Funny SWTOR rant post from Eurogamer

I read an article at Eurogamer about SWTOR that was interesting but the best part was the comments as some people obviously put a lot of time into them.  The consistency of their feelings makes me really wonder where the designers heads were when they developed the game.  Here's some of my favorites:

I think this guy sums up a lot of people's feelings which is a bad sign for the August profit call:

Well if you turn up to a party and there is no one there, and the people there are all upset because the party is shit, you're gonna want to leave; whether you are a casual party-goer or hardcore party master. Umm did that make any sense?

I am playing SWTOR and basically the game feels very empty and quiet. I am only playing it co-op until all the story is done, pretty casual maybe. I did play WoW fairly hardcore until it broke me and pretty serious in general about my gaming. So this guy at EA can suck my left nut when I quit my subs when I run out of story and there is nothing but a few daily quests left...

Someone else picked up on executive's comment that is a perfect metaphor for SWTOR:

"Star Wars: The Old Republic: it's more important than Tiger Woods PGA Golf."

This guy hit many of the same things that has upset me:

I was one of the hopefuls that wanted this to be the best thing since bacon. Bought the CE and all. Unfortunately i didnt find what i was looking for.

The negative points that really put me off were these:

1) Levelling was way too quick. And once you got there, there wasnt that much to do. Most of the time i was just getting into the storyline of the current zone, you know, when it really starts to get good, and then you realise you're way above the level of the zone, more than halfway through the next zone's lvl range, and can pretty much skip it and move onto the next! Some zones were pretty nice, and the story was great but you ended up skipping it entirely coz it just got too easy and the gear was too low level.

2) Lack of diversity when levelling an alt. My first toon was a BH, and it was awesome. My second one was an IA, and i was a bit irked that i had to play through the same zones right after going through them not so long ago with my main. Then i started a SW and beside the starting zone, the rest of the planets were the same! Yes i know the story makes the difference, but i still feel that there should have been more options. If the game was truly story driven, then you should have had real "left or right" choices that make you take completely different routes, even if you're dark/light in both.

3) Maps were sickeningly linear. You couldnt really go out and explore the world. There was a path, and you had to run on it. The SWTOR World is huge as it has so many planets, but you never really get an idea of this size as you're always running on corridors. The planets do become quite open as you level further, but i just dont like to have run around a set path with every toon for 200 times each time i quest in that zone. I missed the freedom of choosing if i wanted to climb that thing over there or just wander off in a direction for more then 10 mtrs.

$) Mounts. All the money for very little speed. 'nuff said

I really hope that the devs keep working hard on this and make it into something that can keep players having fun. In my opinion, they just launched the game and they're already trying to catch up with demands of players. Personally, i think that if the levelling speed at launch was 50% of what it is now, they would have given themselves more time to work on fixes, and more time for people to enjoy the content.

I might reactivate 6 months from now if i'm in the mood to see what has been improved, but not for now. 

This guy was upset that the executive claims about the titles launching in the next few months:

"They're not the Star Wars fantasy. It's not the big expansive universe that appeals to so many people worldwide."

And exactly where is this 'big expansive universe' in your Star Wars game, Mr. Gibeau? I wasn't able to find it while bashing tedious mobs through the sterile pipeline planets, where there was nothing to discover or explore, nothing to make me feel I was in the galaxy far far away.

"You continually perfect the experience."

So obviously you will get rid of the horrible FPS engine and the over-instanced planets, where the players watch loading screens as much as they play, and where you almost never see anyone because most of the servers are emptying and the instances isolate players from each other. Obviously you will also add the day/night cycle because a MMO in the year 2012 without one is just unforgivable.

And while you are at it, just change everything. Change the art direction to something that actually makes the world and the characters look personal and living. Change the gameworld so there is something fascinating and inviting in the planets. Give the game at least a little bit of soul and atmosphere.

Because with this clinical, tasteless wreck, it's shameful you use the words like "perfection" and "expansive" in the same sentence.

A slightly different take from above with similar themes:

There were a number of things that put me off the game, and they all add up:

1) The amount of walking. See: Alderaan as the worst offender. The constant back and forth at spaceports, Coruscant, the list goes on and on. Yes, ok, some of the scenery is nice, but 20 hours later and not much of relevance happening = dead bored.

2) no real sense of impact. Complete a mission, come back 5 minutes later and it's all spawned back. Every time. Granted this is a staple of MMOs, but having come from Mass Effect 3, seeing ME3's DNA here and then have it all totally squandered. Meh... since all the servers are instanced anyway, can't we have dynamic world states...

3) The uselessness of the upgraded speeders. Seriously, after 200,000 credits later, the speeder level 2 is only marginally faster than the 50,000 level 1. The benefit is not proportional to the cost.

4) Stupid independent taxi systems. *cough* dromund kaas *cough*

5) The repeated colour-swapped content across classes. It's absolutely no fun to go through as an alternate class on the same dark or light side, 7 times out of 10 the story ends up at the same place, and it was a fight to go through half these storylines the first time.

6) The space missions. Fun at first, but there's only 5 real levels in the entire game, counting both dark and light sides, all others are variations of the core 5 with ships swapped around or the difficulty increased. Dead boring by level 50. Sapce should have been much closer to a cross between Star Trek Online and X Wing vs Tie fighter than Star Wars Rebel Assault. It would go a long way to add some sense of exploration and it's an easy way to remove the linearity of the ground missions. 

I really didn't have a point with this other than to say that outside the SWTOR bubble opinions on this game are pretty much the same.  The only thing that varies is your willingness to put up with a shoddy effort to play in the Star Wars universe.