It's a small world
When World of Warcraft was first designed there really wasn't a story they meant you to learn as you leveled. Instead they filled the world with random quests that had the objectives close by. This was fun and exploration was the key because you never knew where you could find a new story and in every area there were more quests than you needed to out level the content. This gave the feeling that the world was alive and a second playthrough could feel as fresh as the first time. This was good because it gave the people that didn't want to raid something to do.
Fast forward to the 2nd and 3rd expansions and they changed their philosophy a bit due to the addition of the achievement system. Everything in the game needed to be tracked and to get an achievement you needed to totally finish an area. Quests were made more linear and in the latest expansion every zone was a mini-story. While these stories were well written many people felt something was lost. Blizzard seems to agree as Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street commented last month that:
"...while we liked that each zone has a story, questing ended up being too linear. It didn’t feel like you could fly into a zone, find some quest givers, and explore. Instead, you kind of had to start at the beginning and follow all the quests to the end, and if you didn’t like a quest, well, you had to stick with it to get to the next one. We want zones to have an identity, flavor and a story, but we don’t want to railroad players through a zone either."When I read that quote, I thought it was a subtle dig at SWTOR as Bioware designed SWTOR to be very linear. This works very well for a single player game but experience has shown that once players hit max level they hit a wall. This happens in every game as end-game is very different from the experience while leveling. When you level you are getting something in return for your efforts but at max level, killing random mobs and doing quests lose most of it's thrill. WOW has addressed it with Daily Quests, Achievements, PVP, and Raiding. The problem is most first time MMO'ers have no desire to Raid which makes Daily Quests less important and many don't like to PVP so the only leaves rolling an Alt-ernate character. If you create a game that feels like a single player leveling experience like WOW did in Cataclysm, players are more inclined to quit.
This hold doubly true for SWTOR because WOW always has 2 areas to quest for a level. This is not true in SWTOR as if you want to reroll you have to play the exact same content the 2nd time through. Apologists will point out that the class quests give it a different feel and that it true to an extent these quests are usually only 4-5 quests per planet out of the 20-30 you run. It just isn't enough to feel different and that is a problem. People get to max level and can either choose to do the same quests all over or pick between the end game options of PVP, Heroics, Raid, or Quit. Many are choosing that last option as PVP is missing many options, it is difficult to find others that want to run heroics and raiding is difficult due to the lack of many guild tools.
Quest Locations
The smallness of the world is a big issue but it is made worse by how hard it can be to get to your objectives in the game. It is hard to describe so I put together a simple diagram that shows my impression of Blizzard and Bioware's designers created their quests:
Quest hubs fill the world and usually have an inn, a place to repair, a place to buy supplies, and pick up quests. You then move easily from the town and so you can complete the quests all at once or one at a time depending on your available time. When you are done you can retreat back to town. If you finish all the quests in an area there is a quest that sends you to the next quest hub along a very safe road and the process begins again.
Compare that to SWTOR. you pick up quests at the beginning of an area and pick up a few quests. You move forward to the objectives and pick up a few other quests along the way. This gives the impression there is more out there so as you get further and further from the town you feel you can't return to town for fear of missing something. At some point you run out of time and can either log at your present locations or teleport back to the nearest base. I usually teleport and turn in the quests I've completed only realize that there are 3-4 quests that need to be turned in back in the wild. The next time I'm online I have to spend 5-10 minutes running back to these locations. It wouldn't take that much time but SWTOR's designers rarely make the path to the questing areas free of mobs so invariably you end up in 2-3 fights before you get back to your quest giver. After that it is usually a fight back through the same mobs to get to the objectives you didn't complete.
This is compounded by the fact that SWTOR's method is that quest hubs take you further and further from the initial base. This happens to an extent in WOW as well but it is much worse in SWTOR. This is frustrating because by he time you get to the end of a zone a walk back to a hub is easily 5 minutes assuming you don't run into any mobs. This adds to needless frustration and wasted time.
What this means
The problem with the two issues I've listed is while I feel they are big, they aren't easy to fix. Bioware can't really go back and fix these maps or their questing decision as the work involved would mean they'd probably need to double their staff size and that isn't going to happen. The only option really is to create other worlds for questing so that the initial worlds are mainly used for the class quests but people won't feel required to hit every quest on a planet or they'd fall behind. That is going to take a while but if Bioware doesn't do something fast the unapproachable nature of the game is going to drive most of the casual players away as they won't have anything to do once they hit max level and the playerbase will halve in 6 months.
