By Kieron Gillen on October 21st, 2008 at 11:29 pm.
Well, it appears that gaming’s most open secret is finally confirmed proper-like. Bioware KOTOR (+300 years) MMO, The Old Republic, has been announced today. There’s plenty more screens on the site and I’ll lob the press release beneath the cut, but this is really the sort of thing which makes me think creating an RPS code where if we print rumours and use a certain code word (“Tartan”) it means we know this rumour is totally true and you shouldn’t even consider any other possibilities. Less cynically, they’ll be more theorising around it in the next few days – and I suspect more than a little in the comments thread. Until then, examine the press release or devour all the info on their site to feed your own theories.
LUCASARTS AND BIOWARE REVEAL STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC
OCTOBER 21, SAN FRANCISCO – LucasArts and BioWare™, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS), today announced the development of Star Wars®: The Old Republic™, a story-driven massively multiplayer online PC game set in the timeframe of the Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™ franchise. Star Wars: The Old Republic, being developed and published by BioWare and LucasArts, represents an innovative approach to interactive entertainment, featuring immersive storytelling, dynamic combat and intelligent companion characters.In Star Wars: The Old Republic, players will explore an age thousands of years before the rise of Darth Vader when war between the Old Republic and the Sith Empire divides the galaxy. Players can choose to play as Jedi, Sith, or a variety of other classic Star Wars roles, defining their personal story and determining their path down the light or dark side of the Force. Along the way, players will befriend courageous companions who will fight at their side or possibly betray them, based on the players’ actions. Players can also choose to team up with friends to battle enemies and overcome incredible challenges using dynamic Star Wars combat.
“Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is the most critically acclaimed Star Wars game in LucasArts history and a preeminent example of our company’s interactive storytelling heritage,” said Darrell Rodriguez, President of LucasArts. “For a long time, we’ve wanted to return to the franchise in a grand way, and we felt that the best setting for it was an online world that would allow millions of people to participate in the experience together. We knew that the developer capable of working with us to deliver an engrossing story with a fully-realized online world was BioWare.”
“Traditionally, massively multiplayer online games have been about three basic gameplay pillars – combat, exploration and character progression,” said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Co-Founder and General Manager/CEO of BioWare and General Manager/Vice President of Electronic Arts Inc., “In Star Wars: The Old Republic, we’re fusing BioWare’s heritage of critically-acclaimed storytelling with the amazing pedigree of Lucasfilm and LucasArts, and adding a brand-new fourth pillar to the equation – story. At the same time, we will still deliver all the fun features and activities that fans have come to expect in a triple-A massively multiplayer online game. To top it all off, Star Wars: The Old Republic is set in a very exciting, dynamic period in the Star Wars universe.”
Added Dr. Greg Zeschuk, Co-Founder and Vice President Development Operations, BioWare and Vice President, Electronic Arts Inc., “Star Wars: The Old Republic is set roughly 300 years after the events of Knights of the Old Republic, a timeframe that is completely unexplored in the lore. BioWare has been able to add to the Star Wars history in developing the game’s story and has created an overarching narrative that players can enjoy, regardless of their play style. Our goal is to offer players an emotionally rewarding experience that combines the traditional elements of MMO gameplay with innovations in story and character development.”
Additional details on Star Wars: The Old Republic features, gameplay and release date will be announced at a later time. For more information about Star Wars: The Old Republic and to sign up for future product updates, please visit www.StarWarsTheOldRepublic.com.
Well I for one saw this coming a parsec off.
Can’t wait.
report
Glad to see a news post about this :) I been waiting all day, checking sites all frikking day. It sounds pretty cool, I am sure it will be better by the time of release and it’s Bioware…have they ever released a bad game? KOTOR, Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale. Some of my favourite games :)
Can’t wait.
report
But will it be canon? That’s the question. Has to fit into Wookiepedia’s timeline, or the angry internet men will be, well, angry.
report
George Lucas, you’re already a billionaire. Why do you keep trying to squeeze every last penny out of your franchises?
Please do The Old Republic better than The Force Unleashed. The Star Wars name still has a small iota of remaining reputation. Try to live up to it.
report
Yes, they have. In fact, I’d say at least 50% of their games have been bad if you don’t belong to the segment of the population for whom the D&D license *automatically* translates into “bestgameevar”
Anyway, I’m disappointed they haven’t answered the Jedi Question… How the hell are they gonna handle jedi? Oh well, it can’t go any worse than SWG, and SWG was fun. So overall, I’m looking forward to this. :p
report
Didn’t KotOR use a Star Wars RPG system rather than a direct D&D one?
And clearly they will handle Jedi by making them significantly weaker than everyone else to account for the fact that there will be more Jedi than stars in the Universe.
report
I’ll confess, my optimism kind of took a dive after reading the “fourth pillar” bit. It appears that they completely missed the EVE boat (“MMOs are about creating interesting player interactions!”) and decided to go the “shoehorn a single-player campaign-ish experience into a persistent multiplayer world” route. Which has never, ever ever gone well.
I don’t want to start bashing a game before I know more than the vaguest things about it, but DEVELOPERS:
Your greatest resource in an MMO is your players! They are important, because they are dynamically creating content for every other player that comes into contact with them. This is why full, busy MMOs keep getting fuller and busier, and empty ones slide off the map.
Using the players as a resource to make the OTHER players experiences more fun is a cool thing to do! Designing a game to cater to each player individually as if the others aren’t there is squandering that resource! Not only does it make for a worse game, it’s less efficient; if you set up the framework for player interaction, they’ll create your content for you, and will keep creating it indefinitely . . . but if you just provide a series of missions and quests for them to run through, they’ll use up your content quicker than you can make it.
It is the difference between having two people race, and having two people run on parallel treadmills.
report
Ah, I love KOTOR, but this is going to be a disaster. I can see it, I can see it in my mind… killing Revan, looting his Lightsaber of Doom + 9, and then he respawns in 10 minutes =’(
report
@TooNu: Bioware didn’t make any of the Icewind Dale games.
What strikes me as…interesting?…about this announcement is that they’re focusing on “innovating” the MMO space by focusing on some of the things that Bioware does least well – viz., complex narratives with branching, and story-driven stuff on a smaller level. (They often do okay with the macroscopic “epic” story stuff; where they fail is the smaller-scale stories of individual quests or characters, as RPS pointed out really cannily a month or so back.) Otoh, “Star Wars morality” is probably closer to “Bioware morality” than any other fictional setting save the Bible, so maybe some of Bioware’s narrative/creative weakness will be mitigated.
Basically, it seems to me that Bioware’s strengths are tailored to single-player experiences and not communal, massive game design. And their weaknesses may end up being far more exposed in an MMO than a single-player RPG.
report
Jalf: You’ve played KOTOR, right? They’ve got jedi all over the place, and while they prolly did have an edge over the non-jedi party characters, it wasn’t decisive. I think they can handle the jedi. They’re not stuck with the post-Empire-takeover “no jedi in canon but players want jedi” dilemma that was half (well, 30% maybe) of the problem in the SWG case.
report
I’ll repost my comments from the forum which were based of the 10 minute interview over at Gamespot: ( http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/starwarstheoldrepublic/video/6199708 )
They mention story a lot, which is something inevitable for Bioware, however I fear they will hit the same wall of any MMO, that you ultimately can’t change the world. One point that may redeem this though is that they seemed to suggest that a lot of this story was your character’s story, and that changes may have long reaching reprecussions. This could be extrodinarily interesting, if say the chance to backstab someone at level 3, comes back to haunt you as you play.
They also suggested that dark-side/light-side will be split from the sith/republic factions. This could be especially interesting if it also allows people to change faction. It might also prove interesting if you could turn on other members of your party in the middle of an ‘instance’ (Or however they approach it) although I can also see how this would be annoying.
Not sure how they’ll cope with having companions, It’ll look silly is everyone is running arround with their own HK-47 and Carth.
report
But will you be able to play as a Jawa – that’s the question. ;)
report
@suibhne: I don’t agree that Bioware can not do small-scale stories in RPGs. Jade Empire did not have a great story for its main arc, but it had lots of very well-told side quests. Quests like “The drowned orphans”, or “Aishi the Mournful Blade” in Jade Empire were very poignant short stories. This was precisely why the much less interesting side-quests in Mass Effect were such a disappointment.
report
I dunno, there are approaches you can possible take to mitigate the problem. Having different kinds of Jedi and forcing the player to specialise (Diplomatic consular, fighting defender, other style of fighting agressor), then go to great lengths to make the other kinds of character more compelling/interesting.
Then tweak to adjust for players not knowing what they want.
report
I have just noticed that I seem to like the word interesting a bit too much, especially as I seem to be using it to apply to ideas which probably aren’t interesting at all.
report
Meh. Make Jedi Academy in massive online form – where all you do is duel other players who lead AI armies in dynamic campaigns built around gigantic clashes that end in climactic lightsaber battles.
Seriously. Please do that, and stop trying to shoehorn people into the Star Wars universe as anything other than uber-powerful Jedi who need a good, physics-based, cinematic battle constantly raging.
I’d pay $30 a month for something like that.
report
Oh, Tartan? You mean, like cut-n-pasting stuff?
About this Bioware thing? We’ll see. Again, narrative may be the biggest cost item on the current money-making MMOs, but that’s not necessarily the way forward.
report
Yes, there’s not really a “Jedi Question” in the time of the Very Old Republic. At the very least, there’s still plenty of Jedi to go around back then.
But still. Whatever happened to finishing the KOTOR main trilogy?
report
Every Bioware game I’ve played from Neverwinter Nights onwards has left me cold. Having read the press release for Old Republic, I see no end in sight to this trend.
report
Not really have an opinion on the game itself, but I really like the art style. Very stylized.
report
Err, I meant “Don’t”. As in, “Don’t really have an opinion …”
report
What frightens me is that the Lucas Arts Exec said “we have experience about what players want in a Star Wars game and bring that to the table”. Hope not.
report
“A MMO”?
Fix that.
report
So, clearing Gungans out of a Cantina cellar at level one eh? Count me out.
report
If you’re going to base an MMO on story it’s going to have to be a loooong one. Thousands of hours.
report
KotOR doesn’t directly use D&D’s rules, but it is heavily derived from it. KotOR uses the rules of the Star Wars Role Playing Game, which is based on the d20 System, in turn based on Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition. According to Wikipedia “Most game mechanics [of the Star Wars RPG] are familiar to players of Dungeons & Dragons and other d20-based games”.
I certainly expect The Old Republic to be marketed as “the first d20 MMO!” or something along those lines to help draw in the P&P fan base. Wizards has been preparing for such a crossover for a long time now; they will be offering an online multiplayer environment called the D&D Game Table as part of the upcoming 4th Edition. It features text chat, hotkeys, and even has a subscription fee of some sort.
report
I’d be more impressed if their site functioned properly. Give me a basic website that functions over a gimmicky animated pile any day.
report
Cameo appearance from Jolee Bindo please.
report
Like many others, I got burned soooooo bad by SWG, that I can’t possibly get excited for this.
Yeah, I love Bioware. Yeah, I loved KOTOR (and didn’t hate the sequel). Yeah, I enjoy Star Wars, like any self-respecting nerd.
Still, the cynicism that was implanted in me by the massive fail of SWG is impossible to remove. It’s why I didn’t buy a PS3 (SWG = by Sony), and it’s why I will continue to be more excited for Heroes Online than for this.
report
I’d really like to see someone pull all sorts of innovation out of their backside and do story well in an MMO. Something tells me Bioware isn’t going to be the one to do it though. We’ll see how they do in 2010 (I’m guessing :D).
report
Wait, someone help me with my old republic lore here. This would be… before the Mandalorian war and Revan? Fuck, I wanted to play as a Mandalorian merc. More accurately, Canderous.
Wait, it says 300 years afterwards. After the exile? A second Sith army? Help, I’m confused.
report
Wait a second…
““Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is the most critically acclaimed Star Wars game in LucasArts history and a preeminent example of our company’s interactive storytelling heritage,” said Darrell Rodriguez, President of LucasArts.”
Our company? They had pretty much fuck all to do with the storytelling in KOTOR (hence it not being shite like every LucastArts game since I don’t know when).
report
@Colinmarc:
There’s a timeline on wookiepedia. Seems to indicate that the actions of the Exile in KotOR II signalled the end of the Sith purge of Jedi. One assumes that she (the canon Exile is female) and her apprentices formed a new Jedi Order, since Revan at that point was tooling around somewhere with Bastila. The timeline has a 450-year gap after the Exile’s entry into the canon before we see an entry about a Jedi being expelled from the order, changing his name to Darth Desolous, and forming a new Sith Empire that slaughters a ton of Jedi. I’d almost guarantee that this is where the MMO is set, because Desolous is a new character that Lucasfarts have made up as the boss in one of the Jedi Temple levels in the Wii version of The Force Unleashed.
As for the Mandalorians, I see no reason to assume you couldn’t be one. They’re one of the cooler parts of the Old Republic setting, for one thing, and their order survives past the films and into the New Jedi Order canon as well. They’re definitely still around at the beginning of the New Sith War (about 1000-1500 years after the KotOR period) and Canderous’ being titled ‘Mandalore the Preserver’ sort of indicates that his rallying them back together after the defeat of Mandalore the Ultimate by Revan was successful.
I am such a fucking nerd :(
report
Looks worse than JKII.
report
No Howard the Duck MMO? I’m disappointed.
report
Sadly the only way this game will be good is if George isn’t involved :(
report
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
*sobs*
report
See? It wasn’t that hard to say, Bioware. We all knew it already.
report
I must admit I share the sentiment that since Baldur’s Gate and the gradual switch to 3D, bioware have been losing something.
Something important.
That said the first Knights of the Old Republic seemed like a return to form, but the gameplay mechanics did feel slightly odd for reasons I’m sadly unable to quantify.
report
@ Noc
They don’t even believe the boat exists. The entire MMO development community is deliberately ignoring Eve. 99% of developers have not played it, and do not understand why it is significant. They have played World Of Warcraft, and their imaginative projects continue onward from there.
report
Tartan Lego Watchman
report
Does this mean they’re not making Baldur’s Gate 3?
Awww.
report
This is going to be Age of Conan 2.. Singleplayer game with a chatbox. Why not just make KOTOR with a coop mode where you can find other players in a lobby, oh wait, that’s what it’s gonna be, but done badly…
Would be far more fun if that was what they set out to do. Once they cross the MMO barrier they have to go one further and end up in a wasteland of: mmo..no.. sp rpg, no wait.. mmo.. no.. no open world, so .. what the hell is this game??
Do not have high hopes for this. And by the way, the kotor games are 95% plot and 5% actual gameplay. How that is going to work out in an MMO setting i have no idea.
Party hey guys wait up, i still haven’t read all the text. I’m on page 3
Party Whaaat? You read too slow, gtfo!!11
You have been removed from party.
2. Trade Slow readzor LFG!!
Sorry to be so negative.
- The voice of reason.
report
Think Interplay has the Baldur’s Gate license anyway. ‘Project Jefferson’ was BG3 but it got canned a while back.
Dunno if I like the character style, but it’s far too early to judge proper.
report
Crud.. the lower part of my rant i wrote names in < tags.. the names didn’t show.. hehe.
Jedi112: hey guys wait up, i still haven’t read all the text. I’m on page 3
Skywalkrxxoxx: Whaaat? You read too slow, gtfo!!11
You have been removed from party.
Jedi112: Slow readzor LFG!!
There.
report
The most important question regarding any Star Wars based MMO, will I be able to play as a sith wookie?
If not, then I don’t care for this game.
report
I’m somewhat indifferent towards the announcement. If they actually manage to implement a decent story into the mix which MMOs have failed dramatically to do so far, it might stand a chance. Companions might prove interesting too I guess.
But so far all I’m left thinking is “where is KOTOR III”, and “where can I find Jolee Bindo in it”?
report
And despite them being awesome in KOTOR, I bet they wont let you play Droids.
Yes, I want to be something like G0-T0. Or the lovable T3-M4. HK-47 if they demand I be humanoid (yawn).
report
Hrmph. I’ll say this at the outset: this game needs to break new ground within the MMO genre. It can’t just reskin WoW or Everquest and expect success. By which I mean the standard take-quest-do-quest-level-up system simply won’t cut it. In order to succeed TOR (I think I like the acronym) has to have a bevy of new ideas and… I’m not yet convinced it will.
Breaks new ground in storytelling? Eve broke new ground in story telling. So did Elite/Frontier. So did Total War. And no-one wrote those stories. They just happened.
report
To those saying that you can’t “change the world” in an MMO: play the new WoW addon when it’s released. There’s several questlines where you quite literally change the world, and the effects are permanent. It’s ingenious the way in which Blizzard do this (they’re calling it “phasing” technology) and it’s incredibly effective in making the player feel an important part of the story.
I love most Bioware games, so I’ll set my hopes to “moderate” that this will turn out well, and await proper previews…
report
It’d be tempting to create and account just so you could accost total strangers, tell them that my sister was raped and has became pregnant, then ask them to decide if my sister should have an abortion or not.
report
I think I agree with Bobsy about the story arcs that games produce by themselves through the players. EVE is a fine example of this and though Jim reckons the majority of Dev’s out there ignore EVE it is hard to imagine that with such a game, rich and gripping stories have emerged purely from the player base.
SW:TOR (what a crap acronym) however seems to me that it would be more or less single player story driven, with a plot ready for you to go through. Albeit in several different paths but I would say with 1 inevitable conclusion so that the player base is kept on the same path for interaction reasons. It would be silly to have a KOTOR style game in an MMO if some people ended up doing one thing and others did something completly different , the whole MMO universe would then have 5000+ very important story arcs.
report
Oh, and Wookieepedia sounds revolting. Gah. No. Just no.
report
The thing with Eve is that although there is, technically, a story (i.e. the friction/conflict between the different factions), it’s mostly just wallpaper – it doesn’t really contribute to a great deal to the player experience (after the first couple of weeks anyway)
A prime example of this is the pretty much any group (Squad/Corp/Alliance/whatever) will be comprised of players from multiple factions – factions that are supposed to be enemies (according to the story).
report
People still like Star Wars? I thought Lucasarts had managed to finally get rid of their last 2 fans.
report
A multiplayer game with a storyline?
MUAHAHAHAHA.. what is that? cutscenes in my quake arena?
report
Ergates: That’s not the story in Eve. that’s just the backdrop, and pretty irrelavent. The story, the plot, is the constant interfaction rivalry, the player-owned systems, the great wars between corporate empires, the small-time businesspeople getting caught in the middle, the backstabbing, assassinations, political rivalries and military arms races.
report
I’ve played EVE quite a lot, I even played the beta, but I don’t get why you guys think it’s that different from any other MMOs
No it doesn’t have classes but the game is still just about grinding for better stuff, except at a slower pace. Yes there’s some interesting player interaction mechanics, but they don’t work that well in practice.
The player driven economy is neat, but it doesn’t have much of an impact on the game. There’s so much abundance that you can’t really manipulate the economy, so for most players it doesn’t make a difference. It could just as well be NPC based
Corporation wars are nice in theory but the game just can’t handle them. If you think getting lagged out for two hours and then being dead is a game that works then you’re wrong.
Emphasizing player interaction is the future of MMOs, but EVE really doesn’t do it all that much better.
report
Bobsy – that’s what I was aiming at – I just used the word ‘story’ to refer to the bit that CCP provides, rather than the bit that actually matters.
report
Anyone have insider info on who the chick is who you sleep with and get betrayed by in this one?
report
Forgot that it’s on one server… that’s a big deal of course but it wouldn’t work for WoW-likes. Works well when you can make a universe that’s infinite in size
report
Quietly confident that they are going to make a great game, I would quite like to see some Sith vs Jedi pvp action in there but we shall see what they come up with in a couple of years.
report
Tell that to the 160-man battle we had on Saturday night.
Needless to say, Teo, I think you are entirely wrong. While Eve includes grind and PvE elements, the player interactions are the most interesting aspect of the game, and they do have a massive impact on the game world. The wars, the scams, the politics, and my five year play time attest to that.
It’s flawed, of course, utterly broken in some ways, but it’s still the closest that MMO’s have come to actually fulfilling the “persistent world” promise.
Also this.
report
I hope it’s rubbish. I really do. Because I can’t play this and WoW at the same time. I need *some* sleep…
report
It depends what you want from your story, I suppose. If you want a classic “seven stories” narrative then no, Eve’s players probably aren’t going to provide it, but if you’re willing to look at it in terms of the trials and tribulations of groups of people then there are some fantastic stories out there. My own corporation has had some fantastic adventures thanks to Eve’s player-base, even if they’re not classic stories.
report
Griiiiiiindfest! Searching for gameplay!
I have no doubt that this will simply be the bog-standard WoW template (with a few largely insignificant differences) but with Star Wars decoration.
Meh!
report
@Ergates: Well that’s what I’m getting at – the two shouldn’t be seperated. Just because it happens live rather was pre-written then implemented makes it no less relavent. Eve’s ‘live’ story is actually in many ways superior to anything written, scripted and acted out by Blizzard or Cryptic employees.
report
sorry to be an ass but wouldn’t you say ‘an’ MMO ? I always have..
report
I would rather this just be single player.
report
Christ alive, a developer with a long and distinguished tradition in single player RPGs tries to try genre which could definitely use a fresh perspective, and what’s the reaction?
“How dare they be different! I hate it!”
report
Yeah, started Meh-ing when they got to the 4th Pillar crap. I dont play MMO’s to enjoy a set storyline, and the fear is that emphasis on the story might slow down the game.
Hell, I can’t put my thoughts into words properly. Should Storyline be its own ‘Pillar’, or should it facilitate the other three? Am I talking bollocks?
report
@ Dante: Haven’t you realised yet that the good people of gaming want radical change and no change at all at the exact same time?
report
@AbyssUK
Maybe they are using a Yhatzee inspired pronunciation, which I guess would be muhmo for the first three letters, rather than em-em-oh.
report
I must admit I’m not sure why there is such excitement over this. I was rather disappointed with KoToR, which I only played and completed for the first time this year, because (a) I saw the big surprise coming a mile off and (b) couldn’t complete any of the sidekicks’ quest due to bugs (http://swforums.bioware.com/myviewtopic.html?topic=645367&forum=76). Even Vampire: Bloodlines wasn’t that broken.
I mean, we’ve already had a Star Wars-themed MMO, and that didn’t appear to do too well, because everyone wanted to be a Jedi, until everyone wasa Jedi, at which point it got silly. And I realise I may lose any geek credentials I possess, but {small voice}the extended Star Wars universe really isn’t that interesting{/small voice}.
P.
report
@Bobsy: You do realise we’re actually agreeing with each other, right?
report
Look, I’m all for player narratives as opposed to scripted narratives. I don’t think scripted narratives belong in games
Stories of what you did in games are much more powerful than someone sticking a movie or a book in your face while you’re playing a game. Even Dwarf Fortress is more powerful than that (I shouldn’t say ‘even’). Dwarf Fortress gives birth to the most amazing stories as long as you’re willing to fill in some of the blanks with your imagination.
Aren’t games better that way? Having a 1 million polygon character model doesn’t make him more real to me, it’s more like the opposite. Having something more abstract is better for your imagination and games are about imagination and not reality
Anyway, that was a tangent. I think the stories of what players do in EVE are great! It’s much like the older MMOs like UO where you could just do more stuff to other players. 180 man battle, great! The scope of the game encourages battles much larger than that and they’re broken.
Okay, so that doesn’t matter to you because you can still have your 180 man battle and love it and you wish more MMOs provided experiences like that. I can’t really argue with that
All MMOs still suffer from one fundamental problem though: the reason that most people keep playing is that they get invested in stuff and start caring, but to get to that point you have to put in an injustifiable amount of time into the game. That time that you put in is what makes you invested, and it’s a waste of anyone’s life
No one should ever grind for shit EVER
report
@ Paul Moloney:
“And I realise I may lose any geek credentials I possess, but {small voice}the extended Star Wars universe really isn’t that interesting{/small voice}.”
What I’d say based on stuff I’ve read(like on the internet, rather than actual books)/played/etc, is that there’s enough interesting stuff that is quite good. There’s too much stuff out there for it not to have its fair share of utter garbage but I reckon there’s lots to work with.
report
I don’t agree that scripted narratives don’t belong in games.
Both scripted and unscripted stories/play/whatever have their place, and the games world would be a poorer place without them.
We’re in serious danger of entering into a Ludology vs Naratology debate here, and if that happens someone will say “Mimesis” and all hell will break loose!
report
That’s too subjective to be an argument against MMOs. Most MMO players would argue that this is a reason why they find the games so rewarding. The investment I’ve made in my Eve corporation has certainly been one of the most rewarding game experiences of my life. The same was true of running a Quake III clan, a game which had no grind at all.
report
Jim Rossignol: “While Eve includes grind and PvE elements, the player interactions are the most interesting aspect of the game, and they do have a massive impact on the game world. The wars, the scams, the politics, and my five year play time attest to that.
It’s flawed, of course, utterly broken in some ways, but it’s still the closest that MMO’s have come to actually fulfilling the “persistent world” promise.”
I’m in the odd position of not thinking EVE is very good, but agreeing with you about it’s promise. In my couple of months in EVE (NPC corp then EVE university) I saw the potential for everything you say, but none of it ever actually happened to me.
I didn’t get involved in any corp politics, because I’m not a corp bigwig and probably wouldn’t be for at least a year. The famous Guiding Hand Social Club scam, possibly the coolest thing ever to happen in gaming, involved maybe 20 people out of maybe 200000 subscribers — you had a 1 in 10000 chance of being involved that. And the 0.0 sandbox corps (where the “emergent story” stuff is likeliest to happen) mostly ask for 5 or 10 million skill points, sometimes 20 million, just to join at the bottom of the heap.
And so it seems to me that EVE is a great big machine that grinds out some interesting stories, including one or two per year which are worth writing up for a gaming mag. But most people are very small cogs in that very big machine, toiling away, rubbing one or two adjacent cogs. Maybe 1-10% are making things happen on a regular basis.
As for fleet battles, they have the potential to be thrilling and fascinating. I heard the blood pounding in my ears on my first few outings as a tackler, and I saw some cool tactical manoeuvres like warping hidden reserves into a fight once the enemy fleet controller had called targets and committed his people. But I waited hours for those blood pumping moments — I’ve been in a fleet that spent two and a quarter hours forming up as vital members went off to walk the dog or whatever. And only a fraction of players in EVE can be the FC to get the full joy of the tactics.
These seem to be fundamental, intrinsic problems of MMORPGs as compared to singleplayer RPGs. Most people can’t be in charge, so their tactical itches will go unscratched. Most people can’t change the world, even locally, so their yearnings for epic story go unfulfilled. Most people don’t want to play for the same two hour slot on a Saturday afternoon, so they can’t form a balanced group in a game that favours specific mixes of tank/damage/heal/scout/ crowd control etc without lots of waiting.
I don’t think the big open sandbox of EVE is any sort of solution to this problem. A solution is more likely to come from fiendishly clever use of instancing to let world-changing stories play out for more than 50 people, from game mechanics that make ad hoc character mixes viable in combat, and from radically improved matchmaking between players.
report
@ Ian
The odd think is, Bioware are actually offering radical change (KOTOR MMO), evolutionary change (Mass Effect) and back to your roots retro-ness (Dragon Age) all at the same time.
And you know what? They’re just getting flack for all three, sometimes I wonder why they bother.
report
@ Morte, you might be right, but I do think you under-estimate just how many people get involved in the interesting bits of Eve.
I think the crucial problem with Eve is that the difficult, messy game world clouds the principles that actually make it interesting as a sandbox. I don’t think the game itself is a solution to the problems of MMOs – because it’s ludicrously inaccessible – but I do think it points the way to a game where player-interaction powers the events of the world, rather than any kind of developer-designed event.
The player-driven events in games have always had far more value for me than any created by developers, except perhaps the very best single player experiences.
report
Garrett: d20 no longer exists, it’s all 4th Edition now, so a rule set change seems likely.
report
SW:TOR is a crap acronym, I propose adding another O, making it SWO:TOR (pronounced swohtor)
I’m not going to make any comment on the game itself as there is too little information to make any assumptions as yet.
report
Whilst Eve certainly isn’t the easiest game to get into, it’s a mistake to think you have to be involved at the highest level to get anything out.
The Corp I was in was relatively small Eve wise (Statecorp ftw!), and certainly didn’t have any entry requirements (I joined within days of starting Eve). We were still involved in some large conflicts. Fleet battles don’t have to be 150+ ships large to be fun either – some of the best times I had were ragging around enemy territory with a small group in small ships.
I still miss it sometimes – but the constant state of war just ground me down.
report
Dante: You make an interesting point there actually. I don’t envy developers much.
EDIT: A MMO is actually grammatically right. An MMO is what people tend to use because it’s easier to pronounce. For once, I went with the correct thing rather than the fun thing.
KG
report
Setting it in that time period goes some way of solving the ‘everyone wants to be Jedi’ quandry I guess.
Fingers crossed it is going to be something other than the standard point and click snorefest.
report
@morte
I think you just described the problem with life in general. Eve emulates life and so becomes a chore for the majority, the fun is where and what you make of it.
I think there’s lie propagated by fiction, whereby the best stories and most fullfilling ones are where they supposedly change or save the world. The most important part of any of those journeys is not that the person saved the world, it is that individuals journey. People dont want to change the world they just want to feel that they are in control of theirs and be part of an adventure.
The trouble with all this fiction is it raises expectations and no ones happy unless they are responsble for it all or have what the other person has.
report
I’m excited about this, but I just thought this morning, I would have been even more excited about a Mass Effect MMO. Totally independent IP, no pre-conceived notions with it, huge gameworld to expand with, it’d be excellent!
report
Jim: “I do think it points the way to a game where player-interaction powers the events of the world, rather than any kind of developer-designed event.”
Yes, that is certainly a desirable end. IMHO EVE demonstrates the desirability of that end more than it provides guidance as to how it might be achieved.
Getting back on topic, I can’t imagine Bioware (who brought us a werewolf lair that was empty of werewolves until an NPC gave you a quest to kill them) ever letting the players do more than jump through hoops. The only question is whether the hoops will be arranged in a mandatory order or you’ll get to choose your path through them.
It’s a good job pen and paper RPGs still exist…
report
“Most MMO players would argue that this is a reason why they find the games so rewarding. The investment I’ve made in my Eve corporation has certainly been one of the most rewarding game experiences of my life. The same was true of running a Quake III clan, a game which had no grind at all.”
I don’t think getting invested in something like a clan or a guild is the same thing as getting invested in the game itself.
Look, there are people who just do mining in EVE. Mining is a mind numbing exercise. I knew people who sat and mined every free moment they had. The reason they cared so much about their exhumers, or whatever they were flying, was that they had put so much time into getting them.
I’m sure they got a lot of satisfaction out of their exhumers, but… how much time did they waste sitting around and clicking a few hotkeys every 180 seconds? People sit for YEARS doing that. Just imagine what they could’ve done with that time. If they had read books during 1/4 of that time I promise you that it would’ve enriched their life a whole lot more.
Yes, they’re happy mining, but that’s because they don’t know any better. They get some kind of enjoyment out of it and all they have to do is press a button. It’s easy! What they get out of it in relation to how much time they put into it is horrible though. I know very well that people play MMOs in a wide variety of ways but I do know that too many people sit around for hours and hours and hours on end doing mind numbing stuff just to get virtual rewards, be it ore or gold. Some people just raid in WoW and love it, but too many people just waste their lives and I think it’s pretty depressing and a lot of games are designed to facilitate it
@Morte I agree that EVE isn’t a solution but I still think player interaction, it could be competitive or collaborative, is the future. The things people love in MMOs is what they did with other players. Doing a 40 man raid will always be more powerful than getting your own not-so-personal narrative. If BioWare think they can make MMOs about stories I think they’re sorely mistaken.
I think stories are a hard fit in normal games, and multiplayer games emphasize even more what makes them a hard fit in single player games. If they were making Counter-Strike 2 with a story I wouldn’t care either
report
@Kieron My mother toungue isn’t English and you (PCG staffers) bascially taught me English (I started reading it when I was 12 and barely knew a word!) but I think you’re wrong :p
To my knowledge the article is determined by the pronunciation and not the spelling. For example “a yellow car” even though ‘y’ is a vowel
..
found a link!
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/hotel
http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/anma
report
“Some people just raid in WoW and love it, but too many people just waste their lives and I think it’s pretty depressing and a lot of games are designed to facilitate it”
And now you’re arguing that games companies should aim to produce product which is morally and socially benevolent rather than that which makes the most money. Ultimately people still make the choice to play, so it can’t be that horrific.
report
I think theres potential for an action MMO, something that mixes the moment to moment gameplay of something more like fable, with the larger sense of ‘world’ that you get in typical MMOs.
Because its Bioware, I’ll keep my eye on this, but because its Bioware, I’ll maintain a healthy level scepticism and optimism.
report
It seems to me that people are discussing the difference between a story (which Bioware are generally good at) and a narrative (which MMOs – Eve being a prime example – are generally good at).
report
I added that facilitating part later Lu-Tze
Maybe I shouldn’t have =/
I don’t dislike the games for existing, I’m not into morals, but so many people just wasting so much time honestly makes me sad when I think about it
report
Yeah, there are two ways of doing it, but just about everyone goes with pronunciation-based. Which leads to silly situations, but that’s English all over.
“Buy a house in an hour.”
US: An herb garden
UK: A herb garden
(Sorry Bioware, your MMO is less interesting than grammar nerdery)
report
It’s is a saddening thought that people could be doing “more” with their lives, and once you’ve killed mainstream television i’ll join your crusade against MMOs.
What we need to do is tie that mechanic of wanting to do some simple repetitive task for some virtual bar of gold into finding a cure for cancer or something. Like that image tag guessing game did.
report
You could argue that, yes. Let’s go with it, let’s say jedi are no more powerful than other classes (roughly speaking).
That still doesn’t stop 98% of the player base from wanting to play jedi. Everyone wants a lightsaber, that’s just how it is. One of the fundamental forces of nature. It’s like gravity, people are attracted to lightsabers. So even if jedi are only slightly more powerful than everyone else, we’ll *still* end up with a galaxy populated entirely by jedi. True, they may not be overpowered jedi, but it’ll still look a bit repetetive, won’t it? ;)
report
Lu-Tze
I haven’t watched TV in 18 months =)
report
argh no edit…
I agree with your last point
report
“What we need to do is tie that mechanic of wanting to do some simple repetitive task for some virtual bar of gold into finding a cure for cancer or something. Like that image tag guessing game did.”
Or the folding@home stuff – turning peoples hobby (making their computers go faster), into a competative sport whilst simultaineously helping medical research (in theory).
report
@mandrill
Actually, SW:TOR would be pronounced ‘Sootor’ , because that ‘W’ is, after all, a double u sound (think Welsh like ‘cwm’) :)
report
Does any one else feel dirty when they said “Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™ franchise”
I feel monetised in a bad way.
report
Well, I’m going to be that bad guy here and say I’m extremely excited. I love the Old Republic setting, for one, and Bioware has an awesome track record.
report
I liked the fleshed out EU, it’s much better than evil dude’s committing evil for no other purpose than to be dicks. Moral relativism gets tedious, but I’d rather suffer wades of that, than;
Joe Schmo: Why’d you blow up my planet!?
Sith: ’cause we are teh sith!1! gimme more monies!! grr!
In any case, as long as they have a reason for 100 Jedi’s running around I’m one foot on board.
report
@teo a while back
You mention the contrast between scripted and more dynamic narratives and bring up Dwarf Fortress as an example. Yes, its a good example, but my problem is that it the only example I can think of where an evolving narrative has truly worked. I know some people claimed to get that feeling from the free form bits of Oblivion, but I’m afraid I just didn’t feel it.
I feel one way Dwarf Fortress managed to achieve this was by making everything yours, the world, the dwarves, the fortress, the history. It also forces you forward, and encourages risk taking and possible failure. When I flooded a bit of my fortress I didn’t just shrug and re-load but fought to save it. And similarly when an invasion triggered a spiral of depression I ended up laughing as my woodcutter broke into a party in the main hall and killed everyone there. The fact that it was MY main hall, MY Woodcutter and in a world which would forever more be mine it felt important. I never connected with Oblivion in the same way.
I really love some of the major stories that come out of Eve, and for that reason it will be my favourite game I’ll never play. The mechanics don’t appeal to me, and the grunt-work that I’d inevitably end up involved in doesn’t interest, but there is certainly an inspiration there.
However ultimately I disagree that scripted narrative does not belong in games. While the sheer complexity of Dwarf Fortress means that the randomiser can actually produce an interesting history (especially with some of the more recent changes) it will never quite capture some of the intricacies a more scripted narrative can provide. Any attempts at analogy, symbolism, or to a lesser extent foreshadowing, are going to be extraordinarily difficult to achieve in a dynamic manner. I realise that games aren’t books, and don’t have to follow the same rules, but just because they don’t have to, doesn’t necessarily mean they shouldn’t. However this comes from someone who is still a great fan of the old graphic adventure, a genre which embodies game mechanic at the service of pre-scripted narrative more than any other. (Although I actually do enjoy the game mechanic as well, at least in a well designed adventure. Although they did suffer the growth of the Internet, especially if Alt-Tab works)
report
I agree that it’s a pity that other developers don’t look at the Eve model of ongoing persistence, but at the same time one of the reasons I’ve never really given it much of a look myself is because it is just one great big improv playpen, and in such affairs in order to be truly influential the necessary personal investment firmly crosses the line of obsession in my experience. Sure it would be great to lead a clan to stunning success and weave tales of personal glory and ‘I was there’ camaraderie into a unique narrative that other MMO games simply can’t achieve, but the time sink is unhealthy.
report
DF is great on many levels. One important thing that it does is that it forsakes graphics for gameplay. The gameplay in most modern games is limited by presentation standards. For example, you cannot have fully destructible scenery in a shooter because you simply cannot visualize it. You can only have scripted conversations and stories because you can’t generate speech procedurally.
Look at Spore. One of the biggest technical challenges in that game was the procedural animation. They did a good job, but there’s so much more that could’ve been done if your creature didn’t have to be an animated 3D model.
I played Crysis maxed out. I didn’t enjoy it more than I do Half-Life on my 10th play through. Graphics don’t matter to me, I think that they should be subordinate to gameplay. Whatever I’m seeing on the screen is never real. However real it looks I still have to use my imagination.
When I mentioned non-scripted narrative I didn’t mean the backstory of your DF world. Of course that isn’t going to be as interesting as a story written by a writer. With non-scripted narrative I mean stories that emerge as you play the game and with scripted narrative I mean something written by a writer (just so we’re on the same page! I’m sure you got it anyway :p)
What do I mean with scripted narrative not belonging in games? Well, I think that games can have story to give context to gameplay but games aren’t about story and no one has figured out how to tell stories in games. Until someone does, I don’t think they belong.
If you look at games and then gradually introduce story you realize how absurd it is. Games are about gameplay, about playing the game. If you look at a really simple game, say Tetris, then the gameplay is all there is. It can be fun and it contains the fundamentals of what a game is. If the gameplay isn’t fun in a game then it is, in my opinion, a bad game. A lot of games have forgotten that. Designing fun gameplay is incredibly hard and not many people know how to.
Adding a story to Tetris is absurd, I’m sure you would agree. It’s just a game, like table tennis. Adding a story to a table tennis match would be equally absurd. Now, take something like an FPS. It’s also a game and it should be about gameplay. The fundamental interaction is the point of the software. Running around shooting dudes is a game just like Tetris is, but then games stick movies in between levels. To me it’s just as absurd as sticking movies in between Tetris levels, table tennis sets, or chapters in a book.
To me it just makes no sense to stick movies and books in the middle of games, which is just what games do all the time. Games telling stories today isn’t games telling stories it’s books and movies interrupting games to tell stories. Some games do tell stories though, but not the ones we’re used to.
Here’s one:
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=21845.0
If you’ve played an MMO then I’m sure that you have lots of stories of stuff that just happened. If you’ve raided you will remember stories from that. If you’ve played a competitive game you will have stories from matches you played. Even in something ‘story driven’ like Deus Ex the interesting stories are the ones of how you chose to infiltrate the NSF base and not the fact that you did.
Games are about interactivity and they tell their own stories that way. Not scripted stories.
And about gameplay… most games seem to have forgotten what it is. Some games are fun just on the strength of their gameplay, the Civilization series for example, or Quake 3. Blizzard’s games are also good examples. What they do is that they tweak the gameplay until it is fun! Just having a bunch of “wouldn’t it be cool if”-ideas doesn’t make for fun gameplay. Too many games are only enjoyable until the novelty wears off.
When developers do find fun gameplay the results are incredible. Look at CoD4, people are playing it like crazy, because they actually made a game that’s fun to play on a fundamental level, and that doesn’t get old. That’s good gameplay.
report
Now that’s what I call a blanket statement. Story doesn’t belong in books either, because books are about educating the reader.
Or maybe, just maybe, there are multiple *types* of books, and similarly, multiple *types* of games. No, story doesn’t belong in Tetris or Pong. But Fallout would feel pretty shallow without a story. So would KOTOR, and for that matter, Half-life, Alpha Centauri and many many other games. All these games have scripted stories, and are all the better for it. Just because it’s a game doesn’t mean that static pre-generated content is banned. A game can be all sorts of things. Half the “off-line” games we played with our friends as kids had fairly intricate stories too. Surely there’s room for both types within the term “games”. Surely we can have both procedural/dynamic games where everything happens on the fly, and games that someone have actually designed to offer a specific experience, and tell a specific story.
I’ve seen plenty of examples of the latter, and a few that successfully pulled off the former as well. So why shouldn’t *both* “belong in games”?
report
Tell me a scripted narrative in a game that wasn’t told through books or movies
Portal maybe, but that’s an exceptional game
I liked the story in KotOR, but if I were to reason with the principles I established then it’s a bad game. The gameplay is bad, it really is. The UI is horrible.
Presumably the story would’ve been presented better in a different medium because KotOR doesn’t take advantage over the fact that it’s a game. Being Revan makes you feel like a badass (in theory at least) but that’s the gameplay taking advantage of the story and no the other way around
report
Couldn’t the same question be applied to any medium though? I mean I can’t see anyone suggesting that there shouldn’t be a film because there’s a book with a similar plot. Perhaps I’m missing your point.
But in answer to your question I’d argue that Photopia was a heavily scripted game which would not have had the same impact in a non-interactive medium. The changing first person narrative forced you to look at the situation through a number of different peoples eyes, and the relationship was strengthened through the interactive element. Furthermore, the short length of game, and non-linear nature of the story made a replay highly profitable. Where this differed from a film such as memento, is that the constrained interactivity gave the player a sense of helplessness should they try to avoid the inevitable.
And I disagree that the gameplay in KotOR was terrible, but I’m not sure how that relates to your argument. If the story weren’t scripted this wouldn’t result in the gameplay suddenly improving, and without a significant ammount of work, it would result in an inferior narrative experience.
Don’t get me wrong, I think a smoother intergration of gameplay and story will almost always be a Good Thing(TM), however I disagree that a complete movement away from scripted narrative is the way to achieve this. I also think that to have cohesive and meaningful stories arrise out of gameplay alone is a vastly more difficult task that you seem to be implying.
report
The story makes the game for me, unless the gameplay is top notch. Like Peggle and such. A strong score in one field makes up for a potentially failing other.
Tetris is perfect as is, so it really doesn’t need a story.
Kotor, I’d agree needs work, but story is great so I enjoy the game greatly. More so with 2.
I would hesitate to recommend DMC to anyone, because while I think it’s fun, I think Dante is an unlikable douche.
report
“I mean I can’t see anyone suggesting that there shouldn’t be a film because there’s a book with a similar plot. Perhaps I’m missing your point.” I suppose that’s a fair point. But a book would tell it in a way that’s different from a movie. I don’t feel that games really do. Whenever there’s storytelling the game part tends to go out the window. I don’t want long cutscenes in a game because I want to play the game not watch the movie of the game!
“And I disagree that the gameplay in KotOR was terrible, but I’m not sure how that relates to your argument. If the story weren’t scripted this wouldn’t result in the gameplay suddenly improving, and without a significant ammount of work, it would result in an inferior narrative experience.”
Yes it would! But why is it a game? If the game part of the game is rubbish then it shouldn’t be a game. Some people love JRPGs even though they admit that they only play the game for the story. Why are they playing a game then? If you want good stories games aren’t the place to get them
Of course the narrative experience would most likely suffer if you took out the took out the scripted narrative! But my point is that you should be playing a game because the gameplay is good. If you have a good story but bad gameplay then the story is better told elsewhere.
No you won’t get a story like KotOR’s from emergent gameplay, but you’ll still get stories that can be meaningful. I think that games don’t tell traditional stories as well as other mediums, because they just shoehorn other mediums in. Maybe they can tell them as well, but we’ll have to wait and see
Also, I know I’m talking in extremes, but that’s just because I want to convey how absurd I think cutscenes and the like are in games. I’ll have to check out that game you mentioned
report
“Yes it would! But why is it a game? If the game part of the game is rubbish then it shouldn’t be a game. Some people love JRPGs even though they admit that they only play the game for the story. Why are they playing a game then? If you want good stories games aren’t the place to get them”
Ehh, people play games for a myriad of reasons. I play games to be entertained and one of my friends plays to win. Winning is entertaining him, even if it’s something as minor as flash games on Newgrounds. He did not like FF12 because the time put into it isn’t worth the victory.
I can’t explain why I played so many JRPG’s over the years rather than read a book, I suspect it’s close to the reason why plenty of people who buy NFL/NBA/NHL 200X don’t play actual sports when they’re perfectly capable.
Their chance getting into a league is more plausible than me saving the world with an enchanted sword or even observing it.
report
But would you argue that if you took the story out of something like Half-Life it would improve the game?
Would you honestly prefer it, if instead of the Black Mesa introductory tram ride it just plonked you into the middle of an exploding lab with a crowbar and said “off you go then”. Is the narrative experience not part of the overall ‘package’?
report
Half-Life’s storytelling is very un-intrusive
A story can make a game better, I don’t deny that :p
Half-Life doesn’t decide to play you a movie or show you a book. The story mostly serves as the context, the game isn’t about the story. It’s all good!
report