How is SW:TOR Holding On ?

[Preliatus]

The game is amazing.

Until you hit 50.

Had they held off release until the content available in 1.2 was available, it may have retained its superb, strong start. Alas, I have seen a steady decline in population and getting those people back is harder than getting them to buy the game. These are people who already bought the game and paid for a month or so.

You have to realize that tons of people continue to log in and play WoW despite there being no content left for them to do. Content isn't everything. SW:ToR isn't doing fantastic because it's just.... boring. Not because there aren't 400 ops to do, or because there isn't a lot of PvP options... It's just nothing NEW.

Funny.

I've felt that way with WoW since Cata. Everything got so old, and stale, and boring.

The boss fight mechanics save for a few were rehashes from WotLK. "Don't stand in this, or that." And the PvP was getting boring, Rated Battlegrounds were not as fun as I hoped. It was just Arenas, but with battleground sized teams.

Not to mention that I helped lead a 10/25-man raid group on my server. After 4.3 hit and I got a taste of the bosses in LFR, and then once on Normal I actually announced onto the vent that I was done with this game due to no challenge at all, and that everything was too simple and easy. Granted I did the smart thing and left during a break, but that is when I canceled my WoW account, and talked with a few friends to see if they were interested in any other MMOs. My Co-leader for my guild wanted to try Star Wars.

I'll say that at time TOR is boring, but then I log onto one of my secondary accounts that I have a friend paying for, and I get onto WoW for about 30 minutes announce that the game is boring and then log off. Stare at my desktop and then pop up Sins of a Solar Empire for a few hours.

Granted I agree with most people in this thread, but I've found equal spots of boring in both games, and not just one or the other.

Side note is EVE F2P? Or is it still $15 a month?

TLDR Opinion: Both games boring.


I've played WoW since Feb 2005. Never had an interest in raiding until Wrath. All I did was level alts.

[Leonard McCoy]

However, the disadvantage is that at least on the first and second planets, all quests are strictly "kill mobs"/"kill boss mob"/"click on stuff"/escort quests, and there is no gameplay variety at all, while WotLK/Cataclysm introduced far more varied quests.

Overall, the impression is that they just pumped huge amounts of money in SWTOR and thus delivered stuff like visual quest assignments with voice, but failed to deliver significant gameplay innovation, instead regressing compared to WoW in many gameplay aspects.

See I would be okay with this position if it wasn't ignorant of the development of the game. Since they started they basically said they were gonna marry the classic mmo experience with their panache for story telling. Why you would expect anything different is beyond me.

[Praetorians]

People will love or hate this game. I enjoy it, and I also still play wow. The endgame isn't as bad as people make it sound. Our group has encountered minimal bugs and the majority of them have been fixed. That being said, i tend to avoid pvp in tor. After soMe balancing runs that may change though. I enjoy the manual feel that healing has atm. I wish people would realize that more successful titles on the market are good for the market as a whole. Companies will be forced to innovate instead of churning out the same stuff. It all comes down to preference though. If you enjoy it, play it. If not, that's perfectly ok as well. Humans are diverse, if we all liked the same stuff life would be very boring!!

[Lathais]

The bolded part kind of proves my point. WoW's current endgame system is incredibly flawed but nonetheless pretty fun due to the amount of polish and tuning Blizzard has done with the content. SWTOR took WoW's system, and butchered it. The 4 man Hard Modes are buggy, favor ranged over melee on 90% of fights, and are boring. Seeing the same dialogue over and over run after run gets tiresome and breaks up the flow of the gameplay. Eternity Vault was a buggy mess, with many fights having severe bugs (one of which resulted in you having to reclear all the trash between Assault Droid and Gharj). It also was filled with boring fights, such as the Infernal Council, the puzzle boss, and Assault Droid. EV also suffered from being way too short, essentially clearable in an hour.

Dragon Soul is almost as bad as T9 in my eyes. But oddly enough, I have way more fun in Dragon Soul than I had in EV or Karagga's Palace.

Probably the lack of bugs. Personally I can hardly stand either, not even really sure why I continue to raid DS every week still, or EV/KP for that matter. If the next tier is not an improvement I'm probably gone.

[SirRobin]

There is an area like this on Tatooine - I forget the name.

Criminal Canyon?

Ugh... Crime Cove?

[jazen]

haven played it yet. got my 7 day trial email but cant bring myself to d/l it. when you say 40 at 2:16 est, do you mean 40 people online for an entire server?

[Dakia]

when you say 40 at 2:16 est, do you mean 40 people online for an entire server?

No, the 40 people means that there where only 40 people in that location. It would be like there being 40 people in Stormwind or Org, not the entire server.

[Leonard McCoy]

Supposedly SWTOR hasn't lost that many subscribers, but I struggle to believe it. I was hanging out with my RL friend who still plays the game. Iron Citadel had like 30 people online in its Republic Fleet at 8:00ish PM EST (and it's an Eastern server).

EDIT: The Republic Fleet = Stormwind.

And to think, there used to be an hour and a half long queue to play on that server on weeknights.

That didn't answer his question and is more or less a veiled slight at the game with no evidence or simple conjecture. To actually answer the question you quoted 40 people is people on the fleet, roughly equivalent to org or stormwind most likely.

[Kiry]

It's ok. The game was exceptionally hyped and I fell for it. I'm one of those people that subbed, and am still subbed even though I have uninstalled the game from my harddrive.

I felt the leveling part of the game was well polished and fun for the first 30 or so levels, then it started to unravel. The moment I had to go to Tatooine/Hoth/Fleet/etc for one quest just to talk to the guy next to me, that was the sign of...uh oh this isn't good. From there to 50, I felt more and more disconnected from my character.

Community, MMOs are about the community, guilds, dungeon runs, etc. Relying on people getting groups out in the wild for party quests, going back to fleet for dungeons, with a long cooldown for getting their easily...not a good sign. I can get why guild tools were limited at first, but communities make a game.

How many times have people said with WoW, I'd move on, but my friends play. In the words of Bill Engval, "there's your sign".

It was unfortuante, I really wanted to like that game, but just dont see enough for me (and friends) to come back.

[Rogrux]

The leveling experience is amazing, the stories are relatively dynamic and you get deep into the plot. You then hit 50, finish Corellia, and promptly sit around in the fleet thinking which speeder looks coolest and trying to make your female companions look like prostitutes.

o_o;

Edit: Though I admit when the Legacy system is ready for play I will resume my game time.

[Strah]

Yea but how can you get average when your friend just logged on. That doesn't make very much sense and is not very accurate or telling in any way. Even if its true theirs a host of reasons why and are not terribly indicative of any serious drop in subs or poor performance in "how swtor is holding up".

Bad wording on my behalf, sorry.

By just i mean several days ago. Midday online is between 20 and 30 people, evening online is between 40 and 60, he says.
The ravager EU.

[Beavis]

SW:TOR's probably fine in terms of holding on. We're a couple of weeks from a major patch, so populations are naturally a bit suppressed (especially when one considers how much this patch concerns alts.) But, that also means that there are a lot of Chicken Littles posting screen shots of the server list at noon on a Saturday and talking about how the game is on it's way to the morgue.

We'll really know more about the long term fate of the game in a few months, after 1.2 has been out for a while and people have settled on whether or not they're going to continue playing. My guess is that we'll see some server consolidation in the near future and then SW:TOR will settle into a Rift-style groove, which I think is fine for most people. As long as servers are well populated and there are enough subscribers to justify continued content production, the overall number of people playing the game isn't really that important.

[philefluxx]

Side note is EVE F2P? Or is it still $15 a month?

Not even close. There was close to 50k online this weekend and the average is around 35k on weekdays.

They introduced a system called PLEX = Pilot Extension. Its a cash shop of sorts where players can use real money to purchase PLEX, the PLEX can be sold on the in game market to players. Players can use PLEX to purchase game time. Its a pretty neat system for hardcore players to get free game time and for newbie players who want to sink in a little cash to get a jump on some ISK.

With EvE Dust 514 dropping things are going to get very interesting. If your not aware of what EvE Dust is check it out, its a PS3 FPS game that is integrated into the EvE Online world where players fight for control of planets and can be given aerial support from players in EvE Online in real time.

[Arlee]

And to think, there used to be an hour and a half long queue to play on that server on weeknights.

I am surprised more people don't realize this but, when the game came out those server queues were pretty much artificial because the set the limits much lower than what they are now. Because of this using server queues (or lack of) as a way estimate how many people might have left the game is flawed.

[Arlee]

Any sources for this? I'd like to believe it, but I kind of want a source.

I could see if I could dig it up... but they said it ages ago and is now buried in a mas of dev postings.

[Forsedar]

Any sources for this? I'd like to believe it, but I kind of want a source.

Arlee is correct. I can't seem to find the source as it was a while ago but they increased the server limit by quite a bit.

[Leonard McCoy]

I think "The Republic Fleet = Stormwind" answers the question, at least for most people on this forum.

I think you're just mad because most people seem to be fleeing from your game of choice. I gave my opinion, shared my observations, and that's that. Sorry if they hurt your feelings buddy.

But your observation didn't answer the question that you quoted. It was simply a veiled attempt to bash the game. My feelings weren't hurt, you presume far to much I'm afraid. Rather I think I would point out that people who take every opportunity as a concealed attempt to bash the game should perhaps think twice and wait for a more opportune time to do so instead of looking for a stretch. "Buddy".

[Arlee]

Their Dev Tracker leaves a lot to be desired to when it comes to trying to find old info ><

[Timbaru1924]

I've had a good time with it. Has a good story to it, and the fact that each class has it's own story gives it some replayability. The only time I've ever experienced a terrible bug was a while back in a WZ and I fell through the floor and into space, then was dc'd, nothing else. My server (Jedi Covenant) population is pretty good as well. My guild alone averages 40ish people being online and the Republic fleet gets to around 130-140 during prime hours. There's always a good amount of people running around the planets as well.

I enjoy the PvP a lot, my biggest criticism would be that there's too much CC across the board. Not fun to get stunned one after the other and not be able to do anything.

I hate leveling, but I found the storyline in the class quests to be a good distraction from a lot of the boringness that you'll find in any mmo leveling experience. Trooper storyline is expecially good, hunting down your old special forces squad members who turned on you early on.

The game definetly isn't a "raid or die" experience, and I think people who rush through it just to start raiding are gonna be dissapointed. I quit wow originally because I got very tired of raiding, and all of my friends quit after they got fed up. The whole server (Dunemaul) kind of died off and I would log on every now and then just to check in on the game and get bored since my friends weren't playing anymore. Dunemaul is a step away from dead and I really didn't feel motivated to transfer.

I enjoy it, and if anything this thread should show that everyone likes different things. I've read some people complaining about something that someone else claims to be the greatest thing ever in Swtor. Just depends.

[vizzle]

People arguing about subs should just wait for the official reports for Q1. It won't be that long now I would guess. I haven't played the game in over a month so I wouldn't know how my server's faring these days.