BioWare - What went wrong with SWTOR?

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We normally bypass MMOs but CountChocula sends in this article at Gamasutra, titled What went wrong with Star Wars: The Old Republic.

A. Cooperative Play: Taking on an opponent with five, 20, or even 100 of your friends and teammates adds a great deal to the excitement level of a game. Not only does the result of an encounter require a lot more communication and team work, it also adds additional randomness that can make every encounter unique. Doing well in such situations also can bring great prestige as others will come to admire you if you perform well under pressure when they are depending on you.

The best parts of SWTOR are the story line missions. Their cinematic quality makes you feel like you are in a movie that you control. The weakness of this design is that the focus is on a single player, and that a full group could be just two players and AI companions. This gives SW:TOR the feeling of a "Massively Single Player Game". While there are missions that can accommodate more players, the game never manages to escape this feel. ​

 

The fact that its an mmo, and not Kotor3 is what went wrong. Add EA into the mix, and we have a foul smelling dish.

 

^ I agree.
People asked for a KotoR 3 and got SW:TOR.
Some simply wanted to scratch the Kotor 3 itch with TOR, and hence the drop in players after the scratching was done!

 

That is exactly the point, though noone would admit it.

 

It started earlier. They left their roots with Jade Empire, forgot gameplay, and focused to improve their strongest points. The weaknesses were covered with all kinds of trick and novelties that changed every game.

The fast, easy but fleeting money of the console lured Bioware away and quality dropped to the same level as the competition.

With Dragon Age 1 they took a step back to the right path, but again were lured away by their overlords to take a bite out of MMorpg pot of endless gold. without realizing Blizzard had already sucked it dry.

The game came to late in a market that already had shifted towards the free to play format with micro transaction.

Story alone is not enough.

 

Pretty much. I played it for 3 months myself and honestly had a great time. After a while though, I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that I wasn't really getting my money's worth out of it. I'm actually looking forward to the "F2P" model, if it's decent (kind of like LotRO) I could see myself playing it once in a while.

 

That's not the really the point of why SWTOR failed as a MMORPG. The whole reason people continue to play MMORPGs is because it rewards grinding. Story is fairly irrelevant in a MMORPG. Diablo 2 is a better MMORPG than SWTOR, precisely because of the addictive trait of the gameplay, whose centre is grinding for better gear and higher levels.

SWTOR unique selling point is that it is a MMORPG with a story. But a story is nice for a single time, maybe a second time as well, but certainly not for playing a long time. So people leave after a while - it's only natural.

Bioware's change of course from 'pure' RPGs to action games with some RPG elements has been going on for quite a while now as is not necessarily related to the whole MMO thing. Nor is it necessarily related to EA's involvement, as some people seem to think.

 

My point. They forgot gameplay. grinding and the fulffilment of it is gameplay.

So story is not enough to carry an MMorpg. Neither is it for a single play game. Gameplay first. But the story carries it from 80 tot 95% fresh

That involment started years before the takeover. The EA boss of those days were buddies with the two famous doctors as I recall. It was not the first attempt for a takeover.

How about this piece of gossip: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/BioWare-Austin-Greg-Zeschuk-Ray-Muzyka-SWTOR,16802.html

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I think that they lost the control over their company far earlier. Just around the time frame between jade empire and Kotor2(which they did not make)

No way that Bioware of old, who made our holy grail type games, would have stabbed PC gamers in the back with a console only Jade empire. Hardly any releases for some time. And suddenly Mass Effect1-2, Dragon age 1-2 a MMorp, Mass effect 3 is a timespan not seen by Bioware.

Call it conspiracy if you must.

 

It does seem like there were some good relations between Bioware and EA higher management. That's part of why I say that it's not strictly EA's fault that Bioware lost its way.

I would say it started earlier, with NWN already. Basically that was just a toolbox and some proof of concept that was released as a game. It was a good toolbox and some other people made nice games with it, but Bioware didn't.

Jade Empire was indeed more an action game than an RPG, but I did like it for it's break away from the standard fantasy setting.

 

Strangely I liked NWN. lack of story sure, but the overall feeling was great.

I liked shadows over Untrentide best.

 

I liked NWN too, the gameplay and mechanics are pretty good, but it seems to me that Bioware, which is supposedly famed for being one of the very few RPG makers, do not really have a good track record for making good RPGs. Baldur's Gate is good, supposedly KoToR is pretty good, the rest is mostly action games with some RPG elements.

Some pretty fun action games, mind, but not really RPGs. MDK2 was great fun, in NWN it was fun to think up a character and building him up through a couple of user made modules (and HotU, I guess), Jade Empire was quite fun in a game breaking way, the way you could use some combat techniques to totally break any difficulty in the game.

DA and ME I didn't like, but I suppose that for those that don't mind the repetitive, rather boring gameplay, they were quite ok action games.

 

I'll admit that I really enjoyed NWN also. Even though the OC wasn't that strong, I managed to get through it a few times with different classes. It only got better with the expansions, particularly SoU. Of course, the real magic was the fanmade campaigns that kept it going for years after release. I got my DnD fix from it for sure, in spite of the fact I never really got to have a proper party in any of the official campaigns.

That said, if I want a NWN fix these days, I always go to NWN2, as it is superior in nearly every conceivable way.