I've been a huge fan of SWTOR since it was announced, I spent countless hours on guild, game, and fan site forums discussing the game. I took a vacation to Boston in 2011 and brought the family to spend a couple of days at PAX East and see the SWTOR booth, and no I did not drag 'em kicking and screaming, they went willingly, my daughter being a massive Star Wars fan. I'm sharing all of this to give you an idea of how big a fan I have been of TOR. Despite being a fan, I can be honest with myself, and admit that TOR did do quite a few things wrong, or poorly, but it also did a few things right. Both of those topic's will be forthcoming blogs, but for now let's just go with the idea that I can admit when something is both good, and bad.
So where am I going with all this? Well, I've finally hit a wall, where to an extent I feel that I've about checked out of the game. It isnt the game itself, because SWTOR was, I feel, pretty much exactly what I anticipated it being. It was a story driven MMO, and having seven characters above level 20, and five at level 50 I've thoroughly enjoyed the stories that were provided. Above and beyond, I was let down at the Illum World PvP, but on the whole, good points and bad, I've had a very positive experience, until now.
I realize that offering character transfers or merging servers is considered a sign of declining subs, and that usually hurts a title, so that we rarely see them this soon after release. However, the fact that it is now nearly impossible to find groups, and there are so few servers with an active population I think Bioware needs to act, deal with the bad publicity, and save some subcribers. Post launch, I belonged to a guild that had around 90 members on the Sith side, and around as many on the Republic side, with 25-40 players in each faction online during prime times. In addition, on the Sith side we had an allied guild populated with more of my close friends that most nights had 10-15 players online.
Within a few weeks after release, we had many activities, from PvP nights, to raids, as well as instance runs, but as would be expected, over time, and like the game itself, we had members leaving and moving on, and while I still have a few friends who casually play, I'm almost in awe of how far active players have fallen. My wife, who has enjoyed the game, hit level 50 on her first character about 3 weeks ago, and since then, we have not been able to put together a single hard mode instance run so she could experience what that would be like. Here's where it gets bad, on several occasions, we had 3 people, meaning we needed one single other player to go with, and were unable to find someone. Myself, with the variety of 50's I have, I could have tanked, DPS'd, and the other person was a healer, so it wasnt like we were looking for a specific class or role, we simply needed one other human being to go with. Granted we were not trying every single night, but the fact that we failed to find a 4th person on no less than 6 nights over three weeks was a very frustrating experience.
When I came to The Old Republic, I came with a large group of friends, and made many more. I made a couple of friends that now I'd hate to play an MMO and not have them there to share the experience with. Today, I cant find people to do things with. What I find amusing is the criticism that TOR is simply a single player RPG with MMO trappings. Honestly, nothing could be further from the truth, if that was accurate then I'd still be playing. The game would essentially end when you hit level 50, but without other players, I find myself trapped and unable to experience the end-game, and am limited to doing nothing but leveling characters. When I hear that particular criticism I think people want to find a reason to dislike the game, and forget how solo friendly many, if not most other MMO's are today.
I had someone suggest that if I like the game so much, why not re-roll on another server? The answer for me at least, is simply investment. I have millions of credits, I have 5 level 50's, so I dont want to re-do stories again and again. My wife took months to hit level 50, and I'd like to play with her, is it fair to ask to spend another 4 months leveling a toon? Asking my few friends left who play to move and start again sounds absurd as well.
Once upon a time, I'd hoped that I'd be playing The Old Republic for year long stretches, but today I dont see that as realistic, and it is a shame. I have until mid-June on my subscription, and my logging in between now and then is made harder because I feel less invested knowing that I'm done then. How many times I choose to login between now and then is based more on hoping to see some friends, or take "last runs" thru certain areas. If there were people on my server, The Old Republic could be more than a niche game for me. It's niche because all I have left is to experience a few class stories, and I'm not sure that's enough.
Bioware, you need to make some hard choices, you have fans who want to spend money. It's obvious now that TOR will never be a runaway hit, but if it drives away subscribers by keeping us spread out among far too many servers it will hurt even worse. I've had a passing interest in The Secret World for quite some time, but I never signed up for beta, and never got too involved thinking that I would be too tied up in TOR. This weekend, I'm going to try the weekend beta event they are running, as I tried the GW2 beta a few weekends ago. If TOR isnt going to allow me to play the way I want to play, then I'll take my dollars onto another niche game, until I find something that can be more than niche for me.
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