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Further Details On the Star Wars MMO
Now that the recent announcement about Star Wars: The Old Republic has had time to sink in, specific details about the game are beginning to come to light. Massively, in particular, has a variety of interviews and in-depth looks at the classes, the combat, and the setting of the game. "When you play like a Jedi from 1 to max, and then decide to start as a Sith, you won't see any content that will be the same." They also discuss the leveling, questing and companion characters. "We want you to think of them as actual companions on your journeys throughout the game. Your actions are going to change how your companion characters develop." Eurogamer is running a preview of the game, and a wiki has sprung up to catalog all of the new information. Other tidbits: support for Star Wars Galaxies will continue; the new game will be PC only; and LucasArts is hoping to snipe some of the World of Warcraft customer base.
Does anyone still play SWG?
Can't tell you all how much pleased I am to not have to gestate on the thrilling teaser.
From TFA
Plus, since you're adventuring with your buddies that are playing other classes, they'll be telling you some of the exciting stuff they're doing. You're going to get tidbits that might really get you interested in playing one of those other classes. It's probably going to make you excited to try things out.
Wrong, we just want to choke underlings with the force.
"LucasArts is hoping to snipe some of the World of Warcraft customer base. "
Ya, good luck with that.
..but a story alone can't carry a game. Look at all the other MMOs and their quests. OK, so much of the story in MMOs is more background than anything else, but generally the quests, the actions you need to complete the quests, are rather dull and uninspiring (which is why I like that in WAR you can level up completely via PVP). Kill beavers until they drop a single beaver testicle until you have 10. Fight a spell caster that's AI amounts to casting the same spell on you over and over again. Go to some stupid place in the environment where you need to right click the object. And so on. Questing in MMOs by itself, IMO, is very, very boring. The real question is, will the gameplay be fresh and exciting enough to justify the expansiveness and the story line, and if so, how well will it interact in PVP?
Additionally, endgame: someone might not care to play the other classes, even if the story and game experience is different. They have a top-level character, they don't want to just give him up. Will there be good endgame? No good endgame can kill an MMO, just look at Age of Conan.
The moment I saw there were kill quests, levels and caps I decided this wasn't the game for me. People continually say "levels are the only way". You know what, the reason Gygax and Arneson are seen as development genius' isn't because they gave up and went "but this is how it always is". They developed levels. It was a unique and innovative system for creating characters that can advance beyond their initial stats (or beyond a single enormous transformation, like a pawn into a queen).
But the days of the level are coming to an end (or so I pray). More and more RPG players grow tired of levels--most now see them as other gamers see installation time. "We can't start playing the REAL game until max level." But there are alternatives!
Games like Tri-Stat use character points instead of levels. Upon completing portions of a story, and as bonus points based on how well you played a character or any other number of things, you receive Character Points with which to buy customizable skills and gear. Some say they are like "levels", but the fact you start with 350 of them and they go into your stats, gear and skill acquisition make them a clearly different beast.
A lot of games have abandoned even that and just started pooling experience points directly into stats. Games like Pokemon (yes, its a child's game, but innovative never the less) used levels, but behind the scenes gave each stat a different experience bar that rose depending on your race and the opponent's you beat.
Some games have abandoned levels and abilities altogether, instead focusing on gaming skill. A lot of people just call these "fighters" or "FPS" + MMORPG mixes, but really they can become quite fun.
But the big problem I have with Star Wars having levels based on quests is simply that too many quests just don't make sense given the setting. Jedi weren't supposed to go forth and kill. They were supposed to negotiate first and try to avoid battle. Unfortunately, there's no good way of mass-diplomacy aside from needlessly complicated (and frankly lame) sets of dialogue choices that lead to a predictable (and, if you have something like Thottbot) reliable outcome.
Now if they could make a living and breathing game with characters to interact with that are controlled by GMs and other players who can actually make a difference in the world...
Unfortunately MMORPGs are scared of idiots willing to run around blowing up random planets just for fun. Leading me to another point. Actions should have consequences, the final knife in the corpse of this game (for me, of course). This is another WoW/EQ/MUD style game where nothing you do accounts for anything other than leveling and gear mongering. They claim you can change companion's, but lets face it. In the end your not changing the world around you. Your not really talking with other characters. Your a hamster in a wheel clicking away to get to the "next stage of power" to access more content that millions of others have or will access themselves.
Some people enjoy that. I personally don't. I wish I could diplomatically barter with another player for control over a star system's spice flow that we've worked hard to get control of. And I don't want that player to just be able to kill me (or have some other random player run up and kill one or both of us) without consequence. In some zones in WoW you can kill someone who attacked you without the local guards attacking you due to high reputation with that faction. But lets face it, if you just ran around killing people, eventually even a faction your considered a hero in would start viewing you differently.
But I'm a spoiled Tabletop nerd who has been given the ultimate game system--a living breathing human being who can flesh out a world custom tailored to the needs of me and my friends. That's a real GM. Current GMs in MMORPGs are no more than tech support and referees.
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
No one cares, if it's not Grim Fandango 2.
So instead of making the Jedi and other players on an equal ground by, say, making the Jedi untrained-in-combat Padawans or something, everyone gets to be their own special snowflake with tens of thousands of legendary bounty hunters running around at once. Brilliant.
Lucasarts: What were your most popular games? X-Wing? Tie Fighter? Hmm... Make what everyone's wanted for a Looooong time, a MMO Star Wars starfighter game.
Load 128 players into a 100(Tie) versus 28(xwing) battle with a little briefing ahead of time as to the goals, maybe even include capital ship piloting and hyperspace buoys for tactics. Racing the Kessel Run, Speeder races, Blasting a womp-rat in your T-16; these things are fun, even more fun against other human-level intelligences. A Star Wars RPG? I've got old West End books for that, and it's sooo much better than what a computer could ever provide.
If the top 10% who pay 80% of the nation's taxes leave, where will you get your services?
You do realize that the top 10% of America gets something on the order of 30-40%, right?
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
>Ya, good luck with that.
Sniping WoW customers isnt that hard, heck I used to bullseye womp rats in my t-16 back home, and they werent much larger than most WoW players.
"If you think about it, though, Jedi get popped by people who aren't Jedi all the time. Not everybody's fantasy is to be a Jedi, believe it or not."
I'm rolling Bantha as soon as this comes out. Look out sand dunes! i'm so gonna be role playing all over your ass! Single file bitches!
Gordon: We will definitely have crafting.
Great! I'm looking forward to a new starwars game with an amazing crafting system! What kind of system will it be? Can I expect a crafter based economy, something the original SWG had but every single other MMO out there has failed at doing?
From TFA:
James Olen, Studio Creative Director: Yeah, our game is about loot.
You lying son of a bitch... it only took you to paragraphs to turn around and plant that light saber right between by shoulder blades.
Loot. Crafted. Healer. Tank. Nuker.
Let's actively try to move away from the stereotypes. When people play MMOs they want escapism...these days, they want to escape from the real world shackles as well as the typical MMO trappings. Sure, let us shoot people and create wonderful items. But let us TRIP someone for god's sake and make a run for it instead of standing toe-to-toe, 6-on-1, swinging our sabers into empty air while some giant creature makes "Ow!" sounds.
All this technology...I can't even tackle someone properly, or swing from a rope across a giant air shaft carrying a cute if not stunning princess.
Questions I ask of every new-kid-on-the-block MMO:
That first one is really the show-stopper for most games.
It worked well for City Of Heroes. Every player in COH is, at least in the design guideline, equal to three minions _and_ a lieutenant. That's what's needed for a fight against a hero to be a 50-50 chance, you know, better have a potion (ok, "inspiration") ready.
But that's ok, because the NPCs are also generated in packs of 3 for a solo mission, or pretty much in platoons for an 8 player group.
And yes, nobody seems to have a problem with being in a city with a thousand super-heroes roaming the streets at any given time.
Generally, when it comes to MMOs, probably the only sane option is to just accept what works and is proven to work, and not think much about what would be "realistic". Starting from the original idea waay back that it would be unrealistic to have quests, because it would be unrealistic if 1000 people saved the same princess or killed the same arch-villain. It turns out that people actually get used quite easily to situations along the lines of,
"Ok, did everyone get Van Cleef's head?"
"Yep, I did."
"Wait, I've got to junk something and then I'll take it too."
"I killed him yesterday, thanks"
"Crap, my buddy disconnected. Guess we'll have to come tomorrow so he can get VC's head too."
Same here. Even when logically it would make little sense to have 10,000 legendary bounty hunters, the players invariably can wrap their mind around that concept just fine anyway.
And, in the end, is it that illogical? How good do you have to be, to be a heroic version of whatever you're doing. One in a million? Being one in a million sounds pretty special to me. Well, a planet like Earth has some 6000 people who are one-in-a-million, and a planet like Coruscant could have 100,000 by itself, or more than enough for any server's population by itself. And there's a whole galaxy out there in Star Wars. There are probably trillions of trillions of sentient humanoids across the galaxy, and taking the best-of-the best, the one-in-a-million people would still mean more players than WoW has total or even than the Earth's total population.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
That of course depends on their timing, but WoW is several years old now-- it will be older yet when The Old Republic comes out-- and has expanded the MMO market dramatically. Any game that wants to succeed wants to poach WoW players, and that's a very reasonable goal.
Now if they'd said, "We want to be the next World of Warcraft"-- that might be a little overambitious, especially this early. But to say that they want WoW players to give them a shot? Totally reasonable.
Hah, wish I had mod points!
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
I understand that a whole ton of SWG fans are upset over this, but I kinda like the direction this is taking. Balancing jedi is a good thing - it makes the class less attractive and allows the ability to play other classes without penalty. A lot of the SWG fans need to cool it and remember that this is not SWG 2 - this is a KOTOR title.
I was a huge fan of the original KOTOR (not the sequel). If this has instanced dungeons or something similar (for me, one of the only reasons the pick WoW over other MMOs) I'll definitely pick up a copy and fork over the monthly fee.
I don't see how that's lying. He said they'll _have_ crafting, not that crafting will be the only thing or the alpha and omega. There are a lot of games which have both crafting and loot. WoW is probably the most visible example, though you could take EQ2, LOTRO or WAR as equally good examples. It's the norm.
There are even games where you use the loot _for_ crafting. E.g., the seeds in WAR or the "invention" system in COH/COV.
Anyway, it sounds to me like you wanted the whole game to revolve around crafted stuff. It probably won't. But he didn't say it would. He only said there would _be_ crafting.
And I can also see why they wouldn't want a crafting-centric game. Invariably crafting produces inflation. That's why everything in WoW costs gold at the AH, when quests and mobs of that level pay copper coins. You don't want a game where soon newbies discover they have to farm and grind for months to afford any good item, so there has to be _some_ other source of decent equipment for those of us who hate farming and grinding. You want loot and quest rewards too. That's a lesson that most games and designers had to discover the hard way, after letting crafting create a hyper-inflation comparable to inter-war Germany and drive newbies away.
In fact, no offense, my wish would be the exact opposite than yours: I wish there would be at least one fucking MMO without crafting at all. I don't want my game tainted by a screwed up economy, just to catter to those who want to pretend they have a second job. If you want to pretend you're a baker or miner, there are plenty of games who let you be one. Heck, there's A Tale In The Desert, which is all about that. It's not that much to ask that at least _one_ fucking game lets me concentrate on the actual quests and adventure, instead of making me farm and hammer for hours to be able to afford some other retard's armours. The system is essentially punishing people like me, to reward people like you. And I'm getting sick and tired of that.
I don't want to play a Ferengi, spending hours at the AH, trying to get the best deals on cath-hound balls and goat horns, so I can afford a decent blaster. Ferengi are that-a-way in Star Treck. Different universe.
It's not even "realistic" for those who cling to that notion. Boba Fett earned his money by being a bounty hunter, not by having a main job in herding and skinning nerfs to support his bounty-hunting hobby. And for medieval MMOs, they had this idea of the 3 estates of society back then: those who fight, those who tend the God(s), and those who work. And they were supposed to stay separate. If you were a mercenary you'd get paid, and if you were a knight you'd have an estate. The last time when one had to use his day job to pay for his armour to defend his country was, oh, before the Marian reforms in Rome in 107 BC.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
In 2005, The top 10% paid a little under 70% of the income tax burden. If they receive only 30-40% of the benefits, then they're getting a raw deal. If they earned only 30-40% of the income, they'd be getting an even raw-er deal, though their actual income share of 47% is not much better.
And, I find it really, really unlikely that they would be getting that much benefit. At least, directly. Sure, schools and such benefit everyone, not just the students, in some way, but it's a bit disingenuous to double-count the benefit that way, don't you think?
And besides, if income tax really was a good proxy for the cost of services, it would make even more sense to just do away with it entirely and charge fees for those services directly.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Exactly! I just wanted to post this very message.
;)
We could test different strategies attacking the first and second Death star - of course in both cases in the movies the rebels were just extremely lucky and in a real simulation the coordinators of the imperial forces will not be as "over-confident". Still it would be interesting to have the rebels figure out what kind of weaknesses could be exploited. There are definitely strategic design flaws at least in the first Death star and the imperial battle plan.
The films give us many scenarios to replay, such as the imperial attack on Hoth with the AT-ATs, maybe even mix in a little infantry action... Though I'm not sure if I wanted to play an Ewok in the Battle of Endor.
There is such a host of details in the movies that the game could use - this is what so many Star Wars fans are longing for! Not the ability to play Wookie's third removed step-brother's cousin..
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
the new game will be PC only, and LucasArts is hoping to snipe some of the World of Warcraft customer base.
I already knew that corporations had almost unbridled powers, but murdering customers of a competing product? That seems rather mean-spirited, even for LucasArts.
... and then they built the supercollider.
What language can I write my user-interface mods in? How much of the UI can I re-write using that language? ...
That first one is really the show-stopper for most games.
You and the 3 other people who care more about what language they write UI mods in than actually playing the game.
The above "works", where ALL collect the head. Raids where only ONE collects the head get annoying. But how trivial would it be to re-write the quest so that you don't collect the head but get the proof of your deed some other way.
Or even, introduce a GROUP inventory and the quest item goes in there and the GROUP turns it in?
Other solutions:
Just copying the methods from single player computer RPG's does not work.
No pen&paper RPG does this stupid "A head for every group member" OR "only 1 person gets a reward for this quest" thing.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
X-Wing vs Tie fighter has been out for years and allows online multiplayer.
I tried many MMOs but I didn't like most of them because of the interface which is sometimes too simple, sometimes too complex. In WoW which has in IMO the best interface, you can just scale it up as you get new content. Also, it's probably the most intuitive of all. But I don't use most of the initial interface anymore, instead I use addons which enable me to have a lot more buttons and organize them more easily. In what games can you have so much customization that none of the default interface objects will appear when playing?
ics
If you ever played WoW, you would know that its customer base is rather... well... yucky.
WoW is the 12yr olds paradise who need desperatly an E-penis. Of course there are exceptions but WoW attracts its customers because it is an extremely simple game to grind rather then master or enjoy.
Don't get me wrong. You CAN master and/or enjoy WoW, but that is not what the majority of its 10 million subscribers do. They grind. They are not intrested in story, character development, immersion. They want to grind XP, get fat loot and show of their "rares".
Age of Conan had a LOT of problems but one "new" thing it did was introduce dialog trees in its quests. Not that advanced but leading to the following complaint from a player who went back to WoW:
"Why can't the dialog trees default the best options to 1 or provide a popup to confirm if you are making an important choice because I just press 1 to skip through all of them as I want to get on with the quest without reading".
If I was a little bit lazy I would find the original post. AoC at some points gave you the choice of your quest reward be in the dialog. If I remember correctly, it was the epic quest chain.
So the developers introduced a story, a background and the WoW player base just wanted to get it over with to grind loot.
AoC also had other problems, it had no loot, no armour. The game was supposed to be skill based, not based on what loot you had on you. The forums were filled with endless complaints that the armour from lvl 10 wasn't that different from lvl 40. IT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO BE! This way, a hardcore player and a casual player would have similar stats, very important in a PvP game that doesn't want to cater only to the most hardcore grinders.
Further problem, items weren't bind on equip, meaning you could pass them on easily once you no longer had a use for them. This meant there were no rare items to begin with, nothing special about them if there were rare and in plenty supply for low low prices. Again, no end of complaints despite the fact that this was how the game was designed. on purpose.
The complaints of course all were from the people who wanted AoC to be WoW. AoC had lots of problems but not being WoW was not one of them.
Going deliberatly after the WoW market means you HAVE TO be WoW. And not the WoW some ppl play, but the WoW 10 million people play. That is a very risky market to enter. First, Blizzard has shown they are the best at making WoW and nobody else has even come close. In fact everyone else has had to make a living by NOT being WoW and attracting customers who do NOT WANT WOW! If you introduce the perfect WoW clone, then why would people come to you? They already invested lots of money and time in WoW, so why would they switch?
if you change the smallest bit, the WoW fans will complain till you change things, but they will go back to WoW anyway and you will loose all those who hated WoW and wanted something different. If only there was an example of an MMORPG that attracted people who didn't like WoW style but the game went ahead and changed to attract WoW players, failed to attract them but repulsed its old players. Anyone? Maybe some Sci-Fi movie based MMORPG. *cough*SWG NGE*cough*
AoC showed on thing, the MMORPG market is huge. You can attract a MILLION customers at launch. You do NOT have to be a WoW clone but you have to very clear about WHAT you game is going to be like from the start (DEMO) and have it WORK.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yeah, but Womp Rats occasionally emerge from their burrows into the sunlight.
WoW players are nocturnal, only emerging briefly to pay the pizza guy.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Well, I'm certainly not saying it's the only way. It's just an example of something which logically makes no sense, but the players wrap their head around anyway.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
new game will be PC only (must be directx) and also "LucasArts is hoping to snipe some of the World of Warcraft customer base.". Somehow, they also need to re-assure the support of older title will continue.
I am just saying Blizzard still ships updates (even converting them to Intel) to 5-6 year old games and they use technologies like OpenGL as far as possible. They can easily ship a PS3 version for example. As they also have a CPU independent version, even iPhone version is possible.
Lucas arts should wake up and see the light, get off from Microsoft train and look the amazing possibilities once you try to stick with standards.
Now lets hope they won't buy that Cider thing after this message and claim they got OS X binary.
That was what, 8 players max? - We need this on a massive scale! 8-16 players per squadron, 5-10 squadrons per wave, dozens of Calamari cruisers, Star Destroyers, each of them with players sitting in there having special functions like ship defense, reconnaissance, mission briefing, fighter deployment etc.
Hell, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter didn't even let two or three players sit together in bigger ships like the Millennium Falcon (one pilot, two gunners as seen in the movies) - a total let down of a multiplayer game!
We are still waiting for a real simulation of the Star Wars space battles. While I really liked all of the Lucas Arts simulations for the PC to date one thing that nagged me was the excruciatingly slow burst rate, nothing like the movies! (The only game that kind of got it right was Rebel Assault, but that was more like an interactive movie than a simulation.)
Some devs might say players nowadays don't play games with joysticks anymore, but bring out a good space simulator and people will go out in droves and buy joysticks just for this game, even more so if it's Star Wars (tm).
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Here's the summary for anyone who doesn't have time to read the articles: "Cool stuff coming but we can't discuss it yet."
Star Wars used to be cool, but after the episode I,II and III flop (except the last 20 mins of III) most of us have given up.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
Because it's entirely possible to work hard and be self-sufficient and make good decisions, and still get screwed over in the end. It's pot luck whether you actually make it, the hard work just changes the odds a little.
And just a couple days ago, some other gaming vidiot was telling us Lucas doesn't release games worth a shit on the PC platform.
Just goes to show you, one man's shit is another man's treasure... Or that people in power don't know what they are talking about.
Either way, good to see a new game coming out, and the AI (or programming, if you will) sounds kinda cool on this one. I always hated the fact (and it turned me off of gaming, actually, back in the late 80s / early 90s) that if you finished a game, chose a new / different character, you already knew how to beat the system, because the only thing that changed where the clothing on your character, basically.
When can I download this one :) lol.
--Toll_Free
WTF. Goes to show you don't know what you are talking about.
Their mother pays the delivery guy. Then, she slides the pizza pie under the door.
That way, she doesn't have to see her 30something naked in front of his 4 computer screens. (one with WOW, one with web browser, one with AIM / Yahoo IM / ICQ / Gtalk / insert_IM_here and one with pr0n.
Just a guess on my part, though. Not that I'd ever engage in such lamesauce.
--Toll_Free
I'll be fairly loyal to WoW until more companies start putting out native clients for OS X. I've looked at some of the new MMORPGs that are emerging, looking quite good in some cases, but if I have to run it through VMWare or boot into Boot Camp, then I probably won't be trying it out. And I know the Mac audience is fairly small, but it still is frustrating.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
It doesn't seem like it would be so difficult to get a percentage of the WOW base, if the game is good enough. A crappy game wouldn't pull anyone let alone get some WOW players. There are probably a good amount of WOW players waiting to switch to something else.
KOTOR sold 2-3x more copies on the Xbox than the PC. Now they're abandoning the console in favor of the WAY oversaturated PC-only MMO market?!? wtf? Very dumb move. They've abandoned a guaranteed cash-cow for another Star Wars Galaxies flop.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
See, the thing is, all those ways depend on partnering with other people, either as customers, co-owners, lenders, or buyers. A person can only get wealthy with the intentional or unintentional assistance of others. No man is an island. In other words, a rich man cannot have gotten that way through self-sufficiency. He must have interacted with and relied on others to hold up their end of the bargain.
No man is an island, true. But "partnering with people" includes partnering with people who may be less self-sufficient and make poorer decisions than you do, so does this really explain anything? I apologize if I am merely confused; I am not trying to "argue just to argue" but I really would like a better understanding of this. It seems to me like this only reiterates the same question.
And unfortunately Rand is correct about one thing, there is an elite. The ballot box has become something of an illusion. They did not become the elite by inherent superiority; they became the elite by creating the public education system and basing it on the Hindu educational system and the Prussian educational system (i.e. create a large underclass who cannot think for themselves and knows only one thing -- being a cog in a machine -- and if you're smart, make them feel comfortable), financing political campaigns (just look at how many large Democrat contributors also contributed to the Republicans and vice-versa - the same people own both of them), and owning central banks. I agree that this is a red herring but worth mentioning.
We want 64 players or more! MMOG style! Rankings. XvT is old.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
...the hype, I mean, not the game. (BioWare pretty much automatically gets my money.)
After reading TFA's, it sounds like the same promises we hear every time a new MMO is in the works.
Why don't they solve the energy crisis and give everyone a puppy while they're at it?
I'd love to believe that BioWare can make this great, story-based, WoW-killer MMO, but I don't. Sure, they'll get some players, Star Wars always does, but I'm not holding out hope that this will turn out be anything other than the same old muhmorperger mechanics, with one or two minor tweaks, in fancy new clothes.
WoW! Those are some big womp rats if they aren't much bigger than most WoW players! Dedicated WoW Player
> They also discuss...companion characters. "We want you to think of them
> as actual companions on your journeys throughout the game. Your actions
> are going to change how your companion characters develop."
"Hey, Jimmy. What happened to your companion? He's got dull, listless eyes, sores on his ass, huge ears like a donkey, and a big yellow streak down his back!"
"I don't know. I've just been playin' like I usually do, running the same missions over and over again, slaughtering those giraffe-thingies by the thousands, in-between 1-shotting n00bs who wander too far from the guards."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.