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.
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