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On February 03 2012 07:18 Zocat wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2012 06:51 schimmetje wrote: Look at the bonus missions to fill levelling gaps or the affection meter vs level-bound companion conversations for example. They're stretching things out too obviously and have some other things in there just because an MMO has to have them, but not really integrated in the whole yet. And other things feel like they just ran out of time, the first flashpoint on each faction side was so great and then.. that was it /sadface. I'd say every flashpoint which has a hardmode has a good story. The leveling only flashpoints are a bit dull, I agree. Bonus Missions - you can skip the majority of them. My guardian did 0 PvP while leveling, 0 space missions and I never logged out in a cantina/ship (to prevent rested XP). I did all bonus missions / series and was overleveled for most of the content (until ~45 when the first missions were yellow). Currently I play my vanguard - rested XP, PvP, Space Missions. I skip basically every bonus mission (unless it's like "Kill one more guy!") and again - I'm 34, doing lv 30 missions on Aldaraan. I dont really see the leveling gabs. And I like the affection / level based companion stuff. I have a lv12 scoundrel for some crafting missions, and his companion is already has 6000 affection (gifts). When I have time/interest to level the scoundrel he will have 10k. I'm glad that I can look forward to his story, not have everything already done.
That's really not my experience with the bonus missions. Especially on my guardian starting from Valis pretty much all the way up there were plenty of times where I had to go back just to get the levelling in to beat mobs, while I got there following the natural progression (ie not skipping large parts of content etc). Which I get from an MMO standpoint, but not from a story point of view. Similarly, if every 5-10 levels I have 3 or 4 companion conversations waiting for me at once, how am I experiencing a story? That's what was promised.
Of course, MMO developers promise a lot of things and probably have to, but that's where a phase with people feeling let down like this comes from (again, I don't think it's a bad game, just saying). Especially when a big name like Bioware, who are supposed to be *good* at exactly that, is doing the promising.
Well that and a large part of the MMO community being.. silly, admittedly. It could be the next big thing wrapped in gold and titties and people'd still complain. But things could have been nearer to that lovely image.
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Finally done with Quesh. Hated that planet. I love Hoth though :D
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On February 03 2012 08:11 Arnstein wrote: Finally done with Quesh. Hated that planet. I love Hoth though :D i almost want to make an alt just to do tatooine again
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On February 03 2012 07:59 schimmetje wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 07:18 Zocat wrote:On February 02 2012 06:51 schimmetje wrote: Look at the bonus missions to fill levelling gaps or the affection meter vs level-bound companion conversations for example. They're stretching things out too obviously and have some other things in there just because an MMO has to have them, but not really integrated in the whole yet. And other things feel like they just ran out of time, the first flashpoint on each faction side was so great and then.. that was it /sadface. I'd say every flashpoint which has a hardmode has a good story. The leveling only flashpoints are a bit dull, I agree. Bonus Missions - you can skip the majority of them. My guardian did 0 PvP while leveling, 0 space missions and I never logged out in a cantina/ship (to prevent rested XP). I did all bonus missions / series and was overleveled for most of the content (until ~45 when the first missions were yellow). Currently I play my vanguard - rested XP, PvP, Space Missions. I skip basically every bonus mission (unless it's like "Kill one more guy!") and again - I'm 34, doing lv 30 missions on Aldaraan. I dont really see the leveling gabs. And I like the affection / level based companion stuff. I have a lv12 scoundrel for some crafting missions, and his companion is already has 6000 affection (gifts). When I have time/interest to level the scoundrel he will have 10k. I'm glad that I can look forward to his story, not have everything already done. That's really not my experience with the bonus missions. Especially on my guardian starting from Valis pretty much all the way up there were plenty of times where I had to go back just to get the levelling in to beat mobs, while I got there following the natural progression (ie not skipping large parts of content etc). Which I get from an MMO standpoint, but not from a story point of view. Similarly, if every 5-10 levels I have 3 or 4 companion conversations waiting for me at once, how am I experiencing a story? That's what was promised. Of course, MMO developers promise a lot of things and probably have to, but that's where a phase with people feeling let down like this comes from (again, I don't think it's a bad game, just saying). Especially when a big name like Bioware, who are supposed to be *good* at exactly that, is doing the promising. Well that and a large part of the MMO community being.. silly, admittedly. It could be the next big thing wrapped in gold and titties and people'd still complain. But things could have been nearer to that lovely image. Some of my favourite stories were from bonus missions. The one on taris was extremely tedious though but i was also playing it at 5 am and it took me more than 2 hours (till 7:30 am) so i probably wasnt in a very good fram of mind to follow a story at that point.
But balmorra had an bonus series story line and that was one of my favourites, and the one on hoth was pretty cool because you go back there like 8 levels later to do it and it leads you to a whole new 47-48 zone with its own quests. I regret that i missed the nar shadaa one cuz i really like that planet but i didnt realise it had one even considering its about 6 levels after you complete nar shadaa it also leads you to new zones with their own quest hubs.
Some of the bonus series have great storylines, some of them are kind of meh.
When i lvled to 50 i didnt do any pvp rarely did many space missions, but i did quite a few bonus missions and i didnt do any content except class content on Correllia or Alderaan i didnt finish taris as when i went to do my bonus mission i realized there was about 3-4 quest hubs that i hadnt even touched. I didnt finish tatooine there was half the map that i didnt even explore really and i didnt finish quesh or do the bonus series there either. SO i still have a vast amount of content that im aware that i didnt complete let alone the stuff i havent even reailized yet.
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Taris with your antagonizer was the best bonus mission.
voss with dreamland by far the worst
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On February 03 2012 09:40 Executor1 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 07:59 schimmetje wrote:On February 03 2012 07:18 Zocat wrote:On February 02 2012 06:51 schimmetje wrote: Look at the bonus missions to fill levelling gaps or the affection meter vs level-bound companion conversations for example. They're stretching things out too obviously and have some other things in there just because an MMO has to have them, but not really integrated in the whole yet. And other things feel like they just ran out of time, the first flashpoint on each faction side was so great and then.. that was it /sadface. I'd say every flashpoint which has a hardmode has a good story. The leveling only flashpoints are a bit dull, I agree. Bonus Missions - you can skip the majority of them. My guardian did 0 PvP while leveling, 0 space missions and I never logged out in a cantina/ship (to prevent rested XP). I did all bonus missions / series and was overleveled for most of the content (until ~45 when the first missions were yellow). Currently I play my vanguard - rested XP, PvP, Space Missions. I skip basically every bonus mission (unless it's like "Kill one more guy!") and again - I'm 34, doing lv 30 missions on Aldaraan. I dont really see the leveling gabs. And I like the affection / level based companion stuff. I have a lv12 scoundrel for some crafting missions, and his companion is already has 6000 affection (gifts). When I have time/interest to level the scoundrel he will have 10k. I'm glad that I can look forward to his story, not have everything already done. That's really not my experience with the bonus missions. Especially on my guardian starting from Valis pretty much all the way up there were plenty of times where I had to go back just to get the levelling in to beat mobs, while I got there following the natural progression (ie not skipping large parts of content etc). Which I get from an MMO standpoint, but not from a story point of view. Similarly, if every 5-10 levels I have 3 or 4 companion conversations waiting for me at once, how am I experiencing a story? That's what was promised. Of course, MMO developers promise a lot of things and probably have to, but that's where a phase with people feeling let down like this comes from (again, I don't think it's a bad game, just saying). Especially when a big name like Bioware, who are supposed to be *good* at exactly that, is doing the promising. Well that and a large part of the MMO community being.. silly, admittedly. It could be the next big thing wrapped in gold and titties and people'd still complain. But things could have been nearer to that lovely image. Some of my favourite stories were from bonus missions. The one on taris was extremely tedious though but i was also playing it at 5 am and it took me more than 2 hours (till 7:30 am) so i probably wasnt in a very good fram of mind to follow a story at that point. But balmorra had an bonus series story line and that was one of my favourites, and the one on hoth was pretty cool because you go back there like 8 levels later to do it and it leads you to a whole new 47-48 zone with its own quests. I regret that i missed the nar shadaa one cuz i really like that planet but i didnt realise it had one even considering its about 6 levels after you complete nar shadaa it also leads you to new zones with their own quest hubs. Some of the bonus series have great storylines, some of them are kind of meh. When i lvled to 50 i didnt do any pvp rarely did many space missions, but i did quite a few bonus missions and i didnt do any content except class content on Correllia or Alderaan i didnt finish taris as when i went to do my bonus mission i realized there was about 3-4 quest hubs that i hadnt even touched. I didnt finish tatooine there was half the map that i didnt even explore really and i didnt finish quesh or do the bonus series there either. SO i still have a vast amount of content that im aware that i didnt complete let alone the stuff i havent even reailized yet.
You miss my point. Content wise their fine, but they serve the wrong purpose where they are at the back like that. Integrating them into the whole would have reduced the feeling of linearity/you have to do the same things on every char each time by a lot, even if at some points that may have required an extra class quest step. You know, polish.
I liked the few instances where you had to go back to a planet though yeah, I hope they do more of that instead of just adding new planets, keeps you involved. I did actually like Taris the first time through too because of all the fanservice. Well until I got eaten by the memory leak. Second time through it was a bit meh.
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So the bonus missions are good? I have saved them till I'm level 50. I know I won't get XP for them then, but I'm usually so sick of the planet when I've come to the bonus missions, so I just have to leave I'm do all the missions with my main, then just do class missions and PvP with alts.
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Ran EV and karaggas palace today on 8 man normal. onl1y did the first 2 bosses of karragas but i really liked it so far it was alot of fun. Great Operation.
Im having more and more fun each day i play my guild is just starting to come into its own with enough players hitting fifty to start knocking down raid bosses. plus hard modes everyday.
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On February 03 2012 18:42 Executor1 wrote: Ran EV and karaggas palace today on 8 man normal. onl1y did the first 2 bosses of karragas but i really liked it so far it was alot of fun. Great Operation.
Im having more and more fun each day i play my guild is just starting to come into its own with enough players hitting fifty to start knocking down raid bosses. plus hard modes everyday. yepp, thats the best part of being lvl 50. sadly its over way too fast. then you have a fully equiped char and nothing to do
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On February 03 2012 07:31 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2012 22:15 kukarachaa wrote: EA released their earnings yesterday for the shareholders and SEC as well as other reports that detail how many copies of each game they sold in each quarter etc, there were numbers of SWTOR copies sold something like 2 mill and active subscribers remaining 1.6-.17 mill etc ( you can easily find it online if u search for it ), while things could be better gameplay wise, it is not the end of the world like some people in this thread suggest. The 1.7 mil subscribers number was from december 31st which was still in the free month area. Therefor the number is pretty meaningless. Free month ended 20th jan for first day players. Next update on numbers should show a more realist picture of swtors abilty to retain numbers. Maybe you should read the press release you are referring too again. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/electronic-arts-reports-q3-fy12-financial-results-2012-02-01 December 31st is for their financial results.
And just like all those statistics are from only a few days ago "239 million hours played etc." so is the subscription numbers Here is a quote from the article you are referring too. "Star Wars(R): The Old Republic(TM) has generated 1.7 million active subscribers and sold through more than 2 million units in a little over one month."
If it was for the 31st it would say "in 11 days not in a little over 1 month" they cant lie in these press releases you know because they would be lying to their investors and they would get in a huge amount of trouble.
And a little over 1 month from december 20th sounds like only a few days ago..... which is exactly what they are referring too.
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Woah check this out! The developers clear up once and for all (for all you doubters) about when those subscription numbers are based on, and they are current numbers from the day before the press release BTW
http://www.darthhater.com/articles/swtor-news/19915-electronic-arts-q3-fy12-earnings-call
I thought this was rather impressive as well, out of those 1.7 million subs "This is an outstanding start for an MMO and the metrics on engagement suggests players are loving this game: unique log-ins are averaging about one million per day and their average play time is approximately four hours per day."
1 million unique log ins a day, that is huge!
Also for those guys posting the server population declines here is a nice little tidbit "I want to take a second to correct the reports which speculated that a lack of congestion was a sign of slow participation. Shortly after launch, we doubled the efficiency of each server, allowing us to handle twice as many players and remove the waiting lines. The lack of congestion is a function of great engineering."
That will explain most if not all of those so called server declines from those highly innacurate server population sites lol.
So stop being haters, i have no problem with people not liking the game but i dont understand why you guys are upset that so many people like it or try and disprove its popularity.
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On February 03 2012 22:34 Executor1 wrote:Maybe you should read the press release you are referring too again. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/electronic-arts-reports-q3-fy12-financial-results-2012-02-01December 31st is for their financial results. And just like all those statistics are from only a few days ago "239 million hours played etc." so is the subscription numbers Here is a quote from the article you are referring too. "Star Wars(R): The Old Republic(TM) has generated 1.7 million active subscribers and sold through more than 2 million units in a little over one month." If it was for the 31st it would say "in 11 days not in a little over 1 month" they cant lie in these press releases you know because they would be lying to their investors and they would get in a huge amount of trouble. And a little over 1 month from december 20th sounds like only a few days ago..... which is exactly what they are referring too.
They don't outright lie to their investors of course but the numbers are collected in a certain way to show that even though a lot of money was poured into this game, it is worth it. The press releases are the one side, aimed for investors and others alike. When you've the people who tell you a lot of people have quit and there's unofficial data diagrams supporting it, and the company's press release, the truth is usually somewhere between there. BioWare supposedly have the team which made the game working on it and developing it further, showing they care and will support the game for a long time. You can be sure all that money which went into making this game wasn't only an act of goodwill from EA.
Truth is story doesn't last forever and the end game content is lacking so when people find their way there and see there's not much to do, people will quit. The publisher's job is to convince the shareholders and others that everything is going positive and will count the data and show it in a way it will help them convince their investors that their game is profitable.
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On February 03 2012 23:21 DCRed wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2012 22:34 Executor1 wrote:Maybe you should read the press release you are referring too again. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/electronic-arts-reports-q3-fy12-financial-results-2012-02-01December 31st is for their financial results. And just like all those statistics are from only a few days ago "239 million hours played etc." so is the subscription numbers Here is a quote from the article you are referring too. "Star Wars(R): The Old Republic(TM) has generated 1.7 million active subscribers and sold through more than 2 million units in a little over one month." If it was for the 31st it would say "in 11 days not in a little over 1 month" they cant lie in these press releases you know because they would be lying to their investors and they would get in a huge amount of trouble. And a little over 1 month from december 20th sounds like only a few days ago..... which is exactly what they are referring too. They don't outright lie to their investors of course but the numbers are collected in a certain way to show that even though a lot of money was poured into this game, it is worth it. The press releases are the one side, aimed for investors and others alike. When you've the people who tell you a lot of people have quit and there's unofficial data diagrams supporting it, and the company's press release, the truth is usually somewhere between there. BioWare supposedly have the team which made the game working on it and developing it further, showing they care and will support the game for a long time. You can be sure all that money which went into making this game wasn't only an act of goodwill from EA. Truth is story doesn't last forever and the end game content is lacking so when people find their way there and see there's not much to do, people will quit. The publisher's job is to convince the shareholders and others that everything is going positive and will count the data and show it in a way it will help them convince their investors that their game is profitable.
Yea but i really dont think their lying about the 1.7 million subscribers though, look at it this way though. 700,000 of those were sold after the 26th ish. So probably about 500,000 subs are still in their free month. They dont deny that though, they said a majority of the customers are paying (over 50%) and that is something i can agree with. Also averaging 1 million unique log ins a day sounds about right if i think about it, i dont think its somewhere in the middle or anything, its not like they go oh well we get about 500,000 unique log ins on average, lets double that number in our press release. Its not worth the risk or the trouble, if it was bad they just wouldnt have included that information it wasnt mandatory info it was a cool statistic, just like the amount of npc's killed or the amount of hours logged (or years) since launch.
Also for instance in every wow expansion the begining raid content is usually lacking . When i think of WOTLK launch they had naxx, the wg raid boss, and the sanctum dragon. Aside from like 3 drakes up i cleared all the raid content long before ulduar came out but as more raid content came out that was more difficult and i settled into a more relaxed playing schedule i actually fell behind in raid content a little bit and considering the huge team BW has developing content like yyou said and they plan on releasing a big patch every 2 months i think they will catch up to alot of raiders quite fast. Early raid content is always supposed to be introductory and fairly easy anyways. I think with WOTLK it was a bit easier to get away with it though, because most people had alts and multiple characters to level up and gear out. I dont think my guild will have Karaggas palace cleared on 16 man nightmare before march anyways, so its all good for me and its not like i dont play alot i have 2 level 20's a level 12 and a level 50 gunslinger with 12 days played time on him , if your plaiyng more than that then yea you pprobably will blow through all the raid content way too fast but your in a very small minority of the customer base i personally dont even think much more than half the subcriber base has even hit 50 yet, probably less considering the 700k new subs since after the new year.
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I sincerely hope the next content patch will address how quickly you run out of things to do at level 50. It's awful how quick it is to max your char with top level pve or pvp gear in as little as 2 weeks of semi-consistent gaming. Furthermore, and it's been said before, you end up with a cookie-cutter character with no customization whatsoever. And that's especially a problem when you play a sage and are supposed to dress up like Pippa Middleton at the royal wedding (fascinator included)
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I just hit 50 a few days ago. PVP all day, everyday!
How long did it take you guys to get your champion gear?
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On February 04 2012 04:44 kierpanda wrote: I just hit 50 a few days ago. PVP all day, everyday!
How long did it take you guys to get your champion gear?
4-5 days to get everything except my 2 champion lightsabers which will never drop
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On February 04 2012 04:56 Kyyuna wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2012 04:44 kierpanda wrote: I just hit 50 a few days ago. PVP all day, everyday!
How long did it take you guys to get your champion gear? 4-5 days to get everything except my 2 champion lightsabers which will never drop 
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I have my rifle and an implant, so far. 2/5 bags, not bad!
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i got 2 armor pieces, 1 implant, 1 ear and 2 relics after 60 bags
dont get too cocky guys.
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On February 04 2012 00:16 Calm wrote: I sincerely hope the next content patch will address how quickly you run out of things to do at level 50. It's awful how quick it is to max your char with top level pve or pvp gear in as little as 2 weeks of semi-consistent gaming. Furthermore, and it's been said before, you end up with a cookie-cutter character with no customization whatsoever. And that's especially a problem when you play a sage and are supposed to dress up like Pippa Middleton at the royal wedding (fascinator included)
They are allowing you to rip out armorings/barrels/hilts soon so customization will be possible.
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Are there less content in end-game than in WoW? Because all my friends say that it's the same amount.
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