Yeah I'm still playing it, the game actually gets fun at max level but only if you're into group stuff like raiding and pvp. A lot of my friends moved to it from WoW and its the only way to play with some of them. I totally agree though around Hoth I about said fuck this game. The only way to play this game is with other people imo.

@Jeff: Only you could make me remember that National Lampoon Magazine cover and the NLM CD collection box that had a slight variant of that dog. The only MMO game I played for any amount of time was the Gameloft version of WoW. Got to level 20 with two characters and never touched it again.

It's a little silly to become 'grossed out' by something like that. I don't play the game, but I've played other MMOs that sent me messages like that. It's not really that big of a deal.

I'm still having a blast in SW:TOR. While the endgame is still a little rough for my tastes, each storyline is great and well worth playing on its own. Exploring the dark and light side of each faction keeps the game fresh for me, and while I'm only on my 3rd storyline, the Agent and Trooper were stellar!

That said, I am playing it more like a single player game, but I can justify that. 50 bucks was worth the Agent storyline alone, I figure 15 bucks per additional storyline is worth it. When I'm finished with all the storylines I'll probably unsubscribe if the end-game is still in its current state, but I'm sure EA is kicking butts to make this game stay competitive.

Nothing negative per se....I just started playing wow finally with a friend, he's been bugging me forever and their "Refer a friend" program is/was a super easy way to dive into endgame content with him within 2 weeks, literally.
 
Two guys we play with regularly, internet acquaintances, stopped for star wars almost cold. They'd log on like 1 day a week for a few hours to raid with us. As of this week, they said they're done with star wars. I laughed because they were CRAZY about it a month ago, hyping it up, loving it, bagging on wow. As a new player to wow, but one with the understanding of many many MMO's and what wow achieves(and the mere time invested into it by blizzard), I don't care to defend it I just know it has a lot going for it. It was funny to see their instant turn around. Their complaints of wow being boring are now star wars being boring with unbalanced pvp and a bad endgame(yeah, the game came out a month ago, duh?)

"I don't think I've ever seen a more pathetic-looking attempt at player retention."

Wow, Jeff. Reading into it much?

Got to 31, realised I hated all the quests bar the class ones and cancelled. Won't be going back.

I've been taking it slow and playing several characters. I don't have anything over 25 so theres probably a lot of annoyances that I haven't hit yet, but I've had a good time so far. It isn't quite KOTOR 3 but I've realized that I'm a lot more tolerant of MMO -ness when it's set in a universe I like. I play a couple hours a day and hadn't really played a MMO since WoW, so I haven't gotten burnt out.

With the voice acting and high quality of the art assets, coming up with regular releases of new content is going to be the biggest bottleneck for the game. They'll probably have to merge servers and cut down subscription prices (or go free to play at some point) but if you play in moderate doses it's still a lot of fun.

I'll most likely be playing The Old Republic until Guild Wars 2 comes out. I think TOR is fun and after 6 years of WoW it's a nice change of scenery even if the game doesn't play especially different.

I really like the class quests and story stuff, but I also feel like that hurts the game as a MMO. I'm on a high population Server [The Harbinger] and there's not a whole lot of chatting going and very little community in general it feels. I have no urge to do any of the instances or heroic quests because the story stuff is vastly more interesting and would rather not waste time looking for a group to do 30 minutes of killing guys in a hallway.

It's a fun game and I'll keep playing, but like I said once Guild Wars 2 comes out I'll probably end up canceling as that's going to take up all my time.

Mostly done with it. Had a good time on my Inquisitor leveling up and putting in a decent amount of hours into their endgame scheme. Done with the classic WoW-template MMO endgame in general. Enjoyed the fuck out of the warzones, especially playing Huttball. Playing an alt (Powertech) every other day for a podcast or two. Only bummer, I have to alt-tab and turn off podcasts when doing class story conversations.

I'm ready for Guild Wars 2 and trying out its fresh spin on leveling and endgame.

Before I start on SWTOR, I should give a little background first. I played WoW for almost 6 years straight, and my main character was a Tauren (formerly an Orc before the race change surgery) Warrior, protection spec (tanking). I hopped off that bandwagon around the middle of last year, as my guild essentially fell apart due to all sorts of drama I won't really get into.

For a time I was obsessively into raiding - the kind with a weekly schedule and a very organized (and fair, if I do say so myself!) loot distribution system. Generally I was the main tank, and over the course of a couple guilds I raided a bit of the 40 person raids at first, a lot of the 25 person raids in the middle, and ending (like most other guilds post-Cataclysm and pre-Looking For Raid) with almost exclusively 10 person raids. So I think it'd be fair to say that I'm probably coming at SWTOR from a very particular perspective that isn't indicative of the vast majority of gamers out there.

Currently my main SWTOR character is a level 45 Republic Commando, gunnery specced (dps) - Major Zes Sternone. She's a hard ass - the kind that shoots first and asks questions later, doesn't suffer fools and is always ready to kill some Imps, especially for sport. M1-4X is her trustworthy, super-patriotic and totally cool with violence assault droid companion. He and my character are really on the same page in terms of just about everything. Side Note: M1-4X is easily one of my new favorite Bioware characters ever I say that with full knowledge that few characters may ever top Shale from Dragon Age, Wrex and Mordin from Mass Effect, or HK-47 from KOTOR. M1-4X is that awesome. My character's accomplishments include tracking down and defeating a group of traitorious scum who defected to the Empire, destroying an imperial super weapon in a mission structured somewhat similarly to the final mission of Mass Effect 2, and slept with her second in command.

For me, the fact that I can write that last paragraph at all says more about what SWTOR does well than anything else. My character actually has character. I can tell you about what has happened to her, what choices she has made, and how she fits into an overall world of conflict between the Empire and the Republic. This, to me, is one of the most striking differences between SWTOR and most other MMOs, and it is the game's best quality. In WoW, you are an observer to the main events of the story - it revolves almost exclusively around the characters that Blizzard themselves has created. Thrall, Jaina, Garrosh, Illidan, Arthas, Bronn Bronzebeard, Deathwing. These guys are (or should be) recongizable characters to many people, and your character in WoW bears witness and participates in major events involving those characters, primarily through raiding.

But thats just it - the questions involving story in WoW aren't "What will my character do?" Its "What will happen to Thrall?" "What happens after you defeat Arthas?" "Will defeating Kael'thas merely be a set back... again?" It's never about "What will your character do?" More importantly, most of that story content occurs in high end raiding. You don't see what happens to Deathwing at the end of Cataclysm (spoiler - you win!) if you don't go complete the latest raid. They have dramatically lowered the barrier to accessing the best story content over time, and thats great. But that is a new development.

In SWTOR, my story is ALL about my character. What she does. What happens to her. What choices she makes. The relationship she builds with her companions. To me, this is a new and compelling way of providing a story within an MMO framework, and as best I can tell in that regard theres no other MMO quite like it.

The game itself plays like WoW with a different coat of paint. Tanking is tanking, dps is dps, and healing is healing. Every class and spec has an ideal ability rotation to maximize damage or healing output, and the skill in the combat comes from mastering this rotation and reacting in time to environmental threats. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, assuming you like that kind of combat system. I do, for the most part. Its entirely fair to complain about technical things like ability lag, unbalanced server populations heavily favoring Empire over Republic, broken PVP on Illum, and so on. But by and large I think that if you are sold on that kind of a combat system already, then you won't find SWTOR in that regard to be a big change at all.

The game is missing a lot of things that a player like me is used to heavily relying upon, like more advanced "Grid style" health bars (current raid frames don't cut it), a much more customizable UI, an "Omen" like threat meter, and so on. This can be frustrating, especially since it appears as though Bioware is going to be taking the approach of simply providing more built in UI customization rather than letting the community run wild with addons. Its a good start to add that stuff in, but ultimately its not going to be enough.

I've paid for my second month, and I'll likely play for a bit longer, if only to play some other classes and see their storylines. I do not suspect I will be playing for 6 years or so like I did with WoW, because ultimately, for me, its sort of been there, done that. I've seen what Blizzard can do from a fight design perspective in dungeons, and most of the encounters I've experienced in SWTOR (at least in flashpoints, I can't fairly judge the operations since I'm not max level yet) so far match that similar kind of formula.

But the main thing that would bring me back, and keep me playing, would be the promise of regular and consistent additions to my class story. Anything else... and I'm probably not gonna be too excited. If Act 4 (at the very least!) for each character class is not out by the end of this year, I think they are in major trouble for retaining most of their playerbase.

Do I think the game would be better if it were more like Guild Wars in terms of how you purchase it? Absolutely. I'd especially be in favor of that in terms of server structure as well. They're already instancing everything - just take it to its logical conclusion and do away with servers altogether. Let me play with anyone I want, all the time.

But for now, I am playing and enjoying myself. For how much longer? Keep my story going, and I'm there. Give me side stories that everyone experiences... and they better be really really great. Its up to Bioware to deliver on the promise they've started with.

As crazy as it may sound for some people, i still love Star Wars(particuarly the Old Republic era because of how distant it is from the films). I'm lvl 44 with my Gunslinger and still having a lot of fun with the game. Are a few Flashpoints after the Esseles that have interesting story content, the one where you meet Revan for example is really exciting if your a Kotor fan.

Still have yet to see any Legacy content but that's part of the fun of playing MMOs. Seeing what new stuff comes out each month.

I'm still paying and playing because I like my smuggler and I can't pass up the opportunity to have a wookie life debt and corellian light freighter of my very own. I don't even hate the space stuff, though I would like to see it expand beyond a rail shooter in the future. So far I've been playing this game super casually and I'm fine with that. For me the fact that right now there is no "end game" doesn't really matter. It'll be months at the rate I'm going before I ever get there (I just hit 24 on my smuggler last night which is the main character that I play).

Personally I've always liked MMO's, the biggest bummer with them has been other people and in this game I have yet to interact with anyone I don't want to other than the occasional mob stealing fucktard, so to me that's a win.

In some ways I kinda wish this game was more of a disappointment for me because then it would be easier to just say "fuck it" and be done...I was failing at putting a dent in my backlog and just being more productive with my free time in general as it was :/.

I have a Jedi Knight at level 43. I'll probably get him to level 50, finish the story, and unsubscribe for a while. I have enjoyed my experience with SWTOR immensely, but there's no way I'm going to start a new character any time soon. Not to mention the fact that there are a ton of games coming out in the next month or so that I would much rather play.

@sofacitysweetheart said:

This is EA, after-all. Avoid, avoid and avoid. That email was probably filled to the brim with ads and phishing scams.

Don't hate EA, hate the EA hater. It's what the cool kids do.

@ashriels: Is that not what it is?

OT: MMOs always seem really limited to me with the parts that are enjoyable in them are much better in other Single Player experiences.

@Jeff

Yep, apparently Vette"eagerly awaits my return."

At a time like this, I feel that its my duty as an Englishman to give you our nations most acclaimed advice:

"Get in there my son!"

@ashriels said:

"I don't think I've ever seen a more pathetic-looking attempt at player retention."

Wow, Jeff. Reading into it much?

Yeah that is such a fucking whiny and jaded statement it's unreal!

I got to level 33 and stopped around 2 weeks ago. Got that email today.

I still have a month left though, so I want to go back in.

Sorry Jeff, but I don't see anything wrong with that email at all. Doesn't seem any more desperate or "Gross" than any other MMO email I've recieved trying to get me to re-sub. Mentioning a companion is clearly just an attempt at adding a personal touch that's ended up ham-fisted largely because of the inevitable automation process of these things.

Honestly, instead of trying to find out if SWTOR is crashing and burning, maybe throw a bone to the guys at Bioware/EA and hope they can build on & improve what they've made so far.

I don't play anymore.

Actually, I didn't stop because the game bored me, I stopped because it was apparent to me that I was going nowhere with SWTOR. So last week I said, fuck this, i'm quitting, even thought I could still play for like 20 more days. And guess what? I don't miss it at all. I've made about 10 toons, all to level 20 ish, and none of the classes appealed to me. Something felt seriously '' off '' every single time. Even my level 42 bounty hunter.

Long time ago, I realized MMO's aren't fun. They're actually a chore to trek through, until you carve your own fun out of it. But the time getting there is, often, not worth it. SWTOR has great ideas, but the corridor quests and instanced zones can only get you so far. I seriously applaud WoW for making a living, breathing world, unlike SWTOR's very static and bland planets.

I've got to 50 did some raiding completely geared up and was like hey this just turn into WoW, where i log in do nothing for countless hours or wait till new content arrives. /quit

I'm totally still playing! I haven't had too much time to play because of school but I'm slowly making it through my Inquisitor storyline and having a blast doing it. I'm aiming to eventually finish every class story but we'll see how it goes.

I love Star Wars, and I've had some fun with this game. I'm at twelve days of total playtime and I've cancelled my subscription.

PvP got irritating because my system isn't quite up to it (low framerates in warzones, probably due to my DDR2 RAM I've been told?).

I generally find that I'm getting bored of it for the same reasons I quit playing WoW after six(?) years.

If my PC could handle playing warzones better then I'd probably stick around for a while, I have two friends that are actively playing and doing PvP warzones with them has been a lot of fun despite my PC issues.

Generally I found it to be a very well put together game, and I enjoyed my time with it. I'll probably play some until my last month is out, I might even come back if there are more major content updates.

Don't like MMOs, don't like Star Wars but I like Bioware... didn't play the game because it was super expensive in my country for some weird reason.

Playing because of my guild and the prospects for the future.

They promised us a guild capitol ship. Those things sound prett cool.

@satansmagichat said:

Have you never quit an MMO before? Why is this strange?

^ This

Still playing as well. Things got a bit tedious around level 40 or so and I took about a week long break. The game is fine imo, I just get a little burned out on the current gen MMO-style of game right now (quit wow 4 months ago after playing for 5 1/2 years).

It's not as good as I had hoped, and feels lacking in the open world department. I mean, ya its open world but it feels so small in comparison to the other MMOs I enjoyed.  (examples being Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes/Villains, etc.)
 
I still really like this game, and think the story lines are fantastic. The game play isn't bad either, for an MMO. I haven't really grouped yet as there seems to be so very little incentive to do so, but all in all I think the game is lacking in "MMO aspects" but still fun to play. I have paid up for another 3 months I think it was. I'm fine with that so far. I also don't have a lot of time to play so my leveling is way slower then it used to be. 
 
I don't know, we'll see how it goes. I'm fine with giving them some money to play, I've never had a problem with that for games I like anyway. I'm just weird, though.

@Seppli said:

@sofacitysweetheart said:

This is EA, after-all. Avoid, avoid and avoid. That email was probably filled to the brim with ads and phishing scams.

Don't hate EA, hate the EA hater. It's what the cool kids do.

Pretty sure all the cool Internet kids are too busy whining about Call of Duty games and Activision to even notice the shit that EA gets up to.

No,sir, I am not. I was a WoW player for a while, though raided rarely, loved the Bioware take on story, so I thought, slam dunk. Played until I got my light saber, then I realized that I just wanted a single player game, and I wasn't ever really seek out other players. So now I play Skyrim, and it's cheaper in the long run.

Woow, that's weird. I just cancelled my account right before i read this.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/electronic-arts-reports-q3-fy12-financial-results-2012-02-01

Selected Operating Highlights and Metrics: -- Star Wars(R): The Old Republic(TM) has generated 1.7 million active subscribers and sold through more than 2 million units in a little over one month.

Waiting for free to play. It'll happen soon, this email is just the beginning. Soon they'll offer you incentives to return like items or in-game currency, and when those don't work they'll go free to play...they all do.

Not really no. I found it too sterile midway through and the performance issues in PvP were annoying me as well.

I've been playing way less since my Bounty Hunter hit 50, but I've been jumping in here and there to play a bit with an alt or run a dungeon on my main.

Now that I finished the story for my main character, the driving force for me is kinda gone, but I figure I'll slowly work my way towards the endgame and just jump into my Sith Inquisitor or Jedi Knight whenever I crave some new story.

I already paid for the next three months, so I'm definitely gonna keep playing for now, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with the Legacy system. If it speeds up the leveling process for my alts, I'll start rerolling all over the place.

I've never played an MMO, but isn't this really just like anything subscription based?

I am not

My subscription is still active, but I pretty much only play it when I go to my friend's house every other weekend and LAN. Every time I get into a grindy mmo-y part of the game, I just keep thinking "man, this just feels like a slightly worse WoW." And I already play WoW. And when I don't want to play WoW, I don't want to play a slightly worse WoW, I want to play Skyrim, or TF2, or something very not-WoW.

But it really is just too much fun lanning it, up getting drunk and laughing about the dialog choices we pick in flash points and quests, killing people in whatever they call battlegrounds in that game, and generally having the "new MMO" experience. I just can't do that in WoW because I already know too much about the game.

Also, I turned off the notifications about what dialog choices were light/dark, and just do what I think my character would do, and just don't worry about the light/dark stuff. I think that definitely enhanced my enjoyment of the game, especially when the light/dark thing pops up in seemingly totally inappropriate situations.

If the Old Republic was KOTOR 3 and was offline then I would be playing it everyday, cause I really don't give a fuck about some stupid ass MMORPG. They fucked over the fans of the franchise by making this an mmorpg. I hope it fails.

@IAmNotBatman said:

Is that not what it is?

It's a marketing tactic to get people to play. I'm sure that Jeff being an older guy who reviews games for a living may be weary of such trickery, but the game has a teen rating!

It appeals to young and old alike. Most people aren't journalists and don't mind these things, kind of like most people don't mind television commercials. It's not a big deal.

I don't see this kind of email as gross at all, and it's pretty common in the MMO space. When I was playing pay-to-play MMOs, it was actually nice to get the reminder at the end of the month so I could go pick up another time card and not get stuck being unable to play for a bit. The whole, "your companions need you" bit is pretty cheesy, but it doesn't bother me.

I'll probably play this if it ever goes free to play, or if at the very least, the client becomes free. The main issue being that the client is some 20~GB in size, and running on an 80GB bandwidth cap, I'd have to be sure I was going to invest the time in it for that download to be worthwhile.

Still playing, and basically playing a single player game. After I finish with my current character, I'll roll another one, and keep going until I get through all of the classes. Of course, the only game I'm looking forward to playing this year is Mass Effect, so I plan on having a lot of non-new game time

Shit, I'm still playing it in the Giant Bomb guild...haven't come upon Hoth yet, but thus far I'm finding it a thoroughly entertaining experience. It was actually the Bombcast that got me playing...tho folks were well-sick of the game in the cast that went up more or less IMMEDIATELY after I made the purchase.

I want to be playing TOR, but STO fits my financial situation better right now.

Nope, I'm not playing anymore. Same thing happened as has happened with many MMOs before. I get to late teens, early 20s for my character level, and I realize that it's the same fucking MMO as every other, and that I'm already tired of it. I keep looking to the genre for change and innovation, but never find it. Adding dialogue trees doesn't count as a big enough leap to me, when the overall gameplay is exactly the same.

Here's a whole bunch of words no one will read, but I still am and I like it a lot. Unlike seemingly everyone, I'm loving Hoth. As a native buffalonian and someone who took lots of ski trips, the arctic setting is both comforting and inviting to me. Traveling across snow and ice, with huge snowy mountains in the background, is exactly the type of adventurous setting I love. And its heightened by the amazing environmental art the game has. Worlds aren't Vanguard sized, but they look like they COULD be and you're just seeing part of it. Buildings that should be huge are huge, and the art gives you a sense that you're actually somewhere. Which I haven't felt since Lotro's Moria.

More importantly, I'm engaged in my story. As a Jedi Consular, I'm excited about what's happened, what is happening, and what could happen next. The Jedi stories start slow, but I'd tell everyone to keep with them. They may start out kinda boring, but they heat up and go incredible places. I also like the way my character looks, I like my abilities, and I've come to love the inserts I have to say in conversations. The redundant alien language conversations I've managed mostly to avoid, as I'm consistently overleveled. I'm 40 and I've just started Hoth, I'm likely to hit 41 before I'm anywhere near halfway done. Bonus missions become less important once you have a few sets of orange gear that you like the look of, and once you've got that done it's just a matter of commendations or friends to keep you up to date.

Playing as a team of 3(our 4th had a wierd schedule and then flew out ahead of us), it's been also really interesting to see where other people's stories have went. The smuggler and trooper I've been playing with haven't really liked their act 2s, but they've been loving my act 2 for all of its galactic heft and jedi ass jediness. Being able to free a planet and then leave them with an obtuse jedi proverb that makes the crowd scratch their head was AMAZING. Similarly, the Jedi Prisoner flashpoint series was shockingly awesome for our group who played through both KOTOR1 and KOTOR2. I won't tell you what happens, but it revealed a lot and also raised the stakes on the conflict.

I can see lots of quality of life issues in the game. Airlocks, for one. Crafting being dudes you send out is really nifty when you're doing things, but... when you've got nothing else to do and just wanna make stuff it becomes more of a hassle than a boon. As a man who enjoys a good crafting session, that bothers me. End game issues seem to abound, with PvP gear and balance being all crazy and operations being bugged and there just not being all that much overall. But as cliche as it is, that's sort of the way all MMOs are. And for as much as swtor HASN'T changed things, being able to talk to my quest givers and choose the way things go is a big deal. It makes me feel more invested in the story, because I am. I can't count the amount of times in MMOs when I was forced to do something awful just because a quest said I had to. Those sorts of things showing up and me being able to refuse them is one of the best things that could be added to an MMO for me.

I not only enjoy Star Wars as it is now, I can't help but to feel hopeful that things will get better for it too. I've long believed that MMOs are often at their worst at launch, and barring something catastrophic, tend to only improve over time. I'm excited for the future of the game, and enjoy the game as it is now.

Also every mmo has those things. It's just for customer retention.

I quit for now. I'll go back one day but I think I overplayed it

@Branthog said:

Maybe MMOs will achieve something beyond the 2004 WoW gameplay in another decade. I sure hope so.

Guild Wars 2.

If i had a gaming PC that could run it, i most likely would be.

Sadly i don't, i do have around $700 saved up towards a PC and i know i could build one that could run it i just know nothing about building so i am just gonna continue saving till i can afford the MX18 laptop or something.

@Mordukai said:

@habibyjohnson said:

dont care bout star wars?!

Is it that hard to get? I also don't care about Star Wars. I enjoyed Empire as a movie but that's about it. IMO Star Wars is an overrated, over-bloated bubble gum pop sci-fi created in order to satisfy it's creator's desire to get into the toy business.

Yeah, I'm sure that was the master plan the whole time. Way to sound like a dick.