So, why play a "NFU" in this game?

[JacobusRex]

Recently I wanted to take a break from WoW and pick up SWTOR. I did, only to find that there's not only a lot of negativity on the Reddits and some on thier Subscription-Only forums. Apparently the big thing I've been hearing in the actual game itself is that BioWare (or basically EA's hand-puppet now) is basically ignoring "Non-Force-Users" in their single storyline after level 50. This is really disheartening as someone who wants to play a NFU. I would like to play a Force-user too at some point, but not right away.

I mean it's bad enough that after you finish the Class Story you get shoehorned into a single, one-track story from then on but it's compounded by the fact that the story makes no sense from the perspective of a NFU character. Is this really what BioWare is comfortable with for this game? Has all ambition to excel been laid off by EA?

[Torto]

Recently I wanted to take a break from WoW and pick up SWTOR. I did, only to find that there's not only a lot of negativity on the Reddits and some on thier Subscription-Only forums. Apparently the big thing I've been hearing in the actual game itself is that BioWare (or basically EA's hand-puppet now) is basically ignoring "Non-Force-Users" in their single storyline after level 50. This is really disheartening as someone who wants to play a NFU. I would like to play a Force-user too at some point, but not right away.

I mean it's bad enough that after you finish the Class Story you get shoehorned into a single, one-track story from then on but it's compounded by the fact that the story makes no sense from the perspective of a NFU character. Is this really what BioWare is comfortable with for this game? Has all ambition to excel been laid off by EA?

The sad reality is Bioware didn't get enough money from EA to continue individual class stories. Worse, after the Revan expansion they didn't even have the resources to give us separate faction stories.

The biggest criticisms of the Fallen Empire expansions is that the stories only really made sense if you were a force user. I completed the stories on my bounty hunter and imperial agent and they just don't work. They have a skeleton crew working there now, the next 'expansion' is going to be extremely underwhelming, they moved all the servers to the east coast so half of planet earth can't even play the game anymore. I'm afraid this once great game is now in the final death throes.

[JacobusRex]

Wildstar, SWTOR, RIFT, TERA, GW2, seems like all these autopilot MMOs are on Death Row.

[Vineri]

EA did buy BioWare. They mutilated the company, EA style. All the former employees left or were fired. The original Bioware CEO left the company years ago.

There is no BioWare spirit left. It's by name only nowadays, a word, one that EA touts around - because games under a familiar developer sell better than those under EA.

SWTOR had so much potential.

[Croga]

EA did buy BioWare. They mutilated the company, EA style. All the former employees left or were fired. The original Bioware CEO left the company years ago.

There is no BioWare spirit left. It's by name only nowadays, a word, one that EA touts around - because games under a familiar developer sell better than those under EA.

SWTOR had so much potential.

SWTOR had a huge lot of potential. Until, about 2 months in, they moved all customer support to "Low cost countries", basically killing the support completely.
Then development stopped. After 2 months there was no bug fixing anymore. Stuff that was broken (like falling through the world broken) simply wasn't fixed anymore, EA style.
These latest issues in the quest line are just minor things compared to what happened shortly after release.

I played SWTOR at the start. Had a great time with my guild in the raids. Around the time it went Pay-to-win, however, the situation was so bad that we all moved back to WoW, en mass.

[Vineri]

SWTOR had a huge lot of potential. Until, about 2 months in, they moved all customer support to "Low cost countries", basically killing the support completely.
Then development stopped. After 2 months there was no bug fixing anymore. Stuff that was broken (like falling through the world broken) simply wasn't fixed anymore, EA style.
These latest issues in the quest line are just minor things compared to what happened shortly after release.

I played SWTOR at the start. Had a great time with my guild in the raids. Around the time it went Pay-to-win, however, the situation was so bad that we all moved back to WoW, en mass. A game we'd all abandoned mostly due to boredom. We're still there though. Blizzard seems to be one of the very few companies that understands MMOs; understands how to keep them running. All the rest of them simply don't understand that an MMO needs to be in constant development if you want to have constant players.

Yes. I remember, as I was also an early subsciber. The only thing useful from my Collectors Edition is the soundtrack, which only has 1/3 of the songs, and they didn't even provide a case for the CD - just a piece of cardboard

The stories were developed by "BioWare", which is why they are good. EA purchased the company mid-production though, which is why everything went to shit.

The game / graphics engine was laggy due to a bad purchase from another company. Hero If I recall. An alpha for Hero, which devs at EA were supposed to finish.

Claims exists that the people involved didn't know it would be bad. I kinda think BioWare didn't give a shit since EA was buying their company. It was their last FU. Sadly it also affected perhaps the last SW MMO :/

Last SW MMO. ever.

[Tommi]

Until, about 2 months in, they moved all customer support to "Low cost countries", basically killing the support completely.

That's not true at all. I had to call them about 2 years ago due to a gamecode not working, and I spoke to a nice American woman who sorted shit out for me.

- - - Updated - - -

The game / graphics engine was laggy due to a bad purchase from another company. Hero If I recall. An alpha for Hero, which devs at EA were supposed to finish.

The Hero engine that SWTOR uses was an early alpha version that had little documentation. Bioware then added crap to it to the point it's no longer even Hero engine. The current Hero engine is rather good, but SWTOR couldn't be ported over to it at all. SWTOR Hero engine and current Hero engine are completely different beasts now..

[Croga]

That's not true at all. I had to call them about 2 years ago due to a gamecode not working, and I spoke to a nice American woman who sorted shit out for me.

Ah, so they finally understood that it was a stupid move....
Back In The Days (says the old man ;-)) I lost all of my ingame currency due to a bug and the Indian guy I spoke to simply didn't understand my problem. Took me 2 months to get it back, missing all raids during that time. Made me quit the game right then and there.

[WoWGoneBad]

Recently I wanted to take a break from WoW and pick up SWTOR. I did, only to find that there's not only a lot of negativity on the Reddits and some on thier Subscription-Only forums. Apparently the big thing I've been hearing in the actual game itself is that BioWare (or basically EA's hand-puppet now) is basically ignoring "Non-Force-Users" in their single storyline after level 50. This is really disheartening as someone who wants to play a NFU. I would like to play a Force-user too at some point, but not right away.

I mean it's bad enough that after you finish the Class Story you get shoehorned into a single, one-track story from then on but it's compounded by the fact that the story makes no sense from the perspective of a NFU character. Is this really what BioWare is comfortable with for this game? Has all ambition to excel been laid off by EA?

Yep, this is exactly why I stopped playing period. Well several reasons lol. I was cool with hut Cartel because it was more non-force focused, but KotFE and KotET and then Iokath............ I tried I REALLY tried, to use hte excuse that Valkorion infused us with his force essence so that we can go toe to toe with the siblings, but.......... it was REALLY hard.

Then BW just blew up their own 19 chapter story to shit with Iokath and FORCING the Supreme Commander and LEADER of the Eternal Fleet to become another common foot soldier in the war between Empire and Republic. I mean even the Leaders of both factions treat you like you are just another grunt, not the leader of the most vast and expansive military force in the galaxy capable of wiping both factions from existence.

That is where I drew the line and said I am done. I uninstalled the game and have not been back since for the last 18 months

- - - Updated - - -

EA did buy BioWare. They mutilated the company, EA style. All the former employees left or were fired. The original Bioware CEO left the company years ago.

There is no BioWare spirit left. It's by name only nowadays, a word, one that EA touts around - because games under a familiar developer sell better than those under EA.

SWTOR had so much potential.

This was done completely with the intention of destroying BW and remove them from competition against EA and their SW license. They bought swtor killed almost the entire dev staff and said just die. I hate that the BW investors and company heads went with it and let the game tank. Now I doubt there will ever be another SW IP that will draw a crowd......

EA was a cancer that BW allowed to infect it and now they and the players are paying the final price.

[Edge-]

This was done completely with the intention of destroying BW and remove them from competition against EA and their SW license. They bought swtor killed almost the entire dev staff and said just die. I hate that the BW investors and company heads went with it and let the game tank. Now I doubt there will ever be another SW IP that will draw a crowd......

EA was a cancer that BW allowed to infect it and now they and the players are paying the final price.

What? EA purchased BW just to kill them? What sense does that make, especially as EA dumped money into growing BW into a multi-studio company and started pointlessly slapping their brand on other studios (Bioware-Mythic, BioWare-Victory) ever so briefly before those shuttered for unrelated reasons.

And it had nothing to do with the SW license acquisition. EA bought BW in 2007 and acquired the exclusive Star Wars license in 2013, after SWTOR had even launched.

They didn't "buy SWTOR", they already owned BW while the game was in early development. And staff layoffs came post-launch after the game saw decently strong initial sales (a few million which would normally be incredible, but in the context of a BW game with the SW license and the budget behind it likely was below estimates) and a steep loss in players as the deep flaws that remained due to BW arrogance and refusal to listen to tester feedback started hitting them in the face. It didn't help that like so many other foolish developers before them, BW was promising monthly content updates that were never going to be sustainable unless they carved them up into largely insignificant updates. Nor that their narrative design of supporting 8 unique stories as a primary method of content delivery was never going to be sustainable in any universe. Even if it had been a smash hit there would be no real possibility that they'd have the staff to continue creating unique(ish) content for 8 different classes at the same time without either making story drops tiny or far and few between. It was always more realistic that stories would merge into an Empire and Republic line and go with that, though we're down to a single storyline for a host of factors now (and thank god we're abandoning it soon).

I think one of the former producers came out and tried to pin all the blame on EA a little bit ago, and there's likely some blame to go around at EA given that they were likely pressuring BW for a variety of things given the budget they were investing into the game, but a huge number of the issues can all be traced directly back to BW proper. Their complete lack of any meaningful or quality endgame content around launch due to them thinking that it would take players 3 to 5 months to hit level 50 on a single character, what little endgame raiding etc. that existed being unpolished and buggy AF, a lot of design issues with classes and encounters due to not listening to feedback etc. etc.

There are a lot of fair criticisms for EA pushing BW to make some bad choices (though some of them like adding multiplayer to ME turned out well, as that ended up being a very popular mode), but a huge number of BW's issues are squarely on BW themselves.

[quras]

SNIP......

There is no BioWare spirit left. It's by name only nowadays, a word, one that EA touts around - because games under a familiar developer sell better than those under EA.

SWTOR had so much potential.

Sadly, I fully believe this to be true. The awesome writing and storytelling of bioware is gone so in turn so is the spirit not the bioware of old that many loved.

The past few years have proven bioware simply cannot write beyond something mediocre.

Sadly, that seems to be the case as the game stumbles forward. Their massive lack of creativity just gets worse and worse. In the coming months bioware is shoehorning in everyone back to Emp vs Rep and slowly killing off the alliance even if your massively powerful and independent character wants nothing to do with them anymore.

However if you are a datamined reader

bioware is bringing back Darth malgus because they are incapable of coming up with anything decent for a story hook other than growing crops on a cropless planet. Malgus shows up and the stupidity continues on. It's some of the worst storytelling from bioware to date just to push the Emp vs Rep story they want to get back to so desperately. biowares lack of creativity here is all too telling if you go out and find the datamined dialogue for this. One can only hope its a joke to throw off gamers.

Bioware IMHO could easily be on the chopping block because of SWTOR continued failures and should Anthem fail. I fully believe they are gone. There is no real creativity left at bioware and their stories are just weak, half-ass fan fiction at this point.

[Shibito]

SWTOR had a huge lot of potential. Until, about 2 months in, they moved all customer support to "Low cost countries", basically killing the support completely.
Then development stopped. After 2 months there was no bug fixing anymore. Stuff that was broken (like falling through the world broken) simply wasn't fixed anymore, EA style.
These latest issues in the quest line are just minor things compared to what happened shortly after release.

I played SWTOR at the start. Had a great time with my guild in the raids. Around the time it went Pay-to-win, however, the situation was so bad that we all moved back to WoW, en mass.

I remember everyone claiming swtor would kill wow

[Edge-]

I remember everyone claiming swtor would kill wow

Like...who? I mean, there are always the usual fringe "X WILL KILL WOW" nutters, but who actually claimed this that isn't some random on the internet? >.>

[Deleted]

Like...who? I mean, there are always the usual fringe "X WILL KILL WOW" nutters, but who actually claimed this that isn't some random on the internet? >.>

Arent we all some randoms on the internet?

[Alvito]

SWTOR had so much potential.

It did, but it missed the mark in many places and that was before EA really got into the mix. There were many fumbles from the open beta, early access and onward. They tried and went way outside of their wheel house trying to make an mmo and fell short. It is still a pretty great single player game if you look at it in that scope. It could have and should have been much better though. So many near misses makes it sting a bit more in some ways. It was for a brief run my favorite game and I did really enjoy Ops and ranked WZ somewhere around the 2nd season of WZs.

[Deleted]

Wildstar, SWTOR, RIFT, TERA, GW2, seems like all these autopilot MMOs are on Death Row.

Huh... GW2 is doing well last i checked.

RIFT never took off. SWTOR never had the EA backing after launch. TERA had a great idea for combat, but not anything else.

GW2 is no GW1, but it sees a lot of support. Theres always tons of people online as well. Just log in and go to LA. I wouldn't put it on the same sack.

[Fritters154]

However if you are a datamined reader

bioware is bringing back Darth malgus because they are incapable of coming up with anything decent for a story hook other than growing crops on a cropless planet. Malgus shows up and the stupidity continues on. It's some of the worst storytelling from bioware to date just to push the Emp vs Rep story they want to get back to so desperately. biowares lack of creativity here is all too telling if you go out and find the datamined dialogue for this. One can only hope its a joke to throw off gamers.

Bioware IMHO could easily be on the chopping block because of SWTOR continued failures and should Anthem fail. I fully believe they are gone. There is no real creativity left at bioware and their stories are just weak, half-ass fan fiction at this point.

Does Disney have any say in the story of SWTOR now? My understanding was that Disney making EA their exclusive video game publisher included Disney still having the final say on story points. But idk how that plays out with a video game that was created before the Disney-EA exclusivity was established or even before Disney acquired the Star Wars IP. Especially when most elements of SWTOR are in the Legends category now.

If they do have a say, that could have something to do with the creativity factor. Prior to the sale, George Lucas gave his stamp of approval to all sort of things, which 1. created a lot of messy storylines, but 2. allowed writers freedom/creativity in their story design. At least that is how the books went for the most part.

[Puupi]

Is SWTOR canon?

[Katchii]

Is SWTOR canon?

Disney came out and said after their acquisition of Star Wars that only the films and TV shows released up to that point were canon and only books published after the acquisition are canon. Everything released after the acquisition is canon, but SWTOR is considered Extended Universe and existed prior to the acquisition...so I'm pretty sure it's not considered canon.

[Edge-]

Disney came out and said after their acquisition of Star Wars that only the films and TV shows released up to that point were canon and only books published after the acquisition are canon. Everything released after the acquisition is canon, but SWTOR is considered Extended Universe and existed prior to the acquisition...so I'm pretty sure it's not considered canon.

It's non-canon. IIRC they made parts of KotR (or all?) like Revan part of Canon, but SWTOR proper got removed from the canon universe.