1921

The story takes place several millenia before the events of the Star Wars movies.

1922

How fucking old is Admiral Akbar?
Are we sure that was him? Not his great forefather’s ancestor? An ordinary Calamari perhaps?
Way to break chronologically synched lore, Bioware!
That’s it. A millenia-years old Admiral Akbar with a 2-handed sword. I think many Bothans died for this creation, and also many a SW hardcore nerdogeekors minds been broken.

Indeed. Quite right. And I do believe in some historical review of the making of Star Wars trilogy this was also mentioned, possibly by Lucas himself even.

…and of pretty chicks, apparently.

In my opinion you’re wrong.
Leaks and NDA breaking goes both ways.
If a game is ‘hot’ and ‘all that’ then there’ll be plenty of opposing reviews idolizing the game as the second coming.
As the facts seem to place it, this game is just repeating the same old formula of every other game out there. Aside the voice acting it brings nothing fresh or exciting to the table.
People been expecting it to be the SW-relief they’ve required ever since SWG broke down to pieces and since KOTOR’s greatness the hype and expectations been very high. People thought BioWare will just take KOTOR, and in some spark of design genius manage to translate it proper to the MMO sphere. That didn’t happen. We got a SW-theme-skinned instanced WOW clone with voice acting and some big plots.
You can probably imagine how this plane is going to crash in a ball of flames when it hits the fans’ eyes.

1923

As you’ve argued before. I just don’t know what some Mon Calamari entering melee really has to do with your broader expectations, unless he’s literally an admiral and you have a proposed rank cutoff for NPCs switching to melee.

If you think KOTOR was “great,” - I’d say KOTOR 1 more than KOTOR 2, given the BW/Obsidian divergence there - then it seems like the word of mouth is consistently encouraging in terms of “this will be a fun few months at least.” As I recall you aren’t a fan of MMOs in terms of a content delivery method which is fair enough, but kind of a subjective thing.

1924

It’s not about a random Mon Calamari. It’s about Admiral Akbar in the flesh, so to speak, being in a setting that completely doesn’t feel fitting for such a character. Not to mention waaay out of his respective time-line zone?
It’s not about a soldier rushing to melee, it’s about a frigging Admiral, in the midst of his entire brigade assaulting you with firearms drawing a bloody sword and charging at you…which again is completely unfitting to the manner of the scene.
Is he a Jedi/Sith now? Is he going to deflects shots? Because when some nimrod charges at you with a sword, even in SW, first thing happens is someone draws a rifle and drops him. Unless that Nimrod is actually a sage and happens to be Force sensitive and highly adapt at using the Force.

So…yeah.

Shatbonerz, Bruce! Am totally getting this game based upon this innovative perk!

KOTOR combat > WOW button masher combat?

True, I suppose you could mash buttons in KOTOR to an effect, but in the end it was more about strategic placement of moves (or drawing cards from a deck in a sense) and reaction to actions of the opponents rather than just mere button mashing the same sword attack animation or whatever.

I enjoyed the combat in KOTOR. I don’t really enjoy MMO combat. Instant-action/button mashing differing shticks like Magicka also turn combat somewhat more enjoyable than the regular brainless mash.

I mean, it’s not like MMO combat is at a level like Mount&Blade or your skill-based twitch action arcade games like SubSpace/Infantry, or FPS skill based.
Basically, key words here are “skill based”. And we aren’t talking about your character’s RPG ‘talents’.
Since MMOs lag like hell and TCP based, they can’t really support twitch, unless heavily instanced and well proxified by local infrastructure deployment akin to YouTube/Google’s content delivery system. And so long they can’t do that, MMO-RPG combat is going to be a bore of a button mash.

Anyone remembers EA louse? He called it long time ago.

Almost makes me congratulate them for having the balls, but after watching them work, it’s obvious they don’t have any. They’re cowards running scared trying to hide under the wing of Bioware, now that Rob has become a general manager of EA.

And Bioware? Don’t make me laugh. They’ve spent more money making the Old Republic than James Cameron spent on Avatar. Shit you not. More than $ 300 million! Can you believe that?

And you know what they’re most proud of? This is the kicker. They are most proud of the sound. No seriously. Something like a 20Gig installation, and most of it is voiceover work. That’s the best they have. The rest of the game is a joke. EA knows it and so does George Lucas,they’re panicking , and so most of Mythic has already been cannibalized to work in Austin on it because they can’t keep pushing back launch.

Old Republic will be one of the greatest failures in the history of MMOs from EA. Probably at the level of the Sims Online. We all know it too ……

Yeah, SWTOR will never repay its development fees or whatever EA paid for Elevation Partners/BIOWARE/SWTOR (I’m pretty sure Riccitiello is enjoying his massive retirement fund, though! good scam, rich chello!).

1925

I’m not sure if you’re trolling, but idrisz was just referring to a Mon Calamari as “Admiral Ackbar.” He didn’t literally mean it was Admiral Ackbar. I am 100% certain of this for reasons I cannot disclose.

1926

You do realize that it’s not really Akbar, right? It’s a random mon calimari.

1927

At the risk of being the straight man here I’m pretty sure he didn’t literally mean Admiral Ackbar.

And I’d agree that melee use in Star Wars makes less sense than the (equally dubious) melee rationale in Dune, especially for non-force users, but it’s certainly widespread among non-force KOTOR characters, for the practical reason that it makes combat less ridiculous looking when half your party members are waving lightsabers around. In practice people want widespread melee in a game like this.

1928

Gamer: I demand new experiences in my games, stop giving me the same old thing!

BioWare: We’re adding a huge new element to MMOs, what we think is a great story (in fact, eight great stories) and fully voiced acting that will make people care about the stuff that they previously just clicked through. It’s a monumental effort and has implications for several different game systems and generally changes the way you play an MMO.

Gamer: Fuck that, we want you to make that part exactly like WoW! What we want is something DIFFERENT!

1929

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I asked earlier if it was indeed the real Ackbar, but it seems that portion was skipped. Nice to actually have an answer.
Damn you Idrisz!

I think you lost me there.
Dune has rationale for melee. Dune is all about urban warfare and palace capturing. That becomes quickly a trenchwar and as such ends up with massive forces rushing to close combat to break the stagnation. Or just ending up in close combat as the aggression force swarms and pours onto the halls and so in tight quarters you end up being forced onto melee.
The armies also weren’t only trained in shooting rifles but in using knives, machetes and whatever too.

I don’t see the problem here.
If you are indeed a card-carrying lightsaber-equipped Jedi then you’re able to close in the gap without much problem, wreck your opponent in a swift swing or two and then back off or go to the next target. As such being melee doesn’t impair you in the least in dealing with ranged-type opponents.
Harken back to Phantasy Star Online. True you had HP and some swift legs to compensate for the lack of force jump and force speed, but it’s the same idea. You get in close enough, you swing twice - “He’s dead, Jim”. Melee works just fine. The design philosophy that it doesn’t is what renders such abominations that are wildly ridiculed and unaccepted in the end by the players.

1930

I doubt the “Gamer” in question meant “More *.wav files in the installation directory” when talking about new experiences.

(or *.ogg if they are innovative and kewl.)

@Foxstab:
Darkfall is pretty much a twitch-mmo, and your character skills matter, but to kill someone you still need to aim and hit, strafe and whatnot. Seemed pretty unlaggy when I played it in combat as well.

1931

He didn’t, but he probably did include “meaningful story that’s actually interesting” on his list of new experiences, which SW:TOR (apparently) does deliver on, and is what Monzo was referring to.

1932

I think you lost me there.

I should have said “also dubious” rather than “equally dubious.” I like the Dune setting a lot and the melee / shielding / lasers / projectile weapon buffet was interesting, but it wasn’t military sci fi or anything so I basically just liked it for being cool, not for making sense when I tried to figure out what a war would look like. Lasers and shields interact catastrophically? Doesn’t that just mean shields are a terrible defensive technology against anyone with a brain and a laser? The range of weapons works aesthetically, not in any rigorously logical way. C.f. people running around with swords when other people have laser guns. Yeah, a few of them are Jedi, but frankly any actual firearm fires many times faster than we’ve ever seen any Jedi react. Leaving aside that Star Wars fiction also has actual beam weaponry, projectile weapons, and various other things that makes nerf-sped blaster bolts seem just as ridiculous as sword-based defense in gunfights. It isn’t hard sci fi.

1933

Boils down to this. Is it a well crafted, story-rich, mechanic polished MMO?

Yes.

Is it going to introduce concepts or approach that will revitalize MMO’s for people?

No.

I’ve been playing it for 6 months and still enjoy logging in. Many people will, especially those looking for rich single player content. But there are holes, and they are obvious.

1934

Thank you, instant0 for precisely illustrating my point. You hand-wave away the emphasis on story because it’s not something you care about. Or at least it’s not something you think you care about. You’re unwilling to even consider that it could change the way you play or enjoy an MMO. You’re also unwilling to consider that others may enjoy it, and instead assume what you like is what everyone else likes, and if you hate something, then it is of course bound for colossal failure.

Maybe TOR will fail, maybe it won’t. Maybe people want a meaningful story in their MMO, maybe they don’t. But at least acknowledge that BioWare is, in fact, trying something new, and that they believe so strongly in it that they’re basically betting an entire company on it.

1935

I’ll play devil’s advocate. I don’t think adding story to an MMO is new. WoW has story.

What some are saying is uninspiring about Old Republic is that the mechanics of the game seem to be very similar to previous games. “The juggernaut is absorbing the damage.”

What I’d really like to see Old Republic do is what WoW did. Take a look at the existing MMOs and remove the suckiness. What BioWare should do is look at WoW and figure out where the suckiness is and remove it.

My thought would be to make the end game much more engaging than WoW’s. That’s where the real money is down the line. From what people are saying it looks like the retention strategy is based on re-rolling.

1936

Not ackbar, but a commander.

The whole group just called him ackbar because it was a trap, and he throw out traps.

1937

Perhaps there is a niche that is all about the story, at the expense of everything else. But my impression is that they are focusing so much on this aspect, that they are ignoring so many other things that would make the game “accessible” to an even larger audience.

Anyway, Beta or Pre-launch or Retail will tell. I am very sceptical from what I have seen and heard so far. So we’ll see how long it lasts.

I care about the Lore if it is presented in a good way, like the Tome of Knowledge from Warhammer (best thing ever), or the Books and all the tooltips/Quest-log in LOTRO. In WoW, at least in certain areas, the lore that you can find is mostly in the geography and the various races, and the quest text is mostly ignored just to “get it over with”.

Pretty sure the first playthrough will just be a rush to get ahead of the crowd anyway, and then start working on achievements (of there are any) or grinding gear (unless it is too grindy). Alts have time to enjoy the journey. Mains need to reach endgame and start raiding.

From what I’ve seen on TOR, even though they have all this focus on story, and how YOU might be some incredibly important character, the question I will ask is then; Can you really make an impact on anything? Will not the next person that talk with “HumanoidDwarfNPC_00” get the same responses I did, and the same rewards. Where is the player impact on the game world or the story. Imagine how a book or a movie would be if the protagonist had absolutely no impact on the world around him, or the characters he interact with.

Still, any game that doesn’t send you below the city to gather 10 rat tails, that you need to kill 30+ rats to obtain, as rat tails are apparently a random drop, is a step in the right direction.

Edit: What I “hand waved” away was the emphasis on the 20 gig voice-acting that would “change the way” you played an MMO, in that instead of reading everything you’d listen to everything. They have even stated in interviews that, since they have to voice act everything, this would delay content updates - So they can be more “Media Rich”. Its like BIOWARE invented the “FLASH PLAYER” for MMOs.

Edit2: Also, there is hardly any reason as to why, in 2011 they release an MMO that in many regards ignores so much of what has happened in the last 6 years with MMOs. This focus on story could’ve been the “new” thing, but it did not have to be at the expense of 6 years of “progress”.

  • User Customized Interface (WOW, LOTRO, Warhammer, Rift (1.4++)) - Probably not :(
  • Rifts / Community Zone Quests (Warhammer, Rift) - unknown
  • Solo Player Instances that also can be grouped (LOTRO) - unknown
  • Fast PUG-Random Dungeon system (WoW, Rift) - unknown
  • Achievements / Titles - unknown
  • Character Looks Customization (Wardrobe) (LOTRO, Rift sort of, “Light version” in WOW 4.3).
  • Shared Bank Account between characters (EQ2)
  • Ingame LORE Accessible - Believe the Codex will be something like this
  • Instanced Battlegrounds (WOW, Warhammer, RIFT) - SWTOR will have this apparently
  • World PVP / Zones / Warfronts (WoW (until they broke it with BGs), Rift, Warhammer) - SWTOR will have this apparently

We’ll see what info they are holding secret.

1938

Without wishing to sell WoW (particularly the last expansions(s) short, WoW through… Burning Crusade, had lore and fluff for people who wanted lore and fluff, but it wasn’t in any way important and most of the people I met didn’t know it from a hole in the wall. The secrets of the dwarves’ creation are recorded on the fabled Discs of Norgannon? K bro clickclickclickclickclickclick want to faceroll this again? I’m getting XYZ xp/h.

And you can absolutely find vids of people clicking-through SWTOR content the same way, but I don’t think it’s arguable that we’re talking about a different level of content between the two games. WoW was an MMO you could solo; swtor looks like an MMO with a story you don’t want to / tend to click through indifferently, at least the first time through.

What I’d really like to see Old Republic do is what WoW did. Take a look at the existing MMOs and remove the suckiness. What BioWare should do is look at WoW and figure out where the suckiness is and remove it.

My thought would be to make the end game much more engaging than WoW’s. That’s where the real money is down the line. From what people are saying it looks like the retention strategy is based on re-rolling.

I think a lot of WoW vets would prefer something like that, and it’s a legitimate viewpoint, but I’m glad it isn’t where they’re expending their energy.

1939

I am going to speak for the “managing expectations” crowd, or at the very least me here.

Being annoyed by every video and description of the game as wow but with a different skin and not being impressed by the “interactive” story telling so far. One of the main reasons I’m not excited is because they do not own up to the fact that this is the same game everyone has been playing but with a different skin. At least Rift had the balls to say “more of what you love, but better”

edit
lots of post between hitting reply, daughter crying, and coming back :(

1940

The folks at BioWare aspire to be successful, so repeating Rift’s marketing isn’t really a good idea.