SWTOR Endgame... Why Has EA Let This Happen? 

Additional footage credit to Swtorista, who you can find at swtorista.com/. Essential viewing for prospective players! The excellent progression chart was created by twitter.com/alortania.

SWOTR has never felt like it has a real "endgame" IMO. For me, the value was always in playing through the many stories, then playing dress-up.

"Faced with doing this gearing, I'd rather do another origin story." Basically the way I've felt about this game since I capped my first character back in December 2011.

In other words if you've finished all the class stories there's not much here to keep you there (how SWTOR has been for years).

I've played SWTOR as my primary MMO for years now, but after getting through ARR in FFXIV, I just can't go back except to hang out with friends. There is a lot to do, but you will always be running the exact same content with little to no change. SWTOR has always been great at creating treadmills for players to go on, but it is consistently terrible at giving you motivating reasons to run on it. the content you run will basically never change, the gear stopped having unique appearances years ago (the only worthwhile new designs are all exclusively put on the in-game market), there isn't any unique mounts or weapons to grind out in content (except for a few select examples in old content and you will need a large group running the highest difficulty content regularly to get them). Pretty much everything that motivates me to do things in FF is lacking here: mounts, emotes, outfits, relic weapons, unique questlines, hairstyles, exciting new content, etc. Just do your dailies/weeklies, get currency, rinse, repeat. And to top off the unchanging content over the years, SWTOR doesn't do class redesigns/innovations like FF and other games. They either change basically nothing about the class and simply slap 5 extra levels on it, or in legacy of the sith's case, actively reduce ability variety and dumb down class design, without giving anything new to replace it.

Biggest problem with swtor - no new mmo content. Once you finish the story - content you play is exact same fare we did 7 years ago. Same operations, almost same flash points, same heroics, same daily areas. New gear grind is redoing the same thing we did during 6.0. Again.

I was so excited for swtor 7.0, but then it turns out the "expansion" was just 20 minutes of story and 1 hour of walking around killing mobs, and the final boss of what is really just an update rather than a proper expansion has been broken since 7.0 launched. In February. That's nearly 4 months ago now.

If SWTOR would put even a fraction of the effort that XIV or WoW does into content creation, it would be my preferred MMO. Sadly, bioware seems to treat it like a stepchild

Been playing SWTOR on and off since day 1, I have always loved this game and always will. Yeah its endgame has never been great, but I agree there is enough there to keep you interested if you are a die-hard Star Wars fan with a love of the old republic era. I personally just play the game for more of a story/RP experience. I love getting the unlocks, upgrading my stronghold, and experiencing as much of the galaxy as possible. It's at that point that I think the game succeeds. I just wish it did have a more solid endgame for the people who really need it to stay invested.

I definitely feel like once the Class stories end, you really lose the RPG aspect of the game. I still liked the stories after the class based stories ended, the characters, voice acting, and aesthetic is all their, but I feel like it became less of an RPG and more of a traditional, non-player led story.

I know it's not a dead game, but SW:TOR could have been so much more than this. It had the Star Wars IP, Bioware's talent coming out of Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age Origins, it was part of the beloved KOTOR universe, and it had a 500M$ development and marketing budget... and yet the game crumbled under design and technical issues and tanked in less than a year. Unbelievable. It's difficult to not view SW:TOR as a failure. Typical EA to have thought they could out-WoW WoW just by throwing more money at it, instead of doing something original. If they chose Arenanet's approach of innovation instead of making a WoW clone with a tacked on Bioware story, I wonder if things would have been different.

I won't try to speak for anyone else, but it's definitely the story that keeps me coming back, not the endgame. The last time I raided competitively was when Dread Fortress and Dread Palace were recent. I remember the absolute highs of our first Brontes NiM kill. I haven't come back for Legacy of the Sith yet, but previously, I just made sure to get my full sets and tacticals that I wanted (which we now just have to earn again in a different way). Then, I would just hop on occasionally when I got the urge, move all my gear, delete a character, and remake them, just to play through their story again. Since the game's launch in 2011, I think I've remade my Sith Juggernaut main 7 times, and played through the Sith Warrior story 10 times total. I make outfits for every story arc my character goes through. It's a testament to how compelling the core class stories of the game are. The expansions are great content, but I don't find they have quite the same replayability. The funny, and telling, thing is that the main barrier getting me to pick up Legacy of the Sith is planning a new character, because I know that's exactly what I'll be doing. Not hopping in on my main for a 2 hour story, and then grinding to earn back the gear I already had, but in a different format, with some slight tweaks.

After they scrapped/shortened the end of the whole Hidden Empire expansions, this is sadly just how things seem to go now. It creates a game that can be fun to come back for a month every few years, but it's definitely not a long term player game.

Reality: I placed a Ticket concerning a character of mine being broken. CS checked my character, agreed there was an issue. It would be fixed in a future Patch. I asked when is that Patch, and I really need my character fixed as soon as possible. I was told "If you send another ticket concerning this issue, YOU WILL BE PUT ON PERMA IGNORE for CUSTOMER SERVICE!". (Cancelled my Sub, and stopped playing) The issue isn't End Game .. THE Issue is Electronic Assholes ( Electronic Arts ).

More me musing on what makes an MMO 'mainable'. SWTOR just doesn't really cut it, and that's seemingly down to how little content they're able to make for this games. Really makes you wonder what EA are up to, and what BioWare Austin could do if they have more resources.

"Electronic Arts really needs to work out what they want from this game." They have. Look at the cartel market. The in-game shop and it's obvious. Loot boxes, armor sets, weapons, tertiary companions, stronghold decorations galore! There is always new stuff coming to the cartel market in a constant, regular flow. That is *clearly* where the money is going when it comes to development in this game. It's also the reason why the in-game economy has tanked and hyperinflation is rampant, because you basically see a small handful of super rich players who have billions upon billions of credits buying and selling everything at prices that they themselves dictate, and Bioware refuses to address the problem.

"I don't care about gearing my character in this game". - Exactly how most swtor players feel. It's funny, because your mindset and philosophy about how to engage with this game is what I've been doing since it came out in 2011. I play this game on and off. Never engaged with the endgame really and mostly played it as a singleplayer story driven RPG. That's also why I have like 12 alts. This game should always have been KOTOR 3 with co-op instead of an MMO.

Honestly want more character specific story quests

This was the best video you've made on SWTOR. Bioware is a joke. They're making the bare minimum and selling it as the same type of content we had years ago. The game is fun. But it's certainly no contender in the space of the current era and they will continue to do nothing about that. They should have just stuck with chapter released story and potentially a similair system to ESO selling story DLC via the in-game cash shop. SWTOR is a single player game with multiplayer features. Do not play this game thinking it will have great endgame that feels very rewarding. It doesn't. If you're a star wars fan and haven't played yet, then do it. Edit: 18:14 Bioware actually removed our channel from their "Content Creator" program because we criticised something.

This game survives off of the non MMO type stuff. That being the cash shop. And the playerbase (especially on Star Forge) is primarily people who are creative types who prefer roleplay and designing cool strongholds/creating cool narratives for their characters. Yes, its an MMO. Yes it still has Ranked and Raiding...but at the end of the day both of those fanbases are very small sadly. I am predominantly a PvPer/RPer for the most part, and the roleplay is far more important to me than getting my gold or plat flair. I got my gold flair two seasons ago and realized the toxicity of the tiny ranked community wasn't worth by comparison to a fairly kind (tho yes there's still drama) RP community.

Unfortunately, as soon as this game launched and EA realized that it wasn't the big money maker they wanted, they dropped this game hard. Has never been more than a side dish since.

Great video series and very fair feedback. I think most SWTOR players would really like to see EA give the Bioware team a bigger budget and let them focus more on story content and less on systems. The game has a lot of great QoL features, is very accessible, all the endgame content is still relevant (around 60'ish operation/raid bosses) and of course the fully-voiced story is really great. The end game operations/raids are a lot of fun and land somewhere in between WoW and FF in that they aren't nearly the "dance fights" as in FF but the game does not have a million add-on's like WoW. The corresponding difficulty is at high end is maybe a bit lower than Mythic WoW or Ultimate FF but the difficulty curve still covers a pretty wide range and has similar accessibility to FF, which is really nice. I also really recommend players check out the Jedi Knight, Sith Warrior and Imperial Agent origin stories as they are particularly popular among many players. Also interesting timing to this video since an announcement came the same day as this video releasing that the new operation and daily area (originally intended to launch with 7.0 in February) will go through its last PTS cycle soon and will launch in mid-summer.

Raise your hand if you are surprised that EA ruined another game. They are trying to make SWTOR into something it will never be instead of playing up to its storytelling strengths. I was having a great time in SWTOR and spent a lot of money on pretty clothes, and then I went on the PTR to test the new "expansion". When I saw that they were ignoring the player feedback that said stuff like, "hey, the new UI hurts my eyes", I dropped the game like a hot potato and didn't even download the patch.

Its such a pity what they did with this. Fuck it and R.I.P. May EA burn in hell for giving away the chance to make this a decent mmorpg.

I hope it never ends love playing as an Old Republic Commando and there's so much lore that's been helping me write a book about Havoc Squad and my adventures as a Trooper.

I feel like BioWare is too afraid to step out of WoW’s shadow and really take this MMO up a notch.

SWTOR is PERFECT for anyone who hasn't played before or played in a long time as a single-player RPG. That's how it should be treated in my opinion.

The whole thing about just grinding up your number that keeps getting reset reminds me of Destiny 2. When the progression feels so exposed and explicit, the feeling of marching on a treadmill to a beat becomes more evident and the enjoyment dies as you begin to question why.

Bioware had a great direction for the game, even post class storylines. But EA truly screwed the pooch on this game, and pretty much all it's good for now is role players. EA has the strongest IP in existence for games, yet they never really give it the resources it needs to truly shine.

SWtOR is a game I really wish I could play as my primary MMO. I love Star Wars. The Old Republic is my favourite Star Wars era. The class stories we got from the beginning perfectly encapsulate the class fantasy, which each one paying homage to legacy characters from the Star Wars franchise as a whole. What little story content we do get has been incredible. Even with Bioware not being the same company we used to love they still pull it off. But beyond that content, all there is to keep anyone engaged is just too damn grindy. The main reason I quit World of Warcraft is that it had started to feel more like a job I wasn't being paid IRL to do, rather than the epic adventure the setting has the potential to offer. Yeah... there's some grindy stuff in FFXIV, which is my main MMO right now... but with every job I level up there is a whole story with a whole set of lore to add to what I know of the setting... of the world. Even the gathering and crafting professions offer that... which is something I have never before seen in an MMO. I don't feel all that pressured to get to max gear level just to experience the content when the story and the lore is most important to me. I'm so impressed with FFXIV's lore that it inspired me to start diving into other Final Fantasy titles... seeing as how all of them, despite being in different worlds with different stories and different characters have much of their lore in common... well beyond every game having characters named Cid, Biggs and Wedge. Anyway... absolutely YES... Swtorista is one of the absolute best content creators for anyone trying to understand or get better at SWtOR. Since I go through long periods of not playing the game since I mostly only go back when there are major additions to the story content, I've found her videos and her website a valuable source for getting up to speed.

I'm kind of amazed that SWTOR is still chugging along. This was the first video game that I ever actively followed the development for. There was so much potential and they squandered it. Right now I just want it to die so that *maybe* we can get a new, proper Star Wars MMO that fans deserve.

Sadly, for years now SWTOR has been reduced to a microtransaction machine with occasional sprinkling of content. It's honestly surprising they're still beating that dead horse.

This is because SWTOR has been in maintenance mode for years now. It was deemed not profitable enough and thus the funding was severely cut back. Whether we like it or not, financial success is key for a long-term live service game like an MMORPG.

SWTOR was my favorite mmo. Played in beta, played at launch, and at every expac launch, I was there some years I never even let my sub end between expacs. I was having a great time. But this last year I started playing FF14 and got to experience what their new expac launch experience was like. 40-hour main storyline, 8 dungeons, 3 major boss fights with 2 of those having hard modes available to play as soon as you finished the main storyline. 5 new daily areas, probably around 100 sidequests that are mostly all story-driven. Boatloads of new gear and armor to collect either just because it looks good or because you want upgrades. Within weeks of the launch of the update they launched their new raid series, and a few weeks later hard mode version of that raid. A few months later 6.1 several hour-long main storylines. 24-man raid along with its storyline, new hard mode boss fight, and a good amount of other things I've forgotten, like the PVP rework and new game mode. After seeing what another story-driven MMO can do in its launch I really wonder what is going on over at Bioware. After so many years of great game development, something has gone very wrong. 7.0 came out with one dungeon and an hour and a half-long storyline. The next biggest change was the class reworks. Some good stuff in there, but nowhere near the amount you should expect in a major update. I hope this game gets better, I hope they make a comeback. In the meantime, I'm now a resident of Eorzea.

SWOTR is not for the main MMO audience, but for the main RPG audience who enjoy sci-fi settings and who want the choice of playing either solo or together - things that games like KOTOR don't allow, since they are solo only experiences and when you're done, you're done, there's nothing more to do. Plus, every single main or secondary quest is voice acted in this game (although you can skip that part for dailies and heroics by taking them from a terminal). So I would say SWOTR really is the ultimate sci-fi RPG experience and is really worth a try. And for those who enjoy reading lore and discovering interesting stuff, you'd be surprised of how much content you can discover for your Codex.

SWTOR is a comfort game for me. It was the first MMO I ever really played (I was very much a "why would I pay a sub for a game I already bought? person back in the day) but as I was a fan of BioWare and Star Wars at the time I really had no choice but to play it. I rolled on Ebon Hawk and liked it enough. Then when they had the update where you could take Republic races to Empire characters and vice versa I rushed a Miraluka Jedi to play as one on Empire. Found a great RP guild. Met a lot of people, a lot of friends, did ops together, learned to tank. Just a lot of fun. Weekly RP events, hanging out in vent and teamspeak. But then guild drama happened and things fell apart. But I kept playing it all the way through Shadow of Revan. I left before KOTFE but came back in time for it, finished that, messed around, left. My friends list started being more and more of a ghost town and eventually the only things I recognized about my server were Club Imperial dancers on the fleet. I stopped playing the game. I moved on. To WoW. To 14. To Guild Wars. Hell, I tried TERA and WildStar and a bunch of other games thanks to SWTOR. And as much as I enjoy 14 it just isn't the same for me. Every so often (typically when they have a double xp event) I take the trip into SWTOR again. Make a new character. Go through the story. And it's just nice. It's comforting. It feels like going home for the holidays and having a nice blanket and cocoa. I may not play it like I did ten years ago, but I'll be sad if it finally shuts down for good. And it's sad to basically see it barely clinging to life. But I'll always have a place in my heart for SWTOR and I'll always remember my Miraluka Assassin.

Been replaying SWTOR over the past 6 months. Started a couple of story classes once again with the new combat style system and still enjoying the game. But I do understand that for those who want to main this game and have already done this so many times, there is little to no reason to stick with until the next patch. But I feel that older players are scaring away new players with the focus on how there is little gameplay for them currently. There are so many events, quests both for solo and group content that would literally take years for a new player to reach what the older players already completed. I wished more people showed how great this game can still be for new players and maybe with better numbers there could be an incentive to EA to invest more in its future.

One thing that wasn't brought up is the real world experience of gearing in this game. My actual experience is that if you aren't already at the highest available item level in swtor for the group content you are doing, you will not be accepted in the group. Its insane that say master flashpoints drop 322 item level gear up to 326, but if you try to play it at 322 item level, you will possibly get booted from your group. Playing the content reveals why. The content is balanced toward the high end. Basically, you need 326 level gear to run the content that drops 326 level gear. Its insane and frankly a set up for failure. I experienced this when I came back to this game for the new expansion. The endgame is the worst this time around I have seen in a long time. I used to raid before my kids came a long and had more time. I wouldn't even think of gearing up for that now.

Great vid! I played from Beta up to around lvl 55 and have been thinking for a long time about going back......Am I going to find a completely different game to the one I left?? Will I even be able to continue where I left off or should I just start from scratch???

This analysis rings very true for me. SWTOR is one of the biggest series I've done and that was because I was so engaged by the story. Then I hit the end-game and at that point I found myself struggling to be interested or invested any more. I suppose that my advice would be similar to Bellular's in that the story/ies is/are worth checking out, but I'd recommend bailing after you've had your fill of said story content.

I'm highly considering dusting off my SWTOR account (assuming it still exists) just to play the story again. The voice acting in the game has always been absolutely superb.

I think we all knew this was the inevitable conclusion to the swtor arc.

You made this just in time, i was evaluating all my options to invest in a main "mmo" and i was not aware of any of the points you made, ty.

Aside from a sense of completion and a cool flare for your character portrait, I'd recommend finishing all of the origin stories for more abilities when you use that companion ability where you call upon the Force. Eight completed origin stories = eight mega-abilities on a 1-minute CD.

I play SWTOR as if it was KOTOR 3 The story is all, everything else feels tacked on.

The content that came out in 2011 when it was first released is still the best the game has 11 years later. It’s a BioWare game; story and player choice is Swtor’s biggest strength, and that strength isn’t very cohesive with daily/weekly content. The shaky relationship between the devs and the community over the forum controversy hasn’t helped. I still think that all of the origins are still really solid, but the fact that those origins don’t really continue past that 2011 endpoint sucks.

The original concept of Star Wars Galaxies is probably the game we all wanted. 1. Vast open worlds where players could put their player housing almost anywhere there was level land. 2. Player housing that could be decorated any way the player wanted. You could put your armor, weapons or even fish you caught on display. 3. With the Jump to Light Speed expansion you could fly your ship from planet to planet. You could have multiple players in the ship with friends firing your guns. You could even decorate some ships just like you could your player housing. I could stand in the ballroom of my luxury yacht ship and look out the window to see my friend flying by in his ship. 4. There was faction warfare you could (voluntarily) participate in. 5. There were benefits to being social. Players that were entertainers could perform and give buffs to other players. This promoted meeting other people. I made friends that I still have today. 6. The crafting system was both vast and highly profitable. The quality of your crafted items were determined by the quality of materials which was constantly changing throughout the galaxy. Crafted equipment could be experimented on to improve quality. Dye could be added to armor and clothing to change it's color. The downfall of Star Wars Galaxies was the poorly designed Jedi system (which probably should've been left out of the game), the poor balance of classes and the "New Game Experience" which was basically an attempt to make the game more like WoW.

This video is awesome just for the explanation on gearing before the level 80 bit. I'm still not sure how to gear from when the Heroics start giving those lockboxes until I can get Conquest (Solo player) gear. Still, nice to know that I'm on the right track for my lower level alts.

I remember this game as a pretty good one in the first two or three years, the moment it went free to play... welp, it's clear EA left it to rot. A pity tho, the game was hella fun, but like other comments have said, once you play the lvl50 main story with the 8 classes, you're pretty much done with the game.

Looking forward to your take on ESO (which I am currently playing again after dumping WoW)

Stupid question but how did you get the video to fit the youtube full screen

Excellent point on taking damage in GSF - I hate that game mode, because by the time I notice I've taken damage, I'm one hit from death... or already dead. Watching it in this video does not even begin to convey how minimal the feedback is while you're playing. It is truly a surprise when I die, because I had no idea I was taking hits.

I love this game, it's probably the most fun I've had in an MMO, really close tie to WoW. It just needs more support from the devs, or maybe a sequel, honestly. The actual devs have made great stuff.

Shortly after your first SW:ToR video I installed the game again. Started it. Saw the UI. Click through all the stuff. Quit the game. Uninstalled. I was ready to enjoy a good story. The UI screamed mobile game and monetization. No thanks. I have enough singleplayer RPGs I can finish or replay again. Kinda sad because I feel the game should be right up my alley. I just can't be bothere with it at current time.

I really enjoyed doing SWTORs raids. Had the privilege of doing most on hm and some nightmare back in the day and they really had some clever fights and mind blowing boss rooms. The terror from beyond final fight is a great example. The room actually triggers my fear of heights/falling and made for one tense encounter. The main charaxter storyline are also great. I hope you managed to try out imperial agent it's probably the best of the bunch, which surprised me but all of them are great. I legit had a blast leveling duo with my ex on launch watching her storyline scenes and participating in the group ones. I spent legit dozens of hours decorating my stronghold. I could go on and on about how fun the game is but ultimately if I'm playing an mmo I'm really doing it for the raid and endgame group content and although what swtor has is fun and pretty accessible it's been such a trickle over the years that I'd rather raid through tbc again(which I've been doing the last year) than run eternity vault for the 1000th time. And of of course the new gearing system etc... It's just sad because this had the potential to be the true first "wow killer' but corporate greed strikes again...

Thanks for playing the game. Cool to see it on the channel.

Never understood why they changed gearing, with my progression guild we played until post SoR when we were hit by a massive raid content drought. I think it's cool to offer alternative gearing solutions for non raiders but it shouldn't replace it entirely. The problem here is the lack of meaningful end game content and that is an issue swtor has had for years, it's more of a single player theme park and then you move on. It's just sad because the game has so much potential but EA continues to squander it.

Game has so much potential. Class story experience are so great, still now after all these years. But the system built around the main stories to keep player engaged.. is.. to put it simple: *meh*

last expac gearing was soo good and fast this one i dont know what they were thinking lol

you forgot to mention the crafting system, you can create and upgrade your gear through that method as well, currently too many nutters are scalping the life out the crafting components. This makes finding the needed gear and components on the GTN very hard.

"Electronic Arts needs to work out what they want from this game." They already have. It's money. Money money money money. And more money. Just look at the monetisation avenues. Then look at everything else ie. the effort put into the stuff players care about. "If it's going to be a property-competitive MMORPG... they need to make investments." They won't. The cynical revamp to character playstyle and the minimum-viable-product release philosophy of the update(shamelessly branded as an expansion because hey look, another five levels), is tailored to newcomers who have not experienced the game's past first-hand. It's just increasing reliance on the backlog of existing content to prop up the trickle of the new. The 6.0 cycle at least had some semblance to the pre-4.0-5.0 era with two non-instanced worlds added. Compare that with this new update; even the tie-in dailies don't come included at launch. Critical issues with the new flashpoints remain unfixed without using cheese. The flippin' list of collated issues longer than the update's patch notes sums up how this game is basically sunsetting, but no one is going to say it. Sure it's not dead, but this showing kills confidence in its mid-term future.

SWTOR's original release was amazing. Eight different stories and a bunch of really cool worlds to explore. The Shadow of Revan, the Eternal Throne and the Fallen Empire expansions all have great stories. SWTOR is a great story-driven game. If you remove some of the MMO tropes, SWTOR would be a great single player game. When you are alone, playing through the story, it feels like you are playing KOTOR. I love this. I wish the game would lean even more heavily into story based content. Not just story driven but diversified story driven content. I wish they would make content for each class like they did originally. It would not be that difficult to create a couple of large zones and then fill them up with class-based quests. I know it is easier and cheaper to focus on one or two storylines per expansion but such expansions have far less overall re-playability.

I'm glad you talked about the Endgame Michael, cause it really needs to be fixed. I tried coming back to this about a year ago and after I got through the story I tried to grind up to get good gear so i could try out a Operation or 2. I never made it. I was SO BORED so quickly with this game once i started doing Endgame stuff because it was almost the exact same stuff i had been doing when I left the game but with more steps and waaay less fun. Now it was an extremely long road JUST to get to play Operations which are my favorite part of SWTOR but just trying to get there was like trying to mow my lawn with child-proof scissors. And doing the Veteran Flashpoints for gear? Get ready to do the same 3-4 Flashpoints endlessly because they are the fastest ones and if you get anything else everyone leaves and you should back out and requeue. I was soooo bummed that i didn't get to try out some of the new dungeons when i went to check out SWTOR again, but repeating the content FOR MONTHS...IS...NOT...WORTH IT! i may go back and check it out but who knows how long I'll stay, since not much has changed i see. SWTOR used to be my main game before i jumped ship for FFXIV and at this point there are only 2 options EA and Bioware have in order for this MMO to really shine. 1) Total Revamp ARR Style and 2) Scrap It and Make a New Star Wars MMO. Those are the only options, anything less and it will continue to just putter along with barely any content like it has been for the last few years.

Yup. I completely agree. It's a nice side game, but the game never saw the content cadence support it deserves to break it with the big ones. ESO is right there showing them what it could be, but EA still doesn't commit fully.

SWTOR was my 1st MMO ever and I still love it. But nowdays I keep just coming back for some pvp, which is the most fun content for me on this game right now. It is really a shame that EA did stop investing on this game. I'm sure it could have way more content, quality content, that is. and primarily more story, which, in my opinion, is the core of this game and its best feature, being at the level of FFXIV, imo. It saddens me to see this game slowly dying, while it could be growing... If only EA was willing to invest more resources... I'm sure it would pay off. I don't understand EA. they are always backing off from good games and opportunities.

I loved swtor, was playing it on and off since launch. Sadly, this game has greatly declined in quality since the major changes they did in the last expansion, changing around a lot of things and hurting the experience. Add in that they've been greatly pushing away from the main selling point that made swtor somewhat profitable, and the game is just no longer fun to play. I don't feel like lvling up alts anymore (since the class stories stopped being a thing), I haven't even finished the story of the new expansion and have no real interest in finishing it, and even ops, my bread and butter of this game are just unappealing to me. Quite frankly, I feel like this game had such promise but faltered and failed, to where if they release a swtor 2, I would not be surprised.

I subscribed to your channel cus you referenced Freelancer and that's one of my all time favorite space sims.

2:03 when youre recording a bootleg movie in theatres and someone in the audience gets up to go to the bathroom

After returning from a five year hiatus it was incredibly underwhelming. It seems soulless and nothing like i used to enjoy. I quit after two months and went to ff14

I'd honestly just love the ability to rush through this game and just play for the story. I couldn't care less for the MMO aspect. I want my damage to feel meaty. I'd gladly pay for a separate server that allowed you to 'rush' through combat for casual players that just want the story.

Regarding gearing, thanks to legacy binding, I'm able to have a single set of armor for all my characters. One. I just move it from my legacy vault to the character I'm going to play and put it all back in the vault just before I log out. Sharing one set of gear hasn't made much difference in the Operations I run in. So the only extensive difference in gear between my characters is the weapons for Force users versus Tech users. Even then, every character which uses a one-handed light saber uses the exact same saber. I do this with saber staff, one-handed blaster, blaster rifle, focus, etc. It has cuts down on the cost of gearing so much that I spend most of my resources on customizing those items that can't be used on more than one character. Even tacticals can be shared. And the classes I use are optimized; for stealth, every tech-using character takes Operative (Lethality) and every force-using character takes Shadow (Serenity). Which means I'm at the "dress-up" stage where I create new characters with a unique visual flavor..Female Drow sorcerer, Maori bounty hunter, Wakanda warrior who fights with a spear, blind samurai armed with a katana, psychotic Spartan from ancient Greece. Having already completed all the stories, this all means that I've realized I'm a Grey Jedi at heart.

Bellular I have watched your content for a while but hearing Freelancer was one of your favorite games made me fall in love all over again. No wonder I agree with most of your takes!

Gather around kids, let papa founder tell you the ancient story of the great forum ban 😝 long ago when this game was still in beta, many along myself have offered constructive criticisms about the game. But the dev's did not want to hear it and thus began the great forum purge. Many was striked down, many had left in fear, but most found themselves in GW2 because of it. The remaining along side with me, have continued to with swtor till the game came out. At first the game didntnapear out of the ordinary but soon gamers found themselves wanting more as they consumed content like they're at a all you can eat. But as more and more content came out and is consumed, the more it is apparent that things are lacking and left hollowed. Over the years the dev's have pushed numerous changes from class abilities to completely reworking things altogether. Even now in legacy of the sith expansion the content offered is miniscule but unfortunately with the massive money lost over the years, they have downsized the team altogether. Their biggest appeal of voice over for all content has been replaced for thenmostmpart with just speechless text much like KOTR. Some of us have been left wondering, had theynlisten to us, perhaps it would've saved a lot of people time and money. Had they not locked classes behind character story arch or even abilities to class altogether, things may have been better off. It just took too long for them to rectify these mistakes.

They've drip-feeding us content for years. I've been playing since the beta and the recycling, the rehashing of content, it's beyond old and exhausting. SWTOR has been going on for ten years. The story has been fun, but a good story ultimately ends and with the recent micro update to the story, it's clear they're just wanting to stretch this out for as long as they can. We ruled the galaxy. What more meaningful things can they do? At one time, I would've said they should keep SWTOR going but we've passed that time. It's time to move on and I have. I can recommend SWTOR as well, but only to play for free. It's not worth spending money on and I know because I have. Never bought cartel coins though; I just subscribed. With this update, I unsubscribed and I'm not looking back.

OMG I remember all the hype for SWTOR before launch, I thought it was going to be the greatest game ever, and I will play it forever 🤣. What's funny I haven't really paid much attention to FF14, and it became my favourite mmo

I hadn't played for a few years and convinced my girlfriend to check it out against with me. She had never played it and had only recently seen some of the Star Wars movies, so here are our two perspectives from trying to play SWTOR in 2022 as a free to play MMO with a new character. We spent a ton of time in character creation, trying to make characters that would have similar enough origins that we could start together and go through the story together. I didn't notice it immediately because I had played previously and must have spent some money, but I had a decent amount of options for species and such. However, she had a bunch of pay walls for most of the species and we ended up settling on some pretty vanilla characters to compensate. Ran into our first bug in the intro, but were able to group up immediately after. That's when I remembered why I stopped playing, which was the gameplay. The combat was like a floaty version of WoW, with similar resources, skills, progression. Some of the classes even shared a ton of similarities with WoW classes, with some abilities just lifted straight out of WoW and renamed. I understand there are limitations to the combat system given the Hero Engine that was forced on the devs and the competition, but Bethesda's Elder Scrolls Online is also in the Hero Engine and actually has a very different combat system than WoW and SWTOR. It was one of the main reasons that made me lose interest in the game, because it just feels so artificial. Like you can only fire the laser in this particular way every few seconds, even though you can still fire a laser a different way during that time. That's something that they can't fix, and I'm lost on this tangent here, but that hit me pretty quickly. However, my girlfriend hadn't played WoW or any MMOs, she plays Apex Legends, and she was just kinda experiencing it and not having a ton of fun but was willing to keep going. Made it to an area with a mailbox and both of us got like a ton of mail. I got a ton more because of the age of my account, including some more powerful armor. But also I started running out of inventory space. And I started running out of room on my action bar. No big deal, just add another action bar- and it's behind a pay wall. That is correct, you only have one action bar on screen unless you pay money for more. You of course also can't expand your inventory without paying money, and there were tiny microtransactions in just every part of the UI. And we both quit and uninstalled the game. Which is disappointing, because we didn't even get to any good story beats, which I know the game has. It's really sad that the greate storylines and characters are trapped behind a horrible combat system and a billion minor inconveniences created just for the purpose of wringing money out of players.

what happened? simple, free to play happened, the gutting of the UI to piecemeal sell it back to you for money happened, paying them real money to equip fuckin dungeon gear happened. No reason to play SWTOR outside of the class stories, then just uninstall.

A counterpoint: Maybe this is okay, to have a game on the market that you don't really play that much. Just come back here and there, not a game with a real endgame unless you really want that grind. It's not the game that's advertised, and that sucks, but taken as it actually is, if they advertised it that way, I feel like it would kind of be... fine?

If you want to power level. I found waiting to double exp works wonders. Use your exp booster items and do the starter planet, it usually get's you to about lvl 15 or something I think or maybe it's 12, it's been a while. After that when you got your ship buy the lvl5-6 upgrades on the market for the on rails ship combat mode. It will take you right up to lvl 50 in a few hours. Not really all that exciting but gets you a lot of exp fast. Buy the extra exp upgrades in your legacy tree too, that's key. Then you can do the bounties to grab exp in a group or single to get you to max level or dungeons too. Can easily max a character out on a less than a day if that's what you want.

I think one of the biggest strenghts of SWTOR is that besides some side content in KotFE *everything* is voice acted. That's a huge positive in a story game and the reason I quit FF in less than a week. But what's after the story has never been particularly good, tho I've heard good things about the Iokath raid.

swtor sucks in so many ways that I can't even imagine.. It has potential but it has always been that way. not to mention the restrictions and the "taxes" in game, ridiculous.

SWTOR is really a great KOTOR game in MMO clothes.

I was forced to quit this game when I lost my guild leader rank and guild when my subscription ended accidentally. Apparently EA punishes you with a sneaky build in mechanic when your player status changes from sub to f2p by stripping your guild leader rank and randomly assigning another member of the guild who is still subbed and ignoring guild ranking system. Unfortunately the random member who got the guild leader rank assigned was inactive shutting me out of my own guild bank containing most resources and credits. I tried explaining the situation to EA and even re-subbing the same day but EA wouldn't help me out as they said they couldn't do anything. Not long after I decided to quit as 3-4 years of work was lost because my credit card info was outdated.

Lol, the little fade-in/fade-outs of FFXIV crafting/and gear menu..

As an end-game (but casual) raider from SWTOR, my guild just moved over to ff14 for exactly these reasons. For years, the content EA has released has been the absolute minimum necessary to drag people along. But we stuck with it because we loved the world. The gearing this time around made it impossible for casual guild members that only play for a few hours a week to move beyond the PVP gearing level to the true end game gearing level short of spending 6 months grinding and going weeks between new pieces of gear that are worth upgrading. It does not help that Nightmare modes are the only way of getting the level of gear your average raider will need to complete most Hard Modes beyond the basic ones that have been around for YEARS. This has led many groups to cheese just a couple first boss nightmare bosses for months for our raid team to get back to the gear level needed to TRY progressing against the hard mode bosses we were working on in December. It took 3 months of this for the guild I was in to fall apart and we all decided to move to a different game and most of us had been in game since launch.

Like a lot of other people commenting in the feed here over the past couple of days, SWTOR was my first MMO. I played almost from when the game launched; though I did not start early enough to be eligible for founder's status. I joined the game when it was about half-way through the 1.0 patches, back before the large Rise of the Hutt Cartel expansion that came with 2.0. I consistently played a Jedi Guardian tank, with a heavy emphasis on pvp and open world pvp ~ that was in fact a thing back then, with Thorazan in the Dune Sea being infamous for massive, spontaneous battles. I played consistently up until dev decisions effectively deleted open world pvp from the game, which was my particular content niche~ I would log into the game with my buddies and we would spend the evening trying to protect pub bases and quest areas from max-level imps looking to grief. Once that atmosphere vanished from the game, I started playing sporadically. I would still log in to run warzones, but the shift in focus for warzones from the large 8v8 ranked matches and 8v8 regulars to more bland 4v4 matches lacking much in the way of depth turned the pvp scene into something akin to boring for me; however, more recent 8v8 maps have been really fun to play~ not to mention sorely needed, especially since Hypergate was for the longest time the only "new" 8v8 map. To date my gameplay history with SWTOR a bit more, my Jedi Guardian, as of 8.0, was still decked out in the original War Hero/Ranked War Hero pvp gear that everyone was grinding up prior to 2.0~ modified with color dyes to make it a bit more unique. The gear and skill changes that came with 8.0 though were a bit too much of a hard sell for me, especially since the 8.0 gear system completely departs from the system that the game has had for many years now. It prompted me to try out other games and I ventured into FF14 like a lot of other people who have commented on this feed. In FF14, I found excellent story telling and tank gameplay that makes me feel like I am being spoiled (referring to the Paladin's gameplay here), and I have frankly had no eyes for SWTOR ever since. FF14 doesn't have SWTOR's pvp history; however, the quality of the story telling and the pve content makes that into a casual after thought for me. FF14 for me does what SWTOR did well, just better~ and I have yet to feel like I have run into any of the flaws that have troubled SWTOR. I frankly wish that SWTOR had FF14's quality of story telling~ and for a time the game did quite well in that regard with the Eternal Empire story arcs. Those were new and inventive stories that took the SWTOR world in interesting and wild new directions~ all of which made me play the game as I now play FF14. Unfortunately though, with the conclusion of the war between the Alliance and the Eternal Throne, the story writers have since walked away from the world of possibilities that they opened up with the Eternal Alliance and have forced the story in an awkward way back into an old Pub vs Imp dichotomy, while resurrecting a foe who was long since defeated during the Ilum arc, back before 2.0 ever was a thing.

GSF is pretty fun especially if you aren't into end game raiding and just want to have a blast for an hour. The End game gearing is actually really super easy now with 7.0 as compared to 6.x. You can get your BIS 330s currently just from using the 326 gear from pvp and GSF which you can grind up super fast and then just run nefra farm on multiple characters using the same gear on each. You will get a rakata drop each time from nefra and can get all your pieces in no time.

I love SWTOR so much, I love seeing that since it went to Steam its had quite a few more people (and its not dead at all), but man it feels like its always a step away from just becoming zero funding from the tiny funding it gets

It's one I come back to every few years.

Went back a little bit before you did and am experiencing the same thing. I agree 100%.

Always seen Swotor as a sigle player game, i jump in do the main story with classes i havent done and then i am done for sometime. Its a very good single player mmorpg.

Thats literally what took me out. Is the gearing tracks. Im like I gotta do what to do what to do this just to obtain this to be on level to grind for the better gear of the game

Wasn't this the finale expansion though? Not sure how much continued support would be offered by EA.

Swtor level questing is the best in any mmo. The sad state of things is that 20 years after EQ the best quest system developed yet was based on two endings to each quest whether you decided to help some random npc or punch him in the nuts.

Sith inquisitor story line is awesome!

Swotor is such an amazing game which is pretty badly managed in my opinion. Alot of the changes in the years werent really good but i still had my most memorable mmo moments in that mmo. I remember PvP with my guild huttenball which was a blast, Creating my own PUG raid and spending the whole day figuring out the Bosses and in the end even managing an full clear. and lastly the Story is really good i enjoyed playing alts and seeing there take on some events. But for some weird reason the management is taking it in a weird direction.

SWTOR, for all the insane budget they put into it, needed a "Realm Reborn" treatment that it never got. There's a decent amount of high quality content, but the cost to produce additional content is also very, very high and time consuming. That wasn't well thought out for a genre that lives and dies on the ability to keep releasing new things to keep players interested. The game had some success, but it was a fraction of the success EA wanted. They spent half a billion to release a game that was supposed to go on to make billions off subscription fees, like WoW did. But there was little reason to keep a sub fee going once you got through the class quests. The game continues to limp forward making some revenue, but I cannot imagine EA will take the chance of spending any real money on this, and that's the only thing that would propel it to be anything more than it's always been - a decent Star Wars RPG dressed up as an MMO.

im new at swtor, ive completed like 2 stories and i can agree on few points but i play for the story and i dont even know at what level does the endgame begin.

ahh, the last time I played SWTOR the fighter sections were on rail shooters, when did that change?

Is this game still alive? I was thinking of starting it, but im scared i'll only be able to enjoy the solo player content. Also, for those who played it, is it trully worth playing just to kill some time?