Massivity: Does Star Wars: The Old Republic Deserve the Wrath of the Haters?

Star Wars: The Old Republic may never overtake World of Warcraft's subscriber numbers, but it's all too clear that BioWare's long-awaited creation has already snagged the distinction of hosting the most acidic forums in massively multiplayer gaming. Judging by the hostility in SWTOR's community forums, it's no wonder so many players gravitate toward the dark side of the Force. Simply combing the site for an answer to a basic question requires enduring petty remarks in almost every thread, and enough anger oozes from the site that some players have taken to calling it "TORchan." It's arguably worse on the official Facebook fan page. MMO forums have always been less-than-wholesome places, to be sure, but all this amounts to excessive negativity for what amounts to a formulaic but decent MMO with a few good stories and a clever use of NPC companions tacked on. BioWare's experience should serve as a warning for both the developers of the anticipated MMORPGs on the near horizon and the players who aim to play them.


Somewhere along the line, BioWare's dramatic claim of providing the "next evolution" in MMORPGs led to wild visions of what SWTOR should be (regardless of what BioWare actually said it would be), and I think the game that the fans created in their minds and the game that BioWare was always developing became two different things. As a result, shortcomings and issues that may have slipped by in other titles shimmer in BioWare's project.

Expectations in a Galaxy Far, Far Away

Of course, BioWare's situation may be a special case. Five years' worth of unrealistically high expectations combined with a near-messianic longing for the "next great thing" in MMORPGs built up to December 20th, 2011, so some disappointment was nearly inevitable. And that's not all. Being at once a hotkey MMORPG, a BioWare game, and a Star Wars game, Star Wars: The Old Republic is in the unique position of having to please all three fanbases at the same time. Most previous MMORPGs only had to contend with players who were already attracted to the genre in some way, and thus SWTOR's potential for wider appeal is also its greatest adversary.

That's not to say the technical complaints shouldn't be taken seriously. For one, SWTOR stutters on some rigs that waltz with Crysis on the highest settings, and recent patches only intensified the problem for some members of my guild. Even I tend to play with the shadows turned off for better performance these days. For another, a surprising amount of bugs still float around like midichlorians in search of a host (especially in the endgame operations) -- though I have only personally suffered through the one preventing Jedi Knights from getting saucy with Kira (which has since been fixed) and the persistent inability to delete some quests from my log. Elsewhere, raiding guilds max out their gear in a couple of weeks thanks to easy Operations, and non-raiders decry the lack of fishing or rare spawns to hunt for mounts.


But at the same time, SWTOR offers a decent amount of content for a new MMORPG -- certainly enough dissuade the frequent use of words like "fail" that I see tossed around on forums and articles. Some players complain that there are only three warzones, for instance, but World of Warcraft has only eight after seven years (and some, such as Warsong Gulch and Twin Peaks, are but variations on a theme). Rift only has five. Even the focus on bugs seems a bit excessive, considering recent events. If you're going to take up the silly argument that SWTOR is a single-player game with an MMO skin, then why did so many single-player gamers give Skyrim's buggy performance a free pass? Others complain about the speed of content updates, but 10 whole months passed between the Icecrown Citadel's final patch and the release of Cataclysm while World of Warcraft sat safely on the MMO throne, punctuated only by a one-boss raid encounter that few players tackled. Rift made a name for itself by shooting out almost monthly patches, but even these weren't without issues despite comparatively high polish at launch. To cite but one example, almost everyone seems to have forgotten that the River of Souls, Rift's first major world event, was a laggy, bug-infested failure that cast far more serious doubts on that game's future than some missing walls and buggy loot in Karagga's Palace. I shudder to think of the reaction if a patch in SWTOR went so badly.

BioWare's Not Altering the Deal

Putting aside bugs and technical concerns for a moment, let's be honest with ourselves: When the official announcement of SWTOR first broke in June of 2008, BioWare's official description declared that SWTOR was "a story-driven massively multiplayer online PC game set in the timeframe of the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic franchise." And that's exactly what it's given us. While some of us might wish companions could still betray us or that the combat was a little more "dynamic," the inclusion of a rich storyline on the existing MMO framework justifies its admittedly dramatic claim of being the "next evolution in MMO gameplay." Regardless of what the Kansas board of education would have us believe, evolution occurs in gradual steps, not by great leaps forward. It may be more of the same otherwise, but that doesn't mean it's a lesser game for that.


The bulk of the negativity springs from three groups. The most vocal crowd consists of people who expect an experience like World of Warcraft right out of the box. That's just not going to happen. Blizzard's beast has had the better part of a decade to get where it is today, and the bugs and crashes that defined its launch are barely a memory anymore. If I'm sick of running heroics or done with the week's raids in WoW, I can work on achievements or run outdated raids for cosmetic gear or work on maximizing my reputations. If that's not enough, I can jump into the eight PvP battlegrounds, fight in arenas, or build up my collection of vanity pets. Provided you're not bored with the scenery and the concept in general, the accumulation of seven years' worth of refined content releases means it's impossible to say there's nothing to do in WoW with any sincerity. Two months after launch, SWTOR just can't compete with that level of content and polish, and expecting it to do so isn't realistic.

Specters of the Past

Second, there's the jilted Star Wars: Galaxies crowd, still pining for their ill-starred sandbox that went the way of Alderaan last December. For them, SWTOR's linear story model gets in the way of interactive pleasures such as player cities, uniquely entertaining world PvP, and memorable nights in the cantinas -- never mind that its creative possibilities were always its best feature and that the infamous "New Game Experience" update arguably rendered it a far worse game than SWTOR can ever be.

The third group is players who are simply bored with the standard MMO formula in general, or those coming from other genres with the expectation of something that shatters the mould. I myself numbered among this tribe until I decided BioWare's take on that formula provided enough to counter its otherwise sparse innovation. I'm most amused by the small but vocal crowd that bases most of its dislike for SWTOR on the fact that space combat plays more like StarFox 64 than X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, despite the fact that BioWare never said that it would. I, for one, would rather fight Imperial ships in my spare time in MMOs than click on fishing bobber for hours on end in World of Warcraft. When combined together, all three groups give the impression that BioWare can't do anything right.


Star Wars: The Old Republic may not be the MMO to end all MMOs, but I still believe it's a decent one, and many of its existing flaws generally aren't anything that a few patches can't fix. But to judge from the reaction of hostile members of its community (even in comment threads in third-party sites), any future competitor should take away the lesson that they'll need to face a community that demands perfection and new content on delivery. The unrealistic expectations once piled on SWTOR now weigh heavily on upcoming MMOs such as The Secret World and TERA, but none bears that weight more heavily than Guild Wars 2, which has long been heralded as some kind of great emancipator for the MMO community. SWTOR's reception should urge us to rein in that enthusiasm a bit. Each game looks promising right now, but SWTOR's launch tells us that exciting combat and dynamic events won't captivate the fickle MMORPG community any more than a good yarn with voiceovers if bugless endgame content isn't delivered as often as Han Solo delivers one-liners.

Credit Where it's Due

Perhaps years of World of Warcraft have spoiled us. Perhaps even Rift, with its rapid-fire patches, taught us to expect frequent content regardless of quality. Perhaps some of the critics even have some kind of personal vendetta against BioWare itself, which we've also seen in the response to Mass Effect 3. Whatever the reason, the campaign of negativity against SWTOR seems excessive, and it's made all the stranger because I don't think I've ever seen anyone complain with equal intensity while playing the game itself. I personally find the combat and flashpoints in SWTOR a little more enjoyable than their counterparts in Rift, and I find the lore and settings more interesting than those in Word of Warcraft. Perhaps the solution is simple: Let's not get our hopes up so high, and let's not allow the few nasty parts to ruin an otherwise satisfactory experience.

SWTOR's main enemy is speed at this point, and even the cool features promised in Patch 1.2 won't help BioWare if it doesn't release it and the announce a following patch by April. You may even find me among the haters if BioWare misses that deadline, but I'm willing to give a bit more time since I believe the rest of SWTOR's up to par.

After all, even Darth Vader came around in the end, didn't he?


Spy Guy says: The problem with forums is that they're where people go when they're angry about something. Most happy players don't come to the forums to balance out the angry comments with good ones because they're too busy playing. Remember: don't give in to hate -- that leads to the dark side.