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A Journey Through Star Wars: The Old Republic
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Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
A Journey Through Star Wars: The Old Republic
Two weeks ago, after completing my first Star Wars: The Old Republic column, I was a bit anxious about its next instalment. But just like that and out of the blue, they released the game on Steam.
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"The Shroud Of The Dark Side Has Fallen. Begun, The Adbot War Has!”
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Its also mind numbingly easy, your companion can solo 99.99% of the game, I wish they would do a classic server which was how it was at launch.
Elder Scrolls Online amongst them.
I have a few issues.
First, SWTOR is not an MMORPG. It has a player cap of 75 (or, it did when i played it anyway). Thats less than Fortnite and PUBG, neither of which is massively multiplayer. This is one of the reasons I quit the game, I could feel the difference when playing. There were just never any other people around, even if my particular instance had hit the cap of 75 people. It really manifested itself in a shit community: you cannot form social bonds with other people if you don't see other people! I remember running guild events, trying to spark some PvP out in the world. Had maybe 30 of us from the guild, all flagged, running round imp hubs. Often, when we loaded into a new planet, we would be put in an instance by ourselves because existing instances couldn't fit us in! Then, the enemy could never find us because we were in different instances. Absolute joke.
Second, more of a pet peeve: "the fact that SW:TOR, even after so many years, remains the top dog in the field of MMORPG storylines". I'm not saying I disagree with you, but to me this is the equivalent of saying I have the best smelling farts. It may be true, but it still stinks like shit. Storys and games have just never worked well together, even less so in a multiplayer game. I found 99% of SWTOR's stories to be generic and boring. The only stories that were marginally engaging were, like you say, the class stories. But they were a tiny fraction of the game.
Third, MMO populations don't often follow a bell curve. The first generation (pre-wow) followed a vague bell curve, with the peak at the first xpac. The second generation (wow-swtor) generally followed a decreasing curve (peak at launch with rapid decline, slowly steading out over time), but just some short-term positive upticks for xpacs. The third generation (post-swtor, the action combat years) I don't really have much of a clue about as studios stopped releasing numbers.
For SWTOR itself, it sold 2.1m pre-orders, but peaked at 1.7m player month one, dropping to 1.3m month two, then dropping below 500k by month four. 500k was their break-even point, thus prompting the shift to F2P. Theyve never gone over 500k monthly active users since, so definitely not a bell curve for the game.
The only MMO that has actually followed a bell curve for population is WoW itself.
(I know this last point is really pedantic but can't help myself! I spent quite a while studying statistics in school and normal distribution - bell curves - was a big part of it, so I can get a little frustrated when i see it used incorrectly).
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Without story to a game they are just arcade games to me. Fun for short bits but really dull for the long haul. Or they could be puzzle games and that works as well. But again, just for short bits.
For mmorpg's, sure, they can have less story if they actually capitalize on creating "a world."
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
If you're only in it for the combat and character evolution, you may as well be playing Diablo or Path of Exile. What sets MMORPGs aside from the action combat games ìs the whole lore/questing/storyline within a credible world.
That's how I feel at least.
SWTOR's flaws have been numerous, but I think the main reason that it wasn't popular as it should be is because it is based on the KOTOR series. While KOTOR was a very big hit for Bioware it isn't or may not have been all that well known to a lot of Star Wars movie fans. Personally I think they should had based the game at the time of the CLone Wars because there would be more stories,factions and player classes to it than just the Jedi and Sith.
I mean, i took a Journey in starwars 2 days ago, but that was SWG: legends
record pop: 1902
normally around 1000ísh on in the eu primetime
and in swg i just met more ppl in those 2 days, who actively engaged me in conversation for various reasons. one wanted me to come to Lok with him and his weird wookie friend who kept saying strange and uncomfortable sounds.
yet i had more player interaction in a 18 year olds MMORPG over 2 days, than i had prolly ever had in SWTOR.
sad.
Let's party like it is 1863!
My suggestion is to at least play through the storylines, expansions, and let it sit until new content comes out.