What makes an MMO successful and can/will SWTOR make necessary change

Back in February I mentioned the things that Bioware did right and wrong in the launch of SWTOR.  Over time my opinion has changed a bit in some areas but the thing that is frustrating is on the things they have fixed since the launch.  Here's a summary:

Game Issues

• No looking for Group
• No looking for Raid
• No scripting tools to make mods
• No combat log
• No way to adjust the interface
• No threatmeter
• No guild tools
• No guild bank
• Crafting system extremely basic
• Ability to Queue Crafting on an alt and have them mailed once complete
• Mailbox – Open all function (note: this might have been in game at launch)
• Mailbox – Remember alts for addressing / auto ship certain mats to alts
• WOW Auctionator functionality
• No way to control alt crafting (needed due to their intro of time delay crafting)
• Legacy bank
• Auction house difficult to use which limits use and popularity of crafting
• No Global chat channels
• No Bulletin boards
• Long Travel Times
• Spaceports waste a ton of time
• High learning curve for abilities and limited ability to track them
• Simplistic Space combat
• No easy way to get back to your spaceship
• Space travel between planets is too long
• Spaceships are lifeless and waste a huge opportunity
• Planets feel dead
• Static NPCs
• No central gathering point
• Planet design is too linear without obvious hubs
• Quest design is poor so it likely to rerun an area multiple times to finish everything
• No safe zones to travel through areas which makes travel even more difficult
• Non Instanced dungeon design is bad - Respawns mean a fight in and a fight out.
• NPC sound bites triggers on the player and not to a location
• Better functionality for character placement when entering a cutscene

Of this list the items listed in RED have been fixed.  Of these things, the interface and the LFG system are the most important.  These were great improvements but unfortunately it isn't enough.  The biggest problem for Bioware is the questing/game-engire issues are massive changes with very little return since most players have already gone through that content I doubt that will ever happen before an expansion.

The defense most SWTOR fanboys give in defense of the above is that it takes time to implement some of the advanced features I listed. That is true to some degree. When WoW launched quite a few of these features didn't exist. The thing was many of us were noobs and the genre itself kept our attention for 6 months. I know I almost quit but it was about that point that Blizzard released PVP. Our other options were Everquest 2, City of Heroes, and Starwars Galaxies. None of them were deep enough really steal market. If WoW launched today they'd find it a lot tougher to keep players.  The thing is that I really doubt the Blizzard exec's would release it without key features.


What features are needed these days?

• Robust crafting system that is viable to use and to make money
• A method to ease grouping
• Ability to modify game interface/create macro's (not including combat macro's)
• Guild management system
• Minigames so players have something to do with limited time.
• In game events like the holiday events in WoW.
• Emmersive questing that makes players a part of the story
• A world with a definitive bad guy to hate and characters you fear/love
• Robust PVP system that allows massive PVP battles

What game do we currently have from Bioware?


Eight similar single player games using a broken game engine, dead worlds, limited space combat, decent PVP and a good LFG system.


Is it enough to get by until Bioware can develop the rest of the game?  I doubt it.  It isn't because of lack of fans.  I think there are enough fans to support it but I don't think EA/Bioware is willing to take the risk to put more money into the game.  Everything they've done over the last 3 months appears like they've made the decision to abandon the game.


In the last 3 months the lead game designer, community manager, and most of the writers have left the team.  This doesn't bother me too much as I really think some of them were part of the problem.  I often wonder if any of them have ever played an MMO before.  There are so many obvious issues that anyone I'd think anyone that ever played an MMO would be screaming at their co-workers lack of knowledge in meetings.  Anyone that watched the Guild Summit in March could see their inexperience first hand.


My hope is that when subs started to drop in Feburary, EA brought in advisers to review the game.  It was quickly decided they had a train wreck and a plan was put in place.  It's obvious that at some point it was decided that drastic action was needed.  The exodus of people form the game could indicate one of two things: 1) Massive cost cutting while attempting to squeeze every penny from the existing playerbase or 2) Prudent cost control to support the level of subscriber base combined with reinvestment to grow the game in the future.


Both of these are possible and frankly the answer is probably both options.  The real question is does EA have a plan and are they planning to reinvest.  EA/Bioware's communication has gotten increasingly worse since Stephan Reid was let go.  My suspicion he was let go is so EA could keep things quieter and have less impact on their stock price.  On Tuesday their silence will end as they have to announce their results for the the quarter ended on June 30th.  I'm interested in two things: What is their long term plan and what is the current subscription number?  If they don't answer either question it means they aren't planning on reinvesting as it would be stupid not to release that if they have good news.  I doubt they are that dumb so at the very least I expect lip service on the future plans.


The big news will be subscription numbers.  I really doubt they will give out easy to decipher numbers as the people playing for free will somehow be included.  My server usually has between 1200-1500 people online during the evening which leads me to believe that we've got around 12000-15000 subscribers.  Since there are a total of 27 servers worldwide that equates to about 500,000 subscribers.  If the numbers are truly that low we will never hear about it.


There are some people that still think the numbers are over a million which is patently ridiculous.  I can't imagine them being higher than 750,000 which would mean about 27,000 subs per server.  I guess we will see on Tuesday.


It's no lie to say this press conference will tell us everything we need to know on what to expect from the game's future.

A funny thing happened when I played 1.3

My last post is over a month ago and I thought I'd post what is happening in the game since the release of 1.3.

When the game was released I made many posts about what was wrong with the game.  The biggest flaw I ran into was a lack of community and any guild tools to encourage people to play together.  That was an issue in the early days of WoW but at the time there were many mega guild that formed on most servers that helped with the issue.  The other thing was the playerbase was continually growing so there was always people around eager to play.


With SWTOR's playerbase shrinking this has been an issue since the game was first released.  To this point the patches have done little to address the situation.  

• 1.1 was a content patch that added a few new flashpoints and new endgame.  Since most people weren't able to group up this content was mostly ignored.  
• 1.2 was called Legacy and was a massive update to the game which fixed many bugs included at launch and added a ton of content.  Many looked to it to save the game and somehow it acquired the nickname, 'The Jesus Patch'.  It mainly focused on adding the core innovation the designers included in the game which was to link all your characters on a server into a legacy.  The higher your legacy the more rewards you could get.  Unfortunately most of the 'rewards' were silly/overpriced and the content unreachable which caused a mass exodus from the game.
• 1.3 was called Allies and added one thing - a group finder.  At the same time they merged servers which put player population to levels that hadn't been seen since launch.  To those that remained in the game and actually used this feature it was like playing a whole new game.

Prior to 1.3 I played in 2 flashpoints total. Trying to form a flashpoint as dps was a frustrating exercise that took hours and usually ended in disappointment.  I tried to get into operations but because my gear wasn't good enough I was stuck at endgame.

That was the experience of most and as the playerbase continued to shrink it only got worse.

With the launch of 1.3 the playerbase issue was fixed and suddently it was easy to find flashpoint groups.  I've easily played in a hundred flashpoints in the month since 1.3 was released.  The funny thing is though the single player experience is still badly flawed and the game engine is one of the worst I've ever seen, the flashpoint experience is amazing.  Whoever put this together did an amazing job especially if you play flashpoints as you level.

My current situation is I have two level 50 toons that are ready for operations and am leveling a Republic toon mainly through flashpoints as I try to improve my tanking skills.  1.3 was a true game changer and made everything accessible.  It saddens me that this wasn't included at launch as I'd bet the game would sill have a million+ subscribers with an engaged community.

There are many other issues that plague the game (a ridiculous amount but that is for another post).  Players are willing to overlook a lot as long as the game is fun and accessible and there is a promise of future fixes.  When Ultima was launched there weren't any other options for online play.  If people wanted to play online they only had one choice which allowed them to make mistakes and learn on the job.  As competition arrived many companies failed because they ignored a simple concept I call the Fun to Total Playtime ratio (FtTP).  

The idea is simple and it is the sum of the 'fun' a player has in there limited game time.  For example, if someone only has 90 minutes to play (which is a max for most casual players) they have a few choices.  Here's an example of what I mean:

The beauty of most Xbox games is you turn on the machine and you are gaming.  The same is true of devices like the 3DS or even Ipads.  Gaming on a computer is different in that just getting your PC optimized to play the game can be a chore.  The experience has to be something better than Xbox or people won't put up with the hassle.

In the example above you can see that for most games the 'fun' is a constant but for MMOs it comes in spurts as you are able to experience content with other gamers (I'm ignoring everything but Flashpoints in WoW/SWTOR for the moment).  Before 1.3 most of your time was spent on the fleet looking for a group until it was past time you could finish a flashpoint which meant you'd start crafting, working the GTN, or leveling an alt.  It was a frustrating experience so is there any question why people left the game to other, more accessible games?

With 1.3 people could find a group within 10 minutes (this excludes leveling groups but that is a different issue).  The fun you could find int SWTOR went from being worse than playing a mindless game like TinyTower all night to as good as any Call of Duty type shooter in terms of player engagement.  It made SWTOR a new game.

If  you can't tell, patch 1.3 has re energized me. I'm having fun and I'd bet most people that have tried group finder feel the same.  There are dark clouds on the horizon but many of the 'idiot' designers that ignored the principles of FtTP are gone.  I just hope it isn't too late.