SWTOR is another mediocre mmorpg...

[TixyLixx]

People will say it is one of the best mmorpgs out there and to fair it probably is, doesn't mean however that the genre is dead and has been since around 2005 and SWTOR is the best of the worst. It basically is another WoW clone and I get the sense of deja vu all over again from when I played AoC, WAR and Rift etc. They all have their fanbois defending how it's different from WoW, however the truth is it looks and plays exactly the same. The shame for Bioware is many of us got bored of that type of game with WoW and were hoping this would be something new. Many people claim the story is amazing, yet all I saw was boring cutscenes to link them kill or fetch quests and it wouldn't surprise me if the story dries up as you get to the later levels.

It just makes me angry that we had innovation from Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, Dark age of Camelot, Star Wars Galaxies Pre CU, Planetside and EVE Online. Then WoW came along and it was a great game, it brought so much to the genre that was innovative and people just swept it aside as an Everquest clone. Yet I've played all these MMOs and while WoW borrowed a lot from Everquest, the two played vastly different. Then because WoW proved amazingly popular, all of a sudden the innovation died and ever since we've had WoW clone after WoW clone and old games being ruined by turning into WoW like EQ2 and SWG.

What is worse is MMOs seem like they're getting smaller, like they're so instanced now and linear and most can only have 100 people in one area these days. Frigging tech has gotten better, surely we should be one upping SWG in features? Instead we still haven't seen that level of depth in a character creator or the skill system or that level of seamlessness. Still we haven't seen an FPS come out to tackle more than the usual 64 players, instead they seem to be getting smaller as they're made for consoles now. It's taking Planetside 2 to come along to make me excited again, even if it is made by SOE and they have ruined Four games I used to love and lied to me.

I just play SWTOR and think to myself "I was done with this many years ago and I have no desired to play it again or I would have gone back to WoW". The funny thing is WoW is the better game, it plays a lot better and from the beta it looks a lot better atm and it has better combat and more features. With the new expansion it'll also have a Pokemon system which finally Creature Handlers from SWG Pre CU might have something to play after all these years.

It will flop and it will leave another dent in the genre because developers lack any originality these days. Sandbox games prove they're popular with GTA, Fallout 3, Skyrim, Minecraft etc. Why do we get this linear WoW cloned shit instead?

[Drake Sigar]

I just play SWTOR and think to myself "I was done with this many years ago and I have no desired to play it again or I would have gone back to WoW".

Pretty much my thoughts. My standards were too high. I hoped Old Republic would reinvent MMOs instead of simply adding to a WoW format. I've been off MMOs for a few years now and it looks like I'm never coming back.

[Nalano]

More or less, yeah.

[Reinhardt]

Yeah, I just gave the beta a try for a couple hours. It's WoW through and through, with a completely unnecessary amount of voice acting and video (making the size of the game something like 25GB) and the same stale gameplay and lack of imagination.

Will we ever see a polished sandbox RPG again?

[Mihkel]

I don't understand why most devs want to imitate that shit combat model WoW has. Why couldn't they have skillbased combat like in lets say Jedi Knight 2. Wouldn't be that hard to do it I bet and it would be actually challenging, fun and fastpaced. They could even add it to PvP for instance with the level based system that Global Agenda has. Also done interesting quests instead of regular MMO fare of go there and kill shit or go there and pick shit up and bring said shit back. How about adding some actual puzzles to your dungeons you lazy bastards.

[Heliocentric]

Called it from the first gameplay video.

[Stevo]

I don't understand why most devs want to imitate that shit combat model WoW has. Why couldn't they have skillbased combat like in lets say Jedi Knight 2. Wouldn't be that hard to do it I bet and it would be actually challenging, fun and fastpaced. They could even add it to PvP for instance with the level based system that Global Agenda has. Also done interesting quests instead of regular MMO fare of go there and kill shit or go there and pick shit up and bring said shit back. How about adding some actual puzzles to your dungeons you lazy bastards.

But WoW has 12 million subs so that must mean everything they implement is perfect so if we copy it word for word we'll get 12 million subs too yay!

[TillEulenspiegel]

Will we ever see a polished sandbox RPG again?

Maybe. Not AAA-polished, but better than the likes of Mortal Online and Wurm Online, surely.

This is another of those situations where you look back and wonder what might have been if MMO evolution had followed the model of Ultima Online rather than EverQuest.

[QuantaCat]

I quite liked Star Trek Online. It was pretty good, and it had noncombat missions that werent fetch. This was, obviously, this year, not when it launched.

I havent played WoW, nor have I played SWTOR, but I never intend to. I dont want to have any more star wars stories, as they successfully killed off whatever potential they had with whatever they did after KOTOR 2. And I understand, its easy to not like Obsidian, especially from a business standpoint, as their games have always had technical flaws (though, of course, KOTOR2 was not a flaw of themselves, more of the publisher wanting to push the game, atleast that is the general consensus), but the sheer quality of work they actually made, their innovations not in gameplay, but in presenting a story in a different light and generally making it all seem worth it.. is quite unparallelled. Except by maybe the The Witcher devs.


Basically, what Im trying to say is, MMOs are seldom interesting to me. They take the most boring aspects of a RPG, and thin it to make way for thousands of players to be able to experience the same story at the same time. Which is, honestly, the worst horrible fucking thing you can do. If anything, you should make way for players to make stories of their own. Let people miss out on stuff, thats how you create the most desire to get them playing again, so they dont miss out. (to be clear, dont let them miss out because of bad marketing, but for fucks sake, dont let the xth mission be infinitely replayable by everyone ALL THE FUCKING TIME. PLAYERS make stories, not dungeon masters)

[Nalano]

But WoW has 12 million subs so that must mean everything they implement is perfect so if we copy it word for word we'll get 12 million subs too yay!

And MW3 got ten million pre-sales so clearly people like being led by the nose!

/cry

[Mihkel]

But WoW has 12 million subs so that must mean everything they implement is perfect so if we copy it word for word we'll get 12 million subs too yay!

Yeah man, the truth sucks. I would love if devs would do some genuinely interesting stuff. It doesn't need to be liked by everyone but just to have your own niche crowd of loyal customers who you would build your next game or expansion or whatever on. What most get wrong these days is that it's good if a game is available for everyone. It's an immensely bad thing that takes away originality and interesting things or mechanics what the product might have. "Wow this game is found pretty difficult or too complex by some idiots who didn't like our previous installments anyway so lets dumb it down so we can lose our core audience and maybe gain some of those idiots to play this piece of crap for a little while and then move to the next mediocre game herp derp." Bunch of big companies have done this shit with good franchises in recent years (Bioware, Ubisoft for instance).

[Teddy Leach]

Anyone surprised? Really?

[Mihkel]

Anyone surprised? Really?

Not really but I really hoped that this would be something awesome. I guess I set my expectations too high or have too high standards these days.

[Nalano]

Not really but I really hoped that this would be something awesome. I guess I set my expectations too high or have too high standards these days.

I really hope this isn't BioWare's albatross. At $135 mil in development, they'd need over a million subs just to break even. The fact that it looks and plays exactly like a game that has burned out many people to its whole genre brings concern to me as to whether BioWare will survive this venture.

[Althea]

I really hope this isn't BioWare's albatross. At $135 mil in development, they'd need over a million subs just to break even. The fact that it looks and plays exactly like a game that has burned out many people to its whole genre brings concern to me as to whether BioWare will survive this venture.

Of course BioWare will survive. TOR was done by just one development studio out of four (Austin; the other three are Mythic, Edmonton and Montreal), and LucasArts will likely be footing most of that bill, with EA likely taking up some of it.

It's entirely likely that if it bombs, Austin will either be cut off or merged with Mythic.

[QuantaCat]

I really hope this isn't BioWare's albatross. At $135 mil in development, they'd need over a million subs just to break even. The fact that it looks and plays exactly like a game that has burned out many people to its whole genre brings concern to me as to whether BioWare will survive this venture.

Maybe for the best.

[Mihkel]

I really hope this isn't BioWare's albatross. At $135 mil in development, they'd need over a million subs just to break even. The fact that it looks and plays exactly like a game that has burned out many people to its whole genre brings concern to me as to whether BioWare will survive this venture.

They probably will sadly. I mean hardcore Star Wars fans are a lot of and most of them take it up the ass regularly from every Star Wars related tripe that's out there and then you have your Bioware fanboys who'll also do the same.

[TillEulenspiegel]

I think, to an extent, it's possible to make a game that appeals to both types of players. So the big dumb heroes can go off on quests and kill stuff, using something like the dynamic quest system in Guild Wars 2. And then the people who want to be a blacksmith or open a shop or build a town or wage PvP wars or become a smuggler can ignore the quests and go do that. Or you can join a guild and go do their quests, like in a TES game.

You wouldn't have an epic world-changing storyline where you are The Chosen One, but I wonder how many people actually care about that. If you can just be a soldier and kill evil monsters and help rebuild a village GW2 style, isn't that good too? You're making a unique impact on a living world rather than retreading the same content a million other people have already seen.

[Nalano]

Maybe for the best.

Like all companies that have produced quality and have the potential to continue doing so, I want them to get better at what makes them good, not die for their mistakes.

I think, to an extent, it's possible to make a game that appeals to both types of players. So the big dumb heroes can go off on quests and kill stuff, using something like the dynamic quest system in Guild Wars 2. And then the people who want to be a blacksmith or open a shop or build a town or wage PvP wars can ignore the quests and go do that. Or you can join a guild and go do their quests, like in a TES game.

You wouldn't have an epic world-changing storyline where you are The Chosen One, but I wonder how many people actually care about that. If you can just be a soldier and kill evil monsters and help rebuild a village GW2 style, isn't that good too? You're making a unique impact on a living world rather than retreading the same content a million other people have already seen.

My ideal is to reshape the world in my image.

MMOs allow me - however haphazardly - to do that not through their "theme park" gameplay, but through the fact that there are real people behind the other characters, and I can affect them in ways direct and indirect.

"Daily quests" like WoW or "retake the town from the NPCs" like Tabula Rasa or Rift are not particularly fun ways for me to become invested in my world. Drama - for all its ills - is. But PvE-oriented games like WoW and, therefore, like TOR, limit drama where-ever possible.

[QuantaCat]

Like all companies that have produced quality and have the potential to continue doing so, I want them to get better at what makes them good, not die for their mistakes.

But you forget: it's just a company. The people that make it up can and will continue on, as did Obsidian & Bioware when Black Isle imploded. Companies dont learn, people do.