For those of us who aren't SWTOR players, can you elaborate on this 'instance reset exploit'.

What exactly does that mean, and how did it ruin the economy?

What killed it for me was having attained a high legacy level, when they introduced legacy perks I had to grind for cash to be able to buy my legacy rewards. Which made having a high legacy level redundant. Cash grinding was all that mattered.

Making money is not an end game activity, it's the reason gold farmers are profitable.

It is also possible that SWTOR failed simply because the Star Wars franchise has been over exploited and it has lost the good will of many fans that won't get duped as easily as before with any product slapped with the "Star Wars" label.

Let's not get carried away - it's still a success compared to pretty much any other game not named WoW. It's got what, 800,000 subscribers still?

Eh, there's really not much too this-I could've saved them hundreds of millions of dollars saying, "WoW+voiced quest text isn't going to bring down WoW". You're competing against a huge amount of polished content, and a rock solid core user base.

Anyone who played the pre-beta build or even the beta knows this game was NOT ready for primetime when it was released last December. EA and BioWare would have been better off delaying the game and taking some of the pre-release feedback to heart rather than rushing it out for the holidays and focusing more on trying to get at least an 85 Metacritic score. When you can't get space combat right for a Star Wars game, well, then it's time to table the game and go back to the drawing board. In my opinion, this game played like WoW of 5 years ago, and it's clear that EA/BioWare spent too much energy trying to strategize ways to lure WoW players away instead of focusing on folks that DIDN'T play WoW but love RPGs like KOTOR, Mass Effect, etc., and were interested in making the investment in SWTOR.

Honestly, I felt that SWTOR was just a mediocre MMO with hopes that tacking Star Wars (or KOTOR) on to it would turn it into an amazing success. (With the exception of the story quests. Those were cool.) But after that, there's just not that much appeal.

Side note:

I also liked the cinematic trailers. I know it was Blur Studios, but I almost wish a Star Wars cinematic short film would be made with that kind of quality.

I'll re-install the game if they let me play as a wookie.

a few years from now we will likely look back (at 2011/2012) and realize:
1) the mmorpg market was oversaturated (too many options... not enough players to sustain all of these communities)
2) the "outflow" of mmorpg players exceeded the "influx" of new mmorpg players

(in general it's a "negative-sum game" for subscribers in the current mmorpg landscape)

i'm certainly speculating on point 2),but charts (if they are to be trusted) show peaks in subscriber numbers around late 2010 (http://users.telenet.be/mmodata/Charts/Subs-1.png) and declines or relative flatness since.

my gut tells me mmos aren't just losing subscribers/players to other mmos, they are also fighting a general malaise that has effected the mmo space. SWOTOR, (one of the most powerful brands) did not revolutionize the mmo formula much, and enter into a market saturated with similar mmos (tell me what feature is unique to SWOTOR other than the brand that evovles from the "traditional mmo"?)

evolving the monetization strategy (without evolving the gameplay) seems like a loosing battle, and i would be shocked if the FTP strategy moves them closer to profitability.

Ramin - About half way through reading this, I suddenly wondered if you had written it; scrolled up and yes, it's you. Well done!

I feel SWOTR had great gameplay and story, however when it came out what it really lacked was endgame good raiding. Which made it problematic to keep players once they reach maxed level for long duration of time.

I like that you say how important social interaction is to an MMO. So many people I've read actually think that being alone in an MMO is a good thing, and argue that you don't need actual roles, and would prefer a game where the majority of the content is completable through solo play. SWTOR failed because it had spent too much time, energy, and money on a part of the game that isn't actually necessary for the genre. While it is a nice addition to have a fully developed story for the leveling experience, it should not be done at the expense of the core features that make an MMO.

One thing that I did appreciate was the developer's strong stance against auto-grouping tools like the WoW dungeon finder.

One strong contender for failure is poor end-game content. If you don't have an alluring PvE and PvP endgame you will not keep people or grow your game. Even if you make a pretty and fun grind on the way there, if there isn't any big payoff or challenge or whatever at the end it will all feel pointless and boring.

Kind of how diablo 3 flunked it, focusing on getting the beginning right and fun but with an endgame that many players just asked for a refund even if they'd clocked 100s of hours.

SWTOR does a lot of things right, and a lot of things wrong as a game. But I don't think any of that is why it failed The problem is simple: Subscription games are DONE. Unless your game's name starts with "World" and ends with "of Warcraft", you're not making money that way. SWTOR actually was the last gasp of that system; one big final attempt. I do think its failure (as a pay to play) demonstrates that its just no viable any more, especially for traditional MMO experiences.

Eve is an exception because Eve is >always< the exception, to everything. If someone told me that CCP headquarters in Iceland had successfully figured out how to ignore gravity (not beat, just... do their own thing) and was now floating two miles above the ground, I think might just believe it.

As for SWTOR, they have an amazing franchise and a beautiful world. I have hopes that with a bit of luck they might turn things around and have the kind of successful conversion to free to play that games like LoTRO have had.

Actually i have read lots of comments in forums which i totaly disagree about the unbalanced situation of warzones pvp. I am a dedicated pvp player. I've played at least with 5 different classes at level50 and tried every class at low levels.
There is nothing wrong with pvp balance in Swtor as a game breaking issue. There are lots of reasons why Swtor failed but pvp balance is not one of them.

Any game can work as a subscription if you can include a stable virtual economy and build the game around that economy. EVE works merely because they did that. I personally am shocked every time I see an MMO that launches without this design. Obviously I get shocked a lot, which is what motivates my research. There are huge problems with the unlimited subscription model, but those are primarily due to the lack of multiple price points and temporal controls. There are ways to modify it to make it work again.

Good article and feedback! Single or multiplayer, imagine "Role Play that actually changes the world around you" along with in-game "hobbyist" construction kit purchases. Build and own anything you can afford over time or with add-ons. Allow players to form factions and defend / conquer territory. Keep the servers combined to facilitate both synchronous and asynchronous socialization (rather than reacting to fall-off) plus a mobile info/update/crafting portal and you have something like www.frontier1859.com/mmorpg :)

Makes me think the TES: Online team must be shifting design to F2P, if it wasn't from the beginning

Best Star Wars game I ever played was Battle Front (not the sequel) on the old Xbox, all anyone needs to do to have a successful Star Wars game is just make that game again but with updated visuals, you really felt like you were in a battle in the Star Wars universe. Imagine a Call of Duty type game but using the Star Wars brand? Keep all the Jedi stuff to a minimum because it becomes too much like a superhero game. The franchise is still capable of producing amazing games, but for some reason they keep getting it wrong.

There's also the simple point that: If I want to play WoW, I'll go play WoW. I haven't played SWTOR, but the extent to which it is a WoW clone--not just borrowing a few convenient WoW conventions--is the extent to which the game has chosen to cheap and uncreative. The MMO graveyard is full of games that tried to peel away a piece of of WoW's market by blindly duplicating it.

The game is linear. It's a single player game built by a company that makes great linear single player games. Painting MMO features over the top was only going to go so far. Story driven game with very few paths through it. Great many years ago but not worthy of a subscription, which is a long term commitment.

It's a good game but it's more of a single game with multiplayer. I suspect the Elder Scrolls MMO will end up making similar mistakes. Putting too much effort into being an MMO without understanding what the game is at heart.

Interesting post, not sure I agree though.

I thought it would fail from the get go. EA behind it was the first red flag. Then the fact it sounded like WoW with Star WArs skins. And then the fact that Bioware had little experience with MMOs. And was up against the 800 lb gorilla - WoW. WoW had over 7 years of polishing and expansion packs. The only way to overcome that is to really bring a next-gen design to the MMO space or stay out of their way and go niche.

Also unless you have your head in the sand you know it just isn't possible to create all the compelling story content Bioware is known for at the rate an MMO requires.

Even on the face of Star Wars Galaxies' own failure, they still managed to subsist for a long time.

SWTOR is crashing faster (Less than 2 years) than Star Wars Galaxies did (7+ years).

While SWG suffered from the NGE, it still managed to retain enough subscribers to bring in a reasonable amount of money. How did SWG manage to exist in this hostile environment? Simple: By giving players a living, breathing world in terms of economics, sandbox gameplay and elements that made Star Wars Galaxies by and large one of the most gameplay-rich games in the MMO space for this entire decade.

I dare you to try and find me a game that has more gameplay features than Star Wars Galaxies.

SWG Features:
1. Factional PvP (Rebel vs Empire)
a. Build your own bases.
b. Defend/attack enemy bases and gain superiority in a given region/planet.

2. Crafting System
a. Fabricate droids, with a high degree of customizability (colors, features and functions such as "town crier" systems that advertised your shop).
b. Fabricate clothing, armor and weapons with a high degree of customizability. Re-engineering is a major component to the system that allows for more powerful weapons and equipment.

3. Space Flight System
a. You can fly into spess! Freighters, starfighters, and even sub-capital ships such as the Rebel Gunship/Vigo Gunship/Imperial Gunship are available.
b. Re-engineering allows you to acquire more powerful components for your ships. I once had an engine that made my freighter among the fastest in the Galaxy. Outran even the best TIE Fighters.
c. Atmospheric flight. Implemented with the last update prior to shutdown, you had the ability to sightsee over the planet's surface, or engage in dogfights over Mos Eisley Spaceport.

4. Player-Driven Systems
a. Found your own city, expand it from an outpost to a metropolis! Get bonuses according to what type you designate it as. Industrial? Bigger benefit to mineral/resource harvesters! Residential? Cheaper cost for housing.
b. Resource-Driven Market System. You procure resources through people that survey the planets on a regular basis, seek out the best deposits and harvest them like fiends using massive ore, gas, solar harvesters that you can place anywhere on the planet. These resources are then fed into a factory that has a schematic loaded to produce components that may be assembled to create a mass-produced weapon, armor, or clothing. The crafting system allows for artisanal touches, or a hyper-capitalist mass-production approach. Either way, it's fun!

5. High degree of customizability.
a. In closing, I am stressing that Star Wars Galaxies, as a sandbox world, allowed for a high degree of customizability for your character, your equipment, your clothing, and your cities. You could even furnish your home and position the furniture HOWEVER you wanted using X-Y-Z axis commands. This produced some stunning households and business interiors that have won interior design contests.
b. Sony Online Entertainment decided to implement a card game, and when you earned rare cards, you could use them to acquire rare items, ships, and equipment in the game. This was an effective monetization model for an "unlimited subscription" game.

In other words, LucasArts is a blithering, mouth-drooling idiot for shutting down one of the most prime examples of MMORPG game design. By keeping it alive, they would have been able to provide guidance to what the future of MMORPGs could be!

You had the power to define your game experience. The game didn't do that for you.

@Jack Young: A better question, six months from now, is...

Lucas Arts: "Why does SWTOR have less than 300k?"

You know what? Fuck the concept that MMORPGs need to have insanely large numbers. No. If I ever became a producer in an MMORPG, my goal would be "sustainable, cost-effective" subscription numbers, not "OMGWTFBBQ WE BEAT WoW FOR THREE MONTHS".

In short, If my MMORPG gets 300k, that's sustainable. It'll take longer to pay off the budget, sure, but it's sustainable. Getting 25 million users for the first month is meaningless if they don't stay past the first month.

"What went wrong with Star Wars: The Old Republic?" - while a great write-up and all, the answer is very simple. People wanted KOTOR 3, instead they got an MMO - a mediocre one at that. It doesn't go much deeper than that.

The ones interested in the game had played KOTOR 1, 2 and played it like that - storyline and done. The ones that wanted an MMO are already playing one - so you either have to give them something new with a massive hook or they try it and leave. Who did this appeal to at all? a niche that like MMO's and KOTOR. It was a way too expensive gamble that just didn't pay off.

As far as the article goes, note, every one of those mistakes is an MMO trait that most users (KOTOR users) didn't care for in the first place.

They design these games wrong IMHO. They need to be built from the end game back. They need to spend 90% of their time on the end game design as that is where players will spend 90%+ of their game time. There are of course a million other smaller reasons why they are failing to capture and hold audiences but failure in design focus is the major one in my mind.

This is basically your Lack of Social Interaction, but I'd put it bluntly as

It was a fun single player RPG with some MMO stuff bolted on.

I 'beat' it twice with different classes. Enjoyed it! Then quit.

@Jack,

Sounds like the "New Coke" fiasco. Lots of tests before launch. People liked it better than Pepsi in blind taste tests. Famously tanked with the "Coke" name on it.

I wish so much somthing like a Minecraft MMO. Players building the world, limited resources, cities rising and falling, like old empires.

I enjoyed playing SWTOR, and only left when I was unable to transfer soon enough to find others to play with. SWTOR was my 42 MMO experience. I was really hoping that Players would begin on different worlds, form and build their own Colonies, Research, Gather and build Spaceports and Fleets, Explore - eventually running into each other in Space - setting the stage for what Star Wars is all about!

I'm going to say you've got it partially right. Social interaction in this game is fine. It took me a long time to join a guild but I still talk to a lot of people, and I'm an introvert. What this game is missing is social interaction in the form of cross faction battles on all planets like SWG had, while levelling. The first place you see other players is Nar Shaddar, making you around L22+. Having absolutely no reason to cross the path of the enemy is really silly in an MMO. SWG did it right imho. Shared space ports, covert operatives, player placed faction bases that cause the other faction to mount raids on them. You just can't beat that.

1. AI
Wow... just, wow. Talk about de-innovating. Two or three enemies standing around waiting for you to attack them just does not cut it any more. These groups placed strategically so you can't avoid them is just even worse. Worse still is the lack of tactics required to battle them. Rinse and repeat.

I will say that they did toy with some innovative quest concepts (I can't say they haven't been tried before, not having played every mmo available), but 99.9% of encounters were the usual kind. Why are these troops who are fully battle ready, just standing in the middle of nowhere with no cover?

To me this is the biggest turn off.

2. Glow Bats
Lightsabers in the movies cut right through things and killed enemies in one swipe (mostly, the Acklay and General Greivous aside). In SWTOR, you wield pre-star wars lightsabers designed by the NERF company. I bonk you on the head with my lightsaber and you say "hey that hurt!"

3. Crafting
Yet another joke. It's ok, it works, but talk about boring. Not as boring as EQ 2, a bit better than WoW, but nothing has approached SWG for crafting brilliance. Not being able to craft the end game gear is just utter stupidity and voids the whole concept of a player made experience.

4. Bosses
Devs just don't get it. You want to make me feel heroic and you go all out to prove how powerful I am, then some pathetic republic general has 4 bajillion hit points and a pistol, and it takes me and secven other Dark Lords of the Sith to kill him? Go choke on a lemon please.

SWG failed here too, the corvette runs where average rebel troops had ridiculous amounts of hit points, just to make it take longer to kill them, and then they hit harder, truly a brainless idea.

5. Space Combat
What a joke. Seriously, this is the best Bioware could do? SWG did this pretty well, but even that didn't live up to the old X-Wing / Tie Fighter games. This is what everyone wants, why wont someone give it to us?

Edit: Where the hell is the MMO part of the space experience?

6. PvP
Stun lock. Seriously? You think it's fun to stand around being stunned the entire time? Now lets add a completely new stat to make all the gear you have worthless because it doesn't have this stat. Well done, well done. NOT.

I have a multitude more complaints to make, but to me these are the complete and utter failures of the game.

Having said all that, I have been playing since early access and I still play, and I still love playing it. I'm not finished all the class stories yet, and given that I am in an awesome friendly / casual raiding guild and we're having fun, I probably wont quit when I finish them. If my guild disappears and I'm finished my stories, I will move on.


Edit:
Oh I forgot the other big ones.
- Lack of new content
- Lack of communication from developers (though this appears to be normal for mmo's) This ties in with the Social side. It's not just about players being social, it's about everyone involved with the game being social. Epic Fail.
- Lies from developers about future updates (in the very minimal communications we did get 6 months ago). Social fail again.
- And of course the almight Free To Play update. Yeah, now we have to pay for updates we were getting for free, and that includes people who remain subscried. Yet another social fail.

Oh and yet another issue, one that affects me severely, but americans don't give a shit about, is doing maintenance in prime time. Yeah ok, if your MMO is only supported in the US, that is fine. EA/Bioware officially released this game into Australia and gave as a server in Sydney (yay, its about time a big company looked after us this way!) but then proceeded to do all the maintenance at 5pm - 11pm. The amount of times they bring the server down per week combined with their inability to take under 4 hours to complete maintenance means people just can't play the game. If they keep this practise up much longer I will have to quit the game as it's simply not available for me to play at reasonable playing times.

@Aaron

I completely agree when you said, "The mmo I would have looked forward to would have involved actual "Star"+ "Wars" a larger than life game where the conquest of the Galaxy planet to planet was involved. In the upper atmosphere players battle out to defend or attack a Planets systems, then move to land on the Planet and do X objective. Players could live on Star Destroyers or Corvettes etc..."

"The use of a free-to-play monetization model requires careful placement of your best content, what I call 'carrots,' on the other side of payment opportunities that I call 'gates.' "

And by this process, you become what I call "asshole".

Theres always the fact that players expect too much content too often in MMOs. what happened to playing on week ends and then like ~~ not playing for a couple weeks?


http://tabletop.geekandsundry.com/episodes/steve-jackson-extended-interview-from
-munchkin-tabletop-ep-5/

If Steve Jackson didn't bring life to his game, those kids wouldn't even know what to do with it if they couldn't babble at it or tell it how sexy they were.

And this is the point, we are losing the old salts / baby boomers like this left and right, people who actually knew what roleplay meant. Players who could lead a game and not just toy with it, people who could draw from creative usage of their brains, books and life experience.

And all we will be left with is Saturday morning cartoon kids waiting for dad to draw on experience, dependent mental thumb suckers. Is that the legacy we want to leave behind?

It's real easy to point a finger at commercial America spoonfeeding us our own thoughts, but I believe it's the it's the niche game lovers that are still left and understand what appreciation for real roleplay game experiences means that can change this imagination deficit and decline.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Dungeons & Dragons Online yet. Weather or not you like the game they seem to be doing well after switching to F2P. (Some reports I read said their revenue went up ~45% after switching.) I started playing as a free alternative to WoW, and yes ended up forking over some cash. The mix of F2P and P2P is a fairly gentle ramp up - there's plenty of "carrots" on the other side, but you don't really notice the "gates" until you're rather invested in your character and want to continue. I won't say much about the in-game economy and socialization as I usually play with a small, static group, but Turbine seems to be doing well enough to have recently released their first huge expansion. It's there and I can usually find a pick up group when I need it, I just don't look often.

The potential trouble SW:TOR may face is if, as others have noted, they relied too much on the franchise name instead of the gameplay itself to retain players. I'm sure the folks at BioWare did what they thought best during development, but from reading the accounts above and talking to friends who played during the Beta, I got the impression all the "Star Wars-y" stuff was there but it somehow lacked cohesion.

Ramin highlights in interesting delima for BW, however. From what I've read, DDO was kinda half-baked anyway prior to the switch, so it allowed them to course correct and "finish the thought" in a few areas. If SW:TOR is too locked in to a particular design path, it may end up being even harder for players to connect.

I was going to buy the game from day one, but Origin site said it wasnt available in my region and on the official site FAQ they said they will be releasing it to more countries on the upcoming months, tried a couple of times a few months later but the same lame message appeared, then I just didnt care about the game anymore.

I guess that happened to many international "potential" players, its a shame, isnt that the hole purpose of online stores? downloadable content? and so on

This article, like many articles Ive seen popping up, totally misses the major points as to why this specific MMO has crashed and almost burned. The latest bean counter version is that 40% of their exit interviews (which I took these surveys, several in fact, very poorly designed) say the monthly fee was the issue. In less then one year, EA and TOR's senior management continue the spin machine and sadly, the media continues to buy it, unchallenged, hook-line- and sinker. Although I greatly admire and respect your intellect and views, I think you are way overplaying monetization and the economy as core causal factors specific to this game. Even in your answer to the Legacy comment way above, if in fact Bioware priced Legacy so high due to gold farmers (which I do not buy) and their reaction was that pricing structure; if in fact they were that lacking in terms of adhering to a long-term vision- the game deserves to go under.

The core long-term issues have little to do with their monetization model or that they over reached on the use of the SW brand, or the economy as a huge driving force to the games demise. The solutions are not around some quick turn monetization model, the latest of which is F2P. Im sure some MMO F2P types will save this game on a basic level. But there is a VAST difference between saving your butt financially and an MMO that has truly become all it could be. Almost 2M subscribers speaks to the hope that people had; where it is now, well under 1M subscribers, has to do with fundamental breaches that occurred. Somebody needs to wake up to these truths if the game is ever to be fixed.

Article after article by BEAN COUNTERS cite stat after stat or make the issues about things that never address the CORE GAME MECHANICS and the GLOBAL ATTITUDE which do a much better job of defining the real truths behind the massive failure of this MMO. I cant imagine what all these hard working (many of them now laid off) devs and visionary managers must feel like to have something they cared so much about, shattered into pieces after years of work.

#1- The current mentality is to INVENT Star Wars content versus truly giving players/fans the Star Wars we know. When you constantly invent outside of a powerfully established context, you’re asking people to learn about and embrace your version of the cannon versus offering players the ability to enjoy fully the SW experiences they want to play. The story arcs that Ive played, three in total, are very good, the best of any MMO or any other game and yes, very iconic. Some of the side quests score decently well in this regard. But for the most part, this game is KOTOR on steroids and not even close to an SW MMO experience. Once you make it to 50 to include end game content, the game just falls flat on its face in terms of it being a SW license and as an MMO, plus they abandon the very thing they hook you on- story!

A very good example of this mentality is the invented planet that they are choosing to launch, which is being marketed as an all PvP planet. They are obviously playing to the quick fix, heavy PvP crowd from which F2P will bode well with (for minimal cost), which has nothing to do with truly offering the Opus of Star Wars experiences. Put another way, they way from which they have chosen to "fix" the game is a TOTAL FAILURE TO TRULY DOUBLE DOWN ON OFFERING A SUSTAINABLE STAR WARS EXPERIENCE that keeps a core base coming back for more and growing. Had they launched Endor or Dathomir as planets, well known and mysterious, highly desirable locations to explore and to “experience iconic Star Wars moments”- that alone, just launching one of those planets, increasing some options to explore, having good story lines, a Dathomir end game experience (talk about sexy? WOW!) that alone would have immediately resulted in more players and more revenue.

#2- If Im a Bounty Hunter and Im a level 50, I want to Bounty Hunt. Not gonna happen in TOR. If I am a Level 50 Smuggler, I want to smuggle, a Jedi Master- I want to work with the Jedi Council to go on important missions. NONE OF THIS IS AVAILABLE once your turn 50 in TOR, which is a HUGE STORY OVERSIGHT and has resulted in TOR leaving a ton of money on the table. A moment ago, I stated that had they launched a more iconic planet and opened up the gameplay framework, to allow for more exploration, they would have had a boon in return customers. Now lets add to that Level 50's that can Bounty Hunt, be Spys, run missions for the Jedi Council, so on and so forth- and that number of people that would bring back and the core TOR population would soar. IS EA IN TOUCH WITH THESE TRUTHS ON ANY LEVEL? The answer as evidenced by all of their actions, is no.

You have a game that does a great job of drawing you in through their story arcs and BAM, your reward for turning 50 is ALL OF THAT goes away. Your companions have nothing else to say to you, at least the ones you’ve maxed out, thats it- your relationship with that NPC companion is, for all practical purposes, done. TOR wants you to (in fact, forces you to- if you want to enjoy companion perks) max out all of your companion's XP. So if you had a blast with Kira, ALL THIS BUILD UP with her, you're gonna get married, you secretly broke Jedi rules and then level 50 hits or whenever you max out her storyline, then nothing, you're done, THE SILENT WIFE named Kira. From that point on she will only give you route, basic responses; basically, you have a talking test dummy.

How did this happen? How do you make those kinds of decisions? How do create a game so built around epic story lines and companion relationships only to then abandon all of that once a person hits 50? Again, this is a failure to NOT LEVERAGE THE BRAND ENOUGH versus leveraging it too much or any particular type of monetization model.

#3- Its friggin’ Star Wars! I want to explore and fully experience this cool world. Not going to happen in TOR. Ohlen stated in his article that they never meant to change the MMO experience, only to add story. Every MMO Ive played and I’ve played a lot of the big ones to include Galaxies - WoW - LOTR - Rift and others, let you truly explore the world you’re in. Rift even has a solid reward system for such desires with some fun perks.

A friend and I were talking about the game Star Wars Galaxies. I shared a story about one day when I was zooming along, minding my own business riding my speeder on the high level planet (it TRULY felt like a planet) of Endor, on the shoreline of a lake there, when out of the blue I get knocked off my bike- which then blows up and I hear Stormtroopers telling me to halt. I look behind me and see two ships full of stormies unloading and coming after me. I popped up my chat for my guild and said, "you won't believe this". Seconds later, I was in a fight for my life. The "trigger" for this random event had to do with a system they deployed that tied in how many imp kills I had, both PvP and NPC, that related to my reputation rating. Folks, this was a random encounter that made my experience feel rather over the top real! I was on a SW high for days.

No exploring. No iconic Star Wars world events (think Galaxies and Rift). Nothing meaningfully Star Wars after 50. Very narrow control on skill trees with Hybrids being a big no-no. Next to no interaction with our Star Wars environments. But sure, the real issue is people having to pay a monthly fee. So very sad, given how awesome the game trailers were, give how awesome this game could have been.

#4-Rhakghouls- seriously? Fine, its a call back to KOTOR, so a little bit here and there. But to make that such a huge deal throughout? In operations? In your one world event? Do you people even understand what the attraction of Star Wars is all about- because it aint Rhakghouls! And although KOTOR has some great merits, people didn't sign up for a KOTOR MMO NOR WAS IT MARKETED AS SUCH, they signed up for an EPIC SW experience! Give me a world event where Sith Masters or Jedi Masters suddenly appear on the opposing factions Capital Ships. Have a Call To Arms world event where I see twenty of my fellow players called back to the Jedi temple because its under attack. Give me iconic breathtaking and wide open SW worlds to not just fight in, but also to explore. THATS Star Wars!

#5- The general perception that Bioware and EA could care less has been a huge issue, regardless of all their press saying otherwise. They launched an economy that was utterly ridiculous in terms of all the costs for healing, repairs, transaction fees, etc.. Their tier based equipment and mod systems, which have been constantly changing rendering all your hard work useless, all that made the game anything but user friendly. Then there is the Legacy system complete with a Legacy XP bar for perks that I need to spend a fortune to buy, but somehow that supposed to feel like something I earned? And If you bought the Collectors Edition, you really felt a deep sense of betrayal, of Bait and Switch. Sure, the shipped items with the CE were nice, but VERY CLEARLY STATED IN THE RAMP UP is that we would get a vendor that would be updated regularly with exclusive new items and content. Never happened. The in game benefit to having a security key was dramatically better then having bought the CE. I could go on and on. Side quests, once Ive leveled to 50, I still have to waste my time on all the dialog when Im leveling a toon? I get that being important for a new toon's core storyline quests, but all the side quests too? So leveling 3 toons MANDATES dredging through all the same side content again?

EA needs to STOP spitting out statistics and STOP throwing out quick fixes. Give us the experience we paid for, the SW experience you marketed; give is Dathomir and bounties to hunt, things to smuggle, Jedi council meetings to attend that spark great adventures; give us back the companions WE WANT TO PLAY versus forcing us to level companions we could care less about. And in spite of what all the so called data TOR, especially EA likes to tout- the game will actually turnaround. Sorry OP, but you missed pretty much all of the major reasons this game has failed

I think EA took one look at the game and said, "This isn't a WOW killer. It isn't enough like WOW! You think you'll attract gamers with...*story???*" and gutted it and made them completely re-engineer away from the bones of the original legacy system and redo the end game. Just from my person gut forensics having played a great deal of SWTOR the way (in my arrogance) I suspect it was supposed to have been played, and from my knowledge of Bioware game design.

I think they wanted to do something different and EA killed them on acquisition. I could be wrong. But the fact is, there's a strong game still in this game, and it's not marketed as such. I blog about that here:

https://plus.google.com/101371184407256956306/posts/P6yZqcn2YC7

...and I've bitched about it on the swtor.com forums, where there's a serious contingent who agree with me. The primal sin?

The game I describe is designed for readers, for people who like story, for *introverts* (in the technical, psychological sense). This runs counter to what all the power players (who are all extroverts) in the games industry think that people want, because they listen to their fans, and the fans who are loudest are all extroverts.

Introverts play single player games, so the common wisdom runs. Bioware created an MMO for introverts (which run 50% or more of the general population according to some studies, probably more than that among SF fans, IMO).

EA, I believe, would have none of that. It fit none of their traditional markets. It fit none of their preconceptions. Who ever heard of an introvert in heroic fiction? (Obi-Wan, Luke, Anakin, probably all of them introverts -- Bilbo, Frodo,... uh, yeah...)

Now (as I blogged on my industry blog here) the founders of Bioware have left likely on non-compete. I hope they re-emerge to found another company in a couple years, and I hope they never are tempted to sell to a paternal giant again.

EA may get added to the sad category with SOE with some fans over this eventually. And perhaps, in some years, SWTOR will be the classic cult work like Blade Runner that people look back at and say, "See, this is where this part of story and art changed in this medium..."

What went wrong? Too much like wow.. Been there done that. Period.