What SWTOR needs to succeed as an MMO

So I established that I think the single player and leveling aspect of SWTOR is incredible, but SWTOR is defining itself as an MMORPG game. So let me take a look at the MMO aspect.

Before I get into it, I want to say that this is just general observations and guesses about the future, I simply think it's too early to judge it. MMO by nature is an evolving game and SWTOR didn't have time to evolve yet. Most people aren't 50 yet and there aren't too many established guilds and serious long term raiders and pvpers that makes it comparable to an established game. Also it's obvious Bioware mostly invested at the pre endgame content which people hit as soon as the first day and that they have plans to expand the endgame in the future. For this reason I'll concentrate on the MMO aspect during leveling, where most people are currently at.



I'll start with Flashpoints, the iconic grouping aspect. I play the 3 healer classes, I did every FP from 10 (Black Talon) to 33 (Boarding Party) once with each healer, except the last 3 which I did twice because my Bounty Hunter Mercenary is too low level for these. All of these I played as a dedicated healer to check out the healing mechanic of each class. I'm really happy with the classes, I think they all feel unique and fun and they really feel like classes I'll enjoy playing exploring endgame content, whatever that may be.

There are things that WOW currently does better and SWTOR will have to catch up. I say WOW because if you want to be the new MMO king, you need to defeat the current one. No other way and no doubt this is where Bioware are aiming.

Getting FP groups together. Nobody likes spamming "LF2M tank\dps for boarding party" too long. The group finding should be easier. The obvious answer is LFD, I'm not a huge fan of LFD as a concept and there are queues there too, but what it gives players and what SWTOR will ultimately need to give players too, is a quick, commonly accepted way to easily bring the players who want to do a FP together. The way I handle it currently is logging the healer I want to do a FP with, do a quick "healer lf XXX" and either get an invite or switch to another character and try later. It works well for me but it's far from ideal. It should be simpler and quicker. I'm sure it's harder if you are a DPS.

A thing they did with FP and I really like is the plot conversations, in addition to making each FP run a bit different, with decision ranging from different dialog to fighting different bosses, the fact that the entire group is participating, suddenly give your group mates faces, voices, personality, making it a lot more engaging, making it feels like you are running with real characters and not human controlled bots who are just there to get you through the FP.

UI, many people response is a one word, addons. SWTOR doesn't allow addons, at least for now. In WOW I had about 10 addons at any given time, in fact I think WOW endgame practically can't be played well without addon. This isn't a good thing, addons complicate the game unnecessary in my opinion. You need to find them, keep them up to date, replace the ones who aren't supported, give players who use them different advantages based on the addons they pick.

However, if you want to survive as an MMO, users need these options as part of the game, Blizzard also integrated the successful addons as part of the game often. The thing I'm missing the most is a healbot\vuhdo\grid type healer addon as a healer, making healing a one click action and making dispellable debuffs very obvious. Another is a way to add, resize and place action bars, there are too many abilities to fit comfortably on the existing bars. I would love to see a better chat interface, where it's more quickly obvious when I get whispers or party chat during fights. Also a target of target frame, so I can easily see who the boss is targeting and I need to heal quickly. These are things Bioware will need to add to the interface if they want to stay competitive.

Many people say these things are minor, "are you too lazy to click a target and then cast a heal?", "how long does it take to get your mouse to the bar", I disagree. Playing challenging content, fractions of seconds count and the enjoyable challenge is making the right decision, not doing the series of clicks or key presses to execute this decision.

These are the major ones I can think of, there are other, minor quality of life type improvements that can be made, but the ones I mentioned are necessary. As a healer it's not too bad during Flashpoints, I have key binds for focus healing on the tank and self healing, so basically I just need to target the 2 dps manually for specific heals, but when I think about operations of 8 or 16 people or PVP, this adds an unnecessary complication that can and should be avoided.

PVP: There are currently 3 PVP zones accessible while leveling, they are all nicely done, personally I'm not a fan of Huttball, but that's a personal taste. However 3 zones aren't enough, if they want to keep it fresh and interesting they need to add more. They made it completely possible to level through PVP which I think is a great decision, but I can't imagine someone advancing with only PVP matches and not getting completely sick of these 3 after 20, 30, 50 matches.

Bioware made a great foundation for a potentially incredible MMO, but I think they'll have to expand it and do it soon for it's long term success with the MMO players. People are unforgiving, if they aren't enjoying themselves or feel like they are done with the content they want to do, they'll move on. This is perfectly reasonable, people pay for subscription to have fun, if the fun ends there is no reason to stick around. It's Bioware's job to keep it entertaining for a long time. Everything I mentioned can be fixed, the question is if and more importantly when Bioware will do it.

As far as I'm concerned they have a lot of time because the leveling game will keep me entertained for months, but not all gamers are RPG gamers, plot addicts like me and I think many of these won't stick around for long if the MMO aspect won't get better soon.