One the one hand, I feel bad for BioWare since it’s quite clear that EA forced their hand to release the game for the holidays.  On the other hand, BioWare knew what they were getting into when they jumped ship.  To be a fly in that room when they agreed to sell their soul. Their games were amazing, wholely solid and wide in scope.  Maybe they just needed more capital…we’ll never know.

Back on topic.  TOR mouthpiece James Ohlen (since Georg is German and some people have trouble with his accent on this side of the ocean) did a piece with Massively.  It’s all about selling path 1.2 which is supposed to launch in March.  We’re half-way through March and it’s not on the test servers…

Some of the more interesting points I read, my comments in italics:

• huge scope, needed to push date to test more – should have been in launch
• test servers are empty, looking at ways to get people there – character transfers or pre-made 50s
• surprised at the amount of level 50s – really?  lots of people hit 50 in the beta, even with multiple wipes
• need a dungeon finder, goes in patch 1.3 – I know a lot of people who won’t bother with this game until this feature is in
• they want to have it as an e-sport – that ranks with some of the dumbest things I have ever read
• going all out in 2012 – yay!

The main thing here is that BW is simply admitting that their game wasn’t ready and won’t be ready for some time.  It looks like there’s a struggle of power between the devs who know there are some massive things needed and EA who just wanted money and pushed a game out the door.  If you look at the guild summit notes (10 pages of it practically) you can see that many people have the same concerns.

If you want to compete with WoW/Rift and other themeparks MMOs and charge a subscription, then you need:

• dungeon finder
• guild tools
• non-combat content (achievements, pets, mounts, exploration)
• bug-free raids
• max level access to test servers
• working auction house/sales platform
• useful tradeskills
• logical statistical distribution on gear
• progressive, logical structure to level 50 PvE and PvP content

You don’t need 100 raids or dungeons.  You don’t need 100 PvP zones either.  You need to give people choices of what they want to run.  I saw Huttball about 90% of the time because my server was Empire dominated.  I saw Voidstar about 3 times total (out of a solid 60-70 matches) and that zone was fun.  Choices and specifically logical choices, need to be abound.

It’s not easy and BW is clearly wanting to go down that path.  Sadly, they are going down that path 3 months (in 1 week) after the game launched.  Here’s hoping patch 1.3 is enough to bring people back.

Oh, and TOR is free to play up to level 15 this weekend.

Darth Hater has a good sum of the Guild Summit that happened this weekend.

There are some interesting tidbits

• New operations
• New flashpoints
• New PvP
• Better stat distribution on gear
• Better testing/balance on new content
• Guild tools
• Rebuild of uses of crafting skills at 50
• Changes to economy at 50 (80% of players are under 400k – I can get 400K in about 2 hours work running 1 dungeon)
• Dual spec won’t be in this patch
• New legacy system, unlocks cosmetic items and heroic abilities
• Sprint moving to level 1 (YES!)
• LFG tool still a patch or more away
• UI mods coming

So all in all, lots of stuff they talked about.  Some good questions were asked and the answers were fine.  It still marks me as funny that TOR is admitting their economics/crafting system is clearly broken and the 2 most demanded items (LFG and Dual Spec) are still many months away.  Still, there’s progress.  I guess I’ll keep the game on my radar and once those two features are on, I’ll jump in.

Oh, the most interesting item I read was that nearly 40% of players did Operations (raids).  I have to say that an 8 man raid, that has 5 bosses and takes as much time as a dungeon (and less challenge) sure does make for accessible content.  Rift did this with, uh, rifts but it’s nice to see that this trend is continuing.  Will be interesting to see how WoW adapts to this “standard”.

Holy shart.  Two things.

First, TOR is dropping the price of all high end mounts by a truckload and artifice items are available on vendors – until patch 1.2.  Let me say that mounts are not expensive at 50.  You should have 1 million + in your bank by that point and mounts are 200K.  It’s enough but nothing like WoW were it took weeks at max level to get a mount (until Lich King).  Artifice items, specifically color gems, going to vendors is mind boggling.  They are putting the only unique item that Artifice has – and that is never replaced at 50 – on vendors for at least a month.  That’s just crazy.  No matter what they do in patch 1.2, they have effectively destroyed the market on color gems for a solid 6 months.

Second, they are asking plays in Austin (near their HQ) to help test 1.2.  This is a paid position, one weekend a month.  Now let’s get something straight here.  When you need to pay your clients to test your game, you have some SERIOUS issues.  These aren’t minor things, this is when you are saying “our internal testing is crap, our test server is crap, we don’t have a clue how to get this to work and we’re making massive changes”.  Imagine if Ford sent you a letter asking you to test drive a prototype car.

It’s like the more I read about TOR, the more I shake my head thinking what they got themselves into.  I’ve been in the MMO world for 15 years (UO launch, wow that’s a while back) and I’ve seen games come and go.  I usually have a pretty good idea if a game will work long-term or not.  TOR has rung so many, many bells that I don’t see how they can continue on their current path and maintain success.  This huge re-write in 1.2 just makes me think of NGE (in Star Wars Galaxies) where the devs put up their hands and say they give up, here’s a new game.  I really hope they can pull this off as the future of the subscription MMO hinges on this being somewhat successful.

Just… wow.  I’m at a loss.

So we’re a couple days shy of the 2 month mark and here’s my opinion.

TOR launched 2 months early, at the very least.  The first month had so many crashes, exploit and bugs that they patched once or twice a week to address it.  We’re at the 2 month mark, and there’s a patch every week still.  When Rift launched, it was nearly bug free and they worked on major things, like a group finder and guild stuff, plus content.  SW came out to compete with WoW and Rift, two fully functioning MMOs, with a wiffle bat.

What does TOR do right?  The single player aspect.  Leveling from 1-49 is a pretty cool journey.  It can get repetitive at times, but so do most games.  I enjoyed it tremendously the first time through.  The settings made sense, travel was long to give a sense of scope and you had well spread out enemies.  It’s a single player game with minimal replay (since there are no side-quests) and that’s worth your money.

What it does wrong is everything else.  I leveled another character to 50 and skipped all the dialogue since 99% of it was the same as the first time through.  My 3rd char is 30 now and I’m bored to tears of the questing, flying, zoning garbage that breaks up the MMO aspect.  You feel like you’re alone for ever.

So let’s do a feature comparison.  If you were in an MMO, you left that one to come try this one right?  So you left stuff to try new stuff.

PvP

This is a strong point for WoW, though Rift has some decent elements to it. There is a PvP stat that completely unbalances PvP in all 3 games though it’s being addressed in Rift.  TOR has massive exploits and a RNG system where once a week, you have a 25% chance of getting PvP gear.  Massive exploits too, you can max your PvP level fairly easily by Googling.

PvE

WoW has this down pat.  Rift has some balance issues for raids but the open world content is great.  Rift battles are amazing and you can do pretty much what you want, when you want.  I like it.  ToR has flashpoints that have a 25% chance of rewarding you at the end – and their loot tables are fixed.  Each takes 90mins to 2 hours to complete, many are bugged.  It’s better to run raids, as each boss has a 75% chance of dropping something you can use.  You need gloves?  There’s only one way to get gloves.  Rift and WoW both have LFG tools.  TOR is 2 months old and you can still wait an hour or more spamming LFG.

Money

This is a bit tougher to measure.  WoW has many methods to make cash, AH, dailies, raids whatever.  It let’s you buy flavor items (pets, mounts) and power (enchants, gems).  You need it certainly but not a whole lot.  Rift is close to WoW in this regard, though overall there’s less to buy.  TOR’s only expenditure right now is re-specing your talents (100-400K per shot).  The AH doesn’t work, dailies give 13K per (4 you can do alone), crafting is useless and your best bet is running a level 30 dungeon for money.  My 2 50s are millionaires, many times over with nothing to do.

Meta game

This is the part where you look at the systems.  WoW and Rift both have balanced stats.  You know what’s good, it’s somewhat simple to move things around to get stronger.  TOR opted for a modding strategy, where you move slots of gear within gear.  Sadly, these slots were designed by a drunk monkey where the 2 stats that are most prominent are the least wanted by any class (accuracy and haste).  The core issue here is that 2 of the 4 main classes are resource dependent and that resource regenerates at different rates. Both need to be above 60% at all times, making for somewhat static playstyles.  Making them attack faster, depletes their resources faster.  That makes them change their rotation to regenerate power instead of playing the game.  So what’s happening in game is that everyone is buying 3 particular items, breaking them down and using them to power the rest of their gear.  Every DPS and Healer (80% of the population) is doing this.  That’s bad planning.

Crafting has no use past level 49.  Do a single daily and the rewards outstrip any thing you can possibly craft.  Ship combat is an on-rails shooter.  I can play those for free.

Conclusion

The game from 1-49 is great and if you’re looking to try that out, then it’s worth the free month.  It looks and feels Star Wars (as long as you’re not a Sniper/Gunslinger).  Playing through once is fun.

If you want to play with other people, find another game.  If you want an MMO with PvP, wait a few months for them to fix the exploits and PvP stat.  If you want PvE in your MMO, wait until they put in a LFG tool and fix their item drops.  If you want to craft, find another game.  If you want to socialize/collect, find another game.  If you like alts, find another game.

TOR is not an MMO.  It’s a single player game that lets you talk to other people.

EDIT: I wanted to add a link to a population measuring tool.  TORStatus does a decent job, considering.  A 5% drop over last week.  Let’s say they have 1.5 million paying players (they said 1.7 were playing, most paying).  5% is 75,000 players or about 1.2 million dollars a month.

DarthHater was part of the quarter sales call for EA (shareholders can call in I guess).  They say that 2 million copies sold, 40% through their online service.  That seems reasonable.  In today’s age of PCs, people don’t go to stores to buy software as much. Steam is awesome.  Origin… has work to do.

The really interesting part is that they have 1.7 subscribers (either trial period or currently paying) and 1 million concurrently.  They go on to say that most (emphasis theirs) are paying.  That’s as low as 51%.  If after a month SW lost only 15% of their subs, that’s impressive.  After playing the game I would say that the number is wrong as the servers have way less people than when the game launched and the first two weeks.  I was running some PvP last night with 50s and I saw the same groups, over and over again.

Oh ya, the average session was 4 hours at a time.  I know I put in close to that time for the first 2 weeks but now the sessions are an hour or two before bed.  4 hours doesn’t say how much per week though, explaining why there are still plenty of players below 50.  Heck, I would say the majority are under 50.  Just goes to show how hardcore some of the other players are to keep that 4 hour playtime as an average.

I don’t want to be more negative but the real challenge is keeping those players past the 3 months mark.  Rift took a beating from it I’m sure (they have a 20 level F2P option now) and I honestly believe Rift is a better game.

So I started yet another alt since it’s still practically impossible to get any group going at 50.  I already have a 50 Sith Inquisitor (mage or healer) and a Bounty Hunter (mid-range tank).  I decided to try an Imperial Agent – you know, the suits running the starships?  They have two advanced classes, Sniper (long range DPS) and Operative (mid range DPS or Heals).

First, the play style.  You have a limited energy bar, it regens automatically but at different rates if you have less than 60%.  More = faster.  Bounty Hunter is the same.  This makes it so spamming skills does not work. Which, technically, would make you a horrible emergency healer compared to an Inquisitor.  Anyways, you start off with ranged attacks and 1 melee attack.  Your biggest move requires you to be crouched.  Cool I’m thinking.  I hit 10, take Operative and all of a sudden, I no longer have any worthwhile ranged moves.  I’ve turned into a Rogue, having to be behind the target.  Since most combat is against 3 players, sure does make it hard to live through it!  By far the hardest character to play and survive with.

Story next.  The class quest is probably the best so far.  You actually feel involved as a spy and it makes sense.  Either they patched some stuff out or I wasn’t high enough level but I missed a good half-dozen quests on my way to 16.  I have played a  solid dozen characters to 25 (though most inquisitors during the beta) so it’s weird not having those around.  I’m about 2 levels under where I should be and that’s concerning.  My Bounty Hunter wasn’t 50 when she finished her last quest and I was resting in cantinas for extra experience every log out.

Companion now.  The first one – and the first one for each class is the one you should use forever – is a ranged tank.  A piss-poor ranged tank.  Wears light armor and has no extra shielding, so if I end up against anything tougher than 3 normals, she’s dead.  With other classes, taking an elite was hard but 90% doable.  Now I die about 50% of the time because the tank simply cannot tank.  Plus the character looks cool but has a horribad story.

Cool tidbit, SWTOR emailed me when my character hit 10.  I didn’t get that for the other classes so maybe this one needs explaining to players?  I do know that the only people playing IA are in PvP and that you’d be lucky to find one sniper in 100 players.  A pure class (especially DPS) is dead in 2012.  WoW’s dual classes killed them (Pandas have 3 classes) and Rift’s ability to have 2-3 roles and 5 builds at any given time has changed the landscape of MMOs.

Anyways, it’s an interesting class where the story is better than the playstyle.  A lot better.  Which is pretty much the polar opposite of the Bounty Hunter.  Wonder which one people will want to play at 50 when the story is over?

Here’s an interesting site TORStatus.  I play on Sith Meditation Sphere.

The numbers are basically a scale of 1-5 based on BioWare’s description of server population – Light to Full.  My server is usually Standard with a few spots of Light.  When I started it was full a lot of time time and heavy the rest.  I’m not sure if BW changed the numbers behind the words, perhaps that’s it.  The metrics show that there’s a 5-10% drop in clients since last week and I think that number will increase next week due to subs coming up.

Anyhow, I was on last night in prime time and there were less than 130 people on the Fleet.  It took me a half hour to get a group and it wasn’t a hard mode.  Then it took me 10 minutes to get to the dungeon.  I was on the fleet so I had to Leave Fleet -> Enter Ship Zone -> Enter Ship & Fly to Ilum -> Zone into dock -> Zone into Orbital Station -> Zone into Ilum & run to instance -> Zone into instance.  Each arrow is a loading screen.  Let’s compare to WoW.  I want to group, I press the LFG group and I’m ported to the dungeon.  One loading screen.  In Rift, I press the tool, I’m ported to the dungeon.  In either of them if I didn’t use the tool I would fly (mount or flighpoint) to the dungeon and zone in.

All in, it took nearly an hour from the time I logged on til the time I killed the first bad guy in the zone.  That’s a tad too much.

The Old Republic is out and naturally, I’ve been able to get some time in.  Two guides are up too.  The Sith Sorcerer Guide and the General Strat Guide.  They pay for the game and the monthly sub, which is nice.

I’m playing on the Imperial side, on Sith Meditation Sphere.  Called Asmiroth, naturally.I’m quite ahead of the leveling curve as the planets indicate how many people are playing with you.  Lower planets have 150-200 players while the ones I’m on have 10 or so.  I’ve unlocked my Legacy as well, which gives all your characters the same last name.  You unlock it after Chapter 1, which is around level 32.

The game has improved by leaps and bound from the beta stage.  It’s actually quite surprising how much they improved gameplay in a short period of time.  I was really worried about crafting and mods and they pulled an 11th hour switcheroo which works out pretty well.  From level 10 on up, you can get orange colored gear, which is 100% modifiable.  If you like the look, you can mod it all the way to level 50 and keep the same look.  I’ve had the same helmet for 20 levels now.  This works for all armor but does not work for weapons.  Weapons have a DPS component that is separate from the mods and even for an Inquisitor/Sage, where DPS doesn’t matter, it has Force Power which doesn’t come from mods.  So while you can upgrade your weapon with mods for 5 or so levels, you will eventually be replacing it.

Heroic quests, for 2 or 4 people, are interesting but not required to level.  Getting 2 people together is simple enough, on a populated planet.  Getting 4, especially after level 25 or so where roles are important, is next to impossible.  No one purposefully levels as a healer, so when you need one, it stinks.  Plus, everyone has piles of area effect attacks, making it a pain for a tank to do their job properly, especially if they are geared for DPS instead.

Also, it’s clear that level 35+ content wasn’t tested enough.  There are less things to do and way more bugs.  Sort of like Age of Conan.  Balance is off as well, where some enemy placements are next to impossible to get through unless you get lucky.   Here’s an example.  At level 35 there was a Heroic-2 quest I tried to solo.  Stuns and shields and planning and I was able to complete it without dying.  A level 40, with the same companion and talents, couldn’t get past the first group.  Things are balanced around the harder difficulty by that point.  I do know that Hard Flashpoints were largely broken as were all operations at the last beta.  We’ll see how that goes when I get there.

Leveling pace is decent.  If you skip all the story (spacebar) you can rush to 50 in about 80 hours.  Otherwise, it’s about 1.5-2 hours per level, after level 20 and fairly steady from that point.  There are still some balancing issues to work out (Heroics are not worth the time/experience) but it feels a good pace.

The story aspect is pretty strong.  It really plays like a single player BioWare game.  I won’t spoil anything but the story is quite a bit more solid than anything Lucas has written and you do feel invested in your character.  My questions revolve around what happens after you crush the Republic on a planet.  If you return, are they still there, story-wise?

Fun game, should last a couple months for me.