Hey, Are You Still Playing Star Wars: The Old Republic?

I was never interested in SWTOR and never played any of it, but I would guess that if they're sending round marketing emails like this already, the drop off has been pretty severe. EA made a large gamble on this and I'm not sure it's going to pay off.

I'm definitely still playing, although not as much as I wish I was. School's keeping me too busy(and I caught a nasty cold). I'm creeping up on level 30 and am still a huge fan of what brought me to the game in the first place: The stories, the combat(I like MMO combat), and the Star Wars theme.

I think it's a bit of an over reaction to call it desperate. I feel like it's more a community manager masturbating or patting himself on the back that they could send out' cute' emails about companions missing people to remind them to get back in the game.

"Great idea, right guys!? My job is totally justified! You needed to pay someone to come up with such a creative way to get people to log back in."

I'm still playing, but I'm not an MMO veteran. I didn't race to the level cap, I don't care about PVP or end game content. I am paying to play, and however long it takes me to do that is part of the experience. I just want to enjoy my class story, and when it's all over (though there is no end in sight) I'll start up another class and see that story through.

I have no intention of just hanging around at lvl 50 for better loot or anything. That seems like it's for crazy people.

Still greatly enjoying the game, me and 2 friends play regularly (we do group quests and flashpoints together, but all the story and side quests alone, works out well). If I had to guess, I'll get sick of it in 2-3 months after I see a few more character stories through.

I am still playing. I will admit I am pretty sick of generic mmo quests, but I love my story a lot. Its really pushing me forward and I am really interested to see how it plays out. I like the flashpoints because they are quick and you can run them as many times as you want. I enjoy the crafting system a lot too. Also three of my friends have the game, if I was playing by myself it might be different.

Payed for a full month of the game's time after the free one, but haven't actually used any of that time almost at all. I got a Bounty Hunter up to 29 and just lost interest.

It's worth noting this says more about my level of burnout on MMOs in general than the games quality. I think it's a fine, if highly unrefined (which shouldn't piss anyone off, the game is a month old and way better than WoW was at a month old) experience with the single best approach to plot development in an MMO to date.

That being said, when I do go back into MMOs, it'll probably be to WoW. Couldn't care less about the Star Wars setting (though in all honest the warcraft setting has become so painfully trite and cliche it's literally unbearable. the victory cutscene after deathwing is goddamn garbage) and it doesn't have the insane level of polish WoW has and continues to maintain.

Yeah, I'm still playing. My Mercenary dude is up to Level 37 and I'm going to keep playing for at least a little while longer... probably up to when Mass Effect 3 comes out.

• Am I enjoying it? Yes.
• Is it the best game ever? No.
• Did it come out at the perfect time, when the release calendar was unbearably shitty and after I'd finished Skyrim? Without a doubt.
• Am I grateful that I can play it without having to play with other people? Yes indeed.
• Is it repetitive and tiresome? Certainly.
• Will I renew in 6 months? ...Maybe, if I decide to re-roll. Which I might; I wouldn't mind seeing the Jedi side. This mostly depends on if the 2012 console release schedule improves.

I'm still having fun, inasmuch as running around killing things for XP is fun. I think it's remarkably stable for a launch MMO, with great production values. I've enjoyed my character's story. I've certainly gotten my money's worth.

Bought the game about 2 weeks ago, been enjoying my time. But really don't see this as an on-going relationship. The good parts of that game is few and far between, and lots of design decisions seem to be purposely, for the lack of a better term, wasting my time.

I think if it wasn't Star Wars, there wouldn't be a news post about it..

I'm still subscribed, but haven't played in a couple weeks. I plan on coming back for PVP after I catch up on xbox games.

@mosdl said:

I've gotten such emails before from other mmos, at least this is personalized.

Game is fun, the community seems to be mature where teamplay actually works. GLHB!

I don't know that I'd call it personalized in as much as every other person with that companion got that message. That was, in fact, one of the ridiculous things about playing this game. Everywhere you walked, you passed dozens of people wandering around with the exact same companion as you. Of all the MMOs I've ever played, this felt the most like a single-player MMO.

I don't know why I keep falling for it, but every year, I end up buying a new MMO. Playing it 5-15 days. Realizing how stupid it is, then quitting (except EVE, which I played for about five years). It's one of the more expensive lessons that I never manage to learn.

Still playing, got two characters at 50 that I mess around with and still enjoying the game a lot.  
I would be stocked to be one of these people whining about the End Game content because that means they have played it and that's fucking cheating because everyone else doesn't even have the End Game content in the game yet so they have like Magical accounts or something like that, or they're lying.  I'm loving all the nods to the previous games (well, mostly Kotor 1 and not so much 2)  and just reading the codex stuff and hanging out with my little online buddies and female buddies(whatever they're called)

The greatest con Bioware ever pulled was convincing people to pay $15 a month for a single player game with some multiplayer tacked on.

@Vincenzo said:

I got to level 18 and then promptly canceled before the free trial ended.

There's a free trial?

I still play.

My friends and I have a casual raid guild and we're having some degree of fun running content. It's fun to have a game in common to hang out with and play in and I am genuinely interested in seeing Bioware's story for all eight characters. I plan on playing until I'm done with their stories, at the very least, but my playtime has fallen off considerably from the 200 hours I poured into it from Dec to late Jan.

It's a shame to see people unhappy with the game and cancelling their subscriptions as i'm actually really enjoying it. Saying that though, I am a fan of Star Wars, so I really like the story. I want to continue playing the game to see how my character progresses. I like levelling up, and being able to use new equipment/unlock new skills. I also think the community is excellent as well. If I am stuck, or if I need a group, I just ask away in the general chat and my fellow ToR players come to my aid.

I don't have as much spare time as most people do to play games so instead of putting in 50-60 hours a month into it, i may only get 20-25, so over the coming months, with more updates and content, I can only see the game getting better.

What's next? Your companion is sold into Twi'lek sex slavery.

"which gives is a"

now they're definitely gonna kill your vette

I'm still enjoying the hell out of it. The biggest thing I think is what are you looking for in a game. I don't care for raiding or "endgame pvp," but I've loved Star Wars since I was a kid, I greatly enjoyed KotOR, and most of all I enjoy "playing" a character. WoW and other MMOs have mostly focused on the "game-y-ness" whereas Bioware focused on the journey you're provided, my character in other games is devoid of any personality or reason to exist outside of killing things for their things. With my TOR characters, they have a goal and a reason in everything they're doing, sure it can be kinda forced depending on your tastes but it's the first MMO to justify to me why I'm playing it in the form of story I legit enjoy. I can see many of the arguments and complaints against the game but it provides something other MMOs don't and has the kind of priorities that draw me in. To each their own on if the game is "fun" but to me it's a blast :)

Is it just me or is Jeff ranting about progressively dumber shit as time goes on?

Anyway, still playing it, still loving it. Agent story line is fantastic! Currently at 45, have every intention of going to 50. Of the many other MMOs I have played, only took a toon to max level one other time (COH). And once I get to 50, Ill probably roll another character and keep enjoying it.

Not a fan of Star Wars to keep playing. It's a normal MMO with voiceover, i don't see the point in paying monthly.

I think the issue with SWTOR is that the people that want to play it know that they're just going to add content on the back end to continue making it appealing. For such a story-focused game, there's zero reason to play through it right now because the narrative isn't close to being complete. That's why I haven't picked it up, even though I loved the beta.

They also know that EA spent so much money on it, there's no way they'd just shut it down when so many MMOs have reported record earnings when going F2P.

If I see the boxed game for under the cost of a month of play, I'll pick it up. Otherwise it's just money thrown out the window, or airlock, or whatever the Star Wars equivalent of that is.

@Jeff: Totally still playing. I find it laughable that people think one character to 50 equals "end game". All the stories are different. The content is the stuff on the way there, not the stuff that happens after, but that will get added. This game is meant to be played with alts. The game doesn't start like other games when you get to 50. All of the stories tie in to an overarching story line. If it ain't some peoples cup of tea i totally understand, but at least ToR didn't fall into the grind trope with only one way to get to level cap for all characters. That would suck.

Hit the level cap. Saw that my computer was too shitty for anything other than leveling. Which left absolutely nothing to do. So I am no longer logging in.

Maybe in the future when they add more content, fix the many problems, make a decent UI, and I get an upgraded computer, it will be worth looking into again.

I was playing it daily.

Then STO went F2P.

Now I'm rolling with my crew, killing Borg. Life is good.

Playing and enjoying it. But I only play 2-3 times a week with a couple of people. Both of them are married with Children so playtime is limited. Good time with it so far. Since the game came out I've only made it to like level 28 so it's slow going.

@Vincenzo said:

I got to level 18 and then promptly canceled before the free trial ended.

I am back to WoW. Games like SWTOR do not have true open, discoverable, explorable worlds. That matters.

It wasn't free2play from the get go because they dumped $200 million into its original budget. Once / IF they recoup that, hopefully they will make it free2play for the people who do wish to continue to play it.

P.S. THIS was a pretty desperate attempt to get people to STAY subscribed : http://www.swtor.com/info/founders

Wait - what? SWTOR is not open, discoverable, or really explorable, but neither is WoW. That is crazy that you would reference that as the game you fled back to for those kind of features. I have yet to see any MMO (except EVE, which is just too much of a time sync) that is any of those things. MMOs are some of the least open, lease creative, least discoverable, least interactive games out there. If they weren't, then we wouldn't have twelve million people play the exact quests in the same order to accomplish the same things with the same kinds of characters and same pets/companions doing the same things.

I guess that's why I keep being drawn back to MMOs. I keep hoping "maybe this one will be more alive and have more depth and not just be a single player game that I occasionally can play with other people". So far, they just keep rehashing the same thing. I guess the only exception to that which isn't EVE is A Tale In The Desert, but that's such an entirely different style of game to begin with.

For the sake of my brother's guild, I keep playing. Though, I have to admit, I'm struggling. I just tried today. I started a new planet. Found it's basically the same as all the other planets and just could bring myself to play more. I went and took a nap instead. I'm trying real hard to stick with it but I'm losing interest, fast. The real turn-about happened when I found out that end-game is on such a different level that nothing I bring from the rest of the game, be it skills, crafts or equipment, is good enough. The last thing I want is to find that the millions of credits (let alone, dozens of hours) I spent raising crew skill is meaningless because you can buy stuff better than anything you can craft. Yuck!

@CL60 said:

Hey Jeff, you know emails like that are common for MMOs? ... Blizzard sends them all the time.

Nope, it's news.

I made it to the late 30's before cancelling.

My Bounty Hunter's class quest totally ran out of steam/direction, and every other quest seemed to be an insultingly generic MMORPG killtask, vaguely justified with a couple lines of boilerplate dialog.

I wasn't expecting much more than that, though. My fondest memories of MMOs are from the days when they were actual open worlds-- not theme parks that you look at from the rails of the quest-train. That was a long time ago, though, and the genre just moves further and further from it.

The class quest stuff did almost deliver on the promise of "more KOTOR," but there was just so much killtask filler to slog through in between each class quest that I lost all interest, let alone interest in rolling up another character.

Knowing that the end-game will suck for a while (just like it did in WoW at launch), I'm taking my time leveling and enjoying the stories. It's not my favorite game of all time but I'll play it for a while and see where it goes.

got to level 50, lost interest and cancelled. I feel like I got my money's worth.

Cancelled my account before the end of the first billing cycle. The little annoyances that give me MMO fatigue are all still in there, and the story elements, while cool, just don't really work over time with the way that genre is paced.

I don't regret my purchase, had fun with the game especially over the holidays. But I also don't feel the desire to pay monthly for more, even without hitting a level cap. Sucks for my companions.

I'm still playing and very much enjoying. I have 1 level 50 character and 7 level 18+ characters (goal is to finish each class story).

I really don't understand the hate but maybe my expectations were very different going in. I wasn't looking for a ground breaking new experience. I wanted to play an MMO with characters and a story that I could actually give a shit about. Mission accomplished. Now if only people would just take a deep breath. It's a video game. Try to have fun with it and if you're not enjoying it then please at least try not to ruin it for the people who are.

hit lv42 then it got so slow and boring. couldn't do it anymore

Let's go free to play, I want to get into it.

This story seems pointless.

Cancelled my subscription as soon as the 30 days were up. This was my first experiment with mmos since I loved KOTOR and wanted to play anything that carried that series forward. But after playing for a couple of days, I realised I don't really like playing with other people in these types of games. I tried to play it like it was KOTOR 3 solo but just got so bored. Not to mention the fact that I have to pay monthly to play it, which adds extra pressure to play. If there is one thing that I never want from a videogame, its constant pressure to play it.

So in conclusion, please make a single player KOTOR game.

I sat back and waited when this game finally came out. As horrible as it may sound, I was looking forward to something like a not-broken Galaxies with player-driven economies and stuff, similar to some of the fun I had playing Ragnarok Online and using some of the events as an excuse to make lots of Zeny, to more or less take advantage of the game's world instead of playing a thoughtful, but in the long run, hemmed-in and limited stream. What I mean to say is that I wanted a world that the players ran. I had that unfortunate expectation.

Anyway, I was more or less in the camp after seeing videos and reviews and anecdotes that 'I'd rather have a single player game to play'

The attempt to get you to come back is pretty lame. It's an emotional appeal. The web gaming website 'omgpop' will give you game money every time you leave the website alone for a long time since there are cosmetic, and eventually, gameplay-related purchasables for you to spend that game money on. They *actually* bribe you to come back. The Star Wars appeal is just cute.

@Jeffsekai said:

@CL60 said:

Hey Jeff, you know emails like that are common for MMOs? ... Blizzard sends them all the time.

Nope, it's news.

Of course it is!

@Dezztroy said:

I was playing it daily.

Then STO went F2P.

Now I'm rolling with my crew, killing Borg. Life is good.

That's the one thing I can say about SWTOR. It kept my interest longer than STO did. I played STO for five days, before quitting (but I only actually played it two times in those five days). I played SWTOR for almost two weeks.

Yeah, it's gross, but not surprising. They have so much riding on this game and they will take any chance they can get to lure people back for an extra month or two. Remember how they announced the "Founder" title right when the initial free game time for initial players was running out? Yeah, it was not enough to have participated in the beta tests or having pre-ordered the game months in advance - nope, you wouldn't get recognized as a "Founder" unless you forked out money for another month.

This still isn't as bad as when Funcom acted like they were holding my account for ransom, claiming that they would delete all my characters if I did not return to Age of Conan. The emails were borderline threats.

I am, but only with a couple of friends, and we only play PVP. Everything else is monotonous and boring. I do not know how much longer I will hold out, but I have spent so much time that I feel almost obligated to stay. However, it is not fun, it is not as good a Bioware game as Mass Effect, so as soon as that comes out, I am done. I would rather wait for Guild Wars 2 or Tera, for a new take on the MMO formula.

@Jeffsekai said:

@CL60 said:

Hey Jeff, you know emails like that are common for MMOs? ... Blizzard sends them all the time.

Nope, it's news.

You guys are all aware this is just as much an editorial site as a news site right? Hell, if not more.

Not everything that goes on the front page has to be HOLY SHIT BREAKING NEWS MODERN WARFARE CANCELED FOR LIFE!!!!!

So it can have content that is just a dude talking about something he found weird about a video game. Though it is definitely true mmos send out stuff like this often.

I haven't logged in since reaching level 10 as I can't even walk through a major city without unexcusably low fps. At the same time I have my settings to max in skyrim.

Something is wrong with that game.

Cancelled my account today!

I'm still enjoying it quite a bit! I alternate between two or three characters, but will most likely play through all eight to see the full story. My favorite part is that I can just play it as a single player game. The PvP warzones are fun, but other than grouping with a few friends from time to time, that's the only time I view it as an "MMO."

It's really just eight KOTORs in one, and that is pretty awesome if you ask me.

I'm glad that I stopped playing MMOs and have no wish to return to one. As with many, I would prefer another single player KotOR title. No, I will not return, nor did I sign on with this game to begin with.

I'm still playing.  I can see myself slowing down during months when big games are released (late February through March I might not login)... but when June comes and things are dead again, I'll go back.
 
1) Story.  The stories are fun, I can see how you'd begin to burn out if you're trying to cram it all into a couple weekends.  The common tropes of any game start to appear if you cram it down.  Every quest in SWTOR is "we need X but these guys stole it go get it back!" just like every quest in Skyrim is grabbing the Helm of Winterhold from an ancient crypt.  As someone who roleplays within story sequences (the characters aren't me, they have their own personalities), I find it fun switching from a patriotic, dutiful trooper to the wisecracking, credits-obsessed scoundrel to an absolutely ruthless dark jedi.
 
2) Gameplay.  The regular mobs you kill in quests are pretty plain, yes.  But that's why I do the heroic quests and the flashpoints (the group stuff you tend to ignore).  That's where the challenge ramps up to a level I like, not completely menacing, but demanding you actually use your abilities properly rather than just spamming basic attack.  It also probably didn't help that you were playing Marauder, who definitely has the most vanilla combat out of all classes.
 
3) Giant Bomb Guilds.  The folk in Good Luck Have Bothans are great, although they are shrinking a bit.  That's kind of a bummer.  I'll be adding to it myself when I start Syndicate, Amalur, Darkness, Mass Effect, Silent Hill...
 
I guess that's about it.  I bought the 6 month package because I like to be able to just dump into my MMO whenever I get the urge.  And for the couple hundred hours or more I've got out SWTOR thus far, I'd say it's easily worth it.