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Why BioWare's Star Wars MMO May Already Be Too Late
Since the announcement of Star Wars: The Old Republic, many gamers have been hopeful that its high budget, respected development team and rich universe will be enough to provide a real challenge to the WoW juggernaut. An opinion piece at 1Up makes the case that BioWare's opportunity to do so may have already passed. Quoting:
"While EA and BioWare Austin have the horsepower needed to at least draw even with World of Warcraft though, what we've seen so far has been worryingly conventional — even generic — given the millions being poured into development. Take the opening areas around Tython, which Mike Nelson describes in his most recent preview as being 'rudimentary,' owing to their somewhat generic, grind-driven quest design. Running around killing a set number of 'Flesh Raiders' in a relatively quiet village doesn't seem particularly epic, but that's the route BioWare Austin seems to be taking with the opening areas for the Jedi — what will surely be the most popular classes when The Old Republic is released. ... the real concern, though, is not so much in the quest design as in BioWare Austin's apparent willingness to play follow the leader. Whenever something becomes a big hit — be it a movie, game or book — there's always a mad scramble to replicate the formula; in World of Warcraft's case, that mad scramble has been going for six years now. "
Red dead redemption in SW skin will do very well.
Bram Stolk http://stolk.org/tlctc/
This is why Tabula Rasa was so amazing when it came out, but suffered from poor advertisement and development direction. Even the team for it didn't know where they were going to go with it and openly admitted it.
Everyone wants to be the next big hit to take down WoW so if they go that path they're going to be compared and scrutinized against something that is entrenched and has an army of people backing it. It's quite sad that one of the best games as far as MMOs go was killed off early and left for dead (by politics between NCsoft and Richard Gariott no less). Whoever thinks sending themselves into space is a good advertisement for a game should at the very least have their motives questioned.
CEOs point at a metric and say 'make it earn money like that game', developers just 'baaah' and follow suit because they just want their paycheck and their name on a product no matter what it is. Unfortunately the gaming industry is a chicken and the egg. You can't get money without a name, you can't get a name without a good title, and you can't make really hit titles without money. Either the old generation needs to die off and the internet savy need to take over or someone with really good business sense needs to step into the video game industry or things will die more so then they already are (I wonder if Google wants to start a gaming business...).
Could you imagine a universe, where successive Pacman clones are more expensive, so the last one will cost 150 million dollars?
Thats the MMORPG business for you. Cloning a formula that seems to work, in a very expensive way, for a public that is progressively more bored of the formula.
What make that hurt here even more, is that we don't want BioWare to die. Did a lot of great games, and we are really pleased of his work. These people really got talent and the exact formula of RPG fun.
To be honest, we don't know at this point if the game will be a success or not.
-Woof woof woof!
For the first screenshot in each article, I had difficulty telling if someone hadn't just photoshopped a Jedi + lightsabre onto an actionless WoW screencapture.
Contrary to my previous position, I now think that WoW clones are a really good idea. Producers, please, if you have no insight or creativity, please attempt a WoW clone, bankrupt yourself, and get the hell out of the industry.
...by reading Damian Schubert's blog and his posts on the mud dev2 mailing list.
He is the lead designer for the combat systems on that MMO and his views are straight up conventional.
I think after six years it's safe to say that trying to beat WoW at its own game is futile. If you want to surpass WoW as the world's leading MMO, you can't just copy their model.
The approach that ArenaNet appears to be taking with Guild Wars 2 is more sensible. They've thrown out many things which could be considered as fundamental in an MMO, but are actually limiting or frustrating. This includes things like grinding, quests that have no impact, text based plot and more subtle concepts such as the DPS/tank/heal arrangement.
If any game is capable of surpassing WoW, my money would be on GW2.
>worryingly conventional — even generic
It's an MMORPG. What the hell were they expecting?
no surprise, a megacorp doesnt want to risk even a dime in new concepts or originality. rehash, serve. make how much you can make. this is what happens when big companies with stockholders get innovative small outfits like bioware in their grip.
Read radical news here
I wonder if the bots had anything to contribute to his review.
What do you think, sirs?
The article basically says that despite all the advancements for the genre, the starting area quests feel like more of the same from previous MMOs. That's not a minus so much as a "not so big of a plus".
Personally I'm waiting to see what they do with the endgame, Bioware promised something secret and revolutionary years before it was revealed to be a Star Wars MMO. WoW's endgame (raiding) was designed by the leader of the lead hardcore raiding guild from Everquest, so MMO endgames have failed to evolve for the past 10 years.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Isn't it true that the WoW hype was at it's pinnacle back in 2006 - 2007 or so? Sure, an expansion pack has been released recently, but it appears to be lacking the whole hype. In fact, where I live, Blizzard seems to be promoting the expansion pack pretty aggressively, something I have never seen them do before. Is this necessary because WoW's days are counted? Blizzard themselves are shifting focus to Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, WoW is losing it's momentum, hype is fading away. I'm sure that still a lot of people play it, but from here on out, I think the only way for WoW is down. Maybe in due time, some other game will step up and be the next WoW, simply because WoW is too old and too 'been there-done that' so there's no competition from WoW anymore.
It was just as grindy as all other games.
What the real problem in these games trying to follow World of Warcraft is that they usually take aim at the previous generation of WOW. As in, Blizzard keeps moving WOW forward. The change the mechanics, the reinvent classes at times, they even change their world completely. They haven't stood still. Yet each time I see a new WOW killer come along it is aimed at WOW from three to four years ago claiming great new features which just btw, happen to be in the current WOW or are very similar.
Throw in the one thing they all miss, WOW has two major focus points. It has the leveling system which interests many people with thousands of quests and a lot of lore and it has the end game. The prior does not inhibit you from getting to the later by any appreciable degree. You can blow right through the quest systems, even ignore the majority, and strictly hit top level and do the end game content. Which is where WOW shines. Their end game content is always good. Far too many up and comers have NPC BOSS mechanics that feel nothing more than just that Rat I killed twenty of but with ten times the health. It might have one new effect but for the most part its as dumb as the rats outside.
What is happening at BIOWARE/EA is that I see "we have this great IP, hence any expense is justified" mentality which usually goes hand in hand with feature creep and never finishing a system to completely but having far too many incomplete ones.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Why do so many people think that every new entrant into the market has to take down the top dog?
The SWTOR MMO only needs to make money. It doesn't need to beat anyone. This obsession with beating the 'best' is unhealthy and does not drive development well.
I seriously doubt that WoW devs had the thought 'We need to beat Everquest' running through their heads. Instead, they were thinking 'We need to make a great game'. Beating Everquest came as a by-product of the real goal.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
I really don't understand why these sorts of mistakes keep getting made.
From the perspective of game designers, Blizzard clearly has several advantages that will be difficult to overcome: 1. Already having had years to iterate and refine their game and engine. 2. A large paying audience, which means that the costs of implementing content X or upgrade Y are, per subscriber, tiny. Any game designer who thinks that those can be overcome by any means except doing something quite different(EVE: online, which went for a totally different player base, or any of the random browser-based grind games which go for being radically less expensive to produce and to play) is suffering from some serious hubris.
From the perspective of the management types, Blizzard clearly has several advantages that will be difficult to overcome: 1. Network effects: because so many people play WoW, if your friends play any MMORPG, that is probably the one. Barring specific hatred of some aspect of WoW, you will default to playing the one that your friends are playing. 2. Substantial costs already amortized: They have a (more or less) fully functional engine, stuffed full of art assets and flavortext and whatnot, all paid off. Any new player that they can attract is, other than some slight server and bandwidth load, basically free until they have ground through a fairly large chunk of gameworld. Any competitor is starting from a far weaker position, attempting to get their engine and flavor to playable levels on borrowed or advanced money. 3. Large player base over which to divide fixed costs: Games, like movies, are heavy on fixed costs. The engine costs the same even if noone ever uses it. That dialog tree costs the same even if noone ever reads it. The more subscribers you have, the lower your fixed costs per subscriber(or, alternately, the higher your quality for the same fixed cost per subscriber as your inferior competitors).
That's what I don't understand: All but the most delusionally hubristic game-design guys should easily realize that any 'me-too' attempt is going to go badly. They are probably inclined to be a bit optimistic about how original their work really is; but they should know that 'me-too' is suicide. At the same time, even the management types who know absolutely nothing about games should, purely with basic EC101 type considerations, be able to see that this is not a market where there is much room for imitative product. Blizzard hardly has a monopoly on "games"; but the idea that the market will support multiple "clearly WoW-like games" is hard to support.
Given that even outrageously hubristic game designers tend to depend on suits for money(at least until the game is ready to sell) and that even the dullest suits need a bunch of game designers willing to take the risk of having a real fuckup on their CV, I don't understand how these projects get off the ground. In almost any case, I would expect one party or the other to (sensibly) get cold feet quite early, if they even get the idea at all.
Why is WoW still succesful? That is something worth pondering for the other MMO producers who want to be the next Blizzard. They do not have to beat WoW on the level of graphics or gameplay: WoW is already beaten there, by several other games. And they're still nr. 1. Because of one word: momentum.
Everybody plays WoW because everybody else plays WoW. They got to where they are by being the best but they no longer have to be, social momentum has taken over. All WoW players I know got bored with the game, they took a break, tried one or several other MMO's, got bored with those too, and gravitated back to WoW because at least that had plenty of players and most of their friends in it. The way to beat WoW is to create an MMO that does way better at the social aspect of MMOs, and provides enough staying power for the first two years to retain players and help those players to convince their friends to hop over too. At this time, I don't think this is possible. Don't try to beat WoW, for the same reasons it is foolish to try and beat Facebook at this time.
If I had to guess how WoW was going to be beaten, my money would be on slow attrition caused by light, browser based MMO's on a popular social network like Facebook. And guessing at which MMO producer is going to survive, my money is on a company that figures out how to produce, operate, support and expand an MMO on the cheap, so it can serve a niche market of 100k-500k players and still be profitable. This you can do by figuring out your niche, rather than trying to clone WoW. Two examples of good, viable games are Star Wars Galaxies and Age of Conan. They did a lot of things right in terms of gameplay, lots of things other companies can learn from. There's mistakes to be learned from as well: SWG lost most of their players after a big and hugely impopular change in game mechanics. AoC lost a lot of players following a buggy launch and a subsequent patch that made matters far worse. A shame, because both games have a lot of potential as profitable niche players.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
does no one remember star wars galaxies..? it came out one year before WoW...
What happened to Star Wars Galaxies? Wasn't that supposed to be the best Star Wars MMORPG?
Never mind Jedi, you can be Boba-Fett or Han Solo type of character if you want to. If they just put a bit more effort into marketing and design, it could be a LOT better I think...
http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/en_US/players/guides.vm?id=70000
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I've been watching this game develop since the announce, and I'm looking forward to it. As far as this article author's opinion, thanks, but I'll make my own opinion. As for as the grind of "Running around killing a set number of 'Flesh Raiders' in a relatively quiet village doesn't seem particularly epic, but that's the route BioWare Austin seems to be taking with the opening areas for the Jedi" I'm sorry, the 20 other people that had access to the game did not percieve the questing in the same way. and for that matter, WoW and every other MMO is nothing but a grind fest from minute one, so your point is?
Bioware (and no I'm not a "fanboy") has been doing nothing but inovate with SWTORO. There to date has been no game or MMO that has gone the route of Fully voiced. There has been no MMO to date that has fully different storylines for each of it's character classes. Yes there will like EVERY OTHER MMO be a grind on some quests, but at least in TORO there is story behind the grind if this author bothered to read, Oops I mean Listen to the quest giver rather than escapeing through the audio...
MacOSX, because making *NIX better is a lot better than waiting for Micro$loth to fix Windows
All MMOs are grinds, but some still manage to be different from WoW (like Tabula Rasa and Ryzom) and be great games on their own. They often do this by having a great (roleplay) community and/or focus on story development, the clones rarely get that they need more than just a copy of the mechanics.
Carbon based humanoid in training.
I'm not sure how it was grindy at all. People complained about it not having enough grind and that they got to max level right away. They got rid of the grind by making it more like a FPS then a MMO, but they marketed towards the MMO crowd who wants a grind.
It was anything, but a grind. You could've seen that by reaching the first control point. The style of gameplay and the rewards for participating in the world took a back seat to the actual gameplay, which it is as it should be.
The ideology that the end has to be where all the content is was something that Blizzard fostered and something TR didn't have.
Play a few different MMOs besides WoW (WAR, EQ2, TR (was), CoH, and Aion are good places to start) then you'll have a different look on things. Each one of those titles has very unique things WoW doesn't have and it is extremely apparent after playing with them for a bit.
Stop thinking that WoW is the ultimate game that will ever be produced and look at things outside of their formula, which is coincidentally as addicting as heroine and makes you very subjective. Things can be fun without being really grindy. WoW keeps you addicted with stuff, good games keep you addicted with fun.
What's baffling to me is that they've chosen to use one of the most tedious aspects of WoW. People enjoy WoW *in spite of* the grinding, not because of it. What's next, the Karate Kid "Wax on... wax off" emulator?
Sure it was a grind, but for the first time in MMO history, the grind was FUN! Grinding was like playing a round of base attack / base defend shooter. Against NPCs, ok, but still, it was a lot of fun to mow down rows after rows of enemies, trying to hold the base for as long as you possibly can. And all the while you earned XP, got "marks", got credits, found loot... not only compared to the grind of other MMOs this was heaps of fun!
Grab a few friends, choose a base in your level, take it over and defend it!
Hell, I miss that game.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I had fun grinding Shattered Galaxy but not enough fun to pay
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Whether it's too late for the game to be successful depends on how you are defining "being successful". If you are defining it as staking out a sizeable, but still sub-WoW-sized share of the MMO market, perhaps even becoming the second-place runner, while bringing a number of players new to the genre, then Old Republic still has every chance to succeed; the key factors in whether it does so will be whether it is a good game and whether they have the infrastructure in place to manage it properly.
If, however you define success as "beating World of Warcraft, taking away a large portion of its players and leaving it languishing in the dust" then the timing is indeed wrong. Or at least, the window of opportunity is closing fast and, once closed in a month or so, will not open again for another 18 months to 2 years.
WoW's great strength is also its great weakness - and is the only plausible route to defeating it before Blizzard retire it in favour of a successor. The strength is WoW's cyclical nature. Expansions come out roughly every 2 years and completely reset the game more the vast majority of players. Gear becomes obsolete, old dungeons are retired, some aspects of the game change on a fundamental level. This keeps things fresh for players and, combined with the periodic roll-out of further content via free patches, provides an incentive to continue playing. And if everybody you know is continuing to play, then you yourself feel compelled to continue (even if you aren't enjoying the game much any more). This was WoW's great strength; it achieved a certain kind of watercooler-momentum, that saw people draw into the game by their real life friends and family. You're not going to break that easily.
But every two years or so, there is a window where, I think, WoW's aura of invincibility is briefly dispelled. The final month of one expansion and the first month of a new one is, in many ways, a fairly grim time to play WoW. Before the new expansion hits, you will be bored to death of all of the current content, and many in-game activities will feel pointless because all of the rewards will be obsolete soon anyway. For the first month or two of the new expansion, there isn't all that much content to be working on and a lot of the hardcore players are cheesed off at having to start over from scratch again.
So if another developer, with a relatively polished release product, a rudimentary end-game already present, an interface as good as or better than WoW's and, preferably, a decent existing IP to base the game world on could launch in that window, then the might - just might - have a shot at derrailing the WoW juggernaut and triggering the kind of mass-defection that would cut WoW's player-base by a half or more. However, the window that the launch of Cataclysm created is rapidly closing, and it looks like Old Republic has missed it. So if you are defining success as "WoW beater", then yes, I suspect it is already too late for Old Republic to succeed.
It's the story, stupid. When WoW came out, the majority of MMOs were horrible at telling stories. For example:
Star Wars: Galaxies - there were what, 2, 3 possible "raids"? There were theme parks where you ran a bunch of random quests that kind of told a story, but at the end of it, nothing changed, nothing was unlocked, nothing was different for your character to do, and your rewards were pitiful for doing it. The "missions" in the game were literally, run up to a machine, it says "Hey, (some random SW type person) wants you to go and kill a bunch of animals! Do that!" and you ran out to kill a bunch of animals. The only interesting thing about that game was the rather amazing player based economy, but SOE completely wrecked that when they changed the underlying mechanics of the game.
City of Heroes - this game actually had some really interesting things going on, in that you had storylines to do (though they were grindy as hell and *incredibly* repetitive through *incredibly* repetitive environments, and were *incredibly* stupid for superheroes to be doing). But the whole "repetitive" thing and the whole "dumb for superheroes" thing made it wretched - why, for example, would Spider-Man be asked by (some random person) to deliver something halfway across town? The game mechanics were fun (and the base game still can be from time to time) but it can't really draw the crowds in because once you've run 4-5 missions, you really have done most of what that game has to offer, from a "seeing new and interesting things" standpoint.
And then there is WoW. When it launched, the normal quests you were given lots of were the equivalent of most other MMOs *major* storylines as far as complexity. It was rough around the edges as far as player friendliness went (I remember running around for a couple of hours trying to find someone to turn a quest into - the text said "north of here" but it really meant "way on the whole other side of the world and all the way north as far as you can go") but there was a story, and you were a part of it. There were dungeons to go to - and some of them were jaw-dropping ("Holy shit, a PIRATE SHIP, in a MINE?!") even if they were annoying at times. For every little mechanical nit or bugged event or other complaint, there was stuff to do. And, even with all of the flaws at the time, it was *still* the most polished game around.
In the meantime it's only gotten more polished, and the already way more intricate quests and storyline has been added to massively. There are dozens of dungeons to go to at various points in your playing life and quite a few raids (though some of the older stuff is ignored). They've added tons of features to improve gameplay. And, with the latest expansion, even at very low levels, your character feels, despite being one of millions, *important*. And you can change the world through your actions - as you complete quests, the world around you changes to reflect that in many ways. On top of that, they've really done a good job of making the player feel like their character is important, but at the same time that they are part of something larger.
WoW doesn't have the shiniest engine - it's actually really dated, and I'm often surprised when I play newer games at just how dated it is - but that's not really important. The biggest asset WoW has (aside from a huge playerbase drawing people in) is that there's TONS of stuff to do, tons of stories to follow.
And now we have Bioware's new game and... Oh, look, quests that would have been amazing 6 years ago but WoW's from 4 years ago were better. A shiny new engine but not, seemingly, a lot to do with it. So kind of like a lot of the other games out there. I played Champions Online - and it actually had some interesting stuff going on (and seems like it's gotten more to do so I might try it again). I got Star Trek - which really was pretty interesting to play, but I quickly got bored of repeating pretty much the same 5 missions over and over when I ran out of story arcs to do.
If people want t
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
Maybe larger companies should start taking a more simple approach to game development. Things like Minecraft, Plants vs. Zombies, etc. Stuff that stimulates the person to be a little more creative then finding the perfect formula for the most DPS or whatever. Providing a world where it's can potentially never be the same each time you fire up the game.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Who wants to tell them there's already been a failed StarWars MMO?
It was just as grindy as all other games.
You have some interesting points about how WOW has some flexibility and good end game content. But I think the above quote hits the mark. Boring grind is what IMHO kills the fun in most MMORPGs. A game that wants to be successful needs to get around that. Some possible ways to do that:
-Lots and lots of developer-generated, original quests. Problem: That approach is EXPENSIVE
-Make PVP a way of leveling, as it tends to be less boring. Problem: Will probably be exploited by all kinds of leveling services, commercial and private. Think "victim for hire".
-Make PVE more interesting. There has been some progress with giving players skill combos or allowing them to take cover, which gives more tactical options. But ultimately this approach needs better NPC AI, which is a difficult field.
Here I'd like to mention EVE Online in particular. That game already has a great variety of different weapons, ammo types and support mechanics that make for great tactical options in PVP.
But unfortunately, poor NPC AI and mission ("quest") design make these options useless for PvE. Usually the mobs come at you in a big bunch, so hampering some of them with jamming equipment does not make much of a difference. On top of that, the NPCs always use the same tactics in the same mission, so once you know the mission you just follow the script.
With smarter NPC opponents, EVE PVE could be a lot more entertaining...
-Go for MMOFPS mechanics to get rid of the old "click on enemy, lauch attack, wait what happens". Problem: Twitch combat needs a high update frequency, which increases the neccessary bandwidth (and likely server CPU power). Fortunately, both of these get cheaper year by year, and there is a slow but noticeable trend to more FPS mechanics in MMOs :-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
Yup... I spent quite a few nights doing that with friends.
That's what good gameplay can do over the carrot-on-a-stick strategy.
Bobby Kotick does not own WOW or COD, the company is public. If the article can't get the first thing it says correct why should I trust the rest of the article?
Anyone stop to think "hey, WOW and STORO are 2 completely different genres". One is fantasy, one is sci-fi. Saying they are both MMOs is like saying that Halo and Call of Duty are both FPSs. They appeal to completely different audiences. Sure, there may be a good chunk of people that play both, but chances if someone likes 1 of them, they don't like/play the other nearly as much. And as for this 'reviewer', I think he's just bitter against Bioware and/or a Blizzard fanboy because EVERY other thing I've read about STORO has been how about amazing the initial impression is once you have a couple hours to play it. Plus there's one thing that I haven't seen anyone mention that completely differentiates this from WOW....dynamic storylines. Anyone that has played Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect (2 other games that are as similar as night and day, made by the same company) knows that the choices you make in interacting with NPCs in a Bioware game can have profound effects on your gameplay experience. This will encourage people to make multiple characters of multiple classes and multiple races and even genders. Because the entire experience will be different dependent upon those factors as well as the choices one makes along the way. This fact alone multiplies the replay value many times, leaving Bioware with plenty of time to push out endgame content, even if the game doesn't release with it readily available. I for one am a WOW player, really only playing for the Cataclysm content and as soon as STORO comes out, I'm jumping ship. I've been following this game since the day it was announced and am stoked for it's release. I don't expect, nor necessarily want, STORO to be a WOW killer. I just want it to be fun and be congruent with the Star Wars universe. Oh, and anyone that says "Look at how good Star Wars Galaxies turned out"...either pull your head out of your arse and go read something about WHY it's failed so badly or just shut up because you have no clue what you're talking about (coming from someone that played SWG for 4 years).
You must not play WoW then. With the "new world" the 1000's of quests are gone, and now it is more like a console game where you got to go through every frickin quest in a linear fashion. PvP sucks except for the XP-off 19s and 29s, and unless you are a tank or a healer, expect minimum 40 minute+ wait times for a random dungeon to pop. Someone needs to come out with a fantasy MMORPG that does PvE, PvP, solo play and crafting pretty well. Note not great, not excellent, but pretty well. How frickin hard is it to do that? How difficult is it to get away from the stat inflation and gear-dependency? Is programing in and balancing skills and talents that difficult? Look at D&D (P&P version). They have almost 30 years of experience balancing PvE and PvP. Steal their talents, skills and abilities, file the serial numbers off them, reskin and rename them and there you go.
I wasn't terribly interested when I first heard about this... And, while a lot of the teasers look very nice, I'm even less interested these days.
I like BioWare's games. I generally enjoy the Star Wars universe as well. I thoroughly enjoyed KotOR.
But BioWare's strength, in my opinion, is in their storytelling. And it's hard to develop much of a story in an MMOG.
The other problem is that the Star Wars universe doesn't lend itself all that well got an MMOG framework. As pointed out in the summary - Jedi will be the most popular class. But from a lore standpoint it really doesn't make much sense to have everyone running around as a Jedi.
The end result is a Star Wars setting where everybody is a Jedi. Everybody has a lightsaber and Force powers and everything else. And yet they're running around killing rats to grind up to the next level. And whatever big badguy you go defeat to save the universe just re-spawns in a few minutes for somebody else to kill.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
So The Old Republic is hoping to score hits with XXX-rated content? Just like WoW, even a little worse, but all the enemies are naked women!
Hey, I'll switch for that.
The problem with mimicking P&P RPGs (and why I only play them, and not CRPGS) is that they have a genuine human being behind them dynamically telling a story, varying the difficulty, assigning rewards and generally making the game fun. Until computer game companies produce an AI as good as a human being at social interaction and storytelling (don't hold your breath), a pen-and-paper RPG will always be a 'better balanced' experience.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I'm going to break this apart first.
Things WoW has:
Huge amoung of back story and Lore
A constant grind and a reward system
PvP from the ground up
A beautifully stylized world
Few Bugs
PLAYERS
things SW:TOR has:
Huge amount of back story and Lore
lots of story driven quests (presumably)
PvP from the ground up (presumably)
A stylized world
Who knows how many bugs
Players?
The way I see it, SW:TOR has a CHANCE to match up with WoW. It has the story aspects it needs to compare to WoW and it's BioWare so I'm not to worried about that aspect coming through. The PvP is implied, it's Star Wars after all, however if you played Star Wars Galaxies, you can see what poor implementation can do to what should be a premier PvP experience. The world of the Old Republic is very much stylized in the WoW fashion except in a Sci-Fi setting. And it doesn't seem out of place either. I think the style and the music can go a long way to making or breaking the game by giving you a sense of tone and so far I think where a lot of games have failed is in trying to be too serious which it seems SW:TOR is trying not too do by softening the art style.
BioWare has certainly been playing up the amount of dialog and story driven questing in the game which I don't doubt. I find it a poor assessment to judge an entire game by it's newbie experience because a rudimentary experience is just what a lot of players need. Newbies will learn what they need slowly and gradually without having to keep track of story elements and focusing on getting around and killing things, which are important to survival while Experienced MMO players can play through quickly and just learn the finer points of the game. Of course if they drag the newbie experience too long then it will kill the game but hopefully that's not the case. But here it's all about execution. Do you strike the proper balance for both Experienced players to breeze through and newbies to get all the training they need so they don't feel overwhelmed.
BioWare has as good a chance as anyone, if not better for the delays they are allowing to make sure implementation is handled correctly. I'm just going to hope that BioWare pulls through again.
I've tried many mmos, but sadly they all tend to do exactly what everyone hates about WoW.
- I don't want a pvp MMO
- I don't want to grind x pointless levels, if there's no story to fill 80 levels don't make 80 levels.
- I want story driven mmo play
- I want better group play than what wow offers.
Almost all the alternative mmos I tried are either grind fests, pvp garbage or not story driven in the slightest. The only one that came close was "Vindictus" and that lasted about 25 levels before it turned into a grind, the story driven and group play aspects were very strong though.
did you forget to take your meds?
What the real problem in these games trying to follow World of Warcraft is that they usually take aim at the previous generation of WOW. As in, Blizzard keeps moving WOW forward. The change the mechanics, the reinvent classes at times, they even change their world completely. They haven't stood still. Yet each time I see a new WOW killer come along it is aimed at WOW from three to four years ago claiming great new features which just btw, happen to be in the current WOW or are very similar.
The folks at Blizzard aren't stupid. They've been making games for a while now. They're aware that other folks are out there competing against them. They want to keep their WoW players in WoW. And they aren't afraid to change WoW to keep people playing.
WoW really is not the same product that was released years ago. Core gameplay mechanics have changed dramatically over the years.
If you see some (p)review talking about how GAME X has this awesome new feature that's absolutely wonderful and enjoyable and GAME X might just unseat WoW this time... You can rest assured that Blizzard will somehow incorporate that awesome new feature into WoW by the time GAME X launches.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Yeah, I've been pretty disappointed in Cata. The revamped and new areas are EXTREMELY linear in quest design. The biggest annoyance for me though is every class as become console game in its control style. Its like playing Mortal Kombat or something, If I wanted a console style fighting game I play one. For people that like playing a lot of different characters it makes it impossible to play them respectably without spending insane amounts of time practicing your rotations.
Think Icarus. So many successful game companies get bright lights in their eyes and want their own WOW. Problem is, the MMO genre is geometrically more difficult and expensive (as compared to singe-player games), and the push into it overwhelms and destroys otherwise successful companies over and over again.
"As these talented amateurs struggle in power meta-games to control revenue from online gaming, the collateral damage has been extensive and nearly fatal. When the definitive history of online gaming is written years from now, the analysts will look back and note the executives in charge of online gaming nearly killed it with their greed and incompetence." [Jessica Mulligan and Bridgette Patrovsky, Developing Online Games, p. xxvii]
That was written back in 2003. The next paragraph goes on about how, in the following year, Sony Online's Star Wars Galaxies will be an important bellwether on where the industry goes in the future.
A former online game-company boss of mine: "We're smarter than the average company, so we can cut all of our time estimates in half."
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Yet each time I see a new WOW killer come along it is aimed at WOW from three to four years ago claiming great new features which just btw, happen to be in the current WOW or are very similar.
You have it backwards. A new game comes along, and says "Hey, we'll beat WoW because of these features." Then the WoW team looks at what they are promising, and figures out what's good about it. Then the WoW development cycle is tight enough that they will have those features in WoW by the time the contender hits the market, making the contender look dated.
Then guys like you say "Oh, look, that new MMO has the same features that are in the current WoW, so why would I change games?"
Exactly. How hard can it be to evolve past "kill 10 rats"? Text based games 20 years ago had more variety in quests and adventuring.
As one perceptive WoW player said, logging on for the first time after watching the South Park 'Sword of Truth' episode: "They're all boars. Some are bigger, or look different, or have different abilities, but they're all boars."
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
While I mostly agree with what you say about WOW, I think there is more to it. I've only played WOW for nearly a year, so I don't have the experience of the "old school" players but I have been around long enough to notice a couple of trends. Firstly, I think WOW has been smart to put emphasis on the social aspect...as in guilds and guild achievements. This allows you to have advantages that you simply won't have going it alone. That means you now have an emotional investment in people, not just the game. And if you work with those guildmates you can form effective teams that allows you to get through stuff that is painful to try with just PUGs.
Also, while the quests may not be like they were before, you still have other avenues to advance, such as the dungeons. And while initially the wait times (if you were DPS) were long, it is getting better as more tanks/heals get familiar with the new dungeons. New dungeons that require WAY more tactical sense than the LK ones IMHO.
I don't think they will get away from the stats and gear dependency simply because that is part of what keeps people coming back and playing more. Get geared for dungeons, get geared for heriocs, get geared for PvP, etc. One of the things that initially drew me to WOW was the fact that my success was not based solely on how fast I could click but based on stats/gear and how well I worked within the group. I guess what I am trying to say is that they are stat/gear dependent by choice, not just design.
Welcome to Star Wars - Inner Force!
The entity that you permeate is:
[ ] - Inanimate
[x] - Animate
The living entity you inhabit is: ...
[ ] - Vertebrate
[X] - Invertebrate
You are drifting in the blood stream of a Death-Star Trash Compactor Monster.
[ ] Begin Mitosis.
[ ] Generate Force.
[x] Draw nutrients from your host.
[ ] Die
----
Every player is a Midi-chlorian. The goal of the game is to remain undetected throughout the original trilogy followed by the prequel trilogy in order to avoid becoming a ridiculous explanation.
What version of D&D is balanced at all? 3.5e isn’t. 2e wasn’t. 4e maybe but only cause they update mechanics all the time. You clearly don't play at a high level in any edition of the game if you think D&D is balance for PVP or even PvE out of box. Do you even understand how much work a GM puts into just picking monsters that are good challenges for a party? And that assumes combat is even the focus of the game and the DM just isn’t fudging everything.
Also there is a D&D MMO and it is mediocre.
This is why I'm pretty much done with MMOs. I played MUDs back in the day, and have played "modern" MMOs ranging from Meridian 59 and Ultima Online all the way through WoW. The last time I logged in to an MMO was back in 2006. I'm completely, totally done with the idea of it. Yes, the sense of community is awesome, but I'd much rather just take part in multiple weekly tabletop/pen and paper games for that kind of team work. Not even The Old Republic can reignite my interest in MMOs...and I play in a Star Wars pen and paper RPG game every Saturday night :p
Living With a Nerd
I'm an EA employee. I used to work at BioWare. There's my disclosure.
I'm not allowed to talk very much about the game, for obvious reasons. I AM allowed to disclose that I was part of an internal beta late last year. (At least, at the time I was in it, I was allowed to disclose that. Hopefully that hasn't changed.)
Everyone that I know that was playing it was playing it addictively. We all loved it. The storyline that WE got to play was impressively well put together; I felt more at the center of that universe than I ever have in WoW (and I'm playing Cataclysm again, just so you know. I also think it's great).
This 'review' is pretty vague, and betas are betas. I can't promise the game will be great, and there's obviously a massive bias for me to say that it will be, but I was really sad when the beta completed. The first 6 hours of WoW are just you running around killing small, nearly defenceless animals; the first 6 hours of MY ToR experience was so much more. I really wish I could reveal everything that went on; it was really rich, engaging storytelling, with interesting conversations and dialogue. I don't remember skipping over any of the dialogue – spoken dialogue, of course –even once. Most of the time in WoW, I just click through as quickly as possible and read the quest text only if I really obviously become stuck. (Cataclysm's introduction of forced cutscenes in the beginner areas actually makes things a lot better.)
Seriously, give the game a chance. Beating up on it before you play it and based entirely off of the experiences of one person that played a few levels is hardly the way to judge an entire MMO.
As one perceptive WoW player said, logging on for the first time after watching the South Park 'Sword of Truth' episode: "They're all bores. Some are bigger, or look different, or have different abilities, but they're all bores."
FTFY
And as you mentioned in the title, not just any MegaCorp, but EA, a company which is very well known for taking existing hits or concepts and shovelling out sequels (often with little change from the original). In some cases, this isn't a terrible thing. If a game is storyline-focussed, then slightly tweaking an existing engine and focussing on story makes sense. I've just started Mass Effect 2, but this seems to be pretty much the case there... slightly more polished graphics, but decent storyline and character development.
However, this often precludes having an "original" game that ends up as a blockbuster, as the companies EA buys tend to have their real hits before being bought out, possibly get a few more pieces of quality product out the door, and then often strangle on the vine...
It's too bad really, I'd like to see some gaming-shops that are developing something new and innovative but struggling at maybe the 50-80% mark get picked up by EA and helped along to bring something new and cool to the world. Certainly EA doesn't seem to lack the funds to invest in something like this.
Awhile back all my friends were geeking out over Cataclysm. I don't play WoW so it took me awhile to understand what all the sudden weird jokes and references were on their IM and other sigs... not to mention the pictures of huge overnight line-ups prior to boxing day.
I'd say that it still gets lots of attention from existing players.
Most of the WOW dev team were in the top tier Everquest guilds. They saw what was being done wrong with a fantastic game, decided to take that experience and polish it. They very much aimed to make a game that would replace Everquest, and they did. We got regular updates through Everquest how the then unnamed game was coming along. When some the best players/blizzard devs on the Everquest server stopped showing up because the new game was already better than Everquest, we knew they had something big coming.
However, you are now correct that today, MMOs need to find their niche and not worry about beating WOW to succeed. They need to look at subscription numbers of where Eve Online is, decide that is most likely the best possible outcome, and look at their expenses to run a game with 300,000 subscribers in the very best scenario. Remember, Eve Online is one of the only successful MMOs that has withstood WOW, this is the best case scenario for ANY company planning on an MMO. Realistically, they will maybe have 100k subscribers for their first few years, maybe less.
I definitely disagree about the quest changes being bad. The old world (lvl 1-60) pre-shattering was horrible. Even though they kept upping the XP gained and nerfing the XP needed to level it was still slow and cumbersome. With the changes they also finally got rid of a lot of the old "fedex quests" where you had to spend 45 minutes traveling from one end of the world to the other, give someone a bracelet, travel back and then finally get the next "real" quest in the quest chain which also required 15 minutes of travel. I'm glad those elements are gone, the new reshaped world is fun to play in, you can go exploring if you want to but you can also level quickly and smoothly if you want to.
That's not mentioning that they added more flightmasters so you no longer have trek all over the place while leveling. Of course, I know plenty of people (read:no-lifers) who are complaining about cataclysm, these are the same players who swore they'd quit when Blizzard decided to make mounts cheaper since it "encouraged casuals", again when they moved the lowest level for mounts down to 20 (from 40) because it "encouraged casuals", when BC was released because all their fancy purples became useless which was just "catering to casuals", again when WoTLK was released they complained about how WoTLK gear was better than BC gear was "catering to casuals".
There's a reason Blizzard generally ignores these loud complaints from the "hardcore" players, the complaints are coming from a bunch of people who feel that the game would be perfect if it involved 200+ pointless and boring hours of leveling and running PUGs until you could play with the "big boys". Although if anyone took away their heirloom items they'd rage all over the internet since that would mean their leveling experience would be more like that of the hated "casuals". It'd be even funnier if Blizzard figured out a way to make it hard to "pull" lower level characters with the help of a level capped guildie (or to mail items/gold that had at any time been in the hands of one of your alts or one of your alts' guildies). I know, they'd never do that but oh boy would the "hardcore" crowd whine and moan, it wouldn't be so easy to brag about all your level 85 alts then (since they'd have to experience the whole grind to 85 without assistance).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Looking at wowhead.com, 146 quests in Mount Hyjal, 200 in The Maelstrom areas, 115 in Uldum, 7 in Ruins of Uldum, ~248 in Twilight Highlands, ~130 for starting as a Goblin(just based in the new zones...), ~114 for starting as a Worgen.
(Pretty sure I missed a few in there)
Why so few quests in the new, high-end areas of the game? Because they went through a ton of the old quests in the original(Vanilla) content and changed/updated them.
I haven't played Cataclysm, yet, beyond the beta but leveling my Human Rogue from 1 to 20 in the beta was a pretty different experience from leveling him pre-Cataclysm.(Well, as different as a "static" MMO gets, anyway.)
D&D is only as balanced as the DM running it lets it be. D&D is all sorts of broken, just going off the rules of the system. PvP, in particular, isn't especially great, IMO.
Want to see a D&D-based MMO? ddo.com
You must not play WoW then. With the "new world" the 1000's of quests are gone, and now it is more like a console game where you got to go through every frickin quest in a linear fashion.
In what way is the questing anything like a console game? The storytelling is a vast, vast improvement over what Blizzard had in place before. It may have had the appearance of being less linear but really all you were doing was the same thing in different zones. Having to cross half the continent to kill 10 lions rather than just cross the same zone was an awful way to play.
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
CoH took an interesting twist on the normal MMO concepts. It's not nearly as good endgame as WoW in and of itself, but there's the Architect System for user designed content a lot of which is pretty good and there's enough of it to "hide" the grinding. There's also the whole "archetype" concept, where you have classes that are general functions and a lot of variations in how it works. For example it has a "ranged DPS with minor utility and a tiny bit of melee" class (Blaster), with a bunch of options for what kind of ranged DPS you do (ranging from assault rifles to throwing fire) and what themed utility you have. There's another class that is "group support with moderate ranged DPS"(Defender) that actually shares a bunch of options with the Blaster as far as ranged attacks but has completely different sets of utility powers, and there are class modifiers that change how the abilities actually function. A Blaster and a Defender can both throw a Lightning Bolt for example but the Blaster will be able to at an earlier level, the Blaster will deal more damage with it, but the Defender will drain more of his target's Endurance. Literally, a ranged attack by a Blaster will do more damage than one by any other heroside archetype, but that same power will do less damage but have more potent side effects when used by a Defender.
Even Blizzard will have to compete with WoW at this point. There's not a lot of history with mega-hit MMOs, but judging from the still ongoing success of Everquest (no, not EQ2, I mean EQ1), the game won't be going anywhere soon. I think a trend, at least for the foreseeable future, is for MMOs to be slow-moving behemoths that people just wont move from. There's a lot of reasons for this. One is the time and money already invested. This is something that affects mostly casual players, but also medium and hard core. Also, there's a resistance to taking on major new game mechanics that feel strongly different than what you're used to. They have to be integrated carefully and properly, like WoW's skill tree system. I don't see a big shift from being accepted that anytime soon. Companies simply won't put up big bucks for something innovative but risky.
We got games like Wurm online (from the makers of Minecraft) and other games that are all about crafting and you can dig and build on a massive scale and there's still combat and wars and duels and everything else normally associated with an MMO. But they won't go mainstream until someone throws a bunch of money at it and turns it into something completely different than it is now -mostly competitive, repetative and highly rewarding to some degree.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
Stop thinking that WoW is the ultimate game that will ever be produced
Isn't it, though? Games are made to entertain their customers and sustain their backers. WoW has done both to a degree that no other MMO ever has before - for years and years running. If your image of the 'ultimate game' doesn't include success then I humbly submit that your game wouldn't live very long.
which is coincidentally as addicting as heroine and makes you very subjective
Ah yes, I haven't seen the 'no true Scotsman' argument in quite a while. It's good to see the old tropes trotted out from time to time...
Things can be fun without being really grindy. WoW keeps you addicted with stuff, good games keep you addicted with fun.
While I'm inclined to agree with you, the developers at WoW clearly do not. They are resolute that without enough effort the successes are meaningless.
"What version of D&D is balanced at all? 3.5e isn't. 2e wasn't. 4e maybe but only cause they update mechanics all the time."
Don't forget Skills and Powers. That was so unbalanced it needed a mention here and possibly an Ignobel Award.
-Make PVE more interesting. There has been some progress with giving players skill combos or allowing them to take cover, which gives more tactical options. But ultimately this approach needs better NPC AI, which is a difficult field.
Cata has taken a shot at this, by the way. The sorts of things that one used to only find occasionally on a new boss have crept into the trash mobs themselves. Every single pull requires at least some degree of tactics now, and with the introduction of 'get out of the fire, but get into the green' they're really pulling a mind job on their playerbase.
We'll see how it turns out.
I've been seeing previews of your new "World of Warcraft" game, and I think you're wasting the rumored 50 million dollars you've put into it. It's nothing but a clone of the market leader, Everquest, and there's really no way you can overcome the huge advantage EQ has on you in terms of subscriber base and development time. They've had over five years to constantly refine and improve the game experience; you'll be starting out where they were five years ago, and doing nothing but playing catch-up. You've got the same "Go kill 10 rats" gameplay and the same endgame, except you have almost no raid content ready and I hear that your "innovative" PVP system, using the same "instancing" technology that Everquest implemented years ago in their Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion, will not be ready at launch. Only something totally new and radical will work -- have you considered making it over into a twitch-based FPS game? Just doing what's already proven to be popular and genre defining, but doing it better, cleaner, sharper, and faster, is no recipe for success. Originality is far more important than competence, and building on your competitors work and taking advatnage of all they've learned the hard way, and then bettering it, is no recipe for success. Only the totally new and totally unproven, especially if it's not what customers have previously demonstrated they're willing to pay for, will win the game. You may want to look at Tabula Rasa, which has been in development since 2001 and will probably release soon. It's so original and groundbreaking even the developers aren't entirely sure what kind of game they're making -- that kind of shattering of genre boundaries is the best way to have a mega-hit. I feel sorry for the developers, artists, and so on who will be laid off when World of Warcraft bombs, dismissed as just another Everquest clone in a field already crowded with them (Asheron's Call, Dark Age Of Camelot, Horizons, etc).
you must have missed the later added content. new breed of AI uses quite advanced tactics, and even tho they are so far focused on taking you down, not keeping themselves alive (that's what PVP is about) they pack quite a punch. and in 10 days these new breed AI npcs come in a form of incursion, that should fuel both pve and pvp content fuse .... im not sure this will end well, but there's only one way to see.
Some people actually like linear, story-based questing. It's probably a big reason why console gaming is as big as it is. If you wanted sandbox, open ended gaming why would you ever have played WoW?
Look at D&D (P&P version). They have almost 30 years of experience balancing PvE and PvP. Steal their talents, skills and abilities, file the serial numbers off them, reskin and rename them and there you go.
Unfortunately for your position, not even Hasbro agrees with you. While you'd think that they have rafts of experience, they basically just went and copied WoW rather than relying on any of it.
Either you stopped paying attention around 12/14 or so, or you're repeating something you've heard somewhere else.
Yes, all the FP's and whatnot made the leveling experience easier, and yes there were mutterings about that before Cata launched.
Also the 80-85 experience was modeled this same way, and is super, super easy to complete, so I could see that continuing for about another week (thus the 14).
But eventually those hardcore players got done leveling and experienced the extreme content wall that Heroics have presently become. If ANY of them are still complaining about things being 'too easy', call them out on it. Heroics are hard. And there are, indeed, pointless and boring hours required now in PUGs (and if you have to PUG, triple the expected amount of hours required) in order to get geared enough to set foot in a raid. In fact, you'd need an entire set of Heroic dungeon gear now just to get hit capped. It would take a minimum of, say, 80 hours of play to get that done. And that's not even the end-game.
So yeah, leveling to 85 is still pretty easy. But everything 85+ is so hard that I'm doubting you've followed up with anyone who has discovered this fact.
If there's anything that kills a new MMO, it's pushing the argument of whether it will or won't pose serious challenge to WoW's market share. I don't know if it's Blizzard employees, WoW loyalists, or just really stupid people, but they just keep shoving it down the throats of players who just want to play the game.
They make it sounds like it's an all-or-nothing game. "Oh, New MMO #5 won't beat Blizzard? Well you may as well not consider playing it... even for a day! How can something survive if it doesn't land a constant 5 million users from Day 1?"
All that matters to a game is profits, playability, and word of mouth advertising. It doesn't matter if WoW still holds the lion's share of users... a game can be successful without breaking Blizzard's bank.
WoW just had a massive retooling to make the first 60 levels feel less grindy. For instance, a lot of zones now tell a story.
I can think of two really good examples here. However, the one that was more memorable to me is Stonetalon Mountains (as Horde).
Did I mention that you get promoted through the ranks of Krom'gar's army, until you're made General just before he drops the bomb?
Sure there were some quests that were done just to kill time, but WoW in general has a much more cohesive (and epic) storyline and structure than it used to. Silverpine Forest / Ruins of Gil'naes is likely an even better of an epic storyline where (SPOILER) Sylvanus, leader of the Forsaken (Undead) is actually killed off before being resurrected, but I couldn't remember the entire storyline of that one.
Note: The old version of Stonetalon Mountains was just a random collection of quests to fight the rogue Tauren, stop the Venture Company from pillaging the land, kill some random monsters to perform crazy voodoo rituals, plant some plants, fight some harpies and wyverns because... well... they were there.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Surely they should have released it in 1977 when people were still interested in Star Wars? ;-)
I, for 1, think it's a good thing to be where they are. Although It doesn't mean it will work, over hype often is a title killer. Being an under dog sometime serves more than being the awaited hero. Tabula Rasa is an example.
Also, just because Wow has 12 millions subscribers, does it mean it's the only measure of success? Is it possible to be viable at 1,2,3 or more millions? I'm sure they are ways to still make money and have a good community ready to stay with you if you respect them.
I will try this title, most definitely, I like Science-fiction and can't bare another Sword & sorceress type of game.Plus I like the SW universe.
I don't have an intelligent phone, so I need to be.
I'm sorry, I played CoH back around when it first came out, and at that point, the grind was LITERALLY all there was to the game.
The Architect system you mentioned wasn't introduced until 2009, 5 years after the game launched.
Sure, the mix and match character setup was interesting, but I'd already played another MMO that did something like that: Star Wars Galaxies.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I will continue this post stating other issues with tabula.
1) They invent a fantastic language... then turn it into some kind of pokemon gimmick.
2) They make quests level-limited, but don't provide enough quests at every level to move forward. this was eventually fixed using kill xp multiplacators, but it still meant that for months people had to grind .
3) Instances could be done ONCE (cuz you wouldn't be able to obtain the quest again when completed). When they weren't broken that is.
4) Ridiculously unbalanced pvp. Only in the last month or so they release a pvp "arena", Everything else had to be organised in regular battle zones. Most ended up scrimming in bases, and that sucked horribly.
5) No difference between weapon "rarities"/power level for months...
6) No player store/trading house for months neither.
Definitly released a year before it was ready. when i bought the game, I had high hopes. after playing thru my initially bought gametime, I didn't renew, because it they obviously did not have their shit together. and it's a damn shame, because i'm a huge fan of MMOFPSes.
Peace and happyness to you, by LullySing
I had fun grinding Shattered Galaxy but not enough fun to pay
SG was amazingly fun. I was in one of the big regiments (guilds) back then. I had almost quit when I got into EHJ, but it was a blast with a community. It isn't a "solo" MMO.
Interesting note about SG in the context of the thread: there was no "max level" in the truest sense. There was a level limit, yes, but you could choose to refresh your character to level 1 periodically. Every time you did, you had additional stat points when you reach the level limit again. And there were, what, 3 layers of leveling, too. SG had no endgame, it was a pvp strategic squad MMO, and it was very different from WoW (no quests, player-driven politics and events, changing ownership of provinces).
Of course, it was not massively successful, but it's an excellent example of how a game can be radically different from the WoW model.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
The first thing I did when Cata rolled out was to check out all the new early content. Not only did they make ALL of the old content more interesting with mechanics and quest hub streamlining, they took all of the "stories" of each zone and updated them. If you've leveled more than a couple of times, you know the quest chains, the reason you're killing harpies or moonkin or panthers, and so on.
To see all those little stories moved forward in time was very cool. They did this for almost every single quest I undertook. The scope of the updates is beyond impressive.
Between streamlined questing and the addition of MANY flight paths (usually 2-3 new paths per zone per faction), leveling takes almost no time at all. Add to that the XP bonus heirlooms and the guild XP bonus reward and... well, I found myself sorry I couldn't see more of the zones it went by so fast.
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."
I've played wow for a long time as a high-end pver to say that anyone will hardly kill that game. Just imagine the time they had balancing things, creating and testing content (yeah because an online game ins't just about graphics and bikini-plates). Now add this to the fact that WoW has more than one "enviroment" (satisfies pvp, pve and even casuals) and you have a tough task ahead.
Dont mistake me as a Blizzard fanboy. After raiding Icecrown Citadel for almost 10 months and killing LK on heroic mode I just cant stand that game anymore.
Bioware should just focus on producing awesome games like Mass Effect and KotoR.
Sorry for poor english. Not my native language.
Normally I'm posting on the opposite side of this, but you're far overestimating the difficulty. I was raid ready in about 30 hours of casual play at 85, and I got 300~ archeology in that time. Heroics are hard with bad players, I run guild groups of competent people and heroics are fun and not that challenging. They aren't the complete jokes that heroics were last expansion, but calling them hard is probably an overstatement. It's really not that hard to get 340+ ilvl, you pick up 4-5 drops, buy 2-3 JP items and 2-3 faction items and you're geared. You can pursue all of those avenues of gear concurrently just by running heroics. I've downed 3 different raid bosses in a relatively casual friends and family guild already.
If you want to play an enjoyable storyless shooter, try killing floor. You just missed it for $7 on steam though.
Meh - personally I found grind to be the annoying part - fun is doing a boss battle with 8 friends. Grind is two things to me - one is finding 15 tulips and killing 20 rats to exchange tulips to the tulip vendor and rat tails to the ratcatcher for the key that unlocks the boss dungeon. The second is having to cross 1 hour of map and then grind through a dungeon for 2 hours to get to that boss with no "entrance" to quickly get there (two hours of dungeon I can deal with, spending an hour to get there and then having to grind through it I can't, as I rarely have 3+ hours of uninterrupted time to play any game). I don't know if that is a problem with WoW because I never made it far in WoW, but it is in most other MMOs I've played.
There's an awful lot of people playing WoW because its fun. Your problem seems to be that you think what you consider "fun" is the universal definition.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Actually, it was called both F-19 and F-117. When the game was released for the C64, the official name of the plane was not yet known, so Microprose called it F-19. When the Amiga version was released, they changed it to the official name, F-117.
I don't think that's quite right: F-19 and F-117 were on different versions for the same platforms, as I recall. I'm not sure about C-64 and Amiga, but know I owned F-19 Stealth Fighter for the PC and ISTR seeing F-117 Stealth Fighter 2 for the same platform.
This actually hilights one of the few things I don't like about Cataclysm. They've really gone back to the Horde as the "evil" faction. Forsaken dropping plague on everything (despite being told not to, Garrosh doesn't enforce that any better then Thrall did), wars of aggression all over the place, etc.
Sure that Deathwing guy is up and out and destroying the world, but hey lets go attack Gilneas with plague weapons because we're cool!
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
To me this is a sign that the game development world works. Unlike our current system with its patent, trademarking, and copyrights. A developer with a hit knows he will be copied by everyone, and counts on it. The originators development cycle is always a little ahead because they are the innovator. By not sitting upon their laurels and waiting for the money to roll in and aggressively developing their initial idea, no matter how many copycats come along, they will always be copying an old idea.
The instant you receive protection or a temporary monopoly on your innovation, you stagnate. Anyone remember the eighties game development world?
The wait time is so long because bad DPS in PUGs like to screw up then blame the tank and healer. Being in demand because of their much harder jobs, tanks and healers go find guilds and run guild groups instead.
Seriously, I've had moron DPS die from standing in bad stuff in a heroic for over 10 seconds, then try to blame me (the healer) for it. Those people are the reason why the queue is so long, because there's no reason for me ever to PUG when I can grab some guildies who won't do that and go instead.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I don't play WOW now, and I haven't for a couple of years now, but I did play when it first opened and I was back for Burning Crusade. I left again just before WotLK.
The one thing about the Old World was that was incredibly fun... when everyone was leveling the first time. Its probably hard for anyone to imagine now, but players used to inhabit, even crowd some of those areas which later on became ghost towns and stayed that way. There was world PvP, which was interesting, but even without that, there were players simply around *doing things* which made it feel more interesting and social.
As for the quests, those Fedex quests were there to encourage you to move throughout the world, which was large and rather pretty at the time. They brought you to areas that you would probably not have bothered to go otherwise. I remember actually having the most fun when some silly courier quest had me end up in places that were completely new to me and that I was really interested in exploring.
Of course, then everyone moved on. I remembered when I was grinding up some extra characters to heal or tank for raids after the initial rush to 60 was over and everything looked the same, but it was far less interesting. And that was not simply because I had already done the content, because there were a number of quests I had never done... still haven't done to this day, even after having multiple max level characters. Since I had the experience of being there when it started, there were certain places where I would stop and smile a bit, but I can't imagine what someone who just started the game would think. I assumed that they would probably think, like some people who are posting here, that the world was big and boring, and they couldn't wait to get to end game content. I don't blame them, the Old World was built to be shown off and to accommodate large numbers of leveling players who would want to see everything and get around the world. After the expansions, it became a house that you raised a large family in, and now the kids are all grown up and you're rattling around in a place that is way too big and inconvenient for the remaining inhabitants.
I think the Old World was one thing where Blizzard really did not plan ahead and it wasted a ton of its effort creating those areas only to leave them to rot later. I haven't seen Cataclysm, of course, but I get the idea that they really did not restore the wonder of the Old World as much as they bowed to the fact that the initial leveling areas of a game where most players are level 80 is something that most new players will want to just get through as fast as possible. And that's too bad, in a way. One or two things, like making level 19 or level 29 twinks to put in the leveled battlegrounds showed that you still could have a great deal of fun playing at lower levels, if only you could find other people at your level.
As for hardcore players, and I was one, having spent a great deal of time as guild master and raid leader, I can tell you that when you are facing content that is legitimately difficult and un-nerfed, you want people who are skilled and dedicated to getting things done. Those people geared up and they learned their class. When you finally killed that boss (un-nerfed), you had achieved something. When the experience was then nerfed to let "casuals" get to the content and collect the rewards, it effectively erased the achievement because now they sported the same gear and they could say they beat the same encounters, even though they really didn't. The fact that it took you time, effort, and excellent teamwork to get the same gear and beat the encounters now means absolutely nothing.
Don't get me wrong, I know that Blizzard doesn't want to create polished content so only 2% of its players experience it. And for sure, they will want to see that the pretty gear their artists came up with is widely used. The fact that a casual player gets to see the stuff or and have the gear never bothered me as much as the fact that har
Either you stopped paying attention around 12/14 or so, or you're repeating something you've heard somewhere else.
I assume you mean 2010-12-14 (or 14/12 if you want to, the year does not have 14 months).
And I'm still hearing complaints about how the leveling experience is now "too easy" for the hated "casuals" (with scare quotes because people who don't spend all their time awake playing WoW are clearly inferior subhumans according to some of the "hardcore" WoW players I know).
From what I've gathered from the "hardcore" players I know there is definitely a lot of elitism among them. Now, I remember when just getting to 60 took ages, when dodging crocolisks on foot in Wetlands was part of the experience and it seems a lot of these "hardcore" players hate the idea that someone could actually level to 85 without experiencing every part of the game at its hardest. It just seems to me that they're forgetting what a pain in the ass it is to do your first time (or first time on a new realm) with no guild or main char to back you up. Yes, after the shattering it's a lot easier but it's also a lot more fun. These days Outland and Northrend are the slow and boring zones (currently have a dwarf hunter alt on a new realm at lvl 75, three more levels until I can get out of Northrend).
I just don't get the hatred for anything that makes the leveling experience less of a boring long-winded grind.
As for heroics, yes they are hard. The issue I'm having is that there seems to be a "hardcore" clique of WoW gamers (like a couple of guys I know who actually used up vacation days to spend the entire cata release week getting to 85 on as many chars as possible) who absolutely hate the idea that others may be able to get close to them in level, gear and skill without first playing for as long as they have.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
You are correct, sir!
Network effects: because so many people play WoW, if your friends play any MMORPG, that is probably the one. Barring specific hatred of some aspect of WoW, you will default to playing the one that your friends are playing.
"People come for the game, but stay for the community."
Honestly, does anyone think people pay $15/month to an MMO because it's a good game? Heck no; if that were true, we'd see single-player games with a similar subscription model and gradual content delivery. Nobody plays a single player game for YEARS on end, the way they do with MMOs. (Notable exceptions, such as the roguelike games and [insert contrary anecdote here] are usually played by an obsessive minority, not the mainstream 10 million people who play WoW.)
People play WoW because they have friends that play. They don't want to move to another game and lose touch with those friends. The only way to "beat" WoW is to be part of their community -- integrate to their chat system, preserve guilds and friend lists across game boundaries, etc. -- so that when a person goes to play your game, their friends can come too. Barring some deep Facebook integration, the only company that could really pull this off is... Blizzard. Yup. The only way to beat WoW is to be WoW.
-- 77IM
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
WoW just hit their 6 year anniversary last month.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
I'll swear, MMO dev's are the stupidest MOFU's in the world.
Nothing will take down WoW. It's one of a kind.
You want to make a MMORPG that does good? don't try to be a WoW beater. You won't do it, and you fail and suck in the process.
Be your own original idea. stick to it, make sure the play works.
Pick a niche and go with it.
I do NOT like WoW. I'm sure the game is fine, but playing something that most everyone else plays does NOT appeal to me. I am not like everyone else, nor do I enjoy the things that apparently everyone else (or the media) thinks is cool.
I like challenges in my MMO's, I like to play in a world that seems sort of real, without having a bunch of little kids running around saying everything's gay, when they do NOT understand the meaning of the word gay.
I play MMO to have fun, to get away from RL, and please, playing the same game most everyone else is, is not getting away from shit.
Actually, there is probably 1 game that could take on WoW for popularity, and that would be a Pokemon MMORPG. But no, they are too stupid to make a new pokemon game (so far, all the releases are reworked earlier games), let along capitalize on something that could actually be fun and work.
Having too much of a history (Star Wars, Star Trek) is going to fail as a MMORPG because you won't be able to please the fans, and also get new peeps into it.
anyways, I don't care. the corporations have stopped caring about making what fans want and have been expecting everyone to pay for the crappy shit they are putting out. so fuck them.
you want my money, why don't you figure out what your market really is.
Be seeing you...
Isn't it, though? Games are made to entertain their customers and sustain their backers. WoW has done both to a degree that no other MMO ever has before - for years and years running. If your image of the 'ultimate game' doesn't include success then I humbly submit that your game wouldn't live very long.
By this reasoning, McDonalds must make the best hamburgers in the world, based on their corporate success.
"The "best" anything is always subjective.
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
It's definitely more challenging. Heroic Dungeons are much more like "5-man raids" now. A Demo Warlock is my primary, and I need to use a lot more of my abilities now. When I first started raiding about two years ago, my GM looked over my spec. He instructed that my "survivability" talents I'd used for leveling should be replaced with straight damage talents for Raiding. "If you're taking too much damage, you're either standing in the wrong place, or our healers aren't doing their job". With the release of Cata, my 'panic' button bar is filled with survivability spells. With healers risking going OOM 3/4 of the way into a fight, I not only have to concentrate on maximizing my damage, but also keeping myself alive. It makes the game feel much more "fresh" now.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
I only have one complaint about the 'linear' questing: replay value. When leveling alts prior to Cata, I could be guaranteed seeing content and quests I've never run into before. You could level through any of the Northrend zones, and only see 1/3 of the quests available. Now, it looks like I'm going to see nearly each and every quest with each and every character I level from 80-85. It makes the world, and the game, feel much "smaller".
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
WoW didn't invent questing, gear with buffs, world PVP, talent points, grinding, levelling, etc. Blizzard borrow from MANY games (everything from old MUDs to games like Anarchy Online, which is also still around, though with an order of magnitude fewer players). They didn't even create the basic "fluff" background and racial makeup of their world (that goes to Games Workshop with Warhammer). The game of WoW today has a huge storyline that is unique to itself, yes, but lets face it ... fewer than 10% of the players really know or even care much about the individual stories.
Blizzard got extremely lucky in putting those components together (and borrowing liberally from many many other sources) and making the balance fun enough while keeping enough of the grinding aspect to addict people to the game.
My point isn't that WoW sucks, I'm a full-time player (though every single day I wish for a game that was based on Warhammer 40K instead). My point is that if Bioware/etc are able to achieve that same gameplay balance, even without inventing new paradigms and mechanics, and pair them with fluff that has at least an equal level as WoW (and Star Wars certainly has that potential) ... and they have a chance for enough success to return a giant profit on the millions invested AND give players an alternative to DwarfElfOrcHumanQuest.
PS. The sad tragedy (ok, exaggeration, but it still stings :) and many others is that Games Workshop never got Warhammer off the ground years ago (Blizzard was originally working on these and when GW punted, Blizzard rebranded and changed stories) NOR have they gotten a 40K MMO off the ground, both of which would have been able to fill the niche spaces that WoW and likely SW:TOR will end up dominating. GW is the one that really trailblazed these paths but they either didn't have the cash or the balls to part with the cash to get these done.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Yes, and Harry Potter and Avatar are the greatest book and movie, cause $$$ is the only way to determine success.
While you might have actually run enough Heroics in a 'sub-two-hours-each' time frame and/or might have been lucky enough to get all the right drops in short order, I'd suggest you pause to reflect on any who are in a guild without exclusive access to a tank/healer. Clicks are nifty, that's true, but this doesn't necessarily mean that you can safely gauge the game's true difficulty without ever stepping outside of yours.
I assume I'm not European and meant December 14th (or verbally: 'twelve fourteen'). Of course, I also explained how I arrived at that figure, so why are either of us assuming anything?
I'm with you, I do think that the 'less painful' casual experience is a good thing. I'd rather see a ramp at the end of it, instead of a wall, but otherwise we seem to agree.
Yeah, those people are ruining the game, in my opinion. They're not yet done with Heroics, but they're unwilling to carry the casuals, so they just vote kick or harass them out.
What about the reports of the three-hybrid groups queuing (instantly) as tank/heal/dps but then refusing to actually do those jobs? The group falls apart, but they're still at the top of the queue when they requeue as all dps...
For that, I blame the people. But the wall is what they're trying to avoid.
By this reasoning, McDonalds must make the best [fast food] in the world, based on their corporate success.
While my kids would agree with your original sentiment, I think the modification I made makes it otherwise true.
Comparing McDonalds to (whatever place makes actual hamburgers) isn't precisely fair. Nor would be comparing WoW to American Idol, even while both are entertainment and have wide audiences.
Years (two) plus years (two) does still equal four?
I stand by the notion that six years for a (successful) MMO is a very long time. It would be a long time for nearly any internet-connected technology.
Don't say the A-word on slashdot. The nerds will rage all over you...
But you're telling me that authors should not try and replicate HP and/or that movies like Avatar are a terrible idea?
Isn't hyperbole fun?
I don't know what this guy is smoking. That quests have you kill mobs and then getting a reward is part of what defines an mmo, and 95% of quests in WoW are like that. The writer seems to be just having the problem that he doesn't like RPGs in general and wouldn't like WoW either. When WoW came out it did exactly what the writer is complaining about - it followed everyone else by taking the best features of other MMOs and improved them all slightly. The result was a game that was superior to the other MMOs that came before it. This is exactly the formula Bioware is attempting to follow with TOR, except they are adding story as a central device which just hasn't been done very well in an mmo before - the story in mmo's has always played second fiddle to combat, exploration and progression.
More importantly, if you followed TOR closely (spoilers to follow), you'd know that the story of the jedi starter area centers around you retrieving and using the hilt of the first light saber ever made, and in the process you discover an ancient Sith holocron imprinted with the personality of a Sith lord of old. You can now follow your jedi master in a path to the light side, or make shocking evil choices to become the Sith lord's apprentice while deceiving your fellow jedi about it all. That's the starter area before level 10 - all presented in full Bioware cinematic style. I've got more than 1000 hours in on WoW, including the latest improvements in the expansion Cataclysm, and I can tell you, that blows anything in WoW out of the water story-wise, including the big-ticket year-long overarching story lines in that game. And that's just the starter area of the jedi. WoW has got nothing on TOR story-wise based on what has been revealed about the game. What remains to be seen is if TOR can reach WoW's level of quality on its mechanics, it's combat, exploration and progression, which is going to be a tall order seeing as WoW has been working on those things for a long time.
City of Heroes - this game actually had some really interesting things going on, in that you had storylines to do (though they were grindy as hell and *incredibly* repetitive through *incredibly* repetitive environments, and were *incredibly* stupid for superheroes to be doing). But the whole "repetitive" thing and the whole "dumb for superheroes" thing made it wretched - why, for example, would Spider-Man be asked by (some random person) to deliver something halfway across town? The game mechanics were fun (and the base game still can be from time to time) but it can't really draw the crowds in because once you've run 4-5 missions, you really have done most of what that game has to offer, from a "seeing new and interesting things" standpoint.
I will admit that from a certain perspective, CoH is repetitive as hell. But as a fairly long time CoH/V player, I find it to be somewhat tactically varied what with all the varied powers, abilities, group members, and the mission's NPCs. It also helps when you have some 40 different characters on your account that all play differently.
In WoW, you can level through PvP if you choose. You get XP fighting in battlegrounds, so you can choose to level through PvP, through solo PvE, or by running dungeons in groups. Or, best yet, a combination of all of these. Whatever's less boring to you at the time.
As far as quests better than "kill 20 wolves," WoW has made some progress on this with the new expansions. A lot of times now missions have mini-games where you pilot vehicles, or aid more powerful friendly NPCs destroying an enemy (while dodging tidal waves of lava and stuff) rather than just mindlessly shooting the boss.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
People who like fantasy, generally like scifi as well. The players are basically one in the same. When you walk into a book store, take a look where your fantasy books are, and where your scifi books are. They're mixed together in the same spot. The audiences are the same people.
Star Wars Galaxies failed because the subscribers were the same people who played Everquest. People will not subscribe to more than one MMO.
Eve doesn't require any intelligence to play. Maybe more patience learning how to play (mostly due to the worst UI of any MMO), but not intelligence. I have played both games and always found it amusing how jealous Eve players are of WoW. Always insults on how dumb they are...how it is for the masses. Maybe if Eve was a better game, it would have more people. But Eve only appeals to the griefer. It has the worst...most boring PvE ever...really, no story and only a few missions you do over and over again. PvP is mostly camping at a gate for hours and blowing up people who never have a chance. Due to the loss of your ship, most people don't take risks and it just makes it boring. Also, the developers are corrupt and forever tainted the game by giving stuff to one group of people.
But keep telling each other you guys are so smart...you have plenty of time to post in the forum since there isn't much to do camping that gate. The people who play WoW are too busy playing the game to know your little niche game exists.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
It's make-news. 1UP writes a preview based on the first ten levels, then quotes one part of their own opinion as supporting 'evidence' to draw a conclusion in an article on the same site but written by another guy who didn't actually play the game himself. Then it's linked on Slashdot with all assumptions in place that somewhere along this string of opinion lies some reality. I have researched this game since before it was announced officially, and everything that I've found indicates a great game in development. I played WoW (another great game) for five years from 2004-2009; TOR is not a WoW clone any more than WoW is an EQ clone.
As IGN Editor Charles Onyett had mentioned in his previous article, these gather and kill quests were fairly standard, but were framed within the story in such a way that I never felt like I was doing tedious chores. http://pc.ign.com/articles/114/1142629p1.html/
If you mean the wormhole opponents in EVE, yes they are a bit smarter by going for the smaller ships first. But apart from that, they are still very predictable. BTW, bring a bunch of battleships and a Tank-Drake. Then the "smallest" ship is anything but fragile.
What Eve PVE needs to be more interesting is variety. For starters:
-Some random changes in initial positions of the NPCs
-Changing composition of enemy fleets
-More variety in NPC weapon and ECM use
just to name those things that should be relatively easy to do. Maybe Incursion will do the trick, but right now I want to try one of the upcoming space shooter MMOs (Black Prophecy, Taikodom, and maybe some day after the lawsuit is settled, Jump Gate Evolution).
C - the footgun of programming languages
I'm sorry, I played CoH back around when it first came out, and at that point, the grind was LITERALLY all there was to the game.
While this is true, it also made the vast majority of it a) soloable for virtually all characters (I still remember the problems I had with a Controller in the 'teen levels, an issue which has been to some degree rectified), and b) inside instances where you weren't competing with everyone else for the mobs you needed to complete your missions. "Defeat all Clockwork in office" may not be any different, at its core, from "Bring me ten rat tails", but it doesn't matter how many people are in the zone with you; the moment you step through the door into the office building, none of them can do a thing to interfere with you completing the mission, whether by defeating the mobs you need or by training higher-level mobs to you to get you killed.
Then, too, during the first few years of CoH's existence, the features and development of the game were controlled by one person's concept of 'what the game should be' and what was 'fun'; once NCSoft bought out Cryptic, hired away most of the development team, and set up CoH development in-house, it became much more responsive to what the players were asking for, and the rate at which new features were added to the game skyrocketed.
If the Lich King couldn't distract us from rampaging across South Shore, why should Deathwing deter us from dropping the pain hammer on the Alliance?
You can read about The old republic near the middle.
http://ealouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/hello-world/
I think a problem is with too many games just trying to be a generic MMO. This works for WoW because it started with a pre-built customer base from their older games. So if you've got a set of players on WoW who don't care what the game is like, you won't be able to drag them away by doing the same thing. Similarly if you've got a set of players who don't want yet-another-WoW you won't be able to drag them to your new clone either. Some might want a better game, but they're not going to drop their acquired investment in WoW (friends, levels, gear) just to head to a new game that's not much different.
Sure WoW has the masses but I suspect most of them never went there because they were interested in the Warcraft world and background, or because they analyzed the game play and decided that they liked it. No, they're there because it's the generic game. To break out of the mold a new game has to be different, and it also must decide to not be a WoW-killer. No one will ever be a WoW-killer, in the same way that a new franchise isn't going to knock McDonald's off the map. Instead it would be better to decide to be the best game you can be for a smaller niche market.
What most of the big batch of new MMO games do is focus on game play or mechanics only, and skip over working on a heart and soul of the game. Ie, a Star Wars game should make you feel like you are in the Star Wars universe, not make you feel like you're in just another MMO. If they're not based on an existing background they can still try to present a consistent and logical universe (ala EVE). Some players don't appreciate this though and some prefer genericity (ie, in Lord of the Rings there's always a few players bitching that game play should trump the lore and background, and some who say "I didn't come here for a world simulation"). So save the generic WoW for the generic players, and try to make an exceptional game for the exceptional players.
Anyway... I was pretty sure Star Wars was going to have problems. With the massive amount of hype it's been given it's sure to disappoint everyone.
I take issue with the statement that MMO people want a grind. Grinding is an artifact of older or badly designed MMOs that didn't have enough content, and with players who can't find alternate avenues of having fun. If there's grinding in a game, it's a clear sign that something is missing or designed wrong.
This hype - negative and positive, has been going around since mid October and is based solely on an anonymous, supposedly ex-EA employee's "whistleblowing" blog post. As well as a "preview" which was basically a full review and critisism of a version of the game that technically isn't even at alpha. Does anyone even remember WOW betas? They were a mess. And all thats been written about so far in regards to actual gameplay was from a stage in the games development cycle that isnt even close to beta. That said - since the early days after TOR was officially announced I had a bad taste in my mouth from the emphasis of "voice over work" and npc companions as opposed to things that would really grab me as a player and Star Wars fan. I was honestly hoping this game would be a combination of KOTOR, WOW, new Bioware innovations, and the best parts of SWG (which did boast many at one point and time). The point that I agree with is that even if this game proves to be a gem, it's success is dependent on how EA decides to nurture it after launch. If we are speculating the budget to be $300m. The need to move millions of units at launch. I believe it took SWG a year and a half to move 1million units, though, the MMO market has grown since then. Being that World of Warcraft has perfected such a great product, wouldn't a massive an undertaking of research into WOW player's issues, gripes, wants, and needs would have held a great value as opposed to millions in voice over work?
>> Stop thinking that WoW is the ultimate game that will ever be produced
> Isn't it, though?
LOL, no. WoW is the McDonalds of MMOs. Popularity != Quality.
Let me know when they actually have player housing, or when I can level without genocide.
Character Classes are training wheels for players & developers too lazy to implement a clean GURPs-like system.
Sure, sure, but Ultimate != Quality either, so what's your point?
Did you actually read that somewhere in what I wrote?
Are you talking about TR or any "normal" MMO?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If your guild doesn't have at least two tanks, what raids are you getting ready for? I've healed several pug runs with the lfg tool. There's not much luck, just a little effort. 30 hours is 10 3 hour runs, average 5 bosses each, 50 boss kills of JP = 2-3 items, 60 drops assuming 1/6 are useful and you win half of those gives 5 drop upgrades and tabards mean you have at least three revered or two revered and one exalted faction which if you looked at the vendors means another 2-3 items, tada! raid ready.
Quite accurate list. Though aside of the first point, nothing really bothered me. I liked TR for the base defense aspect.
2) I didn't mind the lack of quests. Actually, the quests in TR felt more like grinding than the base battles did.
3) Same here. Some of the instances were fun and intimidating, they drove the story, but in general they often felt like a huge waste of time.
4) I didn't care for PvP (rarely do in MMOs), so the lack of PvP (let's face it, there was no sensible PvP with any meaning in TR until very, very late, and even then...) didn't bother me.
5) Same here. I wasn't there for the "hunter/gatherer" aspect that seems to drive most MMOs. Actually, the lack thereof was refreshing.
6) Well, due to 5, what did you want to trade? Crafting wasn't really a big issue either (most things were cheaper bought than built, or at least the price difference didn't warrant the time invested). And being a crafter at heart, the base defense system was fun enough for me to even overlook this sore lack of a feature I deem usually crucial.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Oh come on, you're going to tell me that 'has two tanks' means they're always on, ready to tank whatever whenever as needed, but only for you? On what planet?
Assuming 10 3 hour runs is fine. There's no average of 5 bosses being killed in each, though, unless you no longer need the gear. Actually, amend that to 'unless your pug group' because you simply cannot carry anyone at these gear levels. You're also assuming instant queues. 3500 JP is two items. '1/6 useful' wildly assumes that you're don't see the same item drop repeatedly. You also seem to be assuming that those 10 runs won't all be Vortex Pinnacle. You're right on the tabards and the rep, but you've also forgotten to factor in the time to find enchants/etc as well as coming up with the means to pay for them.
Anyway, if you were hardcore like that and equally lucky you might be able to set 30 hours at an absolute minimum. I could be convinced that 80 is somehow a maximum, so I guess we'll just call it a range.
It also assumes that said tanks and healers have taken the painstaking task to level up their gear as well BEFORE they started running your sorry under-geared ass through instances, and they have all the strats figured out and never wipe to trash pulls, let alone bosses. I have leveled up my tank through all of this, with my wife as the healer, and I must have spent nearly 2,000+ gold on repairs alone just to learn encounters, death after death after death.
As a run-of-the-mill DPS, you are starting to feel some of the pain that healers and tanks have had to contend with, now that you have to use ALL of your abilities, and use them without any screw-ups. In essence, your 30 hours game time is piggy-backed on the efforts your guild tanks and healers have taken to improve themselves to the point where they can reliably run you through content that would normally be beyond you.
As one of those tanks, I am CONSTANTLY turning down random requests to come tank X heroic or Y raid. And just because you happen to be a guildie doesn't mean you get to slack off and let me run your sorry under-geared ass through instances just because you made it to level 85. I won't touch you till you have capped your gear so you can at least random heroics. Nor will I sit there and explain the strats to you...I expect you to know them since they are posted in several locations online. In other words, bring your brain and be ready to show me you are worth the effort it will take to get you raid geared.
In response to the original article...I wait to see what BioWare Austin puts out the door. Blizzard has raised the bar considerably for any other MMO product out there. Yes, there are still bugs in the game, but overall, it has the most polished feel of just about any game out there right now, MMO or otherwise. Blizzard has taken a lot of time and effort putting a quality product out the door, and this has been proven in popularity. I can only hope BioWare has put forth the same kind of effort.
Right. If anything, they've moved backwards. I just started playing WoW again, to see what they did in Cata (I wasn't going to buy it, but then ended up getting it as a present for Xmas :p) and have been profoundly unimpressed. The graphics, the story, the new, horrible, talent system. Everything is half-assed, and unworth the month of service I had to buy to play it.
And the players are the worst of any MMORPG in existence.
It's a really weird thing. Bioware usually does an amazingly solid job on their games, that even when they have a crap design (Mass Effect 2 is a corridor simulator) they're still entertaining. But from what the inside reports from the dev team say, they really don't have much clue what they're doing. Which makes them identical to WoW's dev team, but with 12 million less users, and no content.