There are still plenty of instances and dungeons that require a group (all of the raids still do) and have decent stories, but the best stuff that follows the main Lord of the Rings storyline is accessible to any solo player who is willing to have a go at it. LotRO simply added a big buff to the solo player called Inspiration, which gave them Morale (Health) and Power (Class Resource) to match what an on-level group would have, buff their damage and healing stats to also match a projected group output, and called it a day. ![]() You might not even need to nerf the mobs to get the job done. Sure, it's an MMO and the second M stands for Multiplayer, but after awhile, does it really matter all that much to penalize folks who can't or won't engage in group activities? You can either gate your old content so that only a percentage of your players will ever see it, or you can make it more accessible. Lord of the Rings Online once revamped their entire epic questline to make it so that it could be done either as a group or as solo, so players could enjoy the story without forcing them to group. Personally, I wish BioWare would introduce a proper Story Mode for all flashpoints for level 50 and under, because it's elder content. They won't get to see Revan in the flesh. However, for the folks who have any number of valid reasons for not grouping regularly or at all, they will never see the cutscenes in the Foundry. ![]() While there is a Story Mode available for some of the group content, all that means is that you just need a lesser number of people or a lesser-geared group to tackle it. The game has been criticized for being a single-player MMO, but yet they gate much of their most epic content behind grouping mechanics. The only exception is generally if I'm trying to hurry in order to be ready for some public event or something. I love the story so much that I still don't often spacebar my way through even starter planet quests, because while I can and have done them so many times, I'm still not truly weary of them. For me, what separated SWTOR from all the other games I play is its story. There will always be nuances, but the overarching mechanics are more or less the same. I still button-mashed for combat, I still had to have tons of alts to cover all the craft options, I still had my fetch and carry quests, I still had to do all the NPCs' work for them. You see, I didn't really feel like SWTOR functionally played very dissimilarly from the plethora of WoW-like MMOs. I firmly believed that SWTOR was going to replace World of Warcraft as my go-to MMO. We also got companion affection mechanics that unlocked other quests or added layers to our main story. ![]() The game supported those choices and gave us fifty levels of immersive content that was specialized for our individual classes, whilst simultaneously having fifty levels of rich planetary quests and fifty levels of optional quests that were still pretty interesting even if they fulfilled the generic 'kill ten womprats' MMO questing format. When SWTOR first came out, I set aside most of my other games for months on end, because I was busy being immersed in a Star Wars setting where anyone could be a Jedi, they could be a sneaky Imperial Agent, they could be a light-side character playing for the ostensibly evil faction or as dark as the dark side of the moon.
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