How The Old Republic Didn't Change MMOs

[Ken From Chicago]

Ah, but in Guild Wars, no one knew who was NOT skipping the cutscenes as it had to be a unanimous vote.

 

[Ken From Chicago]

First, if you're looking for major innovation in MMOs, well GUILD WARS 2 is the answer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY

ArenaNet puts it best: "If you love MMOs you'll want to check out Guild Wars 2 and if you hate MMOs you'll *really* want to check out Guild Wars 2."

Second, having the group decide on how to respond to an NPC is breaking immersion? How? Isn't that what would REALLY happen IRL if you're in a group and encounter someone? Wouldn't the individual members of the group decide on how to respond? Be it a teacher telling you kids to get to class or a shopkeeper asking you into her store for a sale or a fire fighter warning you away from a burning building, etc.? Wouldn't the GROUP consider whether to stay or go or do something else?

 

[Supernova2000]

First, if you're looking for major innovation in MMOs, well GUILD WARS 2 is the answer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY

ArenaNet puts it best: "If you love MMOs you'll want to check out Guild Wars 2 and if you hate MMOs you'll *really* want to check out Guild Wars 2."

Here here! The GW2 website already describes, in great detail, how it's dynamic events system works, long before open beta. Now that's either AreanaNet setting themselves up for a spectacular let down or they already have a good enough build of that system that they can confidently tell us about. TOR, by comparison, doesn't tell us much about how it's story works - and frankly doesn't need to - because anyone who's remotely familiar with MMO's already knows how it works.

By the way, am I the only one who thinks that it looks like an overloading electric pylon at 2:18 in that video?

 

[2xDouble]

It's not a straight up WoW clone by any means, but it's not a great leap forward for MMOs. We'll have to wait for Guild Wars 2 for that!

First, if you're looking for major innovation in MMOs, well GUILD WARS 2 is the answer:

Yeah, but no sense getting all "elitist" about it.

Spoiler: Totalbiscuit has a message:

OT: Could The Old Republic have been better? absolutely. In spite of it's innovations (most of which are very good), I consider the game to be a massively missed opportunity.
Does that make TOR a bad game? no, of course not. It's a WoW clone by design, but it's the best damn WoW clone there has ever been, and that includes Cataclysm.

 

[Lex Darko]

First, if you're looking for major innovation in MMOs, well GUILD WARS 2 is the answer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY

ArenaNet puts it best: "If you love MMOs you'll want to check out Guild Wars 2 and if you hate MMOs you'll *really* want to check out Guild Wars 2."

Here here! The GW2 website already describes, in great detail, how it's dynamic events system works, long before open beta. Now that's either AreanaNet setting themselves up for a spectacular let down or they already have a good enough build of that system that they can confidently tell us about. TOR, by comparison, doesn't tell us much about how it's story works - and frankly doesn't need to - because anyone who's remotely familiar with MMO's already knows how it works.

By the way, am I the only one who thinks that it looks like an overloading electric pylon at 2:18 in that video?

Yeah but the combat of GW2 looks just as boring as that of TOR, and if that's the case then they just scrap the MMO part make it a single player game with multiplayer elements and save themselves, their studio, and their publisher time and money.

The biggest leaps forward in MMO gameplay (specifically combat) are coming from korean games, such as: TERA Online, Vindictus, and Blade and Soul.

TOR and GW2 may tell me a good story but that doesn't mean I will be able to stay awake to hear it.

 

[Voltano]

To all those complaining about companions being the same. You do realize that their are companion customization items that completely change the look of your companion and their are quite a few of them too. Not to mention each companion has a full set of gear they wear.

But they are still the same character. The same voice-actor, same personal drama, same characterization that fleshes them out from a bunch of 1s and 0s to a believable, 4-dimensional, breathing character that Bioware claims to do so well. Seeing a copy of that character--regardless of graphical changes--means there are clones of that character running around, or he/she is somehow capable of being *everywhere* in that galaxy thanks to some magical time-watch Hermoine used to keep up with her classes in "Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban." Which one is more plausible?

That being said if what your complaining about is that other ppl have companions walking around with the same name as yours (which it seems that yoou are) then i dont really know what to say, its a freaking name, like i said with gear and companions customizations ive rarely seen 2 companions that look the same. The only times that happens are when you first get a new companion and they are in their stock gear and youve yet to put a companions customization on them yet and that period should be brief, its not too hard to go buy a companions customization or to go buy some new better gear to put on your companion. Also if the name part is really bugging you, just take the companion Name bars off in your interface options.....

The other issue pointed out here is your comparing the companions to the gear on one character to another character. Your right that its lame when you have a level 85 troll decked out in elite gear and another troll wanders by with the same looking gear. But those are objects, intended to be replicated and mass-produced so everyone has a fair chance of getting them. If WoW ever gave the chance where your character could equip FrostMourne, then yeah it would be cool, but then you would see 500 (or more) people carrying the same weapon that the entire back-story of that weapon or how epic it is just becomes as bland as a slurpee in a 7/11.

The companions, if similar to gear on a character, then they become just as bland as that gear. To put it another way (I have no clue if this is true since I haven't played this MMORPG, but hypothetically speaking): Imagine if there is a tragic moment where one of your favorite companions die for a noble cause, or is killed by your hands in the story. Then after that narrative event, you see that same character wandering around with other players. Its like Aeris just gets back up and is a playable character for no context reason *after her cinematic death* in FFVII to end-game.

 

[Supernova2000]

The biggest leaps forward in MMO gameplay (specifically combat) are coming from korean games, such as: TERA Online, Vindictus, and Blade and Soul.

TOR and GW2 may tell me a good story but that doesn't mean I will be able to stay awake to hear it.

Fucking hell I see your point! I've just watched the previews for Vindictus and Blade & Soul and they look a hell of a lot more fun, B&S especially looks like the kind of combat system that TOR bloody well should have! Thanks, I'm just downloading them now.

 

[Cenequus]

How The Old Republic Didn't Change MMOs

The Old Republic is great but not groundbreaking.

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Hmm is kinda stupid to say this since we're talking about an MMO after all so very short after a launch,so I won't say you are wrong or right on the conclusion,we'll see in a year.

But thing is it's like saying Wow hasn't changed MMos since it was just a copy paste of Everquest or Asheron's Call but even beeing a clone basically it did. The immediate change to the MMO market that I hope TOR does it's the fact the story matters in an MMO just as much as in a single player game. The amount of people subbing just proves wrong to those that said people playing MMOs didn't give a shit about it. And even if the general MMO public will actually care next to zero of the story it will probably bring a new public to it like me.

I don't think my choices in games are so unique but the only MMO I really enjoyed until TOR was LOTRO just because it actually has a rich story flowing through the game.


Now to sound a prick for a second and read behind this article,to me just sounds like a fanboy pretest when you'll write an articleabout GW2 and how it changed MMOs forever.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I think games like this should be more niche. Again, looking at SWG (the easy comparison) dancing was a small niche, but well-loved. Crafting was very robust, though it catered to a minority of the player base. With all the early ins-and-outs of Jedi, that was a whole 'nother niche. I prefer not to think of these as niche features, but rather as features that are distinctly flavored -- in practice, yes, that narrows their appeal, but to call them "niche" misplaces the intent, I think.

My limited experience with SWG provided a rather bland mechanical experience. Granted, by that point the game community was completely dead, and without that you just don't have any real interactions.

I recall someone calling it "Star Wars-Second Life", and that description seems to have stuck with me.

Modern MMOs want mass appeal, but they also only want to cater to one core group of players. That means blander, less distinct flavor throughout each aspect of the game, with many of those aspects being marginalized.

Bingo.
The MMO genre is forever cursed with the burden of Fixed Costs.
Development (depending on who you go to) is a variable cost. Deployment and marketing is a variable cost.
But servers, bandwidth and the maintainence thereof? Fixed cost. And one that absolutely cannot be neglected if you want your MMO to be a success.

And it's because of that added cost that these MMOs aim for wider market appeal (at least in the US and Europian markets; Asia is a whole different beast).

You can't be a full-time non-combat player anymore, no matter how much you may want to. You have to be the Hero of the World, and heroes fight.

Yeah. That's the sweeping popular archetype for your average gamer in the US/European markets.

Basically, the one-flavor-fits-all way of doing things is the problem I have. It makes design easier, sure (though, I'll note, it hasn't lowered the price one bit). And that makes it easier to fit more story and voice acting in there, because there are far fewer directions in which players can go.

Unfortunately, the nature of this problem goes even deeper into the economics of the MMO gaming market. From a design point, Bioware is trying to shoot for a game that offers an MMO-experience that can compete with WoW (and the WoW-clone market) in terms of both content and population.

Looking at it a bit more broadly, the primary audience isn't the old Star Wars Galaxies demographic, but the new parents holding down employment who don't want to spend effort making their own stories, or the guys who loved the KOTOR games. And all the curious middlings included.

Star Wars Galaxies worked as it did for in part because at the time of release, it was the ONLY Star Wars MMO in town. Around the same time however, WoW came along and rolled up the *entire* MMORPG market.

And something happened. Something terrifying: Executives saw for the first time how an MMO *can* achieve mass-market appeal. Everyone and their dad can play WoW, so the goal shifted to creating that bland game you described, by designing the game to appeal to both the "WoW demographic" and to Star Wars fans, instead of just Star Wars fans (as Galaxies did).

But to ensure financial stability for the project, it appears that Bioware opted to roll out their old proven method of success, which is where the KOTOR stories come from.

And now, we have this bizarre mish-mash of specific market appeals all globbed together.

And as for the "personal story," to me the whole point is that the story isn't personal. Not to MY "person," at least. I don't feel I own my character in any sense of the word.

Aye, it's canned KOTOR story. As you said before, it's probably worth a single play through.
Though compared to your average MMO, it's sadly much more story than you're likely to ever find.

Case in point. When everyone's special, no one's special.

And when nobody's special, nobody cares. Hence, why most MMORPGs don't even attempt to let the players in on the story. But just to sit back and watch.

Hence, why I find it difficult to believe that a game allows for both can be anything other than niche'.
Star Wars Galaxies is an oddity, and because of many factors (WoW chief among them) it remained niche'. And "Niche'" becomes increasingly taboo to the executives who fund these games each year.

 

[Baldr]

I think games like this should be more niche. Again, looking at SWG (the easy comparison) dancing was a small niche, but well-loved. Crafting was very robust, though it catered to a minority of the player base. With all the early ins-and-outs of Jedi, that was a whole 'nother niche. I prefer not to think of these as niche features, but rather as features that are distinctly flavored -- in practice, yes, that narrows their appeal, but to call them "niche" misplaces the intent, I think.

My limited experience with SWG provided a rather bland mechanical experience. Granted, by that point the game community was completely dead, and without that you just don't have any real interactions.

I recall someone calling it "Star Wars-Second Life", and that description seems to have stuck with me.

Modern MMOs want mass appeal, but they also only want to cater to one core group of players. That means blander, less distinct flavor throughout each aspect of the game, with many of those aspects being marginalized.

Bingo.
The MMO genre is forever cursed with the burden of Fixed Costs.
Development (depending on who you go to) is a variable cost. Deployment and marketing is a variable cost.
But servers, bandwidth and the maintainence thereof? Fixed cost. And one that absolutely cannot be neglected if you want your MMO to be a success.

And it's because of that added cost that these MMOs aim for wider market appeal (at least in the US and Europian markets; Asia is a whole different beast).

You can't be a full-time non-combat player anymore, no matter how much you may want to. You have to be the Hero of the World, and heroes fight.

Yeah. That's the sweeping popular archetype for your average gamer in the US/European markets.

Basically, the one-flavor-fits-all way of doing things is the problem I have. It makes design easier, sure (though, I'll note, it hasn't lowered the price one bit). And that makes it easier to fit more story and voice acting in there, because there are far fewer directions in which players can go.

Unfortunately, the nature of this problem goes even deeper into the economics of the MMO gaming market. From a design point, Bioware is trying to shoot for a game that offers an MMO-experience that can compete with WoW (and the WoW-clone market) in terms of both content and population.

Looking at it a bit more broadly, the primary audience isn't the old Star Wars Galaxies demographic, but the new parents holding down employment who don't want to spend effort making their own stories, or the guys who loved the KOTOR games. And all the curious middlings included.

Star Wars Galaxies worked as it did for in part because at the time of release, it was the ONLY Star Wars MMO in town. Around the same time however, WoW came along and rolled up the *entire* MMORPG market.

And something happened. Something terrifying: Executives saw for the first time how an MMO *can* achieve mass-market appeal. Everyone and their dad can play WoW, so the goal shifted to creating that bland game you described, by designing the game to appeal to both the "WoW demographic" and to Star Wars fans, instead of just Star Wars fans (as Galaxies did).

But to ensure financial stability for the project, it appears that Bioware opted to roll out their old proven method of success, which is where the KOTOR stories come from.

And now, we have this bizarre mish-mash of specific market appeals all globbed together.

And as for the "personal story," to me the whole point is that the story isn't personal. Not to MY "person," at least. I don't feel I own my character in any sense of the word.

Aye, it's canned KOTOR story. As you said before, it's probably worth a single play through.
Though compared to your average MMO, it's sadly much more story than you're likely to ever find.

Case in point. When everyone's special, no one's special.

And when nobody's special, nobody cares. Hence, why most MMORPGs don't even attempt to let the players in on the story. But just to sit back and watch.

Hence, why I find it difficult to believe that a game allows for both can be anything other than niche'.
Star Wars Galaxies is an oddity, and because of many factors (WoW chief among them) it remained niche'. And "Niche'" becomes increasingly taboo to the executives who fund these games each year.

Sadly, you got to play SWG after NGE. The game was a whole lot different before the that. Before that is was all player driven, it stem from games like Ultima Online, where there were no real quests, just a huge sandbox and some bits of story, the players made up the rest which was the norm at the time.

I just want to point out the SOE screwed up SWG a long time before CU and NGE. It started with the Jedi fiasco, life day, then X-server trade-able holocrons(for Jedi) and ensuing scams, then making the experience points to unlock the Jedi so ridiculously high.

 

[Dennis Scimeca]

Hey, everyone. I've been enjoying the conversation, and thanks to everybody for commenting on the column this week!

I see a lot of people talking about The Old Republic being a "WoW clone," and I wonder whether that's a fair thing to say. Hear me out.

The basic quest and combat mechanics of massively multiplayer online role playing games were established by EverQuest back in 1999. World of Warcraft really didn't innovate on those mechanics. WoW polished them. From that perspective WoW was an EverQuest clone, but we don't say that because WoW was clearly, ridiculously more popular than EQ ever was.

I don't know what a different kind of MMO would look like in terms of combat mechanics. DC Universe Online's mechanics are more like an action game than a traditional MMO, so maybe that's a step in the right direction. No one's gotten the first person, reflex-based combat system to work properly in an MMO, though Firefall is making a leap in that direction. Buggered if I know what a better quest system would look like, though. Dynamic quest generation would seem to be a goal, but then there's the question of characters and voice performances.

Until such time as these questions get answered, calling MMO games "clones" of whoever came first or happens to be on top at the moment just seems silly. Just call them MMOs. The Old Republic is a traditional MMO, not a clone of anything. My point this week was that by making one, significant change to what "traditional" means in this case, it casts all the other "traditions" in a different light.

That's not to say those traditions are bad, or even to suggest there are immediate, easy ways to break them, but I think it's interesting to see them more clearly as a result of what TOR did!

 

[LetalisK]

This isn't particularly directed at the author of the article, but some of the reasons given for why SWTOR is a bad game have got to make Bioware happy. They are either the most nit-pick minor issues possible or they're issues that every MMO suffers from and usually worse. Chances are those types of people weren't going to enjoy the game no matter what Bioware did and if that's the worst they can come up with? Good on Bioware.

 

[Supernova2000]

However, here is my question:
What do you mean, more specifically, about those korean games being the leaps forward for MMO's? What makes you say that? I'm genuinely curious.

Well the combat in Vindictus (Free-to-Play), for example, is real-time; one click, one attack and you can grab an opponent and punch his lights out or slam them into the nearest wall, even pick up random debris and throw it at them. Granted, my enthusiasm was premature and having played it, I realise it's nothing I haven't seen before and I wouldn't call it "innovative" by any means, especially since every other aspect is as run-of-the-mill as you can get but it does have the right idea with it's combat system, an example that we in the west would do well to follow.

I don't mind the pseudo turn-based system used by the KoTOR series and MMO's in general provided that the melee is well animated, unlike TOR (watch this [http://www.youtube.com/user/Snapwave#p/u/1/289zxRKEqRk] at 14:47 onwards if there's anyone who doesn't believe me) and actually I too, am intrigued by the GW2 combat, especially the environmental effects, like sending minions through a poisonous gas cloud to carry the infection to the enemy or arrows being set alight when shot through fire, except that wielding a single longsword two-handed - my preferred style - doesn't appear to be a bloody option, yet again!

 

[Korten12]

First, if you're looking for major innovation in MMOs, well GUILD WARS 2 is the answer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY

ArenaNet puts it best: "If you love MMOs you'll want to check out Guild Wars 2 and if you hate MMOs you'll *really* want to check out Guild Wars 2."

Here here! The GW2 website already describes, in great detail, how it's dynamic events system works, long before open beta. Now that's either AreanaNet setting themselves up for a spectacular let down or they already have a good enough build of that system that they can confidently tell us about. TOR, by comparison, doesn't tell us much about how it's story works - and frankly doesn't need to - because anyone who's remotely familiar with MMO's already knows how it works.

By the way, am I the only one who thinks that it looks like an overloading electric pylon at 2:18 in that video?

Yeah but the combat of GW2 looks just as boring as that of TOR, and if that's the case then they just scrap the MMO part make it a single player game with multiplayer elements and save themselves, their studio, and their publisher time and money.

The biggest leaps forward in MMO gameplay (specifically combat) are coming from korean games, such as: TERA Online, Vindictus, and Blade and Soul.

TOR and GW2 may tell me a good story but that doesn't mean I will be able to stay awake to hear it.

GW2 is much more action-base then TOR is. GW2 has active dodging, combinging spells with other classes, using environment to your advantage, able to revive in combat (all classes can revive), no holy trinity.

TOR - WoW without auto-attack.

 

[ThunderCavalier]

It's nice to see BioWare trying to make a unique and fresh take on the MMO genre, but the fact of the matter is that they're used to Single-Player RPGs, and trying to mix some of the conventions such RPGs have with the MMO variant feels kinda... awkward.

It's certainly a unique experience, but we're going to have to get used to the fact that some of BioWare's ideas don't translate well to MMO format. So far, though, TOR sounds like a blast.