is still very poor whilst in the game.
Endgame is still the same as WoW, but no better.
Production quality still isn’t where it should be.
Several obvious launch features are still missing.
Class balance still worries a great many players.
Many encounters are still absolutely rife with bugs.
Grouping for flashpoints is still needlessly difficult.
There’s still not enough to do when reaching 50.
Analysing performance is still close to impossible.
PvP on Ilum is still messed up for many players.

Please don’t take this as a laundry list of complaints that are making the game unenjoyable. I’m still playing, and still having a blast. Many problems Blizzard wrestled with for years (and still can’t fix) were dealt with in one fell swoop here, while the commitment needed to be any good at this game is still set extremely well.

But I’m going to be honest; the reason many people are still playing is because of the Star Wars IP, the amount of advertising that went into the game, and the belief that things will be fixed quickly. In lieu of these things, The Old Republic wouldn’t even hold half of its current subscribers because the quality of the game itself simply doesn’t warrant it.

Counting chickens before they hatch is historically proven to be a bad idea.

So please, BioWare, let the shameless self-promotion slide and get back to sorting out some of the problems you know exist.

Players do not have infinite patience.

They really don’t.

[crabmousse]

Endgame is still the same as WoW, but no better.

it is substantially worse.

[cFortyfive]

But I’m going to be honest; the reason many people are still playing is because of the Star Wars IP

I have still quite a lot of fun leveling my chars in a casual manner but I strongly believe that as well.

[obdigore]

it is substantially worse.

Do you honestly think the two OPs that TOR has now is worse than Dragon Soul? I disagree, but the make or break is going to be the next content patch and the OP there.

I'm honestly confused by a lot of these complains. What is there to do in WoW at max level that there isn't to do in TOR? PvP? Hard Modes? Raiding? I mean honestly. I will freely give you the bugged encounters, which TOR at least seems to be working on, but again I'm giving them through the next OP to see if they can release this one with a lot less issues.

I'm assuming one thing they are very proud about is the fact that it was the smoothest MMO Launch Ever. The latest FF game had server problems even discounting how broken the game itself was. AoC had server stability problems at launch. I was not at WAR's launch but I heard they had problems as well.

Meh. It is just a waiting game at this point to see if they will do what they claim they can to keep stuff going.

[vizzle]

It's just PR, you can't blame a company for it. Do you think they're going to make a video saying how many mistakes they made?

[Reluctant]

it is substantially worse.

It has the same contend on wow besides for arena. The problem isnt that the contend isnt there its that its not as readily available. I wasnt enjoying endgame much till i joind a good guild. With ppl willing to do stuff around u can do HM's, operations, world bosses and such on a wim and have fun.

[Deleted]

I agree with the OP, the game lacks polish and feels unfinished, although like the OP I'm enjoying playing the game it feels like it could have been so much more.
EA probably got tired of "waiting for the dev to finish" and jumped the gun through marketing (releasing the game for Christmas cannot be more obvious, only stupid marketing people release a piece of software for Christmas, when real IT people know NOT to release anything during a season when the dev crew wants to be at home with their family instead of being on deck fixing bugs on late nights and long weekends for the next two months after launch...).

Some emote don't result in the character doing anything although the movement exists elsewhere in the game, the characters cannot sit on chairs except in the personal ship, some animations are lacking while others are very detailed (i was amazed by the /eat, seing the character face actually chewing). The raid interface with incoming heals, debuff watch, mouseover healing, the UI itself, etc.. etc... the game is neither broken nor broken but it's lacking.

The launch itself was not too bad. I have yet to experience a SWTOR server crash... I did get in my last months playing WOW a few "world server unavailable" messages but so far so good, the SWTOR servers seem exceedingly stable.

But again, the game lacks polish and many "quality of life" features that would make it a really great game. As it is now, it's a good, entertaining game.

[Pua]

I'm honestly confused by a lot of these complains. What is there to do in WoW at max level that there isn't to do in TOR? PvP? Hard Modes? Raiding? I mean honestly. I will freely give you the bugged encounters, which TOR at least seems to be working on, but again I'm giving them through the next OP to see if they can release this one with a lot less issues.

That’s a fair question. My problem is that once you hit 50, the unique stuff is out of the way and it’s straight back into the gear grind again. The problem, of course, is that the gear grind is something many would like to see the back of. I wouldn’t just compare SWTOR to WoW, but WoW is still the benchmark for “other stuff”.

Professions are too streamlined in TOR to have depth (compared to the completionist in me who loved getting all the blacksmithing plans), there’s no mount or pet collection, the codex is a mixed bag, there’s no small-scale PvP such as the arena, dailies are pretty bland, the RP community doesn’t really seem to have taken off yet and there are no meaningful factions to get involved with. This isn’t to mention the bugbear of being forced to sit around the fleet waiting on flashpoint groups. I support the stance against LFG or a dungeon tool, but why is there still no worldwide LFG channel that at least allows you to do other things while you look for a group?

This isn’t really a list of demands, just things that feel as though they’re missing. And, to be blunt, the amount of money that’s gone into the game makes the low production quality absolutely inexcusable.

That all said, I certainly think waiting on the next major patch is very sound advice.

I'm assuming one thing they are very proud about is the fact that it was the smoothest MMO Launch Ever. The latest FF game had server problems even discounting how broken the game itself was. AoC had server stability problems at launch. I was not at WAR's launch but I heard they had problems as well.

I really want to avoid discussions about launches; none of them are perfect, they’re really not, and the potential to argue about which ones were best is massive.

WoW goes down as a “great launch”, but that was measured against what had gone before it. Looking back and comparing it to today, it was very poor.

Again, that’s not a flat criticism; it’s just an illustration of how subjective “launch quality” really is.

It's just PR, you can't blame a company for it. Do you think they're going to make a video saying how many mistakes they made?

I suppose this is a personal peeve about advertisement. If I like a product, I like it; I don’t need told I like it. And, to me, there are a couple of issues with the video. First of all, are they trying to cover up issues with propaganda? Secondly, it’s too soon to be making such bold claims. Age of Conan got off to a great start, yet it’s now close to a F2P graveyard.

Such aggressive marketing just doesn’t seem prudent at this stage.

It has the same contend on wow besides for arena. The problem isnt that the contend isnt there its that its not as readily available. I wasnt enjoying endgame much till i joind a good guild. With ppl willing to do stuff around u can do HM's, operations, world bosses and such on a wim and have fun.

I think that’s a good point, but is wholly dependent on a server community outside of guilds.

[Throrion]

Well, of course they come out with a statement like that. They wouldn't come out to say "we started out pretty well but now we've lost a buttload of subscriptions and we realise it's been a somewhat shaky start". The fact that they offered us a title to renew our subscriptions past the first month kinda shows what the situation is like at the moment...

[Redblade]

I support the stance against LFG or a dungeon tool, but why is there still no worldwide LFG channel that at least allows you to do other things while you look for a group?

/cjoin LFD

Player created channels are global.

[Rampant Rabbit]

The only thing that I'm unsure of is the lore used in swtor's end game content.

Can anyone tell me if it has anything to do with the SW Galaxy lore?

[KrazyK923]

I support the stance against LFG or a dungeon tool, but why is there still no worldwide LFG channel that at least allows you to do other things while you look for a group?

Nonsensical stance is nonsensical. All of the hullabaloo over LFG was nothing but ridiculous hyperbole and people seem to forget how utterly atrocious getting groups even WITH a useless LFG channel was for specific servers.

Frankly, it sounds like implementing the system would easily fix TOR's lfg problem.

[lolo855]

I already cancelled my account like plenty of other players ( my entire guild already left, and the server we were on is pretty much dead when we I logged back last day of my 30 day's, 10 person online on the fleet, just lol ( 2 were 50 )

The game is a fun 'single player' till you hit 50 and then there is just nothing to do. They focused too much on the leveling and not enough on end game, don't think i ll subscribe again unless they make some very big change, imo I think they already lost a big part of those 2 million subs they had.

[Deleted]

A company focusing on all it's pros and no cons, /shock

[vizzle]

The only thing that I'm unsure of is the lore used in swtor's end game content.

Can anyone tell me if it has anything to do with the SW Galaxy lore?

It has nothing to do with SWG, SWG is another era.

[Deleted]

It has nothing to do with SWG, SWG is another era.

Aye it's pretty much a KOTOR sequel

[berserklover]

I canceled once I hit 50, then I got so bored. While the game was decent leveling, I was really disappointed since I was one of those who waited for the 5 days early of the 20. I will never play it again, and I still consider it a waste of my 50 $. I say this because level 50 didn't even take long. I went back to wow til diablo 3 comes out, I'll wait for another MMO to take me away.

[Gentlepenguin]

Do you honestly think the two OPs that TOR has now is worse than Dragon Soul? I disagree, but the make or break is going to be the next content patch and the OP there.

yes, and it should be worse until they figure out how make encounters that don't break in different ways weeeekly. their in-house testers are incompetent, and they don't have premades/copies on ptr. i don't trust them to make interesting encounters because they will simply break, get fixed, two more bugs arise, some get addressed, some just stay that way for over a month.

[GallowsZA]

So please, BioWare, let the shameless self-promotion slide and get back to sorting out some of the problems you know exist.

I'm not sure who told you that BioWare read these forums, or that they will pour over your letter and do everything in their might to do as you command, but you were lied to.

[H3ll]

The “GM” service is still very poor whilst in the game.
Endgame is still the same as WoW, but no better.
Production quality still isn’t where it should be.
Several obvious launch features are still missing.
Class balance still worries a great many players.
Many encounters are still absolutely rife with bugs.
Grouping for flashpoints is still needlessly difficult.
There’s still not enough to do when reaching 50.
Analysing performance is still close to impossible.
PvP on Ilum is still messed up for many players.

All of this is.
Add to that that nightmare mode has no better loot than hard mode... it only has 1 or 2 pieces of loot more, and a guaranteed rakatta gear. Hard modes drop 2 rakatta pieces anyway 90% of the time (same as on nightmare mode) and the other additional pieces are hardly ever used.
Gearing up in general feels kinda awkward, and the fact that pvp gear is 100% random doesn't help either.
Also it misses some important features as a combat log, no /roll (making gearing up even more awkward) and guilds are nothing but chat channels atm.

And there is still so much more wrong with this game...

Honestly, when bioware is padding themselves on their own shoulder with all this stuff that needs to be fixed all i can do is facepalm.. with 2 hands