Lets take a step back and compare some things to the only measuring stick of a good mmo WoW.

The Launch

When WoW launched if you didnt pre order it you didnt play it for about 2 weeks, those who did pre order it spent a good week and some change of server crashes and not playing. Lost

When SWTOR launched you were placed in a line for a couple hours and then played until your face hit the keyboard. Win

So launch was not the problem.

Economy in real life.

if this was the problem WoW would be free to play months ago so scratch this one off the list.

Game play PvP

WoW worked great Tie

SWTOR just as good possibly better if it would have had more time to grow. Tie

Game play PvE

WoW long boring grinding with big Raids that were chaos at best. LEE ROY anyone (Win)

SWTOR fun story line that made grinding feel almost painless and shor, smaller tight raids were everyone must be playing. (LOST)

why did SWTOR lose on this topic because its to short and simple you need to sell subscriptions. if you want to do a Raid in WoW you need 20-40 people. in SWTOR you need 10-20 that alone shaves off half the time to play end game.

Gear and are endless obsession with the digital penis.

WoW tons of gear endless seas of gear and just stuff in general right out of launch and getting a full set of Tiered gear will take you a very long painful amount of time to get. Thats what blizzard dose. (WIN)

SWTOR Much less gear and it will take you about 2 weeks to get the best stuff its very easy. (FAIL)

So when i first started playing WoW it took me about 6 months to lvl 50 and get a good set of gear Tier 1 so that i could get some Tier 2 and when resilience was put on pvp gear it took me anoth 2-3 months so in total about 9 months for 1 guy. Then i was almost finished with my second toon and BAM! BC came out all of my Tier 3 gear was crap compared to the new green items so i had to start all over again even had to re invest in flying mount gold grinding. When swtor came out in 1 month had my agent lvl50 with Tier 2 gear for PvP and PvE. in 2 Months i had a jugg with the same then stopped playing. a couple months rise of the rakghouls was released and it dint change a thing added some new gear that nobody really needed to get.

Its sad because really bioware listened to the fans everyone said Grinding suck's i dont want it for gear and lvling. bioware said no problem how about story and an awesome loot generator witch at the end of each boss that gives everyone a peace of gear. Then we said Great were done with the game unsubscribe CLICK!

Thats really why it failed because it didnt drag out its content ....its like giving a meth head all the meth he wants in one go lol Hes going to over dose then you cant sell it anymore where if you just give him a little bit at a time and stretch it out you will keep selling for Years just like Blizzard :-)

most of the people that stop playing WoW do it because there tired and cant get to the end not because they ran out of stuff to do.

I have to disagree with you about the grinding. It's true that in general, Star Wars kill quests required fewer kills, but getting anywhere required fighting *tons* of enemies. The focus on storytelling actually made this worse - you hit an interesting story beat and kind of want to go to the next one - but no, you need to grind out these three other minor quests first and fight through a half hour of meaningless battles with trash NPCs in order to progress. I was able to persevere and reach endgame once, but even though I liked the second story I tried just as well, I didn' thave the patience.

Add to that the fact that WoW really isn't the meaningless grind it used to be since Cata. Levels fly by and there are lots of creative new quest types that either require a minimum of fighting or which condense a large number of quests into a single efficient area. The only part where it really slows down is Burning Crusade, and I think if you compared the quest structures of Star Wars to Burning Crusade and then Cataclysm, you'd find it falls closer to the former.

And then lastly, WoW already has people invested. People get hooked initially without realizing they aren't having fun, but when they finally quit, they have recognized the treadmill for what it is. They know what parts of the game they actually enjoyed and which parts were just eating their time, and they lose their patience for the latter. Paradoxically, it is only through usage of the latter that an MMO can make money. This is the same problem that affects every MMO out there, even the ones that are more fun to actually play, like Rift and Tera. I played those games a little bit but eventually I just see through the bullshit and realize "I've already proven I can do all this five levels ago, the sky was just a different color then."

Why is your post written like an E. E. Cummings poem?

Why is your post written like an E. E. Cummings poem?

WoW is not the standard model for MMOs. It's an anomaly. SWTOR failed because Bioware are trying to mine gold that isn't there.

The biggest difference between them is the time both respective games launched, Wow launched at the best possible time, Everquest was on the wane and a successor was imminent and this was also when paying for a subscription based MMO made sense (it does not any longer).

Star Wars in comparison launched in a new age of Free to play games and trying to pick a fight with the immovable juggernaut that is World of Warcraft of course it was going to be screwed especially when it brought almost nothing new to the table, it wasn't groundbreaking in anyway nor was it any better than World of Warcraft so the only demographic that this made sense for were Star Wars fans (which is a fan base that HAS to be dwindling after the shit fest that was the prequels).

To me Star Wars was only heading one way and that way was failure.

It wasn't an mmo. It was a single player game with a subscription model. They did so much stuff that you wonder "Why not just make it single player". Not to mention do stupid shit like banning people cause they did something unintended the developers put in the game.

I don't know how they could justify it having a sub fee when Guild Wars 2 is more interesting in every way, and is more like a real MMO than some half-single player half-pvp affair.

SWTOR is a well-made mmo, its failing primarily because its star wars.

@Simplexity said:

The biggest difference between them is the time both respective games launched, Wow launched at the best possible time, Everquest was on the wane and a successor was imminent and this was also when paying for a subscription based MMO made sense (it does not any longer).

Star Wars in comparison launched in a new age of Free to play games and trying to pick a fight with the immovable juggernaut that is World of Warcraft of course it was going to be screwed especially when it brought almost nothing new to the table, it wasn't groundbreaking in anyway nor was it any better than World of Warcraft so the only demographic that this made sense for were Star Wars fans (which is a fan base that HAS to be dwindling after the shit fest that was the prequels).

To me Star Wars was only heading one way and that way was failure.

Yeah this seems like the most logical explanation. It's a deadly mix of bad timing, outdated pricing models and a lack of innovation.

@AbeBroHamLincon said:

Lets take a step back and compare some things to the only measuring stick of a good mmo WoW.

How little they remember...

1. Ultima Online
2. Everquest

Uh tier 1 wasn't until 60 in molten core and SWTOR wins raiding. At launch WoW had 0, count em, 0 actual raids. They had instances you could raid and would later become 5 mans but they gave the same gear then as they did in 5 man mode. That's right, the original 40 man raid Molten Core wasn't even in game on WoW at launch. So even though SWtOR's raiding is too quick at launch (it is better off now) it still wins simply because it actually was in the game.

Blackrock Depths was considered a raid at the time,Stratholme was a 10 man raid as well.

@Simplexity said:

The biggest difference between them is the time both respective games launched, Wow launched at the best possible time, Everquest was on the wane and a successor was imminent and this was also when paying for a subscription based MMO made sense (it does not any longer).

This. You can't take context out of the equation when talking about stuff like business models. When WoW launched, NOTHING was even close to like it at the time (and I'm saying this as someone who doesn't particularly care for WoW), and to Blizzard's infinite credit, they have continuously updated and added content. SWTOR, while I'm sure it's a fine game with a great story (Hell, I'm jumping in come the price drop), was still chasing what WoW was doing on a fundamental level. You're not gonna dethrone the king by emulating what the king does.

The reason why is that it's hard for people to justify paying 15 dollars a month for a game that they play as a singleplayer game.

@Karkarov said:

Uh tier 1 wasn't until 60 in molten core and SWTOR wins raiding. At launch WoW had 0, count em, 0 actual raids. They had instances you could raid and would later become 5 mans but they gave the same gear then as they did in 5 man mode. That's right, the original 40 man raid Molten Core wasn't even in game on WoW at launch. So even though SWtOR's raiding is too quick at launch (it is better off now) it still wins simply because it actually was in the game.

That sort of stuff has become pretty much a requirement in an MMO. It doesn't make a lot of sense to say that SWtOR is better than WoW in that aspect - you're comparing a characteristic of a newly-launched MMO to one of WoW when it launched. You're basically saying that SWtOR is better than a 2001 product, or whenever that was. That's not saying a lot.

@Snail said:

That sort of stuff has become pretty much a requirement in an MMO. It doesn't make a lot of sense to say that SWtOR is better than WoW in that aspect - you're comparing a characteristic of a newly-launched MMO to one of WoW when it launched. You're basically saying that SWtOR is better than a 2001 product, or whenever that was. That's not saying a lot.

I am merely following the OP's methodology no matter how flawed it is and correcting him on some info that he was wrong about. Truthfully any mmo that releases with as piss poor a launch as WoW had in today's market may as well sign it's own death warrant.

The shorter answer is that it sucks and no one wants to pay a sub fee to play it.

@Karkarov said:

@Snail said:

That sort of stuff has become pretty much a requirement in an MMO. It doesn't make a lot of sense to say that SWtOR is better than WoW in that aspect - you're comparing a characteristic of a newly-launched MMO to one of WoW when it launched. You're basically saying that SWtOR is better than a 2001 product, or whenever that was. That's not saying a lot.

I am merely following the OP's methodology no matter how flawed it is and correcting him on some info that he was wrong about. Truthfully any mmo that releases with as piss poor a launch as WoW had in today's market may as well sign it's own death warrant.

I think the only time he compared SWtOR directly to a newly-launched WoW was when he outlined just how much time both games took to complete at launch, which I think makes some sense, because it is relevant in this comparison that the product is new. In other words, it seems that OP thinks that when an MMO is new, it needs to make you want to keep leveling and gathering loot so that it becomes a habit and an investment to you that you grow attached to or something like that. The structure in this sentences probably isn't as clear as it could be, but you get my point right? I think OP has a point there, even though I'm not all that into MMOs, and kind of (or completely) agree with Brad's view on the subject. They can be fun though.

@AbeBroHamLincon: It took you 9 months to level to 60? What did you do play 15 minutes a day? If you want a grind fest go back to when Lineage 2 launched and try to level to 60 in that game. That would really have taken you 9 months.

The failings of SwToR are very simple. Bad engine and poor end-game. The retention-rate for MMOs is completely connected to the quality of the gameplay. If the gameplay is not good people will play through the content, but they won't want to play the _game_. SwToR PvP had a massive problem with ability delay and unresponsiveness. Just playing some WZs for fun worked completely fine, but playing it on any competitive level (which would be what would keep people playing) was just an exercise in frustration (and Ilum was just a joke). SwToR PvE on the other hand suffered from content riddled with bugs (several months after launch there was still bosses in both flashpoints and operations that was straight up broken), and tuning that was completely out of whack. In many cases you could go from complete walkover boss to painstakenly hard boss to a somewhat challenging boss to a compeletely broken one.

These two things meant that once people was done enjoying the content and exploring the game there was no _game_ to enjoy, which lead people to move on. Looking at WoW on the other hand the PvP was always fun and snappy, and except for the absolutely last bosses (like rag and c'thun) no bosses were ever left with any gamebreaking bugs for more than a week. The content was also very well tuned to give you harder and harder challenges as you moved on.

@Leekspin said:

@AbeBroHamLincon: It took you 9 months to level to 60? What did you do play 15 minutes a day? If you want a grind fest go back to when Lineage 2 launched and try to level to 60 in that game. That would really have taken you 9 months.

Holy fuck, dude. You just brought back some horrible memories for me LOL. I forgot all about that damn game. I loved it for a while back in the day, sure, but the more I thought about it, that game was fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucked. And no joke, unless you didn't have a job and didn't go to school, 9 months was certainly not an exaggeration for getting to 60.

@Karkarov said:

Uh tier 1 wasn't until 60 in molten core and SWTOR wins raiding. At launch WoW had 0, count em, 0 actual raids. They had instances you could raid and would later become 5 mans but they gave the same gear then as they did in 5 man mode. That's right, the original 40 man raid Molten Core wasn't even in game on WoW at launch. So even though SWtOR's raiding is too quick at launch (it is better off now) it still wins simply because it actually was in the game.

This is just false. I was inside both Onyxia's Lair and Molten Core before the game even launched (during beta), and we pulled our first trash in MC less than a month after launch.

There's a very short and very simple answer to why WoW won in almost every single aspect over SWTOR.

WoW did it first

I question whether you really played WoW at all, or at least, you're lying about playing when it first launched. The level cap in vanilla WoW was 60, and back then there was absolutely no Resilience (that was introduced in WotLK IIRC), raiding Molten Core was a complete bore, but if you raided above that (and you claim to have had tier 3, so you must have), then you would know that Blackwing Lair, and anything above that was extremely challenging and very, very, very difficult to do at all unless if you put an insane amount of time into it, not to mention later raids (Naxx) required VERY precise coordination in order to beat, which is why only a handful of guilds ever beat it before Burning Crusade was released. If you were a casual back in the Classic WoW days, the best tier you could hope to get is the 0.5 tier, which is basically from dungeons like Scholomance, Upper Blackrock Spire, and other high end 5-man dungeons like that. PvP back in Classic WoW was also atrociously balanced - for MONTHS Warlocks were considered a laughing stock, and anyone who played them was an idiot (Main was a Warlock, I'd know). Speakings of raids, Druids, Paladins, Priests, and Shamans ALL had to heal for raids too, because their tier sets were geared towards healing ONLY.

I say all of that because I think ToR had an excellent launch, the PvP in it was fun, but what absolutely killed it for me was the very, very, very bland leveling experience. It almost never breaks out of the mold of - go kill 10 of these guys, or go collect 10 of these things, outside of the class quests everything is such a chore. Even the dialogue couldn't save it, in fact, it was worse, because in WoW I could at least choose not to read the text, accept the quest and be on my merry way. In ToR you had to sit and listen to the entire conversation (yes, you can skip, I know, but it only skips to the next line, it doesn't end the entire dialogue conversation) for every character you create.

Bioware should have taken a risk and done SOMETHING to freshen up the experience of leveling, because people like me are bored as shit of it, they already took a huge gamble by making the entire thing voiced acted, they could have done something innovative for the leveling as well, since people were going to buy it anyway. As it stands however, it plays exactly like WoW, just with voice acting and a different paint job.

@Azteck said:

There's a very short and very simple answer to why WoW won in almost every single aspect over SWTOR.

WoW did it first

This basically.

I think Star Wars going free to play is a competitive move. With WoW showing its age and obviously that it's running out of ideas with its most recent addition of combat pandas as player characters, there is definitely room for someone to step in.I think they're setting a new precedence and I think with a high profile a expansion at the right time they could convert a lot of people.

And I personally appreciate an MMO that I can play and not have to dedicate entire days to it to make progress.

@Veektarius said:

I have to disagree with you about the grinding. It's true that in general, Star Wars kill quests required fewer kills, but getting anywhere required fighting *tons* of enemies. The focus on storytelling actually made this worse - you hit an interesting story beat and kind of want to go to the next one - but no, you need to grind out these three other minor quests first and fight through a half hour of meaningless battles with trash NPCs in order to progress. I was able to persevere and reach endgame once, but even though I liked the second story I tried just as well, I didn' thave the patience.

It's the fucking worst. I really liked what I've seen storywise but you have to do all those boring ass sidequests to keep your level up. I wish the main questline would scale to your level so that you can play all the stories without doing the same sidequests over and over again. Hell, I would even pay for that.

I enjoyed my time in the game quite a great deal. The main concern however is lack of content. After my free month trial was over I had seen almost everything. Once I got over the coolness of the voiced characters, there wasn't a great deal to get excited about. The class story was quite good, and I grew attached to my companions, and certainly there were things I enjoyed about the game, but it didn't stand out enough, and needed more to feel "complete". There needs to be more mid-level content, and more diversions, like fishing or quasar or pod racing or something.