Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: Helen Ohmiras on 13 Oct 2011, 10:37
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Even if all I see of that game is pure crap, I will still try it to see. Though I will probably be on a localized server, so, probably not with you :/
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Yes. Mizhara will rise anew in yet another game. She's been a character in an astounding amount of games so far, as a personality archetype (with one or two similarish gimmicks for continuity) to build a character around, taking the setting into account. I'll be going Sith of course, as I just never could get the hang of goodie-two-shoes in any RP setting. Even my 'best' and 'good' characters are utterly ruthless when the situation calls for it, which at best makes them anti-heroes. They could never be 'Light side' in anything as the movies and games largely shows that it requires an enormous amount of naiveté and stubborn refusal to face facts.
(Singleplayer is another thing entirely, as the stories/interaction usually allows for it, but in multiplayer RP settings it never works for me.)
So, yes. European server, may have a guild coming up depending on old friends and it'll be Dark/Sith/Empire side.
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I will probably be playing with friends and family.
No details yet, we will probably be on the darker side of things. Mainly because of the reasons mentioned by Mizh.
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Yep, and as Sith.
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I might play (as Republic) if some RL friends drag me in, but I doubt it. What I've seen of that game is totally contrary to all the spirit and flavor that I love with the SW universe.
... Soldier tanks, Jedi healers and Sith damage dealers. Srsly, whoever came up with that concept should be taken out and run over by a sandcrawler, twice.
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[mod]*snip* (http://backstage.eve-inspiracy.com/index.php?topic=2775.0)[/mod]
P.S. I will prolly play and will prolly be a Soldier doing everything possible to kill every force user in the game. I'm not sure of the faction
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My brother has this incoming for his Xmas gift, I'll be getting a trial when I'm able to so I can join him. I've had ample opportunity to participate in the beta but the giant size of the game and my currently limited HD space has kept me back.
If/when I'm in I'll see about joining some backstagers, if we're on the same server.
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servers? ughhhhhh
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servers? ughhhhhh
Avatar driven combat (especially PvP) doesn't handle high latency very well, so region servers are a minimum must for a game like this I fear. What I can only hope and pray for is that there'll be dedicated RP-PvP servers that are enforced to be such. Avatar driven games like these just can't be done the same way Eve does things.
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I dig Star Wars and all, but primarely from the point 'X-Wing' introduced to me when I was a child so I doubt SW:TOR will appeal to me.
Heck, I did not even enjoy (or managed to finish) the original KOTOR games...
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Yeah, there seems to be a bit of a chasm there between two different groups of Star Wars fans. Personally I can't stand the games nor movies/books from the time period of the movies, but the Old Republic Star Wars universe really appeals to me. A lot of other people have it the exact opposite way.
KOTOR and the books from that universe are really enjoyable to me, in ways that the 'original' Star Wars universe really isn't. It's all the awesome of Star Wars without the George Lucas shitfest, basically. Of course, this is dependant on the person and not really a 'trufax'.
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Perhaps. In my case I think it is more about enjoying flying spaceships than anything else. :)
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I played the beta for like a year. I don't think it would be an NDA violation for me to say that the game is terrible.
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I played the beta for like a year. I don't think it would be an NDA violation for me to say that the game is terrible.
Can that judgement call truly have any validity on a product that was still in production? Could you elaborate on your statement with facts of why it is terrible so we can all come to a consensus on this and not waste our money.
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Meh. I'm interested, I used to love the star wars universe, but I'll let the game be out for a few months before I think about buying it. See what people think of it, see if I want to invest the time and money. Much as I expect great things from the company making it... blargh. We'll see.
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Disclaimer : as I have been something like the star wars nerd since I was 4 or 5 maybe (thanks, parents), I may sound "a little" bitter.
I might play (as Republic) if some RL friends drag me in, but I doubt it. What I've seen of that game is totally contrary to all the spirit and flavor that I love with the SW universe.
... Soldier tanks, Jedi healers and Sith damage dealers. Srsly, whoever came up with that concept should be taken out and run over by a sandcrawler, twice.
My case exactly, too. Except that I have pre ordered it compulsively for some reason so... :/
KOTOR and the books from that universe are really enjoyable to me, in ways that the 'original' Star Wars universe really isn't. It's all the awesome of Star Wars without the George Lucas shitfest, basically. Of course, this is dependant on the person and not really a 'trufax'.
Probably dependant on the person, though we do not have to be experts in cinema to see that the Lucas shitfest is not about his first saga, but that terrible prelogy and all the crap that followed. Lucas turned bad when Kurtz left him after Ep 5.
On another note, I really liked the kotor series (especially the 2nd one, a butchered little marvel to my eyes), but seeing what is SWTOR I just feel the urge to vomit.
I played the beta for like a year. I don't think it would be an NDA violation for me to say that the game is terrible.
Can that judgement call truly have any validity on a product that was still in production? Could you elaborate on your statement with facts of why it is terrible so we can all come to a consensus on this and not waste our money.
You might want to read this review (http://www.betacake.net/2011/09/14/star-wars%e2%84%a2-the-old-republic%e2%84%a2-another-negative-review/) from another tester. It does seem to be a huge gap between testers themselves (some find it terrible, some find it ok or great), and also between the colossal (almost absurd) hype revolving around the game with outsiders of the beta. I also know some friends playing the beta atm, their feeling is more or less the same : another WoW in its basic release state, with voiced/bioware dialogs as a sugarcoat.
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You prettymuch summed up my feelings on SW there, Lyn. The Thrawn Trilogy was more exciting to me than LOTR, but I'll avoid anything set during the clone wars like it's poisoned. I liked the KOTOR games a lot too, and just about anything from that era; Tales of the Jedi is a good old series and more recently I enjoyed Darth Bane as a character (though his books are so-so)
Back to TOR... does the art style bug anyone else? It seems really off to me. Not even that it's just cartoony, it's very blocky and the animation looks stiff. Like a second rate version of that awful Clone Wars 3d cartoon.
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"another WoW in its basic release state, with voiced/bioware dialogs as a sugarcoat."
And I'm very cool with that. Just like games like Painkiller and so on returns us to bygone eras of great shooters where the gameplay is just rock fuckin' solid and enjoyable (instead of the current-gen massproduced nausea that is Chesthigh Walls and Two Weapons max crap or endless Call of Duty games), there's very little need to reinvent the wheel for MMOs when it works. For all my hatred of WoW as it is today, I will gladly admit that the gameplay is rock solid and it just... works. WoW just got utterly retarded with the content and the playerbase, which turns me off massively.
My personal hopes with SWTOR is simply that it got similarly good gameplay mechanics and keeps the content at the quality level I've come to expect from Bioware. If they achieve that, they will have a loyal and long-time customer in me. That kind of gameplay really works when it comes to avatar-driven combat in MMOs and it's fun.
I don't think anyone's expecting Eve Wars Online here and if they do, I for one kind of hope they'll be disappointed because I sure as hell don't.
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I was a little interested in it when I first heard about it, but at this point I have no plans to buy it. Haven't really been impressed by the videos I've seen and get the general impression that the game plays similarly to WoW from a mechanistic PoV. After trying Rift briefly I'm just no longer interested at all in that kind of MMO.
I'm a total FPS and PvP whore though, so maybe that's why.
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I'll give it a go, along with a few mates both from in and outside of Eve.
I'll be playing Republic.
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Back to TOR... does the art style bug anyone else? It seems really off to me. Not even that it's just cartoony, it's very blocky and the animation looks stiff. Like a second rate version of that awful Clone Wars 3d cartoon.
Well, dont tempt me...
As its my job, I ofc have a pretty strong opinion on the SWTOR graphics.
Environnements
To summarize a bit, there is at least one thing that is overall very good, and its landscapes and backgrounds : considering that almost everyone seems to really like them, I can say that they are well done and designed, and generally it does not surprise me because bioware have always been fucking good at environnements design. Anyway, the whole all hand painted textures and the style of these BGs are well rendered and colorful, but not too much, not too less. Rocks are surprisingly nice, and ambiants too (Nal Hutta, Dromund Kaas, for example).
Weapons
The rest is very, very bad. Especially characters, but lets talk about the rest first. Even if they enormously decreased the size of weapons (especially lightsabers), its still a little oversized, and ridiculous on some cases. We know that they want to give a little cartoonish look to the whole thing, but its just getting a bit like LEGOs here.
Clothes
Just terrible. Especially these ugly shoulder pads (looks like some bad japanimation remake, or a star wars dragon ball version or something... :s). I perfectly know what they thought when designed that kind of clothes. Its for kids. But it is also such of bad taste that I am still amazed they dared to design this like that. But after all, most of that game is bad taste. Even the storyline is of bad taste, considering how cheesy and clonewars-esque it is (too bad, because the whole story background coming from kotor and the tales is nice). But will they beat clone wars 3D on the scale of bad taste ?
Faces
There is something, I suppose. It is original. But I also find it too cheesy or all lovey dovey. All the characters look almost cute (yes, even the bad ones). I am now merely expecting little butterflies and rainbows (and ponies ?) to appear out of nowhere. But yet again, graphically, its for kids. Though, even for kids, bad guys look evil, period. Here its... not always the case, especially for the playable characters.
Characters
Here they come. I do not know who designed the characters structure, but he has serious anatomy troubles. Characters are definitly all but human. Enough said for me, it is so poor and bad that I wonder where the artists working on this studied (or not).
Animation
They have access to all the LA motion capture stuff and all shiney tech, and we get this ? I mean, what the hell ? Some animations are quite decent or nice, and others are just ludicrous. And considering how low poly are their characters, it does not help at all, so everything looks stiff, yes : no matter how good your animations are if the models are too low poly. And maybe they also screwed on the body rigging somewhere, wouldnt surprise me either.
Artistic Direction
They screwed up somewhere. They seem to want something semi realistic (between full cartoon like say Dofus, and realistic like Mass Effect), so you normally end up with characters with human proportions, but exagerated or very loose (tightness, constitution, lenght of the legs, eyes, nose, whatever). Here it just does not work (especially anatomically). They also seem to suffer of the Lucas syndrome consisting to put every target audience in the same basket, much like it was the case in the prelogy : mixing space politics with jar jar binks and little boys, then mutilating these grown up little boys in a lava lake. Is that for children ? Teens ? Adults ?... Or aliens ? No they, just want clonewars 3000 years before, without any artistic variation like it was the case in the Tales for example (ships with solar sails, etc). What do we see ? Clonetroopers everywhere, boba fetts everywhere, clone wars 3D like obiwans everywhere, and even better, the new ugly darth vader alias Dark Malgus. Wtf. Ah yes, and Satele, which is not bad, but do feel like the female selling point of the whole design.
So yes Miz, Wow definitly works, because it remains coherent, unlike that game (and yet, I have doubts on wow too). I mean, look at their marketing : their selling asset is their storyline. They keep telling us "look how awesome our voiced class stories are going to be huge and awesome". They keep emphasizing on this, because they perfectly know that the rest has nothing original in itself. Eventually, they are doing some kind of online solo RPG.
Edit : slightly off topic, but for these that are interested and do not know them, just watch these awesome reviews (http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/star-wars/). Parodic by nature, of course, but they are so true in themselves (and hilarious)...
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Folks in my house have the beta.
We're all probably going to cancel pre-orders.
I was never that interested, but I like to play with my roomates and they could never get into EVE, so this was our compromise. We should have picked something better....someone should have made something better.
The fucking amazement to me is that no one can make something better than EVE after all these years. No one has even tried.
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Earthrise had looked promising. :(
Then again I just caught this (http://therepopulation.com/) on Massively earlier.
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Folks in my house have the beta.
We're all probably going to cancel pre-orders.
I was never that interested, but I like to play with my roomates and they could never get into EVE, so this was our compromise. We should have picked something better....someone should have made something better.
The fucking amazement to me is that no one can make something better than EVE after all these years. No one has even tried.
well i'm sold, not getting it.
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SWTOR is a flop already.
But I still have a lot of hope for Guild Wars 2. I played through the first one and loved it... and even if Guild Wars 2 isn't mind shockingly amazing.. it's free to play. They have a lot of things going for them already. Amazing artists and graphic designers, a coherent art style. They've got this dynamic quest-event system, and the lack of healer-tank-nuker trilogy class system (everyone can tank, everyone can nuke, everyone can heal).
I can't wait.
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The mumbling among game designers is that this game is a Water World-esque disaster.
Which makes me :(
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Thanks to this thread, my girlfriend has now vetoed my pre-order decision. :cry:
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Liked SWG. SWTOR however, didn't interest me from the start. And considering I keep hearing bad things about it...
No, I put my hopes (and money) into Funcom.
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Thanks to this thread, my girlfriend has now vetoed my pre-order decision. :cry:
Im sorry I didnt want that. I shouldnt have spit on it like that. :(
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I think your girlfriend is a smart cookie. Wait til the reviews come out and you get a chance to demo it before spending your money on it. ^^
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I've pre-ordered it. The main reason I want to play it is because I love Star Wars. To me it looks fairly cool and coupled with my overall SW greekness, sure I'll give it a go. I doubt it will replace EVE, but it does look like it has a vibrant and at this point eager RP community. So I think it will be worth a shot just for that.
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I'd like to thank averyone who offered good arguments for/against SWTOR.
I'd like to slap all that go 'it's crap don't buy it' with no arguments for why this is; I am not interested in your personal oppinions because mine differs. If you want to convince me otherwise offer good ARGUMENTS.
As for the game itself I pre-ordred it with my friends to give it a good, honest try an see for myself.
I disliked, and still dislike, WoW. I still got an account and played it for a good while because, while I have a list of issues about it long as day I've also a shorter list of the pro's. By the coming of Cata the list of pros was so short there was no more point and thus, I left. SWTOR will be no different. EVE is no different - when/if the list of cons outweight the pros I will be leaving EVE as well. That it seems entierly unlikely to happen is a huge plus.
Back to SWTOR. I will play Republic. I wil roll a trooper (clone-trooper copy or whatever the complainers want to call it) and I will likely enjoy, so very, very much, gunning down all the 'I'm so evil look at me being a nasty sith-lord, trololololololol' kiddies and all their pretentious friends, and relatives, and house-hold animals. I predict and fully expect the Republic side to outnumbered atl 2:1 so I'll have plenty of enemies. Fun times, I hope.
I don't care if the graphics is cartoonish. So was WoW. WoW worked great in that regard. I don't care for all the complaints about game-design being to much this, or that, or whatever. I'm a SW fan, and the Old republic time-period is enjoyable to me. I'll offer the pitiful sum they want for the game and a couple months and maybe, if they made a really great game that I enjoy, the Sith-kiddies will all die. If not... well, there is allways EVE, and plenty of good non-MMO games. I honestly don't get why people bitch so much about this and convince themselves that, because the whiners don't like it, they won't either. If you really wanted to? Then try it. Find out. Decide for yourself.
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Funny how the ones gung-ho about playing republic side resort to calling people who want to play the sith side as 'kiddies' and other lovely terms. I suggest looking in the mirror and growing up a bit :roll:
Playing Sith Empire for me it's not about being a 'bad ass' or 'leet'. I just find the Sith lore in the Star Wars Universe more interesting, compelling. I find characters like Exar Kun and Darth Caedus (aka Jacen Solo) more appealing than the average good guys. Hell even one of the all loved good guys, Luke, dips into the dark side at one point. I hope in SWTOR there's some nice storylines or plot hooks about history of the Sith Empire. If ti's gonna be a 'Evil dudes being evil and doing evil things for the sake of evil' I'll be disappointed.
Yeah, sure there will probably be those guys you mentioned - on both sides - but I'd appreciate not to blanket prejudice everyone.
As for gameplay, yeah it looks like WoW in SW setting, I don't mind. It gives me an opportunity to play something with my RL mates who don't care for EVE and we all share a soft spot to SW and especially to the Old Republic setting. We agreed as group to go play Sith because we think the stories about them are pretty awesome and the lore is cool.
I was pretty unbiased for going one side or another and maybe looking up a few dudes up from EVE to play with in addition to my RL mates - be it republic or sith empire. This thread has convinced me to not do that.
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I'll probably trial it (assuming they let you), and then see if space combat is at all interesting. Frankly, the traditional "run your avatar around and spam specials" style of gameplay just doesn't appear to me all that much.
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What bothers me with the sith lore, as things stand, is the... blood-raider like ideology. It's about gaining power at any cost, to anyone or anything else, for selfish, personal reasons and desires. You step on others, to become more powerful, to more easilly step on others.
The ideological alternative is the Jedi - become powerful for the sake of everyone's service and protection, basically. It's alot more fleshed out and detailed for both of these, but this is basically it.
What was cool and nice about stories like Kun and Skywalker (father and son, as it is) was that both started out as Jedi. Exar Kun was a Jedi who fell and became DARK JEDI - there is a world of difference between him and the Sith. Luke's drop to Dark side was also impressive in that he reverted back to non-dark alignment and could trully say 'you know what Sith guy? I've been there, done that, and it was... boring."
Luke's father was redeemed to... eventually. In between he was perhaps the most tragic character in all of SW lore.
In short - Dark Jedi is 'acceptably cool' and the dynamic between them and yuor common Jedi works well, I think. Not so well for Sith. I get the impression most people who play Sith do so for the same reasons people play disorder in Warhammer and pirates in EVE - the desire to be a 'badass' - ofthen seen to be hand in hand with being a 'bad guy' - WoW had a simmilar thing with Horde, but in a slightly different way, and honestly bad game-balance from Blizz had a hand in that too.
So ultimately, I don't like Sith, far as lore go. As I said, I fully predict Sith Empire to be the by far numerially dominant faction and for the badass-seekers to chose them. Because being a 'good guy' is not cool enough. The combined effect of this is, I fully expect that fighting them will be extreely fun. Or so I hope. It's all conjecture at this time.
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Funny how the ones gung-ho about playing republic side resort to calling people who want to play the sith side as 'kiddies' and other lovely terms. I suggest looking in the mirror and growing up a bit :roll:
Ohh even if I never said such a thing myself, do not take it that personnally. I am pretty sure these remarks are not targeting the audience here...
We all have in mind the kid archetype that wants to play sith warrior because its cool and all. I am myself more or less convinced we will find most of them in the sith warrior class. That does not mean that every sith is a trolololol little twit. :roll:
If ti's gonna be a 'Evil dudes being evil and doing evil things for the sake of evil' I'll be disappointed.
Knowing Bioware, I am afraid it might well be the case. But at the same time I have had some hints from a friend playing the beta as a Sith inquisitor, and its not that bad (playing someone of an old lineage), though the story often does not make any sense (Why am I here ? Why am I doing that ? What is the purpose of all of this ? Wtf is going on ?). Also of course, you have to take in account that class driven storylines are very, very short. 95% of the quests are dumb and tasteless secondary quests that makes you run all around the planet to kill x mobs.
I'll probably trial it (assuming they let you), and then see if space combat is at all interesting. Frankly, the traditional "run your avatar around and spam specials" style of gameplay just doesn't appear to me all that much.
The space part is a rail shooter minigame at the moment (much like Starfox). May be expanded after the release in some add on, especially for "guild ships".
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I'll probably trial it (assuming they let you), and then see if space combat is at all interesting. Frankly, the traditional "run your avatar around and spam specials" style of gameplay just doesn't appear to me all that much.
The space part is a rail shooter minigame at the moment (much like Starfox). May be expanded after the release in some add on, especially for "guild ships".
It reminds me a lot of that quirky old game Rebel Assault (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBGlYwiYYsg).
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Funny how the ones gung-ho about playing republic side resort to calling people who want to play the sith side as 'kiddies' and other lovely terms. I suggest looking in the mirror and growing up a bit :roll:
I'm not sure if countering useless overgeneralizations with more useless overgeneralizations is particularly useful.
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Funny how the ones gung-ho about playing republic side resort to calling people who want to play the sith side as 'kiddies' and other lovely terms. I suggest looking in the mirror and growing up a bit :roll:
I'm not sure if countering useless overgeneralizations with more useless overgeneralizations is particularly useful.
(http://separi.wippiespace.com/img/kummeli_neut.jpg)
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Apparently I got some disturbing news confirmed by several of my accointances playing the beta, and it would seem that both factions can not see each other on most of the planets, as if they were in an instance for each faction. It is the case for PVE servers, but also for PVP servers in their current state on the beta, and nothing indicates that it will change.
It would seem that factions would be able to see each other only on pvp dedicated planets (4 of them) : Alderaan (full pvp), Tatooine/Hoth (warzones), and Illum (RvR). Unsure how it will be for pve servers on these planets though.
I am looking to know how you can cancel a pre order... Thats fucking opaque.
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Does it strike you as odd that the factions are fighting over two of the most useless, barren planets in their galaxy? xD
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I would have preferred KOTOR 3 rather than some half-assed circa 2003 "MMO."
Or a straight remake of X-Wing. Wait, make that TIE Fighter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_TIE_Fighter).
But, hey, I'm sure it makes commercial sense to keep making the same tedious WoW clone over and over again.
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mmmh, Tie-fighter remake. I'd love that because it would be a twitch-shooter AND set in the SW universe all at the same time. I loved Freelancer for being a twitch shooter and when I were really young I loved what little action I got in TIE fighter more than X-Wing, if only because I actually got to play a fully working version of the former xD
And ofc, given how awesome a TIE-fighter re-make would be, it's never going to happen.
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Apparently I got some disturbing news confirmed by several of my accointances playing the beta, and it would seem that both factions can not see each other on most of the planets, as if they were in an instance for each faction. It is the case for PVE servers, but also for PVP servers in their current state on the beta, and nothing indicates that it will change.
It would seem that factions would be able to see each other only on pvp dedicated planets (4 of them) : Alderaan (full pvp), Tatooine/Hoth (warzones), and Illum (RvR). Unsure how it will be for pve servers on these planets though.
I am looking to know how you can cancel a pre order... Thats fucking opaque.
Grim news indeed, if true. I'm assuming here that these beta testers don't care to recieve the penalties for breaking their 'don't fucking talk to people about the game's gameplay or anything' part of thier beta-testing clause. As far as I'm aware none of the beta testers are allowed to speak about any of the game's features or anything. Are you sure your sources are accurate?
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On the subject of Sith vs Jedi I couldn't really disagree more with Bloodbird.
Sure, the 'Sith kiddies' will be there, just like every MMO is plagued with the wannabe-badasses. This doesn't detract from the fact that the Sith in the TOR setting allows for both the simplistic 'power for the sake of power' character and the far more complex depth of those that seek freedom from the repression of the Jedi and so on. I'm reading some of the Old Republic books at the moment and I am fairly impressed with the Sith there. Yes, they're the bad guys and there's little to hide that... however, I don't think I've ever seen a capsuleer in Eve that's less of an asshole than them. The Sith Darth Malgur who practically burns with the desire to see Coruscant eradicated by the Empire forces, instilling fear and injury on innocent civilians outside a hospital and so on... feeling love and gentleness for the Twi'lek woman who loves him fiercely right back, protecting her from the racism of the Empire/Sith's culture and allowing her to be his weakness simply because he loves her.
The Sith apprentice Ax Eldon who is a fierce Empire loyalist, filled with utter rage in combat and entirely without qualms accepts that her job is to kill her mother. Does she find some kind of 'redemption'? Well... hard to say, but damn me if that wasn't an interesting character with very subtle depth and complexity, especially when forced to work together with a Jedi Grand Master.
There'll always be differing opinions on factions and so on. Personally I can't really stand the bland, repressive and manipulative Jedi/Republic side with it's corrupt leadership and utter lack of decisiveness or order. The arrogance implicit in saying "We're RIGHT and JUST and that means we can invade a planet by force, disrupting trade, law and order simply because it's an Empire planet. We will also be VERY surprised when the populace resents us for it, as they didn't really suffer under Empire rule at all. Derp.". The ideological superiority coupled with the utter shitcake they make of it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
However, I fully recognize the potential that faction has for RP and how it can allow for extreme depth, complexity and fun within itself. I won't blame any player going Republic/Jedi as it has great potential. Just not for me, in the same way that I can't really play Amarr as it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I'd appreciate it if my own preference for character background, motivation and archetype fitting so much better in the Empire/Sith side of things wasn't automatically thrown out as 'Sith kiddie' bullshit. Us two both being in Norway should allow timezone wise for us to meet should we end up on the same server. I truly hope we end up facing each other, because anyone who just dismisses the enemy as a 'Sith Kiddie' isn't going to be much of a match.
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I'm reading some of the Old Republic books at the moment and I am fairly impressed with the Sith there. Yes, they're the bad guys and there's little to hide that...
Exar Kun = WIN! My favourite Sith by far, followed by a tie between Vergere and Darth Maul. There is a novel that was written specifically detailing Darth Maul's rise as a Sith that gives him so much justice that episode 1 left out.
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Yeah, some of the extended universe (books and some of the games) blow the movies away with ease. It's like the authors looked at the Star Wars movies and went "... yeah, that's shit. Let's see if we can't get some real awesome up in this setting.". All it does is show how utter crap George Lucas is, really. He can't write himself out of a paper bag.
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Apparently I got some disturbing news confirmed by several of my accointances playing the beta, and it would seem that both factions can not see each other on most of the planets, as if they were in an instance for each faction. It is the case for PVE servers, but also for PVP servers in their current state on the beta, and nothing indicates that it will change.
It would seem that factions would be able to see each other only on pvp dedicated planets (4 of them) : Alderaan (full pvp), Tatooine/Hoth (warzones), and Illum (RvR). Unsure how it will be for pve servers on these planets though.
I am looking to know how you can cancel a pre order... Thats fucking opaque.
Grim news indeed, if true. I'm assuming here that these beta testers don't care to recieve the penalties for breaking their 'don't fucking talk to people about the game's gameplay or anything' part of thier beta-testing clause. As far as I'm aware none of the beta testers are allowed to speak about any of the game's features or anything. Are you sure your sources are accurate?
How would bioware know ? You just have to read websites like betacake to see the amount of info you can get out of anonymous beta testers.
I was not sure of my first source. It is someone I barely know (just because he is a roleplayer), but I do not really see why he would tell me bullshit. On another hand, I waited to have other confirmations before posting this here. Someone I trust a lot more confirmed me this. I will try to get other confirmations if I can though.
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Another reason why I wont touch this game is the writers for the game have crush alot of SW PF, and its bugging the shit out of me right now.
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Another reason why I wont touch this game is the writers for the game have crush alot of SW PF, and its bugging the shit out of me right now.
Thats the case since Lucas made his prelogy, and worse, clonewars 3D (that crushed half of the Canon mandalorian culture in the process).
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Another reason why I wont touch this game is the writers for the game have crush alot of SW PF, and its bugging the shit out of me right now.
Thats the case since Lucas made his prelogy, and worse, clonewars 3D (that crushed half of the Canon mandalorian culture in the process).
OMG don't get me started on the mando's. They destroyed the awesome work of Karen Traviss. There is no reason for all that retconning in the clone wars and they did it again for this mmo.
Out of respect here she is, awesome sci fi novelist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Traviss
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Well, I was definitly not a big fan of her SW novels that I found quite dull to be frank (and have not read anything else from her), but the work on the Canon she did was indeed very nice.
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OMG don't get me started on the mando's. They destroyed the awesome work of Karen Traviss. There is no reason for all that retconning in the clone wars and they did it again for this mmo.
To be fair, The Clone Wars has trampled on a lot of established canon. For that reason I pretty much see it as non-canon, regardless of what George "Aside-from-the-movies-nothing-is-canon-and-the-Star-Wars-story-ends-at-Episode-6" Lucas says.
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Personally I am going with its a fictional account made by the Republic propaganda machine to inspire its citizens to bear with the shortages made by the war.
And on the original topic, I might play it as KOTOR was pretty good, and despite this being an MMO, it seems like its going to be a giant play with friends version of KOTOR. Though all depends on my twin daemons, time and money.
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I guess this is going to have to be one of those "agree to disagree" things, since I was almost happy to see much of Traviss' work retconned out... ironically, many of my issues with her are the exact same issues you have with the newer series (maybe it's just a bad case of :bittervet: from existing in the Star Wars Expanded Universe for to long, but I no longer get that angry when each new series comes with an associated round of retcons).
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Trololol I have been trying to contact EA Origin customer support and have been unvariably getting 404 errors. Thought it was tied to the page default language, and tried to change it, but apparently it keeps directing me to the EA main website instead.
I am struggling with the SWTOR customer support to cancel my pre order but they keep telling me its up to EA customer support.
Splendid. I wonder if I should contact my bank and put Origin on blacklist eventually before they get my money...
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Bah. The more I read about this the less good it seems like it's going to be. If the "pre-order now!" email had landed in my inbox 6 weeks ago instead of just now, I probably would have done it. Now I'm wondering if I'll even pick it up at all.
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The more I read, the more interested I get. It sounds like Bioware is actually pulling off the actual RP aspect in SWTOR, allowing for actual decisionmaking and individual paths rather than the usual "There's just -one- conceivable way to do this. Do it like that. Hell, we'll even RP your character's reaction for you as well." in any other MMO. (Including Eve).
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Problem is, decisions in a group (you know, the RP part) is randomly assigned to a member of the party each time.
And Light/Dark side decisions are everywhere, even though only one of those decisions will benefit your progression (Repub/light, Sith/Dark).
So, either everyone will pick the same option, or one guy will make the 'wrong' decision and fuck everyone up.
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Problem is, decisions in a group (you know, the RP part) is randomly assigned to a member of the party each time.
And Light/Dark side decisions are everywhere, even though only one of those decisions will benefit your progression (Repub/light, Sith/Dark).
So, either everyone will pick the same option, or one guy will make the 'wrong' decision and fuck everyone up.
:eek:
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How does it 'fuck' everyone up? You only get the Dark side points if you CHOOSE the dark side options, not if someone else chose it. Let's say you get the choice of helping or abandoning someone. Two of you choose to help, two of you choose to abandon. The roll goes to abandon. The two who chose abandon gets the Dark side points, the other two doesn't. Same thing applies to 'Light' choices. Only those who chose it gets those points.
This is no different from a loot roll. I have yet to hear someone being 'fucked up' by not winning the loot roll.
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Have you played this game? :s
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Nope. I'm just asking a guy I know who play it.
If I'm wrong, tell me how and why instead of just running one-liner complaints about the game with no details.
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I think I'm gonna wait for the stick to dissolve. :|
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Ah, so no real arguments against the game then? I mean, if there were any good ones, I'd have thought it'd actually be easy to explain what's wrong with it. A verbose version of "it sux lol" doesn't really hold much weight, as far as I'm concerned. I'm very open to hearing the bad sides about this game, to the point where I'm craving said negative criticism of it. I want to know these 'bad things' before I play the game and find them myself, but for some unfathomable reason no one actually explains them.
On one side I'm pelted by nothing but praise for the game in excruciating detail, while on the other side I am bludgeoned with cantankerous hate for the game without a single explanation for why. It's mindboggling to see so wildly diverging views for one, but that is almost normal for games these days. What's completely unbelievable is the difference in how the views are provided. One with detailed in-depth exploration of awesomeness and the other with vague 'bleh, sux'.
It's okay! It's perfectly okay not to like the game, guys. Just... you know... tell the rest of us why.
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Sure, no real arguements.
You should pay full price. Enjoy. ;)
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Funny, I think a majority of the commentary in this thread has been about the backstory, which is no surprise given the audience.
I am skeptical of this product, despite some of the great things bioware has created in the past that I had hours of enjoyment from. It looks like a single-player product, amalgamated to be an MMO, and I get the strong impression that there will not be enough content to cover more than a month or two (i'm a bit slow with these things). If I do like the gameplay it will probably be worth one or two replays. I also like the cooperative multiplayer aspect and the star wars setting, so this certainly is a tempting opportunity.
My biggest 'concern' is the gameplay. Do I have to run treadmills to get appropriate loot? Is the story going to be limited by 'raid' style content? Are the fights going to be as ridiculous as WOW boss fights? Am I going to get 'pooched' relying on pickup groups? These are pretty common concerns I have when dealing with MMOs, which is why I'm waiting to see how people think about it and what their initial responses are before I dive in and get this.
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EVE has pretty much spoiled me for other MMOs.
Having a corporation that runs a fleet ops smoothly and racks up a decent kill ratio takes a lot more co-ordination than anything I have come across in any of the MMOs I have played.
Guess it is the player base, in EVE people seem to have this strange mentality that they have to suffer to have success and/or fun, instead of just having fun.
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EVE has pretty much spoiled me for other MMOs.
Ditto.
It's the quests. And the shitty AI. Every MMO I have looked at has been entirely dependent on fairly dull quests (they are either outright "Collect x Objects" / "Kill x Critters" / "Fetch x Objects" / "Be a postman in a silly outfit" or that sort of thing with a veneer of story to sweeten the deal). It's just awful. It's like a training wheel for working in a factory, except you probably get better conversation on the production line. Then there's the AI of the bad guys, which is universally dumb as a rock.
Games should be better than this.
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Am looking forward to it, will probably roll a Trooper.
Bioware are always worth giving a chance imo. Whether I'll subscribe after 1-2 months is another issue.
... Soldier tanks, Jedi healers and Sith damage dealers.
Er, pretty sure that is absolutely not the case.
Firstly republic/empire classes are mirrored.
Secondly 3/4 mirrored base classes have tank specs, and 3/4 have healing specs. All have dps options available.
If you're just complaining about the Trinity in general my apologies and I can understand, but that isn't entirely clear.
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... Soldier tanks, Jedi healers and Sith damage dealers.
Er, pretty sure that is absolutely not the case.
Firstly republic/empire classes are mirrored.
Secondly 3/4 mirrored base classes have tank specs, and 3/4 have healing specs. All have dps options available.
If you're just complaining about the Trinity in general my apologies and I can understand, but that isn't entirely clear.
Actually, that's roughly what I saw in one of the preview videos. Either I misunderstood the dev comments, or the preview was quite old (this was months ago). Thanks for the clarification.
My main issue there was that I don't see the "standard trinity" working really well in the SW universe. But then, I'm still bitter that the dancing/music playing ideas from SWG never got adapted in any other MMO :-(
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Can anyone other than Lyn actually post what makes the game bad?
Otherwise I agree with the notion that making a singleplayer story as an MMO is a bit "wut" to me. Why didn't they just make KOTOR3?
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I have to insist on the fact that what I said on the two factions not seeing each other on 80% of the planets is still unsure, especially as I found someone else that told me otherwise (but I do not think he is on the beta though).
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Seri, personally I think the game will at least be okay, as Bioware writes good stories, and I like good stories over a lot of stuff. However, as someone coming from eve, here is what I see as possibably "bad" about it.
1. Its on rails. They have said that there are branching storylines, but in reality, I don't see how much branching they can do with eight different story lines. And your character will go from point A to point B or maybe point B, or C, or D, but there is really no room for RPing like there is in EvE.
2. It looks like this will be a grind fest if only in the sense that you will have to play the game to advance in level, but that's every other MMO besides EvE I think, so no real surprise there.
3. There have been no real menction of social zones. I am sure there will be, but it is unlikely there will be much of anything besides talking in them, and it will probably be hard to RP.
4. Once you join a group, you are at the mercy of the conversation roller. Yes you will not get dark side point if you chose the light side but the roller choses the dark path, but you still have to go through with the dark side path. You can't turn on your team, and can't do the right, or wrong thing in spite of them. I see why they made it that way, but coming from EvE, its a let down.
5. Space is on rails. You can not fly freely, all the space combat portions are on rails and you can only move your ship a little bit around on the screen, not change your course.
So, really, this does come off as a single player game that has multiplayer PvE and PvP parts, if you want to play them. I'm okay with that, since its fits my pretty casual play stlye right now, but I'm not going to even try and RP with others in this unless something major changes for how things seem now. That is one of the few things I missed from Galaxies in this.
And about the classes, from everything I have seem, the classes are mirrored, just not exactly.
Trooper and Bounty Hunter are about the same and both can be DPS or Tank, but in different ways. Trooper gets the big scarry guns, while Bounty Hunter gets gizmos and special attacks (like flamethrowers, etc), but both can have armor. It seems the same for other classes. Smuggler get the quick draw and up close stuff or dual pistols, while Spy on the Empire side gets sniper rifles and poisons, but both use cover, and both can heal. So not quite the same, but roughly similar.
And the trinity I assume you mean is the damage, tank, confusion one? It kinda works, but there are not many real clear lines. Most classes seem to focus on tank or dps, with the confusion stuff sprinkled around for crowd control.
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Yeah, I'll be there with my Sith kiddy homies pwning ur face.
Actually, don't the kids usually go for the regular side, ala Alliance? I think the truth isn't cleat cut at all and everybody labels "the other side" as more numerous and as kids to justify their own choice as "the underdog and more hardcore". It's all bullshit to me and I'll play what I like.
That said, I fully expect to go back to WoW once I've had a taste of SWTOR. I'll give it a chance in case it turns out to be particularly fun, but something to get me really excited should be different and innovative - and SWTOR is certainly not looking to be that.
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Yeah, I'll be there with my Sith kiddy homies pwning ur face.
Work hard and earn it, otherwise your little prediction here will fail you, badly.
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And about the classes, from everything I have seem, the classes are mirrored, just not exactly.
Trooper and Bounty Hunter are about the same and both can be DPS or Tank, but in different ways. Trooper gets the big scarry guns, while Bounty Hunter gets gizmos and special attacks (like flamethrowers, etc), but both can have armor. It seems the same for other classes. Smuggler get the quick draw and up close stuff or dual pistols, while Spy on the Empire side gets sniper rifles and poisons, but both use cover, and both can heal. So not quite the same, but roughly similar.
And the trinity I assume you mean is the damage, tank, confusion one? It kinda works, but there are not many real clear lines. Most classes seem to focus on tank or dps, with the confusion stuff sprinkled around for crowd control.
Class mechanics are mirrored exactly, but 'flavour' isn't. So just as sith shoot lightning and jedi throw objects with telekensis for the same result so a commando trooper uses an assault cannon and a bounty hunter merc dual's pistols to do the same thing.
Of the eight advanced classes per side only two have skills trees only for dps, three have healing trees and three have tanking trees. Fairly well spread out.
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Welp. Got a weekend beta invite.
For this weekend.
Starting about the same time of day I should be finishing my installation of Skyrim after getting home from work.
Yeah, probably not going to spend more than a couple of hours playing.
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My wife is now buying this for me as an early Christmas gift. :D
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Wife got a weekend beta invite so I will try it out.
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Got a weekend beta invite too. Gameplay is definitely very WoW, no surprise there. Storyline for the smuggler stuff is decent so far, but all the quests/quest objectives have been pretty generic. With Skyrim installed on my PC now its pretty fuckin' hard to not just play that instead at this point.
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[accountantopinion]
From what I've seen...it doesn't have the economy I like...
I'll stick to my Spreadsheets Online, thank you! :lol:
[/accountantopinion]
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Yea, very Wow-ish. Even some of the hot keys are the same.
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Class mechanics are mirrored exactly, but 'flavour' isn't. So just as sith shoot lightning and jedi throw objects with telekensis for the same result so a commando trooper uses an assault cannon and a bounty hunter merc dual's pistols to do the same thing.
Of the eight advanced classes per side only two have skills trees only for dps, three have healing trees and three have tanking trees. Fairly well spread out.
But people bring it down everytime to the simple "Class mechanics"
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Remember, I didn't warn you.
At all. 8)
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It's very nearly Warcraft with a Starwars skin. I did like the more personal storyline vs WoW and had fun overall. At least when my wife let me play.
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Yea, very Wow-ish. Even some of the hot keys are the same.
WoW had some of the same hotkeys as Baldur's Gate ;)
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I wonder why this either comes as a surprise to someone this late in the development, or somehow seems worth mentioning. Yes, gameplay wise it's the WoW mechanics. This is for the most part a very -good- thing. There has yet to be an Avatar Driven MMO that worked better gameplay wise than WoW, so that sounds just fine for me.
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So, WoW in space is a good thing?
Really? ;)
I know you're deeply, madly in love here but ...
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:eyeroll:
It's not WoW in space. The mechanics are similar, yes, but what separates these avatar driven MMOs is the story, the worldbuilding and the storytelling. Saying it's 'WoW in Space' is like saying Modern Warfare is Quake 3 in a contemporary military world. It just doesn't compare even though the mechanics are very similar. FPS games have milked the same mechanics for two decades now and they're there because they -work-. They're good mechanics for that gameplay.
The same applies to SWTOR. They're using mechanics that work in their own story/world/universe.
And a small correction: I'm not 'in love' with neither WoW nor SWTOR at this point. WoW pissed me off too royally with the endless flow of stupidity that came along, ruining a perfectly good fantasy universe. SWTOR I -can't- be in love with since I haven't played it for a few months. I'll admit to having a crush on it similarly to how I also have a crush on the girl serving me coffee at a nearby cafe, but she's yet to open her mouth and show me she's got more than a body I'd kill for.
You on the other hand seem to have some kind of irrational hatred for the concept, without explaining why. What exactly is your beef with SWTOR? Any actual complaints or arguments to back it up? Anything at all beyond 'WoW in Space' which makes neither sense nor holds any validity.
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Played up until level 10 during the beta weekend, enough to get one of the Smuggler advanced classes and get a taste for the PvP. Still hadn't got my ship back. FFUUU
It definitely uses WoW's combat mechanics, which I think is great, in lieu of a more involved combat system like turning it into a third-person shooter of sorts. I could have almost been interested in it, but there are a couple of things that kill my interest:
1) The (now) standard junk quests of Kill X or "right click on Y number of terminals" style of objectives that seem to never end. That was all I ever ran into, even on the main smuggler storyline. The only thing that differentiates some of these from WoW or Rift would be that you can sometimes turn it in to different people for Light/Dark side points and change the storyline a little. (And yes, I know this may as well be endemic, but stands as the primary reason why I've been burned out on more traditional MMOs / spoiled by EVE for a long time.)
2) The art style, especially for characters, bothers me. I think EVE and now Skyrim with their more gritty "grimdark" art styles has influenced this preference heavily, but anyway. All the characters in SW:TOR have a soft-cartoonish look to them. It is hard to actually take the characters seriously or get immersed in the setting when all the characters look distinctly non-threatening (even the scars don't help). In contrast I actually loved WoW's art style, as I thought it hit a perfect mid-point between high color stylized design and a more gritty realistic take on the universe.
3) It is still lacking polish in some areas that hurt immersion noticeably. When switching into the dialogue "mode" NPC switch from low-poly to high-poly as you are talking to them, which is super distracting and constantly bugs me. Cantinas and the more social areas tend to be de-populated so it feels more like you are wandering around alone (unless you pay attention to general chat) than actually being part of a thriving world, etc. I miss the days when you would walk into a Cantina in SWG and hear a small band of (PC) musicians playing.
4) Skyrim. :lol:
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The basic mechanics and interface of WoW are solid. After all, they amalgamated them from the most successful MMOs of the time and polished them up.
I'm not a fan of what Blizzard have done with WoW since vanilla but reducto ad WoWum applied to any and all aspects of another MMO is rather tiresome.
For a non-sandbox MMO swtor looks like above average evolution in the genre. Whether you like non-revolutionary non-sandbox MMOs is a different question.
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Yes, gameplay wise it's the WoW mechanics. This is for the most part a very -good- thing.
It's not WoW in space.
You on the other hand seem to have some kind of irrational hatred for the concept, without explaining why. What exactly is your beef with SWTOR? Any actual complaints or arguments to back it up?
Because It Is WoW In Space.
It's being played not 20 feet from me right now. You're the only person I have heard try to say that it isn't what it is (right after admitting it is...)
It's WoW in space. With cutscenes. Some people will like this! Many will, in fact.
Many many many many people! They will love TOR.
The people on this forum who play the antithesis of WoW? I tell them to stay away, because they are almost certainly not going to like WoW In Space.
Gosh, what a terrible and unreasonable person I am.
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How very subjective.
The term "WoW-like" is defined in different people's minds by different aspects of that game. Thus "WoW in space" is not a useful description.
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Well, we disagree on that.
Still, anyone who doesn't understand the reasons behind my opinion should be pretty clear on the basics at this point.
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Yes, Graelyn, you -are- unreasonable. Is it a fantasy world with Night Elves, Orcs, Trolls, Goblins, Werewolves and freakin' Pandaren? Does it have the same story? Does it have the same NPCs and so on? It's not the same game, Graelyn, no matter how much you want to go 'WoW in Space' as if it means anything. It's got WoW Mechanics, just like Rift and a huge amount of other MMOs. Hell, WoW's mechanics aren't even original to WoW itself. They just polished all the good stuff from other games and made it all work well together.
The mechanics doesn't make the game. That's just the hardened core that the game is built around. The world, story, storytelling, presentation, classes, community and so on is what defines an avatar driven MMO these days.
I can definitely understand that some people might not like this kind of MMO, but I think most of them will dislike it for the right reasons. Not because of "It's WoW in Space" which is not only highly inaccurate, but also rather insulting towards those who do like what that game was once upon a time.
Misan brought good points to the table and the mechanics can also be laid out point by point as something negative for those who don't like them. This doesn't mean the mechanics are in any way bad, just not for everyone. Judging by the market shares in various MMOs out there, I think it's quite desirable for the majority, though.
It's also Rift in Space. Also, Warhammer Online in Space. It's LotR in Space. Hell, Eve's practically the only MMO out there that this game isn't.
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The mechanics doesn't make the game.
I think we're done here. 8)
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I have the same feeling that Graelyn has. However, its my opinion. But mostly from what I have seen for the last past years :
1) The epic 100++ hours of awesome stories they promised are in fact the usual "kill x mobs", even if some of the class quests are okay-ish according to some friends (that are as bitter as myself which already means something).
2) Actually, around 80% of the quests you have at your disposal are not even class quests, but generic quests shared by all the classes of your faction, and are rather the dull quests you know from every tasteless MMO in existence (meaning, 99% of them). So much for the 100+ hours of epic storytelling.
3) It is wow-esque with a starwars AND voiced NPC dialogue sugarcoat.
4) Graphically its mostly a disaster : the only thing that is really good is the environnement, an example of how good can be non realistic visuals. On the rest, it is not very creative (especially as it is obvious that they tried to be creative considering their artistical choices). And at last, the characters : the design is like Misaan said, they all look like good-natured people (even the ebil Sith) difficult to be taken seriously. But, the worst is their anatomy (their artists really should shoot themselves in shame for that considering the budget of the game), and the animations are very poor, especially considering their access to stuff like motion capture technologies (but hey, go try to animate a 10 polygons character properly...).
5) Still have to confirm definitly that both factions can't even interact with each other except on 4 planets (the pvp ones), even on pvp servers.
6) It is a solo RPG online.
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I'm definitely torn on this one.
RE: Miz v Grae, while I can definitely see how a game is more than just the mechanics, I have to wonder: What makes you think that SWTOR won't develop all the same problems that WoW has? If it has all the same good points (solid mechanics for both pve and pvp) what's going to stop it from growing the same detestable community? In fact, I think the Star Wars brand increases the likelihood that the game will be swarmed by little brats with midichlorians dripping from their noses. Just thinking about this is giving me flashbacks to Barrens chat.
tl;dr, if it's so similar to wow is so many good ways, why shouldn't we expect it to have the same problems?
Re: shitty missions, I think it might be that this is, in fact, Beta. Just because it's Bioware I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're going to actually make the missions worth doing, rather than just a stupid, "Kill this, gather that, go there" grind. It could be that they are simply making sure the core game just works and will put in the flavorful, enjoyable stuff when there aren't a bajillion beta testers leaking every little detail to the public.
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I'm definitely torn on this one.
RE: Miz v Grae, while I can definitely see how a game is more than just the mechanics, I have to wonder: What makes you think that SWTOR won't develop all the same problems that WoW has? If it has all the same good points (solid mechanics for both pve and pvp) what's going to stop it from growing the same detestable community? In fact, I think the Star Wars brand increases the likelihood that the game will be swarmed by little brats with midichlorians dripping from their noses. Just thinking about this is giving me flashbacks to Barrens chat.
Who's saying it won't go downhill as WoW did? I expect it'll be fun at launch and soon after, I'm not counting on more than that.
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Pretty much what Borza said. The community problems and so on will come in time. However, what we -don't- know is whether or not the GM Corp and so on will be willing to lay the smackdown on the RP-PvP servers (if there is such a thing) to allow people some semblance of immersion. It would have been doable in WoW, but hasn't been bothered with. All we can do is sit back and see what happens in SWTOR in that regard.
SWTOR may very well turn out to have all the problems of WoW, certainly... and yet, even then... it's nowhere near WoW. It'd still be a very different game and it'd remain so until the Pandaren flies Tie Fighters and Jedis drop Totems.
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It's also Rift in Space. Also, Warhammer Online in Space. It's LotR in Space. Hell, Eve's practically the only MMO out there that this game isn't.
Well...this. But there's a reason why Rift, Warhammer and LotR came out after WoW and share WoW's mechanics. It was a successful business model. It's the MMO that went 'big'. Subsequently, as far as mechanics are concerned, they are WoW clones. (Not referring to Rift, as haven't played it, mind you :P) And yes, WoW had refined the model based on earlier MMOs (Everquest? Seemed to me Everquest and Ultima Online were the two main early MMOs which completely different styles and EVE had a lot of inspiration from UO...I think it came up in a devblog once. TomB or someone. The karma system feels very similar to the security system in some ways, with blue greys and reds but I digress...) but nowadays you don't really get anyone stepping away from that formula (linear play-style of carrot-on-a-stick quest and rewards, no losses from death, no real dynamic consequence to pvp, similar interface). And if you do, they tend not to be that successful. (Tabula Rasa, f.ex)
Certainly LotR is WoW in middle earth regarding how the game is played. I don't think it's innaccurate or disparaging to say that. And in some ways it works, and in some ways it feels very shoe-horned in. (Like you can work the 'resurrection' stuff into WoW fairly easily, but in the Lord of the Rings books people weren't popping back from the dead all the time. The only person who really did that was Gandalf. So in the game you don't 'die' you merely suffer 'defeat' and lose morale and retreat from battle...) Though I think it does go beyond mechanics and there are social elements and similar vocabluary like 'end game' and 'raids'. I don't remember the words 'raid dungeons' being used anywhere in the Lord of the Rings books. It's just WoW has them, so the modern MMO (particularly fantasy I guess) feels it needs to have them also, to compete. Even the classes are very similar in terms of a group dynamic - you have a tank, you have a healer, you have your dps and they all work in the same way.
And that's just expected as the norm now and has become synonymous with MMOS. I've seen people go into EVE and be utterly perplexed when they're asking people what 'end game' is like and how you 'level up'. I'm not trying to be elitist here, just stating those things are accepted now as normal. I don't think pre-WoW this was the case.
I don't hate WoW - well, that's not entirely true. I have a love/hate relationship with WoW. There's been long periods where I've played it avidly, enjoyed it - because it is very good at what it does - then got burn out at the repetitive nature of it and lack of...well...anything meaningful occuring. It's becomes a never ending quest for phat lewts ultimately. And then I tend to think fondly of games like Ultima Online and Eve that have offered more of a 'create your own adventure' scope, and have offered something different and innovative and introduced real loss.
It isn't WoW. It's WoW's success really. It appears to make other game companies too cautious to do anything other than recreate the wheel (or place the wheel in a different setting). And the thing is - yeah, if it works, fine...but...We already have WoW and nobody is going to make a better one. So I would rather game companies moved away from that in the future and, as with EVE, tried to create something completely different and innovative...and organic I guess, mechanics that develop with the gameworld, being suited to it, rather than having another game's mechanics shoe-horned in.
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I wonder why this either comes as a surprise to someone this late in the development, or somehow seems worth mentioning.
Well... I hadn't been following it's development so I had no idea what to expect. I mentioned it's likeness to WoW because that's the best reference I had to describe it and because I just assumed it would look and play like KOTOR. Eve, WOW and champions online are te only MMOs I have experience with. It is not like Eve, it is not like Champions and it is not like KOTOR.
I had fun and will likely get an account just for the chance to kill Darth Baras.
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It'd still be a very different game and it'd remain so until the Pandaren flies Tie Fighters and Jedis drop Totems.
I already saw a jedi with a poop shield. Anyway it was fun enough, and I like the story better than WoW but I'm still with Graelyn. Same mechanics same game. Slapping a cool Starwars story onto the WoW engine isn't more than a novelty for me.
I can't wait somebody can come up with an original story AND original mechanics that they can make work.
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However, what we -don't- know is whether or not the GM Corp and so on will be willing to lay the smackdown on the RP-PvP servers (if there is such a thing) to allow people some semblance of immersion.
At the moment they say that pvp-rp servers (and pve-rp servers too) are RP only by name. And rp-pvp servers have only been added and confirmed recently, as they were reluctant to add them in the first place.
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In that case, we might be looking at a WoW situation where the community makes the game shit after a while. We'll have to wait and see.
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Worth giving this a prod, what with there just having been an open beta weekend...
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Heard this was another 1-9 numkeys MMO.
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I played SWG from beta through the CU, NGE, and for about 2 years after, until I came to EVE in 2008. After seeing how solid SWG was, especially before the great cleansing that was the NGE, SWTOR seems like a fluffy eye candy POS to attract kids... much like what SWG turned into, minus the parts that stayed decent like, i dunno, actually having to purchase/craft equipment?
SWTOR looks like a steaming LA turd from what I have seen and heard... will keep praying for an Elder Scrolls MMO i suppose, and stick in EVE in the meantime.
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I will agree that as an MMO, its nothing great. Played Beta (and can now talk about it) and its is a very pretty world, very Star Wars, but also a WoW clone from what I know of Wow. It was also very laggy, though that might be my machine and ISP, and fight do boil down to chaining attacks, though one of one fights do look pretty awesome with your avatar blocking attacks. To bad that most fights are you verses the mob.
But on the other hand, I will say that if you liked KOTOR or Mass Effect, and just found yourself wishing on some parts that you could have a real person instead of your companions' AI, then this is for you. I say that it fails at being a good MMO because it is not an MMO, more like an MORPG (Multi-player online RPG). If you ever liked those chose your own adventure books, or Star Wars, or both, I think you could have a fun time for a few months. I think it would have been better if they just called it KOTOR 3 and cut out the MMO part of the ads, and just billed it as something more along the lines of Halo, you and a couple of friends writing your own story. Which leads to a whole 'nother rant about how game companies think everything has to be MMO these days (even Mass Effect 3, I mean come on). MMOs are nice and some do quite well, but they are not the answer for everything.
And I think I will shut up here since I'm sick and I have less and less idea of what I am saying. And I haven't even had drugs yet.
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I played, had fun.
It comes across like KOTOR spliced with the staples of the non-sandbox MMO genre. Not for everyone, but a well-made game with its own little sub-niche.
The term "WoW clone" is rather meaningless however. Would you describe Fallout 3 as an Oblivion clone? Or EVE as a Microsoft Excel clone? If so, derpity derp good for you but you're not really saying anything about the game except that it's not revolutionary within its genre.
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I found nothing in SWTOr to make me want to pay money per month for it. I didn't think World of Warcraft had anything, and frankly... the game looks visually like a WoW clone. Storyline or not, I'm not interested in playing SWTOR when it makes me feel like I'm playing WoW.
That's it.
No big debate like Miz vs. Graelyn.
It just isn't worth my wallet.
...
I still have high hopes for Guild Wars 2.
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I was a beta tester for TOR for a few weekends. It was a good game, but it didn't really feel like an MMO. It felt like KOTOR with some slight multiplayer interaction, which makes it a good game in its own, but is it worth a monthly sub? I doubt it, but we'll see how it goes.
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For those who preordered, the mails were started to be send to people yesterday.
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PLEASE OBI WAN EVE ONLINE COME TO THE PROGENITOR SERVER
YOU ARE MY ONLY HOPE
So, yeah, I hear "The Progenitor" is gonna be "the RP server" on the EU-side. Join us and together we will yadda yadda. That's where I'm going to check this game out.
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PLEASE OBI WAN EVE ONLINE COME TO THE PROGENITOR SERVER
YOU ARE MY ONLY HOPE
So, yeah, I hear "The Progenitor" is gonna be "the RP server" on the EU-side. Join us and together we will yadda yadda. That's where I'm going to check this game out.
Is it PvP enabled? If it's just PvE(RP) it'll kind of suck if WoW's PvE(RP) servers are any indication. Too many carebears and uberflowery Lord/Lady Entheluaethystdreamsorcerersageawesomedude people who couldn't actually RP their way out of a paper bag. Besides, trust me when I say Avatar-driven MMOs lose all immersion when people start hiding behind PvE Ruleset mechanics.
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PLEASE OBI WAN EVE ONLINE COME TO THE PROGENITOR SERVER
YOU ARE MY ONLY HOPE
So, yeah, I hear "The Progenitor" is gonna be "the RP server" on the EU-side. Join us and together we will yadda yadda. That's where I'm going to check this game out.
Is it PvP enabled? If it's just PvE(RP) it'll kind of suck if WoW's PvE(RP) servers are any indication. Too many carebears and uberflowery Lord/Lady Entheluaethystdreamsorcerersageawesomedude people who couldn't actually RP their way out of a paper bag. Besides, trust me when I say Avatar-driven MMOs lose all immersion when people start hiding behind PvE Ruleset mechanics.
It's not PvP and I'm well versed in PvE rulesets, mostly because I have played and still play WoW on a PvE server. When I started that game, I immediately hopped on a PvP server because.. well, because I'm supposed to be this awesome PvP bad-ass, right?
Now that was a mistake, in my mind. Eve is a great sandbox PvP game. WoW is a terrible sandbox PvP game. What it amounts to is pointless griefing, ... and trust me, I occasionally like my griefing (usually with a point), but I think the PvP ruleset is not a good tack-on to WoW's essentially non PvP based gameplay. At least, until they make proper world PvP ... which will never happen because WoW is WoW, not Eve Online. I take my PvP in WoW on the arenas/BGs, where it is actually competitive and interesting.
So yeah, since SWTOR is in essence WoW in space (yes, I know you disagree....), I'm not holding out hope that PvP servers contain any meaningful world PvP at all. Oh, except that there's supposed to be this world PvP planet.. but I'm assuming it will work just so on PvE servers as well (that is unconfirmed, though).
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Not to derail, but once upon a time in WoW there was world PvP, but that was before battlegrounds existed. Ah, Arathi Highlands. :cry:
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Well, I never did mention anything about 'Sandbox PvP Game'. The only decent RP I've gotten in WoW was on PvP servers, so it's simply a matter of different experiences. Besides, what Misan said is pretty much true. World PvP was definitely fun once upon a time. Leveling through Stranglethorn Vale, Arathi Highlands and so on. EPL and WPL for higher level PvP. Was great stuff.
BGs were never really any good for PvP beyond crowdrushing for honor/ranks.
So it sounds like "THE rp server" of SWTOR is going to be like Argent Dawn in WoW. A few decent RPers and a whole horde of horribad super 'speshul' snowflake vampirelichmageuberninjas. Well, translated into the SW universe anyway.
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So it sounds like "THE rp server" of SWTOR is going to be like Argent Dawn in WoW. A few decent RPers and a whole horde of horribad super 'speshul' snowflake vampirelichmageuberninjas. Well, translated into the SW universe anyway.
Luke Skywalker1234 and Hanz Zo1o reporting for duty?
On the more serious side: from time to time i was thinking of trying this out but more or less decided not to. a number of reports from friends betaing it made me decide its not for me.
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So it sounds like "THE rp server" of SWTOR is going to be like Argent Dawn in WoW. A few decent RPers and a whole horde of horribad super 'speshul' snowflake vampirelichmageuberninjas. Well, translated into the SW universe anyway.
I don't think that was ever a point of contention. Welcome to RP with 13 year olds. It's not all that engaging.
I personally don't think the PvP vs non-PvP rulesets really have that much to do with it. Plenty of speshul snowflake vampire/half-demon RPers on Defias Brotherhood (PvP) when I was there as well (and yes, I'm on Argent Dawn myself - not that I actually RP over there, but I do enjoy the ambiance).
And well, back to the actual topic, where I actually end up on will depend also on where my friends end up on, and who knows.. maybe open PvP will end up working better in SWTOR? I'm not vehemently opposed to the idea, I just rather quickly lost the idea that "PvP servers are the only real deal" (which I certainly had coming to WoW) after actually experiencing the game.
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It's a matter of preference, is all. Immersion takes one helluva hit when suddenly your greatest enemy is powerless because you're in your 'own zone' or vice versa, not to mention takes every bit of challenge out of it if you're not under threat of hostiles when venturing out in the world. PvE servers have this nasty tendency to squeeze all the actual need for any kind of reflexes or skill out of the game, is what I guess I'm trying to get at. Want to RP someone that's badass in any way? Well, you kind of have to prove it. I guess this goes over into the debate in another thread here in Backstage.
While there should be other ways to make an impact, these games only allow proving your mettle through PvP.
Anyway, I might make an alt on that server you mentioned, but I'll be coordinating with the old crew I RP'd with on PvP servers to find a decent RP-PvP server where RP can actually be backed up by action. It's kind of an important part of RP to me and some others.
(Note: Not saying urdoinitrong, just that there's a lot of different tastes when it comes to these things and frankly a lot of us consider PvE servers to be wussing out of 'real' RP as it were.)
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Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend of mine who has early access and if his claims are to be believed (I do) there is in effect only ONE RP-PVP server at this point that is flagged for english speaking players, rest is russian, french, german etc.
Obviously it's going to be my first choice, and once I get a hold of said friend I'll ask him again what it was called because I can't remember right now... :bash:
At any rate, I'm hoping to get alot of action on that server because I could not bare to be able to chose to be safe anywhere or whatnot by flipping on/off an option called 'PVP'. PVP is not a freaking 'option' when your in the middle of an intergalactic war and I expect and WANT to have to watch myself, and for my enemies to watch their asses, when out in the field.
I got enough of PVE servers after watcing hordlings stroll by like they owned the place back in Ashenvale. In any kind of 'realistic' scenario Kaldorei warriors would never allow that, but due to game mechanics, I have to... *sigh*
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Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend of mine who has early access and if his claims are to be believed (I do) there is in effect only ONE RP-PVP server at this point that is flagged for english speaking players, rest is russian, french, german etc.
Obviously it's going to be my first choice, and once I get a hold of said friend I'll ask him again what it was called because I can't remember right now... :bash:
At any rate, I'm hoping to get alot of action on that server because I could not bare to be able to chose to be safe anywhere or whatnot by flipping on/off an option called 'PVP'. PVP is not a freaking 'option' when your in the middle of an intergalactic war and I expect and WANT to have to watch myself, and for my enemies to watch their asses, when out in the field.
I got enough of PVE servers after watcing hordlings stroll by like they owned the place back in Ashenvale. In any kind of 'realistic' scenario Kaldorei warriors would never allow that, but due to game mechanics, I have to... *sigh*
Too fucking right. And when the Kaldorei went fucking about in the Barrens, we bloody expected to get Horde hunters on our ass. It's what made the entire world alive and exciting.
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I was under the impression there'd be no RP-PvP servers (which would've been odd, but not unprecedented). Well, I hope they toss me an Early Access invite soon, so I can go have a look-see myself...
On the topic of 'immersion' and 'realism', I hear what you are saying. However, I don't really believe in the world as presented in WoW on that level anyway. It just... doesn't work. I dunno, I make a pretty big distinction in this between sandboxes and theme parks. I actually think the theme park sort of breaks down if you allow uncontrolled PvP, because the things you'll be able to do tend to be equally 'immersion/realism' breaking in this context. It's not a matter of e-honor or anything, just a matter of game mechanics to me.
I would give an arm and a leg for a proper fantasy sandbox with a proper, working world/simulation, but the industry is set to spout out the same kind of crap because (they think) it is the only thing that sells. It's not my ultimate preference, but the games manage to be enjoyable nevertheless and thus, I'm heading to SWTOR to check it out.
I really hope that PvP planet is going to end up being in some way interesting. That'd mean Blizzard would prolly have to copy it to WoW, too. WG/TB just doesn't cut it, they're just timed BGs embedded into the world to me.
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I was under the impression there'd be no RP-PvP servers (which would've been odd, but not unprecedented). Well, I hope they toss me an Early Access invite soon, so I can go have a look-see myself...
As I understood it there were only RP, PVP and PVE servers at some point, but they decided to add RP-PVP servers a bit later due to very popular demand. According to my friends the only RP-PVP server based on english as a language so far is "Lord Calypho" - I'll be joining this one as soon as I can, even if they are very likeloy to open up more english RP-PVP servers later on.
Also in other news SW:TOR has allready crushed WoW in numbers - it's not fully out yet and still well over 12 million people have signed on or purchased copies.
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I'm actually a proponent of a single RP-PvP server. The problem with WoW is that it was horribly crappy monitored by the GMs. Even the few RP server rulesets there were, never got enforced. That led to most RP-PvP servers to have a 5% RPer population and 95% troll/lolkid population. So with one single RP-PvP server it should allow GMs to respond to issues and get rid of the lolkids as they appear.
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Well, for those that choose RP-PVP servers, I would be interested to know if there are really a lot more pvp enabled areas than on PVE-RP servers.
Oh, and I find it just ridiculous either to see people aggroing each other in pvp just because they have a "republic/empire" tag above the head. That is just ludicrous, how do you tell that someone is your enemy if wearing common not factionned clothes ?
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"Strong is the Dark Side in this one... GANK TEH BITCH!"
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Also in other news SW:TOR has allready crushed WoW in numbers - it's not fully out yet and still well over 12 million people have signed on or purchased copies.
Blatant lies. I should have figured the highly impressive numbers were born from miss-information - I somehow managed to mistake "The launch numbers of The Old Republic has crushed those of WoW with ease" to somehow mean WoW in thier zenith has been trumphed allready. It's quite a long way to go still, though I don't expect it will take as long as WoW did.
The actual numbers iirc, are something akin to 1.1 million copies purchased so far, can't recall if it was only those in America or including Europe and other places in that tally.
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Well, Miz is now a level 10 Sith Inquisitor on the only RP-PvP server in Europe. Definitely a fun game so far. Will have to see how it holds up once I'm past the initial class mission stuff and get to start exploring and dying everywhere.
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I got a level 10 Bounty Hunter over there right now.
Still too much to see to make any final conclusions. Some good, some bad. It is definitely a "WoW-clone" (and some of the class design shows that a bit too blatantly too...), but it has a somewhat different feel regardless. Unfortunately, the polish of WoW isn't there and while some of it will get better in time, I'm not entirely sold on all the graphics, animations, level design, general comfortability of design, etc (that said, it is still a lot more polished in this way than other MMOs which have come out in near history). Also, I have a lot to say about the quests, but I'm withholding comments until I experience a few more classes and go farther in the game.
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16 now and definitely enjoying myself. As far as Avatar driven MMOs go... this is the best one I've played so far. I -definitely- enjoy waiting for people to ask me about crafting, since I can then sniff and go "Crafting? Peasant... I have people for that kind of thing." The companion/crew bit seems quite decent and it's all pretty much the good stuff from WoW without as much of the derpery.
Loving the Inquisitor classquests and definitely loving the sheer amount of nasty you can dish out as Dark Side. Gameplay wise, Inquisitor is a lot of fun. Especially the Assassin specialization. Stealth, tons of double-bladed Lightsaber damage and dear sweet jesus I have more electric death to offer than the gathered Tesla Coils of the world. Kind of plays as a WoW Rogue if Rogues had Doctor Insano's "SCIENCE!" skills.
I also like the quests. Even among the sidequests (non-class quests) there's none of the WoW "Keel ate snow moose" quests. Those things are relegated all the way down to the bonuses underneath the sidequests. (Bonus quests are basically just things you discover while doing side/class quests. Like "Kill 24 of these. Destroy three of those." and so on.) If you ignore them, all you lose is a little xp and it's frankly kind of hard not to fulfill them by accident while doing the side/classquests.
One thing I definitely like are the Flashpoints. Well, the one I've tried so far anyway. I think they're the SWTOR version of Instances/Dungeons. They are told as stories and it's basically the awesome of a singleplayer game storytelling/action/progression while having a MMO group for the combat, making the whole greater than the sum of it's parts as it were.
During conversations with NPCs, you choose your own response and there's a conversation roll. The one who wins gives the response and it's rather fair. I've gotten my fair share of responses and it seems nicely balanced. When there's a Light or Dark Side choice in the response options, the one who wins the roll performs the action, but everyone who chose that option gets the Dark/Light side points. It's rather nice.
The game mostly just needs a bit of polish but so far it's the most painless MMO launch I've ever seen. Well, even though there's two days left until the launch. Only found one bug so far and it's not really affecting me beyond making me waste an extra two seconds per resource node.
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A few things I've noticed so far, nothing conclusive from my end either;
PVP - My biggest grip with PVP is that it appears anyone from level 10 orwhateverisminimumlvlforpvp to max level of 50 can end up in the same battle. There is no segregation of levels like it was in WoW, 10-15, 15-20 etc etc. That balance things out a bit and makes it harder to get entierly overwhelmed by a completely superior character.
The 'fix' to this is to boost a toon's stats to the level of the highest level enemy player. A lvl 42 Sith Warrior enters, my lvl 12 Jedi Sentinel get's boosted from 1884 HP to 12546 HP's. That compensates, right? No it don't. I've barely started on the Sentinel path, at level 12 my skills are few and low compared to the 42 level Sith with his way more and far more powerful abilities - his crowd control nearly allways hits, if his don't his friend's ability will. All my attacks hit a wall of higher resists and cutting into a 30-40 something foe is CONSIDERABLY different from attacking a level 14 or so enemy who's barely over my level.
Let's not even start on the difference in gear and equipment.
Second part is the idea of the 'wow-clone'. It's undeniable that many aspects of WoW's gameplay is to be found in TOR, mostly this is for the better however. I see so much of WoW's gameplay that worked in use here, and this lends a flavor of old familarity to the game. (This will be good or bad depending on who is asked.) On the other hand much of what blew up in WoW's face is noticably lacking. Item level, Achievement whoring, rampant pet collection, auto-instance/raid finder across servers etc.
Most if not all the factors that eventually degraded wow into what it is now seem to be lacking.
Lastly is the duality of the 'alignment' system - it's possible to get gear based on it - in fact if you go light you get a good selection of light side exclusive gear and vice versa. I don't know if any of the gear available from one is superior to the other but I do know that if you go for one your denied the other. There is no middle ground so this force you to aim for A or B, to much fidling get's to conflicting score and in mid-to-end-game it seems you need high score one way or another to get access to some of the best gear. Trying to follow a borderline toon or one with a specific viewpoint (say, a rough trooper who is merciless, cold and effective (much dark points) but humane and caring to his/her cause and faction (more light points)) can easily land you to few of either points to have access to hig-end stuff denying you high-end gear. This hurts immersion, among other things, especially as some of the choices asks you to be either stupidly naive or nice or needlessly cruel or in-humane for the hell of it.
As an example, I'vetaken my trooper to level 11 so far, got off the origin world and so on, and some of the choices made simply did not make sense - this person's record, if I had gone 100% goody-goody for instance, would include a number of order-violations and out-right unacceptable stupidity. Only dark options were not much better.
*edited to fix typos and add some to the end*
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Watching (as per usual) over my housemate's shoulder as he's been exploring this game, I have to admit I'm intrigued. Eve, bless it, is a game best played by those who can afford to Take It Seriously, and I just ... can't, anymore.
Legal practice, it turns out, is a lot like Eve: opaque, non-user-friendly, treacherous, high stakes, and with a hell of a learning curve. It's a damn shame, but I only really have room for one Eve Online in my life.... So, I'm in the market, I'm afraid, and apologies to anyone caught up in one of Aria's half-finished projects. Aria would continue them; I simply can't.
So.
I love the Star Wars universe, its creator's foibles notwithstanding. I loved KOTOR, I loved the West End RPG, and I didn't touch Galaxies with a fifty-foot lightsaber. I do not love the revisionist force power scheme that allows "Jedi" to huck rocks, floor chunks, and expensive banks of computer hardware at people while claiming to use the Force for "knowledge and defense, never for attack," but I am willing to let it go.
My question, my primary, burning question, is this:
Can you talk to the other side? Do Sith and Jedi speak in words at times, or only in the mutual language of lightsabers? Can you be corrupted? Turn traitor?
Can you, in short, engage in the drama of temptation, fall, and redemption (or deeper fall)-- a core element of the Star Wars mythos?
If not, can you at least pretend that it's possible by engaging in a bit of banter over drawn sabers instead of immediately making with the hack and slash?
Speaking as someone who dearly and deeply loves the Darth Vaders and Emperor Palpatines of the universe (especially the Palpatines), the inability to explain to poor, anguished, impressionable Luke why the Dark Side is *truly* the correct path would make this one a non-starter.
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My question, my primary, burning question, is this:
Can you talk to the other side? Do Sith and Jedi speak in words at times, or only in the mutual language of lightsabers? Can you be corrupted? Turn traitor?
Can you, in short, engage in the drama of temptation, fall, and redemption (or deeper fall)-- a core element of the Star Wars mythos?
If not, can you at least pretend that it's possible by engaging in a bit of banter over drawn sabers instead of immediately making with the hack and slash?
Speaking as someone who dearly and deeply loves the Darth Vaders and Emperor Palpatines of the universe (especially the Palpatines), the inability to explain to poor, anguished, impressionable Luke why the Dark Side is *truly* the correct path would make this one a non-starter.
Everyone I've talked to about this claims the following.
You can talk to the other side whenever you meet. That is, if smack-talk and your average banter between players can be considered 'talk'.
I keep being told that agressive, cold and merciless to the enemy only goes so far - I need be careful lest I will face the inevitable 'fell into darkness' scenario and join the sith. That's for cold and merciless Republic troopers and Jedi, that is. No idea if Imperial Sith warriors/fagents etc. can be to 'nice' for their own good and end up on Republic side.
So yes, far as I know one's loyalty is not assured, there IS a Light/Dark meter to measure this, and you can talk to enemies. I'm going to explore planets beyond my starting world and Corusant tomorrow, and being on a PVP server, I will be flagged for battle there. I'll let you know if any 'interesting' convos took place - only negative so far is, no chat-bubbles, this limits RP and interaction somewhat by a constant need to scan the chat tab. I've heard this will be fixed soon however.
Off-topic Aria, but damn it, don't leave EVE, the universe will be so much more stale and boring without you :cry:
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On topic: good news. Look forward to hearing more.
Off topic: eh-- I'm torn, really. I've kind of been half-assing along for the last year and more, and need to either get deeply involved again or take my leave.
Perhaps what I really need to do is change the way I play it.
Hm.
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There is a lot of things that I fear and do not like in this game, especially high end wise when we will eventually come to really practice RP (almost nothing is planned to suit RP, very few tools and a LOT of restrictions). But at least it is a funny game to play.
And no, you can not speak to the other faction unless you see them localy. Which sucks hard.
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http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-12-15-star-wars-the-old-republic-the-end-of-an-era-preview
The thing is, given the amount of man-hours that EA has poured into SWTOR, to only break even isn't enough; this game has to be hugely profitable to justify the lost opportunity cost to their shareholders from all the other stuff those hundreds of developers and millions of dollars could have been devoted to. That is, why they're spending money on this instead of any of their other hundreds of underexploited franchises, such as Mirror's Edge, Dungeon Keeper, Ultima or Wing Commander...
Grr. I would have very much preferred some investment in all of those franchises, personally. Mirror's Edge in particular: it was an interesting but flawed game; and one that could have benefited from a thoughtful sequel that learnt from its predecessor.
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Illustrating this, even the AAA MMOs that have gone free-to-play - Dungeons & Dragons Online, DC Universe Online and Lord of The Rings Online to name a handful - despite making much more money than they did before (trebling it in LOTRO's case), still don't feature in the top earners of free-to-play games. That goes down to League of Legends, Shaiya and World of Tanks, all games designed specifically for free-to-play. Basically, if you're going to be making an MMO now, you have to design it to be free-to-play.
I'm sorry, the FUCK you just say? >>
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Illustrating this, even the AAA MMOs that have gone free-to-play - Dungeons & Dragons Online, DC Universe Online and Lord of The Rings Online to name a handful - despite making much more money than they did before (trebling it in LOTRO's case), still don't feature in the top earners of free-to-play games. That goes down to League of Legends, Shaiya and World of Tanks, all games designed specifically for free-to-play. Basically, if you're going to be making an MMO now, you have to design it to be free-to-play.
I'm sorry, the FUCK you just say? >>
:lol:
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My question, my primary, burning question, is this:
Can you talk to the other side? Do Sith and Jedi speak in words at times, or only in the mutual language of lightsabers? Can you be corrupted? Turn traitor?
Can you, in short, engage in the drama of temptation, fall, and redemption (or deeper fall)-- a core element of the Star Wars mythos?
If not, can you at least pretend that it's possible by engaging in a bit of banter over drawn sabers instead of immediately making with the hack and slash?
Speaking as someone who dearly and deeply loves the Darth Vaders and Emperor Palpatines of the universe (especially the Palpatines), the inability to explain to poor, anguished, impressionable Luke why the Dark Side is *truly* the correct path would make this one a non-starter.
You can talk cross-faction in spatial and emote range. You don't share global channels. You can't go to the other faction's starter planets or capitals worlds, but everywhere else you'll be in talking distance of each other.
You can make choices that lead your Jedi to the Dark Side or your Sith to the Light, but you cannot change factions - NPCs do, though. A Light Side Sith will still be part of the Empire; a Dark Side Jedi will still be part of the Republic, like Revan was in the war against the Mandos. Unless someone rerolls the character and levels it up again, the game mechanics don't allow for a Jedi to bring a redeemed Sith into the Order. (There are people who are willing to reroll if their characters turn through cross-faction RP.)
But, no faction-changing could still be interesting if you wanted to play with falls and redemptions. Instead of someone switching sides and getting lost in the galaxy, there will be quiet cabals in your midst for you to find. My sister's 1984/KGB-style RP revolves around that - her Imperial Agent snoops for Light Sider Sith in the Empire, so they can be 're-educated' or blasted.
One really good thing is that the Light/Dark choices have grown up. I remember a Dark Side chat option in KotOR that was, "I didn't ask what your name was, and I won't tell you mine!", just because a NPC introduced himself. I can't help imagining it in a spoiled brat's tantrum voice. Now, some Light Side choices are cold - you can get in trouble for being sympathetic instead of impartial. Some Dark Side choices (like blasting a backstabbing schutta in the face instead of making a deal with her after she killed a NPC friend) feel satisfying or seem like common sense answers.
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On topic to the thread, I am playing a bit, but the same problem keeping me from EVE is keeping me from doing anything but dabbling with TOR. I'll eventually play a Sith Inquisitor Assassin (twi'lek, naturally) with family and friends, but for now, I'm enjoying my human smuggler, Sivana, on Lord Adrass RP server.
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(http://v.cdn.cad-comic.com/comics/cad-20111221-4c5ca.png)
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Hilarious.
Also illustrates why I so enjoy shooting Sith in the face.