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
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
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.
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