I think people have every right to be making the criticisms that they are doing (perhaps not repeatedly over the past 60 or so pages, but still).
I believe the issue is really that people in general are burnt out from the WoW style MMO model, gathering and completing quests in this isn't all that different to WoW. In certain areas, you just want the quests done, you're getting bored with it, it's dragging on a bit and you want to go to the next planet. Then, you get a bonus series... (Taris as Republic, anyone?). In places, it does become a bit of a yawn fest.
Thankfully, you can make up for this lack of XP by doing PvP or Flashpoints, the latter of which can be difficult to find groups for. As for PvP, it certainly isn't fun when you end up with a load of level 15-30's vs a team with a lot of level 50's, but that doesn't mean you should give up. Your stats are bolstered and if you play right, you can give them hell with relative ease. Until there are 50 v 50 warzones, the balance is always going to be called into question. So far, it doesn't seem too bad, but changes need to be made.
Rift was the same as the above, after a while you forget about the lush graphics and changes and leveling was just the exact same story as WoW - wanting large parts of it over and done with as fast as possible.
I think the class quests are generally fun, but they are fairly short and the immersion of them is questionable in places. For example, some planets are huge and take hours to finish, yet in all this time you'll have 3 or 4 fairly short conversations relating to your class quest. This somewhat breaks the feel of the game being a single player game, with instanced zones breaking the feel of it being an MMO.
I can totally understand all of the above issues, and as I've said before, the next 2-3 months will make or break the game for Bioware. With Diablo III, Blizzard are on the edge of pulling a
lot of people back into the Battle.net system, which is the last thing Bioware and EA will want to be happening.
Bioware have to do the following things, for me -
- Get rid of instanced planets so there are more people around
- Put in at least the 50 level bracket for warzones (done)
- Fix all the high level flashpoints and operations, so they are bug free
- Put in an option to enable the high res textures, hardcore gamers have high end PC's and they certainly aren't happy with this
- Work on some sort of 2v2/3v3 arena system - this is extremely popular in WoW and would be easy to implement, but would make PvP harder to balance - tough
- Keep rolling out new Flashpoints and Operations on a monthly basis
- Realm forums on the official SWTOR forum, why have no cross realm flashpoint or PvP system and then leave this out?! Bizarre.
The above sounds like a lot to ask, but it's entirely reasonable when you gunning for World of Warcraft - without at least the majority of those improvements, they aren't going to get near it and will just haemorrhage subscribers on a daily basis.
Personally, I'm still very much enjoying the game. At times it can be a bit boring, without a doubt. I think the final key point is that as with WoW, Rift and any MMO, a lot of the immersion and entertainment comes from the other people you are playing with. They can make the game infinitely more enjoyable.
