Star Wars: The Old Republic (The Thread)

[dragon]

The Bioware forums are utter shit for the most part because Bioware has zero community guys, the people actually posting are devs which is always a mistake in an mmo.

Are you serious? That's fucking hilarious. EA/BW can't pay some guys $5.75 an hour to check forum posts or get some fanboys to do it for free?

Really minor nitpick minimum wage is 7.25 but other than that agree whole heartly. Which is why I stay away from those forums

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour effective July 24, 2009. Many states also have minimum wage laws. Some state laws provide greater employee protections; employers must comply with both

link

[Highlord Laan]

Anyways, This is all the new gear put side-by-side. First off, I've noticed gear seems to really be modelled on the Type 4 (I think, whatever the BEEEEEFCAKE!body-type I picked was) body type to make it look decent. The smaller types make the gear look like tight fitting spandex. Certain armor should be bulky, even if your character is skinny.

That said, this gear is just horrifying looking with the possible exception of the Trooper PvE set, but it still looks more like clothes than armor. Have any of these designers even seen a Star Wars movie? Have they ever seen how clothes are worn or how armor is supposed to fit? The sage once again really got the shit end of the stick, though I must say it perfectly balances "ugly" with "bland."

Actually, if I remember correctly, EA hired on several artists from a Korean MMO I can't recall to handle their gear designs. It shows, dear god it shows.

[Mr Bean]

Actually, if I remember correctly, EA hired on several artists from a Korean MMO I can't recall to handle their gear designs. It shows, dear god it shows.

Rumor is they snatched up Linage 2 dev's which can't be true as the armor is not nekked enough for the women folk so current thinking is it was some of the ArcAge guys.

[TheFeniX]

Actually, if I remember correctly, EA hired on several artists from a Korean MMO I can't recall to handle their gear designs. It shows, dear god it shows.

It's all just fantasy gear with some electronics bolted on rather than belts and zippers or literally just rehashed armor from the movies.

As always it takes someone else to directly state what I can't put into words. But I read another blog (can't remember the name) stating: "Anyone remember Bounty Hunter Terminals?" I do. And I remember when Smuggler's actually smuggled stuff (which is funny because I thought the scanner droids in SWTOR in the hangars actually did something. Boy was I a dumbass). Funny part was this was brought up on the SWTOR forums a while back and was met with "yea, then go play SWG, oh wait, you can't."

Shit posting never gets old I guess.

Still playing, though my server (Fort Garnik) is mostly a ghost town now. Actually works out fine, since I really just wanted to play cooperatively with my wife. Darn shame there aren't other Star Wars RPGs out there that allow cooperative play without the MMO monthly price tag.

If you aren't dying to keep your legacy crap you could always reroll on "The Fatman." That's what I was going to so until I realized the game wasn't worth the effort.

Hilarity: I still have 3 days left on my subscription. But I won't put my SSD through that mess of code again. I do want to see if I can still post when my sub finally runs out, although BW may give me another month for some odd reason.

[Darksider]

Reading the list of shit in 1.3, it looks like they mention something about character transfers. Are they going to put in a method to transfer characters between servers? because I might like to do that.

[Mr Bean]

Reading the list of shit in 1.3, it looks like they mention something about character transfers. Are they going to put in a method to transfer characters between servers? because I might like to do that.

That's exactly what it means

[Darksider]

sweet. Maybe we should group off on local servers and form an SDN guild or something.

[TheFeniX]

Reading the list of shit in 1.3, it looks like they mention something about character transfers. Are they going to put in a method to transfer characters between servers? because I might like to do that.

I didn't see anything like that. All I saw was something about a Group Finder and some shit about Legacy. Also, you will be able to modify gear for an augment slot rather than praying to the RNG gods.

Really, X-Server something needs to come. Transfers (or straight up server merges) would be best. But X-warzones or a dungeon finder are a must. I've seen more than a few complaints of servers having less than 10 players in the fleet during peak hours. Personally, this is why I don't like "servers." I really enjoy how I have a chance to game with anyone who plays STO (even if I rarely login).

[Darksider]

Tell me about it. There are times i've tried for a week or more to get a group together for a Flashpoint. And Heroics? forget about it.

[PREDATOR490]

But... but... you dont HAVE to do Heroics, they are just optional content so shut up and stop whinning about not being able to do them.

Typical response whenever someone dares suggest this game is going down the shitter interms of population. I have 5 characters now and 2 of them got to 50 during the initial surge and even then the group content could be a pain to find anyone for. 3 characters now effectively running around on starter worlds with 10 - 20 at peak. This is on the EU Frostclaw server no less which was one of the most heavily packed.
Havent logged into the game since a week after 1.2. Finding groups is beyond sad and its so nice to have the morons telling you to skip the 'optional' group content as an excuse to justify the situation.
The animosity being directed towards group finders either cross server or locally is equally funny.

TOR would buckle being put into a single world dynamic like EVE Online and one of the key sticking points Bioware touted was worlds being non heavily instanced which STO does to the extreme. Watching the faction fleets turn into thousand player theme parks like Jita would be hilarious. However, I doubt Bioware would dare go down that route even if they could.

[TheFeniX]

The animosity being directed towards group finders either cross server or locally is equally funny.

I don't really understand the bile. I can only assume it's either rabid fanboyism, they have their 4/8 man team already, or they literally suck too much to even handle 4-man heroics. BW forum mods take no action that I've seen against them. The PvP forums had 3-4 posters off-hand who routinely mocked and insulted people pointing out how bad the PvP was and how it needed to be fixed. I'm talking shit like: "Quit being a scrub and learn to play idiot." Meanwhile, I got a post edited because I posted something to the effect of: "The idea that a game from EA/BW could handle client/server issues this poorly would be retarded if I hadn't already lived through the BF2 debacle." I was pinged for using the word retarded and "being insulting."

Basically, be a kiss-ass and only insult people intelligently pointing out flaws in the game and you're good. Posts that insult the poster more than who he's targetting (ex: lol thish game sucks, I'm no limit CoD sniperelite and this pvp is terribad") get left up all the time though. There's literally no consistency in the moderating on the forums.

TOR would buckle being put into a single world dynamic like EVE Online and one of the key sticking points Bioware touted was worlds being non heavily instanced which STO does to the extreme. Watching the faction fleets turn into thousand player theme parks like Jita would be hilarious. However, I doubt Bioware would dare go down that route even if they could.

It was just wishful thinking really. One of the things I hate about WoW is people asking what server I'm on because there's almost no chance we're even in the same battlegroup, much less server. STO may be instanced to all Hell but FeniX can play with anyone who has the game. It also keeps what's happening to TOR (and what happened to me in WoW) from happening: getting stuck on some barren server. If anything, there should be server "pools" that a character could soft-transfer to for group questing, instances, or raids.

In reality, TOR buckles when 20 players just stand around the PvP terminal even with great hardware. Their build of the Hero engine is just not up to the task of an MMO. Even turned down to low settings the engine feels clunky and starts hemorrhaging FPS when multiple players get on the screen. I remember Dalaran being bad on Kiljaeden before cata popped. Even my PC would experience some slow-down. My buddy couldn't even go there on his laptop. But as bad as that was, a player hub like Dal would crater any computer running TOR.

Whatever BW is going to do, they need to do it about 3 weeks ago. Grapevine (take with that what you will) is that they're losing active subs everyday and are keeping up their numbers through free subs (like how I technically count as a subscriber until.... today I think). Personally, no matter what they do, I refuse to go back until they make it so opening your inventory doesn't destroy your FPS. It may sound stupid, but that one problem really sums up a lot of my issues with TOR.

[bilateralrope]

Grapevine (take with that what you will) is that they're losing active subs everyday

This RPS article from march 8 says it's not rumor. March: 1.7 million subscribers, May: 1.3 million. That's 400,000 gone in 3 months.
Sounds like a dying MMO to me.

[Mr Bean]

. March: 1.7 million subscribers, May: 1.3 million. That's 400,000 gone in 3 months.
Sounds like a dying MMO to me.

Not exactly since all MMO's that are not Warcraft typically pick up half a million extra subscribers over their future subscriber count of people who play the MMO for 30 days then go back to Warcraft. If in three months they have lost another 400k then yes dieing MMO. But I'm guessing it will level out at 1.1 million a year from now.

[Darksider]

is 1.1 million good or bad for an MMO?

Oh, and one more gripe I have with the game. Sometimes when I abandon quests to keep my log from getting full (why the fuck does that even happen?) I can't re-start them. I accidentally abandoned the Balmorra and Quesh bonus series quests, and now I can't get them back. I've sent a repair ticket request to Bioware but i'm not holding my breath. This game can be fun, but I honestly don't think it's worth all the trouble it's giving me anymore. I had planned to do multiple alts to set up a legacy family tree, but I think once I finish my Commando storyline i'm done.

[Mr Bean]

is 1.1 million good or bad for an MMO?

Oh, and one more gripe I have with the game. Sometimes when I abandon quests to keep my log from getting full (why the fuck does that even happen?) I can't re-start them. I accidentally abandoned the Balmorra and Quesh bonus series quests, and now I can't get them back. I've sent a repair ticket request to Bioware but i'm not holding my breath. This game can be fun, but I honestly don't think it's worth all the trouble it's giving me anymore. I had planned to do multiple alts to set up a legacy family tree, but I think once I finish my Commando storyline i'm done.

250k is the break even point for MMO's assuming your not paying you update team half a million dollar a year salaries. 250k is 1.75 million a month in revenue roughly 21 million a year in revenue (Assume that 70% of the 11.99 is profit the rest upkeep or low balling it 7$ a month a user in profit) of which you minus off your patch and support teams which can be run quite cheaply as games like CoH's demonstrate (Less than two million a year in keeping the game running)

MMO's rarely get shut down unless they totally bomb since with subscriptions you can keep a game going for a good long time. Free to play games are much trickier as your counting on money that varies month to month.

[bilateralrope]

. March: 1.7 million subscribers, May: 1.3 million. That's 400,000 gone in 3 months.
Sounds like a dying MMO to me.

Not exactly since all MMO's that are not Warcraft typically pick up half a million extra subscribers over their future subscriber count of people who play the MMO for 30 days then go back to Warcraft. If in three months they have lost another 400k then yes dieing MMO. But I'm guessing it will level out at 1.1 million a year from now.

Looking around I keep finding this piece of information from early in febuary:

Star Wars®: The Old RepublicTM has generated 1.7 million active subscribers and sold through more than 2 million units in a little over one month.

So if you're talking about the people who only play the first 30 days, shouldn't you be looking at the 2 million copies sold, not the 1.7 million that stayed subscribed ?

is 1.1 million good or bad for an MMO?

It's still very good, if they can hold onto them. MMO data has charts of how various MMO subscription numbers look over time.

[Darksider]

If they've lost almost half a million players then they should probably merge a few servers. Nearly every server on the list has it's population read as light, and there's like one server with a "heavy" population.

I know Bioware fans are shut-in's but no one like to play an MMO in a ghost town.

[TheFeniX]

I doubt the validity of the 1.3 million claim. Right now, anyone who had a 50 still has an "active subscription" even if they haven't played for a month. Considering I've been looking at the server trends, I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of people actually playing is at or below 500,000. Just look for yourself. For me, I'm seeing 9 standard, 2 above that (protip: reroll on the Fatman), and the rest "light" which could literally mean less than 50 people total on the server. I've seen screenshots of 8 total on player's servers during peak hours for that time zone.

And BW keeps quoting the same 2, 1.7, and 1.3 mil numbers. I don't have any faith in that at this point.

[bilateralrope]

I doubt the validity of the 1.3 million claim

The RPS article claims that the 1.3 million number comes from EA’s annual fiscal earnings call (the article give a link which isn't working for me). Which sounds like one of those things where EA would get in serious legal trouble if they were lying. Shareholders would not be happy if they were given any number other than the number of paying subscribers.

So I trust that the 1.3 million number was correct when they made the call unless I see proof otherwise. Just remember that it was 2 weeks ago and it would include people who are paying but not logging in.

[PREDATOR490]

Bioware dont have a clue about MMOs, this is clearly obvious in every aspect of TOR.
They took a look at WOW because everyone loves that game and decided to copy that then repaint it to become Star Wars. Throw in standard Bioware generic RPG material and call it a day.

End result: Go figure why the population tanks because your selling a poor substitute for the real thing and if people WANT that they can just go to WOW. Only folks that are left are the fanboys of Bioware / Star Wars. Both equally rabid in their devotion to the point they frantically post on the forums to defend their masters.

I am paying for a 3 month subscription and I have barely played 1 day of it. I just cannot find the will to log in when I have to pass up every heroic because only 5 people are on the planet doing their own thing.
Guilds - What a monumental cluster bomb that has been. There is really no valid reason to be in a guild and with the mass exodus the remaining guilds are a shambles. I may just cancel my Sub if things dont improve before the renew date because LOTRO has had one major expansion and various increments compared to TOR floundering helplessly. The added bullshit Mass Effect 3 has caused certainly did not improve my view of Bioware.

Bioware go out and get the legacy system which ends up being worthless items with insane prices to acquire... to help you level alts on empty worlds. Apparantly the repeated calls to rip off LOTRO's cosmetic gear system were a wasted effort and Bioware cant make decent looking sets to save themselves.

Personnally, I think a cross server group tool for heroics, flashpoints and even PVP is mandatory at this point.
Might even go one further and link all servers to a unified hub where people can trade, communicate and shop. I.E Jita, Earth Spacedock
Maybe then the goddamn market will be populated with items for EVERYONE and customers to buy them.

I find the more telling indicator of TOR's future is in the completely lacklustre information about whats next. We got 1.2 and 1.3... but exactly what will be the expansions and major content ?
The game is not going to survive or retain people if the only updates they can manage are copy / paste some random items with shit textures. That is effectively what Star Trek Online does... except they do make a sizeable effort to make things look nice to pander to vanity.

[TheFeniX]

The RPS article claims that the 1.3 million number comes from EA’s annual fiscal earnings call (the article give a link which isn't working for me). Which sounds like one of those things where EA would get in serious legal trouble if they were lying. Shareholders would not be happy if they were given any number other than the number of paying subscribers.

I doubt they're "lying." I'm technically a "paying subscriber" even though I went so far as to pull my CC information from SWTORs billing page: they keep giving me extra play time.

So I trust that the 1.3 million number was correct when they made the call unless I see proof otherwise. Just remember that it was 2 weeks ago and it would include people who are paying but not logging in.

There's ~218 SWTOR servers. For 1.3 million active subscribers means ~6000 players per server. I doubt even the Fatman gets anywhere near that. In fact, as The Fatman is the place to be, if anyone who gives a shit could roll a PC there and check logins on both factions during prime-time, I would appreciate it. Probably 90% of servers never get above "Light" even during prime time.

I'm not buying EA or BWs bullshit.

End result: Go figure why the population tanks because your selling a poor substitute for the real thing and if people WANT that they can just go to WOW. Only folks that are left are the fanboys of Bioware / Star Wars. Both equally rabid in their devotion to the point they frantically post on the forums to defend their masters.

If they had just copied WoW and added lightsabers as well as space combat and a few other Star Wars tweaks, they would not be in this mess. People would pay money for World of Star Warscraft and eat it up like you would not believe. I've talked to a lot of people over the years who hate the prequels. Yet, when asked, they've seen them all at least 2-3 times. No one watches a movie they hate that much. People fucking love Star Wars.

But, it's like they took all the shit from WoW no one liked and combined it with the absolute shittiest technical expertise (say what you will about WoW, but it will run on a fucking toaster oven) and called it a day. But as it stands, SWTOR launched without the most basic of functionality and had a horribly optimized engine to boot. Having no dungeon finder in Rift was annoying, but at least the game worked. Even a few weeks after I quit, they were still trying to fix the SOA fight. It was the only reason we weren't 10/10 hard mode and 9/10 Nightmare mode (which, in retrospect, is sad considering our raid group).

The game is literally standing on the SW license. Without glow sticks and Boba Fett, it would have tanked right out the fucking gate and be written off as a colossal failure.

Bioware go out and get the legacy system which ends up being worthless items with insane prices to acquire... to help you level alts on empty worlds. Apparantly the repeated calls to rip off LOTRO's cosmetic gear system were a wasted effort and Bioware cant make decent looking sets to save themselves.

The focus on the Legacy system really ties in with their "ignore lack of endgame and just reroll and/or grind dailies for money" mentality. Even before I quit, the scope of the game was continually narrowing, especially with regards to PvP (Ilum and the open PvP zones).

We got 1.2 and 1.3... but exactly what will be the expansions and major content ?

I doubt anything expansive. 1.2 was originally supposed to include dual-specs, full legacy unlocks, and a slew of other content I can't be bothered to remember. What we got was maybe 20% of what was originally talked up (none of which was promised, but more of a ::hint hint nudge nudge:: "we're totally not baiting you to stay subbed!"). There seems to be a lot of push behind this Rakghoul invasion which is basically L4Dead. Because: fuck originality just steal ideas wholesale from better developers. I would be interested in the specifics behind the continuation of the Rakghoul instance. It would be good closure to the balls retarded argument I got into on the SWTOR forum where some BW fanboy claimed it was original to ripoff valve because it's an MMO (and not an FPS). Basically, changing the medium creates originality, not the idea itself. Totally fucking serious here.

1.2 did however manage to royally fuck up the PvP balance which (while still having issues) was something Bioware actually did a great job of once Ops/Scoundrels were nerfed.

[jegs2]

Still playing cooperatively with my wife, but my server is all but dead. Really, if I could play cooperatively with my wife on KOTOR 1 & 2, I'd not bother with this MMO.

[Darksider]

They're allowing server switches for Update 1.3, and some servers are getting shut down and moved. I know mine (Khoonda Militia) is getting shut down, and my entire guild is moving to Jedi Covenant. They really just have too many servers for the subscriber base. It's a result of them expanding too quickly and then loosing a lot of players. Supposedly subscriber numbers have settled at around 1.7 million now.

[Kuja]

Supposedly subscriber numbers have settled at around 1.7 million now.

The 1.7m number is three months out of date, and was suspect even at the time of its publishing. By all accounts I've seen actual logins are far, far below that.

[Mr Bean]

I've not logged in for a full month now, the only things worth doing are the other stories and I can't drag myself to do them since the markets are still so immature because credits are hard to come by and the credit sinks in this game as massive. Unlocking everything on Legacy costs right around 41 million credits and checking the gold farming websites that's 799.99$

According to their own surveys the average max level player has less than two million in the bank, credit farming thread detail rates of return of about a million a day using multiple 50s assuming your not playing more than eight hours on a low population server (Playing the markets are impossible since they were not cross server to begin with)
Purples are so hit or miss still, at least 1.3 is fixing enhancements but still I've played the gear farming game on two 50s now and did it half way on a third 50 before losing interest in the game. It gave me a good four months of entertainment but I can't find a reason aside from the stories to log back in.