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[Won]

Amount of actual boss encounters is probably a more interesting number than the number of raid dungeons, though variety of course matters too.

And yeah, WoW basically got away with it because Blizzard really throttled progression as much as possible. Doesn't sound like Bioware is going for that, nor do I think that they would get away with it.

 

[Morn]

Amount of actual boss encounters is probably a more interesting number than the number of raid dungeons, though variety of course matters too.

And yeah, WoW basically got away with it because Blizzard really throttled progression as much as possible. Doesn't sound like Bioware is going for that, nor do I think that they would get away with it.

Every MMO needs to do it. It's one of the secrets to WoW's success and keeping people playing.

Blizzard is surprised that they're loosing so many subscribers. It's because people are tearing through the content so fast now because there's no throttling. There's no barrier for entry besides gearscore, and gear is so damn easy to get now. They really need to bring back raid attunements, keys (which they just removed from the game entirely), and other things to keep people playing.

 

[CzarTim]

I bet TOR launches with 3-5 raids. Probably closer to 3.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Amount of actual boss encounters is probably a more interesting number than the number of raid dungeons, though variety of course matters too.

And yeah, WoW basically got away with it because Blizzard really throttled progression as much as possible. Doesn't sound like Bioware is going for that, nor do I think that they would get away with it.

Well WoW got away with alot because it was too many the "first" at the time (yea it wasn't the first MMO). People have different expectations now and you see it with every MMO release with how they don't have enough content to keep up with older games that have been adding onto themselves for years.

Some people have more realistic expectations that a launch MMO is going to be a bit light on content compared to older games, but still a game needs to at least try to have some variety of content at launch. TOR better have more than one raid at launch

 

[Dinosaur Tamer]

The difference is that WoW from Vanilla on had a gear progression prior to doing the hard raids, which kept people playing. That's their real design secret for preventing subscriber churn early in it's life. There wasn't a massive loss of subscribers from WoW after the first month, the OPPOSITE happened. Blizzard only expected to have 500,000 subscribers by February after the November launch, and they had that after the first month.

For Molten Core, a launch raid, players had to first become attuned to it by finding this rock at the very bottom of Blackrock Depths. Then to actually SURVIVE in MC you had to clear the 15-Man Strat, Scholo, and Upper/Lower Spire to get your class armor set.

And don't even get me started on having to farm Onyxia to craft Onyxia Scale Cloaks for a 40-man guild raid to kill Nefarian in 1.6.

Time sinks like attunement and real gear progression have been thrown out to make games more casual friendly, but the backfire is that it causes a loss of subscribers much earlier.

That is correct, but I am sure you know devs can't pull this kind of crap anymore. Obvious stretching of content like vanilla WoW is now frowned upon by the majority of players. New MMORPGs would not get away with this and that is why they just don't try. World of Warcraft had an advantage here, as it had with many things. That's why there will never another true MMORPG becoming as successful as WoW was. To reach that kind of player numbers, you just have to leave the genre and/or go down the Farmville road (as Titan is rumored to be going).

Now, we know there are at least three different difficulty modes, so if you cannot skip one (and Bioware could make it so) SWTOR could buy some time with three cycles of the same raid tier instead of two and none of us know how good that is going to work.

Yea WAR had a couple raids at launch. Rift had a big raid similar to WoW and Raid Rifts as well.

Yeah, off the top of my head, as I said.

Saying all other MMOs only had a "first tier" of raiding is just an attempt to not make TOR look lacking.

Again, COME ON. Please, show me a MMORPG with more than a first tier of raids at launch. Multiple small raids of roughly the same difficulty with rewards of roughly the same quality count as a tier. I did not make that up and you damn well know that.

If you want to count raids instead of boss encounters (and we have no idea about the number of encounters in the Eternity Vault), count the tiers and not the amount of zones/instances.

 

[Won]

Every MMO needs to do it. It's one of the secrets to WoW's success and keeping people playing.

Blizzard is surprised that they're loosing so many subscribers. It's because people are tearing through the content so fast now because there's no throttling. There's no barrier for entry besides gearscore, and gear is so damn easy to get now. They really need to bring back raid attunements, keys (which they just removed from the game entirely), and other things to keep people playing.

They need to do it, but I'm just not sure how the playerbase will react. WoW didn't end up at this point because Blizzard randomly tries out this stuff. They track every player and their raid progress. I don't think sooo many more players suddenly finish raid instances and quit because of it.

 

[Dakota47]

I can understand that the lack of raids at launch will be a problem for the hardcore crowd, but I don't see myself reaching level 50 within the first month (or the first two months even), unless leveling is superfast. I am more of a toon-a-holic anyway.

 

[Morn]

Again, COME ON. Please, show me a MMORPG with more than a first tier of raids at launch. Multiple small raids of roughly the same difficulty with rewards of roughly the same quality count as a tier. I did not make that up and you damn well know that.

If you want to count raids instead of boss encounters (and we have no idea about the number of encounters in the Eternity Vault), count the tiers and not the amount of zones/instances.

Ok then, WoW had two tiers of raiding at launch, if you go by the armor. The Dungeon sets 1 and 2 are called Tier 0 now and the stuff dropped in MC was Tier 1.

 

[BattleMonkey]

I can understand that the lack of raids at launch will be a problem for the hardcore crowd, but I don't see myself reaching level 50 within the first month (or the first two months even), unless leveling is superfast. I am more of a toon-a-holic anyway.

Well as I said before I can see this game being very divided, with lot of the hardcore MMO players especially WoW vets scoffing at it and turning away from it back to their home. Lot of the interest in the game from what I gather just from friends (yea I know it's just anecdotal) is that it's the more single playerness image that the game seems to be going for. I can see the game doing well for the more casual player base but the hardcore might be hard to keep with how things are sounding.

 

[ElectricBlue187]

The difference is that WoW from Vanilla on had a gear progression prior to doing the hard raids, which kept people playing. That's their real design secret for preventing subscriber churn early in it's life. There wasn't a massive loss of subscribers from WoW after the first month, the OPPOSITE happened. Blizzard only expected to have 500,000 subscribers by February after the November launch, and they had that after the first month.

For Molten Core, a launch raid, players had to first become attuned to it by finding this rock at the very bottom of Blackrock Depths. Then to actually SURVIVE in MC you had to clear the 15-Man Strat, Scholo, and Upper/Lower Spire to get your class armor set.

And don't even get me started on having to farm Onyxia to craft Onyxia Scale Cloaks for a 40-man guild raid to kill Nefarian in 1.6.

Time sinks like attunement and real gear progression have been thrown out to make games more casual friendly, but the backfire is that it causes a loss of subscribers much earlier.

Agree. That stuff really didn't bother me that much. You just have to make it part of the storyline and I'll enjoy it

 

[LowParry]

WAR's endgame was so so bad. I'm talking glitchy to the point of unplayable. It just wasn't worth it. So a lot of people turned to PvP. And it was glorious. Then game the whole open world RvR. Great idea, but damn what a slideshow that was.

I'm not too worried about TOR's endgame yet. If this world PvP is something that looks like fun, I'll probably end up setting camp there. We'll see.

 

[Dinosaur Tamer]

Ok then, WoW had two tiers of raiding at launch, if you go by the armor. The Dungeon sets 1 and 2 are called Tier 0 now and the stuff dropped in MC was Tier 1.

One tier. Just like every other "recent" MMORPG release at launch. Onyxia + Molten Core being the first and Blackwing Lair the second tier. Instances dropping entrance level gear are obviously not a raid tier (marked the key words for you). I know you already knew that, but I am not going to take the bait and just act like I really have to tell you how this works.

Now, let's not dwell on this. We both know a single tier is standard. I agree that a percentage of players will bail out as soon as they are done with the launch content -just like in every other game with WoW having a once in a time resistance against this. There is nothing to gain by trolling, let's just move on.

WAR's endgame was so so bad. I'm talking glitchy to the point of unplayable. It just wasn't worth it. So a lot of people turned to PvP. And it was glorious. Then game the whole open world RvR. Great idea, but damn what a slideshow that was.

I'm not too worried about TOR's endgame yet. If this world PvP is something that looks like fun, I'll probably end up setting camp there. We'll see.

WAR could have been massive with it's PvP system (although I still consider DAoC's superior) and an actual working clone of WoW's movement and combat mechanics. Unfortunately they screwed the last part up to the point of combat as a core element of the game being no fun at all.

 

[BattleMonkey]

WAR's endgame was so so bad. I'm talking glitchy to the point of unplayable. It just wasn't worth it. So a lot of people turned to PvP. And it was glorious. Then game the whole open world RvR. Great idea, but damn what a slideshow that was.

I'm not too worried about TOR's endgame yet. If this world PvP is something that looks like fun, I'll probably end up setting camp there. We'll see.

WAR had issues in pretty much everything. While the PVP was fun, it had tons of design problems that ruined it and for many became pointless.... so many features of the game were just ignored completely as players quickly found out how best to exploit renown and xp gains, and that lot of objective RvR was not worth their time.

They have greatly improved WAR, it's pretty good set up now, but it's a game that depends on needing lots of players to enjoy and people left the game in droves.

 

[Morn]

One tier. Just like every other "recent" MMORPG release at launch. Onyxia + Molten Core being the first and Blackwing Lair the second tier. Instances dropping entrance level gear are obviously not a raid tier (marked the key words for you). I know you already knew that, but I am not going to take the bait and just act like I really have to tell you how this works.

Now, let's not dwell on this. We both know a single tier is standard. I agree that a percentage of players will bail out as soon as they are done with the launch content -just like in every other game with WoW having a once in a time resistance against this. There is nothing to gain by trolling, let's just move on.

You needed 15 people to get that instance gear, which is the same amount of people (minus one) in the TOR raid.

 

[Gvaz]

My friend was telling me how he got to over 10+ with two classes in 2 days, though he's close to poopsocking.

 

[EhrgeizVII]

The monthly fee has absolutely nothing to do with polish.

When GW2 is released and people realize it's just GW1 again, you'll see why there's no monthly fee.

The GW2 hype is absolutely retarded and Arenanet should be sued for false advertising once the game is released. I played the thing at SDCC and it's just as instanced as the first game was.

Lol, you're kidding right? You sure you didn't play something else? Because even SW:TOR is more instanced than GW2.

 

[Dinosaur Tamer]

You needed 15 people to get that instance gear, which is the same amount of people (minus one) in the TOR raid.

By that logic 10 player raids in Wrath and Cata would be instances and not raids.

 

[Spehornoob]

Lol, you're kidding right? You sure you didn't play something else? Because even SW:TOR is more instanced than GW2.

Dude. You just don't get it. It's clearly a massive conspiracy by both ArenaNet and every single person other than Morn who's played the game to fool everyone into thinking that GW2's world is persistent.

Instancegate, indeed.

 

[ElectricBlue187]

It doesn't really matter. Hardcore players will be more focused on Alts due to the amazeballs class quests than in other MMO's. I see a bit more leeway given to TOR than WAR and others on the lategame for that reason at first

 

[Iadien]

The only way most hardcore players will care about the class quests is if the end result is the best attainable gear.

 

[BattleMonkey]

It doesn't really matter. Hardcore players will be more focused on Alts due to the amazeballs class quests than in other MMO's. I see a bit more leeway given to TOR than WAR and others on the lategame for that reason at first

Hardcore are not going to give a damn about story, dialogues, etc. They are just going to race to endgame as usual

 

[Gvaz]

Yeah alts will be after, most people don't even work on alts except after the game has been established and they've already tackled the main content.

 

[CzarTim]

Hardcore players always ruin the fun for everyone else. Their sense off "fun" is fucked up.

 

[Emitan]

Hardcore players always ruin the fun for everyone else. Their sense off "fun" is fucked up.

I can't wait for them to rush to 50 while skipping as much as they can and then complaining on the forums that there's no content.

 

[Felix Lighter]

Hardcore players always ruin the fun for everyone else. Their sense off "fun" is fucked up.

That's why it can be difficult to get a sense of whether or not some of the complaints would apply to me. What I'm looking for and what the hardcore MMO vets are apparently looking for are very different.

 

[Gvaz]

IMO getting to level cap should take a month, even if you play 16 hours a day. I have no idea how long it takes to get to cap in TOR however.

 

[BattleMonkey]

Hardcore players always ruin the fun for everyone else. Their sense off "fun" is fucked up.

You sound like one of those carebear casuals who ruin it for us Hardcore players!

 

[Gvaz]

No okay what I really hate is when some MMO players try to defend grind or horrible RNG and say that it makes the game harder. No, it makes the game more frustrating, fuck those guys.

 

[Darklord]

I can't wait for them to rush to 50 while skipping as much as they can and then complaining on the forums that there's no content.

"This game sucks I got to end game in 5 days!"
"Did you do the companion quests? Story quests?"
"What???? I did some on the starter planet but it was giving me shit gear who cares about the npcs they just talk and its annoying this is a MMO not some rpg!!"

 

[Gvaz]

I honestly don't think there will be rushing like in most MMOs because of the voice acting. Instead of just clicking accept, you have to listen and wait for the cutscene and to make your conversation choices.

 

[Emitan]

I honestly don't think there will be rushing like in most MMOs because of the voice acting. Instead of just clicking accept, you have to listen and wait for the cutscene and to make your conversation choices.

Spacebar skips dialogue. Gear or progression isn't linked to your choices so they'll just pick an allignment and keep hitting that key.

 

[BattleMonkey]

I honestly don't think there will be rushing like in most MMOs because of the voice acting. Instead of just clicking accept, you have to listen and wait for the cutscene and to make your conversation choices.

Which would piss off many as well I can imagine. BLAH BLAH BLAH, hurry up already! Though supposedly you can skip that stuff

 

[Iadien]

You can skip shit, and people that only care about end game content and not fetch and kill quests will be doing that.

 

[Gvaz]

Which would piss off many as well I can imagine. BLAH BLAH BLAH, hurry up already! Though supposedly you can skip that stuff

You can skip shit, and people that only care about end game content and not fetch and kill quests will be doing that.

Nope.

Spacebar skips dialogue. Gear or progression isn't linked to your choices so they'll just pick an allignment and keep hitting that key.

Since when?

 

[CzarTim]

You sound like one of those carebear casuals who ruin it for us Hardcore players!

I say that with Eve open on my computer as we speak. But people who mix/max... jesus. I can't even conceive the desire to spend that much effort for such a trivial thing.

 

[Iadien]

We must have played different games. The only time you can't skip dialogue (to my knowledge) is while grouped, unless everyone skips it.

 

[BattleMonkey]

We must have played different games. The only time you can't skip dialogue (to my knowledge) is while grouped, unless everyone skips it.

Thats probably it then, so you can't skip single player stuff? Sucks or those people who want to skip then

 

[Rflagg]

No okay what I really hate is when some MMO players try to defend grind or horrible RNG and say that it makes the game harder. No, it makes the game more frustrating, fuck those guys.

Some of the stuff the people call grind never felt like one to me shrug. I like being in a group doing some dungeon and tend not to pay attention to experience or gear. The only time it started feeling like a grind to me in eq1 was when I couldn't get a group. Now ff11 that felt like a grind because I had to switch to my subclass and level it, if they would have given me a slider bar to adjust how much experience my subclass got to level them I would have played a lot longer.

 

[Morn]

By that logic 10 player raids in Wrath and Cata would be instances and not raids.

You're comparing TOR at launch to WoW at launch.

Right now, we know that TOR has one 8 or 16 man raid.

At launch WoW had four 10-15 man mini-raids and two 40 man raids. That's six times the endgame content, not counting PVP.

 

[Morn]

I honestly don't think there will be rushing like in most MMOs because of the voice acting. Instead of just clicking accept, you have to listen and wait for the cutscene and to make your conversation choices.

Nope. You can skip it and right above your conversation choices the dialog is written so you know what you're replying to.

 

[FieryBalrog]

In TBC a lot of the instances were hard enough in heroic mode to present some challenge to the hardcore crowd until a certain level of equipment. In Wrath and especially Cata heroic instances could be done by 2-3 competent max level players in level gear. That is ridiculous. A full group of competent players was easily able rush through heroic like it was normal mode in TBC.

And while there were some challenging encounters, raids turned out to be a lot easier in Wrath and Cata heroic mode than back in TBC.

Eh. The only point I agree with you on is that heroics in Wrath were piss-easy, and that was after everyone gorged themselves on Frost badge gear 1-2 years into the expansion.

Cata heroics were assuredly NOT piss-easy- I've done both BC heroics and Cata heroics at launch, and the ZA/ZG 5 mans, plus freaking Grim Batol, were easily as hard as Arcatraz and Shattered Halls were back in BC, and the boss fights were actually a LOT more complicated.

And as for raids, again I completely disagree. Have you actually tried hard mode Icecrown and Ulduar? That shit was insane. Not a hardcore raider myself, but a couple of friends of mine were in a top 50 US guild (Eternal Reign) and according to them, that stuff easily exceeded almost all of BC, with the exception of pre-nerf Sunwell. I tried doing some fights in ICC on heroic and it was pretty tough going for our mickey mouse guild, even things like Marrowgar.

It sounds more to me like you haven't actually done heroic Cata dungeons or heroic Wrath/Cata raids to be commenting like this.

 

[Morn]

Anyone who says a Cata Heroic could be done by 2 people hasn't played Cataclysm.

 

[FieryBalrog]

Anyone who says a Cata Heroic could be done by 2 people hasn't played Cataclysm.

Yea, I ignored that part as either over-the-top hyperbole or complete ignorance.

 

[Gvaz]

Nope. You can skip it and right above your conversation choices the dialog is written so you know what you're replying to.

Well I remember pressing a bunch of buttons and found the only thing that seemed to work was esc to back out of the whole conversation.

Cata Heroics are downright frustrating, but mostly because of pubbies.

 

[Morn]

Well I remember pressing a bunch of buttons and found the only thing that seemed to work was esc to back out of the whole conversation.

Space bar?

 

[border]

Just watching the cutscenes in the preview videos, I find myself wanting to skip this game's tedious spoken dialogues. Is there a way to get past them or not? I think I'd prefer just to read through text, at the least.

 

[Morn]

Yea, I ignored that part as either over-the-top hyperbole or complete ignorance.

The funny thing with Cata is that the people who liked the harder BC gameplay (where CC was REQUIRED in Heroics) came back, and the people who started playing at WoLK where you could just AoE a Heroic ran to the forums and cried like little bitches.

I think his post just proved he hasn't experienced Heroic Cata instances at all. Even after the nerf patch, they're still extremely challenging even to people with Firelands-tier gear.

 

[Morn]

Just watching the cutscenes in the preview videos, I find myself wanting to skip this game's tedious spoken dialogues. Is there a way to get past them or not? I think I'd prefer just to read through text, at the least.

You can use space bar to skip any dialog section, just like in all other BioWare games.

 

[Dinosaur Tamer]

It sounds more to me like you haven't actually done heroic Cata dungeons or heroic Wrath/Cata raids to be commenting like this.

Well, I could say the same thing of you. Especially since Grim Batol is actually an example for Cata heroics being waaaay too easy. Yes, they were harder than Wrath. That's not hard though and they definitely never came close to TBC. And a few hard encounters like Lich King don't make the whole expansion challenging.

You're comparing TOR at launch to WoW at launch.

Right now, we know that TOR has one 8 or 16 man raid.

At launch WoW had four 10-15 man mini-raids and two 40 man raids. That's six times the endgame content, not counting PVP.

You are not going to drop it, are you?

At launch WoW had two raid instances - one with a single raid boss and a pretty large one with 10 encounters. Together they form WoW's first raid tier which is one tier compared to SWTOR's one tier consisting of a raid instance with an unknown number of encounters.

What you refer to as mini-raids (lol) were relatively challenging instances that quickly got patched into easy farm status.

So you are saying 11 (10+1) encounters equal six times an unknown number of encounters? OK. I just hope you don't have a lot of math to do in your daily routine.

The best part is, even if Eternity Vault only had the two encounters to fit your x*6 = 11 equation (yeah, that's not likely, is it?), that would still be only about quantity and not about quality.

And yeah, I love the "not counting PvP" implying WoW had more content there as well, while we already know of 3 Warzones at launch versus 0 (zero) Battlegrounds.

The funny thing with Cata is that the people who liked the harder BC gameplay (where CC was REQUIRED in Heroics) came back, and the people who started playing at WoLK where you could just AoE a Heroic ran to the forums and cried like little bitches.

I think his post just proved he hasn't experienced Heroic Cata instances at all. Even after the nerf patch, they're still extremely challenging even to people with Firelands-tier gear.

I have. I am just capable of using CC.

They were already on farm on day 2 - that's how challenging they ended up to be after getting nerfed over and over again during beta. We did them in level gear plus some max level quest rewards (so pretty much what everyone ended up with on launch day) and while some of them were harder than Wrath (again, that's not hard at all), they were still easy compared to early TBC. Some of them (i.e. Tolvir and Pinnacle) were nearly as easy as Wrath Heroics.

 

[Gvaz]

I signed up in WOLK and played a ton of raids but never got anything but the ULD10 drake and got all those cheevo rewards, but the heroics even with the right gear and rotation and everything, it just ended up being frustrating. Either the tanks couldn't tank, the dps couldn't CC, or the healers thought it was too hard to keep everyone up. Hello 5 hours of jumping in failed dungeons while you have to wait 15-30 minutes to find a group as DPS only to be in the dungeon for 45 minutes before it breaks up.