My prediction of layoffs comes true

Last week I made this point -- http://tor-men-tor.blogspot.com/2012/04/ea-profitibility-real-reason-for-free.html.

I do hope Bioware is able to fix this mess before headquarters is forced to tell them to start tightening their belt. The first clue will be if we hear about downsizing in the next few months. It will be especially bad if it is released before the May conference call as that means they are proactively making changes which means internally they know thebattle is over and upper management is working to save their jobs.

A few days later this was posted in the interwebz -

EA is planning to cut a significant number of jobs, it's been claimed, and 'poor' performance of big budget titles such as Star Wars: The Old Republic and Battlefield 3 are said to be the cause.

According to multiple sources, EA is is planning to layoff between 500 and 1,000 people, which is between 5 - 11% of total company employees.

This is standard damage control for any big company as they are just trying to get through their year end  profit call without being told they need to cut back on development.  Development is what will help the company grow and the only thing that can save SWTOR at this point.  Only time will tell if they are successful.  If not you can put a fork in the game.

Finding the fun - MMOs at max level and the motivation to roll an alt

I remember when I hit 60 in WoW for the first time.  I was an officer in my guild and taking my time getting to max level but as a few of the other players hit 60 I started to feel like I was being left behind.  I think I was around level 54 when I started and played non stop for a few days until I got there.

In Vanilla WoW leveling was an entirely different proposition.  The game launched in late November 2004 and though I played 2-3 hours a night and many more on the weekends it was almost May when I made my final push to 60.  The leveling experience had been magical to that point.  Blizzard had created a world where the exploration was half the fun and if you didn't like something it was only a matter of going over the next hill to perhaps find something you did like.

The questing felt a little more ominious in the 50s and the storylines were darker and less fun.  Most people finished leveling near Blackrock Mountain but I decided to go a different route and went to Azshara where I ground out mobs as I looked for questgivers.

In hindsight Azshara was a bad choice as it is now obvious that they threw a bunch of mobs there, added 2-3 quests and moved on as they were running out of time.  There wasn't a city nearby, replenishing was tough and nobody went there.  MMOs, like life, are more fun when the experience is refreshing and Azshara was anything but refreshing.  When I killed probably my 5000th Naga I was a bit surprised to see my character light up and receive the message, "You are now level 60".

I was happy.  I had spent more time on this game than anything I'd ever played to that point and now I had reached the end.  I looked around and realized the place was empty.  No bells went off, no parades were held in my honor.  Just a simple 'ding' and live went on as normal.  The creatures I killed respawned and when I annonced it in guildchat I got the usually series of  "Grats!" but it all felt hollow.  When I hit max level the overriding question on my mind was, "What now?"

That question dogged me for weeks afterward.  I joined with the few brave souls and tried the end level dungeons like Stratholme and Scholomance but we found were weren't nearly good enough to beat them.  As I struggled for weeks to figure out what to do, a depression set in and I quit as officer of the guild I had helped made the largest on the server.  As it was difficult to find something to do I did what most everyone did at the time.  I rolled an alt.  Actually I rolled many alts.  Henna, my paladin was the first to 60 but I had left Shribryn behind at 38 (and rolled Henna when it was apparent that druid was broken) so it made sense to start playing her again.  That day I also rolled a mage (Kelyn), rogue (Rinda), and warlock (Lemhi) and suddenly the game was fun again.  I was now an altoholic.

It is obvious from playing SWTOR that at least some of the design team had the exact same experience as me.  The problem is they weren't listening very well.

SWTORs worlds feel dead, 90% of the quests are exactly the same the 2nd time through, and those worlds felt more like Azshara than Westfall the first time through.  Rolling an alt in SWTOR is an exercise in rapidity that is grating.  Combine that with WoWs a similar focus on creating inaccessible content at max level and you have a situation ripe for disaster.  The sadest thing is the designers had no idea just how quickly people would blow through content which shows just how ill prepared they were for what is needed to design a good game these days.

One of my favorite memories in an MMO was when I first started playing WoW was when my first character (Shri'bryn) hit level 5 and the quest giver at the tree house told me it was time to leave the nest.  It actually felt a little scary.  The exit from the area had two level 60 NPCs guarding a small crevice that was the young druid's only link to the outside world.  As I walked past the world outside opened up before me and I was excited to experience all it had to offer.  Subsequent characters weren't as intense a feeling but exciting nonetheless.  For all the praise Blizzard has gotten over the years for their design innovations, this simple fact was the key to their success.  Not Raiding, Not Instances, Not Crafting, Not LFG, and Not PVP.  The simple fact that questing was exciting drew people in and the rest eventually took care of itself.

Until SWTOR can duplicate this they will never be the hit they expected when the game was designed no matter how many features they add.  If they don't do something soon they won't have enough subscribers to pay for it.

Good and Evil in Roleplaying

As I play through the Star Wars universe one thing continually bugs me and that is the concept of good and evil.  It is mostly based on the dark and light sides of the force and the real problem behind it works well when you are creating a movie with a set storyline but is frustrating in a world filled with real people.  There are decision points throughout the game that aren't clear as to what is good and what is evil and many times I will see +dark or +light pop up on my screen and think to myself... really?

In the climatic scene in the first film, Luke Skywalker along with hundreds of other Republic pilots attack the deathstar.  Now imagine there's a young boy named Billy on the deathstar that recently graduated from school and needed a job.  Billy's lived on a planet dominated by the Empire his whole life and when the opportunity is given to join a top secret project with great pay he jumps at the chance.  He works hard and sends his paychecks back to his ailing parents with the hope that someday he can afford to start a small business back on his homeworld.  Luke and his X-Wing crush Billy's dream in a single shot and his parents are left with nothing but memories.

Is Luke's action good?  No.  Is it evil?  No.  The determining factor in how you view the act is individual point of view but the act isn't inherently one or the other.

This happens over and over in games and unfortunately most times the best rewards come from playing the extremes and in real life no one is an extreme.  Look to actions like the torture at Guantanamo, the Russian revolution, carpet bombing Germany or the Crusades and you will find well meaning people making decisions that ultimately in retrospect can be viewed as evil but it also depends on your point of view.

That's where Star Wars: The Old Republic really messed up.  They decided to use the paragon system from Mass Effect 2 when a much better alignment system had been in use by World of Warcraft for almost 10 years.  The paragon system works ok in a single player game but it is a bit funny that even Bioware changed the system in Mass Effect 3 making SWTOR look dated in comparison.

I would have much preferred a system with the following factions at launch:

Light/Dark
Republic/Empire
Mandolorian
Hutt

Only Force sensitive people would even have access to the Light/Dark tree as it is currently stupid that classes like Troopers and Bounty Hunters get light or dark points.  Either way it isn't like they can use the force.

It's too late to change but it frustrates me every time my Agent is faced with a decision.

EA Profitibility & the real reason for the free month

Just did some quick math on EA and posted it on the forums in response to someone:

Originally Posted by Rooks_THX
They're not doing it to retain subscribers. They're doing it to pad the numbers for the shareholders report. They know the ship is sinking, and instead of actually trying to fix it, they're telling the passengers everything is fine, just to remain in their cabins, while the captain and crew run for the lifeboats.

This is very true. EA's year ended on March 31st and their annual report will be coming out during the first part of May. They have already banked their revenues for the 1st quarter so the freebies given in April won't hit until their next fiscal year. 

When they have a meeting with the investor community in May the biggest question will be how many subscribers do you currently have in SWTOR since the 1.2 patch? Considering that annual revenue for EA last year was about $3.5 billion and based on their last conference call SWTOR's annual revenue should equate to $300+ million ($15/month x 12 months x 1.7 million subscribers from last report) it is a huge part of their business. 

EA has spent a ton of money for infrastructure, programming, support and advertising on this game and it will have a huge effect the entire company if this game appears to be heading down the same path as Warhammer. The difference between SWTOR and that game is the amount of money invested and if it looks to be failing investors will crucify the stock which will cause some really tough questions from the board. 

EA realizes all of this and are hoping to buy as much time as possible to fix the issues before the board tells them to make drastic changes to improve shareholder value. I hope they are successful because despite everything else, EA/Bioware make a lot of game I like and I want that to continue.

Despite the fact that I didn't get a free month, I do hope Bioware is able to fix this mess before headquarters is forced to tell them to start tightening their belt.  The first clue will be if we hear about downsizing in the next few months.  It will be especially bad if it is released before the May conference call as that means they are proactively making changes which means internally they know thebattle is over and upper management is working to save their jobs.

SWTOR's loyal customers?

Patch 1.2 hit yesterday and after I started playing I went into a funk.  It was cool to finally move the screen around, nice to easily make my gear match my chestpiece design, and fun to play around with my legacy.  After that I started to play the game again and realized that while that was nice it did little to impact the core of the game and the issues with quest design came rushing back.  

SWTOR's key selling point since launch has been the class stories and right now I've got my agent through the whole thing with my warrior, inquisitor, and bounty hunter sitting between chapter 2 and the ending.  This has been the sole reason I've been playing for a while but suddenly it just didn't seem worth it anymore.  As I was questing I saw someone mention that we get a free pet so I went on the forums to check it out and this is what I found:

We appreciate the support of our community throughout the development of the Legacy game update. As a ‘Thank You’ gift, we are giving all active subscribers (as of April 12, 12:00PM CDT, 5:00PM GMT or April 21, 12:00PM CDT, 5:00PM GMT) the in-game Legacy reward: the Legacy Tauntaun Ram Pet*, sure to be your new best friend!

If I stopped reading there I would have been happy but this next section upset me to no end:

A SPECIAL GIFT FOR OUR LEVEL 50 PLAYERS – 30 DAYS OF PLAY TIME ON US!
As a thanks for being one of our most valued players, every active account with a Level 50 character as of April 12th, 2012 at 12:00PM CDT / 5:00PM GMT, will receive thirty (30) days of game time** in appreciation for your support and loyalty.

This struck and nerve with me as I currently have 8 Imperial toons on my main server level 48, 48, 44, 43, 37, 34, 33, 22 not to mention the 4 Republic toons on my alt server all over level 10.  I also spent quite a bit of time leveling a character on the test server to level 21 to help Bioware improve the game.

I really don't care about the money but the implication that somehow I'm less loyal because I don't have a level 50 makes me mad.  Is the money the level 50s spent the last 4 months somehow better than mine?  As normal I went to the forums so see if others shared my feelings and saw that many others have the same complaint.  Quite a few of us easily could have gotten to 50 if we had even a days warning that we'd get a free month by doing so.  But that's not the point.  People that only have 1 toon at level 23 but have payed their subscription every month is doing as much to support the game as anyone.  This is my first comment on the forum:

This free month thing really has upset me. I know I've got more game hours than 99% of players out there I just decided to start an alt when I finished my character's story. I currently have 2 48s, 1 44, 1 43 and a bunch of lower level alts. I have leveled every profession to 400 as well

Once I heard about the legacy rewards I set a goal of getting the 1 of each of the 4 classes to the end of the 2nd chapter so I would have all the buffs. I've also spent a ton of time on the test server in the last month that I could have spent leveling but decided to spent time there instead as it would help the game.

I have been waiting for this game for years and I really want to like it. I actively avoided getting to 50 because the forums were filled with complaints that after hitting 50 the game became intolerable to play. Now because I stopped a few levels short of 50 I'm being told indirectly that I'm not a valued customer?

 I know this isn't rational because we are only talking about $15 but I feel disrespected. I'd like to think I can get over it because like I said earlier I really want to like this game. The sad thing is there is no doubt in my mind that some will quit over this and it's just another example in a long string of Bioware's mistakes that I'm trying to ignore.

After stewing on it a little more I decided to look up my subscription and saw that I was signed up through April 23rd.  This surprised me as I thought I had a 6 month subscription.  With my frustrations in SWTOR and Diablo 3, The Secret World, and TERA on the horizon for the first time, I'm actually thinking of quitting.  This prompted this comment on the forums: 

I'm surprised this has upset me as much as it has and it actually caused me to look at my subscription for the first time since I signed up in December. I found it ends in 11 days and automatically renews unless I change it. Right now I'm planning on cancelling before then unless Bioware responds in proactively to this matter.

After spending months defending a game that was obviously released early and is still missing many key features I was willing to be patient until this. It just shows again that the people in charge are out of their depth and further proof this game will never be what we all hope. Please prove me wrong.

Of course the trolls are out in force betlittling the comments of the people that are angry about it.  I chose one in particular to respond:

i can feel simpathy with the people that just started playing for like a week or 2 a 3 that they dont get the free month but i dont feel simpathy for the ones that are here from dat one or even earlyer u guys had WAY enuf time to get 50 so stop complaining

I'm happy that you made it to 50 before the deadline. I have two characters at 48 who finished the 3rd chapter and didn't bother leveling them further because of the well known issues at end game. Instead I chose to play how Bioware suggested by focusing on my legacy and right now the total level of my characters on my server is 303 (an average of level 37.9). In addition, I've got every profession leveled to 400. In other words, it would be difficult for anyone to have played more than I have and not hit 50.

Like most, the $15 doesn't bother me. It's the implication that somehow people that chose to focus on their legacy are somehow less loyal than people that focused on one character. People say things like "I don't feel SYMPATHY for people that didn't hit 50" are missing the point. This game has been hemorrhaging players for months and can ill afford PR snafu's like this. If you want a better game, you should hope for increased subscriptions not mock those that are considering leaving. After all, WoW didn't add things like LFG, rated battlegrounds, and guild banks just because it improved the game. They did it because they had a huge playerbase and those revenues meant they could afford to try to make the game better.

I was hoping to get into operations after 1.2 hits but this is making me reconsider. My server is already low population and this isn't going to help. I'm going to give it a week and if Bioware's response isn't good enough I'm planning to leave. I hate it because I love the Star Wars universe but there comes a point when change is necessary. I don't expect anyone to care but once thousands of other people like me leave perhaps you'll understand why it matters.

 Sadly this is my feeling right now and it will spell the short lived career of this blog.  I hope Bioware surprises me.

Where have all the players gone?

MMO subscription numbers from 1997 to 2012

Looking at the graph on the right you can see that MMOs have been in decline for the last few years.

There's no one good answer but part of the reason is because of the type of different players that makes up the MMO player base.  To keep it simple I break them into two types - hardcore and casual.  Hardcore gamers are about 10 % of players and were the ones playing Ultima back in 1997.  Then the 2nd wave of MMO's came out it attracted the casual gamers and this was especially true in the World of Warcraft.  When WOW was launched in late 2004 there were about 6 million people subscribing to an MMO of any type.  Fast forward a year and the total number jumps to over 12 million with about half of them playing WoW.

Keep in mind that during this time we also saw the release of games like City of Heroes and EVE Online which attracted players that had never considered playing a fantasy based MMO in the past.  The one thing about all of these players had in common was that they were "noobs" and had no preconceived notions / experience playing an MMO.  I remember this time very well and someone I used to raid with summarized it very well in the quote - "There will never be another time in gaming history like Molten Core."  I've repeated this a few times since then and many people misunderstand it as an insult.  What it means is suddenly there were thousands of players on ever server in the game that not only wanted to raid but were willing to do what ever was necessary to "beat the game".  To beat Molten Core it meant countless hours of menial tasks so you could acquire the stats needed to beat the individual bosses.  Many of the buffs were small incremental adjustments that didn't matter much but the playerbase attacked them with a vengence.  My personal favorite time waster was a shoulder enchantment that probably took 10 hours to grind and gave you around a 2% reduction to fire damage.  The toughest was grinding an entire set of pre-raiding Best-in-Slot (BiS) gear that could only be attained by running the same 4 dungeons over and over and easily took 100 hours in total to complete (lfg ubrs/lbrs/scholo/strat).

The key to finishing Molten Core was getting into a good guild and guilds made players jump through all sorts of hoops to gain entry.  The most common was to require applicants to have a set of BiS gear and this had all sorts of implications.  The most important was it made the end game dungeons extremely popular and it was easy to find a group.  No other game had made playing an MMO that was as approachable and this fact drove the game's success.  Every month WoW added another 300-400k players which was the fuel for the whole engine and it gave guilds incredible power but in the end it was exhausting and not sustainable.

Ultima and Everquest vets scoff at the notion that WoW was difficult but that's only true if you are a hardcore gamer.  Hardcore gamers don't mind running dungeons over and over.  Casual gamers do it for fun and to noobs, Molten Core was an adventure on a grand scale.  Even with all the hard work many casual gamers never finished Molten Core or ever beat the first boss in the next raid, Blackwing Lair.  By the launch of the first expansion, the game had grown to 8 million subscribers and while some casuals were determined to do what was necessary in Burning Crusade many more had determined that it wasn't worth the effort and started to treat the game as a social event instead of a raiding game.  WoW didn't hit a wall though because over the next 2 years they added another 4 million subscribers hitting a peak of 12 million subscribers by the end of 2009.  It would be pretty easy to argue that WoW hit its saturation point at this point.  Everyone that was interested in a game like World of Warcraft had tried it which meant that most anyone that was interested in an MMO had gone through an MMO grind.

MMOs live on grinds.  Grinds can be equipment, levels, materials or things that don't help you raid like achievements or in-game pets.  Computer gamers vary greatly in age but are centered from 16 to 48 and a large portion of this group went through the MMO grind in 2005-2009.  From that point forward most of the new blood were in the 16 - 22 range and entered either during their high school or college years.  The key takeaway is as time goes forward the player base has gotten increasingly tired of grinding.

Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft, noticed the trends and worked to make the game less grindy in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.  Once again they were ahead of the curve and any game that ignored this lesson paid for it with poor sales and a quick exit.  Despite all the complaints on the internet, the majority of gamers want to maximize their fun to time played ratio and most don't find grinding a good use of their time.

Looking at the growth graph I put at the top of this article, you can see that MMOs are at a cross road.    Part of the reason is after 7 years of playing, people are really tired of the World of Warcraft and nothing else has come close to duplicating its features.  Games like SWTOR, Rift, and Warhammer hoped to do this but so far WoW has lost more subscriptions than these games have in total.  While it is possible that a mega hit could change this trend my suspicion is the number will continue to decrease until someone figures out a way to make the genre fun again.

PS - A few years ago I ran Molten Core with a friend and regaled her with tales of all the different bosses when I first ran the game.  I'm sure she was bored to tears as it is hard to imagine a place being tough when you can run it solo.  As we killed boss after boss without losing even a fraction of our health it began to make me sad and was another reminder that MMOs are more about the online friendships and less about the pixels.  If more developers realized this we'd have less game failures.

Have MMOs hit middle age?

To know where you are going, sometimes it is necessary to look to where you've been.

To answer the question posed in the title I decided to take a moment and look at the history of subscription based MMO's and see if it could give me any insight into what might happen next.  The broke it down into four parts: Pioneers, MMO's hit maturity, the Next Generation, and today's games.

The Pioneers (1997 - 2001) - These games set the standard for all that followed.  They proved that gamers would pay a monthly fee for a well crafted game and although they look ancient by today's standards, they were year's ahead of what has being produced by other game companies.

Ultima Online (1997) - This was an extension of the Ultima roleplaying game that began in the early 80s.  Richard Garriott had a vision of taking his game online and launched it in 1997.  It was the standard for a while and peaked at 250k in 2003.  Slowly declined after that as new games were introduced and was at around 100k when it ended in 2009.

Everquest (1999) - Started in 1999 and improved on many of Ultima's features.  It quickly took that games place at the top of the MMO food chain until it peaked at 550k in mid-2004.  It quickly declined after the release of WoW/Everquest 2 to under 200k by the start of 2006 and then slowly deterioated to 100k in 2010 when it was cancelled.

MMO's hit maturity (2002 - 2007) - As the popularity of the pioneers fell, newcomers rose to take their place and many new innovative type of gameplay were introduced.


Final Fantasy XI (2002) - Launched in early 2002 and grew slowly until it hit 550k in mid 2004.  Declined slightly after that but had surprising staying power with 500k subscribers as late as 2009.  It declined quickly to 350k subscribers in 2010 and went free to play soon after.

Star Wars Galaxies (2003) - Launched in early 2003 it hit 300k a few months later then stayed at that level through mid 2005 when it started a steep decline and was close to 100k in 2006.  It had further declines from there until it was closed in 2011.

Eve Online (2003) - Launched in 2003 this game had steady increases year by year until it grew to 375k in 2010 but has remained steady since.

City of Heroes (2004) - Launched in early 2004 this game quickly approached 175k then had a decline until the late 2005 City of Villians patch which re-energized the series and put it over 200k.  After that it had steady declines until it hit 100k in 2010 when it went free to play.

Everquest 2 (2004) - Launched in late 2004 to replace Everquest, it quickly rose to 325k then fell to under 200k by the start of 2006.  It had a devoted core but still slowly lost subscriptions and when it went free to play in 2010 it had fallen to about 120k.

World of Warcraft (2004) - Launched in late 2004, it surprised everyone and almost immediately took the #1 spot from Everquest.  It hit 2,000k subscribers in 3 months, 3,500k in 6 months and 6,000k subscribers by 2006.  Fueled by the release of the Burning Crusade Patch it rose to 8,000k by the end of 2007 and hit its max of 12,000k in late 2008 with the release of Wrath of the Lich King expansion.  The numbers remained somewhat steady for through the first few months of the Cataclysm expansion in late 2010 when numbers started to fall and currently are estimated to hover just above 10,000k subscribers.

The Next Generation (2008 -2011) - Numerous developers see the success of World of Warcraft and enter the market with hopes of stealing market share.  The trick was finding the combination of having enough differentiation to attract players while being similar enough so it is easy to play.


Age of Conan Online (2008) - Within months of its early 2008 release it spiked to 700k then rapidly fell to 100k by the end of the year.  It stayed around 100k for the next 2 years as a subscription MMO before it went free to play.

Warhammer Online (2008) - Within months of its mid-2008 release it spiked to 800k then rapidly fell to 300k by the end of the year.  It fell to 100k by the end of the next year and went to a free to play model.

Aion (2009) - Catered mostly to Asian tastes this game launched in early 2009 it rose to 4,000 by the mid year and has steadily declined until today where it has 2,400k subscribers.

Rift (2011) - Launched in early 2011 it quickly hit 600k then dropped quickly and is now around 250k.

MMO's hit a mid life crisis? (2012 - ) - No new arrival made a dent in WoWs dominance so another crop of games are launching to try to take its place before the next WoW expansion launches this fall.  This is a tough time to enter the market as while total MMO subscriptions increased by an average of 25+% starting in 2004, in 2009 they suddenly stagnated.  Subscriptions hit a high of over 22 million that year and have fallen slightly to just over 20 million today.

Star Wars: The Old Republic (2012) - Launched in late 2011 it rose to 1.7 subscriptions in the first quarter which is the last reported number.  Patch 1.2 which hits in April will likely make or break this title.

The Secret World (est. June 2012) - The makers of Anarchy online are creating an MMO based on a blend elements of mythological and modern day civilizations, along with a mix of dark fantasy and the supernatural, and have no character classes. This game will feature a mix of urban legends, myths, and conspiracy theories and use 3 factions. This game looks interesting but really depends on the social features and quest design if it is to get a lot of market share.

TERA (est May 2012) - In TERA the world is under siege by evil gods, monsters, and beings from the underworld, and it’s up to the players to stand against their onslaught to save the world. The key attraction is true action combat which means fighting will be based on actual player skill. This means it should attract fans of first person shooters which dwarfs MMOs though that is partially because none of them currently charge a monthly fee. I've heard the gameplay is fantastic and if they include good quests and social tools it could be a sleeper hit.

The one thing that no one knows is whether MMO's have a future.  For the last 15 years fans have shown they are willing to pay $15/month to play but with the advent of cheap IOS games along with the free to play MMO model are fans willing to continue this?  The next year will go a long way to answering this question.

What mistakes did Bioware make in the design phase?

Hindsight is a beautiful thing.  Anyone that has been involved in a big project knows that the goals at the beginning are barely recognizable when you get to the finished project.  That's because things in life rarely go as expected so modifications are made along the way.  The key in any project is starting with a good plan and while I'm sure Bioware felt they had a decent idea at the beginning, it appears in hindsight that they made some egregious errors during the planning stage.

Designing the game first as an RPG
Star Wars: The Old Republic was originally designed as follow up single player game to Knights of the Old Republic 2.  The game still feels like an RPG that was shoehorned as an MMO.  When EA bought Bioware the design of KOTOR 3 should have been scrapped and SWTOR should have been remade from the ground up.  Instead, it appears that many of the design elements of the original game effected the end product.


Make your ship the center of the game
When I think of Star Wars I think of the X-Wing, TIE Fighters, and of course the Millenium Falcon.  The designers did a great job of designing different ships for the various classes but did little else.  I've said a little about it in a previous post but there's no reason players shouldn't be able to call their ship to pick them up to ease travel.  It might not be the most realistic thing but it makes gameplay easier/more fun and that should trump realism in a game every time.


Killing the sense of exploration
One of the great things about Bioware's first Mass Effect game is you can explore the entire galaxy and actually land on any planet.  The implementation in that game was crude and annoying but the ability to go to any world gave the game a feeling of depth.  My hope for Star Wars was to have the ability to visit hundreds of planets like Mass Effect 1.  Every planet would have a back story and you'd land on the world and be able to explore at your pleasure.  I wouldn't expect these planets to have more than a landing area and a small area of mobs surrounded by mountains.  Ideally it would have 1 or 2 quests but the key is just to have ruins/artifacts/raw material nodes to explore.  This wouldn't be very popular at the beginning but the key is eventually these planets would be easy to expand for expansions.vvv

Too much emphasis on the class story
The class story is great but it feels disjointed as you work your way through the game.  My biggest issue with it is I'd bet between voice acting, quest design, and video implementation they spent at least a third (33%) of their $200 million development money on this part of the game.  This is just a guess but I'd bet it isn't far off.

One of the things that Blizzard learned from Vanilla WoW is they were spending an most of their time developing endgame for 5% of the players who could actually complete it.  They decided to try to reverse that in following expansions.  Many players complained that they were dumbing down the game but it makes sense to focus your money to increase fun for a greater percentage of players.

Compare that to Bioware's class stories.  To level a class to 50 takes about 9 days or 200 hours of game time. That means it would take 200 x 8 (or 1600 hours) to experience everything Bioware has included in the game.  I'd bet only a few people will level more than 2 characters to 50 which means that 75% (6 / 8) of Bioware's story will never been seen.  Put another way, $200 million total cost x 33% for the class stories x 75% never seen is $50 million of the game will never be seen by 99% of the player base.

When you consider that Rift cost $50 million total to make and it had many features missing from SWTOR at launch it is easy to determine that this decision wasn't the best use of resources.

Heroic Quests
These were a total waste of development money.  No one runs them because of low populations on all the various planets and there isn't a tool to help form a group.

Splitting the player base in Republic / Empire factions
One of the great things about the Star Wars universe is the battle between light and dark.  While this works well in movies it is less useful in an MMO as once you pick a side you are stuck there forever.  It also has the unfortunate offshoot of splitting the player base.  I've never liked this game design in any game though most MMOs use it.  I much prefer the D&D method of alignment which doesn't restrict play between players but does affect interactions.

My preference would be to have a universe where you don't have to pick a side.  The first 10 levels would have been on 2 planets -- Korriban and Corruscant.  Currently there are 8 class quests for the following:

Sith Inquistor - Assassin/Sorceror
Sith Warrior - Juggernaut/Maurader
Imperial Agent - Sniper/Operative
Bounty Hunter - Powertech/Mercenary

Jedi Knight - Sentinel/Guardian
Jedi Consualar - Sage/Shadow
Trooper - Commando/Vanguard
Smuggler - Gunslinger/Scoundrel

Instead I would propose combining the stories:

Knight - Juggernaut/Guardian
Sage - Sorceror/Sage
Assassin - Assassin/Shadow
Warrior - Maurader/Sentinel
Agent - Operative/Scoundrel
Bounty Hunter - Mercenary / Commando
Smuggler - Sniper/Gunslinger
Trooper - Vanguard/Powertech

The key would be that you'd have a class quest to level 10 and you'd establish your dark/light side leanings at that point but it would mean little as you could quest with anyone.  The story would continue not on questing areas but given through your holo terminal once you reached a certain level.  You'd then travel to the planet and your quest would continue based on your earlier decisions just like any other Bioware game.  This has a few benefits as it allows more role play by the people that like it, immediately ends faction imbalance, and is a much better fit for the legacy system than their current plan.  It would also give map designers more options than needing to shoehorn in 20 class specific instances on every planet which makes maps much larger than needed and hogs system resources.

In the end you'd have two ratings.  The first would be an Empire/Republic rating as well as a light/dark rating.  The light/dark would determine some of your spells and appearance but it would be cosmetic like a sage/sorceror casting rocks/lightning.  The Empire/Republic rating would really only affect PVP. I'm sure there would be people that would complain that this isn't realistic as Sith Warriors didn't fight on the same side with Jedi and my response would be two fold.  There are many Sith hid their true identities in the Star Wars universe.  Furthermore, everyone has the option to join (or form) a Republic/Empire only guild as requirement to entry.  Guilds aren't necessarily part of the Republic or Empire.  They are like minded individuals with a goal of some sort which doesn't preclude members from having other interests (similar to Scryer and Aldor for Wowheads).

Questing on 15 different planets
Other than peak time, quest planets have less than 10 people on them at any time.  When you consider that there are 2 million people subscribing on 200 servers that means are an average of 10,000 subscribers on every server.  Most people point to the low population on every planet as proof that the game is failing but when you consider that people are split by faction, only play 1-2 hours a day, and split into 15 worlds (plus fleet/ships/orbitial stations) the average would be (10000 / 2 / 10 / 20) or 25.  Add to that when a particular planet gets full they create another phased planet to make sure the game runs smoothly.  All this adds to the sense that you are playing a single player game as you rarely run into anyone else.

Get rid of Fleets as hubs 
They should eliminate fleets altogether and create three natural hubs for players - Corruscant, Korriban, and Hutta.  The main hub would be on Hutta (or Nar Shadda if you prefer) which would be where most of the early questing (10-20) is done in the game.  The rest of the game would be played on Tatooine (20-30), Voss (30-40), and Correllia (40-50).  Zones would be created on each planet with multiple story lines so players have at least 2 zones they could quest at every level to eliminate repetitive play.  Also, flashpoints for that level are on that particular planet so you can quest while looking for a flashpoint group.

Developing the game with an engine that couldn't handle more than 20 people in an area
Bioware denies it but it seems the biggest issue with the game is the Hero engine.  The game looks amazing but it seems like the designers have actively worked to keep players as far away from each other as possible.  The reason I feel that way is any time I go into the fleet with more than 20 others there is a noticeable slow down in the game and PVP has the same issues.  I'm not sure why the system slows down so much but WoW has a much larger contiguous area and rarely has a slow down.  If the Hero engine couldn't do the same they should have switched no matter how much it cost.  There's no way the game should have shipped if they couldn't put 100 people in world PvP without lag at moderate settings on an average computer.  People don't play MMOs for the looks - they play to see a world made up of other people.

Emphasize the fun
The most important thing that was forgotten in the universe is fun.  I lost count how many times I saved the universe on my way to max level and after a while it becomes boring.  How many times do you walk 50 steps to find something that no one else has been able to do in 400 years?  How many times can you steal/save the most important artifact on the planet and get 500 credits in return?

Things like this aren't just repetitive, they're dumb.  By level 20 other than my class story I really didn't have much interest in the quests because the writers chose to do the same quest over and over.  WoW is a forbidden word to many SWTOR fans but Blizzard really has gotten good at designing quest areas that are fun.  Bioware should have taken note.

Summation
The sad thing is most of what I've typed above will never happen because it would cost too much with little return.  As I said before, Bioware had $200 million to make the game and blew it in the design phase with the focus it on class stories and forgot why we play the game.  Patch 1.2 will make it better and for me it is probably a situation of "too little, too late".