Comments on: The Old Republic – Reactions Brain Dump

By: Minerva

Minerva — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:14:53 +0000

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.

By: Pete

Pete — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:19:37 +0000

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.

By: Jigglybean

Jigglybean — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:58:28 +0000

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.

By: shiznit

shiznit — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:39:23 +0000

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.

By: H

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:41:01 +0000

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.

By: Gorgeras

Gorgeras — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:41:27 +0000

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.

By: Ergates

Ergates — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:01:32 +0000

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.

By: cncplyr

cncplyr — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:48:09 +0000

npc’s like real people? so like, they will occasionally disconnect, go to the toilet, have to walk the dog etc… cool!!! :D

By: Ergates

Ergates — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:09:15 +0000

I meant to put quotes around “civilised people” too in the above – just imagine they’re there…

By: Ergates

Ergates — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:07:56 +0000

“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.

By: Grill / Griddleoctopus

Grill / Griddleoctopus — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:07:34 +0000

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.

By: Flint

Flint — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:59:27 +0000

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.