I wanted to take a little time and express my thoughts about the launch, current status, and future of Star Wars: The Old Republic. However, before I go into the my opinions and whatnot, I’d like to explain the three different types of MMO players because each of these players are audiences that Bioware is trying to please at the same time, while maintaining a balancing act of game stability.
The three different types of players are Veteran PvE, Veteran PvP, and Casual. The Casual players are players who are either new to the game, MMO’s, or simply don’t take the game very seriously and don’t dive very deep into the depths of the game or mechanics. The Veteran PvP player is someone who really focuses on the PvP experience and has most likely already finished the grind process to Battlemaster. Lastly, the Veteran PvE player is the person who focuses mostly on the PvE content the game has to offer and is probably already progressed into Hard Mode or Nightmare Mode operations.
Now… as we know, with the latest patch, 1.1, we saw some great new content, bug fixes, and also the addition of some more bugs. As with any MMO during a time of exploits, the official forums instantly blew up with flaming posters and people threatening to quit the game. Granted the bug that people were frustrated with was definitely a major oversight on Bioware’s end and provided some players, within a few hours, with a feat that only a handful of players on each server had accomplished until that point. So, the frustration is definitely expected and understood. However, this brings me to the purpose of this article… Be patient!
Players need to keep in mind that the game is still just a baby, having only been live for just over a month. We’ve been spoiled over the last couple years with very stable MMO’s to keep us entertained, like World of Warcraft and RIFT, so it’s easy to lose sight of how complicated it is to launch an MMO with millions of players on day one. If you take a step back for a moment, you will quickly realize that the game has been playable since Early Access launch, with minimal downtime for most servers. All the bugs we’ve seen, granted there have been a good handful of them, have been very minimal and fairly easy to skip over and continue with the game.
As far as the oversight with Ilum and continuing poor experience with Ilum PvP, Bioware quickly addressed the issue within 24 hours, assessed the situation, and decided to opt against doing rollbacks. The amount of servers that the oversight affected was minimal; however, the forum post discussing the issue quickly blew up in flames and many people prematurely reacted negatively.
I guess the point I am trying to get across is that players need to be patient with Bioware. They are new to the MMO scene and have been very communicative with the community and have done a great job addressing a large quantity of issues in a very short amount of time, while still providing new content. The Bioware team picked up a handful of the PvP developers who worked on Warhammer Online, so this team has the potential to make great things happen with the game over time. So I ask everyone to please take a step back, realize that the game is still in a very early stage of its life cycle, and it has such great potential and a solid foundation to be one of the few MMO’s that can hold a consistent player base over the next five plus years.
So, let’s all enjoy what Bioware has provided us – an exceptional game with an extremely solid foundation, a good amount of PvE content, and a PvP framework that can only improve from here on out with ranked PvP and more. If you find a bug in the game, do the right thing and report the bug in-game and on the forums if you see it being a top priority issue. The negativity doesn’t help anyone. Stay positive, enjoy the game, and help Bioware improve the experience for everyone.
Thanks guys.