PvP in SWTOR 1.2 is Complete Crap...Unless You're Empire....

...but just so happens that 80% of  SWTOR's population play Empire.

So...I took this free "7 days come-back" special from Bioware for people who quit. They wanted us to come back to try the hyped up 1.2 legacy patch and give the game another chance. I decided to try it again because, well, Guild Wars 2 isn't out yet and maybe I judged SWTOR too early but...

...all it's doing so far is making me hate this game even more. There are many things I want to touch on but the major most noticeable thing is the PvP handsdown.

It's almost exactly 50% worse than it was before and worse than any game you've probably PvP'd in. 

Yes, even Champions Online and Rift.

Just Joined A Game. Republic Losing and Only Had 5 Players Vs. 8. This Happens 90% of the Day.

Not to mention Bioware buffing/ changing classes in very rushed and sloppy way. And it's not me. I love PvP and found SWTOR pvp amusing and fun before 1.2. Now it's complete trash.

It's hard to describe how the PvP is worse because it was never really that good to begin with, but I'll give you an example:

If You Play Republic, This Is What Your Score Will Typcially Look Like. Note
If You Have Less Than 3 Medals, You Will Get No Reward.

Before 1.2, you would get a certain amount of rewards if you lose. It wasn't as much as the winner but it was better than nothing.

Now, they changed things to the point that you can get NOTHING AT ALL for doing PvP matches. Literally, nothing. It's now based on medals. If you get very few or none, it's almost if you didn't even play a match.

 And this will happen ALOT if you are playing on the Republic. I was just in a match, fighting the SAME pre-made Empire guild over and over. They would stomp us into the ground. This has alot to do with the "PvP" stats in game as well (which I find makes PvP worse in itself) but still let's say that wasn't even a factor.

The fact that you get NOTHING is stupid all together.

It's even more stupid because Bioware KNOWS 100% well that Republic is outnumbered or dead on almost every server. Not only that, on the server I am on, we barely, if ever, have a full team. So it's always 5 +/- Republic going against a full 8 man team of Empire.

I also say Bioware knows this because they are slowly leaning torwards making all the Warzones non -faction based. Which pretty much means Empire will be fighting Empire and Republic will fight Empire. See what I did there?

The sad part is, there are players ACTUALLY trying to play the PvP still. That part I DO NOT understand. For some of these players common sense will just never kick in. The PvP is imbalanced and not fun. Period.

But you know what? Instead of making some long post about this horrible broken PvP sytem, I'll leave you with some threads on the official forum where people are obviously not happy with this change to PvP:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=405248
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=414039
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=412826
http://www.swtor.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=76

 In fact, the only ones that seem to be happy are the Empire. I wonder why?

With that said, if people want my advise on if they should buy this game...

...then the answer IS NO.

I can deal with MMO developers making mistakes but Bioware just does not listen. They do not test their content properly. They have no clue how to run a MMO or what a MMO needs.

Do not waste your money and time on SWTOR unless it goes free to play or you just want to do PvE single player type things.

Bioware Values You...If You Are Level 50 in SWTOR.

Many adult TaunTauns were killed in order to steal their children to be your slave.

Yesterday on April 12th, Bioware announced they would be giving their loyal subscribers that remained subscribed from day one a free TaunTaun pet and 30 free days.

Sounds great!

Bioware is finally giving back to the community it loves to rob so much.And I bet it has nothing to do with players leaving SWTOR in droves and all the negative feed back! Oh,wait a second...aren't you...aren't you one of those, "I didn't rush to 50 players" that still don't have a level 50 after almost 4 months? You are also one of those players that believed Bioware and thought a decent MMORPG consist of rolling alternative characters constantly?

Well then I would like to apologize as this offer does not apply to you.

No, for those of you that are not level 50  but subscribed the same time, you get nothing but the TaunTaun, which if you are lucky won't causes errors to your gameplay. Yes, you players that decided to roll alts because Bioware said it was an important part of the game are not important nor loyal enough to get 30 free days.

On a serious note, if you look at the forum, most of the people who constantly defended everything Bioware did are now up in arms about not being rewarded as well. Go figure.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be rewarded as well. I feel they should get 30 days free as well but it's kind of amusing to see the ones who called anyone who was dissatisfied "whiners", "complainers" and "entitled generation". And now they are complaining.

Amazing isn't it?

Because remember kids! Everything is fine and dandy until it's something that effects you!

I leave you with links to the rage:

The Real Reason for the Free 30 Days!
Celebrate Game Update 1.2: Legacy

Also a bonus post for Legacy 1.2 and why I told you / will make a post about why it fails:

GUILD BANK GONE! items lost!

Enjoy!

Quit SWTOR. Sucked Then, Sucks Now, Will Suck in 1.2 PT.2

Alright, just to let you guys know, this will probably be one of my last post about SWTOR...

I know. I just love giving my very biased opinion about SWTOR because it's everything I feel is wrong with the MMO genre wrapped up in a big ball of hype and failure-to-deliver. I don't believe I have hated a game this much since...All Points Bulletins. In a way, they are actually very similar.

APB and SWTOR that is. They were both published by EA, both lacked real content, both were hub games and both focused more on advertising than the horrible, broken gameplay.

Maybe I liked Bioware so much  I expected too much? Not sure!

Moving on!

So...by now if you STILL have forced yourself to play SWTOR, you probably have noticed the huge drop in server population unless however, you are on one of the few populated servers. And when I say "few", I literally mean that. If you stroll by the forums, the "loyal" Bioware fans however will make you believe otherwise.

I say this because most of them will consistently deny that most servers are either very empty or near death. They deny it to the point that if you were to show them any evidence of this server population deficiency (let's say the evidence is people on the forums begging for server merges, TORStatus.com and screenshots of empty fleets), they will persist with denial. Usually, citing that they see no issue with population. But...

...I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact the ones claiming there is no problem are usually on the two or three populated servers.

Anyhoo...Let's talk about how linear SWTOR is!

Now, I understand that a video game can only offer so much as far as exploration goes... But in SWTOR, it's almost as if they just cut the idea of adventure out completely.

First, Bioware claimed all this unique story, decisions matter blah blah blah. I will tell you that, not only are the "class" stories not "unique" because most of the stories (if not all) revolve around the same plot (Hunt this guy down, Stop this super weapon, Hunt this guy down)and they only count for about 10% of the missions. The rest of the missions are all the same for EVERYONE on your faction.

No, it isn't like alot of other MMOs where you have some type of option as to where you might want to do missions... unless you just completely skip those around your level. This is because you follow an invisible path that takes you from quest hub to quest hub, planet to planet etc. If you've played Rift and Warhammer you will know what I mean. Ironically, people from the Warhammer team helped with SWTOR...go figure.

The linearity of SWTOR is so bad that it made it VERY hard for me to make alts after 50. It's worse than a grind. It feels like TORTURE. I know, I know! "But on the SWTOR forum, people say they love making alts!" Yeah, that's because most people that have a bunch of alts still aren't level 50, barely play the game and/or are loyal to anything Bioware does. Probably even working for Bioware.

 I actually had to skip most of the missions on my alt and do PvP for levels just to  get through the tedious grind. PvP was a little better but after doing 100's of matches of the same three maps, I am sure you can imagine that also gets old too.

Transition!

Oh man...end game/ normal content. Wow, not only was it broken, it was broken with the most stupid things I have ever seen in a game. And what made it worse, it's almost as if none of it was tested!

OH WAIT!...It probably wasn't because Bioware didn't allow players to have pre-made max level characters in beta nor did they allow it in this new 1.2 patch (which is why it is failure already; No ranked warzones, overpowered tank assassin class, matches usually unbalanced).

You had things like tons of mobs coming out of no where, couldn't delete missions to the point you HAD to do them, you die when you zone in to a instance after a wipe, bosses spawn that didn't reset, boss mechanics not working properly, companions not working properly, getting stuck on your ship etc etc. Some of these issues had work arounds, most didn't.  It was almost as if I we were playing a beta SWTOR still.   It was so frustrating, people would vent in guild chat, in general chat, on the forums, on my sleep, on my blog...well, you get the picture.

Another problem I have with SWTOR is the lifelessness. When every mob seems like it's just sitting there, waiting for you to kill it, there is no thrill in that. It's boring. Not only that, but ALL the mobs are usually spread out in the same format /pattern almost as if they just copy and pasted them up and down. Then having to dig your way through a tunnel of enemies only to have to dig yourself back through them...ugh.

Quit SWTOR. Sucked Then, Sucks Now, Will Suck in 1.2 PT.1

Seems alot of SWTOR players have forgotten the rocky road torwards SWTOR's launch which stilll continues it's jagged path today but I'll try to refresh their memory. It's kind of hard to say anything good about the way Bioware handled all of this because most of it was bad.

I followed the SWTOR development on and off since 2008. Coincidentally, I was in my "star wars fanboy" phase and playing Star Wars: Jedi Knight Academy a ton. So you can imagine I was pretty excited when I heard about Star Wars: The Old Republic being in development.

Not only this but I was a huge Bioware fan after Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins.

I never paid attention to the forum that much except for a quick peek to see what the community was talking about. It's better to stay away from the forums before the game is released since it's mainly filled with people dreaming and hoping (sometimes dictating) about what will be in the game.

Some years later with Bioware releasing small amounts of content /information on the game, I start to get the feeling the game isn't all it was being hyped up to be.

 Well, that along with the EA Louse thing and Warhammer team working on SWTOR...

Fast forward. Bioware dodging questions, still barely any info on SWTOR, strict NDA beta.

 I actually managed to find more "information" on SWTOR and got into beta. I pretty much went along with the whole "It's beta! It will get better!" idea people usually use to justify their favorite game looking nothing like what they imagined.  And though I turned my hype meter off long ago after disappointing games like Warhammer and APB...There was something about this game that was...wrong.

Fast forward. Bioware focusing more on hyping SWTOR, launching with tons of bugs and broken features, Wiped forum of past evidence.

SWTOR is launching with it's "early access" plan over a seven day period. Not only was this probably the worse idea ever, but it made it the worse MMO launch I have ever experienced.

Basically, people who paid the SAME PRICE for the game had to wait in a "que". This que was Bioware letting players into the game in order by which month they bought the game. Now I hope you can imagine how much the forums were on fire at this time. It was the people who were already in the game proclaiming how well a job Bioware was doing vs. angry customers who were...well..angry.

Biowares' whole reasoning for what they label as a "staggered release" was you create a "smooth launch". In other words, they wanted to pretend the servers were stable and would NOT have player ques by letting players in slowly...

That would have been acceptable I suppose...if it actually worked. Which it didn't.

Not only were the servers dead and empty because of this, but there were STILL huge ques. I'm talking, "Wait three hours to get in the game." ques. Then I get into the game and there is barely anyone to play with for group content.

Fast Forward. Leveled up, dealing with tons of bugs (some game breaking, some just annoying) and forum wars continue. Also, tons of exploiters either getting rich off the Slicing. Which nothing was done. In fact, there is a post on the official forums asking how many are millionaires.

Bioware gets tons of negative feedback on the forum about the amount of bugs and broken content. My guild is literally raging, myself included, about how much of the game is either not working properly or just frustrating. Bioware seeks to remedy this by releasing patches.

Now...normally, patches are supposed to "FIX" the game. Most of the patches released either didn't fix what they claimed to be fixing, made things worse or went into the game in what appeared to be untested states.

They claimed to had fixed "ability delay" (When you attempt to click your skills, it won't work if it's right after you do another skill. This leads to you not really being able to time attacks or have fluent effective combat responses) which was still very much in the game. They released the notorious "Ilum patch". Now, EVERYONE knew this patch was going to completely destroy Ilum content. There were so many post about it on the forum Bioware just seemingly ignored.

Well, not seemingly, they DID ignore them because they went ahead and patch it anyways. And sure enough what happened? Here's a clue for those that don't play SWTOR:

There are two factions. One Empire and one Republic.What used to happen was these factions would take turns destroying each others "war assests" which I agree should have been changed. However,
 on almost EVERY server, the Empire outnumber the Republic about 3:1.

The patch Bioware added to the game was one that would FORCE players to fight each other OR collect these "armaments" which have a slow respawn, are only in ONE place and you have to gather 30 of them.

Not only did this destroy Ilum as a "world PvP" zone. It helped most of the Empire players max out their valor ranks in ONE day. They did this by camping the Republic base due to sheer numbers. The guns that were SUPPOSED to keep them out were not working properely (go figure Bioware) and there was low FPS.

What did Bioware do to fix this? Nothing. What did Bioware do to fix the fact tons of Empire/Republic players gained max or near max valor in one day? Nothing.


To be continued....I'll discuss how linear the game is, how broken the end game content was/is, how there is no soul to the game and why legacy 1.2 will not fix the core problems with the game.