Labcoat Samurai said:
So I think the video was pretty funny. I was a bit worried at first that it would just come off as antagonistic and spiteful, but the fun seems to be poked amicably enough. The thread is another matter.
Why do people have such vitriol for this game? Bioware is trying some genuinely new stuff in trying to bring story to the forefront in an MMO. It may end up being a failed experiment, but I, for one, am glad that there's someone giving it a try. I also like the direction they're taking Star Wars. The prequel trilogy and The Force Unleashed make jedi and sith the only interesting or worthwhile characters. Bioware's take on Star Wars has been that jedi and sith are important, but that there's more to the universe than lightsabers and force powers. Sure, it was a big part of this video, but at least they're letting the other characters be cool too.
The game may not live up to expectations, but if it doesn't, isn't that a disappointment? Why does everyone seem to be taking such pleasure in deriding the game before they've even had a chance to sit down with it?
I shall remain cautiously optimistic, and I hope this game doesn't fail simply because people refuse to give it a chance. Seriously, before anyone writes me off as a fanboy, let me say that I am a fan, and I really just don't see what's wrong with that. I mean, it's a game. It's supposed to be fun. Maybe it'll suck, but why on earth would you *want* it to? It seems a lot of people would take some perverse pleasure if this game were awful and it crashed and burned.
Well, it's starting to look like a mess. I was originally enthusiastic about this game. The KOTOR universe was Star Wars with it's own style, and genuinely looked like an earlier era in the Star Wars universe. But now they're trying to shoe horn in as many different styles as they can... leading to a very oriental jedi standing next to a space cowboy. I know they always had this, but if you put Han Solo and Luke Skywalker together, they still look like they share a world, even though their costume designs harken back to a cowboy and martial arts gi. Layering on the clone wars art style to the already established, more realistic, KoTOR style makes the transition to MMO more awkward. To put it simply, it doesn't look how people remember it. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's an odd choice when you're already making a radically different type of game.
They're also cutting corners in terms of game design. Although it looks like they have 8 classes, it's fairly clear that they simply have copies for both sides. Again, there's nothing wrong with this in an original game. But here, a title such as Sith or Bounty Hunter already carries a unique character, which can't simply be overlaid onto another title with different animations. To put it simply again; a passionate Sith will have the same play style as a serene Jedi. A cunning bounty hunter will share mechanics with a meat head trooper. And as an aside... isn't it a little odd that the Sith, a militaristic organisation with their own distinctive looking soldiers does not, in fact, have a soldier class? This was done because the 'Republic Trooper' was popularised in the Clone Wars saga, but is out of place since they were a new concept then, and did not exist before Palpatine created them. In fact, it wouldn't be too far a stretch to imagine them being a Sith idea, which he sought to resurrect. Again, an odd choice, at odds with the established universe.
And you're right. It is interesting that they're exploring the other parts of the Star Wars universe, other than the Sith and Jedi. But they're crippling the great developments of the KoTOR story to do it. In KoTOR they were making Sith and Jedi more morally ambiguous, and thus, were becoming a lot more interesting. But as that cinematic shows, they're rushing back to the Sith bad, Jedi good mentality. He DOES look like Satan! This is leading to some fairly silly ideas, such as Smugglers being good guys. Han Solo was a good guy, it's true, and also a smuggler. But he's an exception, which made him interesting. Putting the smuggler on the 'good side' they're saying that smuggling, an illegal activity, is morally correct. Which is just... silly.You could argue that player characters are also exceptional smugglers, but with the ammount of players playing, well, that will be a little silly to say as well.
I'm not saying I wont't play the game. I'm just saying that the vitriol people have against this game is that it looks like a mess of ideas, without a whole lot of real thought put into it. Or at least any thought beyond, 'It was in the movies/games/books let's copy and paste'.
Hope that clears it up for you