By Jim Rossignol on October 22nd, 2008 at 12:52 pm.
So the new Star Wars MMO news is pouring in now, and I thought I’d have a little look at what’s known about it so far, and post some thoughts.
The thing that Bioware are most keen to emphasise is that this will be an MM that tells a story. They’re aiming to make this a game in which their classic RPG-creating skills will come to the fore, allowing MMO players to have a solo adventure of the highest standard. This is commendable, I suppose, at least if you set it against the backdrop of World Of Warcraft and the other big, quest-based MMOs. If The Old Republic is able to tell a lengthy, on-going story that encompasses our entire game life, rather than a series of multi-level bursts of questing narrative, then Bioware could be on to something.
What’s perhaps most intriguing about this focus on story is the announcement that players will have “companion characters” accompany them through the game. These are definitely not pets, but sidekicks or party-members, as seen on other full-blown single-player RPGs. Creative designer James Ohlen told Shacknews: “Companion characters–we want them to be more than pets, we want them to be virtual friends. We want you to interact with them and become friends with them. You’re gonna be able to customize your companion character in different ways. Your companion characters are going to be levelling up and getting different equipment.”
I have to admit that this intrigues me. I’ve long argued that NPCs will undergo a slow revolution in games, the point where they essentially become artificial people. Videogames are the one industry driving the commercial need for artificial life, and I suspect that it’s in projects like this that we’ll see advancements made. We’re already seeing signs of the artificial person in Turing Test-beating chatbots, and plot-driving emotive central characters like Alyx in the Half-Life games, but there’a hell of a lot more to come. When these elements all converge on a demand for believable not-people, then we’ll start to see players rating games in similar ways the way they rate friendships and interactions with other people. Of course I don’t believe that The Old Republic’s companion characters will manage more than another foundational fragment of this kind of future, but if they are a success then they will only inspire more work on NPCs in multiplayer games, and nudge us towards more sophisticated artificial people over time. If nothing else, I hope Bioware deck out The Old Republic world with believable, coherent NPCs, rather than the static quest dispensers we put up with elsewhere…
So we can safely assume that these NPCs will be tied into the story which, we are assured, can be played through solo. What many players will be intrigued to hear, however, is how PvP will factor into this. Realm versus realm conflict – between the Republic and the Sith – will also be tied into this big over-arching story that Bioware are so keen on. “This is Star Wars,” they assure us, and that means grand conflict between space empires. We’ll be fighting either as Sith or Jedi for the fate of the universe, and it’d be fun to think that if Bioware are really serious about a story with irreversible consequences, then maybe they’ll allow for the success or failures of RvR combats to actually end up changing something palpable in the world, rather than being a really big, long game of capture the flag.
Of course this notion of there being story-wrapped-PvP is nothing by vague promises for now. What is clear is that “gamers can even play it as a solo game“, which for a multi-player zealot like me is a little disheartening. I’m happy for my single-player and multi-player experiences to converge, but I want big brave MMOs to look at how to make the most of having thousands of people in a single game. If thousands of them are paying subscriptions to play a single player game, then you are doing it wrong. However good the story is, I can’t help feeling like people would rather have a single game that they could play co-op with chums, rather than have to deal with a subscription and an “OMG LoL”-spewing MMO universe.
Finally, as a child who was firmly rooted in the “Star Wars is best” camp, I feel somewhat disconnected from this attempt to make a Star Wars MMO. Whether or not the KoToR games were great RPGs is, for me, meaningless. The attraction of the Star Wars world is not the shiny space fantasy of the Republic, but the grungy dystopia of the Empire vs Alliance conflict. The repeated failure of the original Star Wars MMO was monumental and unforgiveable, but I don’t think the world of the original films should have been so readily discarded. The Old Republic might make a fine science fiction setting, and Bioware might just make a great leap for MMOs, but it’s still not the game that the original, treasured franchise deserves. That, I can’t help thinking, might now never show up.
22/10/2008 at 12:57 Thiefsie says:
“The Old Republic might make a fine science fiction setting, and Bioware might just make a great leap for MMOs, but it’s still not the game that the original, treasured franchise deserves. That, I can’t help thinking, might now never show up.”
Agreed, and I think I gave up on that game a long time ago.
22/10/2008 at 13:06 Maerd says:
Kinda sounds like some persistent world modules made for NWN, in SW universe.
22/10/2008 at 13:11 Calabi says:
If Alyx is held up as an example for great AI and a precursor for subsequent AI’s then we will still be in the dark ages for some time to come.
There’s been better AI before her and there is plenty better now, she is nothing but a parrot in a box, in fact thats insulting to a parrot, she’s nothing but a cuckoo clock. There is nothing in her that approaches the words Artificial Intelligence.
22/10/2008 at 13:12 Mogs says:
Playing it as a single player game is pure nonsense. MMOs should be striving towards players actions influencing both the story and the world in fundamental ways. I appreciate the technical challenges involved and that progress towards this end is likely to be very slow, but tailoring it for single player is a step in the WRONG direction.
22/10/2008 at 13:14 Dan Milburn says:
re: Playing MMOs as a single player game. This is exactly how my girlfriend plays WoW. I mean, she talks in guild chat, plays the auction house, does the occasional group quest but mostly has no interest in even doing instances, never mind raiding or PvP.
I don’t think she’s alone in that, and far from doing it wrong, I think it’s the fact that the game appeals to people who want to play in that way and still pay a subscription which is one of the factors in it’s success (if we define success to mean having lots of people playing and making large quantities of cash). Of course it’s not exploring the full potential of MMOs, but so what?
22/10/2008 at 13:14 Sam says:
Re: artificial people.
I am a little nervous about how well this can work – Alyx only interacts well with you in HL2 + Episodes because she responds generally to the confined and limited nature of the script. I suspect that it would be considerably harder to generalise this to the kind of open interaction that an MMO would demand.
As for chatbots almost winning the Turing Prize… have you tried conversing with the “almost winning” entry, Elbot? It seemed little better than Eliza to me, mostly failing to correctly parse my sentences and relying on “so, tell me about X” style responses overly. I’m not convinced we’re that close to reasonably interactive artificial people yet.
(On the other hand, people get attached to decidedly unintelligent “intelligent” things – there was a study that showed a significant fraction of Roomba owners named their Roomba, and some even made it clothing…)
22/10/2008 at 13:15 Jim Rossignol says:
@ Calabi: Alyx is great character design, not AI. It will take both to get good artificial people.
22/10/2008 at 13:17 Feet says:
… in a galaxy far, far away.
Sorry had to complete the quote. I’m not Star Wars zealot I enjoy the universe, I’ve read some of the books, I loved Tie Fighter and the story of the disintegration of the Empire and most of it’s generals. All this Old Republic stuff does not really conjure any kind of excitement in me.
22/10/2008 at 13:21 Trent_Z says:
I just hope this is more like City of Heores
and less like World of Warcraft.
Also, I hope this is nothing like Star Wars Galaxies; that game is a shining example of how not to do a MMO.
22/10/2008 at 13:22 Meat Circus says:
“If The Old Republic is able to tell a lengthy, on-going story that encompasses our entire game life, rather than a series of multi-level bursts of questing narrative, then Bioware could be on to something.”
Yeah, but it won’t.
It’ll be a WoW clone with light sabres. Let’s not delude ourselves otherwise.
22/10/2008 at 13:29 Ginger Yellow says:
“The attraction of the Star Wars world is not the shiny space fantasy of the Republic, but the grungy dystopia of the Empire vs Alliance conflict.”
Really? I mean, in the original films there’s almost no exposition of what daily life is like for most people under the Empire or the Alliance. As dystopias go, it’s remarkably unfleshed out. Compare it to Bladerunner, say, or Firefly-Serenity for the Empire/Rebel dichotomy. And say what you like about the new films, they do cover that angle much more.
22/10/2008 at 13:31 The Sombrero Kid says:
@Calabi alyx is a good simulacra from a presentation perspective they AI in her facial animation and body language is the best there is with regards to presenting a human on the surface, her higher level decision making is on rails true but there’s more to work than just I’ve got to move around and shoot and we need both.
22/10/2008 at 13:36 Sam says:
@The Sombrero Kid:
There is no “AI” in Alyx’s facial animation and body language – that’s mostly scripted or based on keying to the sound files being played. So, she’s a lovely, very much non-AI simulacrum.
22/10/2008 at 13:40 aldo_14 says:
I mean, in the original films there’s almost no exposition of what daily life is like for most people under the Empire or the Alliance. As dystopias go, it’s remarkably unfleshed out. Compare it to Bladerunner, say, or Firefly-Serenity for the Empire/Rebel dichotomy. And say what you like about the new films, they do cover that angle much more.
Maybe that’s why they’re worse?
22/10/2008 at 13:44 Babs says:
You’re talking about X-Wing/Tie Fighter 2 right?
22/10/2008 at 13:46 The Sombrero Kid says:
@Sam
they use a tool to design face states and link them to loads of different triggers but the don’t design the animation just the result and the lip syncing is procedural, the two combine to make a largly automated facial animation system, the most complex in any game to my knowledge.
22/10/2008 at 13:47 Dante says:
@ Meat Circus
Because that sounds like Bioware *rolls eyes*
Still, good to know you’re still getting in your daily WoWbash.
22/10/2008 at 13:53 schizoslayer says:
I can’t help but feel that this is heralding a dark age for MMO development. Eve is standing alone in the camp of “What does having thousands of players interacting actually mean?” while everybody else is trying to make MMOs more like Single Player games.
Having Virtual Companions sounds like an attempt to remove other people from the gameplay experience in order to strengthen “The story”. Something that alot of MMO players happily ignore (I never actually read quest text in WAR I just check the rewards and click accept, complete the objectives and hand it in.)
Eve and in a wierd way Counterstrike have proved that the key to longevity of product is in fostering the interactions between real people. Having people interacting in interesting and meaningful ways (to them not always to the universe) constantly generates an amount of content that no number of writers could hope to generate that has a far more personal implication for the player.
To try and further turn an MMO into a Single Player experience (something that was responsible for me cancelling my Age of Conan sub) is to miss the point of the MM part of the genre.
That’s not to say they won’t make money from it. They might. It’s just it’s taking us further away from what makes MMO’s interesting to me.
22/10/2008 at 13:54 Meat Circus says:
The damage that WoW has done to the nascent arena of virtual worlds is immense. You only have to read Bioware’s wrong-headed ideas of what an MMO is to see that.
22/10/2008 at 13:56 Conquests.of. says:
I agree entirely with Mr Rossignol, there’s something extremely wrong in a MMO that’s entirely played solo, to the point of the paradox… and I also agree on the natural dislike of boring 3.500 years before the GOOD events happen, that’s disappointing too.
BUT, I don’t think The old Republic is really meant to be a SOLO game, it would be insane… I think the social interaction comes into play when your current “mission” (which I hope you don’t take off NPCS, please God no) conflicts with the other members of the coterie, and the way you have to cope with different scopes… IT’s sort of like Baldur’s gate core concept of relating to the party members, each had an objective and they would leave or fight you if your behaviour, alignment or aims were too contradictorial to theirs.
I think they’re building around this concept.
22/10/2008 at 13:57 Dan Harris says:
I choose to be optimistic about this, largely because KoToR itself was an excellent game.
Clearly there are elements which they could introduce which would make this a great game, and still a ‘proper’ MMO, where if the goal is to encourage players to play together, rather than against the game, there needs to be either rewards for doing so, or difficulties introduced by not – that’s a given.
Reward wise, easy – copy WAR. They’ve said there’s factions, they’re talking about RVR, so they can reward players for participating in RVR battles. I totally agree that this should have a lasting effect on the game world. One of the few flaws I see in WAR is that I’ve not noticed any real difference in my game experience between my faction controlling a zone, and the other guys having it (or neither). Maybe that’s just because I’m not that far into WAR yet…anyway.
The other hand, introducing difficulty, is more interesting. I can’t help thinking it would lend itself more to co-op play than real, honest to goodness multiplayer. How about you start on your home planet/territory/whatever, and after some story you find you need to go off-world.
But you have no ship. So you need to get a ship – you can either buy one (good guys) or steal one (bad guys). So make ships prohibitively expensive so that a single player can’t afford one for ages, so players pool their resources and buy a ship together. Bam – crewmates. Or make it tough as nails to steal a ship, meaning you need help. Once again, I say bam – crewmates.
And off you go adventuring through the galaxy.
What’s that, a distress call I hear? Land on planet. Save the scientists! (A la Mass Effect). With a bunch of other players who were also in the area, in some sort of ‘public quest’ format. That might catch on. Especially if you’re saving the scientists from players in the other faction – proper, integrated, PVP/RVR combat. And all because you stumbled across a planet.
Ace.
22/10/2008 at 13:58 Meat Circus says:
The last thing the MMO-space needs is another godawful massively single player WoWGrind of shitty doom.
So why are Bioware talking about creating one?
22/10/2008 at 14:00 Calabi says:
I admit visually she has the second best facial animations I’ve seen, first being Jeanette from Bloodlines. As a character though she’s a bit…. I cant think of the word but she panders to the player. She doesnt appear to have much character of her own.
22/10/2008 at 14:03 Conquests.of. says:
Having said that, I also agree on blaming WoW for the damage it made in MMO’ing, something they obviously didn’t expect, and have no fault o’course. Their extreme success stagnated gameplay evolution, now (since 2004) every SH starts building their own games off the (sure, solid) basis of WoW, nobody makes a MMO that’s really unique and is the entire product of their vision, instead it has to obey certain rules. Entering a town, searching quests, doing quests, get the reward, move on to another zone, so on. This is unarguably the very foundation of RPGs, but
1) It’s been repeated NOT in a generic acceptable way, but in the EXACT same way throughout every MMO.
2) It’s gotten old and smelly… it’s high time someone altered this dingy system.
22/10/2008 at 14:04 Dolphan says:
I technically have a Guild Wars account (Factions free with a magazine subscription) although I’ve played it once, so this may be just confusion – but didn’t they already do the everpresent NPC companions bit?
22/10/2008 at 14:10 Dan Harris says:
@ Dolphan:
Yup, Heroes.
22/10/2008 at 14:13 Fox1 says:
There’s actually a large population of MMO players who enjoy playing within a populated world full of other entities going about their business, doing unexpected things, creating an economy to be exploited and so on, but they don’t really want to pal around with other internet-folk or have their playing time dependent on others. It’s not about “playing like it’s a single player game,” it’s about being a lone adventurer within a multi-player game. For obvious reasons, they may not be well represented on online fora.
I’m willing to bet it’s a substantially larger group than you might think, and so I see nothing wrong with building portions of your MMO with those players in mind. If they’re ruling out major group-play features because they’re focusing on the loner demographic, that’s something that might be worth moaning about, but it seems premature at this point.
Also, Eve is a successful niche product, but it is still a niche product, and for good reason.
22/10/2008 at 14:14 kyrieee says:
Did you mean the turing test?
I certainly hope people’s future social interactions aren’t with chatbots. People should reevaluate what they want from games
22/10/2008 at 14:19 Radiant says:
““The Old Republic might make a fine science fiction setting, and Bioware might just make a great leap for MMOs, but it’s still not the game that the original, treasured franchise deserves. That, I can’t help thinking, might now never show up.”
Agreed, and I think I gave up on that game a long time ago.”
Thing is Star Wars’ base is so broad it is a lot of things to a lot of people.
The old films, the books, the new films, the cartoons and the direction they have taken the franchise.
I doubt there will be one thing that hits it all; the base is too broad.
22/10/2008 at 14:19 Rath says:
“However good the story is, I can’t help feeling like people would rather have a single game that they could play co-op with chums, rather than have to deal with a subscription and an “OMG LoL”-spewing MMO universe.”
–
That right there pretty much sums me up. I like my single player games, I want to know what happens next in the KotoR universe, I don’t want to have to put up with a bunch of crap from people so eager to out-run death itself that they justify “lol!!11! noob” with “It’s faster”, but there are a certain select number of people I know would be playing who I’d like to chat and trade with, possibly even in a role playing fashion, but in our circumstances there is no way a LAN would be possisible for this.
22/10/2008 at 14:20 schizoslayer says:
@ Dolphan
They did and the result was people forming groups asking who had the highest level version of a character so they could use it to fill the inevitably missing Healer they hadn’t managed to find as a player because nobody wants to be a healer.
However Guild Wars has a versy distinct difference between itself and other MMOs.
It has no subscription fee. You can play it as a single player game if you want and don’t have to worry about paying a tenner a month for playing on your own. Or you can play it with other people you know or against other people.
Much like any other regular non mmo that happens to have co-op and multiplayer.
It does tend to strike me that Bioware have figured that they end up building as much content as an MMO for their single player games with co-op and could do exactly the same thing again but this time charge a subscription.
22/10/2008 at 14:22 Malagate says:
@Dolphan, I was thinking that as well, but I would imagine that Bioware’s intent is to take them further than Guild Wars did. What they propose does sound neat…for a single player game with a co-op mode, for a MMO that’s not so interesting. I can imagine it being a system for getting around everyone wanting to be Jedi/Sith, as in if there was no companions then people would be forced to play as something without a lightsaber just to fill a much needed role in a group (i.e. a dedicated healer/hacker/pilot/Etiquette droid/whatever). With companions, everyone can happily run around hacking off each others limbs whilst still having their much needed group support. I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing.
I much prefer Dan Harris’ idea, that would be quite sweet, but it also includes part of the problem of having a Star Wars MMO: multi-genre. To make a full Star Wars game, you really need a combination of exploration, action, diplomacy, pitched battles and space flight sim/shooter. I doubt they could manage all that, just like no game has yet managed the freedom to play as a Sith Wookie.
Yes I won’t shut up about them, I just want to force lightning someone whilst gargling like a choking bear dammit. I would settle for a different creature as long as it was small and annoying, such as an Ewok with any class (as I would imagine asking for a Sith Ewok would be a step too far, but should still be totally possible).
22/10/2008 at 14:28 Morph says:
Not sure why people are immediately shouting ‘WoW clone!’. I mean there are so little details how can you tell? ‘Someone’s announced an MMO – it must be a WoW clone! Booo get some new ideas!’
If anything, this intrigues me far more than WoW (which I have no intention of ever playing) by the talk of the single player campaign. I’ve often quite wanted to play in a world where other people are going about their business around me, but without the hassle of actually interacting with these people, because this is the internet so a large number will be idiots. In other games it seems you have to band with others to progress, if you can do it alone I’m much more interested.
22/10/2008 at 14:33 Richard Beer says:
I was about to say what JR said further up this thread: Alyx is a triumph of writing and characterisation, not AI. Actually it’s a tribute to her creators that she could be mistaken for AI. Score one for Valve.
I think Bioware’s companions are a very interesting idea and, in fact, the issue goes to the heart of what makes an MMO. What really comprises a Massively Multiplayer Experience? Is it about sharing your gaming time with people doing the same thing? Is it about competing with these people and killing them? Is about being able to socialise while you game?
Ultimately, who are we to dictate how people should play? Why is a pure PVP-fest better than one that allows people to compete co-operatively against an AI and socialise all the while? Why should a dynamic, player-created environment be better than the ‘you’re the hero’ storyline and character development of an offline RPG like KOTOR or Mass Effect?
One of the reasons games like KOTOR and, to a lesser extent, Mass Effect strike such a chord is because they make us care about the ‘people’ playing the game with us, our quest companions. We invest emotionally in these characters and, when it’s done right, it’s as good an example of story-telling as in any genre.
Can you get this kind of creative immersion whilst raiding with Leroy Jenkins? Doesn’t the very nature of gaming with teenagers across the world break the spell and serve as a constant reminder of the fact that, actually, you’re not saving the universe, you’re sat in front of your computer in your pants playing a game with people young enough to be your children?
In summary, let’s not destroy too early what Bioware are trying to create. From the sounds of it they are melding the emotional attachment of a lifelong companion with the multiplayer experience and allowing people the license to play the game how they see fit, whether that’s imagining you’re a real Jedi fighting the evil Sith tide or slicing up countless n00bs with your lightsabre, kthx lol!
I’m interested to see where this one goes. And as some one who wasted weeks, nay months, of my life playing Star Wars: Galaxies when it was in beta, trying desperately to tell them where they were going wrong, I’m fascinated to see whether Bioware can actually make it feel like Star Wars. That’s really the most important thing of all.
22/10/2008 at 14:35 Bobsy says:
@Fox1:
I think this ideal works better in an environment where the players have had input in the world being built. If it’s static like Azeroth you may as well be playing an offline World of Warcraft. All you’d be missing out on is the auction house.
On the other hand there is a certain niche for the lone player in a more dynamic, community-built game world. The best example of this I think is actually Second Life. As a lone player you can interact with large groups and the things they have built without having to ‘party up’ yourself.
22/10/2008 at 14:38 Dinger says:
Wow guys. First, Meat Circus: every year, there’s more than a billion answers to your question.
Now, bringing up Counterstrike and Eve as examples of MP longevity: yes, multiplayer interactions add depth. They also end up excluding people. This is a natural social function, but one that screams inefficiency to the bean counters.
The winning MMO formula is: extremely simple mechanic based around operant conditioning (usually where elements of a story are used as a reward) + a social environment where the players legitimize and encourage their addictive behavior (usually by giving social value to the rewards doled out by the game mechanic).
If you’re putting $100M on the table for development, that’s what you’re going to want in a game: something that captures the imagination, sure, but also something that drives huge subscriptions.
When you have a bunch of humans playing a game, some are going to be better than others (in some way or another), and they will use this skill to differentiate themselves. Good for them, bad for the losers (think Counterstrike and Eve). Now, consider that one of the reasons MMOs are attractive to people with socialization issues is that they’re not losers there. That’s why the successful games are simple and reward time invested. Put enough time in, and you’re not a loser, at least not there. Sidekicks fit into this system very well. What makes Alyx so effective is that she’s never a burden, and she keeps reminding the Gordon of his greatness. A good NPC will do those two things (in one way or another), whereas a real human needs to establish a position in the hierarchy.
So, yes, it’s the kindergarten science fair: everyone gets a prize, and everyone is special. People will pay good money for that.
22/10/2008 at 14:42 The Poisoned Sponge says:
@Morph
I think people are screaming WoW-clone because essentially WoW can be played single player, and because of that a lot of people hate it. Personally, I can think of literally nothing better than having a world so fundemntally player driven that I get my missions from players who are higher up on the food chain than me. I don’t want to do what everyone else is doing. I want a dynamic play environment where everything I do makes a difference, no matter how small. And in that, WoW fails dramatically.
I’m going to wait for World of Darkness with baited breath. Please CCP, apply what you learned in EvE to something not quite so hard to get into.
22/10/2008 at 14:47 Fox1 says:
@Bobsy
I agree, wholeheartedly, with your opinion of what “works” best, but there’s still a whole lot of people playing WoW this way, even on non-PvP servers (where “All you’d be missing out on is the auction house” gets as close to 100% accurate as it probably can).
There are still a lot of intangibles that are being accounted for, as far as what people “get” out of playing a game like WoW this way. For one, it does provide a more living feel to the world than any offline game has managed, thus far. Also, there’s the fact that your accomplishments (gear, titles or whatever carrots are being doled out at that time) will be viewed by others in the course of day-to-day gaming. Even if they may not be at the heights or raid play, imagining a new player walking out of a starting area and seeing you on a mount or with a particle effect on your weapon, even base-level versions of these things, can be a powerful one.
Then, of course, on PvP servers, there are any number of more easily understood reasons to play, even if WoW doesn’t provide the most compelling head-to-head combat.
22/10/2008 at 14:49 Tuor says:
With all this talk about Alyx and what’s the greatest AI to date, I’m astonished no one has yet brought up the real winner among AIs. The one that you instantly formed a close and deep relationship with. The one that protected you from death more than once. Yes, the one that couldn’t be at your party because you murdered it.
I’m talking, of course, about the Weighted Companion Cube: the greatest AI ever made… and then thrown into an incinerator.
22/10/2008 at 14:52 schizoslayer says:
@ Dinger
That doesn’t mean I have to like it though does it?
I understand WHY such things exist and come to be and that people out there like it. I’m just laying down my position which is: “This is not a game I want to play and it seems like nobody wants to make the game I want to play”.
22/10/2008 at 14:54 TooNu says:
I said it before but, how will having every player with their NPCs afect the game? Surely there can not be plans to have every player use the same NPCs or do they mean fully customisable NPCs forming your own party?
Imagine if every player in WoW was running around Orgrimmar with their own Thrall and Kairne, the lag would be incredible and it would look absurd and would remove players from the immersion that Developers are always talking about.
So if you can customize everything about your own NPCs names/hair color/clothing etc would that all fit perfectly with every mission and story arc that you partake in? What if the NPC names you want are all taken? Would there be some random name feature? can other players interact with your NPCs? Can you interact with theirs? Can your NPCs interact with their NPCs? Do you keep your NPCs in the bank when you don’t need them out? Will NPCs clip into the scenary? Does having a 5 man instance mean just yourself and your NPCs? is a 5man the new 25 man?
This will be interesting to see their plan for the NPCs.
22/10/2008 at 15:09 Dinger says:
schizoslayer: I’d even suggest that building a game on such a model is morally reprehensible. Well, I would, but Mr. Blow beat me to it, so I’ll let him take the flak.
22/10/2008 at 15:32 aerisdead says:
Jim, you have hit the nail on the head so hard it’s shot right through the wall into the next room and killed your neighbour’s dog.
My hat is off to you.
22/10/2008 at 15:43 Sam says:
@The Sombrero Kid:
Indeed, the facial animation is awesome. But it ain’t AI. ;)
22/10/2008 at 16:03 Jim Rossignol says:
That’s kind off off the point. What I’m suggesting is that believably “human” NPCs will make games far more engrossing, and it’ll be particularly interesting when they’re part of a multi-player world.
22/10/2008 at 16:08 andy says:
its all relative mr jim.
the singleplayer/solo aspect of this game is almost a guarantee that i will buy the game to at least try it out.
if all it had to offer is more of the same “mmo”, i’d pass, as i do on almost every mmo released.
the point he makes is that the player has the CHOICE to play the game either of the two ways, that HE prefers, not how people like YOU, THINK, everyone else should play.
22/10/2008 at 16:12 Bobsy says:
@andy:
That choice comes before the purchase, not during play. If you don’t want to play with other people, why are you playing a Massively Multiplayer game? It’s like playing Total War and complaining you don’t get to play as an individual soldier.
22/10/2008 at 16:15 andy says:
bottom line, the developers are in the biz of making games that SELL, to the widest possible audience.
when a dev releases an MMO that promises both great multiplayer/pvp/etc AND the prospect of being able to solo the vast majority of the game (aside from the pvp/etc parts), their potential audience automatically doubles.
22/10/2008 at 16:18 elias says:
“The repeated failure of the original Star Wars MMO was monumental and unforgiveable, but I don’t think the world of the original films should have been so readily discarded. The Old Republic might make a fine science fiction setting, and Bioware might just make a great leap for MMOs, but it’s still not the game that the original, treasured franchise deserves. That, I can’t help thinking, might now never show up.”
I think it’s because players want to be heroes (Jedi), and there aren’t enough of those in the setting of the original films to let people be that without breaking the setting (similar problem to the DC MMO–do people really want to only meet the characters they love rather than playing as them?–but worse here, since for the most part non-Jedi shouldn’t have comparable powers at all). For now, I think it’s just easier to go with the Old Republic setting, which appeases everyone’s desires to play as Jedi.
Also, even with a strong focus on multiplayer, soloability is important for the pick-up-and-play factor rather than having to wait half an hour to get a group together.
I wonder what they have planned for the endgame? When everyone has finished the storyline and hit max level, why will they keep their subscription?
22/10/2008 at 16:23 andy says:
@Bobsy:
your argument is exactly the shortsightedness that Bioware here is stepping over (probably the only dev to do so if they deliver).
the choice should ABSOLUTELY come during gameplay, NOT before the purchase. especially if you look at it from the standpoint of the developer/publisher.
you want to attract a larger audience, not just a segment of the whole.
the problem with “massively multiplayer” is that thanks to the oldies/goodies like Everquest, everyone thinks that the term automatically should forever imply “forced socializing for advancement/enjoyment”.
i want to play in a MMO where i have the OPTION to interact with real people, whether for trade/sales/help/etc.
The option should NEVER be between: forced to group in order to progress in the game, or worthless grinding of mobs in solo to ding and move on down the line to the next grind spot.
22/10/2008 at 16:25 cyrenic says:
@elias
Raiding for phat Jedi Manadlorian Armor, of course!
22/10/2008 at 16:35 Zuffox says:
I still don’t see why Alyx is a good virtual character. It’d be interesting to see a blog post for why some(!) regard her as one such.
And it’s great to see new intercharacter relations added to MMOs – first Champions’ archnemesis, and now ToR’s companion.
22/10/2008 at 16:36 Ginger Yellow says:
“Personally, I can think of literally nothing better than having a world so fundemntally player driven that I get my missions from players who are higher up on the food chain than me. I don’t want to do what everyone else is doing. I want a dynamic play environment where everything I do makes a difference, no matter how small.”
Indeed. It really baffles me why so many developers and publishers keep putting out what are, in the grand scheme of things, WoW clones. It may have made sense at first, given how much money WoW makes, but after the first few fell to the wayside, you’d think more people would have tried something properly different, like Football Manager Live. Where’s the Madden MMO? Where’s the Company of Heroes MMO? Where’s the Total War MMO? The answer is that, to the extent they’re done, they’re done by fans/bedroom coders and organised outside the structure of an “official” game – for instance CoH: Europe in Ruins, Goalline Blitz and so on. They’re enormously popular, for the scale of the development budget, but imagine what they’d be like if they were “officially” supported, released and marketed, rather than spread through word of mouth among ubergeeks.
22/10/2008 at 16:42 Korgan says:
Bioware is, like, known for making many old-school hardcore RPGs in the past, yeah. So I’m, like, confident that even a MMO by them is going to have an intelligent, mature story, serious choices and consequences – like, all that stuff that boring old PC games had before, you know, next-gen and shit. It’s going to be a true classic like Oblivion and Fallout 3.
Of course, some nerds would probably say that this is a fucking waste of a decent franchise. Why would anyone ever cater to these retards?
22/10/2008 at 16:48 schizoslayer says:
@ Andy
Jim and I and all the other complaining about lack of player interaction aren’t specifically talking about having to group to advance because that is in fact part of the fabric of MMOs that just doesn’t need to exist.
Player Interaction and influence comes in many ways that aren’t “Grinding through content”. The markets in Eve are almost exclusively player driven now so when you finish your PvE Quest from your Agent and sell your loot and buy a new bigger ship you are still interacting with players even though you haven’t actually spoken to them or are even aware of it.
An example within the confines of a Diku-Styled MMO might be that a player needs to gather crafting components to make some uber-armor. Instead of grinding themselves to get them they can post a Quest to a notice board offering a reward for delivering the components within a time limit. It’s player generated content that doesn’t actually require direct interaction with other players but is part of a much larger player driven world.
You can exist in Eve quite happily as a solo player ignoring everybody around you but you are part of a larger universe of players that you are interacting with.
In short: Player interaction doesn’t only mean PvP and grouping and while Eve has only scratched the surface nobody else is willing to take what Eve did and either dig deeper or put a more accessible experience on top of it.
22/10/2008 at 16:49 Jim Rossignol says:
@andy
Clearly I’m fine with people playing online games in a single player way, but the fact that it’s seen as such an important feature is kind of the point: it’s another multiplayer world where interaction with other people is *optional*. Often people don’t see much point in interaction with others in these worlds, because they’ve not played a game which has shown them how and why that is awesome. The fact that there are thousands of people in these game worlds, all interacting, should be incredible, central, crucial to what’s going on. Another spectacular multiplayer-optional game is great, but I’d rather someone was unveiling a living, breathing, player-populated Star Wars world and saying: “people are going to play together in their thousands, and it will be fucking awesome because of the thousands of people and what they can do.”
I am playing Devil’s Advocate somewhat because I’ve enjoyed solo time in WoW too – but the fact that solo-play and scripted story are the main events in a game in which there are thousands of players seems to me to speak of a failure of imagination. Player interaction is not “LFG, dungeon X”, it’s about using people’s activity and creativity to bring virtual world’s to life – SWG’s buildings, Eve’s economy, etc etc. All that clever emergent stuff that happens when you give players tools to do more and more, and let the stories take care of themselves.
If a multiplayer game is trumpeting its single-playerness and solo-supporting story then I want to stand up and point out that it doesn’t have to be that way. Because that’s *exactly* the game design problem that these kinds of games are running into: people kind of maybe want to have the option, but they’re often not seeing the benefit of, or enjoying, their interactions with other people. That *is* a waste of what MMOs are capable of. Fine, play solo, but I think games like this should be pushing much harder. MMO is an amazing technology currently suffering incredibly limited usage, and I think that’s driven by trying to make games where interaction with other human beings is optional.
22/10/2008 at 16:55 Klaus says:
I wouldn’t consider Fallout 3 a ‘true classic’ seeing how it’s not due for a week, I think. Unless you meant 2 or something.
I wouldn’t call Oblivion – The Monotony, a classic either. Though that’s just personal taste.
22/10/2008 at 16:55 andy says:
@Jim
And i happen to think that your chain of thought is one of the reasons why the technology is suffering this incredibly limited usage :) because people are trying to pigeonhole the technology into “all social all the time” more often than not. :)
@schizoslayer:
i like what you said overall and agree. as for EVE, i’ve always wanted to play that game, but have always been under the impression that there’s parts (too many?) of the game world where things are open/non consensual PvP, isn’t that the case? i.e. unless you become a pawn in some guild there’s places you can’t go as you become nothing more than target practice for someone else who is. and there seems to be a high price for dying in this game if i recall.
22/10/2008 at 16:59 schizoslayer says:
Also most of the people I know wanted to be Han Solo not Luke Skywalker. Jedi’s suck.
22/10/2008 at 17:00 Jim Rossignol says:
EDIT: Actually, you’ve lost me.
22/10/2008 at 17:05 Noc says:
The other thing I want to point out about EVE’s market is that it’s easy. Meaning that it’s a system that attempts to facilitate inter-player commerce as best it can. EVE isn’t the only MMO with a player-based economy by a long shot, but the EVE market is a very, very far cry from, say, a system that involves those who wish to sell things sitting around AFK in the streets with shops open.
Required grouping for grinding/quests does encourage player interaction, but the problem with it is that it’s more about making accessing content logistically more difficult. As in, you don’t play the game to interact with the people; you play it to explore the content, and required grouping simply puts a barrier in the way of that.
But, like . . . playing a multiplayer FPS with real people is many, many times more fun than playing one with bots. The experience itself is fundamentally multiplayer – you actively seek out other people to play it with, and only default to playing by yourself if no other option presents itself. Much of an MMO, on the other hand, is fundamentally singleplayer, and you only grudgingly hook up with other players when you have to.
This is why a lot of people who start playing EVE have such a shit time. Because it’s an abysmal single-player experience. Now, EVE is a flawed game in many ways, but as Schizoslayer said, I think it’s on the right track. WAR is on this track too.
I don’t think The Old Republic is.
. . .
On the other hand, we totally need an X-Wing MMO. Planetside in Space, we can call it.
22/10/2008 at 17:06 Noc says:
Also what everyone else said while I was typing this up.
22/10/2008 at 17:08 andy says:
@Jim:
I guess his words painted a different picture for me than yours did :)
I consider an mmo “all social” when you the majority of latter level content is designed for grouping/guilding/raiding with no alternative for those that aren’t into that.
anyway, we can agree to disagree, doesn’t matter to me, our opinions on the matter don’t really matter to anyone but ourselves anyway :)
i hope to be playing some heavy gun toting guy in this game. all these lightsabers have always annoyed me.
22/10/2008 at 17:24 Iain says:
@Bobsy: That choice comes before the purchase, not during play. If you don’t want to play with other people, why are you playing a Massively Multiplayer game?
Why play an MMO solo? Simple. To experience the game world. Take something like WoW, Guild Wars and perhaps even EVE – absolutely stunning game worlds in terms of design, which pretty much outstrip anything you’d find in a traditional single-player game. I’d say it’s more of a strength of these games that you can play them solo if you want to, rather than a weakness.
The biggest problem inherent with all multiplayer games is the fact that they’re multiplayer; that is, other people are idiots. Not as a rule, but it only takes one sadistic moron to corpse camp you for an hour before you renounce all of humanity. If there were a way of forcing players in MMOs into not being assholes, then perhaps we could really pursue the concept of player-created content and emergent behaviour in these kinds of games. Unfortunately, I don’t really see how that’s possible while people still act like, well… people.
Though I do agree with Rob and Jim that the EVE model of MMO is most likely to really progress the possibilities of the genre, but from my experiences of the game, lordy, they do desperately need to try and put it into an experience that doesn’t feel like a second job.
22/10/2008 at 17:26 Larington says:
Heck, think of all those MMO gamers these days who moan about being jumped by other players (Or groups thereof) who have no idea what actual player character death is like (Myself being one of them).
In any case, MMOs also suffer from a huge problem – Its players often don’t know what they actually want. For instance with this example pulled from ‘Designing Virtual Worlds’ (Richard A Bartle), players want a massive world with multiple continents/regions, but they want to be able to travel through it really quickly.
So they want a massive world and then they want to shrink it.
22/10/2008 at 17:28 Noc says:
@Larington: So they want a lot of content and a lot of variety, but they want to be able to access it without tremendous inconvenience.
There’s not a lot of contradiction there.
22/10/2008 at 17:32 Korgan says:
@Klaus: Your sarcasm detector is working fine, may I please borrow it?
22/10/2008 at 17:40 Larington says:
It kind of depends on what sort of realism your going for. In a large old technology world, the fastest method of travel is horses… Is teleportation really appropriate? For instance, you can’t really justify it in Lord of the Rings, but the designers have been forced to make concessions which in effect are teleportation but under a different name (Path finding, or whatever)… Thats sort of what I referred to.
22/10/2008 at 17:46 jalf says:
But then it’s no longer a question of players demanding contradictory features. As Noc pointed out, there’s no contradiction in demanding “lots of content and variety, spread out over a large world”, while at the same time wanting to be able to visit any part of it easily.
The contradiction only arises when you start imposing additional constraints, like “But I only want to allow horse travel”, or “I want time to pass in a linear manner”. But players didn’t demand any of that in this example. That could be said to be just an artifact of the game designer’s limited imagination. (Yeah, of course you need to be able to offer a consistent and somewhat believable universe, and a lot of players get hung up about realism too. The point is just that there’s no inherent contradiction between the features you mentioned. It depends entirely on the context you place it in.)
22/10/2008 at 17:59 Larington says:
Well, in any case there is a reason that there are whole books devoted to the subject of making MMOs/Virtual Worlds.
But essentially you’ve got two audiences therefor, the ones who slant towards a realistic world and the ones who slant to more of an, err, game game.
I suppose the real challenge is to get these players to go to the game thats meant for them, rather than the other ones.
22/10/2008 at 18:00 Larington says:
Arr hell, I only wanted one word italicised then.
22/10/2008 at 18:01 chris says:
JR makes a good point about this MMO.
Some of the things that make Star Wars Star Wars like Jedi, The Rebel Alliance, The Empire, etc… are missing from here. While I think the setting is interesting they’re going to have to try REALLY hard to make sure the game feels sufficiently Star Warsy since they’re really only working with a subset of the iconic Star Wars characteristics. SWG was a tragedy several times over for the way it missed the mark and then flailed about trying to hit it over and over.
22/10/2008 at 19:23 Orange says:
Didn’t see anyone mention this, but Guild Wars introduced npc Henchman and then subsequently expanded on it with Heroes, npcs you would recruit and could level up like a player and with skill sets you could pick or tweak for them.
For single player it was excellent, made soloing the game so simple to the point where it was actually far easier taking the npcs with their auto reactions than bothering with humans. However for multiplayer it was a disaster, as nobody bothered to pug or group up. End result was a very empty game experience and as frustrating as random human players can be, the times when it works out makes a game infinitely better.
They are keeping the heroes for GW2 but as I understand it have wisely scaled them back in numbers. Curious to see that the Star Wars people either haven’t seen this or opted to disregard arenanet’s experience.
22/10/2008 at 20:41 Gorgeras says:
It isn’t just single-player elements being dominant in an MMO that is stifling for the genre, but the massive expansion of multiplayer elements which are not massively-multiplayer.
Right now, Warhammer Online is going to shit because Mythic ignored the loud and repeated warnings of myself(blows the ‘Chief Wyrmskin is Awesome’ trumpet) and others(blows the ‘Wyrmskin anonymous lackeys’ trumpet) concerning the emphasis on instances.
I raised the issue in WoW aswell, but we all know what the average IQ of a WoW player is(sitcom audience nervous reaction). It was an MMO with almost no MMO in it; a glorifed chat hub linking instances(the only real content) together. Not one of them was something which could not have been done in a non-subscription, non-massively multiplayer online game. Wait, didn’t we do group PvE in custom maps on Warcraft 3? Aren’t we about to do group PvE in Left4Dead? Do we have to pay subs for those and does Blizzard really think their trash raid dungeons, BGs and arenas even compare?
Now Warhammer is going the exact same way: the most accessible content is stuff which is anti-massively muliplayer and leeches from the genuinely MMO bits. I wanted to love it, but I won’t be re-subbing unless some desperate measures are taken based on the *evidence* of what happens when BG servers in WoW crash and what happened when scenarios were unavailable during the WAR beta.
EVE is the only MMO that does it right, but CCP keep repeatedly giving concessions to anti-PvPers and homogenising the ships and mechanics. If a developer wants to discourage ass-hats griefing in games: get rid of all artificial restrictions and make everyone potentially dangerous and capable of causing grief. Right now, the very measures put in place to supposedly prevent ‘griefing’(meaning legitimate PvP that just so happened to take someone by suprise) are exactly what helps real griefers.
Griefers LOVE flag mechanics, they love low-sec space, hate 0.0 sec space where anyone can fight back pre-emptively and are not at all hindered, threatened or detered by hi-sec space, nor similiar idiotic ‘anti-griefer’ mechanics in any other MMO.
22/10/2008 at 20:51 Kadayi says:
I get what Andy is saying; it’s theoptionto group rather than the necessity, and I completely understand where he is coming from. Sometimes you just want a break from your clan mates and the ability and option to just do your own thing in an MMO on an evening, but unfortunately a lot of MMOs just aren’t rigged that way. They cater towards clans and groups and exclude the individual player. Personally I like to play games with other people, but I’m not that fussy about hooking up after a session and making it a ‘meaningful’ long term relationship unless they are really worth the time. Nothing worse than being in a clan whose members you don’t ultimately like. ;) (been there, done that, sold the movie rights..)
Anyhows I do think the NPC companion thing sounds interesting, though how well implemented it will be whose to say.
22/10/2008 at 20:51 Klaus says:
@Korgan
I don’t know what that is, how much would one cost?
22/10/2008 at 21:19 Erlam says:
I noticed you didn’t mention Stalker for the NPC ‘characters’ list. I think that Stalker is one game where I actually give a shit about characters. Alyx was, to me, a meatshield. Occasionally an annoyance, I’d spend most of my time around her watching her slowly kill enemies, being mostly invulnerable, and then suddenly in one scene basically one-shot by an enemy.
In Stalker, because the characters are not dependent on the story, and can die at any time, I’d have “Vitoly Butters” or something as a guy I’d walk by, talk to, sell a gun, and help in combat. It was my choice to help him, watch him die, give him a medkit, etc.
A.I. still needs a lot of work. A lot of work. We still have games with Doom-style suicidal enemies. In fact, most do. Since Half-Life, the only real change has been a greater increase of flanking and life-preservation ideas, but not to any remotely realistic level.
While I like the idea of Companion Characters, they will be pets; because you’d rather they die than you (because them living is great and all, but if you die, so do they), and they will probably be so retarded you’ll find yourself waiting for them to catch up, swearing at them for being slow to kill things, wishing you could make them assault while you cover (but knowing that will never work), and so on.
One unfortunate part of this is that consoles will hamper this significantly, and consoles are currently more popular than PC’s. So while great A.I. would be nice, in-order processing makes this essentially a no-go.
22/10/2008 at 21:25 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
Some day I will have my version of the perfect SW MMO finished and you will tell the people here that is worth the 20 peggle download.
22/10/2008 at 21:30 Erlam says:
“The fact that there are thousands of people in these game worlds, all interacting, should be incredible, central, crucial to what’s going on.”
Consider, though, that people are also the problem. When guy ‘x’ is central, crucial to what’s going on, and he’s a fucking ass-hat who doesn’t know he can heal himself, but will go out of his way to stop other people from doing what they’re supposed to, the idea starts to crumble. John-Q-Gamer is often quite stupid, belligerent, loud-mouthed, and anonymous. Basing an entire mechanic, hell, a core design for a game around grouping all of the John-Q’s together and hoping they don’t just tea-bag eachother for an entire day is going to leave you one frustrated person.
I agree the idea is good — the problem is the people themselves. The ‘massive’ in MMO is both the blessing and curse of the genre. And frankly, they’ve driven me away from it, as I’m tired of relying on people who cannot be relied on.
22/10/2008 at 22:45 Gorgeras says:
If you want to counter John-Q-Gamer’s anonymous-fuelled idiocy: give him a weapon. Then, give everyone around him a weapon.
Remember, there is a reason why savages are more polite than civilised people.
22/10/2008 at 23:07 Kadayi says:
Agreed with Erlam. The idea of the MMO as a pro-active positive experience is a wonderful idea, but much like ‘user made content’ it’s a bit of a bug bear. If you can incorporate flexibility into your game model that allows for player to solo as well as group through choice rather than absolute necessity, you’ve made a better model. For a start Ass hats loose their captive audience, which encourages better attitudes (if they do want to team) and it means you as a player have the option to play as you want to and not be beholden to the time schedules of your friends. Frankly sitting around halway through an instance for 15 minutes twiddling your thumbs waiting for Y to sort his/her/its life out is no ones idea of fun as a gamer.
23/10/2008 at 00:00 Stromko says:
The trouble with designing an MMO to be an entertaining singleplayer game, is that the content runs out or gets boring and people leave. Other players are the source of new content as well as offering new ways and philosophies to experience the old content, and if you don’t have a very solid reason to be interacting with them on a regular basis, you’re mostly going to ignore them and vice versa.
In my opinion, Hellgate London and AutoAssault both failed because they did not reward group-play. Oddly their run and gun gameplay made it hard to coordinate and feel like you were actually cooperating with other players, even when you did team up. So not only did they not require group play, not only was there no reward for group play, but even if you grouped up just for fun.. it wasn’t fun. I only grouped up in the old Star Wars MMO five or six times, and also found it incredibly lacking.
A lot of online players aren’t worth interacting with, funny thing is even the ones that are worth it don’t look like it when they’ve got their attention on the game itself. If there aren’t strong mechanisms in place to encourage beneficial interaction, we generally assume we’re surrounded by idiots because we only notice them when they annoy us. Thus, most people seal themselves into solo play, the social players can rarely find anyone to play with, it gets boring like all singleplayer games eventually do to 99% of players, and they leave.
Without an emphasis toward interacting with other players, we assume everyone is an asshat and interaction dries up. Queue servers merging, new content appearing glacier slow or not at all due to lack of interest, and eventually the game being discontinued.
23/10/2008 at 00:11 Bop says:
I hate this forced-interaction-mentality-bullshit that comes with the term MMO. Bioware are making a game where you do not have to deal with a bunch of EQ shitsock EVE fanatics? THREE CHEERS FOR THEM “but but its an MMO theres other people lets all play together massive multiplayer massive did I say multiplayer you are playing it wrong let me know all the details of your life interact with me poop in that sock” Jesus Christ…
23/10/2008 at 01:08 Erlam says:
“If you want to counter John-Q-Gamer’s anonymous-fuelled idiocy: give him a weapon. Then, give everyone around him a weapon.”
How does that stop them? They shoot you, someone shoots them, then they do it again. Or 40 John-Q’s get together and find small groups of non morons.
This is like the (oft American) idea that if everyone has a gun, no-one will get shot. What happens is the reverse, where one bigger group attacks a smaller one, and super fun time starts.
If you want MMO’s to be fun in groups, try not doing WoW’s patented 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 attacking in instance mechanics. Warhammer made some attempts towards it, but fell up short. I think MMO’s can be fun in theory, but they’d need more working NPC’s. Actual team-mate A.I. with lives and so on. Then there’s far less reliance on other people.
23/10/2008 at 02:32 Derek K. says:
I played SWG primarily “solo” (technically duoed with my wife).
And yet I spent a good portion of my time hunting for meat and skins for people, shopping in player vendors, buffing in towns (if you call standing in line to pay a doc “interaction” you’re a silly person), etc.
I couldn’t have done that in a single player game (not in the same uniquely interesting way). And yet, I primarily solo’ed. Even going to the cantina and watching people interact was really a solo experience – I’d do that for a while, chat a bit, then go off and kill stuff.
23/10/2008 at 02:51 Pattom says:
Sorry, this will be mostly off-topic, but did anyone else find it strange that this game is supposed to take place centuries after the KotOR singleplayer games? I was so convinced that setting it in the Mandalorian Wars would be a superb choice, giving so many options to players and room for new content.
23/10/2008 at 05:18 Derek K. says:
“Without an emphasis toward interacting with other players, we assume everyone is an asshat and interaction dries up.”
With it, we *know*.
23/10/2008 at 09:03 Requiem says:
I don’t play mmos so eve model and wow model means nothing to me, but the idea of ai contolled companion characters in a multiplayer game seems like missing the point. In singleplayer fine, and the sooner they get more life like the better but then they always were stand ins for your friends in a pnp game. Playing an mmo solo is one thing, but shouldn’t you be actually playing it solo? If you don’t want to play nice with other people fine, but having your own group of ai contolled followers doesn’t that sound a little too much like the guy with 36 wow accounts?
The Old Republic era always seemed more logical for an online game with loads of Jedi and Sith running around, maybe now (eventually) we can get a single player rpg set in the rebellion era, after all turnabout is fairplay.
23/10/2008 at 09:47 KindredPhantom says:
As mentioned by various people this sounds quick similar to Guild Wars, being able to play the game solo and NPC companions. It also sounds similar to what Guild Wars 2 promises, a single NPC companion you can choose to adventure with.
23/10/2008 at 09:48 Dinger says:
Okay, how about to put it constructively: the genre is “Massively Multiplayer”. There has to be a social element to it. Without that social element, it’s just an “Online Game”.
So, to the “solo types”, who are insisted that “Massively Multiplayer” games have no social component: what exactly is it about these games that appeals to you over the single player ones? Is it the thrill of public masturbation as opposed to drudgery of doing it in private? Even (and above all) public masturbation is a social activity.
23/10/2008 at 10:36 Dan Milburn says:
I don’t think anyone’s claiming that MMOs shouldn’t have any social component, merely that the game should be playable and fun if a player chooses not to use it. Here are some reasons why I like to be able to play solo:
This morning I woke up at 6.30, so I got up and played WoW for a bit. There was no socialising to be done because there were very few other people around.
Sometimes I just don’t feel like it. I want to log into the game and do a few quests, explore the world, whatever, without relying on other people to help me do it.
Why don’t I just play a single player game instead? Because I want to level my characters before the next expansion comes out, because I want my characters to have appropriate level and equipment for when I do want to play in a group with people, because soloing in WoW isn’t very difficult and therefore a good thing to do when you’ve just woken up, and because yes, it’s designed in such a way that makes it rather compulsive.
23/10/2008 at 10:39 Feet says:
Yeah I have to say if you don’t want to interact, socialise play or deal with a bunch of EQ shitsock EVE fanatics then why not play a Single Player game? The very thing that makes an MMO is that interaction with other players is the very core of the experience. Otherwise you’re just paying a subscription for a single player game, and if you’re doing that I have to call into question the way you spend your money. There are plenty of great single player RPGs you can play instead and save yourself that cash.
23/10/2008 at 10:40 Feet says:
Well now I look like a silly head. Damned timing. :(
23/10/2008 at 11:50 Dan Milburn says:
I should add though that I’m aware that I’m not really explaining myself very well, but that doesn’t really matter. I don’t expect you to understand my gaming preferences and habits, and I wouldn’t expect to understand yours.
What is important for an MMO developer is to understand that people who like to ‘solo’ in such games represent a significant section of their potential market. They are free to not cater to them of course, but they shouldn’t then wonder why WoW has millions of subscribers and they get a few hundred thousand at best.
I find the argument that anyone who wants to play games in this way is either being manipulated by the evil developers or simply doesn’t know any better incredibly patronising.
Oh look, Far Cry 2 has just come through the letterbox. Maybe I will go play a single player game instead.
23/10/2008 at 11:59 Flint says:
So, to the “solo types”, who are insisted that “Massively Multiplayer” games have no social component: what exactly is it about these games that appeals to you over the single player ones?
Whilst there are loads of singleplayer games where you can find WoW’s appealing character development (in the sense of the talent system and seeing your character go from rags to spectacular armour) in one sense or another, there’s no singleplayer-only game with similar gameplay that features WoW’s world, areas and lore. I’m sure solo players could find loads of single player geared games to suit them gameplay-wise but those lack the other major factor of the game – the environment.
I don’t insist multiplayer games to be aimed towards those who like to go solo, but I do think it’s very nice that you can get a lot out of those games even if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t enjoy actively playing and working together with strangers.
23/10/2008 at 12:07 Grill / Griddleoctopus says:
What I want from TOR, not as the PR for the game for a mo’, is for my friends to be able to take over as my companions when they want to; for some reason, I can see Alec as a T3 or Kieron as an HK droid.
23/10/2008 at 12:07 Ergates says:
“If you want to counter John-Q-Gamer’s anonymous-fuelled idiocy: give him a weapon. Then, give everyone around him a weapon.
Remember, there is a reason why savages are more polite than civilised people.”
“Savages” are more polite than civilised people, not because everyone is armed, but because they tend to live in small close-knit communities where they rely on the people around them for day-to-day survival.
It’s when population densities increase and you start interacting with people you don’t know, don’t need and don’t care about that rudeness becomes common.
If you give everyone the capability to be dangerous at all times, it won’t stop griefers being asshats, it’ll just mean they can be asshats whenever they like. It won’t just mean you can defend yourself from griefers at any time, it’ll mean you HAVE to defend yourself from griefers all the time.
The problem with griefers is that there are no consequences for their actions that they care about. In real life, if someone goes around randomly attacking people they’ll either be put in jail, or killed. In game, they don’t care about dying (they’ll respawn), about in-game money (they’ll just find a weaker character to take more from) – all they care about is fighting and making a nuisence of themselves.
23/10/2008 at 12:09 Ergates says:
I meant to put quotes around “civilised people” too in the above – just imagine they’re there…
23/10/2008 at 12:48 cncplyr says:
npc’s like real people? so like, they will occasionally disconnect, go to the toilet, have to walk the dog etc… cool!!! :D
23/10/2008 at 14:01 Ergates says:
It’d be an interesting experiment, to create an MMO (or just set up a server for an existing one) and populate it entirely with human-like AI NPCs, then just leave it running and watch what happens.
23/10/2008 at 14:41 Gorgeras says:
So as long as there are griefers, you’ll never be bored.
I’m not a big fan of the ‘mutual deterrent’ in real life for all kinds of reasons, but I think it’s totally appropriate for an MMO. In 0.0 space in EVE, you are safer from griefers than you are in 0.4-0.1 for very good reasons. In low-sec, you can’t shoot first, take pre-emptive defensive action without losing standings you need to keep access to hi-sec. A pirate/criminal or griefer is not deterred by standing loss and loves it that they can shoot first. Because it’s a different story in zero-sec where there is no standing loss for shooting first, you’re generally safer. But to reach zero-sec, CCP idiotically decided you must run a gauntlet of low-sec systems first. So if you go to 0.0, you have to stay there or you’ll be making frequent perilous trips and lose ships too much.
The general rule is that good guys outnumber bad guys, so if everyone is armed and dangeorus, it’s good that most weapons belong to the right side. There are exceptions, clauses and craveats, but it’s generally true.
The main deterrent to a griefer is the inability to grief. Artificial mechanics imposed by a developer tend to actually give them a play-ground of exploits. But players able to act pre-emptively against a griefer is not something he can do anything about unless he brings a lot of friends(which is what the Goons had to do for EVE and AoC’s FFA servers and even in EVE’s case they kept getting toasted until they started making friends), which isn’t practical got them.
24/10/2008 at 14:41 H says:
Something still missing from MMOGs is GM- and staff-run events. We had them years ago in Ultima Online, hell even various MUDs ran them. I saw a few in EQ. There was the invasion at the end of the WoW beta. But they’re missing from all the current crop of games (caveat) as far as I can tell.
I long for the staff on the various games to band together as high-level NPCs and storm a castle and force the playing public to get it back. What about just interacting as an NPC and striking up conversation, giving out stories and quests?
I just remembered… When SWG started a pal and I were on Tatooine and two guys came up to us and hired us as tour guides and bodyguards. They wanted to see a bunch of places (incuding the Pit of Carkoon) and were going to pay us to look after them. Turned out afterwards they were GMs just getting out there and interacting.
Why can’t we see more of that? Community RP managers who go out of their way to interact with their community IN the game.
Okay, this is off-topic, but if they’re pushing the story, it’s something I want to see. I’m proud, really honestly proud, to have been a part of those events previously, and I want to see more of them.
27/10/2008 at 19:39 shiznit says:
Other than some basic pathfinding and target selection, Alyx is mostly scripted. She is pretty believable as a virtual person but not even close to AI.
29/10/2008 at 15:58 Jigglybean says:
I’m worried for this game. As many here have touched on, we just don’t need yet another WoW clone.
For those who have slated Galaxies, it was a very decent game at launch. Fantastic ideas, awesome sandbox and as a player, you could go anywhere and do anything!
However, content is king and Galaxies lacked focus and direction at launch. Then, the WoW virus infected Galaxies with NGE back in 2005 and it all went wrong from there.
Despite its best attempts to bring back alot of the old features, the damage has been done. I fear that same WoW virus has already infected SWTOR.
30/10/2008 at 14:19 Pete says:
To those of you who predict yet another WOW clone from Bioware, you pretty much don’t get it. Bioware is that rare company who have never done a bad game. Baldur’s Gate, KOTOR, Neverwinter Nights, Mass Effect, and now the upcoming Dragon Age, which is the game so many RPG fans have been hoping for for so long. Bioware doesn’t fuck around. If they say they are finally doing their MMO, there is no reason to believe, based on their past track record that their game will suck. It’ll probably be a phenomenal accomplishment. I seriously doubt anyone can catch up to WOW with their brand and financial lead, but the game will probably come closer than anyone else.
16/01/2009 at 08:14 Minerva says:
Bioware may not throw out an incomplete MMO like Funcom, destroy a great start like SOE, or hype a subpar effort like EA, but I just am not excited. I just do not have much confidence in the corporations that make MMOs. The cash cow rules. Get in get it out, get paid and bail out seems to be the new policy.