Did we mention we were rather warm in our anticipation of The Old Republic? John had some pretty hefty preview thoughts to unload after E3, and we’ve been eager to learn a bit more. It seems IGN scooped the internet on that count, with a four part, twenty-minute developer walkthrough of parts of the game, including the early bounty-hunter, smuggler and Sith sequences, with lots more besides. Posted below, it is. This is heavy spoiler territory, obviously, so those of you who are definitely on course to play this game might want to avoid it. On the other hand, that bit where he walks out onto the surface of Hutta…
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Quote from official GW website:
“Rather than labeling Guild Wars an MMORPG, we prefer to call it a CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game). Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to create the best possible competitive role-playing experience.”
(I just found that to add :p)
“I hope you’re as excited about The Old Republic as we are”
That’s extremely unlikely. Bioware are way too pleased with themselves over this, and it’s coming off as smugness for things which really aren’t especially great leaps forward. A fully voiced MMO is great, of course, but it’s hardly a major selling point. The multiplayer dialogue is far more important, but they just don’t seem to realise this, and we barely got to see what it was like in that video.
They’re not taking a very polite attitude with promoting this game. A lot of people have extremely significant grievences with the contept of TOR, and not only are these being poorly addressed, Bioware are coming of as aloof and superior, banging their own drum about how amazing they are at what they’re doing without giving much away in terms of actual information.
Incidentally, nothing in those videos is up to date. It’s footage that was captured ages ago when the ‘Fully Voiced’ video was released. And the scenario was first described months ago in a PCG feature. So this is old footage of old content. I wonder how long ago these videos in their current format were assembled.
The only issue i see is calling this an MMO. Guild Wars is not an MMO either… and that’s a good thing. This, and guild wars, are multiplayer games, not massively, but multiplayer nevertheless, with big chatrooms… not very different to many multiplayer source games, for one. Or GunZ.
I do think, though, that it’s rather silly to say “why is this an MMO” – City of Heroes’ content is almost entirely instanced beyond the city zones that’re used to travel to the entrance of missions, are you asking why that’s an MMO?
TOR doesn’t have you often sat around in the hub areas killing ten banthas, but that doesn’t mean it’s a single player game that you’ll pay subscription fees to play any more than City of Heroes is single player. Games which use instanced quests rather than having everything out in the open have the capacity for more interesting missions because there’s a limit to what you can do when other players are wandering around in the area of the mission.
Just because it’s taking a different approach to Warcraft and its imitators doesn’t mean it’s not an MMO. Do you REALLY want World of Star Warscraft?
@Legionary
I’d rather have Eve + Planetside in Star Wars clothing. IS THAT SO BLOODY DIFFICULT?
(hint: yes, it is)
I like starwars. When I initially played SWG, I felt they got the crafting right, just never enough options for each profession. Combat, was boring. I can’t think of a better word, but im sure one of you non politically incorrecy people can come up with one.
Im a little freaked by the video because the combat reminded me alot of the combat in SWG really. (of course ts a work in progress) but it was the whole feel of it. I fear that it will be a game that makes you grind to get access to nice voiced over cutscenes, and not much else. Thats all I really got from that video.
Starwars is a huge universe, “dumbing it down” to a focus of character development, and only character development has been seen and done before, changing the journey slighty, in regards to get to the highest level, isnt going to make a game great. been seen, been done, doing it tomorrow.
In conslusion:
The stories might be good, but will I have to grind ½ hour of tedious combat for 30 seconds worth of cutscene?
Will It have any impact on the game (other then my characters development) what I do?
if the answers is Yes, No. Then I wont be buying the game. And it does seem like a shame because the idea is good, but if they mess up the execution, it will be a long time before another finacial backer will risk developing such a game.
It really is suprising me with the amount of negative views people are getting after seeing those videos.
I will say perhaps some of the graphical look/feel of the game is a little less dark than you might expect for the sith side of things but other than that I think the style will work quite well. I do highly doubt they influenced the art style to appeal to younger audience though, I mean the games going to have slicing people up with a sword for cripes sake.
I think graphically it might of been appeased significantly had they just stuck with the KOTOR look and feel, which would of provided that more serious/darker look in places.
Regarding the Instancing:
Has it even been announced that its going to work like Guild Wars with non-instanced hubs and instanced everything else? or is this just a huge assumption everyone is making on seeing those videos?
Considering its just one guy showing you around I’d of thought the potential lack of other players was an obvious one, and not some sinister fuel for the angry internet man fire.
Cranking out Ultima Online expansions and adding elves and crazy shit like that.
Wait, elves? In my Ultima?
What a travesty. I’m glad I never managed to get into that game.
As for TOR, I didn’t dare hope much, but these clips were still a disappointment. Aside from just looking tedious and genric, the ego-stroking and sucking up to the player disgusts me.
While the combat system looks old and similar to wow (keep in mind they’ve stated a fair few times that there are aspects of combat they aren’t willing to release yet), atleast the animations in the sith’s combat looked brutal enough. Too bad the art style and out of combat animations are pretty poor. I actually liked how the models reacted to getting kicked in the crotch etc though.
They still haven’t delved into the pvp half yet. That alone, I imagine, will be a large part of the Massively Multiplayer experience, and i’m sure there’ll be your standard open world MMO style planets. I look at it this way, story driven content could be the newest, and greatest end game material for those of us who want something other than just raiding.
All games that want to look generic need the characters to wear something like full plate, or if the theme is sci-fi, wear something like a robot chest with giganteous shoulderpads.
I don’t remenber the sith or the jedi with these armors. Other than Darth Vader, but he was something like fused to his armor by a accident.
The stormtropper armor, yes, the mandalorian armor, yes… these make the characters looks like robots. But everything else on star wars looks more human… more like *cough* leather armor.
If this game is done right, there will be a implementation of “sets”, where if you have all the items of the armor of a mandalorian, you will get extra bonuses. Otherwhise, people will have mandalorian armor, mixed with stormtroper-y armor, mixed with some randum sith elements, and a pink laser blade.
Why I sould care about this? because is Star Wars.
What concerns me about this game is that you’re not playing character classes, you’re playing a character.
You don’t play a bounty hunter, you play a boba fett clone.
You dont play a sith warrior, you play a darth vader clone.
You dont play a smuggler, you play a han solo clone.
I don’t want to be boba fett, or darth vader, I want to be my own character.
Does every bounty hunter in the galaxy get a jetpack, a flame thrower and a rocket launcher? Is it part of your induction seminar?
NERVES OF STEEEEL!!!!!
Duke nukem delayed because LA have hired him as a voice actor?
It’s strange but I feel like I haven’t even glimpsed the game yet. It’s all so.. okay-ish? In a bland way. It’s like I’m thinking: “Is this it?”
And I wonder how the choices they give will work out. If they are far-reaching it could be a bummer to party up with someone who chooses things you wouldn’t have. If they’re not.. then it’s not much more than flavour. A gimmick.
Still, it very much feels like a single player game coupled with some basic aspects of the generic MMO. And I really don’t like how the players aren’t pushed at any point (maybe somewhat during the boss fight). If npcs pose no threat, mowing through them may be easy, but much less fun as well.
Thoroughly unimpressed, I’m afraid to say.
So… much… hatred.
Judge the game when you know more about it. Judge it when it’s not over a year from release.
I for one am fucking excited about what this game could represent, and I may well be disappointed with it when I get to play it, but I might think it’s the best thing since sliced bread. If it’s crap, I’ll be the first one to hold up my hands and admit it.
But from what I’ve seen I am impressed. Apart from that Sonic the Hedgehog DS abortion, Bioware haven’t released a bad game in my opinion.
If this is Kotor crossed with an MMO, I’ll be happy to play it. In fact, the average MMO man, who plays the game hardcore for maybe a month or two before moving onto the next game will probably loiter in this game for longer because of the story elements. I know I would and I’m hardly unique in my gameplay habits.
If they keep adding more storylines and plot elements for high level and there’s some PVP, some old fashioned grinding for those who want to, raiding, trade and space combat then they’re on to a winner with at least a reasonably sized portion of the gaming world.
i love mmo’s
FACT-watching other people play mmo’s is rubbish
that is all
“What do you do in most MMO’s? You run dungeons, or PvP”
Speaking for myself, I reckon 99% of the time I spent in WoW was in non-instanced areas. I don’t get the point of MMOs that are mainly instanced either.
P.
Why is this game an MMO again?
Neut: isn’t it obvious ? monthly milking sounds a lot better than one time only milking
I enjoyed the video preview! I cant wait to play, Im so sick and tired of Fantasy MMO’s.
Also I am so tired of hearing about how “TERRIBLE” Instanced worlds are;
1. “WOW Is endless, you can really feel like your in that world” Well to put it bluntly, WOW is 6 year old graphics and looks every bit of 10 years old. I call b@ll$hit on this, you are walking around in an Obviously Cartoon World, with Obviously Cartoon Monsters, with Obviously Cartoon Characters, swinging Obviously Cartoon weapons and you believe instancing breaks the suspendsion of disbelief? You just wanna prevent anything from questioning your Obviously Cartoony game.
2. “Instancing is old school” – Until Networks become 10X faster than they are now and that is common place for locations all over the world, if you want to increase graphics detail, increase story content and make “truely better game worlds” Your going to have to use instancing. WOW is the peak for graphics detail even in todays world without instancing. So every game looks like WOW or you wait a couple of minutes between areas. Big deal.
Waiting on the Instancing screen isnt a big deal with the modern attack modes of some of these game it’s the only time I even get to have a pause, they seem like non-stop action or free PvP makes the only safe place logging off.
i though the idea behind “instancing” was so that other players wouldnt bother your party while you were busy kicking ass, you know unlike OLD mmos ?
and if you think any new mmo will not have a cartoon world with cartoon monsters and obviously cartoon characters swinging obviously cartoon weapons you should stop smoking whatever you are smoking
This looks like a shambles. A generic MMO with bad writing and endless combat against weak enemies is nothing to be excited about.
All the nonsense about making the action “iconic” and the player feel “heroic” made the developers seem like planks, so there’s little chance of this changing for the better.
Looks fun :)
rule number 1 of a pnp rpg dungeon master : do not give a player special powers, it pisses everyone else off
rule number 1 of mmo marketing : try to get customers to think they can be special and better than everyone else playing the game
uh…
“WOW is the peak for graphics detail even in todays world without instancing. ”
Someone has never played EVE…
The combat looks, hmm, interesting. I noticed the bounty hunter had a WAR-type action point equivalent (in terms of player resources that recharge during combat), and that the Sith Warrior uses something akin to a rage mechanic. I also noticed the game uses a global cooldown timer for abilities. Auto-attack didn’t seem to be present, unless it’s like WAR and is just something that runs in the background while you’re hammering on your abilities.
As for the items that are not combat mechanics, I think that the cutscenes for the instances (sorry, flashpoints) might be cool the first time you run one, but would get really old if you are doing the thing for the nth time. I feel that might also be a problem with the dialog – I noticed it’s possible to skip through the dialog after a bit, but the player is still required to listen to at least a portion of the NPC talking. If you’re rolling your 4th bounty hunter and listening to the character creation dialog, this would be tedious to say the least.
From the Sith starting area, it’s evident that “kill x of y quests exist in this game, and who knows what else. I also find the idea that every member of the same class starts on the same world to be faintly ridiculous.
Who knows what they’ll pull out of their collective hats before release date, though. I’d certainly be interested to see what they have in mind for Player vs Player, which I hope goes beyond the duels and battlegrounds in WoW. I also hope if there are collection-style quests, the completely abandon the drop-rate-as-a-percentage mechanic that WoW uses to full effect.
You know, aside from the fact that they’ve not stated that the whole-game-aside-from-cities is instanced, there’s more to an MMO than an uninstanced overworld.
Oh wait, I forgot, Morrowind isn’t an RPG because it doesn’t have moral choices.
Not to mention that Men of War isn’t a strategy game, because it doesn’t have base building and tech trees,
>>“WOW is the peak for graphics detail even in todays world without instancing. ”
>Someone has never played EVE…
Or just about any MMO released after WoW and one or two released before it.
Regarding how innovative this game will be, Bioware said it themselves. They are simply adding the extra ‘pillar’ of storyline to the other foundations of an MMO. Nevermind that those other pillars are made of steaming piles of Sith. What matters is that the game is cartoony, will retain a couple million users, and generate revenue. DAS IST ALLES!
If the game provides many an opportunity to grief, I will be all in. Quite simply, NOTHING in an MMO has brought me the ecstatic joy and hilarity I experienced in SWG, convincing poor saps I was a jedi (and gaining ’shelter’ in their homes), then robbing the place blind. It was so glitched at some point you could do quests over and over and I would peddle ‘unique’ quest rewards for dough. One can make fun from the shittiest of games, says I!
Meh, I have mixed feelings about this.
Firstly, the characters look horribly cartoonish. What’s with all the anime hair?
Animations aren’t the best, but a big improvement from what I saw a while ago. Voice acting looked very sluggish in parts.
But then again, this still is looking like an awesome game, the co-operation looks well thought and combat still has a hope of being slightly more interesting than press this to hit then 10000 times.
It doesn’t help that they butchered their own setting. The original two KOTORs were set 4000 years before the Original Trilogy/Clone Wars precisely so that they could explore avenues not allowed by the cliched “Empire versus Rebels” thing. So we got to see a lot of different dynamics that, while reminiscent of the movies, were clearly different/predecessors.
This, on the other hand, has literally returned to the same exact Empire vs Rebels formula, including the symbols for the Empire and the clone troopers. It doesn’t make any sense within the grander scheme of the universe and feels horribly contrived — they should’ve made it Star Wars Galaxies 2, then.
I wonder how many MMO players have ever thought ‘man, I wish this quest text was fully voiced, that would be so much better’…
This game looks awesome! I can’t wait to play it! This game blows that stupid world of warcraft crap out of the water. Woot! Star Wars is so bomb!
Star Wars… *YAWN*