Is SWTOR seeing its last days? According to who you ask, the answer might be yes but I am not fully convinced it’s time to weep for the death of the game just yet. In fact, I think there is reason to believe that its popularity is really just getting started.
For those who have heard the rumors that SWTOR is dying, here’s some evidence that it’s not. Daniel Erickson, BioWare’s lead designer on the project said that rumors of the game’s demise are incredibly premature — and outright wrong.
Massively has some info straight from Erickson himself:
Following Update 1.2 and the Rakghoul Outbreak live event, Erickson reports that player activity in the game is increasing. He said that the studio is working hard to keep its customers happy: “The community has generally been excited about the direction the game is going as we finish up our last must-have quality of life features (group finder, etc) and can start concentrating full-time on creative things like the world events.”””
Erickson said that the live event was kept a surprise to make it “feel organic” and not spoil everything in this age of instant internet sharing. He said that the team took a cue from World of Warcraft’s Corrupted Blood plague that swept through the game in 2005; the devs tried to channel players’ actions to fun rather than griefing.
He goes on to tell about future plans for the huge PvP community in SWTOR and how they are shifting team resources to help develop more content for this and endgame. This really brings up a lot of interesting points about the game.
It seems that SWTOR has hit an impasse, so to speak, where those who tried it and don’t like it have moved on but those who appreciate it for what it is and not how it may or may not compare to other games, are eating up the content at a rapid rate and hungry for more. BioWare does have to stay on their game to continue to produce content that will keep the happy players into the game but at this time, it seems like they are doing exactly that. So what more can you expect from a game developer?
Personally, I’m all for more and improved PvP content. I know my guildies will agree since we’re a PvP guild but even our guild likes to do endgame content, too and up to this point, it’s been a real pain trying to get a group together to do stuff like this. Then there is the server wide problem that those who were “hard core” about the endgame content have already completed it and many have left the game or just gone on to other things they want to do. So unless you completed the content with the early rush of fans, you’re waiting in the background, spending hours in LFG that gets no response or spamming chat channels begging someone to take pity on you and join your group.
Yes, more endgame content is going to be great. It will bring back players who may have quit and it will give us all something new and exciting to do. I think this is just another example of how the game is continuing to grow and I’d say SWTOR has yet to reach its peak. Sure, some people tried it and didn’t like it but that doesn’t prove the game is dying. We need to see how people handle future content updates before we can say for sure what will happen.
