Tor is not the most beloved MMO, by any stretch of the imagination. Most people agree that it going F2P was a sign it was not doing well. Of course, some games going F2P meant they earned LOTS of money, but ToR has a lot of hype to live up to, even now. Another team might want a new SW MMO, and if that happened, ToR might be closed like Galaxy before it.

Now, as much as many people don't like ToR, I know a LOT of people think the storylines in the game are GREAT. When I played, they were by far the best part of the game. When they announced it was going F2P I was excited to see more of them, but hearing some of the restrictions dampened that. That said, there is still the doomsday senerio. If F2P DOESN'T catch on and the game dies, it will all be gone.

Ryan said that the best parts of an MMO are the beginning and the end, and I could kind of see where he was coming from. But in a game like ToR? Where the best part is honestly in the middle? I think losing it would be a huge loss to people who like great stories in games.

Then they shouldn't have made an MMO.

I honestly have ZERO interest in any more MMO's. If they close down TOR, for a proper KOTOR game on the next gen systems I am all for it. Honestly, Bioware would have made a hell of a lot more money doing exactly that. For a fraction of the cost.

I think the point that people agreed that it wasn't doing well was after the 30 day free trial period ended for day 1 purchasers.

TOR doesn't have a great story. I don't think anybody is missing out on not playing TOR as getting to the story bits involves grinding through 50+ hours of really boring gameplay. There is no loss for people that like story in games cause there's plenty of better playing games that have a hell of a lot better stories than this.

Edit: And i should say I was one of those day one purchasers.

EA will milk SWTOR for all its worth in an effort to not have such a massive loss from the game, much like Warhammer before it (which is still going), so it's not going anywhere. It also has the name Star Wars in the title and thus will do comparetively well regardless.

I feel that both Bioware and players where simply mistaken. It is true that story is often just an excuse to perform some repetitive mini-game in the MMOs but Bioware and players failed to realize is that going to the other extreme isn't the fix because they ended up with a rich story that setup the repetitive mini-game. In other words, the silly quest structure was the real issue.

So I'm indifferent about TOR. I might have some great story (dunno...does it?) but if it requires me to pick up N bot power cores by kill X number of rampaging droids, then wants me to be FedEx and take that box over to an NPC on another planet who then wants me to kill an "elite" for an item they have, return it to them so they can assemble the McGuffin then no thanks where it doesn't matter if there is some intriguing dialog at the start and end.

@Jazzycola said:

I think the point that people agreed that it wasn't doing well was after the 30 day free trial period ended for day 1 purchasers.

TOR doesn't have a great story. I don't think anybody is missing out on not playing TOR as getting to the story bits involves grinding through 50+ hours of really boring gameplay. There is no loss for people that like story in games cause there's plenty of better playing games that have a hell of a lot better stories than this.

Edit: And i should say I was one of those day one purchasers.

I really don't agree. I mean, it's not going to win any awards in the story department, but I think with it's Mass effect style interactivity system, it really shines. I know for me my favorite part of the game was the scenes where I was choosing a dialogue option (Which highlights how boring the actual gameplay was...)

To people saying they should have just made a new Kotor instead of an MMO, I didn't agree at the time it was coming out, because I thought the game would be really fun (I was a day one purchaser as well) and if done well I think it would have been an amazing game. But that's not what we got.

@EXTomar said:

I feel that both Bioware and players where simply mistaken. It is true that story is often just an excuse to perform some repetitive mini-game in the MMOs but Bioware and players failed to realize is that going to the other extreme isn't the fix because they ended up with a rich story that setup the repetitive mini-game. In other words, the silly quest structure was the real issue.

So I'm indifferent about TOR. I might have some great story (dunno...does it?) but if it requires me to pick up N bot power cores by kill X number of rampaging droids, then wants me to be FedEx and take that box over to an NPC on another planet who then wants me to kill an "elite" for an item they have, return it to them so they can assemble the McGuffin then no thanks where it doesn't matter if there is some intriguing dialog at the start and end.

From what I heard, they spent huge amounts of money on all the VAing and stuff, so yes, they might have just focused too much on that and not enough on gameplay.

I LIKE MMOs and I still couldn't like ToR. It's just a badly designed game.

Oh and that reminds me of a flaw: Tying gear to the morality system is a bad idea. Gaining light/dark points unlocks gear so why bother asking the player for input?

Don't get it confused; Not being a big success or earning back the massive amount of money EA spent on development does not mean the game is in danger of being shut down. While The Old Republic was basically a huge failure for EA business-wise, in that it cost millions and millions of dollars to develop and they haven't gotten the return on investment that they were hoping for and frankly, needed, it costs relatively little to keep an MMO running.

The Star Wars name alone is enough to keep the servers up for years to come. Just look at Galaxies; That game was total horse shit, but would still be up and running today if not for the sole fact that a new SW MMO was released. TOR is fine. Don't worry.

@flindip said:

I honestly have ZERO interest in any more MMO's. If they close down TOR, for a proper KOTOR game on the next gen systems I am all for it. Honestly, Bioware would have made a hell of a lot more money doing exactly that. For a fraction of the cost.

I agree with all of this.

@SamDrugbringer: Having to hear the same 10-15 generic responses from your character was a good thing? It's a game. If it isn't fun to play then it is irrelevant how good you think the story is because at the end of the day it's still a bad game.

As somebody who loved KotOR1 and 2, I honestly hope it vanishes.

Retcon KotOR2, will you, you bitter motherfuckers?

@Jazzycola said:

@SamDrugbringer: Having to hear the same 10-15 generic responses from your character was a good thing? It's a game. If it isn't fun to play then it is irrelevant how good you think the story is because at the end of the day it's still a bad game.

There won't be a heart left beating.

Nah, those sucked, but the ones that had actual unique dialogue were great.

@EXTomar said:

Oh and that reminds me of a flaw: Tying gear to the morality system is a bad idea. Gaining light/dark points unlocks gear so why bother asking the player for input?

To be fair Kotor did the same dumb thing, really. Not with gear but you majorly gimped yourself by not going all light or dark in Kotor because of the force power bonuses. I hate morality systems in most games these days.

I played through the Jedi Knight story but it was so drab and dull that I struggle to remember any of it now.

@Terramagi said:

As somebody who loved KotOR1 and 2, I honestly hope it vanishes.

Retcon KotOR2, will you, you bitter motherfuckers?

that was lucas arts because george lucas hates any sort of moral ambiguity and the hint that jedi and sith are both terrible

@SamDrugbringer said:

@EXTomar said:

Oh and that reminds me of a flaw: Tying gear to the morality system is a bad idea. Gaining light/dark points unlocks gear so why bother asking the player for input?

To be fair Kotor did the same dumb thing, really. Not with gear but you majorly gimped yourself by not going all light or dark in Kotor because of the force power bonuses. I hate morality systems in most games these days.

But that isn't an excuse. Carrying bad system for simply due to legacy is silly. Carrying bad systems into a MMO will help kill it.

I think what they should do is ratchet up the experience gains so you can progress a little quicker, and make it so people only do quests they find interesting. The problem I saw with a lot of people was "I got to do all these quests... ARGH THIS QUEST ISN'T INTERESTING" and you could never convince them to move on and pick a different quest. I only did the quests I found interesting from a character or situational standpoint. I got tired of recapturing stolen supplies for outposts, but I still enjoyed raiding bases and killing notorious pirates and Imps.

And I enjoyed my character, I liked saying "As a soldier of the Republic, it would be my honor to help." often because that's who I felt that character was. I liked when my companions would chime in with their opinions. I liked a lot of the characters you'd meet, I especially liked when the stories start to blend together at the end. In Ilum there's a collection of the Republic's best generals, and my CO General Garza is there. But other classes probably just see her as some lady, it feels like I have history with that character. That's what interests me in the idea of a multiplayer Mass Effect online campaign thing. They could do basically the setup for SWTOR but make the combat the Mass Effect third person shooting and I'm happy. You pick one of 8 races with their own story, there are plenty of group quests where you can all vote on what to do.

I have a friend that told me that the server where he plays became overcrowded after TOR changed to F2P.

Michael Patcher also predicted that with F2P TOR could have the possibility to challenge WOW. While I'm not sure how that will translate to reality, I don't think TOR is going anywhere.

Why don't they re-release it as a Borderlands style, 4-6 player co-op adventure?

I really like the Sith warrior story (only one I've played) but the fact that the quest are so incredible boring and MMO standart really drags the game down. That said I think the F2P model will keep the game going for quite some time.

@Jeust The irony is that Blizzard's store is already more successful. The cider kitten is going to make Blizzard a bunch of money even with the charity support.

F2P seems to have been doing good for the game, with a lot more people added in. It's not a perfect game by any stretch (I vastly would have preferred just a KotOR 3, and I really don't like what they did with Revan), but it has some pretty fantastic moments. The story quests usually don't use traditional MMO quest design outside of bonus objectives (kill X enemies, find X items), and the Imperial Agent story has been pretty amazing. World Quests tend to be pretty interesting too. While yeah, as an MMO, the game has a lot of padding (and spreads out the Class Quests a bit too much as the game goes on) it's still the only MMO I can actually play without feeling like I'm just sinking my time into nothing.

@Jeust said:

I have a friend that told me that the server where he plays became overcrowded after TOR changed to F2P.

Michael Patcher also predicted that with F2P TOR could have the possibility to challenge WOW. While I'm not sure how that will translate to reality, I don't think TOR is going anywhere.

Patcher says a lot of things.

I'm pretty sure we were all personally responsible and morally reprehensible for the doctors leaving.

So who gives a fuck what he thinks.

@adam1808 said:

Then they shouldn't have made an MMO.

I would have loved to play a new KotOR if it were a single player RPG. But I will not suffer the time sink bullshit of MMOs.

Imagine if they made the KOTOR 3 we all wanted.

Silly EA.

It's amazing in the same way Black Ops II is innovative.

@Red said:

F2P seems to have been doing good for the game, with a lot more people added in. It's not a perfect game by any stretch (I vastly would have preferred just a KotOR 3, and I really don't like what they did with Revan), but it has some pretty fantastic moments. The story quests usually don't use traditional MMO quest design outside of bonus objectives (kill X enemies, find X items), and the Imperial Agent story has been pretty amazing. World Quests tend to be pretty interesting too. While yeah, as an MMO, the game has a lot of padding (and spreads out the Class Quests a bit too much as the game goes on) it's still the only MMO I can actually play without feeling like I'm just sinking my time into nothing.

I think it's still too early to tell. Every game sees a massive influx of players when they switch to a F2P format, DC Universe was even reduced to a state of unplayableness because of the amount of people who were playing.. most of whom vanished after the first 2 weeks. I get the feeling a lot of people will go back to TOR for the story content and then promptly quit when they're done with it. I personally quite enjoyed a few of the moments in the Republic Trooper story, but the gameplay was too much of a slogg to bother seeing it through to the end.

Everyone who originally complained about the fact they made an MMO instead of a KOTOR 3 were bang on the mark and it's sad to see the Elder Scrolls about to fall right into the same trap (although at least there it isn't replacing an eventual Elder Scrolls VI).

Well, looks like i won a bet!

I like to think that there's an alternate universe where Bioware instead made KOTOR 3 and everyone was actually happy.

@McGhee said:

I like to think that there's an alternate universe where Bioware instead made KOTOR 3 and everyone was actually happy.

The same universe where America gets its stick out of its ass and lets us get some hard hitting Vietnam games.

If they ripped out the mmo part and turned the story parts into an adventure game or a more traditional rpg I would pay money for that.

I put like 20-30 hours into what was supposed to be the best story (Imperial Agent) and I hadn't seen anything all that great. It wouldn't be a particularly memorable story we lose. Also youtube probably has all that shit.

@flindip said:

I honestly have ZERO interest in any more MMO's. If they close down TOR, for a proper KOTOR game on the next gen systems I am all for it. Honestly, Bioware would have made a hell of a lot more money doing exactly that. For a fraction of the cost.

I agree with this statement.

The "MMO" crowd has always moved from one MMO to the next looking for their next WoW or MMO fix. They play the life out of a game and move on. Then you have those who are loyalist, love the setting or the specifics of a certain MMO and stay. For SW:TOR it also had another group of people. The non MMO crowd. To be honest the Bioware crowd. The people who loved KOTOR and Jade Empire and Mass Effect. They specifically said in all their marketing this was a game you could play by yourself, experience the rich story of the characters. They weren't wrong. I got a character to level 40 and loved the storytelling in the game, the typical Bioware voice choices and the great cutscenes/everything being a voice over. The issue is and I know and saw countless people like this. After they played their character to 50 they didn't want to stick around. Even if the end game stuff had been the best in MMO history, those players are not MMO players. The signed up to experience a traditional Bioware game...and they did that. Then they were done.

This is something Bioware should of saw coming with the way they marketed this game. I think doing another Knights of the Old Republic, or hell just having The Old Republic be a single player game with some Co-Op elements would of been better. Things like the flash points and operations could of easily been added in some type of online capacity to fill the role for those truly interested to play for months and months on end. This way there is no crazy server costs for them to uphold, and the actual initial sales of the game help it to become successful. For all accounts a ton of people bought The Old Republic. And if Bioware didn't have to pay what they pay for servers and staff and patches and updates and all that jazz I don't think TOR would be anywhere near a financial failure.

Wow I'm depressed now. The Imperial Agent had an amazing story and it's kinda sad I won't be able to relive that in the future.

@Pinworm45 said:

Wow I'm depressed now. The Imperial Agent had an amazing story and it's kinda sad I won't be able to relive that in the future.

Welp you've got roughly 5-6 years before it shuts down, maybe 10.

dont be so melodramatic, you can still watch all the cutscenes on youtube.

I bought this game day one and really enjoyed it, but it's been.a crazy year and had to stop in June.

There is far to much generic MMO stuff for the story to be a workable and good thing.

As fun as it is to harp on story, if most of the game is a certain sort of mechanic, than that has to carry some water too. And in this case it means that you really need to like MMO mechanics for it to be worth it. And without the social support setup WoW has good luck with that (sort of like Auction sites and Ebay).

@McGhee said:

I like to think that there's an alternate universe where Bioware instead made KOTOR 3 and everyone was actually happy.

And I like to think that there's an alternate universe where KotOR2 wasn't rushed out the door, and what I played in the Restoration Mod was what everybody played.

And then Obsidian got to make KotOR3, and it was hype as shit, and after playing it everybody high-fived each other before returning to work in the acid mines.

I think the death of an MMO is a huge thing. Think of all the people who had played Galaxies for nearly a decade. These people who put tens of thousands of hours into building an online persona and then one day are told that character and that world is getting erased. It would be devastating. For Non-MMO players we can always go back and play our favorite games for as long as there are computers. When an MMO is gone, it is gone. You can't bring it back, at least not the way it was before. MMO's ask you to become someone else, to inhabit a character and live in a world and losing that can really be a terrible thing to a lot of people. It kind of sounds funny to most people, but when you've attached yourself for years to a world and a character and a group of people, leaving all that behind, knowing that there will be no records of the thousands of hours you spent there, that is something that people have a hard time coming to terms with.

private servers would keep that shit alive wouldnt it

They should have given me KOTOR III instead of this crap and they wouldn't be worrying about their finances than.

I wasn't entirely impressed with the story in SWTOR, but games generally lack any form of mature storyline so I don't know where to draw the line. I do, however, still believe it was a wrong choice for the game to become an mmo, and if this trial isn't evidence enough for other developers, I really don't know what will be.

If they had made KOTOR 3 instead, people would just be complaining about how it doesn't live up to the standards set by 1 & 2, even if it did. Cest la vie.

@Levio said:

If they had made KOTOR 3 instead, people would just be complaining about how it doesn't live up to the standards set by 1 & 2, even if it did. Cest la vie.

Obviously.

Imagine the state of the company though. They'd be in a much better position, may even still have a couple of Doctors.

@Brodehouse: You're probably right, I doubt Bioware would have ever made a KotOR 3, but that doesn't mean they should have went ahead with a product that nobody wanted. My point was the "whining fanboys" proved to not just be blowing steam for once. It wasn't a case of people complaining about something and then going and buying it anyway.

KotOR 3 could have still happened under another developer (maybe that wouldn't have been a good idea, but it still would have been preferable) but TOR has pretty much stopped any chances of the series continuing in any form.