One year since The Old Republic- thoughts?

[Commissar MercZ]

A year ago (December 20th) SWTOR was officially released to much anticipation. There was a lot of discussion as to whether it would be the next big MMO- it ended up earning a great deal of subscriptions early on.

It soon hit trouble though. I never played SWTOR- in fact I've not played an MMO- but being on the internet you get the chatter coming. SWTOR lost subscriptions with some players angry over a variety of issues, starting with a peak of 1.7 million subscriptions after launch to dipping below 1 million by the following summer, leading EA to announce that the game would shift to a F2P model starting November. There are still paying subscriptions, but it is no longer necessary to start up an account.

Now I don't know how many subscriptions there are at this moment, or the total number of users. I do get the vibe though that SWTOR fell below expectations, even when we factor in the usual problems with hyping something.

Any of you guys playing SWTOR? Former players? Thoughts?

[Mihail]

Currently playing the F2P version level 49 sith right now, and my opinion is... It's a decent single-player game that was fox holed into being a MMO as if some chairman at EA said we already have Dragons Age and Mass Effect, lets turn this KOTOR 3 idea into a MMO instead. F2P limitations are sort of stupid decisions that doesn't make you actually want to subscribe in my opinion they are annoyances at best such as waiting to level 15 to run, or level 25 to have a "mount" or things like not allowing you to fast travel back to the "fleet", 200k credit limit and inventory slot limits"

Basically spending real money only becomes necessary at level 50 for artifact items and no credit limit for unlocking legacy items, so far I haven't spent any real money, instead have been using in game credits to unlock cartel items which unlock inventory slots.

[Master Lindale Mustaparta]

I beta tested it, but then I never subscribed once it came out.

Personally, the lack of stuff the free to play crowd gets is what keeps me from downloading. From what I see on the website, I would only get the inventory space equivalent to carrying everything in my arms. Before I can even get that far, I would not even be able to create a unique character, since the creature creature is greatly limited for the free to players. Almost seems like I would have to choose from a small list of pre-created characters. And then, I would not even really be able to interact with other people, or so much as use chat.


With games like Star Trek Online, almost the only things worth mentioning that I do not have are the account banks, veteran ships, the veteran clothing, and 500 Zen per month. Apart from that, not really much difference between me and my Lifetime Veteran fleetmates. I even have better weapons than a few of them, even some of fellows on Level 50. And we get together to run STFs almost on a daily basis.


Long story short, it needs to be quite immersive for even the free to play crowd, or just make it all single player offline like it should have been in the first place. I am still waiting for KotOR 3, and will not be satisfied until I get it.

[Mihail]

Almost seems like I would have to choose from a small list of pre-created characters. And then, I would not even really be able to interact with other people, or so much as use chat.

There isn't a limitation on character creator, only on available races. As for being able to interact, the is a one minute or so limit between messages on general chat, but none after that.

[Primarch Sanguinius]

I had it at one point...but found paid for the subscription stupid sense it really didn't draw me in, now I kick myself for wasting so much money when I could have bought food..

[Nemmerle]

I really have to agree with Mihail here: It's a single player game that was pigeonholed into an MMO suit. The thing most of their money was sunk into was the storyline - I'd hate to think of the voice acting bill they must have had. And then there's a lot of rather mediocre MMO activity built up around that. I switched my F2P account over to subscription to eliminate some of the grind, but I can't imagine that a couple of months down the line I'll still be playing. Maybe I'm wrong but PVP in that sort of game doesn't really interest me very much.

My understanding is it took about two months to go sour. I imagine that's when people ran out of the class quests for the variety of characters there. What do you do when you hit a high level? EVE is the only game that's come up with an interesting answer in that respect IMO.

All in all it's a game that would have benefited vastly by being one storyline of about 40 hours and being called KOTOR3, I think.

Originally Posted by Master Lindale Mustaparta

[FONT=Book Antiqua][SIZ
Personally, the lack of stuff the free to play crowd gets is what keeps me from downloading. From what I see on the website, I would only get the inventory space equivalent to carrying everything in my arms. Before I can even get that far, I would not even be able to create a unique character, since the creature creature is greatly limited for the free to players. Almost seems like I would have to choose from a small list of pre-created characters. And then, I would not even really be able to interact with other people, or so much as use chat.

The f2p restrictions aren't that bad. The inventory you get is enough to last you a few quests before you sell stuff (since miscellaneous loot stacks) - and since there are vendors alongside all the respawn points and at all the transit hubs in the form of medical droids it isn't much of a bother anyway. General chat restrictions are a bit of a bother but ... not hugely so.

Frankly the most annoying thing about f2p is that there's not a good looking for group system and the 'who' list is cut off from them - so when things are busy you get people spamming the general channel trying to group up for heroics.

[Ryojin]

Honestly, I didn't touch the game until a month or two ago. I remembered all the hype that came at first, then all the bitching that followed, and when I tried it out myself, I simply found a mediocre MMO. I can only agree with previous statements of how the game would likely have been better off as a single player game instead of a forced MMO...

[Supa]

Played during the beta, played from launch on till about 6 months in, and I actually enjoyed it. What was the turn off was the lack of promised content coming out. What did it for me and the group of people I played with was the announcement they were postponing ranked warzones. It would have not been so bad had they not waited until literally 3 days before that patch was supposed to go live to tell us something like that.

And many people have heard my stance on the free to play conversion. The difference in limitations between F2P and P2P is just hilarious. 3 warzones a day, 2 or 3 raids a week. Really Bioware?

What set me off, and made me not want to buy any Bioware game ever again, was their promise that those who subbed from release would get complimentary cartel coins for each month they were subbed to the game once the game went F2P. They went back on that promise, and told us they if we were to resubscribe we'd get those "complimentary" cartel coins they promised us.

Honestly, don't touch the game. Let it die. Let them release a standalone single player version of the game, because Bioware isn't ready to deal with people.

[Marirranya]

played it during launch - stopped playing after 5 months around May.

hated the damn game ><

[Digz.]

I played the game for a good 6 months as a subscriber from when it first came out. I really enjoyed the game for the first 3 months and that was simply because I was levelling. The PvE content is brilliant, the storyline, quests are great - as others have said before me it's really a singleplayer game stuffed into an MMO.

I found a lot of grind doing warzones for better armour at level 20 and 40 and then 50 but I didn't mind as I knew I was going back to PvE. After level 50 I didn't do any dungeons or raids I just PvP'd trying to get the next set of armour because I loved PvE but I wanted to get into PvP, eventually playing Illum when they re-vamped it (but that's STILL to be done despite 8 months of waiting now!).

Bioware has made lots of promises and I did log in when the game went F2P for about 5 mins to discover I had to re-do my legacy name, then I logged out and haven't opened it up since.

The F2P is essentially the single player game, for the MMO content (e.g. PvP/raids) you need to pay - that's how I see SWTOR now.

I went back to LotrO straight after I stopped subscribing for SWTOR and actually appreciated what Turbine have done with the game, it was amazing and now I'm playing GW2 and enjoying that, but again when I get bored of GW2 I go back to LotrO because I find it a brilliant MMO.