1961

The reasons for using melee weapons in Dune are actually fairly well presented and understandable.

Star Wars is a colossal lore mish-mash that is basically Lucas handwaving a lot of shit into existence. It’s not nearly as coherent as Dune, despite Dune having some truly abstruse writing in the later books.

1962

Why?

I’m not being snide, and you’re not the first to express this philosophy. I just don’t understand it. Can you explain why you feel motivated to do this?

1963

Because a lot of games are failed and base everything on LEVELS.

In UO you had the whole game world available to you as soon as you created your character, there were no amusement park rides (or dungeons) that said “You must be this tall to enter”. No, you could freely enter them and die horribly, or use your own craftiness and skill to avoid the monsters, and instead get horribly killed by 3 Dread Lord Playerkillers, before they looted your body, carved up your corpse and then ressed you, only to kill you again, while you shouted profanities they could only see as “oooo ooo!!”. But you had the CHOICE, you could go anywhere, and experience danger and adventure, and kill people, or get killed, by people or monsters, or even a Bear you decided to attack to get your wrestling skill up to 60 and hopefully gain some STR so you could wear plate armor.

In the LEVEL Based MMOs you start at level 1. The end level might be 50, 60, 75, or whatever. As you gain levels, you will notice that you need to move from Tiny Rats, to Bigger rats, that give basically the same XP in %, but as you outlevel the Tiny rats, they will give less and less XP, due to the level difference, but they will also be easier to kill. You will notice that the old dungeon you visited, and perhaps liked to do, no longer offers any challenges to you, but the new dungeon will offer you a challenge, or just be piece of cake, for another level or two, until it too, is outleveled or outgeared. The LEVEL based MMO Is filled with “You must be this tall to enter”. And to enter everything, you need to be at endlevel.

At the end-game, you will not be able to level any more, but the content will no longer scale away from you, and sooner or latter, everyone you played with or enjoyed grouping with, will be on your level again, and you can enjoy doing the dungeons or raids with the same group of people again, without being restricted by a level difference. At the same time, if you decide to do PVP, at end-level, you will not be oneshot by someone, simply because they are 2 levels above you, and due to how the stat works in the game, you might have a “inbuilt” 8% miss chance vs someone 2 levels above you, whereas they will be unable to miss in addition to having another “tier” of gear or new talents. In a LEVEL based MMO - player SKILL is disregarded and replaced with TIME/LEVEL/GEAR.

Simply put:

In a game that has LEVELS on the characters, the only equal playing field is at max level. And that is the only place your friends wont outlevel you, or you they, so you can do the same content together without taking massive XP penalties for grouping with someone much higher (or lower) level than you.

EQ2 tried to remedy this situation somewhat by allowing people to group, and allowing the highest level players to “Mentor” the lowest level player, where he’d get more XP, and they’d get “Scaled” down to his level (but keeping some of their massive gear bonus, to keep themselves awesome).

1964

Instant, while that’s certainly the way some people feel, there are people who feel the journey is the reward, and they don’t feel compelled to max a character as fast as possible. I enjoy raiding, and I play a lot when I’m playing MMOs but I enjoy the trip to get to max level (and to be honest, it seems that’s a lot of what SWTOR is aiming for, what with the big emphasis on story… in fact, since resources are finite, I would guess the big emphasis on story might be somewhat because there isn’t quite as much to do at endgame).

As to whether or not this emphasis on storyline will be seen as a positive or negative, I don’t think we can tell at this point. I do agree that this is probably the last huzzah of the “traditional” MMO, given the way development costs have increased.

It will be interesting to compare the financial success of SWTOR to Guild Wars 2, as they’ve got pretty divergent business models. And if neither of those two “succeeds” well then MMOs will be domed.

1965

I’m not in the beta, but I’ve been following the game quite closely. From what Bioware has said the answer is yes. You and your wife could summon two companions and play a four-person “dungeon” with just the two of you. Bioware says that the companion characters aren’t as strong as real player characters, so the instance will be tougher for you, you may need to be a level or two higher or just a better than average player to complete an instance with two player characters and two companions than with four player characters.

1966

While I understand what you are saying, this isn’t the case for me at all - I enjoy the scenery, make alts, and in general just have fun.

I rarely make it to highest level, but even so I’ve played pretty much every major MMO out there for a lot of years by just exploring the world, lore and classes.

I think WoW was the only MMO where I ever raided , and that was when lvl 60 was the highest level and men where lvl 60 and it was hard earned, not like today kids who gets lvl 60 handed to him on a silver plate.

I am curious as to why MMO makers don’t just allow people to start at max level if the real game begins there for them? And no, I don’t buy the “But you have to learn you character”, you can do so at lvl 60 as well with little difficulty.

Its because the developers see there are two divergent groups - one who rushes to endgame, and one who takes a leisurely stroll through the content, and they need to cater to both, at least so they think.

I fear Starwars is a combat based MMO though, meaning as someone responded a bit upwards, there is little exploration to be had which is a shame. With a rich universe like this, a lot of fun could have been had, but I guess this will be one of the games where you can’t move 2 steps without running into A MOB!

1967

There is a reason, by the way, that UO hemorrhaged subscribers to EQ and other PvE games, even though EQ was certainly no casuals’ haven.

Because a griefer’s paradise is really not that attractive to many players.

1968

Except UO still had advancement, and instead of playing the game to advance, you locked yousrself in your house and ran a macro program.

UO had some great ideas, but holding it up as some example of a level playing field or a superior advancement mechanism is evidence of a serious case of rose-tinted spectacles.

1969

He didn’t say UO was perfect. He just said he liked that the world was truly open, and you could try anything without worrying about zones and level restrictions. He’s right about that. I disagree with his rant about levels being bad. I have 20 characters in WOW and NONE of them are max level. So obviously I like the leveling up, and I think the majority of players of WOW do too. But the hardcore like the end game. So both end up being important to the success of an MMO over the long haul.

1970

You can, but so far everything looks …brown and not very innovative. Even the Jedi Temple entrance reminds me of Magister’s Terrace. Running is a slow slog (At least until level 15. I have MMO running issues).

I’m with Fox on this one. It’s more of the same. Probably worth a play through for the storyline.

1971

It wasn’t that much of a griefer’s paradise, but yes it did serve as one for the most part.
It also gave rise to PKK and police-esque RPers or otherwise people who believed in upholding values and morals, even in a virtual world and so on. So yes, there were evil people, but also good and lawful ones. And that you don’t get to see most any day. Yet UO had those in a large concentration, relatively.

Arguably, the friendly no-pvp zones and so on actually caused UO to leak out even further and prevented self-policing against some griefers.

1972

If there must be levels in a game I think I prefer City of Heroes solution. It now auto sets everyone in the group one level below the leader or mission owner. This means a lvl 50 can group up with a level 5, do missions at lvl 5 (as a lvl 4/50) then do regular mission content at 50 with their friend at 49 …without doing anything more than switching the chosen mission. The level restrictions are on the after 50 stuff (incarnate) and the task forces/strike forces
Which isn’t a whole bunch of content, much less than say Wow’s raid tiers.

SWG was open world as well. If you didn’t have decent damage going to Yavin was a -bad- idea. But you could do it, just remember to keep moving.

1973

The subs were on a pretty severe downward spiral until they added the safe zones.

Anyway, if you liked the UO experience Darkfall sounds a bit like it – you get killed and you can be looted, and it’s skill-based so repetition of actions instead of gaining levels is how you get more powerful.

I think that ultimately content created by players interacting is more interesting than crafted PvE content, but that means there are winners and losers and losers tend to get frustrated and unsubscribe.

1974

There is also non-pvp related player created content in the form of SWG’s old Storyteller system, STO’s Foundry and what ever CoH’s system is called. It’s a shame more mmos don’t include these tools from the start. You would think they would lessen the developer workload.

1975

UO was more about an organic world.
From what I gathered DarkFall is about relentless merciless hardcore PvP where you have to be the mount&blade champion or you get hosed like a poor kid in his first day in Quake.
So that wouldn’t exactly be my thing. I have FPSes for the frag-fest extravaganza needs.

1976

Darkfall has its organic side from what I’ve read, but it’s home to hardcore PvPers so that’s what you’ll see most of the time.

1977

Mission Architect (Architect Entertainment in game)

However it has been a severe downfall to City of heroes in retrospect. There was a whole “generation” of what was called AE babies. Folk who couldn’t find anything if it wasn’t on the Atlas part tram line. (So the solution became put -everything- on the Atlas tram line, least for blue side)

You can get to lvl 50 , smacking ambush spawns of fire cyborgs in about 5 hrs. Takes a Tank or a brute to do it, or a lvl 50 Incarnated out character and 7 other folk bored enough to smack the same mobs over and over. I suppose that is the pve experience burned down to the minimalistic level. You -do- feel powerful smacking 50 something guys all over the place as another 50 spawn on your head. I don’t know if it is really content though. The mission crafter will not be available at -all- to the future free players of City of… you will have to be at least premium of some level to get into the building and more so or paying to get rewards from it.

There has to be a happy middle somewhere. Something between on rails, and wide spaces with griefers waiting. (I remember griefing with harvest machines in SWG… you beg for rights to put down a harvester to get some resource everyone wants, offer half of it, then bomb the city with housing. Usually followed by putting yourself to vote if the town is really not paying attention to get claim on the town)

I wander… but seriously can’t we find a middle ground somewhere?

1978

I felt the implementation of Architect was a mistake, for the reasons you cite, but ultimately it has been a strength for the kind of players I like to be around. And community is a big deal for me in a massively multiplayer game. Sure there are powergamer idiots who just want to race to the top of the “I win” pile but there are also creative folks, like roleplayers, that have made some pretty decent adventures. Even better many SG’s create ongoing custom storyarcs for their players so it can feel like a comic book storyline featuring your actual character rather than the sort of Mad Libs, generic adventures, that everyone does in the main game.

Players always complain about what they do not effecting the world. Player created content, like tabletop roleplaying, can reflect changes and themes and dynamic storylines. It does require players with a bit of imagination and talent but they’re more common than you’d think. There’s a reason many top servers in MMOdom are Unofficial RP servers.

The reason Architect failed, in the sense you describe it, is that it offered excessive rewards. SWG’s Storyteller remained popular even though it actually cost the mission designer credits to use! And there was almost no crap produced by powergamers because they had nothing to gain. All of it was employed to enhance player created events or stories for the sheer love of being able to do that.

You don’t need to bribe a kid to play with a toy especially a bright kid and a toy that allows him to do cool things.

1979

Seems impossible…but someone will figure it out one day and his MMO will see meteoric rise.

1980

Testing FAQ:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=479405